Just read: God of the Woods, Dream Count, and another Birder Murder mystery

God of the Woods, by Liz Moore - I saw this book on so many blogs last year, and since I loved the premise, I fell for the hype. So glad I did because it was a fun book that kept me on the edge of my seat. 

Two children from the same wealthy family disappear 14 years apart from their parents' summer complex in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. The story alternates between the summer of 1975 when 14-year-old Barbara Van Laar disappears from the children's summer camp on the Van Laar preserve and the summer of 1961 when 8-year-old Bear Van Laar disappears from the preserve. 

The cast of characters include the weird Van Laar parents, both from moneyed backgrounds--Peter is a cold, controlling banker and Alice is a debutante who never grew a spine; wealthy friends of the parents, hardworking law enforcement, a convicted escaped rapist and serial killer, camp staff including the camp manager and groundskeeper, and town folk from the nearby blue-collar town of Shattuck, NY.. 

The resolutions for both disappearances were different than I expected and pretty interesting in themselves. I also thought the red herrings were terrific and really had me going down a variety of deadends. 

I almost had a problem with stereotypical characters, but Moore managed to step back from the stereotype and make them real. The 1970s she depicts in rural NY was not really recognizable to me--being a teen in Colorado in the 1970s, but I figured that had more to do with location and regional norms than authorial sloppiness. In other words, I enjoyed the story so much I gave the author some slack.

Has anyone read any of the other books by this author?

Dream Count, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - this was a five-star book for me. Here's the GoodReads blurb:

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

I really enjoyed reading about these four women from worlds that I know so little about. Even when they are in the U.S., their experiences, being international women of color, barely intersect with my own reality. However, Kadiatou's story is the most powerful and compelling. She tells of her life in Guinea--unlike the other three women, she is not born into a wealthy family--and so she must work from an early age. She immigrates to the U.S., helped by her fiancée, and it was fascinating and sobering to read about the immigrant experience. The other women were interesting to read about, but hers was the story I really cared about...and deeply.

The ending is probably one of the most satisfying endings to a story that I have read in a very long time. It is beautiful and hopeful, life-affirming but not sugar-coated. We all dream our own dreams and what is good or right or just for one person is not necessarily what another person wants.

Also, the Author's Note at the end is brilliant and definitely worth reading. She says this about stories:

Stories die and recede from collective memory merely for not having been told. Or a single version thrives because other versions are silenced. Imaginative retellings matter. Literature does truly instruct and delight—or at least it can. Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament. Stories help us see ourselves and talk about ourselves. 

I also read but never blogged about the author's Americanah, which was also a 5-star book for me. 

A Foreboding of Petrels, by Steve Burrows - #7 in the wonderful birder murder mystery series, this one was particularly interesting as the murder took place at a research lab in Antarctica, so it was interesting to learn about life down there, the logistics and how to deal with the extreme conditions, etc while watching Dominic Jejune, chief detective, figure it all out while on required leave from his job.

This is such a good mystery series--chock full of interesting side characters--and set in the marshy eastern coast of England. Small town stuff, birding stuff, science stuff. All good!

Apart from Reading...

I've started ice skating again. I was practically born on skates--with a Canadian mother, there was really no choice. I speed skated until age 11, then shifted to figure skating through high school. And then, I stopped skating except very occasionally, sold my custom skates since they no longer fit, and didn't skate for about 20 years...while the body aged. I bought a pair of skates and have been four times in the last two weeks, with two of my adult kids, and am really enjoying the change of pace. As I say, I have the muscle memory...just not the muscles anymore. Pictures of me on the ice will not be forthcoming.

Finished season three of The Gilded Age and cannot wait until season 4 is released later this year. What an exceptionally good show. I loved everything about it. Will start current season of Bridgerton soon. 

Resumed watching Mad About You--Jamie and Paul are finally pregnant. I loved this show in the 1990's and am so impressed with all the great comedians that Paul Reiser induced to be on his show. We're talking Carl Reiner, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Stephen Wright, and I know Carol Burnett shows up as Jamie's mom later on.  And then, of course, there were the crossovers with other NBC shows: namely Friends and Seinfeld.

Set up to record the new Count of Monte Cristo on PBS, which starts on March 22. Gearing up to watch Death by Lightning about the assassination of President James Garfield.

Tried to watch How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, assuming it would be like Derry Girls, but too weird and spooky for me.

Watched the first two episodes of the rebooted Scrubs. Definitely a keeper!

Happy Spring! So glad we are back on daylight savings time--walks in the evening, reading on the back deck in the evening. Garden planning is underway.

Best wishes for a wonderful March full of good books!

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

In searching for books about and set in Scotland, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, was on virtually every list I encountered and since I had not yet read it, I did.

Set in Edinburgh in the 1930s and published in 1962, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie surprised me in how much I disliked it while I was reading it but came to like it later, while I was trying to figure out what to say about it. 

Synopsis: Jean Brodie is a forty-something attractive, single teacher at a girls school in Edinburgh. She teaches the middle grade girls--the 11–13-year-olds. She is unconventional in that she doesn't drill her class on the fundamentals but rather wants to instill in them an appreciation and understanding of what she considers high culture and art--classical music, poetry, classical literature, Renaissance art. She selects a set of girls from her class to become her favorites, "her set," and she takes them to concerts and other outings, including tea in her flat. 

The school administration disapproves of Miss Brodie's approach to teaching and the fact that she has a set of girls who are loyal to her even as they age out of her classes and move to the senior school. The head mistress tries for years to figure out how to get Miss Brodie to "retire early" and tries to get girls from her set to "betray" her by sharing secrets about her sex life. All the girls know that she is in love with a married man, the art teacher, but having an affair with a single man, the music teacher. The girls never bow to the headmistress's pressure to spill what they know. However, one girl does tell the headmistress that Miss Brodie admires the fascists who are gaining power in Italy and Germany, and that is all the headmistress needs to finally boot Miss Brodie from the school.

 I started this book assuming that I would like Jean Brodie and feel awful for the way she was treated. This was not the case. I disliked Miss Brodie intensely--she is arrogant, self-satisfied, selfish, vain, and manipulative. As a teacher, she cared not about actually helping her students but in having them do well in order to make her shine all the brighter. Her love for Mussolini and Hitler and her admiration for their Black Shirts and Brown Shirts was repulsive. She talks about being in her prime--that is, she is at the peak of her beauty, knowledge, intellectual prowess and she is gracing her students with her gifts while she is in her prime.

The writing was interesting in that the narrator never gets us inside Miss Brodie's head, but rather we see what she does and says, often second hand, not what she thinks.

The narrator pegs or labels each of the girls based on Miss Brodie's assessment, and they are stuck with those labels: Eunice was athletic, Jenny was theatrical, Mary was stupid, Monica was known for sex, Rose was beautiful, and Sandy had "little piggy eyes" and fantasized a lot, living out stories in her head.  And the narrator repeated these descriptions often, reminding me of the "wine-dark sea" of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These girls were reduced to the labels Miss Brodie attached to them, and in the novel they never have a life apart from the label, except for Sandy who becomes the "one who betrayed her."

When I finished the book, I gave it three stars. After thinking about it for a while, I've upped my rating to four stars. The book is not really about Miss Jean Brodie and the Scottish or Edinburgh school system. It is an allegory for how charismatic leaders can create loyal followers who will blindly support them even when they are shown to be less than perfect. 

Written thirty years after the rise of fascism in Europe and almost twenty years after WWII ended, it seems to be an attempt to demonstrate how easily a fascist leader like Mussolini or Hitler could convince seemingly reasonable and rational people to do heinous things.

It is a sobering tale, relevant now in the US like never before. Not a fun book to read, but a powerful message. Maybe it is a five-star book after all.

I've never seen the movie, starring Maggie Smith. I wonder how true to the book it is.

The Brontës

I've been reading the Brontës for almost my entire life. When I was a young teenager and ready to move from the children's section of the library, my brother Mark recommended Jane Eyre to me. My parents had these wonderful hardback copies of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights that had woodcut illustrations that became burned into my memory. 

In compiling this page of all the posts that I've done on the Brontës, I was surprised to find that I've never done a post devoted to either of JE or WH, both of which I have reread many times. Now that I have seen that glaring omission, I will endeavor to correct this on my next rereading.

Now that I have started collecting my thoughts and posts on this wonderfully interesting literary family, I am inspired to rewatch, reread, and read more about them and what they created.

The Novels

Villette, by Charlotte Brontë - mixed feelings about this one. Felt like an exercise in catharsis but worth reading if only to understand Charlotte better.

Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë - I know there are legions of Anne fans, but I am not among them. I didn't like this book, but I do like Anne in the family. She just didn't have the genius of Charlotte and Emily.

Biographies

The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth Gaskell - I have read this several times, and I really love it. I am a Gaskell fan anyway, and the fact that she was asked to do a bio of her friend Charlotte by Patrick Brontë after Charlotte's death makes it so meaningful and relevant. Yes, it is biased but it was a labor of love and respect. I did a number of posts based on a rereading of this book.

Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë

Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë: In the Hill-Country Silence

Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë: The Professor and "Mode of Composition"

Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë: the French, Branwell, and Ruth

The Taste of Sorrow, by Jude Morgan - Morgan writes wonderful fictional bios and this one, also called Charlotte and Emily, is superb.

The Brontës: Wild Genius of the Moors, by Juliet Barker - a comprehensive bio of the family. My only gripe is that she doesn't respect Gaskell's bio as I do.

Fifteen Wild Decembers, by Karen Powell - the story of the Brontë family, told from Emily's pov. Absolutely wonderful. Gorgeous writing and the depiction of Emily is spot on.

Miscellaneous

Daphne, by Justine Picard - an interesting novel about Daphne du Maurier and her obsession with Branwell Brontë, with weird parallels to the author's own life.

Brontë Humor, Gaskell Bio, and Plath's poem - a truly spur-of-the-moment post about something that struck me while I was reading the Gaskell bio. 

• Here is the Sylvia Plath poem, Wuthering Heights.

The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte, by Daphne du Maurier - I read this as a teenager and have been wanting to reread it for decades. I'll let you know when I do.

The Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys - I read this roughly 50 years ago as a teenager. I remember feeling that Jane really got shortchanged, but I think that was the point. It is Bertha's story--the first wife, the mad woman in the attic. How she got there and the role Mr Rochester played in her madness.

Cinematic

Brontës of Haworth (1973) - episode 5 - the very dated Brontës of Haworth is absolutely wonderful. I have watched it several times and it is so good. Yes, it was done in 1973, but the storytelling is first rate and the characterization of all the members of the family is perfect. I think they must have used Gaskell's bio as the source material. 

To Walk Invisibile - I haven't done a post on this BBC series (though I've mentioned it a few times), but in many ways it is an updated version of the 1973 mini-series. Excellent.

All the movies and series on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

George C. Scott was my first Mr. Rochester, but I haven't seen that version of JE in decades. Same with Heathcliff and Lawrence Olivier. I am currently down on adaptations because they invariably disappoint me. 

Travels

Travelogue: Haworth - I visited Haworth in 2009 with my then 16-year old daughter, and we had the best time exploring the town, visiting the parsonage and church and museum and pubs. I especially liked walking up on the moors.

More on Keighley or 'Cyhha's Clearing' - this was a nerdy follow-up post to the post about our visit to Haworth. Keithley is the nearby town with the train station.

Does Rick Steves' Hate Haworth - a prequel post made while planning the trip to Haworth. Posted in 2009. It would be interesting to see if more exists on the RS website about Haworth now.

Two Mysteries: Kate Shackleton and Mrs. Blossom

Happy February! 

The Super Bowl was fun, and we enjoyed seeing the Seahawks beat the Patriots since the latter kept the Broncos out of the big show. The commercials were mostly lame--I just cannot get excited about AI and was super-disappointed that Matthew Broderick used his Ferris Bueller persona to encourage companies to use AI to do the work real people need and can do better. I also loathe the ads that encourage people to gamble. The best commercial was the Dunkin one with stand-ins for all our favorite TV characters from days gone by. Fun. I may have to go to Dunkin to show that the ad worked!

The Olympics are fun, although it was heartbreaking to see Lindsey Vonn crash. Those winter sports are, on average, so much more dangerous than the summer ones.

Mysteries

Based on Constance's review on Staircase Wit, I read and enjoyed Death Takes a Vacation, by Laura Lippman. Our heroine, Muriel Blossom, was an assistant to Lippman's main detective, Tess Monaghan, and is now on a vacation in France where she finds herself at the heart of a murder mystery and she has to figure out who to trust and what the heck is going on. I absolutely enjoyed every minute spent with Mrs. Blossom, as the narrator and most of the other characters call her. I thought only my mother preferred the Mrs. moniker, and since Mrs. B is only a year older than I am, this seemed pretty dated, but that's okay.

Visiting Paris with Muriel was fun--she goes shopping, visits art galleries, and dines in wonderful restaurants. I absolutely loved traveling down the Seine with her, stopping at Versailles, Giverny, Rouen, and Normandy. I especially enjoyed learning about the artist Joan Mitchell, whose home near Giverny Muriel makes a pilgrimage to.

The mystery itself is good and kept me guessing until all was revealed, which is the way I like it. 

I've only read one Tess Monaghan mystery, but now I am motivated to read more.

Dying in the Wool, by Frances Brody, is the first in the author's Kate Shackleton series, set in Yorkshire in the post WWI years. There are 11 books in the series, so I imagine they lead up to WWII. Anyway, I digress. This one involves a young widow, Kate, who lost her beloved in the Great War and is beginning a career as a private investigator, having proved to herself that she is quite good at finding lost people. She is commissioned by a friend to discover what happened to the friend's father, mill owner and local bigwig who disappeared following his arrest for attempted suicide. 

This was interesting primarily because of the setting and time period--the mystery wasn't riveting although it was well told. I have another in the series and plan to read that as well.

Speaking of Sheep

I was speaking of wool, which comes from sheep, so not too great a leap there!

My daughter just told me about an upcoming Hugh Jackman movie, The Sheep Detectives, which is based on the novel Three Bags Full, by Leonie Swann. Here's the trailer and it looks so much fun. I know what I want to do for Mother's Day!

Orchids, Olympics, Imbolc...Oh, My!

Having finished only one book since my last post, I decided to bring you a little mid-winter color to brighten things up. The Denver Botanic Gardens has an annual orchid exhibit--I missed it last year, but was desperately in need of color so went last Friday.

This is the display at the entry to the greenhouse.

  

S

At the Water's Edge

So, on to the one book I did finish since last post. 

I decided to read At the Water's Edge, by Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants, for two reasons.

1. It is set mostly in the Scottish Highlands, exactly where I am planning to visit in September.
2. The audiobook was available from my library and I needed something to listen to.

I blithely ignored the many negative reviews on GoodReads and just focused on those that were somewhat positive. It was, I kid you not, one of the dumbest books I've ever actually finished. If I hadn't been so invested in the location, I would have abandoned it. 

Here is the GoodReads blurb about it:

After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind.

To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war.

Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants.

Sounds reasonable, right?  Unfortunately, the entire plot is completely bonkers. The threesome cross the Atlantic in January 1942, as tourists, during WWII, with two of them being able-bodied, rich young men not helping the war effort one iota. The idea that finding the Loch Ness monster would redeem Ellis was impossible to swallow. Maddie comes to loathe both Ellis and Hank, as do we all, but then Ellis starts threatening Maddie with a frontal lobotomy. I found it impossible to believe that Ellis (being the loathsome shirker that he was) would find a doctor in the UK willing to perform such an operation on Maddie. 

Nessie does make an appearance near the end of the story. And, like the rest of the book, this encounter was simply ridiculous.

Maddie does find her true love in Scotland, who just happens to turn out to be laird of the land, monarch of the glen, a war hero, and a tender lover. This actually could've been a really great story, but the author made a few fatal mistakes that doomed it to the library dustbin.

The Gilded Age

Much better news on the TV-watching front. I am almost done with season 1 of The Gilded Age. What took me so long? The costumes and sets alone are enough eye-candy to keep me happy, and the characters and their stories are interesting and entertaining.

One of the main characters is Marian Brook, played by Louise Jacobsen, who looked so familiar that I had to look her up. She is Meryl Streep's youngest daughter--no wonder she looked familiar, and she is terrific.

In addition to Marian's story--that of a country girl coming to NYC to live with her old-money aunts after her father dies and leaves her penniless--I am enjoying Peggy's story--a talented African American woman making her way as a journalist despite her Brooklyn parents' objections.

The Winter Olympics

And then we have the Olympics from Milan (ice events) and Cortina (alpine events). I love figure skating, hockey, speed skating, downhill skiing, and all the other events. Should be a really fun two weeks.

And then I can start planning my garden!

Happy Imbolc

Beating the January Blahs

Getting through January always requires a stack of good books. Here are some winners that have been doing the trick for me.

The Wedding People

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach, was as good as all the hype around it. I saw it on so many blogs last year and was super excited when my turn in the library queue finally came. I went into the book not even knowing the premise, and I was a bit shocked when I found out what Phoebe's intentions were. For those of you living under a rock (as I was!), here's the GoodReads blurb:

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

 In very short order, I found myself rooting for Phoebe as she found herself first clinging to life and then embracing it. I loved how we learned about all the various wedding people through their conversations with Phoebe. In a way, she reminded me of Austen's Anne Eliot in Persuasion--the person everyonr feels comfortable in confiding in. And, I ended up liking all of the wedding people--including the poor Bridezilla and the horrible ex-husband--just proving my maxim that everybody has a story worth hearing. That said, I loved where Phoebe ended up and I hope that Espach follows up the success of this novel with a sequel. 

The Bookseller of Inverness

As part of my Reading Scotland project in anticipation of a planned trip there in September, I devoured The Bookseller of Inverness, by S.G. Maclean. I gave it a solid 5 stars on GoodReads for being a whopping good historical novel, thoroughly researched and chockful of interesting, believable characters, hair-raising adventures, and detailed descriptions of many places I plan to visit this fall. Again, here is the GoodReads blurb:

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor [1745]. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.

Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the night. The next morning Iain opens up shop and finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him - a sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites.

With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for - and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war.

 The notes at the end by the author provided me with a list of excellent books on the Jacobites. I know I don't have time to read them all, but such wonderful choices to have.

The author has dozens of books listed on GR, some appeal more than others, but the Alexander Seaton series, set in Scotland in the 1620s, looks promising. Has anyone read anything by this author that they can recommend?

Nightshade 

Nightshade (Catalina#1), by Michael Connelly, is the first in a new series, this time featuring a sheriff stationed on the island of Santa Catalina, off the coast of California and opposite LA. This is vintage Connelly--good characters, good mystery, good love-to-hate villains, good action, good side threads...but this time, fantastic setting. I spent half my time reading this book looking for places to stay on Catalina. I would seriously love to go there for a vacation. I think Connelly must have a connection to the island because I remember Mickey Haller (the Lincoln Lawyer) going there with one of his girlfriends after he and his wife divorced. 

Oh...you probably want to know what this one is about. Here's the GR blurb:

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor—a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig.

Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases. Though hampered by an old beef with an ex-colleague determined to thwart him at every turn, he is convinced he is the only one who can bring justice to the woman known as “Nightshade.” Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.

Surviving the Winter

This winter has been mostly mild and dry and windy in Colorado, with just a bit of snow and a few frigid days. We need more or we'll be facing drought conditions this coming summer. 

Go Broncos! I just started watching football two seasons ago, but cheering on the Denver Broncos in the face of all the nay-sayers has been fun. I even bought myself a game-day tee-shirt! Those of you who have visited the Denver airport might recognize, Blucifer, the giant, blue, demon horse that most of us love and that epitomizes the Broncos for me!

Finally watching season five of Only Murders in the Building--we pulled our Hulu subscription after the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle but decided Disney had suffered enough and reinstated Hulu to watch Mabel, Charles, and Oliver solve the latest murder in the building. I am absolutely loving Selena Gomez's wardrobe this season. 

Listening to Austen's Mansfield Park in preparation for our region's February discussion of the novel. BTW, I found a free audio version on Audiobooks, courtesy of LibriVox. The reader, Karen Savage, is doing a fine job, although I don't care for her Mary Crawford voice. I plan to scan an annotated version before the meeting in order to find some interesting tidbits to share.

Went to the Denver Art Museum Pissarro exhibit and decided I want to live in most of the places he painted. Here are a couple of favorites:

Best wishes for a successful survival of January. Tell me how you beat the mid-winter blahs.

Rise to Rebellion - Jeff Shaara

After watching the Ken Burns's multipart series on the American Revolution, I knew I had to read Jeff Shaaara's two-part series on the same topic.

Rise to Rebellion is a novel starting in 1770 with the lead-up to the Boston Massacre and ending with the Declaration of Independence and Washington's move to protect New York from the British invasion in July 1776. As with all the Shaara novels I've read so far--both Killer Angels by Jeff's father, Michael, and the other Civil War novels by Jeff, the author tells the story through the eyes of a handful of people. In this case, we follow primarily George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, and British commander Thomas Gage, with a sprinkling of other players.

The novel was inspiring and extremely well done. While I know that Shaara had to invent much of the dialogue, the big show pieces were all drawn from the players' letters and other written works, and so it felt as authentic as a piece of fiction could feel. Plus, all the characters felt completely consistent with what I already knew about them. 

One of the most interesting aspects were the maps that Shaara included, particularly of Boston Harbor. This image isn't from the book, but it shows what I mean. The city of Boston is practically an island, with just a thin neck connecting it to the mainland in the south. I asked a JASNA friend from Boston for help in understanding how modern Boston came to be, with so much water filled in, and he recommended Gaining ground : a history of landmaking in Boston by Nancy Seasholes. A copy is currently enroute to my local library!

What I learned from all the Civil War reading I've done over the years, and what any decent historian already knows, is that geography plays a huge role in any event. Until reading this novel and studying the maps, I really didn't have a good sense of how vulnerable Boston was, how isolated, and how the British navy terrorized it.

It was great to dive into the details, sometimes day by day, often month by month of the six years leading up to July 4, 1776. Some things I knew from school, past reading, the Ken Burns special, the John Adams near obsession I have, but so much was new to me.

One of the most moving sections was when Dr Joseph Warren, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, took up a musket and fought as a soldier, although he had the rank of general at this point, during the Battle of Bunker Hill, on Breed's Hill. He was a man ready to die for his convictions, not merely someone who talked big but left the work to others. A true hero of the revolution, who inspired those around him with both his words and finally his actions. The image on the cover of the book is a painting of the death of Warren on Breed's Hill.

I also absolutely loved the section detailing Franklin's time in London as agent of several colonies. I really need to read a bio of Franklin. I read one decades ago, but that was...decades ago!

I am hoping to visit Boston vicinity this year--last year's trip was cancelled due to my husband's back issues--but the Isabella Stewart Gardiner art museum is still beckoning, and now I was to revisit Concord (here's a link to my travelogue from 2012), as well as re-walk the Freedom Trail.

I stumbled upon this article a few days ago: The five best TV shows about the American revolution – recommended by a historian. How apt!

• I watched most of Washington's Spies but now feel the need to watch it again...and finish it this time.
• How did the special on Franklin, starring Michael Douglas, escape my notice?
• I wonder if I can still find the 1997 Liberty online? If not, there is always the library. I'll bet mine has this as a DVD.

Anything else I should add to my reading/watching list?

My Year in Books -- Happy Hogmanay

 Here are my GoodReads stats for 2025:

As you can tell by the average rating of 4.1, I loved a lot of books in 2025. 

Let's just say, I love my reading life. Taking good care of my eyes is a priority. Macular degeneration is not going to defeat me!

77 books and 26k pages feels so good! I read a variety of favorite authors and discovered some new ones. I enjoyed a bunch of mysteries, historical fiction, and nonfiction, including some terrific memoirs.

I have a hard time picking favorites, but here's a few that I will definitely reread:

• The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn
• Emma, by Jane Austen
• The Heirloom Gardener, by John Forti
• Fifteen Wild Decembers, by Karen Powell
• The Last Bookshop in London, by Madeline Martin
• John Adams, by David McCullough
• The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

My very best wishes to all of you for a happy and healthy 2026. May your days be merry and bright, and may all of your reading choices yield 5-star books.

Happy Hogmanay - 2026 is my year of Scottish reading, so I baked shortbread yesterday and shared some with my neighbors

No Longer AWOL - Life Throws a Curveball

 I'm back. It's been almost a month since my last post, but I have more than just holiday mayhem to blame for my absence. 

Alright, I admit that I didn't post in the first two weeks because I hadn't finished anything worth writing about, or basically anything at all. 

And then, my husband had surgery on Monday, December 15, Mother Nature blew into Colorado causing massive power outages, my husband had emergency surgery on Friday, December 19, due to complications (aka a blood clot), Christmas wasn't slowing down for anyone, and here we are...but I do have a couple of books finished to report on and things are looking up.

The Literal Backstory (not for the squeamish, potentially too much info)

It all began... back in November 2024 when Jeff was playing pickleball with daughter Emily and hurt his hip. After many doctor visits, x-rays, and MRIs, the diagnosis was that he had a couple of things going on.

Arthritis in his hip that means hip replacement is probably in his future. But the biggie was that a couple of discs in the lower back had disintegrated (due to age) so much that they were causing a bulge on his spinal column. He had multiple injections of steroids to try to avoid surgery, but they didn’t help much or for long. When we went to Baltimore and Gettysburg, walking was painful, but standing was worse. Despite that, we did have a great trip.

His neurosurgeon and he agreed that surgery was the best option for the long term. He was originally scheduled for surgery on January 6, but there was a cancellation and since the pain was worsening daily, he took the cancellation. On Monday, December 15 he had a 5-hour surgery to clean out the corroded disks and replace them with a combo substance that is held together with pins and rods while the new stuff fuses together to create bone (a six-week process before he can start PT). The surgery went well and Jeff came home on Wednesday, December 17. However, by end of day on Thursday, he was experiencing sharp pain in his right thigh, and he had stopped being able to pee. We called the doctor at 6 am on Friday, right when Xcel turned off the power to our house, and they said to go to the ER at the hospital in Louisville (CO not KY) where Jeff had the surgery. Emily came over and drove us down because we couldn’t open the garage door because the power was out.

An MRI revealed that Jeff had a hematoma (aka blood clot) above the surgical site and it was pressing on the spinal column, inhibiting the valve that opens and closes, enabling him to pee, and causing the pain. The doc and team went in a second time. An MRI after the second surgery showed that they got most of the problem but not all, so they put in two drains and put him on a blood clotting med post-surgery. 

The drains worked well, and they were removed on Sunday, and he came home in the afternoon. So far, he is doing well, although he has to have a catheter until Jan 2 (that was the earliest appt we could get), while his bladder heals from being stretched. He will be seeing a hematologist in late Jan to check whether he has any blood-clotting issues that might surface in the event of future surgeries.

The big concern now is that there is not permanent nerve damage, but his spirits are good and he hasn’t experienced the kind of pain that he did last week. So, fingers crossed that all will be well.

The moral of the story...go for a walk instead of playing pickleball!

What I've Been Reading

Reading is truly the best medicine. Audiobooks kept me company on the solo trips to the hospital, and regular books provided a welcome respite from worry and fatigue. I was able to read in a cold, dark house while the wind raged due to my around-the-neck reading light.

The Autobiography of Santa Claus, by Jeff Guinn - a solid 3-star holiday book. The premise if very cute, and this reads like a young YA novel, providing a good survey of the past 2000 years of European/North American Christian history. The story starts in Turkey with St Nicholas as a big-hearted orphan boy who falls in love with giving gifts (using the money left to him when his parents died) to those less fortunate. The magic is that Nicholas is blessed with seemingly eternal life and the ability to move around very quickly--he acquires a wife and helpers, some of whom are quite notorious (e.g., Attila the Hun, King Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin). We learn how his reality adjusted to the myths about him--e.g., why he acquired reindeer and how they learned to fly. There is a running and tiresome joke about his girth and love of food. 

I don't mean to sound negative--I enjoyed reading this book. It was easy and earnest and feel good, all of which I needed and appreciated. However, I probably would not read anything more in this series--it is first in a series dubbed The Christmas Chronicles.

Selected Tales from Beatrix Potter - this was a gift from Michelle, by GoodReads buddy and host of True Book Talk, last Xmas, and I loved every story and especially Potter's charming and iconic illustrations. In addition to rereading about poor Peter Rabbit, I also read about Timmy Tiptoes, the Pie and the Patty-Pan, and Johnny Town-Mouse. This lovely book now has a place of honor on my shelf with the china Potter figurines my mother gave me when I was pregnant with my first baby.

The Last Bookshop in London, by Madeline Martin - loved this book so much that I almost gave it 5 stars. I do wish GoodReads allowed half stars! Here's the GoodReads blurb:

Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.

Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.

Grace is a wonderful heroine who discusses the magic of reading and does her bit in the war by ensuring that others can find solace, comfort, and courage in books. 

My brother Mark recently sent me an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about How reading can help older adults boost brain health and moods. It was an interesting article, but one of the main takeaways for me is that reading is actually a social activity. Even if you aren't in a book club or engage with something like GoodReads, you are still making connections with the author, the characters and their stories, and the countless other people who have read and loved the book.

I also really enjoyed reading about the Blitz in London. Interesting side note, Grace and her love interest (an RAF pilot) get to know each other over the years through their letters. They actually only occasionally meet up when he has leave. This exactly mirrors my own parents' courtship--they met and dated once or twice and then wrote to each other for over a year. My dad gave my mom books to read and my mom recommended music for my dad to listen to. 

Madeline Martin has a slew of similar books that all look equally good, so new favorite author?

What I've Been Watching

Thanks to everyone who posted about The Diplomat. Before Jeff's surgery we had made it through season 1 and had just started season 2. So good. 

Also, we started Nobody Wants This at about the same time and got about as far. Through season 1 and a few episodes in season 2. It stars Kristen Bell, who I thought was great as Veronica Mars, and the rabbi looked and sounded so familiar I had to IMBD him and discovered he was Dave Rygalski (Lane's first boyfriend) in Gilmore Girls (aka Adam Brody). The writing is absolutely excellent and the cast delivers!

I've also been watching Netflix Xmas rom-coms with daughters and Jeff when he finally came home--they're easy, uncomplicated, and just fun. My favorite was Jingle Bell Heist, but I also liked A Merry Little Ex-Mas with Alicia Silverstone, My Secret Santa, Christmas at the Chalet, and Christmas on the Alpaca Farm. This is the absolute first year I have indulged, but I needed indulgence to get me through the past two weeks.

November Wrapup - Art Thievery, Post-WWII Shenanigans, News from Three Pines, Holiday Schmaltz

We finally had our first snow last night and now it is cold. Didn't get above 20 degrees F today, but that didn't stop us from picking out the perfect Christmas tree. Holiday decorating is in full swing, and my first puzzle of the season is underway. I'm having my first hot chocolate of the season and looking forward to turkey sandwiches with leftover fixin's for dinner tonight.

John Forti, the Heirloom Gardener, shared this poem on Facebook this morning, and I fell in love with it.

November Comes and November Goes 

by Elizabeth Coatsworth

     Here's what I read in November:

The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel - everybody seems to be reading this right now, which is how I found out about it, and it is a compelling story. However, I came to loathe Stéphane Breitwieser, his girlfriend and accomplice, and his idiot of a mother who destroyed much of the art her son stole in order to save her skin.

What an arrogant twit of a human to steal art from not only museums, but castles, churches, and galleries all because the piece "moved" him. What about the rest of us who also are moved by art, who plan trips around visits to museums that house the works we want to see in person? 

I was also so frustrated by the incredibly light sentences all three of these poor excuses for human beings received. And my annoyance with all involved in this book didn't end with the culprits or the lack of justice, but Michael Finkel, the author, also fell in my estimation when in the notes at the end he confessed that he was present when Stéphane stole a book out of the museum they visited together. Why Finkel didn't say, "go put it back" I will never know. He almost seemed to think it was funny. I didn't.

If I ever find out that Stéphane was compensated in any way for his participation in the creation of the book, I think my head will explode. All that said, it was an interesting book.

The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair - my JASNA friend, Pam, recommended this book, and I loved it. First in a series (Sparks and Bainbridge #1), the setting (post-WWII London) was terrific and the characters were so fun. Iris Sparks is a former trained spy who cannot talk about what she did in the war and Gwen Bainbridge is a war widow whose son is heir to a title. They meet at a wedding and decide to open a marriage brokerage (I guess before the advent of online dating there really were marriage brokers). One of their clients is murdered and another of their clients is charged with the crime--Sparks and Gwen don't think the police got the right man and so resolve to solve the case. I'm eager to read the next in the series, and it will be interesting to see if they remain in the marriage business or morph into detectives. One of the things that I really liked about this book is that both main characters grew and developed and learned stuff about themselves--they were real, multi-faceted people with baggage and a lot of heart.

The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny - #19 in the fabulous Armand Gamache series, once again the stakes are sky high as Armand and his team race against time to find out who is behind the plot to poison Montreal's drinking water and how they can be stopped. We armchair travel to monasteries in Canada and France, and we spend quality time (never enough) in Three Pines. Be forewarned, however, this book ends with a cliffhanger, and the story is picked up in Penny's latest, The Black Wolf.

The Christmas Shoppe, by Melody Carlson - this was a yawner, at best a 3-star book but in actually more like 2.5. Mysterious woman comes to town, everybody is against her because she has a witchy vibe, she opens a thrift store, everyone who goes there finds an object that heals whatever wound has been festering inside. She disappears at the end. I wanted a great holiday read, but this was just same-old, same-old. 

Now I am reading The Autobiography of Santa Claus, which is turning out to be much better!