I'm home on "readcation" through Wednesday, but I still wanted to post an update of what I finished last week. Hold on to your seats, this is a long one.
The seventh book in Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, Killing England, is a good as all the others. This is the story of the Revolutionary War, and if, like me, you haven't really studied that since grade school, it's a great refresher. We learn about General George Washington and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, Benedict Arnold, King George III, and all the other key players in the war and the writing of the Declaration of Independence. There were several things that I'd long forgotten or I don't remember learning at all--that we enlisted the help of the French, for instance. And the book is full of historical facts that you just don't get from others books. George Washington was 6'2"! "Cannon" is both singular and plural. The lieutenant is named such because he serves "in lieu of" his superior (duh, how did I never put two and two together?). I enjoyed the parts of the book that talked about the founding fathers, but the parts that gave the blow-by-blow of the actual fighting wasn't my cup of tea. Reading this during the NFL kneeling-during-the-national-anthem controversy, I was struck again that if we only knew the sacrifices made by those imperfect men and women who went before us, we would find our national pride and come together. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence, every commander in the rebel army, every public person who called themselves a patriot was facing sure death should the war be won by England. If that doesn't give one pause, nothing will. I would recommend the books in this series to anyone interested in approachable historical nonfiction where you can learn a lot about the past without a moment of boredom. My rating: 4 stars.
Another wonderfully patriotic book that I finally got around to last week was Sully, the true story of Captain Sully Sullenberger landing flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January of 2015. It's so hard for me to find books that are instructive and truly uplifting, that show a man or women with the values we used to hold dear: integrity, steadiness, moral integrity. If you're looking for the same kind of book, pick up Sully. I listened to the audio version, and the narrator was fabulous; it also included a postscript narrated by Sully himself which is very well done, too. The flight lasted only about five minutes, and the time the plane's engines were disabled by bird strikes until the time it landed safely on the Hudson, with all 155 people on board safe and sound, was only 208 seconds. The amount of information gathering and processing and clear-sighted decision-making required of a man to make a landing as un-routine as a water landing, to do it with the stress of knowing the fate of 154 people is in your hands, the fear of making the wrong decision, of recrimination, it boggles the mind. And after the safe landing and quick evacuation of the plane, there was still the winter temperatures and icy water to worry about until boats could rescue them all. I found the book fascinating. It's mostly memoir and good background on commercial flying and aviation in general. It did feel that it was stalling, trying to fill pages until it got to the main event, but I enjoyed every word and thought so much, I didn't mind at all. I would have gladly read twice as much, because I just liked Sully so much. One thing that differed greatly from the movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks is that the book didn't touch on the investigation at all. Although there obviously was one, I guess using that as the backdrop for the movie was Hollywood's way of injecting more drama into the situation. Needless to say, I recommend this one to anyone. It would be a great book for teen boys because of its strong male role model. My rating: 5 stars.
I resisted Kathryn Smith's The Gatekeeper for quite awhile before buying my copy. I feel that I've read so many books about President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, his presidency, and the people he surrounded himself with. But I think I always knew I'd cave, because I just can't seem to resist the siren call of an historical biography, especially if a president is involved. The Gatekeeper is the biography of Missy LeHand, FDR's secretary from the time he was Governor of New York to his last years in the White House. Smith seems to equate LeHand's job to that of the present-day chief of staff, though I find that hard to believe and unsubstantiated by anything Smith wrote about her position. She didn't seem to be an advisor, and though she had policy opinions and voiced them discretely, I have never read that she was considered a cabinet member (which I believe the chief of staff is). At any rate, LeHand was very important to Roosevelt and was beloved by all. Single all her life, she lived in the White House with the Roosevelts, and although there have been rumors over the years that LeHand was one of the women Roosevelt had an affair with--a claim made by one of FDR's own sons--there seems to be no evidence of romantic involvement. She loved him deeply and believed in him wholeheartedly, and he signed his letters to her "Father". By all accounts, the Roosevelts' marriage was very troubled, with both parties having affairs with other women, so the fact that Miss LeHand made her way to her boss's bedroom in her nightgown at night could probably be taken with a grain of salt. At any rate, I found this to be a very readable account, not gossipy nor terribly one-sided. If you've read other books about the Roosevelts, though, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, or watched Ken Burn's wonderful The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, nothing here will be new to you.
My rating: 4 stars.
I absolutely adored Tsh Oxenreider's At Home in the World released earlier this year, and I've also been loving her The Simple Show podcast, so I was very excited to read her previous book Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World. But you guys, this one bombed for me. I think that Oxenreider has matured much as a writer and person, and I think there's a big change in her approach between Blue Bike (published in 2014) and At Home in the World. I think she was trying so hard with this book, and although she kept saying she wasn't judging those who didn't live like her, the book did feel judge-y and preachy. I think she was still trying to convince herself of the life she wanted to dive into while writing this book, and perhaps it should have been kept to herself instead of being shared with us. In the book, Oxenreider, whose family is inordinately fond of travel and living abroad (and thinks yours should be too), examines the different facets of her life--finances, food, travel, education, entertainment, etc.--and decides what living intentionally means to her and her family of five in each category. I felt like all the ideas never came together. She talked on and on about how her family was going to do X, but in the end, we never really knew how doing X worked out for the family came. In other cases, she talked about how her family had put things into effect in retrospect (time gets very confusing in this book; it's hard to keep track of which year and which country the family is in). It's possible part of the problem I had is that I live in a family of two. I don't have three little kids whose food and education I need to worry about, and whose world view I need to mold. (On the other hand, a family of two needs to make most of the same decisions, so the information should have translated.) I just felt the whole book was kind of amateurish, which I really hate to say since I have come to really respect Oxenreider's honest voice. I would say if you're interested in eating locally and organically, if you're interested in homeschooling, if you think traveling and living abroad is one of the most important experiences you can give your children and family, this book is a good fit for you. I had no objections to anything she said, just maybe her approach. I would definitely recommend her new book about an extended world travel trip with her husband and three young children, though. I think it was much more mature in its approach and tone. My rating: 2.5 stars. 
Marie Howe is a poet I discovered in the late 1990s (maybe 1998?) when I ran onto her poem "What the Living Do" and decided it was one of the best poems I'd ever read. (Read it here.) But since her collection of the same name, I haven't read anything by her. So when her newest book, Magdelene, came into the library, I decided to read it. This is where I freely admit that there is a lot of poetry out there that I don't get. Just like everyone else, I struggle with poetry sometimes, and I struggled with Magdelene. But the thing is, I didn't struggle with the poems in Magdelene, I struggled with the concept behind the book. This is supposed to be a collection of poems that "imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape." Okay, I understand that. But I kept wanting to ask "why?" Why not just present the poems as straightforward poems of a contemporary woman? What does Mary Magdelene have to do with it? And frankly, why Mary Magdelene? None of the poems seemed to be particularly tied to the Magdelene. This is one I'd have to discuss with someone who spends more time in poetry than I do. I enjoyed the poems, but the larger message, and I'm sure there is one, was lost on me. My rating: 2.5 stars.
I've written several reviews of the Calpurnia Tate books, including the two full-length middle grade readers and the now three shorter chapter books. Although the longer books are my favorite of the two sets by far, I do enjoy the chapter books as well. The first was about a skunk, the second about sheep, and this, Who Gives a Hoot?, is about an owl. I might have enjoyed this the most of the three. The illustrations in these books are beautiful, and you learn bits and pieces about the natural sciences right along with Calpurnia. Calpurnia is a little girl at the turn of the last century who lives in Texas with her parents, six brothers, and her grandfather, a crusty old scientist who takes Calpurnia under his wing. She wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, but she gets resistance from her mother who believes she should forsake her tomboy ways and be a proper young girl. The books are very well done. They're engaging, informative, and fun. I recommend them all. My rating: 3.5 stars.
You know that if it's a book of dog photography, I'm all in. Years ago I owned a book of William Wegman's dog photos of his Weimaraners dressed as people and posed in interesting ways, and I loved it, so when I saw a retrospective of his work was coming out, I bought it as soon as it was released. There's a very confusing essay in the beginning of the book that I'm still trying to figure out. I'm not sure if it was ironic or serious. But after that, it's just one great dog portrait after another. Many of the titles are funny or puns. And the dogs are so human that after you see too many you kind of lose perspective and ask these are dogs, right? Right. It would be easy for work of this kind to slide from art into kitsch, and I suppose sometimes it does, but there's an underlying seriousness that fascinates me. Each portrait is so well composed, you can see the thought (the art) behind the fun shots. I really enjoyed this collection. It would be perfect for any dog lover on your Christmas list. My rating: 4 stars.
Last week I began:
After finishing Notes from a Blue Bike, I kind of missed not having a Kindle book in progress, so I decided to finally tick Funny in Farsi off my reading list. It's the memoir of Iranian girl fresh to America, and it's funny and smart. I'm loving it so far.
This week I'll be reading:
On readcation I'll be double-fisting it with The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Love That Boy.
My audiobook
The Sound of Gravel is a book I'd been waffling over for a few weeks, but when it came up as a Kindle deal, I bought a copy, and then decided since it deals with dark themes, maybe it would be better on audio where I could skip through the unsavory parts. It's heartbreaking, but then, I've read a whole stack of books about folks escaping fundamentalist Mormon sects, and they're all heartbreaking.
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