What I'm reading this week (3/25/19)

I'm home the first part of this week on my first "Readcation" of the year. I saved book seven of the Flavia de Luce mystery series for my days off. I can't imagine a better way to spend my reading time. I also have a lot of catching up to do on several other books. Wish me luck! 

What I finished last week:

I love a good middle-grade reader, so I decided to listen to the newest Newbery Medal winner, Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina. This is the story of sixth-grader Cuban-American Merci who is in a new school. But in addition to navigating the changes at school, home is changing too. Her grandfather, whom she calls Lolo, is showing troubling signs of forgetfulness and aggression, and her big brother, Roli, is heading off to college in the fall. Add to all this the pill of a classmate, Edna Santos, and you have a pretty real look at a young girl's life. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The audio is very good, as the narrator gives certain characters true Spanish accents, which really brings the story to life. I kind of hope this becomes a series, because I could use more Merci. This is a good book for girls and boys in that tween stage. My rating: 4 stars.

Last year I listened to Daisy Goodwin's Victoria, which was a companion book to the PBS miniseries. It was one of my favorite listening experiences of the year. So I was excited to see if The American Heiress lives up to Victoria, and I'm happy to say it did. This is the story of American heiress Cora Cash who goes to England to (marry and) get a title. It's the only thing her family's enormous wealth can't buy. In short time she meets and marries a duke, but becoming a duchess in a society as inhospitable to Americans as the English one at the turn of the last century is not nearly as easy as she'd hoped it would be. There's not necessarily a lot of plot here (which I almost prefer in books), and the fun of the book is in the details. There's all the societal judgement, pettiness, intrigue, and scandal we come to love from stories of the Downton Abbey era. The characters were interesting and believable, if a bit exaggerated (though I think that exaggeration is what I liked about them). A word on the audio: This was more of a performance than most audiobooks I listen to. You're either going to love it or hate it. The high-society voices are just what you'd expect to hear, but they can grate on your nerves. The (American) Southern high-society voice of Cora's mother was especially good. I really liked this one, and I think Daisy Goodwin will become an auto-buy for me. Her stories are fun and interesting and break up the monotony of too much fiction. My rating: 4 stars.

Each year I re-read a Jane Austen novel in the order I originally read them. This year, it was Northanger Abbey's turn. This is likely Austen's least preferred novel, but there's something about it I like quite a bit. Our main character is Catherine Morland, an unassuming, simple, young lady who travels to Bath with some older acquaintances and meets some young people her own age. She falls for Mr. Tilney and becomes fast friends with his sister, but she has to ward off the unappreciated advances of the insufferable Mr. Thorpe. There's the usual issues with love and engagements, with positions and money. But this book is a little different from the others in that it has a lot to say about books, especially novels--that scandalous material they young folk are getting into. And I like the main character's naivety more than I like some of the other, better-known and more poised Austen girls. I even enjoyed the reading of this book more than some other Austen re-reads I've done lately. I didn't have the usual problems with getting to the end of a page of text and realizing I hadn't picked up anything. All in all, it was an enjoyable re-read. My rating: 4 stars.

Another of my recent re-reads was Stephanie Nielson's Heaven Is Here. Nielson is a blogger who writes (week)daily updates about her five children, her Mormon faith, and her life as a wife and mother. She also has a strong sense of style in clothing and décor, which I find interesting to follow. I started reading her blog after reading her book the first time, so I thought it would be nice to revisit the book for details I may have forgotten. In 2009, Nielson and her husband, Christian, were involved in a fiery plane crash (her husband was at the controls) that left them with burns over 80% of their body (if I remember correctly). Nielson was in an induced coma for several months before awaking to the long, hard road to physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. Most of the book chronicles her time in the burn unit and university hospital enduring untold pain and relearning simple tasks made much harder by the inflexibility of her too-tight skin. She recalls the difficulty of seeing her facial deformity for the first time and the heartbreaking ordeal of her small children's first visit to see her after the accident in which one child took one look and left the room and was unwilling to look at her for months afterward. This is an honest book, simply told, and it's guaranteed to put all of your daily gripes in perspective. It was also a good reminder to me to be gentle with those who are dealing with difficult things. There is a lot of talk of faith and the Father's love, which is a great reminder to all. My rating: 3.5 stars.

Years ago I read a poem by Polish poet Anna Swir (you can read it here), that I found so endearing, I added her to my list of poets to explore in depth. I finally checked out her Talking to My Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz. For the most part, her poems are short and contain a sting, usually at the end. While I enjoyed the book, I didn't find any poems that equaled my love for "The Greatest Love" which has a lightness many of the other poems do not. Of course, Poland as not a great place to live in the last century, so you can expect dark poetry coming out of the country. I'm glad I read this one. My rating: 3 stars.

This week I'll be reading:

I. cannot. wait.

This week I hope to finish:

My current audiobook:

My first Graham Greene novel.

What I'm reading this week (3/18/19)

Last week I finished:

I met someone at my favorite jewelry store recently who has similar reading tastes, and she said I had to read Beneath a Scarlet Sky. It was on my TBR (I already had the Kindle version), but I decided to move it up to an audio version after her urging. This is a novel based on the true story of a young man in Milan, Italy, during World War II. When Italy surrenders to the Nazis, young Pino Lella joins the Nazi army as a spy for the Italian resistance. He becomes the driver for a Nazi general and reports what he learns to underground resistance forces. He also falls in love with the lovely Anna, the maid of the Nazi general's mistress. This really is quite a story, but I just have such trouble believing it's real. It's too good to be true. The amount of serendipity and coincidence is too high for me to believe. So, I was a bit on guard throughout. It could be true, but in the age of "fake news," who knows? I do recommend this one, though, as one of the better WWII novels to have flooded the market recently. The writing is a bit simpler than I like, but the story really is something. The audio version is good, but if you have the ability to listen at 1.5 speed (which I don't), you might do so as the narration is much slower and more deliberate than the book warrants. My rating: 4 stars.

I am always on the lookout for a good, solid mystery series, and I think I've found another to add to my auto-buy list. Death of a Rainmaker is the first book in a new Dust Bowl Mystery series. Set in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s, the book introduces us to the small town of Vermillion, where farms are being foreclosed, businesses are going belly up, tramps are setting up camp, and the air is thick with dust. The sheriff, Temple Jennings, has a murder case on his hands when the rainmaker hired by the town to bring relief and came to town not 24 hours earlier is found dead outside the matinee. The sheriff's wife gets involved in the case when a local CCCer (one of President Roosevelt's ABC initiatives to put people to work during the Depression) is accused of the crime. She knows he's innocent, but if he didn't do it, who did? Who had motive? And will the sheriff solve the case before the primary that will determine his reelection chances? This was a good, straightforward mystery. It's not fancy, but the characters are real, and the desperation of the town itself becomes a character. I really enjoyed it. My rating: 4 stars.

Next up:

A favorite re-read from a few years ago.

My Kindle (re)read:

 

Nearly done with this one.

My nightly reads:

 

 

Slowly making progress on each of these. I've been focusing mainly on the politics and decorating books.

My audiobook:

I'm enjoying this newest Newbery Medal winner.

What I'm reading this week (3/11/19)

 Even more snow fell this weekend, so we had a cozy weekend in. (Come to think of it, I pretty much could have written that for every weekend this winter.)

Last week I finished:

I'd known about current poet laureate Tracy K. Smith for awhile, but only recently have I begun to explore her poetry. After enjoying Wade in the Water last month, I moved her memoir, National Book Award Finalist Ordinary Light, up my TBR. It was a wonderful book. This one won't be for everyone, because the "plot" is very...ordinary. That's the point. Smith writes about moments of her life that are less stories than slim memories. But it's those memories that make up a life, that form a path that, when looked back upon, show us how we became who we are. Smith is the youngest of five children, her siblings quite a bit older than she. Her parents are educated Southern Baptist blacks, her father has a military career, her mother stayed home to raise the children. Faith informs their lives, and Smith spends a great deal of time examining the mother/daughter relationship and their Baptist beliefs. Her mother is a strong, moral, principled woman, whom Smith admires. (I adored her, too.) The family is close-knit and values church and education. As Smith grows older, she grapples with her blackness, with her faith, and with her desire to do what she pleases though she'd always been told certain things were sins. In short, it's a memoir of identity. I was disappointed that Smith didn't talk more about her path to becoming one of the premier poets of the modern era, but this book stops at the death of her mother (not a spoiler--the book opens with the death), when Smith is just out of college. Her literary career is yet to unfold. If you're interested in memoirs about identity, especially African-American female identity, this is a must read. It's gentle and slow, but it's well-written, honest, and respectful. I loved it, and I only wish it would have been around in my post-college years. My rating: 4 stars. 

Always on the lookout for modern classics to read, I was excited to tackle Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. It was published in 1984 and takes place in 1906 in Cold Sassy, Georgia. It's narrated by the teenage Will Tweedy whose grandfather E. Rucker Blakeslee, a widower of only three weeks, announces in the opening pages that he plans to marry Miss Love Simpson, the milliner in his dry goods store--and he does so the next day. Naturally, this turn of events angers Will Tweedy's mother and his Aunt Loma, Rucker's daughters, who are worried about propriety as well as their inheritances. It also sets the townsfolks' tongues a-wagging. It is true that Grandpa wanted a free housekeeper, or does he really have feelings for Miss Love? Along with the main story, there are other happenings, like the automobile coming to Cold Sassy, Will's narrowly escaped railroad accident, and a suicide in the family. While it's an overall light book--which I appreciated, though it took awhile to--it does have some high-drama parts that seemed a little jarring with the overall tone and time period. But more and more I found myself falling for the book's charm, and I ended up enjoying it a great deal. The rather rushed ending sets up the book's sequel, Leaving Cold Sassy. I listened to this one on audio, and the audio was very good. There's a lot of Southern speak, and I still hear it in my head at all hours even days later. Try this one, I think you might like it. My rating: 4 stars.

I'm currently reading:

 

I've just begun this first book in the new Dust Bowl Mystery series.

My Kindle read:

I'm finally making good headway on this re-read. I've passed the halfway point.

My night reads:

 

I'm enjoying all of my evening reads. It's a lighter load than the last few months, and that feels good.

 

 

My audiobook:

It's kind of a slow story, but it's good so far.

March 2019 reading list

I think I've got a case of spring fever. No doubt March will be a better month than February, weather-wise--it certainly can't be worse--but I have no illusions that we will have springtime any time soon. So it will be another month of hunkering down and survival reading. I've chosen a lot of fiction this month, but also some wonderful memoirs and re-reads, plus some new poetry.

Fiction

 

 

 

Memoirs

Memoir re-reads

Non-fiction

Poetry

 

 

 

 

February 2019 wrap-up

February was a horrible month for anything but reading. At least it was here in Wisconsin where the snowdrifts are as tall as a man. There was a lot of hunkering down and waiting for the snowplow to come through. I finished a record 18 books this month--the most books read and in the shortest month, too. My reactions this month were strong. Some I really liked, and some I really disliked. One word reviews are linked to full reviews below.

dark

3 stars

helpful

4 stars

biased

3 stars

good

3 stars

enjoyable

4 stars

wonderful

4 stars

smart

3.5 stars

impressive

4 stars

splendid

5 stars

 

miserable

2 stars

informative

3 stars

unhelpful

2.5 stars

sweet

4 stars

 

frank

4 stars

 

funny

4 stars

superb

5 stars

okay

3 stars

 

excellent

4 stars