The Renfroe Scoop: 2015 Book Reviews

2015 Totals: 51 books

Pages: 14,629
Audiobooks: 69 hours, 10 minutes
New Favorites: We Took to the Woods (my very fave book of 2015), Pollyanna, The Historian, Watership Down, Fever 1793, Wesley the Owl, His Bright Empires series (five books, all audio), Dad is Fat
Old Favorites: The Poisonwood Bible, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Book of Mormon
Favorite Vocab: inchoate (just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary)

51. The Christmas Thief (2015.12.30, book club)
By: Mary Higgins Clark, Carol Higgins Clark
Published: 2009
Genre: fictions / mystery / Christmas /
Pages: 201
Bex Rating: 7

When Packy Noonan is released from prison after serving time for a fraudulent investment scam, he has only one thought on his mind: to break his parole and hightail it to Stowe, Vermont, where he hid a flask of diamonds, wired to a large pine tree. But he soon discovers that his very tree has been selected to be the Christmas tree for the Rockefeller Center in New York, and pandemonium ensues.

It was definitely an easy "candy" read--I finished it in one sitting while the kids were sledding--and it was even mildly funny. But I think I left my Mary Higgins Clark days behind me when I was fifteen.

50. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (2015.12.29)
By: Marie Kondo, translated from Japanese by: Cathy Hirano
Published: 2014 in USA, 2011 in Japan
Genre: self-help / housekeeping / organization / meditation
Pages: 207
Bex Rating: 8

This book was delightful and breezy. I borrowed it from Cori two weeks ago, because I knew it would help motivate me to get more organized in the new year. I read it while kids were sledding.

Marie Kondo developed the "KonMari" method of "tidying" and is one of the most sought-after consultants in Japan when it comes to de-cluttering and organizing. In a nutshell, her method involves handling every item you own and asking yourself if it brings you joy. If it doesn't . . . you don't need it. The end result is that you are living a life you want to live: surrounded by things that inspire you and bring you happiness. She maintains that when you get rid of the physical things you don't need, you are also getting rid of the stress, worry, time, and energy that these un-needed and unused things demand from you.

I was a little amused by Marie's habit of talking to all of her possessions, but you can see the ways it makes sense, too. I especially liked her advice of "thanking" the things you get rid of for teaching you what you need/like/want and what you don't, which makes de-cluttering a learning, meditative process instead of an exercise in guilt.

I think the excerpts below make the methods pretty clear, and I highly recommend this book! I already got rid of three full garbage bags full of toys and clothes in one day.

Storage experts are hoarders: I had merely been wasting my time shoving stuff out of sight, concealing things I didn't need under a lid. [Storing] things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved.
Start by discarding all at once, intensely and completely: When you tidy your space completely, you transform the scenery. The change is so profound that you feel as though you are living in a different world. This deeply affects your mind and inspires a strong aversion to reverting to your previously cluttered state. The key is to make the change so sudden that you experience a complete change of heart. The same impact can never be achieved if the process is gradual.
Selection criterion: does it spark joy? Focusing solely on throwing things away can only bring unhappiness. Why? Because we should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.
Gifts: The true purpose of a present is to be received. Presents are not "things" but a means for conveying someone's feelings. When viewed from this perspective, you don't need to feel guilty for parting with a gift.
Sentimental items: Truly precious memories will never vanish even if you discard the objects associated with them . . . No matter how wonderful things used to be, we cannot live in the past. The joy and excitement we feel here and now are more important.
The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
Follow your intuition: To avoid rebound, you need to create your own tidying method with your own standards. This is precisely why it is so important to identify how you feel about each item you own. The fact that you possess a surplus of things that you can't bring yourself to discard doesn't mean you are taking good care of them. In fact, it is quite the opposite. By paring down to the volume that you can properly handle, you revitalize your relationship with your belongings.
Attachment & Fear: When we really delve into the reasons for why we can't let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.
The things we own are real. They exist here and now as a result of choices made in the past by no one other than ourselves. It is dangerous to ignore them or to discard them indiscriminately as if denying the choices we made. That is why I am against both letting things pile up and dumping things indiscriminately. It is only when we face the things we own one by one and experience the emotions they evoke that we can truly appreciate our relationship with them.
There are three approaches we can face with our possessions: face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them till the day we die . . . If we acknowledge our attachment to the past and our fears for the future by honestly looking at our possessions now, we will be able to see what is really important to us. This process helps us identify our values and reduces doubt and confusion in making life decisions.
Learning that you can do without: There is a reason my clients never complain about discarding things--and this is the most significant. Because they have continued to identify and dispense with the things they don't need, they no longer abdicate responsibility for decision making to other people. When a problem arises, they don't look for some external cause or person to blame . . . selecting and discarding one's possessions is a continuous process of making decisions based on one's own values. When I visit my clients homes, I never throw anything away. I always leave the final decision up to them. If I chose what to discard for them, there would be no point in tidying. It is by putting one's own house in order that one's mindset is changed.
Your living space affects your body: When we reduce what we own and essentially "detox" our house, it has a detox effect on our bodies as well.
I think the main reason that tidying has this effect is because through this process people come to know contentment. After tidying, many people tell me that their worldly desires have decreased. Whereas in the past, no matter how many clothes they had, they were never satisfied and always wanted something new to wear, once they selected and kept only those things that they really loved, they felt that they had everything they needed.

49. Go Set A Watchman (2015.12.28)
By: Harper Lee
Published: 2015
Genre: Southern Literature / contemporary fiction / Civil Rights / coming-of-age /
Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
Audiobook Length: 6 hours, 57 minutes
Bex Rating: 9

I can see why the critics didn't have a favorable response to Watchman, and it isn't an instant "classic" the way To Kill A Mockingbird was and is . . . but I did enjoy it. It's incredibly thought-provoking, and there are some very real and adult issues about prejudice verses government policy, as perceived from a Southern perspective.

Aside from what the book is about, there are two things I loved especially: Harper Lee's incomparable command of story, description, and character . . . and Reese Witherspoon's peerless performance. Seriously, Reese? I already thought you were one of best actresses/producers of our time . . .

Since I listened to it, I could mark all my favorite passages, so I tried to remember some as I heard them, and the folks who wrote down their favorite quotes on Goodreads helped.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.
As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.
Don’t push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county’d be easier to live with.
On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds' early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. She would have walked beneath yellow-ringed pines rising to a brilliant eastern sky, and her senses would have succumbed to the joy of the morning.
It was waiting to receive her, but she neither looked nor listened.”
She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex, 'What would Atticus do?' passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father; she did not know that she worshiped him.

48. The Life of Emily Dickinson (2015.12.27)
By: Richard B Sewell
Published: 1973
Genre: biography / research / scholarly study / history / poetry / Emily Dickinson / 1820s-1850s / National Book Award
Pages: 751
Bex Rating: 9

This is, without a doubt, the most difficult book I have ever read. Harder than the Old Testament. Harder than reading Shakespeare. It took all my powers of concentration to focus and to really understand it. I finished the last 200 pages while taking kids sledding.

That said, it was rather fascinating.

If you look back at my book reviews since 2007, you will find ONE biography (Thomas S. Monson) because it is definitely not my preferred genre. In fact, I admit that I read the Monson biography because A) it was a gift, B) I was trying to read more spiritually-bent books on Sundays and C) it was kind of out of a sense of obligation. {Oops, I also read a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder}.

But I want to know about Emily Dickinson. Hers is the only biography I have ever really felt a burning curiosity about. She was so guarded and private in her life that this entire humongous book (751 pages--NOT COUNTING two huge appendices--each page equivalent to two pages of a "regular" book--tiny fonts, MASSIVE amounts of footnotes, and wading through scraps and fragments of letters that people in the 1800s wrote to each other throughout--most of the work is based on the letters that ED wrote to others) is dedicated to piecing together who she really was and what made her tick.

Don't you want to know about the undisputed queen of American poetry? Who only had six of her poems published in her lifetime? Whose bedroom was found to contain, after she died, roughly EIGHTEEN HUNDRED poems, and that a few more are discovered almost every year, from letters that she wrote to her friends and family?

The first third of the book is background information about her father, mother, older brother Austin and younger sister, Lavinia ("Vinnie"). So you are set up to understand the world in which she lives, with its Puritanical roots and the nuances of the expectations for the daughter from a prominent New England family.

The next two-thirds focuses on her relationships with others through her letters. Happily, many people with whom she corresponded saved her letters, because they were so witty, intriguing, and unique. Aside from her reclusive tendencies, I think she and Jane Austen would have gotten along famously--she was an accomplished baker, pianist (composing her own "weird melodies"), and was a famous wit with her siblings and friends.

So how do I distill this entire book into a short review? I think I may have to give it its own post.

inchoate: just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary

47. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (re-read 2015.12.24)
An Account Written by the hand of Mormon, taken from the plates of Nephi, translated by Joseph Smith, Junior
Pages: 531
Genre: scripture / Jesus Christ / spiritual / self-help / nonfiction / Christian / answers to life's problems
Bex Rating: 10 (but of course)

What a perfect day to finish the Book of Mormon! I almost finished the day before, but decided to save the last chapter for the morning of Christmas Eve--it was a great way to focus on Christ during the Christmas season.

As in my past reviews of the BoM, I try to write about something new that I learned or thought about while I was reading. It's always so easy to focus on the end of the book, because that is what I most recently read. That said, I really enjoyed linking three verses in Moroni 10 to each other, while thinking of Elder Bednar's Christmas message about Christ being the "Light of the World."
Moroni 10:6- " . . . nothing that is good denieth the Christ, but acknowledgeth that he is."
Moroni 10:18- " . . . remember that every good gift cometh of Christ."
Moroni 10:30- "Come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift."

Thinking of "good gifts" on Christmas Eve is pretty easy, but it's just as easy to forget that Christ is, not only the giver of good gifts, but also the greatest gift that I enjoy in my own life.

I testify that He is the truest light of the world, and that His light brings the peace and happiness that we are so often seeking. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for the gift of His Son. I am grateful to my Savior for the matchless gift of His atonement. And I am thankful for the opportunity to have the "unspeakable" gift of the Holy Ghost to testify that I am known and loved, as we all are, by our Father in Heaven and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

I hope that in 2016, I can share the light that these truths have brought into my life.

Past thoughts about the Book of Mormon: (#6 below, 2014 #17, 2014 #12, 2013 #10, 2012 #9)

46. Harriet the Spy (2015.12.09)
By: Louise Fitzhugh
Published: 1964
Genre: young adult / contemporary children's literature / New York City / sixth grade / gifted children / writing / kids can be mean
Audiobook Length: 6 hours, 48 minutes
Bex Rating: 6

In fourth grade, I thought this was my favorite book. That was back in 1988. All I remember about this book was that it gave me good ideas about how to be a spy. I remember the illustrations and thought for sure that I needed a utility belt like Harriet describes.

Fast forward almost thirty years. I finished listening to this book today: that Harriet is ROTTEN. I recognize that this book (now fifty years old) is lauded as a landmark in children's literature--perhaps because it was written from the point of view of a sixth grader, and because said sixth grader just "tells it like it is." This is allegedly an "honest" look at what sixth graders think and feel. Or at least at what one smart, spoiled, selfish sixth-grader thinks and feels.

Well, Donald Trump (current presidential candidate, as of this review) "tells it like it is" and I am sure he is giving his "honest" opinions . . . but that's no excuse for being bigoted, unkind, and narcissistic. Maybe Harriet the Spy was his favorite book as a child. I think she and Donald would get along just fine (though she would be sure to write down cruel observations about his hair in her composition notebook).

That's what this book is: Harriet's narrow descriptions of everyone she encounters. I was waiting for her to learn a lesson about how her obsession with recording everything kept her from actually experiencing anything. I was waiting for her to realize that she is self-centered, narrow-minded, ill-mannered, and unkind. I was waiting for some kind of moral or lesson. But those things never came.
The "moral" seems to be: "That's just the way I am." Or, "Everyone is born the way they are, so there's no use in improving or progressing or trying to conform to anyone else's set of standards." At the very end of the book, Harriet apologizes for the hurt she has caused her friends by the mean things she wrote about them in her notebook . . . but only after her caregiver and mentor (Ol' Golly) tells her it is okay to lie if it prevents people's feeling from being hurt. Almost the final line of the book is "Ol' Golly was right: sometimes it's okay to lie."

No thanks, Louise Fitzhugh. I am annoyed that Truman and Brigham heard the first several chapters of this book on a drive with me, but glad they didn't have to come to the sad realization that Harriet, aside from learning that it's okay to lie in order to keep your friends, is a completely static character.

I found a great quote from Jeffrey R. Holland that addresses just what is wrong with this brand of reasoning:

If there is one lament I cannot abide—and I hear it from adults as well as students—it is the poor, pitiful, withered cry, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” If you want to talk about discouragement, that phrase is one that discourages me. Though not a swearing man, I am always sorely tempted to try my hand when I hear that. Please spare me your speeches about “That’s just the way I am.” I’ve heard that from too many people who wanted to sin and call it psychology. And I use the word sin again to cover a vast range of habits, some seemingly innocent enough, that nevertheless bring discouragement and doubt and despair.

You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. That’s another satanic suckerpunch—that it takes years and years and eons of eternity to repent. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, “I’ll change”—and mean it. Of course there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make. You may well spend—indeed you had better spend—the rest of your life proving your repentance by its permanence. But change, growth, renewal, and repentance can come for you as instantaneously as for Alma and the sons of Mosiah. Even if you have serious amends to make, it is not likely that you would qualify for the term, “the vilest of sinners,” which is the phrase Mormon uses in describing these young men. Yet as Alma recounts his own experience in the thirty-sixth chapter of the book that bears his name, his repentance appears to have been as instantaneous as it was stunning.

Do not misunderstand. Repentance is not easy or painless or convenient. It is a bitter cup from Hell. But only Satan, who dwells there, would have you think that a necessary and required acknowledgment is more distasteful than permanent residence. Only he would say, “You can’t change. You won’t change. It’s too long and too hard to change. Give up. Give in. Don’t repent. You are just the way you are.” That, my friends, is a lie born of desperation. Don’t fall for it.

Tell it like it is, Jeff! This is from an address he gave waaaaaaaaaay back in 1980, when he was president of BYU.

45. The Fatal Tree: Bright Empires, book 5 (2015.11.30)
By: Stephen R. Lawhead,
Published: 2014
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Genre: fiction / action / adventure / time travel / history / physics / ley lines / Egyptology / European history / prehistoric man / theology / Roger Bacon / astrophysics / quantum physics /
Audiobook Length:10 hours, 27 minutes
Bex Rating: 9.5!

Wow. The conclusion was as amazing as the beginning, which is a hard feat for any writer. I can't recommend this series enough--it was exciting, informative, well-written, well-researched, and totally engrossing. And I feel like I am a better person for having read them (ahem, listened to them).

I especially loved Lord Archelaeus Burleigh's journey in this book, and more of my favorite character, Engelbert Stiffelbeam. If you like a good adventure story, this should be at the top of your to-read list.

44. Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy {Bloody Jack series, book 1} (re-read 2015.11.19)
By: L.A. Meyer
Published: 2002
Genre: young adult fiction / adventure / sailing books / pirates / early 1800s / British history / rags-to-riches / humor
Pages: 289
Bex Rating: 9

I am not one to read books out of order, but since it had been 13 years since I read this book, I just wanted to refresh it in my mind before I go back to reading them in order.

Mary Faber is orphaned on the streets of London at a young age, and quickly learns to get by by begging and stealing with a gang of kids. When the leader of their gang is murdered, she sees to the needs of the other children, then cuts her hair, dresses as a boy, and boards a ship (chosen by the shipmaster because she can read) in His Majesty's Navy, The Dolphin, as a cabin boy, telling them her name is Jack.

"Jacky" has to navigate through incredibly rough characters while aboard The Dolphin (this book is NOT a fluffy adventure story--if you are squeamish about child abuse, menstrual cycles, or prostitution, it might not be for you). But she makes fast friends with the other four ships' boys, and is particularly fond of "Jamie." He is soon delighted when he finds out she is a girl, but helps her to keep her secret.

When The Dolphin encounters the dreaded French pirate, Le Fievre, everyone soon finds out what Jacky is made of.

"It's line when it's runnin' loose, it's rope when it's coiled up and put away."

43. Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady {Bloody Jack Series, book 2} (2015.11.18)
By: L.A. Meyer
Published: 2004
Genre: young adult fiction / adventure / sailing books / pirates / early 1800s / early American history / rags-to-riches / humor
Pages: 488
Bex Rating: 9

A friend posted on Facebook several weeks ago how much she enjoyed listening to the "Bloody Jack" audiobooks. I immediately remembered that I had read a young adult book I really loved called Bloody Jack when Allen and I lived in Texas, over ten years ago. I did a quick search and found that it was the same author--and that the first book had been published in 2002. I mentioned the series to Cindy, local head librarian par excellence, and had the second book in my hands inside of two weeks. I hope they will order the rest, too :).

The entire series is about one Jacky Faber, an orphaned London girl who rises out of the slums of London by pretending to be a boy and boarding the Dolphin as a cabin boy. This second installment in the series has "Jacky" found out and left in Boston to attend the Peabody Finishing School for Young Ladies, where it is hoped her rough spots will be rubbed off.

It's a first-person narrative, and it is rollicking and delightful. Jacky Faber is a character you can help falling in love with. I think I will go back and read the first book over again, since it has been thirteen years . . . I look forward to reading all twelve books in the series!

I know that I will read and re-read this letter till the edges fray and the ink blurs and the very letter itself falls apart in my hands. I know that.
"Yes Gully, it's a shame. You were a great fiddler, you just weren't much of a man."
. . . Well I know the drill, so we get done and get out. but not before I lifts us a couple of hot cherry tarts from a tray. Ain't lost me Cheapside touch.
cheroot: a cigar having open, untapered ends.
weskit: Cockney slang for waistcoat
asafoetida: a bitter resin with an unpleasant onion-like smell, obtained from the roots of some umbelliferous plants of the genus Ferula: formerly used as a carminative, antispasmodic, and expectorant

42. The Phantom Tollbooth (2015.11.08)
By: Norton Juster
Illustrated by: Jules Feiffer
Published: 1961
Genre: young adult fiction / children's fiction / allegory / fantasy / moral tale / importance of education / appreciation for life
Pages: 257
Bex Rating: 8.5

I have wanted to read this book for actual decades, and I finally got around to it! I remember looking at it in my young teenage years, and I vaguely remember it as an animated (after-school special?) movie--I saw the part where Milo and Tock speak with the Mathemagician, who explains the concept of infinity to them. It's also where I learned the word "dodecahedron." Anyway, it's on everyone's must-read list of books for children, and I think it's safe to call it a modern children's classic, now 54 years old.

It's the story of a boy name Milo, who can't get excited about or interested in anything. Then one day, when a tollbooth appears in his bedroom, he is just curious enough to hop into a toy car and drive through. He ends up in the Kingdom of Wisdom, where he meets Tock, (the watchdog) and together they embark on a quest to find the banished princesses, Rhyme and Reason, so they can restore order to the kingdom, which has fallen into calamitous confusion.

This was my favorite of the illustrations,
The Gelatinous Giant.

In the tradition of Alice in Wonderland and James and the Giant Peach, it's a fantastic, sometimes silly story, but filled with shiny nuggets of wisdom and humor.

As he and his unhappy thoughts hurried along (for while he was never anxious to be where he was going, he liked to get there as quickly as possible) it seemed a great wonder that the world, which was so large, could sometimes feel so small and empty.
"And most of the time you don’t,” said a yellow [Lethargarian] sitting in a daffodil. “That’s why you’re here. You weren’t thinking, and you weren’t paying attention either. People who don’t pay attention often get stuck in the Doldrums.”
“You see,” [Tock] continued, beginning to feel better, “once there was no time at all, and people found it very inconvenient. They never knew whether they were eating lunch or dinner, and they were always missing trains. So time was invented to help them keep track of the day and get places when they should. When they began to count all the time that was available, what with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year, it seemed as if there was much more than could ever be used. ‘If there’s so much of it, it couldn’t be very valuable,’ was the general opinion, and it soon fell into disrepute. People wasted it and even gave it away. Then we were given the job of seeing that no one wasted time again,” he said, sitting up proudly. “It’s hard work but a noble calling."
“All that he would have to do,” continued the worried bug, “is travel through miles of harrowing and hazardous countryside, into unknown valleys and uncharted forests, past yawning chasms and trackless wastes, until he reached Digitopolis (if, of course, he ever reached there). Then he would have to persuade the Mathemagician to agree to release the little princesses—and, of course, he’d never agree to agree to anything that you agreed with. And, anyway, if he did, you certainly wouldn’t agree to it.
“From there it’s a simple matter of entering the Mountains of Ignorance, full of perilous pitfalls and ominous overtones—a land to which many venture but few return, and whose evil demons slither slowly from peak to peak in search of prey. Then an effortless climb up a two-thousand-step circular stairway without railings in a high wind at night (for in those mountains it is always night) to the Castle in the Air.”
He paused momentarily for breath, then began again.
“After a pleasant chat with the princesses, all that remains is a leisurely ride back through those chaotic crags whose frightening fiends have sworn to tear any intruder limb from limb and devour him down to his belt buckle.
“And, finally, after the long ride back, a triumphal parade (if, of course, there is anything left to parade) followed by hot chocolate and cookies for everyone.” The Humbug bowed low and sat down once again, very pleased with himself.
“ . . . it is quite important to know what lies behind things, and the family helps me take care of the rest. My father sees to things, my mother looks after things, my brother sees beyond things, my uncle sees the other side of every question, and my little sister Alice sees under things.”
As they ran, tall trees closed in around them and arched gracefully toward the sky. The late-afternoon sunlight leaped lightly from leaf to leaf, slid along branches and down trunks, and dropped finally to the ground in warm, luminous patches. A soft glow filled the air with the kind of light that made everything look sharp and clear and close enough to reach out and touch.
"Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them have to be right."
“But why do only unimportant things?” asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them.
“Think of all the trouble it saves,” the [Terrible Trivium] explained, and his face looked as if he’d be grinning an evil grin—if he could grin at all. “If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren’t for that dreadful magic staff, you’d never know how much time you were wasting.”
Her eyes sparkled brightly and she answered with a laugh as friendly as the mailman’s ring when you know there’s a letter for you.
“That may be true,” said Reason gravely, “but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

41. Pollyanna (2015.10.18, book club)
By: Eleanor Porter
Published: 1913
Genre: young adult fiction / classic children's fiction / moral tale / humor / Christianity / dealing with trials
Pages: 192
Bex Rating: 10!

What an absolute delight. I can't believe I have never read this book before. I loved it so much that it made me want to watch the Disney version with Hailey Mills, though the last time I tried to watch that, I was bored stiff. I am so glad this was a book club choice--I read it yesterday after church in about two hours.

When her father dies, the orphaned Pollyanna is sent to live with her rigid aunt Polly, who takes Pollyanna in out of a sense of "duty." Pollyanna confides in the housemaid, Nancy, about the "Glad Game"--where you think of something to be glad about in any circumstance. Soon she is sharing the game with everyone in Beldingsville, Virginia, whether they are sickbound, reclusive, or ostracized, and a change begins to take place in the entire community.

To a critic, this book can easily be dismissed as childish or terribly quixotic, but I found it to be full of humor and a simple sort of wisdom. It's been in print for over a hundred years, people! I highly recommend it.

Miss Polly rose with frowning face and closely-shut lips. She was glad, of course, that she was a good woman, and that she not only knew her duty, but had sufficient strength of character to perform it. But--Pollyanna!--what a ridiculous name!
"You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living. I mean living--doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't living!"
"Hephzibah!"
"Yes. Mrs. White's name is that. Her husband calls her 'Hep,' and she doesn't like it. She says when he calls out 'Hep--Hep!' she feels just as if the next minute he was going to yell 'Hurrah!' And she doesn't like to be hurrahed at."
It seemed that their society was famous for its offering to Hindu missions, and several said they should die of mortification if it should be less this year. Some of what was said at this time Pollyanna again thought she could not have understood, too, for it sounded almost as if they did not care at all what the money did, so long as the sum opposite the name of their society in a certain "report" "headed the list"--and of course that could not be what they meant at all! [This part reminds me of a passage from The Screwtape Letters, where Screwtape instructs Wormwood to prompt his subject’s thoughts in such a way that his malice is directed toward people he knows and sees every day, while his benevolence is directed toward those who are far away and unknown].
"Why, Aunt Polly, I should think you'd be glad to have folks like to look at you! Don't you like to look at pretty things? I'm ever so much happier when I look at pretty folks, 'cause when I look at the other kind I'm so sorry for them."
"Oh, [Father] always said he was [glad to be a minister], of course, but 'most always he said, too, that he wouldn't stay a minister a minute if 'twasn't for the rejoicing texts."
"The--what?" The Rev. Paul Ford's eyes left the leaf and gazed wonderingly into Pollyanna's merry little face.
"Well, that's what father used to call 'em," she laughed. "Of course the Bible didn't name 'em that. But it's all those that begin 'Be glad in the Lord,' or 'Rejoice greatly,' or 'Shout for joy,' and all that, you know--such a lot of 'em. Once, when father felt specially bad, he counted 'em. There were eight hundred of 'em."
Between Scylla and Charybdis: The sea monster Charybdis was believed to live under a small rock on one side of a narrow channel. Opposite her was Scylla, another sea-monster, that lived inside a much larger rock. [Odyssey, Book XII] The sides of the strait were within an arrow shot of each other, and sailors attempting to avoid one of them would come in reach of the other. 'Between Scylla and Charybdis' thus means to having to choose between two dangers, either of which brings harm.
andirons: a metal support, typically one of a pair, that holds wood burning in a fireplace.
porte-cochère: coach gate or carriage porch. A porch- or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building through which a horse and carriage (or motor vehicle) can pass in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.

40. The Historian (2015.10.13)
By: Elizabeth Kostova
Published: 2005
Genre: contemporary fiction / suspense / mystery / European history / Dracula / vampires / love story / Gothic / travelogue / historical fiction
Pages: 676
Bex Rating: 9.5!

Yesssssssss. I loved this book from beginning to end, and it was the perfect spooky October read. This is the story of a young woman (we never know her name) whose father is history professor who travels around the world, lecturing. When she finds an old book in her father's study, he reluctantly begins to tell her about his research into the life of Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler--the real-life Prince of Wallachia, whom Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is based on. The narrator's father, Paul, can only tell the story of his Dracula research in small doses, because he is obviously terrified as he reveals more and more about who Dracula was . . . or still is.

I adored this book. I would never call it "horror"--but suspense at its finest, and a delicately eerie story that unfolds perfectly amid the backdrop of Amsterdam, London, Istanbul, Budapest, Romania, and Bulgaria. I can't believe how much of the history that Paul presents to his daughter is TOTALLY true. That Vlad was one bad dude. And there are three love stories woven throughout the book that make it even more enjoyable. And this is the author's first novel, which is amazing. WELL DONE, Kostova!

When my father was away, the handsome house echoed. No one could help me with my algebra, no one admired my new coat or told me to come here and give him a hug, or expressed shock over how tall I had grown. When my father returned from some name on the European map that hung on the wall in our dining room, he smelled like other times and places, spicy and tired. We took our vacations in Paris or Rome, diligently studying the landmarks my father thought I should see, but I longed for those other places he disappeared to, those strange old places I had never been.
I might have said he was avoiding me, except that sometimes when I sat near him, reading, watching for an opening to ask questions, he would reach out and stroke my hair with an abstracted sadness in his face. At those moments, I was the one who could not bring up the story.
I felt then, as I do now, that there is no joy like the arrival of a train, no matter how disturbing your situation - particularly a European train, and particularly a European train that will carry you south. During that period of my life, in the final quarter of the twentieth century, I heard the whistle of some of the last steam locomotives to cross the Alps on a regular run.
When I grasped his hand, my heart leaped into my fingers.
The waiter was bringing dessert-pastries and coffee that Aunt Eva urged on us with motherly concern, as if by fattening us a little she could guard us from the world's evils.
It came to me just in time that Rossi's heritage--mild, patrician, Tuscan, and Anglo--also ran through her, and I saw Rossi's incomparable kindness in her eyes. In that moment, I think - not later, not at home in my parents' stodgy brown church, not in front of any minister - I married her, I wed her in my heart, I cleaved to her for life.
"[My singing] is much better with my sister--she sings the second voice."
Dracula speaking: "History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is. Why should you not use your great mind in service of what is perfectible? I ask you, my friend, to join me of your own accord in my research. If you do so, you will save yourself great anguish, and you will save me considerable trouble. Together we will advance the historian's work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood." [Oooh, it's so chillingly perfect!]
börek: Turkish roll of pastry with salty cheese inside
éclat: 1- brilliance of success, reputation, etc. 2- showy or elaborate display. 3- acclamation; acclaim.

39. The Shadow Lamp
By: Stephen R. Lawhead, first published in 2013
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Genre: fiction / action / adventure / time travel / history / physics / ley lines / Egyptology / European history / prehistoric man / theology / Roger Bacon / astrophysics / quantum physics
Audiobook Length:11 hours, 17 minutes
Bex Rating: 9.5!

As soon as I finished this audiobook, I started listening to the fifth and final book. It's been a wholly engrossing and surprising series of books by a gifted author--one who uses mountains of research for each book, and then seamlessly uses that research to craft a really great adventure novel. (It doesn't hurt that Simon Bubb is an excellent narrator, either). FYI: you CANNOT read these books out of order, or they will make no sense at all.

I especially enjoyed Lawhead's essay at the end of this book, entitled "The Great Divide." The essay addresses the centuries-long debate about whether science and religion are mutually exclusive, with the author maintaining that, not only are they NOT, but have never been--and that scientific advancements and studies have been furthered by religious funding and interest for thousands of years.

More than this, I loved how the author talked about the pitfalls of using a scientific approach to explain religious idealogies, and vice versa. He argues that training and expertise in one area does not translate into other areas of expertise, and that using one "worldview" as an approach to explain others is as invalid as it is presumptuous. At least, that's the feeling I got as I listed to it. I have searched in vain on the Internet for a copy of this essay so I could quote from it directly--I guess I will just have to get hard copies of the books so I can re-read the essay :). The Bright Empires is a series worth owning, people.

38. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2015.10.06, book club)
By: Rebecca Skloot
Genre: nonfiction / science / tissue research / African American experience / segregation / 1950s / history / race relations / family / loss of loved ones / searching for ancestry
Pages: 708
Bex Rating: 9

I don't know that I would have read this book if it wasn't for book club, so I'm sooooo glad it got chosen, because it was fascinating. I could not put it down, actually (and not just because I had a borrowed copy and read it in the two days before book club). The author herself admits that when she told people she was writing a book about the first 'immortal cells", their eyes glazed over. But when she began to describe that they were cancer cells, taken from a black woman without her or her family's knowledge, and that these cells went on to help doctors and scientists develop all kinds of cures and treatments that we take for granted, people got interested. Including me.

HeLa cells are cells that keep replicating themselves, over and over, without weakening or dying. They are called HeLa, because the doctor who took them used the first two letters of a person's first and last name: hence, Henrietta Lacks = HeLa. The author did a positively EXHAUSTIVE amount of work, mostly interviews with Henrietta's surviving children and grandchildren, and she is a science writer for Popular Mechanics, so she knows her business.

Scientists knew from studying HeLa that cancer cells could divide indefinitely, and they'd speculated for years about whether cancer was caused by an error in the mechanism that made cells die when they reached their Hayflick Limit [the lifespan of normal cells being preprogrammed]. They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they're almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer time our cells have left to divide before they die.
By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa's immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta's chromosomes so they never grew old and never died. It was this immortality, and the strength with which Henrietta's cells grew, that made it possible for HeLa to take over so many other cultures -- they simply outlived and outgrew any other cells they encountered.

When we got to Deborah's car, her two grandsons--Davon and Alfred who were just shy of their eighth and fourth birthdays--sat in the back seat screaming at each other. "Them are my two little hearts," Deborah said. they were strikingly beautiful children, with huge smiles and wide, dark eyes.

"I'm sorry," said Zakariyya. "Maybe her cells have done good for some people, But I woulda rather had my mother. If she hadn't been sacrificed, I mighta growed up to be a lot better person than I am now."

"Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different."

If you believe the Bible is the literal truth, the immortality of Henrietta’s cells makes perfect sense. Of course they were growing and surviving decades after her death, of course they floated through air, and of course they’d led to cures for diseases and been launched into space. Angels are like that. The Bible tells us so . . .The idea that God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells made a lot more sense to them than the explanation Deborah had read years earlier in Victor McKusick’s genetics book, with its clinical talk of HeLa’s “atypical histology” and “unusually malignant behavior

37. Matilda Bone (2015.09.20)
By: Karen Cushman
Genre: young adult literature / historical fiction / medieval England / religion / Middle Age medicine / friendship
Pages: 167
Bex Rating: 9

Karen Cushman, along with Laurie Halse Anderson, is one of the best historical fiction writers for young adults out there. I am delighted to return to medieval England and learn more about the "every day" people who lived and worked in some pretty harsh conditions. Like she did in The Midwife's Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy, Cushman draws on a vast amount of research to re-construct what life was like during this period.

Matilda was raised in an abbey and longs to spend her days in religious contemplation. But she is sent to work for Peg the Bonesetter and learn the trade of healing from this rough, loud, practical woman. As she begins to see a life she's never known, Matilda comes to learn for herself what real love and friendship can do to make life meaningful.

"You'll be cozy as a yolk in an egg."
"Could you not call on the Saints for help? Saints Peter and Viktor and Servais are said to be excellent for foot trouble. Surely they would cure her, were it God's will."
"God gave me this brain and these hands to do His will, I think," said Peg. "And by Saint Elmo's elbow, I plan to do my best."

36. The Wind in the Willows (2015.09.17)
By: Kenneth Grahame
Genre: classic children's literature / British Literature / talking animals / satire / allegory
Pages: 192
Bex Rating: 9

This was the perfect book to read after Watership Down. The animals in Watership Down are mostly animal, but Rat and Mole and Badger and Toad are about as human as can be. It's a little strange that there are human characters in The Wind in the Willows, but I thoroughly enjoyed the adventures of the four friends. I vaguely remember a stop-motion show called The Wind in the Willows that was a BBC prodcution sometimes on PBS . . . now I would like to see some of those (they seemed super boring when I was a kid).

The prose was especially soothing, and reminded me a bit of how JRR Tolkein waxes when describing the idyllic Shire. Simple country life for me!

And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering "Whitewash!" he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens.
Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs. It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over everything without distinction.
He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple--how narrow, even--it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.
At last . . . [he] found— not only no money, but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!
To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case— all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.
Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys and its snug home life, and then he became simply lyrical.
Toad now knew well that he had not been really hungry before. What he had felt earlier in the day had been a mere trifling qualm. This was the real thing at last, and no mistake; and it would have to be dealt with speedily, too, or there would be trouble for somebody or something.
Toad was inclined to be sulky at first; but he brightened up immediately, like the good fellow he was.
murrain: 1- any of various diseases of cattle, as anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, and Texas fever. 2- Obsolete. a plague or pestilence.

35. Watership Down (2015.09.10)
By: Richard Adams, first published 1972
Genre: animal fiction / classic fiction / young adult / children's / allegory / British / rabbits / country life / fable
Pages: 476
Bex Rating: 9.5!

I really enjoyed this book. I know already that it's not a book that appeals to the masses--since it's an "animal story" where a colony of rabbits are the main characters. But I thought it was lovely--beautifully written, imaginative, and meaningful. That my sweet lop-ear Mospy has a cozy burrow full of at least six darling kits who are about four weeks now makes it all the sweeter. I keep using the word "silflay" when I see them scampering around their coop--it is a made-up word from this book that means "coming above ground to feed."

Richard Adams wrote this book at the urging of his children, who he made up the stories for. Once he had a rough draft, he befriended a man named Lockley, who was a great authority on rabbits at the time. The two became great friends, and Lockley proofread every draft before publication.

When Hazel's small brother Fiver has a premonition of danger, they warn the chief rabbit, but he does not believe them. Undaunted, Hazel and Fiver lead several other rabbits away from the warren, just in time to avoid being gassed by a rural development company. The companions set off in search of a new place to live, and encounter every danger imaginable. The rabbits have their own cultural and oral tradition, and the book is peppered with stories of El Ahrairah and Rabscuttle, two wily rabbits much the equivalent of Robin Hood and Little John--I especially enjoyed the tale of "Rowsby Woof and the Fairy Wogdog."

It was quite a delight, and now I must read The Wind in the Willows for the first time, while I am still under the enchantment of Watership Down.

One watch succeeded another through the day, though how the rabbits judged the passing of the time is something that civilized human beings have lost the power to feel. Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather; and about direction too, as we know from their extraordinary migratory and homing journeys. The changes in the warmth and dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beans in the light wind, the direction and strength of the air currents along the ground - all these were perceived by the rabbit awake.
"Well, there's no need to do any serious digging, is there Hazel?" said Bigwig. "That sort of thing's alright for does, but not for us."
Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.
There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even tops to notice that you stare about you.
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.
combe: (pronounced koom) a short valley or hollow on a hillside or coastline; a dry valley in a limestone or chalk escarpment.

34. Man's Search for Meaning (2015.09.02, book club)
By: Viktor E. Frankl, first published 1959
Genre: nonfiction / Nazi holocaust / WWII / psychology / self-help / spiritual /
Pages: 179
Bex Rating: 9

I enjoyed Man's Search for Meaning, but I don't think many at my book club did. The first half, about the author's personal experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp, was better than the second--an explanation of his own brand of psychology called logotherapy.

The concentration camp experience, was, as you can well imagine, pretty harrowing. But so were the descriptions of how psychologically draining it was for those who survived the camps and were eventually free. Returning to "every-day" life after such an experience was horrific, and is the reason why Frankl chose to speak out about his own experience and how he triumphed over it.

So many great quotes!

There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are "nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations." But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my "defense mechanisms," nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my "reaction formations.
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

33. Each Little Bird That Sings (2015.08.20)
By: Deborah Wiles, first published 2005
Genre: young adult fiction / National Book Award / death / grief and grieving / best friends / difficult relatives
Pages: 247
Bex Rating: 8.5

This is an excellent young adult book. Especially for anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. The book takes place almost entirely at the Snowberger Funeral Home, as 13-year-old Comfort Snowberger deals with two family deaths, the loss of her best friend, and the annoying company of her whiny little cousin, Peach, who refuses to leave Comfort alone.

It was written beautifully and with great sensitivity--a great book for teaching the inevitability of death, and that we can choose to both live and die with grace and kindness. Plus, I'ma try out this recipe for sweet tea with some yummy herbal tea and mint from my garden!

"I like to pic-a-nic more than a bee likes to bumble!"
My parents smell like a mixture of gardenias and embalming fluid, even in the evenings after their showers. I think the smell of their jobs have permanently soaked into their skins. I don't mind. I'm used to how they smell.
Mama looked right into my eyes and smiled a genuine smile that showed all the sadness around her mouth and behind her eyes. It made me love her a lot.
Celosia reminded me of enormous celery stalks with a mass of red brains on top.
"This body is a shell of who you are," Aunt Goldie whispered. She tapped Peach's chest with two fingers. "Here is who you are, sweet thing. It's inside, not outside. Death cannot touch that."

32. We Took to the Woods (2015.08.12)
By: Louise Dickinson Rich
Genre: memoir / humor / survival / back-to-the-land / Maine forests / 1930s-40s / homesteading /
Pages: 322 (not long enough!)
Bex Rating: 10!

I found this book at the D.I, and paid $3 for it. The cover immediately captured my attention, and when I read the first paragraph, I was hooked. In fact, I even thought to myself, "Was this book written JUST FOR ME?" It's the first-person account of Louise Dickinson Rich, who lived in a remote forest in Maine with her husband and son in the 30s and 40s with no electricity or plumbing, but with a richness of life that is hard to find anywhere. She is witty and philosophical and has an amazing gift for narrative.

My copy is a first edition, published in 1942, and I was delighted to find that this book had been reprinted as recently at 2007, and you can buy it on amazon for eleven bucks. I highly recommend it to everyone.

When you're in a house, its external appearance needn't bother you. In fact, I should think a good way to buy a house would be by the looks of the house across the street, which is the one you see most of.
I don't much like to cook. I like the results of a morning's hard labor to last more than ten minutes.
I'm a good knitter, and I'm proud of it. I see no point in being modest about things you know you do well. It doesn't indicate humility so much as hypocrisy or lack of perception.
Maine guides have a legend of quaintness to uphold, and boy! do they uphold it. They're so quaint they creak . . . he wears what amounts to a uniform. It consists of a wool shirt, preferably plaid, nicely faded to soft, warm tones; dark pants, either plus-fours, for some unknown reason, or riding breeches; wool socks and the soleless, Indian-type moccasin, or high-laced boots. He carries a bandanna in his hip pocket and may or may not wear another knotted around his neck. but he must wear a battered felt hat, with a collection of salmon flies stuck in the band, and he must wear it with an air; and he must wear a hunting knife day and night; and he must look tough and efficient. If he has high cheekbones and tans easily, that is his good luck.
Putting down words on paper is a very dull substitute for seeing new things and people.
In civilization we try to combat winter. We try to modify it so that we can continue to live the same sort of life that we live in summer. We plow the sidewalks so we can wear low shoes, and the roads so we can use cars. We heat every enclosed space and then, inadequately clad, dash quickly from one little pocket of hot air through a no-man’s land of cold to another. We fool around with sunlamps, trying to convince our skins it is really August, and we eat travel-worn spinach in an attempt to sell the same idea to our stomachs. Naturally, it doesn’t work very well. You can neither remodel nor ignore a thing as big as winter.
Christmas in the woods is much better than Christmas on the Outside. We do exactly what we want to do about it, not what we have to do because the neighbors will think it’s funny if we don’t; or because of the kids, who will judge our efforts not by their own standards but by the standards set up by the parents of the other kids. We don’t have any synthetic pre-Christmas build-up — no shop window displays, no carol singers in department stores, no competition in the matter of lighting effects over front doors. At the intersections where the deer-runs cross the Carry Road, no Santa Clauses ring bells in the interest of charity.
We don’t even have a Christmas tree. It seems a little silly, with hundreds of square miles of fir and spruce, from knee-high babies to giants of eighty feet on all sides of us, to cut one down and bring it into the house. It seems almost like vandalism to shake the ice and snow from its branches and hang them with popcorn strings and cheap tinsel. We have our Christmas tree outdoors, for the benefit of the birds, hanging suet and crusts on the branches of one of the trees in the yard.
But we do have Christmas, just the same, and since we are so far from stores and last minute shopping, we have to start planning for it a long time ahead. With no chance to shop for gadgets, we have to make quite a lot of our presents, and the rest we get from what is known here simply as the Mail Order. I give mittens, hand made by me with the initials of the recipient knit into the design across the back. These don’t cost much over and above my time, and no one in this country ever had too many pairs of mittens. For people who live Outside I try to think up things that they couldn’t buy in stores. After all, it would be simple-minded to send out and buy something, have it mailed in here, wrap it up, and send it out to someone who, doubtless, lives almost next door to the store where it was bought. [Becca here: this was my favorite passage. When will my lifelong dream of being a recluse in the woods be realized???]
Nor can I bring myself to believe that our children are hopelessly handicapped because they take baths in washtubs in front of the kitchen range, read by the light of kerosene lamps, and sleep in unheated bedrooms. We'll give them a bathroom and steam heat and electric lights when we get the house rebuilt; but perhaps we'll be making a mistake. Soft living isn't important to them now, because it never has been.
It’s lovely on the dam on a bright spring morning … All the senses come alive, even that strange rare sense that tells you, half a dozen times between birth and death–if you are lucky–that right now, right in this spot, you have fallen into the pattern of the universe.
I'm just a little bored of women who claim to be afraid of men, or who feel either inferior or superior to men, or who consider men as being anything other than so many more people.
Then the wind died down and a slow and drizzling rain started, the sort of rain that people living as we do actually pray for, forgetting the fashionable skepticism with which education has veneered us.
A poem to repeat, either aloud or silently, will help you over a hill or on a long mile as surely as a neighbor who stops his team and gives you a lift.
The idea is that we try to keep our radio in its place. It is our servant, and we try not to let ourselves become its slaves. [Becca here: I loved this passage so much--it's always been a battle against distraction, not against technology. Also, I often say the same thing about our vehicles--they are meant to serve us! Not we to slave over them: we should definitely take care of our cars, but not be overly concerned with the appearance or age or "fashionableness" of our transportation].
Here I dare to be myself. I don’t see why it should ever again be important to me what I wear, or whether I have read the latest book or seen the latest play, or know the newest catch word. I don’t see why I should ever care again what people think of me. It seems silly now, but those things were once important. I don’t see why it should ever matter to me again who does or does not invite me to her house, who does or does not speak to me, who does or does not have more money than I have. Those things used to matter, though, because I had no identity of my own. I had nothing to go by but the standards someone else had set up. To define freedom, for which men and women and children are dying all over the world, in terms of indifference to clothes and social contacts and popular attitudes seems so trivial and irresponsible a thing to do that I am ashamed of it, as of a gross impertinence; but that is what living here adds up to, for me. I am free.
Mother Hubbards: A Mother Hubbard dress is a long, wide, loose-fitting gown with long sleeves and a high neck. Intended to cover as much skin as possible, it was introduced by missionaries in Polynesia to "civilize" those whom they considered half-naked savages of the South Seas islands.

31. The Poisonwood Bible (re-read 2015.08.05, book club)
By: Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: historical fiction / modern classic / The Congo / Zaire / war / missionary work / Africa / Southern Evangelical Baptists / women / sisters / mothers
Pages: 649
Bex Rating: 9.5

I like this book even better the second time. I read it in three days, because I could not put it down, even though I had already read it. Seriously. Kingsolver is one of the best contemporary writers out there. I also highly recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

This is the story of the Price women: the mother, Orleanna, and her four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. Their father is a baptist minister who uproots their family from Georgia nd takes them to the Congo in the late 1950s, to "save" the Africans. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the girls, and it is quickly apparent that Nathan Price is a megalomaniac with a very tenuous grasp of reality. It is a moving, heartbreaking historical novel about the Congo, but it also the story of women all over the world, and how profound their influence is on families and individuals.

Orleanna: I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my could could be chinked with a book.
Rachel: Here comes Moses tromping down off Mount Cyanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
Adah: Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded, and promptly make a show of their own limitations.
Orleanna: My family required remarkable occasions three times a day. They couldn't understand that the sort of meal they took for granted, a thirty-minute production in the land of General Electric, translated here to a lifetime of travail.
Rachel: They are Episcopotamians, and their real name is actually something foreign like on-tray-don. We just say Underdown because it's easier. To tell you the truth, the two of them are just a couple of the plainest Janes you ever saw, in their economical home haircuts and khaki trousers. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.
Rachel: No matter what happens on God's green earth, Father acts like it's a movie he's already seen and we're just dumb for not knowing how it comes out.
Rachel: But what in tarnation could you tell somebody with just a drum? It would have to be worse than that dip-dip-dop More Scold thing the use in the army.
Leah: That is surely childhood's end. When you look at a thing like a rabbit needing skinned and have to say "Nobody else is going to do this."
Adah: Caterpillars one after another I laid on my tongue, their char crisp bristle taste a sweet momentary salve to a body aching for protein. Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.
Rachel: I've always made sure I go to church with the very best people, and we get invited to their parties. I insist on that. I have even learned to play bridge! It is my girlfriends here in Joburg that have taught me how to give parties, keep a close eye on the help, and just overall make the graceful transition to wifehood and adulteration.
Leah: This is what we mothers always come back to. How could he regret the marriage that brought Pascal, Patrice, and Martin-Lothaire onto the face of Africa? Our union has been difficult for both of us in the long run, but what union isn't? Marriage is one long fit of compromise, deep and wide. There is always one agenda swallowing another, a squeaky wheel crying out. But hasn't our life together meant more to the world than either of us could have meant alone?
demijohn: a bulbous, narrow-necked bottle holding from 3 to 10 gallons of liquid, typically enclosed in a wicker cover.

30. Fever 1793 (2015.08.01)
By: Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre: young adult historical fiction / post-revolutionary American history / fever epidemics / family crisis / coming-of-age
Pages: 252
Bex Rating: 9.5

I think Laurie Halse Anderson is as fine a historical fiction writer as the best of them. That her books are geared toward a younger audience only makes them better, in my opinion, because she is bringing real history alive for teens--instilling a love of reading and of research for future generations! Her bibliographies are always extensive--this woman does her homework, people. Her book Chains was in my top five favorites in 2013 (review #48), and was also a National Book Award finalist.

This is the story of fictional Mattie Cook, who lived through the very real fever epidemic of 1793, which brought the largest city in America (then Philadelphia) to its knees. It's a subject about which I knew nothing until I read this book, and it's incredibly interesting and heartbreaking.

It's also a great book to read to help one develop a desire to prepare for natural disasters and disease epidemics. Though these events occurred over 220 years ago, the same scenario could easily be played out in a modern city if an epidemic were to strike: food supplies cut off, doctors and hospitals overwhelmed, lack of medicine available, widespread panic, and an increase in crime.

Mother stitched my dress as fast as she could, her needle darting in and out of the fabric like a bumblebee darting through flowers.
The stays bit into my stomach and my shift was already sweat-soaked. If this was how the upper class felt all the time, no wonder they were all so cross.
Giving my mother a bath felt upside down and backside front. I didn't want to do it. Daughters aren't supposed to bathe their mothers . . .
Yellow fever. My mouth moved, but I could not breathe. It made no sense. Mother wouldn't allow it. She had given birth to me in the morning and cooked supper for ten that night. She survived the British occupation while my father fought with Washington's troops. Mother would beat back illness with a broom.
"A soldier needs three things to fight . . . One, a sturdy pair of boots. Two, a full belly. Three, a decent night's sleep."
I stood back and shook the idleness out of my skirts. Day was begun.

29. The Summons
By: John Grisham
Genre: legal thriller / contemporary fiction / inheritance
Pages: 384
Bex Rating: 7.5

Not your best, John Grisham. Fortunately I didn't realize it wasn't that great until the very end--because I hated the ending! But it was fun to read John Grisham--he knows how to hook you, and I haven't read a Grisham thriller in at least fifteen years.

28. The Peacegiver
By: James L. Ferrell
Genre: self-help / Christianity / finding peace / forgiveness / healing relationships / LDS
Pages: 199
Bex Rating: 9

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. SO LONG--I was embarrassed when I read inside the cover that my mom gave this book to us in 2006! Seriously! I remember thumbing through the first five pages and not being interested, but since I finished this book, it has been on my mind every day for a few weeks.

The "story" of the book (told from the point of view of a husband in a failing marriage) is kind of a clunky vehicle for a very profound message: that Christ offers the peace we are seeking for, and His Atonement makes it possible for us to forgive completely and be healed. These are things I already knew, of course, but the book really opened my eyes to looking at the Atonement in new ways, in deeper ways. I want to re-read the book right now! There's no way I absorbed everything completely.

Definitely this is a book I recommend to everyone, and perhaps especially at times when you are struggling in any relationship--with a spouse or parent or sibling or friend. I will be referring to it often!

"Being mistreated is the most important condition in mortality, for eternity itself depends on how we view those who mistreat us."
"If the story reveals something about peacemaking, as you say it does, but your yourself have not been brought closer to peace because of it, then either it is a trifling story or you haven't yet penetrated it--or allows it to penetrate you."
"Abigail’s message was that forgiveness was for the one who was forgiving, not the one who was being forgiven. David needed to forgive so that, in the words of Abigail, ‘he would continue to be found without evil, so that the Lord could make him a sure house.’David might have felt justified in withholding this forgiveness from Nabal, however sinful such withholding might have been, but from Abigail? No, her offering on behalf of another obliterated every justification David might otherwise have had. She freed him from the blind comfort of his grudges. Through this merciful act, she created for David the most forgiveness-friendly environment that could possibly be created. David was never more able to do what he needed most to do-forgive, or more precisely, repent of his failing to forgive-than when the request for forgiveness was made by one who had atoned in full for the sin David was raging against.
“The Lord, by taking the sins of our Nabals upon his head, extends us the same mercy. ‘Upon me let this iniquity be,’ he pleads. ‘Let me deal with it if there is any dealing to be done. But you, my dear son or dear daughter, let it go. Let me take it, as I already have done. Forgive.’
“Although the Lord doesn’t actually ask us to forgive him, the effect of the atonement is such that it’s as if that is what he is asking. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it [or done it not] unto one of the least of these,’ the Savior taught, ‘ye have done it [or done it not] unto me.’33 When we withhold forgiveness from others,” Grandpa continued, “we are in effect saying that the atonement alone was insufficient to pay for this sin. We are holding out for more. We are finding fault with the Lord’s offering. We are in essence demanding that the Lord repent of an insufficient atonement. So when we fail to forgive another, it is as if we are failing to forgive the Lord-who, as you already rightly said, needs no forgiveness.”
Through the crucible of the atonement, the Lord has already forged forgiveness for her. What more could your forgiveness add? No, Carol doesn’t need you to forgive her. You need you to forgive her, Ricky. So the Lord in his mercy comes to you and says, ‘The atonement applies as much to Carol as it does to you, my son. I have claimed her sins and taken them upon me. Let it go.’
“My son,” Grandpa said gently, “when the Savior comes to you with the sins of others upon him, he offers you a view of others that only he knows. He begs you to see as he sees-as One who knows every pain, insecurity, aspiration, and infirmity because he has taken them upon himself. He will show you others as he sees and loves them, and he will help you to see and love them that way as well, for he begs you not merely to ungird your sword but to ungird your heart."
"Whether Jonah was better or worse than Nineveh isn’t the question at all, is it? And whether you are better or worse than Carol isn’t the question either. Some laborers work longer, the Savior told us in one of his parables, and others shorter.37 Each person’s payment at the end of the day has nothing whatsoever to do with the work of others. We are each working out our own salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord. And that gift will come to us only if we know in our hearts that we deserve it no more than anyone else. What I meant earlier by ‘fleeing to Tarshish’ was just this: persisting in the idea that we are better, more righteous, and deserve more than others. The truth is, we are all, each of us, equally damned without the mercy of the Lord. Eternal life is a gift. I have no cause to feel entitled. I have cause only to feel grateful.”
"One transgression, one choice away from the Lord, and what happens? The transgressor becomes blinded to his responsibility for sin, and he begins to fall into the captivity of the devil, which are the chains-the chains of sin-that keep him from feeling the need or desire to return to the Savior. This is how we become subject to the will of the devil when we yield to temptation.”
“And then,” his grandfather continued, “remember what the Lord did next: He cursed the ground ‘for their sake’ and ‘greatly multiplied’ their sorrow in bringing forth children.75 That is, he banished them to an earth where everything would be difficult-a curse that was ‘for their own good’ since the sheer difficulty of life would push them to look heavenward for help even in the midst of their sins, every such approach to the Lord providing them an opportunity to be saved from their captivity in sin.”
“Unfortunately, knowledge for the mind is never by itself enough to break from the chains of sin. Such knowledge can be helpful, to be sure, but only if it leads you to him who is powerful to save. Salvation is not in a sentence, or in a string of sentences, however profound. It is rather in a person-in the Messiah, come to earth, to deliver man from his sins.”
"And our hearts must be broken in just this way, for we must be cured of the vanity of the sufficiency of our own hearts."
"Of what are you afraid?”
Rick thought of that morning with Carol. “Of my own sinfulness,” he said. “Of the pull of the darkness within me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to sustain the change you are talking about.”
“You won’t be able to, Ricky. Only One can sustain that change. If you remember that, your continued failures will lead to your salvation, and to the salvation of your marriage. In humility, you will ever return to the Lord. And being keenly aware of your own sins and shortcomings, you won’t demand perfection of Carol either.”
Grandpa Carson looked tenderly at Rick.
“Don’t misunderstand, Son. The Lord does not give you a new heart only once. He gives you a new heart every time you come to him repentantly, in faith, believing that you will receive. We need the gift of a new heart every day.”

27. This Time Together (2015.07.05)
By: Carol Burnett
Genre: memoir / humor / nonfiction / celebrity
Pages: 266
Bex Rating: 9

This was a delightful, light memoir, of a comedienne who wass such a huge part of my childhood. Not only did my parents watch reruns of The Carol Burnett Show, (which, honestly, I don't remember too much about) but the first (and only) movie we ever owned was Annie, and I was never scared of Miss Hannagan, because she was so funny.

Each short chapter in this memoir is a humorous or touching story from Carol's life--some of them are her encounters with other celebrities (she knew Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart), some are funny stories about her husband or children, and a few are about her home life before she became famous. All are well-written and lovely--if she seems like a lovely person, it's because she is. I have a strong hankering to watch The Carol Burnett Show, now . . .

26. Fortunately, The Milk (2015.07.01)
By: Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by: Scottie Young
Genre: children's fiction / fantasy / humour / whimsical / bedtime story
Pages: 113
Bex Rating: 9

Hilarious and super-fast. you could read this book in one sitting to your kids, and they would love you for it.

Then [the dinosaurs] sang a song called, "Don't Go Down to the Tarpits, Dear, Because I'm Getting Stuck on You." There is nothing in the whole of creation as beautiful as dinosaurs singing in harmony.

25. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl (2015.06.12)
By: Stacey O'Brien
Genre: memoir / animals / owls / pets / science / biology / love story / friendship
Pages: 229
Bex Rating: 9.5!

My friend Melanie told me about this book that they had read for her book club--she knew I would love it! It's the true story, told by the author, of how she raised and cared for a barn owl for 19 years. It's hilarious, informative, and touching, and she does an excellent job of making you care, not just about Wesley, but about all animals as sentient beings who share our planet. I absolutely loved it.

Like all barn owls, the baby smelled like maple syrup but not as sweet, something closer to butterscotch and a comfy pillow all in one. Many biologists at Caltech, where I both worked and took classes, would bury their faces in their owls' necks to breathe in their delicate, sweet scent. It was intoxicating.
In the wild, the father owl hunts relentlessly. He has to provide approximately six mice per baby per night. The usual brood is five babies. The father also has to feed his mate, who never leaves the nest and eats about three mice per day. And he must feed himself about four mice per day. That adds up to thirty-seven full-grown mice every day during mating season.
When Wesley pulled a feather that was ready to come out, he invariably also pulled out the exact opposite corresponding feather on the other side. If it was the third secondary flight feather on the left side, a few minutes later out would come the third secondary flight feather on the right.
I gazed into the universe of Wesley's eyes almost every day for nineteen years . . . When I would look into his relaxed, at-peace-with-himself eyes, I felt like I was looking into something inscrutable, unobtainable, deeper than we can possibly imagine, an old soul that reflected something bigger, ineffable, eternal.
Guilt is just anger turned inward--anger at our helplessness in being unable to chnage the inevitable. but we are not gods. We outlive our animals. There's no way around this. So we choose whether or not to take the pain with the joy. I know people who have decided it's too hard and have given up living with animals. But to me there's no question that it's all worth it.

24. H is for Hawk (2015.06.07)
By: Helen MacDonald
Genre: memoir / grief / birds of prey / coping with loss / wild animals / falconry / T.H. White / contemporary British nonfiction
Pages: 300
Bex Rating: 8.5

I was excited to find that my library had this book, because it's been suggested to me on amazon for the past six months. It's the story of how the author, a trained falconer, takes on the very difficult task of training a goshawk as a means of coping with her father's death. She also goes back and forth between her own experience training her falcon (Mabel) and the experience of British author T.H. White (author of The Once and Future King), training his goshawk a half century earlier.

The story was unique, and the writing was excellent. It is a very unadorned and unapologetic account of how vulnerable and bereft one can feel when a loved one dies, and how "wildness" is a state that can exist in all living creatures.

Plus, hello. Really topnotch vocabulary words.

In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see.
Bereft. It's from the Old English bereafian, meaning, 'to deprice of, take away, seize, rob.' It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone.
In England Have My Bones, White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: 'Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.'
In two months, I think, my college job will end. In two months I will have no office, no college, no salary, no home. Everything will be different. But, I think, everything already is… In my three years as a Cambridge Fellow there’d been lectures and libraries and college meetings, supervisions, admissions interviews, late nights of paper-writing and essay-marking, and other things soaked in Cantabrigian glamour… Now, standing on a cricket pitch with a hawk on my hand, I knew I had always been falling as I moved past these things. I could reach out and touch them, pick them off their shelves and replace them, but they were not mine. Not really ever mine.
Being a novice is safe. When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe any more. Being an expert opens you up to judgment.
I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing — not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There’s little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?
hunting makes you animals. But the death of an animal makes you human.
The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.
louche: dubious; shady; disreputable.
arrogate: to claim unwarrantably or presumptuously; assume or appropriate to oneself without right
purdah: 1- the seclusion of women from the sight of men or strangers, practiced by some Muslims and Hindus. 2- a screen, curtain, or veil used for this purpose.
saturnine: 1- sluggish in temperament; gloomy; taciturn. 2- suffering from lead poisoning, as a person.
revenant: 1- a person who returns.2- a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost.
argillaceous: Geology, Petrology. of the nature of or resembling clay; clayey.

23. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place (2015.06.02)
By: Maryrose Wood
Genre: young adult fiction / British / governesses / mystery / 1800s
Pages: 267
Bex Rating: 9

Delightful, from beginning to end, with that lovely tongue-in-cheek omniscient narration that the British pull off so well. "Of especially naughty children, it is sometimes said: they must have been raised by wolves. The Incorrigible children actually were." How could I NOT read this book after reading the synopsis on the back? I look forward to more adventures of the Incorrigibles and their governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, who graduated from the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females.

There is no alarm clock like embarrassment.
(For those of you with maps close at hand, you will note that city of Christiania has long since been renamed Oslo. This is a perfect example of why many children prefer to play catch with their globes rather than to study geography with them, for place names and the boundaries of the nations have a tendency to change the very minute one is done memorizing . By the time you read this, it is quite possible that the name of your hometown may have been changed from something charming such as say, Sweet Maple Ridge to something more sleek and modern, like Aluminumville. This is called progress, and there is no stopping it, so it must be cheerfully borne.)
"A girl of your station will likely stay a spinster and not have to concern yourself with such matters."
The truth is that one cannot go through life without being annoyed by other people, and this was just as true in Miss Penelope Lumley's day as it is in our own.
As you may know, complimentary remarks of this type are all too often made by well-meaning adults to children who are, to be frank, perfectly ordinary looking. This practice of overstating the case is called hyperbole. Hyperbole is usually harmless, but in some cases it has been known to precipitate unnecessary wars as well as a painful gaseous condition called stock market bubbles. For safety's sake, then, hyperbole should be used with restraint and only by those with the proper literary training. (Hahaha!)

22. The Spirit Well (2015.05.16)
By: Stephen R. Lawhead
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Genre: fiction / action / adventure / time travel / history / physics / ley lines / Egyptology / European history / prehistoric man / theology / Roger Bacon / astrophysics
Audiobook Length:10 hours, 51 minutes
Bex Rating: 9.5!

"I am familiar with the anthropic principle," Cass replied . . . "The theory that the universe was designed to bring about human life--that the universe not only exists for us, but because of us."
"We got further," said Mrs. Peelstick. "We extend the principle to say that the universe was conceived and created as a place to grow and perfect independent conscious agents and fit them for eternity."
"Truly," agreed Brendan. "Our view is that the aim of the process of creating all these independent conscious agents is to promote the formation of harmonious communities of self-aware individuals capable of knowing and enjoying the Creator, and joining in the ongoing creation of the cosmos."
"Pray, speak--and let me feast on the sound of a voice not my own . . . "
"As you can see,"--he indicated his own predicament with a wave of his hand--"the authorities do not treat kindly truths that confound their own more limited understandings."

21. Theodore Boone: The Fugitive (2015.05.15)
By: John Grisham
Genre: young adult / American law / solving crime / Washington D.C.
Pages: 250
Bex Rating: 8.5

I love a good Theodore Boone book. Keep 'em coming, Grisham!

This fifth installment sees Theo Boone on a class trip to Washington, D.C., where he recognizes Pete Duffy, the fugitive who fled the law in the very first Boone book, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer. Theo sets in motion a chain of events that lead to the capture, arrest, and trial of Duffy for the muder of his wife, but unfortunately for Theo, Duffy knows it was Theo who pegged him. The last line made me laugh, even if it did make me excited for the sixth book:

Omar smiled and said, "Paco, Paco. Haven't you learned that it's never too late for revenge?"

20. Paperboy (2015.05.13)
By: Vince Vawter
Genre: young adult fiction / Newbery / Newbery honor / speech impediments / Memphis / 1950s
Pages: 223
Bex Rating: 8.5

Definitely this book deserved the Newbery honor (2014) that it was awarded. It was beautifully written (with no commas!), a compelling story, and dealt with many deeply important themes. There's some swearing and mature situations--I would recommend it for age 15 and older.

Victor Vollmer has stuttered severely since he could talk, and most people treat him like he is unintelligent and unable. The story is written in first person from his point of view, and he tells the reader about the four weeks that he spent one summer, taking over his only friend's paper route. He is terrified of collecting money for the route each week, because it means he will have to talk to people, but he wants to make himself do it.

The author, Vince Vawter, has stuttered all his life, and says that Paperboy is more memoir than fiction. It's his first novel and a really amazing debut.

"This knife won't do for hot butter."
"If you are asking if the story of Jason and the Argonauts is fiction or nonfiction, I will answer that there is no difference between the two in the world I inhabit.
I probably get over things that hurt much faster than most kids. I don't have much of a choice seeing as how mu stuttering hurts me so many times during a day.
I let the words stay on the blackboard in my head.
"God will see to it that you find your words."
"But you put s-s-s-s-s-s everything on s-s-s-s God."
She stuck her needle in a cloth and the cloth went in her handbag and she turned her eyes hard on me like Superman seeing through a brick wall.
"I do and will for all my days."
"I fear no man the likes of Ara T. No matter who has hold of me I know the Lord will protect my soul."
I still felt empty with all my tears gone.
Words in the air blow away as soon as you say them but words on paper last forever [this was the last beautiful line of the book.]

19. Elizabeth Smart: My Story (2015.05.03, book club)
By: Elizabeth Smart with Chris Stewart
Genre: nonfiction / memoir / biography / kidnapping victims / overcoming adversity / faith /
Pages: 320
Bex Rating: 9

This was a very difficult book to read, and I never in a million years would have read it if it wasn't the book club choice, and so many people I trust said it was worth the read. It was worth the read, though I felt so heartsick as I read it. It ultimately is a book about faith and hope, and the triumph of the human spirit. Elizabeth wrote it ten years after her abduction, nine-month imprisonment, and then rescue.

I don't think it's possible to read this book without coming to admire Elizabeth Smart's courage and incredible example of faith and heroism. She is a remarkable individual and it is right and good and necessary to decry crimes against children, which is the whole reason she is sharing her story. I am glad I read it, even though I admit that it was emotionally draining. My favorite excerpts are long, but I think you'll see why I am including entire paragraphs when you read them.

I don’t think what happened to me was something that God intended. He surely would not have wished the anguish and torment that I was about to go through on anyone, especially upon a child.
But since that time, I have learned an important lesson. Yes, God can make some good come from evil. But even He, in all His majesty, won’t make the evil go away. Men are free. He won’t control them. There is wickedness in this world.
Which left me with this: When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice.
We can choose to be taken by the evil.
Or we can try to embrace the good.”

Grandpa was one of my guardian angels...During the darkest days that I was captive, it helped me to think that someone I loved, someone who loved, someone who was a good man, was standing at my side."

The realization that my family would still love me proved to be the turning point. In fact, it proved to be the most important moment throughout my entire nine-month ordeal.
It was at this moment that I decided that no matter what happened, I was going to find a way to survive. The conviction was crystal clear. I would do whatever it took to live. No matter what it took, no matter what I had to do, I was going to survive.

I don't know what it was that drove so many people to try to help me. It's beyond my comprehension to understand why so many good people were willing to work and to sacrifice for me, a little girl they didn't even know. All I know is that i more grateful than words can express. And to this day I remain the luckiest girl in the world.

So why did God send me the water?
Because He loved me. And He wanted me to know.
He wanted me to know that He was still near. He wanted me to know that He controlled the earth and all the heavens, that all things were in His hands. And if He could move the mountains, then He could do this thing for me. To Him it was a small thing —a terribly easy thing to do— but for me it was as powerful as if He had parted the sea.
This experienced reminded me once again that God had not deserted me, that He was aware of my suffering and loneliness. And that assurance gave me hope. It helped me to keep my faith and gave me the strength that I needed to go on . . .
In my life, I have come to believe there are lots of examples where God provides us little miracles to give us hope. Most of these experiences are not as obvious as waking up and finding a cup of water. Some of them are much more subtle. We may even have to look to His miracles along the way. But they are there. And they are important when we are struggling with the challenging battles of this life.

That night, I lay atop my makeshift bed and thought, It’s Thanksgiving. You’re supposed to count your blessings. But did I have anything to be thankful for? I wondered.
At first, I didn’t think so. Then I started to make a list.
I still believed in God. I knew He was the Savior of the world. And I knew that He was near, I felt His presence every day. He was the only reason I had been able to keep my sanity. He kept me strong and gave me hope. Nothing that Mitchell could ever do to me could take away my faith.
Yes, that was something to be thankful for.
I still had a family. I didn’t get to be with them, but someday I thought I would.
Another reason to be grateful.
I was hungry, but I was healthy. And though I didn’t get any dinner, I had been able to eat lunch at the HomeTown Buffet, which had turned out to be a really great meal. Millions of people around the world hadn’t eaten anything all day.
My list went on.…
One day I would be able to get away from my tormentors.
One day I would be free.
The gray tent kept the sun off.
The trees around our camp kept the wind at bay.
I kept adding to my list of blessings until I eventually fell asleep.

I think a few people might look at me and almost not believe what I say. Some of them might think, given the fact that I haven’t received any professional counseling, that something must still be wrong with me, that I’m hiding my wounds or putting on a happy face. Some might think that I’m carrying a bit of baggage, or that there are certain things that I’m not ready yet to face.
But it’s very important to stress that every survivor must create their own pathway to recovery. What works for one might not work for another. Therapy, medicine, and counseling might be the right path for some people, but not for others. The fact that I chose a pathway to recovery that worked for me is not to suggest that it’s the best path, or that it’s the only path. The only thing it suggests is that I found the path that worked for me.
My parents made it very clear that they would do whatever it took to help me. Every option was on the table. Counseling. Therapy. Doctors and medication. Whatever it took to secure a happy future. But while we talked about the possibility of therapy or counseling, I never felt it was the right thing for me.
So how was I able to get past all of the horrible things that happened?
First, I want to remind you of my mother. There are certain pains that only a mother can really feel, exquisite and intense, and my mother endured them all. She endured them day and night. She endured them for nine months. She wondered if I was dead. It’s one thing to lose your child, but it’s something altogether different to have your child stolen our of her own bed. She endured months of bitter scrutiny, with some of most horrible things being said about her family. In her darkest hours, she imagined all of the suffering that I might be going through. And now she knows about it, the pain that I endured and things that I was forced to do.
But she didn’t let any of these things stop her. She remains the strongest woman I have ever known. She is full of faith and hope and optimism.
So you see, I come from a very strong mother. In fact, I come from a long line of strong women. Maybe I inherited a little of their stock.
And there is also significant historical precedent that indicates that what I’ve been able to do is not terribly unusual.
The truth is, history is replete with stories of human suffering. The world has been full of brutality and abuse and suffering since the beginning of man. There are examples of those who suffered abuse as I did, maybe in different forms, or from different sources, but I am not the first one to suffer at the hand of an evil man. And there were other kinds of challenges. Some of my own ancestors were early pioneers. They faced suffering and starvation, the loss of their children, the loss of other loved ones. They too endured the gamut of emotions, from utter devastation to lifesaving miracles. But the human spirit is resilient. God made us so. He gave us the ability to forgive. To leave our past behind. To look forward instead of back. I’m not the first one who has ever done this. People have been doing it for generations. Since the beginning of time, men have found ways to heal.

All of these things have helped me. But ultimately, to get better, I simply made a choice.
Life is a journey for us all. We all face trials. We all have ups and downs. All of us are human. But we are also the masters of our fate. We are the ones who decide how we are going to react to life.
Yes, I could have decided to allow myself to be handicapped by what happened to me. But I decided very early that I only had one life and that I wasn’t going to waste it.
As of this writing, I am twenty-five years old. I have been alive for 307 months. Nine of those months were pretty terrible. But 298 of those months have been very good. I have been happy. I have been very blessed. Who knows how many more months I have to live? But even if I died tomorrow, nine out of 307 seems like pretty good odds.
Looking at it that way, I don’t think I have much to complain about.
People sometimes ask me if I am happy. Have I truly been able to move on with my life? Have things turned out okay for me? I want you to know that they have. I am happy. I am fulfilled. I am satisfied and at peace with myself and the life that I have built.

I will never stop caring about abuse prevention. I will always speak out. I will do everything I can to keep these conversations alive. I will never become callous or cease to feel horrified upon learning of crimes committed against children.
I will never lose my faith in God and in His love.
I will always be grateful to the thousands of people who prayed, searched, and cared about me.
I will never give my captors even another second of my life.
My greatest ambition will always be to have a family and to be the kind of mother that my mother was for me.

18. The Bone House
By: Stephen R. Lawhead
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Genre: fiction / action / adventure / time travel / history / physics / ley lines / Egyptology / European history / prehistoric man / Roger Bacon / Thomas Young (How have I never heard of the astounding prodigy, Thomas Young, before this book?)
Audiobook Length:10 hours, 38 minutes
Bex Rating: 9.5!

Dare I even admit it? The second book in the Bright Empires series was better than the first. And listening to an audiobook makes even the most odious tasks (painting the stairs hallway while perched on various combinations of chairs and stools) fly by with pleasure.

In the first book, The Skin Map, my favorite story line was of Wilhelmina visiting 17th century Prague and successfully introducing coffee to Europe, but Lawhead eclipses that story line with Kit's unintentional, extended stay in a Neolithic Age with a clan of, well . . . cavemen.

These books have got plenty of action and adventure, but Lawhead is such an amazing, descriptive genius who weaves a wholly believable tale--in part because of the exhaustive amounts of research he has done. Can't wait to listen to the third, The Spirit Well!

(Thanks again to conscientious readers who listed their favorite quotes, because I could not mark mine in a physical copy of the book).

Contrary to what many may think, immortality is not a fairy tale invented to compensate for an unhappy life. Rather, it is the perception shared by nearly all sentient beings that our conscious lives are not bounded by this time and space. We are not merely lumps of animate matter. We are living spirits—we all feel this innately. And in our deepest hearts, we know that we can only find ultimate fulfillment in union with the supreme spiritual reality—a reality that appears, even during this earthly life, to take us beyond the narrow limits of time.
Time is the central mystery of our existence. It confines and defines us in many ways.
How very bright this empire of stars, he mused. Which poet had said that?
The returning labourers ate a hearty meal and, exhausted with the good fatigue of useful work, went to sleep. [ I love all descriptions of good sleep after good work. It is the sleep of the righteous :) ]

17. Theodore Boone: The Activist (2015.04.11)
By: John Grisham
Genre: young adult / American law / local politics / solving crime
Pages: 289
Bex Rating: 9

I used to read every John Grisham book as the came out, as a teenager in the nineties :). I haven't read one of his courtroom thrillers in a long time, but I love the Theodore Boone series for young adults. Makes me remember what a good writer Grisham is. The Theodore Boone books actually remind me a lot of Andrew Clements' "school stories"--both writers are good at understanding what makes kids tick.

This volume has Theodore in the middle of a political dispute of land seizure for a bypass project in his fictional hometown of Strattenberg. It was very believable and fun--and I look forward to the fifth book coming out next month!

16. Woods Runner (2015.04.09)
By: Gary Paulsen
Genre: young adult / historical fiction / Revolutionary War / war /
Pages: 176
Bex Rating: 8.5

A book from Gary Paulsen I have never heard of? This was a very quick historical fiction adventure, set in New York during the Revolutionary War. Paulsen is nothing if not realistic, and this book paints a pretty horrific description of the bloody war between England and its American colonists. I would recommend for 12 and up.

15. The Skin Map Bright Empires, book one (2015.04.02)
By: Stephen R. Lawhead
Narrated by: Simon Bubb
Genre: fiction / action / adventure / time travel / history / physics / ley lines / Egyptology / European history
Audiobook Length:11 hours, 21 minutes
Bex Rating: 9.5!

Wow. This is totally original and I could not stop listening. In fact, I listed to the second half with headphones while I cleaned and worked outside--I didn't want to wait for the next long drive in the car.

Kit and his girlfriend Wilhelmina are unexpectedly caught up in struggle between adventurers who use ley-lines to travel to different dimensions and times. They are accidentally split up early on, and each goes to a different dimension in time. Kit has his great-grandfather to help him along, but 'Mina is left completely to her own devices. Both encounter the "Burleigh-men," who want to use the skin map (a map that holds the key to finding and using ley-lines) to further their evil purposes, and they each must use their wits to stay ahead of a scheme that has been centuries in the making.

Lawhead is a gifted writer--I loved his "King Raven trilogy" and this series is already outstripping that one for sheer creativity, research, and TOTAL adventure. Also, no book has ever made me want to drink coffee more than this one--I absolutely loved the entire Wilhelmina/coffeehouse plot line.

The narrator, Simon Bubb, is very gifted and I love his voice of Cosimo and especially of Engelbert Stiffelbeam ("Etzel"). I wholeheartedly recommend this series to anyone!

(I'm so glad other readers wrote down their favorite lines, because I loved this part when I heard it.)

"Today," she said, gazing back at Etzel, "Is one of the most important days of my life. I just want to do well. Our future depends on it."
"No,” replied the gentle man, “our future is in God’s hands. Nothing can change that. So, let us just enjoy today and be happy."

14. The Penderwicks in Spring (2015.03.29)
By: Jeanne Birdsall
Genre: young adult fiction / coming-of-age / modern classic / sisters / music / losing pets
Pages: 339
Bex Rating: 9

One of the first books that I bought BRAND NEW on the very day it came out, because I adore the Penderwick sisters. This is the fourth installment in the five-book series (which is sort of a modern-era Little Women) and I hate to admit that I am kind of feeling like the glass is half-empty. That is, instead of eagerly awaiting the final book, I am dreading that the series will end. Because I love Rosalind and Skye and Jane and Batty (and Ben! and now Lydia!). Time to start on the Betsy-Tacy books . . .

The Penderwicks in Spring focuses mostly on Batty, who is now almost eleven years old, and trying to figure herself out, especially in the wake of Hound's death. There is a new baby sister named Lydia who is hilarious, and the Penderwick household is often full of teenage boys coming to hang out with Skye and Jane. I loved it from beginning to end, and cried more than once.

"Jane! Leave some food for the family! . . . It's not the money, it's the innumerable trips to the grocery store" Father said.
"I Lima-Oscar-Victor-Echo you, Skye."
"Lima-Oscar-Victor-Echo you, too, buddy."
Penderwick birthday cakes were always deliciously homemade and from scratch. Cake from a mix or, even worse, store-bought birthday cake, would have been a sign that the world was coming to an end.
Getting a sobbing two-year-old ready for bed was no easy task. The removal of each piece of daytime clothing was misery, as was the putting on of each piece of night-time clothing. But all of that was nothing compared to what happened during face-washing and teeth-brushing.

Books to read: (Jeanne Birdsall always works great children's lit into the stories!)

The Phantom Tollbooth (can't believe I haven't read it yet)
The Dragonfly Pool. by Eva Ibbotson
Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Bryce

13. As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (2015.03.20)
By: Alan Bradley
Genre: fiction / mystery / British / humour / 1950s / chemistry
Pages: 389
Bex Rating: 8

I will always read Bradley's hilarious Flavia mysteries! The first Flavia DeLuce book (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) will always be my favorite, but the subsequent novels have been laugh-out-loud enjoyable in their own right. I borrowed this copy from a friend, so I did not dog-ear the pages with my favorite quotes . . . but like its predecessors, I may as well have just dog-eared every page.

Flavia is now twelve years old, and is shipped off to boarding school in Canada, where she tumbles headfirst into a murder investigation. I missed Daphne and Ophelia and their constant wrangling, but they were there in spirit.

Enjoyable as always--and keep 'em coming!

12. Dreaming Spies (2015.03.04)
By: Laurie R. King
Genre: fiction / mystery / Sherlock Holmes / suspense / British / Japan / 1920s
Pages: 331
Bex Rating: 9

The first brand-new book I have bought for myself in quite a while was well worth it. I always get Laurie R. King's "Mary Russell" books on the day they are released, because they are my absolute favorites. This is the thirteenth novel in the series! Start with The Beekeeper's Apprentice and you'll be hooked, too.

This installment is set in 1924, and does come chronologically after the last one, Garment of Shadows, but at least two-thirds of the book tells the story of what Holmes and Russell did during their three-week stay in Japan between The Game (set in India) and Locked Doors (set in San Francisco) in 1923. The plot was masterfully woven and I feel like King is back in her stride (which got a bit erratic in books 9-11).

Holmes and Russell protecting the Prince Regent Hirohito from scandal? Only Laurie R. King can pull of something this of this scope . . . and make it as exciting as it is believable.

Heaven lay within, an ancient gathering space that could only be in England, every breath testifying to its centuries of smoke and beer, damp dogs, and the sweat of working men.
I left his presence feeling the need of a good cold, invigorating bath, to clear away the honeyed assumptions of wealth.
My dress was really quite nice, my emeralds nothing to be ashamed of, but standing before this woman, I felt like an oversized schoolgirl fumbling along in her mother's patent leather pumps.
To a large extent, it is easier to bear pain than to cause it.
The Bodleian Library is one of the glories of the Western World--although, if the world (and the University) was a fair place, the institution would be called the "Ball Library," after the wealthy widow Thomas Bodley had married.
gutta-percha: 1- the milky juice, nearly white when pure, of various Malaysian trees 2- the tough, rubberlike gum made from this and used as a dental cement, in the manufacture of golf balls, for insulating electric wires, etc.
sybaritic: pertaining to or characteristic of a sybarite; characterized by or loving luxury or sensuous pleasure
Hiroshige: 1797–1858, Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese: 歌川広重), also Andō Hiroshige (Japanese: 安藤広重 ) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition.
lascar: an East Indian sailor
insouciance: lack of care or concern; indifference.
baize: a soft, usually green, woolen or cotton fabric resembling felt, used chiefly for the tops of billiard tables.

11. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2015.02.16)
By: Susanna Clarke
Genre: fiction / fantasy / fairy tale/ alternate history / Napoleonic Wars / British / social satire /
Pages: 846
Bex Rating: 8.5

I read half of this book about eight years ago, and can't remember why I never finished (apart from the fact that it is MASSIVE--not only is it 846 pages of small type, there are even smaller-type footnotes on every other page). It's fun, incredibly creative, hilarious, and a great,original story. I bought it the first time I saw it in a bookstore, when I read the review on the back that said this book reads like a love child of J.R.R. Tolkien and Jane Austen. Even though I don't think it's often fair to compare authors to other writers, I think that's a pretty accurate description.

Crotchety Gilbert Norrell astonishes the British public in 1806 when he claims to be the first practical magician (as opposed to theoretical magicians, who simply study magical history) and then demonstrates his magical ability in a very public way. He is soon drawn into the best circles in London, though he is secretive, suspicious, and condescending. Another magician, Jonathan Strange appears on the London scene a year later, and he is everything Norrell is not: young, handsome, kind, and affable. Norrell takes on Strange as his pupil, and the two magicians employ their magic to help in the Napoleonic wars. Wellington's victory at Waterloo is actually owed to STrange, who made it rain for days to confound the French cavalry.

But one of Norrell's first acts of magic has opened the long-closed doors into Faerie, and the English countryside is soon awash in old magic. Only together can Norrell and Strange rescue England from old enemies.

"Next week I may need a guinea very badly--and so I will be so bold as to ask you to brinf it again on Wednesday."
The gentlemen among my readers will smile to themselves and say that women never did understand business, but the ladies may agree with me that Mrs. Brandy understood her business very well, for the chief business of Mrs. Brandy's life was to make Stephen Black as much in love with her as she was with him.
He . . . had the natural distrust that a young, rich, self-indulgent man feels for members of the clergy.
She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three counties.
She smiles to herself as wives do when they pretend to criticize their husbands, but are really boasting of them.
"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."
The door opened to reveal a tall, broad fellow of thirty or forty. His face was round, white, pockmarked and bedabbled with sweat like a Cheshire cheese. All in all he bore a striking resemblance to the man in the moon who is reputed to be made of cheese. He had shaved himself with no very high degree of skill and here and there on his white face two or three coarse black hairs appeared--rather as if a family of flies had drowned in the milk before the cheese was made and their legs were poking out of it. [So gross! And yet such an amazing description--the entire book is dosed with Clarke's amazing gift for physical description].
Being a politician, he was never dissuaded from giving any body his opinion by the mere fact that they were not inclined to hear it.
"I see no necessity for you to reside permanently in England merely because you are its monarch. A week is the utmost any person of taste could be expected to linger in such a dull country."
The room--which was scarcely more than an attic--had all the wretchedness that old age and extreme poverty could give it. It contained nothing that was not broken, chipped, or ragged. Every colour in the room had faded, or darkened, or done what it must until it was grey. There was one little window that was open to the evening air and shewed the moon, although it was a little surprising that the moon with her clean whte face and fingers should condescend to make an appearance in the dirty little room.
"Tell her that I have brought her money . . . Tell her that she must not thank me . . . " Dr. Greysteel waved his hand vigorously as if a reputation for generous deeds and benevolent actions were a little like a mosquito and he hoped in this way to prevent one from landing on him.
sarsenet: a fine, soft silk fabric used as a lining material and in dressmaking.
ecarte: is a two-player card game originating from France, the word literally meaning "discarded". It is a trick-taking game, similar to whist, but with a special and eponymous discarding phase. It is closely related to Euchre, a card game played mainly in the United States. Écarté was popular in the 19th century, but is now rarely played.

10. Shadow Hero (2015.01.30)
By: Gene Luen Yang
Illustrated by: Sonny Liew
Genre: graphic novel / young adult / superhero comic / Asian fiction / history / tribute
Pages: 158
Bex Rating: 8.5

I loved Yang's American Born Chinese and knew he would be a writer/artist to watch. My friend Cori got Shadow Hero for me from my amazon wishlist on a week when I was down. It's a two-time pick-me-up: once when it came in the mail, and the again when I read it!

There really was a superhero comic in the 1940s entitled "The Green Turtle," and that's what Gene Yang used as the basis for this story--the back of the book has the first episode of The Green Turtle in all its politically-incorrect glory.

Hank is a Chinese American whose mother is enamored with the idea of him becoming a superhero instead of a grocer like his father. She sews him a costume and pushes him into a toxic chemical spill, hoping that he will receive super powers. It's only when the Chinese mafia comes calling that Hank realizes that maybe he is superhero material. Fun and original (well, okay, based on an original).

9. Dad is Fat (2015.01.29, book club)
By: Jim Gaffigan
Genre: comedy / memoir / humor / satire /
Pages: 274
Bex Rating: 9.5

I may start reading comedy books full-time. This is the book my friend Debbie chose for our March book club discussion, and I was laughing out loud the entire time I read it.

I never used to dog-ear pages of my books--I've always used a bookmark, or just remembered the page number I am on . . . but I started dog-earing when I began adding my favorite excerpts to these book reviews in 2011--I turn down the corner of the page of my favorite passages, then after I finish a book, I go through the dog-ears and type the excerpts at the bottom of each review.

Right now, there are so many dog-ears that there's no way I am going to write all my favorite parts. In fact, I could probably just open this book to a random page and find a "favorite" part. So I am trying to narrow down Jim's hilarious observations about parenthood to the ones that struck a chord with me personally.

I have never fought in the Vietnam war and had dinner in Paris on the same day. I had no context to understand the casualties or the romance a parent feels on the same day. I never knew the joy of successfully putting a two-year-old down for a nap.
I love being a parent and find joy and humor in parenting. If you complain about how you spend your Saturdays taking your kid to birthday parties, that means you are taking your kid to birthday parties. If you complain about how hard it is to get your kids to read, it means you are trying to get them to read. If you are complaining about your kid not helping around the house, that means you have a fat, lazy kid. That's how you deal. If parents don't like being a parent, they don't talk about being a parent. They are absent . . . Failing and laughing at your own shortcomings are the hallmarks of a sane parent.
People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Have you seen a baby? They're pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn't it?
I always found those Anne Geddes baby-flower photos annoying, and it kind of puts me in a good mood to see a teenager fall off a skateboard. How could someone like me ever hope to be a good parent?
Our apartment may be small, but at least our children talk like they are on a helicopter.
Nothing in my life has ever been as important as pushing the elevator button is to my three-year-old.
I find museums incredibly exhausting, and by that I mean acting like you're interested in all those exhibits. "So this is a painting by another European painter of another unattractive European from the 1700s? Fascinating."
What I've learned is that when children see animals in captivity, it makes them want ice cream.
Once your child is born, the "classes" for one- and two-year-olds run the gamut from pointless to useless.
Jeannie is very Catholic. She's like a Shiite Catholic.
Eventually the need for a babysitter creeps in as sneakily as reality TV took over and ruined prime time.
TV news is like Kryptonite to children.
Unfortunately, around the age of three, there comes a time when napping your child becomes counterproductive. It's not worth it. The nap during the day for a three-year-old becomes a payday loan . . . if you take the payday loan of some free time by letting your cranky, drowsy three-year-old succumb to the relinquished nap habit, be prepared that your child will be awake very late. When I say awake, I really mean a nuisance to your life and sanity. This is the aforementioned huge fee that you must now pay.
Judging people says more about you than the person you are judging. Except of course when you are judging people with too many cats . . . A good friend of ours has three cats in her studio apartment and asked me "Can you tell I have cats?" I replied, "No, but I can tell you have a box of turds in your living room."
Children's book to read: Caps for Sale

8. Firefight (2015.01.28)
By: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: fiction / superheroes / dystopia / action / thriller /
Pages: 416
Bex Rating: 9

Ahhhhhhhh. Nothing like a great sequel to a spectacular first installment. Last year, Steelheart (review #21) was easily one of my favorite reads of 2014, and Firefight did not disappoint . . . only now I'll be waiting all the way until 2016 for the third book in the Reckoners series, Calamity.

The story picks up with David fighting alongside Prof to rid the world of the power-hungry Epics that are trying to take over Newcago after Steelheart is taken down. Prof deduces that the High Epic Regalia has been sending lesser Epics to Newcago from her domain in what used to be New York City (now known as Babilar). The reckoners decide that the only way to protect Newcago, and the rest of the country, is to go to Babilar and bring down Regalia themselves. I loved the change of setting for almost the entire book--Babilar has a real hippie, funky, go-with-the-flow vibe that never existed in Steelheart's Newcago, and it brings out some nice development in the characters.

Meanwhile, David is still searching for ways to contact Firefight, the girl he knows as Megan, and help her battle the personal darkness that all Epics struggle against, by fighting her powers. She lets him know that the more powerful an Epic is, the harder it is for them to resist using their powers--David becomes increasingly worried about Prof, who has had to use his powers more and more in order to bring Regalia down.

It sounds so fantastic and geeky to write it out, but Sanderson is a master storyteller, and this book may have been ever more fast-paced that the first. I cannot believe the actual amount of writing that Sanderson is doing--he writes, like, three huge books every year. And I think he's one of the best writers of his genre right now. Keep it up!

"I'd just pretend to be a chef," Exel said. "Every organization needs both good chefs and good morticians. The two great constants of life. Food and death."
The sudden and abrupt removal of my all-consuming goal . . . well, it was like I was a donut, and somebody had sucked all the jelly out of me. But I could stuff new jelly in there. It would just get my hands a little sticky in the process.
Regalia was not only an Epic; she was also an attorney. That was like putting curry powder in your hot sauce. She could talk rings around me.
Exel: "I'd love to do nothing. Seems like a grand profession. It's never because of the 'do-nothings' that people go to war."

7. The Moorchild (2015.01.22, book club)
By: Eloise McGraw
Genre: young adult fiction / fairy tale / Newbery / Newbery honor / love
Pages: 241
Bex Rating: 8

This was a fun story, and pretty different from any I've read before. It's the story of a "changeling,"--a half-fairy child who is switched with the human daughter of the blacksmith, and who grows up bewildered and confused by the human world. She is shunned by the villagers, blamed for every sickness and misfortune, and misunderstood even by her "parents." The only place she feels free is on the moor. When she discovers that she doesn't belong in either the human or fairy world, she makes up her mind to show her human parents how much she loves them. A really original idea that is executed with beautiful description and dialogue.

She didn't really understand about hate. She often felt scowly, sometimes sore and lonely, mostly bored to screaming at their tireless, stupid pestering. But hate? . . .
Hate sounded a lot like the way they acted, not the way she felt.
There was still a handsbreath of golden sky between earth and sun when they reached the thorn-tree hollow and wriggled into the concealing thicket. A few wind-raveled clouds turned slowly scarlet; the light over the moor dimmed. To Saaski it seemed that time and sun both stopped, even the bird calls quieted. Then the suns rim touched the edge of the earth.
skep: 1) a round farm basket of wicker or wood. 2) a beehive, especially of straw.
byre: a cow shed
melilot: sweet clover

6. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (re-read 2015.01.22)
An Account Written by the hand of Mormon, taken from the plates of Nephi, translated by Joseph Smith, Junior
Pages: 531
Genre: scripture / spiritual / self-help / nonfiction / Christian
Bex Rating: 10 (but of course)

This was my 23rd time to read the Book of Mormon through. It has especially brought me a lot of comfort and peace in the past two months. One particular phrase that has brought me comfort is one that Mormon write to his son, Moroni, in Moroni 8:2 "your Lord Jesus Christ hath been mindful of you."

I want to think more of my Savior in this way, trusting that He has been mindful of me and my problems and successes and trials and triumphs. And I hope that this "mindfulness" will work both ways--so that I will be more mindful of Him, and His mercy, and patience, and lovingkindness, and perfect example.

The Book of Mormon is a true account, and I personally know that reading from it daily is the best way to come unto our Savior Jesus Christ and see His care for me, and feel His love for all people.

5. The Gloria Scott (2015.01.19)
By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: classic fiction / short fiction / mystery / crime / Sherlock Holmes / sea tales
Audiobook Length: 51 minutes
Narrated by: the incomparable BJ Harrison, on the FREE podcast, The Classic Tales
Bex Rating: 8

I always love a good Sherlock Holmes story. Harrison brings the story to life with his excellent reading and knack for voices. Since almost all Sherlock Holmes stories are under an hour long, it's the perfect thing to listen to while folding laundry or doing dishes or driving across the plains for supplies :).

This is not the first Sherlock Holmes story published, but, according to Holmes himself, this was his first "case," and the first incident that led him to believe he could make a career out of studying criminal ~~behavior~~ behaviour. It was as entertaining as most, and I enjoyed listening.

4. The Return of the King (2015.01.18)
By: J.R.R. Tolkien
Genre: classic fiction / fantasy / allegory / poetry / epic
Pages: 311
Bex Rating: 9

I have always loved this quote by C.S. Lewis (who you probably already know was a close personal friend with JRR Tolkien) about Lord of the Rings: "Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart."

Seriously.

I realized as I read The Return of the King that, as a kid, I skipped the first half (about the battles at and around Minas Tirith) and went straight to the second (about the journey of Frodo, Sam, and the treacherous Gollum to Mount Doom). In fact, I can't honestly say that I have ever read the first half of The Return of the King (gasp!). A lot of it was familiar, thanks to the dramatized BBC audio version and that one time I saw the movie in the theater when it was released in 2003, but much of it seemed new to me . . . which was great!

The best line of the whole book was made into a "printable," which I actually found when I was searching for something completely unrelated to Tolkien.

Tolkien was a romantic if he was nothing else--
I love this scene between Faramir and Eowyn.

Of course the final destruction of the Ring is a masterful conclusion, and Tolkien does an excellent job of making the reader feel pity at last for poor, wretched Gollum . . . but I loved the excellent falling action just as well: Aragorn's crowning and then wedding, the long and relatively peaceful journey home to the Shire, the routing of "Sharky" and his ruffians, and the final passing of Frodo and Bilbo to the Grey Havens.

What a great way to start 2015.

Eowyn: "All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death."
Denethor; "He has long had your heart in his keeping."
For yet another weapon, swifter than hunger, the Lord of the Dark Tower had: dread and despair.
Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.
Aragorn: "His grief he will not forget, but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom."
Gandalf: "Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after will have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.
Under the lifting skirts of the dreary canopy dim light leaked into Mordor like pale morning through the grimed window of a prison.
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing; there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
Gandalf: "Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret, for wonder makes the words of praise louder."
Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvelous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more, an air of richness and growth and a gleam of beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-Earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and they were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among Hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young Hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream. And later they sat on the lawns under plum trees and ate, and piled stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass.
argent: 1) silver 2) something silvery or white.
weskit: a vest or waistcoat.
firth: a long, narrow indentation of the seacoast.

3. The Two Towers (2015.01.14)
By: J.R.R. Tolkien
Genre: classic fiction / fantasy / allegory / poetry / epic
Pages: 352
Bex Rating: 9

Good old Lord of the Rings! There are some favorite books from my childhood and teenage years that are just plain laughable when I re-read them as an adult (ahem, books by Dorothy Keddington), but LOTR has only gotten better. I am amazed at how ahead of his time Tolkien was with the genre. And the "high speech" that is often used by elves and kings and Special Occasions does not sound forced or ridiculous or inconsistent (ahem, Eragon); Tolkien's life's study was ancient languages and stories, and he is clearly a master of the form--it is as evident in The Two Towers as in any of his books.

Treebeard: "His face, as I remember it--I have not seen it for many a day--became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside."
Kind Theoden: "I have lived to see strange days. Long have we tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun."
Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.
Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.
Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a disheveled dryad loveliness.
Faramir: "War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
Sam: "The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind."
When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I'll linger here, beneath the Sun, because my land is best!
rede: 1) counsel; advice. 2) a plan; scheme.
besom: a broom, especially one of brush or twigs.
sloe: 1)the small, sour, blackish fruit of the blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, of the rose family. 2) the shrub itself.
dingle: a deep, narrow cleft between hills; shady dell.

2. The Fellowship of the Ring (2015.01.08)
By: J.R.R. Tolkien
Genre: classic fiction / fantasy / allegory / poetry / epic
Pages: 423
Bex Rating: 9.5

It's been at least ten years (closer to fifteen, I bet) since I've re-read The Lord of the Rings, though this is probably my sixth or seventh time reading the trilogy. I first read LOTR in sixth grade, and, aside from being a riveting adventure story, the courage and determination of Frodo and his companions really did have an impact on my life during those formative years.

It is pure nostalgia for me to re-visit the series, but with a new appreciation of Tolkien as a writer and a visionary. I am delighted by his ~~humor~~ humour and character development and his masterful use of slowly building tension. I definitely "scanned" through the poetry and songs when I was younger, but this time I've been enjoying the poetry for itself. I have read somewhere that Tolkien developed the plot so that he could insert and showcase his epic fantasy poems. Not all of it is Shakespeare, but there really are some beautiful and original lines and stanzas.

I have seen the three movie adaptations of the three books exactly once each, in the theater when they were released. They were fun, and I especially appreciated the vastness of the cinematography, but they still did not even come close to the scope and power of the books. I think The Fellowship is the best of the movies--I remember hating the prolonged and ridiculous battle scenes of the other two films. Recently seeing the final preposterous installment of The Hobbit movies made me long to tramp through Middle Earth again, so that at least was one good side effect of these films.

Bring on The Two Towers!

At any rate he was too large and too heavy for a hobbit, if not quite tall enough for one of the Big People, though he made noise enough for one, stumping along with great yellow boots on his thick legs, and charging through the grass and rushes like a cow going down to drink.
Saruman: "As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all things that we have so far striven to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."
At first they could see nothing. Then slowly they saw the forms of the encircling mountains mirrored in a profound blue, and the peaks were like plumes of white flame above them; beyond there was a space of sky. There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glittering stars, though sunlight was in the sky above.
Haldir: "The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
Celeborn: Do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know."
"Aye, we will," said Gimli. "The legs of Men will lag on a rough road, while a Dwarf goes on, be the burden twice his own weight, Master Boromir!"
The two powers strove in him. For a moment, perfectly balanced between their piercing points, he writhed, tormented. Suddenly, he was aware of himself again. Frodo, neither the Voice nor the Eye; free to choose, and with one remaining instant in which to do so. He took the Ring off his finger.
Through Evernight he back was borne
on black and roaring waves that ran
o'er leagues unlit and foundered shores
that drowned before the Days began . . .
When winter first begins to bite
and stones crack in the frosty night,
when pools are black and trees are bare
'tis evil in the Wild to fare.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
swart: swarthy, dark
hythe: a landing-place in a river; a harbor or small port.

1. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple (2015.01.04)
By: Karen Cushman
Genre: young adult / historical fiction / California gold rush
Pages: 218
Bex Rating: 9

Karen Cushman is not only one of the best writers of young adult fiction, but one of the best historical fiction writers in America, in my opinion. Her afterwords are full of all the interesting information that you want while you read the book, and always include a laundry list of books she read while researching for her novels. I have enjoyed her medieval English histories about "regular people" (Catherine, Called Birdy, The Midwife's Apprentice, and Alchemy and Meggy Swann), but this book, set in the California gold rush, was a nice change from her usual setting. I picked this paperback up for fifty cents at the D.I., and it's definitely a keeper. (I found out when I finished reading that the book was adapted into a CBS made-for-TV movie with Glenn Close--might be interesting to see . . .)

California Whipple hates the mining town of Lucky Diggens, where she and her siblings end up when their mother sells their home in Massachusetts and moves West, lured by the dream of a better life after her husband dies. But California hates California, and so she changes her name to Lucy. She is plagued by the endless work of helping with her mother's boarding house for miners, and longs to return to New England to be with her Gram and Grampop, oyster stew, and indoor privies.

The letters Lucy writes her her grandparents are saucy and funny, and there's some great character development that takes place as Lucy matures through the novel--there's some real tragedy, too. There is a conversation about a girl's "monthlies" in the novel, so I probably wouldn't give it to a second-grader--I would say it's appropriate for age 12 and up.

I lived in fear of what mama would do, for our small Massachusetts town fitted her like a shoe two sizes too small.
Jimmy says writing letters is like tossing words to the wind, for the mail takes three months or more to get all the way to Massachusetts and three months or so to get back here, if it doesn't get stolen by outlaws, lost in a landslide, or sunk to the bottom of the sea, He says writing letters in an act of faith.
"And the oldest daughter, Lucy, who is very beautiful and sought after by all the men but who prefers to lie in a hammock on her green and glorious Massachusetts estate and read. She does not eat oatmeal or possum or boiled milk and bread, and never has to chop onions or lug water in lard buckets."
I'm just not sure that I believe in heaven, at least not like I believe in the public library.
"But Mama, listen. You always listen to Gram, and Gram says, 'It's not only fine feathers that make a fine bird, but it sure don't hurt.'"
By the light of treetops still on fire, I took the opportunity to see what book I had saved from the fire. It was The Little Christian's Book of Pious Thoughts.
Then I cried.
apple pandowdy: a baked apple pastry traditionally associated with Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, with a recipe dating to colonial times. Looks like Martha Stewart has a delicious-looking recipe for it.

Pages

2015-01-04

2015 Book Reviews

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