Review: COUNTRY PEOPLE (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Country People by Daniel Mason

Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary: Kate has been offered a one year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, who has never quite finished his dissertation on Russian folktales in the twelve years since he started working on it, looks at the move as a chance to finally get going on it again. The kids, Wesley, age 12, and Olive, age nine, are along for the adventure.

But when they get to Vermont, Miles finds lots of things to distract him from his dissertation: helping a colleagues husband in his orchard, being a parent volunteer at Olive' school, figuring out how to fix everything that keeps breaking down in the rental house, ski lessons, and getting to know a cast of characters as colorful as folks in his fairytales. Then Miles runs into a local very bizarre legend which seems circumstances lead to a conclusion that it might not be a legend at all, possibly true.

"Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world" (Publisher).

Review: Kate and Miles are from California where they both worked at a large university in an urban setting. Moving to Vermont is almost like moving to another country for them and meeting the folks who live in Vermont (country people) is almost like learning about a new culture from them. Miles, as you have probably guessed, never does get to work on his dissertation, but he sure has a magical year with his new friends and his family.

My husband is from a rural town in Eastern Oregon. I, on the other hand, grew up in a city and have never lived in a rural setting. The drive to visit his parents involved driving through lots of little towns along the way. One time as we drove through one of those little towns, Don tuned in the radio to a local station. The news of the area came on. There was an announcement of who had anniversaries that week and then they named folks who were galloneers -- people who had donated at least a gallon of blood (over time, of course) at the local blood bank. I was charmed. Don laughed and told me that was the same thing they did in his town. In case you are wondering the connection, part of Country People involves a weekly radio programs with a DJ who always has a topic but has a hard time keeping the callers from going off topic. 

When we go back to Don's hometown now, he always sees people he knows -- a friend of his brother's, a Sunday School teacher, a person he swam with, a gal who played bridge with his mother -- here in the "big" city we rarely bump into people we know. This dawned on Miles, too, and at some point he came to expect and enjoy bumping into the same people over and over.

I was a huge fan of Mason's book North Woods, published in 2024. It wasn't a terribly serious book but it was certainly more serious than Country People so I wasn't expecting the silly situations and corny humor. At first I was put off by it but then I relaxed into the story and found myself laughing along with it. At one point there was a tiny bit of tension and I realized this was NOT the type of book where something awful would happen. I was right. It didn't. My rating: 4 stars.

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Note: Gillion of Rose City Reader is retiring soon from hosting Book Beginnings. And I've been wondering if it is time to retire Friday56, too. There seems to be so little interest based on the shrinking number of participants and the low number of comments made on each other's blogs, including mine.  I'm willing to stick with it for a while if you think you want to continue. Let me know what you think.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Bookish Places I've Visited

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Places I've Visited (or Plan to Visit)

Have visited:

The Strahov Monastery Library in Prague, Czech Republic.

Make Way for Duckings sculpture by Nancy Schön in Boston Common Garden celebrating the children's book: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

Winnie-the-Pooh original stuffed animals on display in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York City Public Library.

'The Art of Eric Carle' exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Home to over 420,000 rare books and seven million documents.

Juliet sculpture in Verona, Italy.

"Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

-Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

221b Baker Street, London, home of Sherlock Holmes.
Actually it is a fictitious address.

Franz Kafka sculpture in Prague, Czech Republic, the author of The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.

Chincoteague, Virginia
We visited the island to see the horses because our daughters were crazy for the Marguerite Henry book, Misty of Chincoteague.

The Mark Twain Cabin.
Located on Jackass Hill, near Angels Camp, California. Supposedly this is where Twain wrote his short story, during the winter of 1864-5, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." We bumped into this historic landmark on our way back from Yosemite National Park. The gate was locked and the fence you see above was covered with little stuffed frogs of all shapes and sizes and they were also hung from the tree branches. It was very tacky!

Plan to Visit:

(We are heading to the UK in a few weeks)

Jane Austen Festival , Bath, England.
Austen book set in Bath: Persuasion.

Hill Top House, home of Beatrix Potter, author of Peter Rabbit, Sawrey (Lake District), England.

Culloden Battlefield in Scotland, featured in the book by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander.

Stratford-Upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare.
We have tickets to see "As You Like It" while we are there.

I look forward to reading other TTT posts for new ideas for bookish places to visit in the future.

-Anne

Review: LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Lies My Teacher Told  Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong: A Graphic Adaptation by James W. Loewen and Nate Powell

Summary: In the 1990s James W. Loewen, an American History Professor, published Lies My Teacher Told Me. It was highly regarded, winning both praise and awards. Now in this edition, published in 2024, Loewen has partnered with graphic artist Nate Powell to bring the original back to life with updated information and fantastic illustrations.

Using several American History textbooks currently in use as his examples, Loewen points out why American students are so bored by the subject and find nothing within these textbooks to inform their current situations. Dividing the book into twelve themed chapters he makes a case for truth and honesty about our past and giving students the tools to examine our past to inform our futures.

With the help of one illustration per chapter I shall attempt to summarize the book. Obviously this is just a tiny piece of the book and I encourage you to read it for yourself.

The introduction is very uncomplimentary to the teaching of US history. "History is the only field in which the more courses students take the stupider they become." Ouch. Yet, of all subjects it is the most dependent on textbooks.

 

Ch. 1, American Heroes -- Loewen starts off with a bang. He talks about how we make people into heroes (Betsy Ross, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller) without teaching anything about these individuals and what they actually did to deserve our attention. I proved his point when I had a conversation with an adult not long ago and ask why was Helen Keller an American Hero. The person replied "because she was deaf and blind yet she learned to read and write." That is all we know about her. Not that she was a remarkable person concerned about inequality and how impoverished persons did not have access to health care and other services she had at her avail. She spoke out publicly and wrote about these types of issues. 

Ch. 2, The True Importance of Christopher Columbus -- Up until recently we have made Columbus a hero by saying he discovered America. This idea completely discounts Indigenous people that lived here. It also makes him into a hero even though he was very ruthless in his approach to these people. When we removed Columbus Day or renamed it to Indigenous People's Day many celebrated, but some insist of that Columbus is a hero and think his holiday should be restored.

Ch. 3, The First Thanksgiving. We like to think that colonists and Indigenous folks held hands and enjoyed peace right from the start. Unfortunately this is far from the truth.

Ch. 4, Read Eyes -- Deciding who is civilized and who is not based on a Euro-Centric notion. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America is our ORIGNIAL SIN." -Sol Tax, anthropologist.

Ch 5, The Invisibility of Racism in textbooks -- This amounts to early forms of anti-woke publishing. Because something is bad, will make people feel uncomfortable, or controversial, leave it out. Ch 6, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln -- John Brown, a white man who was killed for trying to save slaves has gone through a revisionist history. He is portrayed a mentally ill in the textbooks rather than a man who was very concerned about the way slavery considered Black people as subhuman. Don't like something a person does or says? They must be crazy.

Ch. 7, the Land of Opportunity for some -- Though we tell each other we are a classless society that is not true. "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons -- a very much larger class of necessity in every society -- to forego the privilege of liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific manual tasks." Woodrow Wilson. Oh boy, are we ever living through this today with Trump politics.

Ch. 8, What the Federal Government is doing and has done -- We hold ourselves up as good paragons of justice in the world, yet reading the above examples, one has to wonder. "As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything." - Malcolm X. Think about the way we recently bombed Iran. For what?

Ch. 9, The Vietnam War -- Most textbooks spend about as much coverage of the Vietnam War as they do covering the War of 1812. Why? Because we didn't win this war so we can't tell ourselves we were heroes?

Ch. 10, Ignoring the recent past -- What can be learned by studying the Civil Rights Movement, 9-11, the War in Iraq, climate change, pandemics, or the impact of A.I? A ton!

Ch. 11, History and the future -- Shouldn't we study the past to help inform our future? That isn't what most should textbooks do?

Ch. 12, Does this way of teaching work? Imagine being a student today and getting ahold of this book in your school library. You read it as your teacher is following the curriculum as set by the textbook. Wouldn't you be angry as you notice the book skips climate change, says next-to nothing about the Black Lives Matter movement, glorifies Betsy Ross who really didn't make the American flag, downplays George Washing and Thomas Jefferson's owning of slave, etc.?

Afterward: Honestly, don't we want a citizenry that knows how to learn and to think for themselves. Shouldn't that be the goal of education?

Review: "Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should red this book." - Howard Zinn. I feel the same way. Unfortunately, the book is also quite overwhelming. Most of the points I was aware of, but not all. I had a really terrible experience in high school and didn't even take an American history class, somehow escaping it in the experimental 1970s. So I didn't realize to what extent information was altered or left out of textbooks. I knew Christopher Columbus wasn't a hero, yet I hadn't realized what a tyrant he was, for example. As I read each chapter I found myself angry and angrier so I had to read slowly and take breaks. I even had to skim some of the chapters just to save my sanity. I've been working on this book almost all summer. But I finished and I still want everyone to read it. My rating of 4 stars reflects the value of the book and how difficult I found it digest.

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Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Book series I'd like to catch up on

Top Ten Tuesday: Book series I'd like to catch up on

1. The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
I've read the first two books and purchased the third and fourth. This is high on my list of series to finish.

2. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
My hubby and I listened to the first book and my mother gave me the second book in the series. I hope to read on and finish this series before year's end.

3. The Harlem Trilogy by Colson Whitehead
The third book just came out but I haven't read the second book yet. My husband liked the first book very much so we may try to listen to the last two books this fall as we drive to Eugene for football games.

4. The Amgash series by Elizabeth Strout
I read four of these books out of order (1,4,3,5) all I have left is #2, Anything is Possible, which seems like an an appropriate title for this project.

5. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy by Douglas Adams
The funniest book ever written has a joke for its readers -- a trilogy is made up of five books! I still haven't read the fifth book, Mostly Harmless. When I need something very lighthearted I will seek this one out.

6. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
There are 41 novels in this series. I've read the first and the last and maybe six or seven in between. I want to keep reading but get overwhelmed at the enormity of the task. Which book to read next? What are your favorites from the series?

7. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I've read and loved The Shadow of the Wind #1 in the series. I've read The City of Mist, #5. I own The Angel Game, #2. I at least want to read that book.

That's all I can think of at the moment

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- August 16, 2026

 

Sorority Sisters: Anne Marie, Me, Mary Ann, Chris, Sandy

Weather: Lovely summer weather with tinges of odors of forest fire smoke every once in a while.😕

Sisterhood: I met with four of my sorority sisters for a good chat and dinner early last week at Anne Marie's home. It was amazing how we could all pick up where we left off forty-five years ago. Sisters forever.

Ian and his Auntie wearing silly rally "hats" trying to urge team onto victory. (It didn't work.)

First Mariners baseball game: Ian went to his major league baseball game in Seattle last Friday to be part of the crowd celebrating the 50th season of the Mariners team. He almost caught a flyball, ate pizza, bought a baseball from the club store, and got to watch a home run derby after the game was over which involved eight retired Mariners, including Ichiro! After riding the link train back to the park-n-ride and driving home we didn't get back until 1 AM. Pretty late for all of us but especially for an eight-year-old boy.

Slow-mo: Since getting back from Oregon two weeks ago I've been pretty much on slow-mo. The only things I've had to do is go to appointments and then the rest of the days have been filled in with reading, blogging, and watching TV. We are finally caught up on back episode of Ninja Warrior and AGT. The above video is of our dog and his is reaction to a dog trick on AGT. The rest of the time he was ignoring the TV.

Reading (since my last update):

• Completed:
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• Currently reading: 
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• Blogging:

• TTT: Inspiring Books with Uninspiring Covers
• Review: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
• Six-Degrees: LAND
• Classics Club Spin #45, announcement is Sunday (today)
• TTT: Books I was reading on this day for the past ten years
• Review: Land by Maggie O'Farrell
• Reviews: The Warmth of Other Suns and Last Summer on State Street

Cybils Book Award closes: Sadly I read that the Cybils (Children's and Young Adult Book Lovers' Literary Awards) Board decided that it was time to cease to exist. I was a Cybils judge for several years --mostly reading MG and YA nonfiction, and I loved it and took a lot of pride in doing it. The board cited among two reasons that it was time to fold. First that is difficult to find dedicated judges and secondly they had trouble getting preview copies from publishers. I understand the first reason. There were so many categories when one factors in all the category classifications from pre-readers up to high school. I bet it was tough to fill all the judging slots. The second reason, one would think that publishers would want people to read and review their books but I bet it was a huge job to ask them to send preview copies to each of the judges for their books. Sigh. I wasn't a board member so I can't even begin to understand the task that those folks, probably volunteers, went through each year to pull off the awards. But I always thought the process was more open than it should have been: Publishers didn't have a limit on how many books they could submit and nominations by members were accepted for books not even read by the nominators. Because of this some categories, like YA fiction, would end up with over 150 titles included. What judge has the time to run down and read that many books in the 2 month time frame? Goodbye Cybils! I will miss you.

OMG: I had a dickens of time this week adding images (photos) to the post. The two photos were texted to me from others' phones. When I sent to them to my computer I couldn't add them to the post because they had a .heic file type instead of .jpg. I tried and tried to save them in the other format. Eventually my husband had to download a converter app onto my computer so I could change them into a usable format. Grr. Just when I get used to dealing with the technology at hand, I have to learn something new. Why do tech companies do that?

This week's solar eclipse over Spain:

Juan Carlos Muño
Time-lapse pic by Juan Carlos Muñoz, astronomer, science communicator and media officer at ESO. Photographed from Peñafiel in the north of Spain. https://fosstodon.org/@astro_jcm@mastodon.online/117094881754294266

-Anne

Reading books that make me feel uncomfortable for all the right reasons

I've been grappling with the criticism in some circles that being "woke" is undesirable. Why would any educated person think it's a bad idea to be aware of what others go through on a daily basis? Why is it "woke" to read about what happened to others [POC, women, children, Indigenous people ... fill in the blank] in history books or for those history textbooks to correct misinformation as new information comes to light? I've come to a recent observation that the critique comes from people who don't want to put in the work to learn about unpleasant and uncomfortable truths. 

Don and I recently finished the Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction book by Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, which examines the great migration out of southern states when six million Black Americans left their homes for locations in the North and West starting in 1915 and continuing until 1970. The book is organized around the lives of three of these migrants: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, who fled Mississippi for Chicago in 1937; George Starling, who had to leave Florida for Harlem in 1945 in fear for his life; and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of being able to use all of his medical skills in California. 

The book, published in 2010, clearly took Wilkerson years to compile. She conducted a series of extensive interviews with the three protagonists over many years so she was able to give readers a very complete profile of their lives before, during, and after they migrated. By focusing on three individual stories Wilkerson was able to show aspects of life in the South which led to the need/desire to move and the migration routes which generally followed train lines. After conducting over 1000 interviews and doing a deep dive into a broad swath of research on the migration, Wilkerson was able to dispel the many misconceptions that transplanted Blacks were more uncouth, ignorant, and impoverished than the Black people who were already in the northern cities. Extensive scholarship shows them to be more like immigrants from Europe, who arrived in the new land ready to work hard, improve their economic conditions, and ready to assimilate into their new land.

The Warmth of Other Suns wasn't an easy book to read, both Don and I agreed. The stories of terrible inequality and unfair treatment of Blacks, where ever they lived, was depressing and maddening. Typically we can listen to hours of audiobooks on long car trips without pausing. Not so with this book. The stories kept hitting us like gut punches and we would have to take breaks from listening as we digested the new information. Fortunately we were together so we could stop and talk to work through our feelings. It was hard work but we were learning and waking up. It took us over a month of listening, an hour here, an hour there for a total of 22+ hours. When we finished we both were very glad we read the book, but relieved we were done. I rated the book with 4 stars for the above reasons. Don rated the book with 4 stars for its content and 3 stars for entertainment value. Like I said, it was hard work reading this book and most people want to enjoy what they read. Isn't that fair?

A week after we finished The Warmth of Other Suns I found myself reading Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe, as part of the Goodreads Summer Challenge. It is set in the South Side of Chicago in the late 1990s during the process of dismantling the housing projects built to accommodate many of the migrant Blacks who made their way to the city in the 1930s and 40s. By the 90s people living in these projects found themselves crammed together in inhospitable conditions, beset by the crack-cocaine epidemic, and overrun by rival gangs. The story is told by a 12-year-old girl who loses all her friends, and nearly loses her brother, in this one fateful summer. It is a heartbreaking story, though the girl makes it out of the projects with help from a special teacher and her church. But like the previous book, I found reading Last Summer on State Street was hard work. It gave me an updated look at other effects of the Great Migration, too. 

I am never upset when I learn something new from a book, even if I find it difficult to read. My discomfort is, after all, helping me to become more "woke" and hopefully a better antiracist. My rating of this book was 4 stars.

Challenges: 20 books of Summer (#26 & #27); Big Book Summer (640 pages); Audiobooks with Don; and Goodreads Summer Challenge (11/11).

-Anne