Short Reviews: THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE; THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks

Classic, Audiobook, 3 hr. 59 min., 1961.

It is the 1930s in Edinburgh. Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher at an all-girls school. From among her students she selects six ten-year-old girls for her special mentorship. These girls become known as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie makes sure that these girls receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out". In addition gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. As the girls age they remain loyal to Miss Brodie even when the head mistress seeks them out to find out what is going on. Eventually one of the girls does snitch on Miss Brodie, telling the head mistress about how she admires fascism. Miss Brodie loses her job and never knows which girl turned on her.

It was my idea that we read a classic for our book club. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie seemed like a good choice because it was named as on the top 100 novels by Time Magazine and was identified as the 76th best novel of the 20th Century by Modern Library. But probably more importantly, the novel is short, only 160 pages. We were busy selecting really long books for other months, so a short one sounded really good. The group is made up of mostly retired high school teachers. I'm guessing that they, like me, will find Miss Jean Brodie's teaching and manipulation techniques as highly offensive. It is bad enough that she played favorites with some students but the way she indoctrinated her charges was unconscionable. 

I wondered, even as I was reading the book, why this book is so highly regarded. I looked around online and this was the reply: "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is worth reading because it subverts the 'inspirational teacher' trope. Muriel Spark’s 1961 novella is a brilliant, unsettling study of manipulation, power dynamics, and the dangers of unexamined ideological devotion" (Stargazer Online). Well, now I see that this book could be instructive for devoted followers of certain politicians today and their "unexamined ideological devotion." Ahem. 

My rating: 3 stars.

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The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Nonfiction. audiobook, 11 hrs 6 min., 2022.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras' Columbian grandfather was a curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets": the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. When Mami was a little girl she came into her power after she had a head injury which caused her to have amnesia for 8 months. This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia for about eight weeks. She now understood what it was like to live in a third dimension.

In The Man Who Could Move Clouds Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse. Interweaving her family stories with the history of her Columbian homeland, the author helps the reader to understand that there are different types of truth. Just because we don't understand something doesn't keep it from being true.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds was another book club selection, this one for my other book group. We met to discuss the book this week and had a fairly awkward discussion about all the incredulous situations we learned about in this book. I reported how I kept thinking that the book was a fictional novel written in the Latin American magical realism style, then I would have to remind myself it was nonfiction. All the ghosts, magic, curses just seemed too incredible to be true to my Western way of thinking. Those of us who made it to the end of the book found the last two chapters to be especially helpful to our thinking about other cultures which have different beliefs and practices than our own. Rojas Contreras said: "You call it magical realism to us it is just realism."

My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne

Review: WHISTLER by Ann Patchett (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Whistler by Ann Patchett

Book Beginning/ First Line Friday quote:

Friday56 quote:

'No one would say such a thing today, but there was a time when it did not feel like lunacy to want what the majority of the human population had. Your mother’s deal was that I had to give up Skip [Eddie’s partner] and give up being gay. I know it sounds terrible now, but she didn’t know any better. I’m the one who should have known better.'

Summary: Daphne, a 53-year-old English teacher, has a chance meeting at the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York with Eddie Triplett, her stepfather for one year when she was nine-years-old. When Daphne finally recognizes her "stalker" she burst into years. Here is the stepdad of her childhood whom she loved so much, just 40 years later. Over the ensuing months Eddie and Daphne renew their relationship and family bond, with Eddie even introducing Daphne as his daughter at party of his friends. The two clearly share something very special. As they share memories of their past they can't help but recall that Daphne saved Eddie's life after a horrifying car accident on a snowy winter night. It was just a week after that accident that Daphne's mother abruptly demanded a divorce and two hadn't seen each other since that time. 

Review: By looking at the cover with a horse on it one would think that the story is perhaps a Western or at least set in West. In fact, the story of the horse, Whistler, doesn't even enter this story until the middle of the book. While Eddie and Daphne are trapped in the car on the snowy hillside after the accident Eddie, a book editor, tells Daphne the story of a woman who wrote an account of a time in her life when she was thrown off her horse and was so badly hurt that she was sure she was going to die but she whistled and the horse came back and stayed with her until she was rescued. The woman was convinced it was love which saved her. And so it is with Eddie and Daphne who return to each other after all those years and find that love [father-daughter love] that was missing.

Don and I listened to the audiobook of Whistler together on the last leg of our 13-day car trip recently. In fact, we had to finish it at home after our return as we still had four hours of listening left to go. As we turned off the audio-player as the story ended I was wiping the sad/happy tears off my face as Don stood up and remarked, "Well, that book sort of fizzled out." What? Had we listened to the same book? Don thought the story was sweet but sort of plotless. I thought it was nearly perfect as we learned the stories of two people who were clearly thrilled to have found each other again. "That's what I mean," Don grumbled. "Where was a the action?" As I stumbled around looking for words to express my thoughts on the book it hit me that indeed the book had no big trauma, or rising and then falling action. The book wasn't crammed full of awful people doing awful things. It was a gentle story about family love, relationships, and the importance of friendships.

Today before I embarked on writing this review, I read a interview in Elle Magazine with Ann Patchett which finally gave me the words I needed when I tried to explain the book to Don. 

Like the story Eddie tells Daphne in their overturned car, Whistler itself is a intentionally warm-hearted tale, made all the more remarkable for the courage of these qualities. Over the years, numerous readers and interviewers have asked Patchett why she writes books that the author herself has referred to as “good, smart literary fiction that will not crush people’s souls.” In an era of buzzy sad-girl lit and weird-girl lit and ragebait lit, the PEN/Faulkner Award winner writes literary masterworks about “people who are not perfect, trying their best and showing up for each other,” she says. They’re not simple books—please, don’t call them simple—but they are precise in their purpose.

Patchett continued-

“And it is how I live my life. I can watch the news; I can read the paper; I can know that terrible things are happening everywhere. But in my life, everybody’s so nice. In the bookstore, in my house, in my neighborhood, in the grocery store, people are kind to one another. I know that part of it is that these are my eyes, and this is the way I see the world, and the more you see it, the more it reflects back. It becomes self-selecting. I’m not seeing horror in my everyday life. I’m reading it. I know it’s there. But it feels very realistic to write stories about people being kind.” (Elle Magazine)

That's it. That is precisely what I was saying [obviously badly] to Don. The reason I like Patchett books, and this one is no exception, is because the characters are not perfect, they are just trying their best and they show up for one another. And the books are full of kindness and thoughtfulness. Heaven knows we need more of that in our lives these days.

I'm guessing Don will rate the book with 4 stars, but he is not here right now to ask, and you can tell from this review I rated the book with 5 stars.

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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! 

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-Anne

A LONG OBEDIENCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION (+PDF of study session questions)

My Women's Bible Study group at church recently decided to study the Psalms of Ascent with the aid of Eugene Peterson's wonderful book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

Eugene Peterson wrote this book, published in 1980, to counter society's obsession with the "quick fix" and instant gratification. He focused the book on the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120-134) which are sometimes called the Pilgrim Psalms. These psalms were sung by pilgrims as they traveled from their hometowns to Jerusalem several times a year to attend the annual festivals. Since Jerusalem is situated on a hill, these pilgrims sang the song as they ascended the hill moving toward the holy city. Thinking of Christians today as pilgrims, Peterson, "with prophetic and pastoral wisdom, shows how the psalms teach us to grow in worship, service, joy, work, humility, community, and blessing" (Publisher).

After publishing A Long Obedience in the Same Direction Peterson embarked on a larger project -- to translate all the Psalms into idiomatic North American language. Peterson said in his 20th anniversary preface to this book, "I knew that following Jesus could never develop into a 'long obedience' without a deepening life of prayer and that the Psalms had always been the primary means by which Christians learned to pray everything they lived, and live everything they prayed over the long haul" (6). That project, which morphed beyond the psalms to the whole Bible, became known as "The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language" ("The Message", so short) translation of the Bible. It is a translation I use quite often or alongside other, more traditional translations when I am studying scripture.

Peterson died in 2018 but his son, Leif, wrote a commemorative preface including part of his eulogy for his father in this edition, published in 2021. In the eulogy Leif included a poem he wrote for his Dad which is titled "The Message." It concludes with these lines:

Because for fifty years you've 

been telling me the secret. For fifty

years you've stealed into my room

at night and whispered in softly to my

sleeping head. It is the same message

over and over and you don't vary in one bit.

God loves you.

He's on your side.

He's coming for you.

He's relentless.

This message along made me want to read the book. I wanted to learn more about this relentless God! 

When I read A Long Obedience in the Same Direction last summer I was convinced that it would make a terrific study for our women's group at church. When we finished another study in late January I pitched the idea of using this study and focusing on the Psalms of Ascent at the Bible portion of it. The only problem, there were no discussion questions. Or more correctly, there are discussion questions which were written before Peterson had even published his translation of the Bible and don't cover all fifteen of the psalms. No problem, I said, I'll write the questions for our discussion. So that is what I did. I had no idea how detailed a project that would become but ultimately it was a rewarding project for me and the feedback I got from the group was positive. 

The book is divided into sixteen chapters all on a theme related to each psalm. The theme for Psalm 120 is Discipleship, Psalm 121 is Repentance and so forth. Each week one woman would take the leadership role and guide the discussion and work through the questions. At the end of hour-long session that same person would close the session in a prayer loosely based on the week's theme or the psalm.

I enjoyed and got a lot out of reading the book for myself but studying the book alongside other women really enhanced my understanding and deepened my experience with the material. 

If you would like to study A Long Obedience in the Same Direction with your Bible study group and don't want to write your own questions, you can help yourself to mine. I've saved them as a Pdf and have been assured you don't have to have an account with Adobe Acrobat to open the document so you can print them out. Just click the link below. If, by chance, that link doesn't work for you, you can email me (click email link of the side bar) and request a WORD version of the questions. Be sure to use the title of the book in the SUBJECT line so I don't delete the request thinking it is spam.

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction PDF

Sample page of discussion questions:

(Here's the file "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.pdf" for your review.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:e93f62ed-ecc7-440a-b414-392ff03d6c93)

-Anne

Very short reviews: I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED; AUTOMATIC NOODLE; WILD RESCUES; and more

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Audiobook, 6 hr. 26 min., 2022.

Jennette McCurdy, a Nickelodeon star of iCarly, started auditioning for acting roles when she was six years old. She did it because she wanted to please her mother, a wanna-be actress. She also went along with her mother's schemes to keep her thin by limiting her intake of food and weighing herself up to five times a day. By the time she was cast in iCarly at age 16, Jennette was struggling with an eating disorder, followed not many years later, with an addiction to alcohol. Lonely and self-conscious she also seemed incapable of having healthy friendships and relationships. All of this was caused, at least in part, to her over-intrusive, smothering, abusive mother. When her mother died of breast cancer, Jennette was eventually able to get to therapy and started addressing all of her issues.  Along the way she decided to quit acting.

My daughter listened to the audiobook, she said, in one big gulp, finishing the book in one or two days. She urged me to read it and I admit I was intrigued based on the title alone. As I started listening to the audiobook I realized something, however -- I had never heard of Jennette McCurdy, having never watched a moment of iCarly or its spin-off. I wanted to call CPS on the mother and wanted to slap the father for never standing up to that monster either. I'm definitely not in the demographic for this memoir and won't be recommending it to any of my friends. I'll let the younger generations read it without comments from me.

My rating: 4 stars.

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Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Audiobook-with-Don, 4 hr. 13 min., 2025.

When San Francisco starts rebuilding from the chaos of war and climate-related emergencies, a group of food services bots take over a ghost kitchen, rebranding the restaurant as a local hand-pulled noodle spot. The bots proudly start developing a good following until someone or something start review-bombing their feedback page. It the bots don't figure out what is going on quickly their new business will be destroyed before it has a chance to thrive.

Don and I went on a 13-day car trip. We spent a lot of time in the car listening to audiobooks. Automatic Noodle was what we considered to be a palette cleaner after we had finished two rather serious books in a row earlier. We both felt like the book was a little like ear-candy...not very high on plot, relatable characters or drama, maybe a little too high on technology and directed toward a younger set. But we liked it and thought it was sweet. The audiobook did provide the bridge we needed before be tackled another serious book.

Our ratings: Don - stars, me - 3.25 stars.

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Wild Rescues: A Paramedic's Extreme Adventures in Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton by Kevin Grange

Audiobook-with-Don, 8 hours 6 min., 2021.

The subtitle pretty much sums up the book perfectly. Kevin Grange leaves his job as a paramedic in the LA  area to become a paramedic working for the National Parks, becoming a park ranger responding to medical and traumatic emergencies often in isolated and very rugged environments.

When Don and I were on a tour of Grand Teton National Park another couple kept raving about this book, having recently listened to it as they drove through Nebraska. By the time we were finished with the tour everyone, including us, were checking their phones to see if their library system had an e-source of the book. Ours did and Don and I started listening to it as we drove around Yellowstone. Kevin Grange is a paramedic not a writer but we enjoyed the situations he reported very much since many of them happened in spots we were visiting in real time. Clearly there is no limit to the stupid things people do or say in national parks.

The writing impacted our ratings. Don gave the book 3.5 stars and I was little more generous with 3.75 stars.

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Moby Dick by Will Eisner, based on the novel by Herman Melville

Graphic novel, 32 pages, 2003.

Ha-ha. I read this whole 32-page version of Moby Dick while my husband took a shower. (In other words, it took 10 minutes.) After I was finished I thought to myself, "Well, that pretty much sums up the 800+ pages I just finished reading that took me a month to complete." The illustrations were very good but all I got was the story's outline.

It does leave out all the spiritual and psychological aspects of the original, which is really the good part. What does one expect in 32 pages?

My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne

WHY READ MOBY-DICK?

Last month I completed my One Big Book goal of 2026 to read Moby-Dick. I got more pride from finishing the book than I enjoyed reading it. (Read my review here.) Yet, I knew, even as I was reading it, that I was obviously missing something. Why would a book remain on the best-books-of-all-time lists for over 175 years if it didn't have something to say to us today? I turned to Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick? to see if I could find some answers. As I read this short book, published in 2010 I highlighted points he made in the book which helped me think about the classic book differently.

Below are those highlighted points. If Philbrick quoted Melville I used quotation marks and red font color to highlight them.

Ch. 1 The Gospels in this Century

Contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America. All the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1776 and a civil war in 1861 and continue to drive this country's ever contentious march into the future. whenever a new crisis grips this country, Moby-Dick becomes newly important. (5)

A whaling story is "nothing less than the genetic code of America"? Moby-Dick speaks to us anew with each new crisis? Well, this chapter sure sets the reader up to learn how Moby-Dick is special.

Ch. 2 Landlessness
“For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." This startling insight was revolutionary in 1851 and is still wickedly fresh to us today, more than 150 years later, as globalization makes encounters with foreign cultures an almost daily occurrence. (13)

You've got to hand it to Melville. He didn't write a story for the conservative puritan ethic so common with the people he lived among in New England. He was very open to embracing men from all over the world, even "cannibals" and possible homosexuals. It seems very 21st century to me, not 19th century.

Ch. 6  The Pequod

The compartmentalization of spiritual and worldly concerns in a temptation in every era. In Melville's day, it was most apparent with the issue of slavery, and Bildad, the Bible-reading Quacker whaleman, illustrated the truth of Frederick Douglass's observation that the most brutal slaveholders were always the most devout. (29)

We are facing the same thing today with the rise of Christian Nationalism. Everytime I hear people who identify with this branch of religion I think they are the most unloving people I have ever heard. They want people to think they are devout yet almost all of their actions are the opposite of what Jesus taught us.

Ch 8 The Anatomy of a Demagogue

In Chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck", Melville shows us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man. (37)

Oh, oh. Melville explains through the crew's adoration of Ahab why we follow demented men like Hitler and Trump? Maybe the book really does speak to us today.

Ch 10 The View from the Masthead

Ishmael of the Bible was Abraham's bastard son, who along with his servant mother, Hagar, was banished from his father's household and forced to wander the desert. Ishmael of Moby-Dick has suffered some grievous unnamed loss and now wanders the waters of the world. (51)

Even though I am a Bible reader, I missed this connection of names. One never does learn what the Ishmael in the novel is running from, though. I'd guess I missed a lot of symbolism in the novel. It is such a long book and I didn't spend a lot of time pondering it. Now I wish I'd been more observant.

Ch 10, cont. Ishmael may have his intellectual pretensions, but they evaporate in the face of Ahab's overwhelming charisma. "My oath had been welded with [the rest of the crew's]," Ishmael admits. "A wild, mystical, sympathetic feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine." (52)

As Starbuck discovers, simply being a good guy with a positive worldview is not enough to stop a force of nature like Ahab, who feeds on the fears and hatreds in us all. "My soul is more than matched," Starbuck laments, "she's overmanned; and by a madman!" (54) 

"Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine," There it is again. Why do ordinary people buy into Trump's megalomaniac need for revenge?  Starbuck, the First Mate on the Pequod, gives us the answer: "My soul is more than matched, and overmanned; and by a madman!"

Ch. 13 A Mighty, Messy Book

Melville's example demonstrated the wisdom of waiting to read the classics. Come to a great book on your own after having accumulated essential life experience can make all the difference. (61)

I no longer have a copy of Philbrick's book in front of me, so I don't remember how Melville's example demonstrates why a person should wait to read the classics but I'm doing it. I'm an old person reading Moby-Dick for the first time. Not only this classic, but almost all classics I've read as an adult. I do appreciate them more now than I think I would have as a teenager.

Ch. 14 Unflinching Reality

Reading Moby-Dick, we are in the presence of a writer who spent several impressionable years on a whaleship, internalized everything he saw, and seven or so years later, after internalizing Shakespeare, Hawthorne, the Bible, and much more, found the voice and the method that enabled him to broadcast his youthful experiences into the future. And this, ultimately, is where the great, unmatched potency of Moby-Dick, the novel, resides. It comes from an author who not only was there but possessed the capacious and impressionable soul required to appreciate the wonder of what he was seeing. (70)

I thought the same thing as I read the book. Clearly Melville did a ton of research, some of it actually aboard a whaling ship, for this novel. He also immersed himself in Shakespeare and the Bible, and read everything he could find on whales. It really is impressive.

Ch 16 Sharks

The job of government, of civilization, is to keep the shark at bay. All of us are, to a certain degree, capable of wrongdoing. Without some form of government, evil will prevail. Here lies the source of the Founding Fathers' ultimately unforgivable omission. They refused to contain the great ravenging shark of slavery, and more than two generations later their grandchildren and great-grandchildren were about to suffer the consequences. (78)

The example of slavery in comparison to sharks is very striking. Melville never spoke for or against slavery but he didn't call the young Black boy on the Pequod a slave, which is noteworthy.

Ch. 21 So Remorseless a Havoc

In chapter 105, Melville tackles a prescient question given today's extinction-prone Earth: "whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must ..., like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff." In the paragraphs that follow, Ishmael compares the whale to the buffalo in the American West and acknowledges that given what has happened to those "humped herds", it might seem inevitable that "the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction." (93)

Golly, Moby-Dick really does address crises of today: extinction or near extinction of particular animals.

Ch. 23 Pulling Dictatorship Out of a Hat

As the final showdown approaches, we have become so scorched and crushed and otherwise slapped by Ahab in his magnificent emergence as an evil superhero that it becomes increasingly difficult to care. But that is precisely the point. (100)

I've felt that way. Trump does or says some horrible thing every day. It is hard to pay attention and to care anymore.

Ch. 24 Essex Redux

This is where Melville is perhaps the most profound in his portrait of Ahab as the demagogue and dictator. In the end, even the fiercest of tyrants is done in, not by his own sad, used-up self, but by his enablers, the so-called professionals, who keep whistling in his ear. (106)

Ahab listened to his spiritual advisor/fortune-teller, Fedallah. Trump listens to his minions (there are so many!) like Steve Bannon, Steven Miller, and Fox News.

Ch. 26 Ahab's Last Stand

This is the fundamental reason we continue to read this or any other literary classic. It's not the dazzling technique of the author; it's his or her ability to deliver reality on the page. (111)

Ch. 28 Neither Believer nor Infidel

Once free of its own historical moment, Moby-Dick became the seemingly timeless source of meaning that it is today. (125)

Ch. 28 cont. This redemption mixture of skepticism and hope, the genial stoicism in the face of a short ridiculous, and irrational life, is why I read Moby-Dick. (128) 

It's hard to believe but Philbrick has turned me into a Moby-Dick fan because he has shown me how much of the story I can relate to my reality today.

I just wish I'd read Why Read Moby-Dick? before I actually read Moby-Dick. I think it would have helped me find where I fit into the story better.

-Anne

Sunday Salon: Home from our trip -- by the numbers

Viewing the Yellowstone River and Lower Falls from Artist's Point overlook. The river runs through a 24-mile gorge called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

We just got home from a big trip. Here is a summary of what we did, by the numbers.

Thirteen days, 33+ hours of driving time, and over 2000 miles: We were on the road for thirteen days traveling south to my sister's home in Oregon to pick up furniture from my mom's home to deliver to my other sister in Idaho. From there we continued heading east to investigate --

The Grand Tetons overlooking Jackson Lake. Can you believe I took this photo? So lovely!

Two National Parks: Yellowstone and Grand Teton, both in Wyoming. Don had never visited Yellowstone and I was eight years old (or younger) when my family camped there. In reverse, I'd never been to Grand Teton and Don had only visited briefly for a business conference nearly two decades ago. What a joy to experience these parks together finally! While driving around Yellowstone, which is massive, we must have made --

One of many signs we passed like this. We only hopped out of the car for this shot.

Five or six crossings of the Continental Divide associated with the Rocky Mountains determining which way waters will flow as it leaves the source -- toward the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic (via the Missouri/Mississippi).  I think of the divide as a straight line running north and south but that is not the case. It is a squiggly line as it runs through Yellowstone wandering from northwest to southeast so every time we passed certain points on the road, we would cross back and forth over the divide several times. We'd see one sign announcing the continental divide and elevation, then a few miles later would be another sign marking the divide with a different elevation. We found this very humorous.

Our tour on the yellow bus was small, just one other couple. Don and I are in the front grouping.

Two bus tours. We took a bus tour in each park and learned so much not only about the flora and fauna but also about the history of each park. Yellowstone was our nation's first national park, so it holds a real special place in our history. To make our Yellowstone tour extra special, we rode in an historic yellow bus, part of the original fleet from the 1930s (restored and retrofitted twenty years ago). We took a similar tour in Glacier National Park last year with our family in a red bus from the same era.

I now realize I didn't take any photos of mudpots. Too ugly?

Four hydrothermal systems. While on the tour we learned about and witnessed all four of the hydrothermal systems at Yellowstone: geysers, mudpots, hot springs, and steam vents. The park is stuffed full of them, over 10,000, and each one is so fascinating.

The bears are so cute it is tempting to think of them as cuddly but signs everywhere remind tourists how dangerous the bears are. We carried bear spray with us on hikes.

Five bears. While driving around Yellowstone everyone is on the lookout for animal sightings. The bison were everywhere, sometimes in large herds (called "nurseries" with all the calves, known as red dogs, recently born this time of year). Elk are often spotted, too. But the prize is seeing the bears. We spotted five -- four black bears (two of them were black, two were brown-- same species just different colors), and one grizzly.

One bison photo selected from many. This guy clambered onto the road right in front of us and stayed put until we were able to pass.

This is the lovely view of Jackson Lake we enjoyed during our last picnic in Grand Teton. While eating we watched three White Pelicans fly by. They are such huge birds we thought they were swans. As we debated which type of birds they were, one of the pelicans broke away from the group and flew very near to us, landing on the water long enough to catch a fish in its huge pouch and gobble it down.

Seven identical lunches. When we travel we always cheap out on breakfasts and lunches so we can splurge on dinners. For seven picnic lunches we ate peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, carrots and celery, grapes or apple slices, mustard-spiced pretzels, and EL Fudge cookies. We would pack everything we would need for our picnic before we'd head out in the morning, storing them in a cooler in the car then we'd find a place to eat in shade come lunchtime.

Three sunset photo opportunities, one successful. We were told where to stand to view the sunset over the Grand Tetons when we checked into the lodge on our first day in the park. Jackson Lake Lodge is perfectly located to view sunsets over the beautiful mountains. Unfortunately our two opportunities in that park were busts -- no colorful skies as the sun went down. Our last night of the trip, as we were heading home, we stayed in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho and we took a sunset dinner cruise on the lake. The weather had been cloudy all afternoon. We didn't hold out any hope for a beautiful sky. But we were rewarded with a beautiful colorful display.

Four and a half audiobooks. Don and I enjoy books as we drive on long trips. Here are the ones we listened to this trip:

• Angel Down by Daniel Krause -- Our first audiobook was the winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Set during WWI, four men discover a fallen angel who has the power to save them from the war if they can tamp down their selfish urges. It was an incredible listening experience for both of us. Powerful. We both rated it 5 stars.
• This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through US History by Beverly Gage -- Gage takes readers on the ultimate road trip to visit thirteen key places in American history that explain our past and help envision our future. Both of us hope this book gets wide readership. Her insights are were just that -- insightful. We both rated the book with 5 stars. It was Don's favorite book of the trip.
• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz -- in the near-future a bunch of abandoned robots open their own restaurant. Both of us considered this novella as a palette cleanser after the first two serious books. We both rated it 3 stars.
• Wild Rescues: A Paramedic's Extreme Adventures in Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton by Kevin Grange -- Paramedics in the National Parks often have to respond to medical and traumatic emergencies in very isolated settings. This book, recommended by another couple on our bus tour of in Grand Teton, was a perfect book to listen to while we were in the parks where many of the stories were set. The writing, however, was bit repetitive and very much centered on Grange himself. Don rated it 3.5, I gave it a 3.75 stars. 
• Whistler by Ann Patchett -- Daphne Fuller, now in her 50s, runs into Eddie Triplett, a man who was her stepfather for one year when she was nine. This chance encounter rekindles a relationship they both treasured. Don and I started listening to this fifth audiobook on the last leg of our trip home and we only managed to complete 60% of it. I am a huge Patchett fan and this one is shaping up to be my favorite of the trip even though it will have to be finished in our living room.

Four other books. Alone I managed to complete two books I'd started before the trip, made progress on another book, and started a fourth. We had quite a bit of time to read when we were staying in Yellowstone. Internet connectivity was terrible throughout the park and in our hotel. We played cards each evening then would tuck into bed and pull out our books. Don was working away on a Cormac McCarthy novel and I worked on:

• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert -- This is my CC Spin book for the month. I tried to read just 12 pages a day and I think I kept to that schedule pretty closely. 59% complete.
• Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick -- I recently finished Moby-Dick and wondered why that book is still near the top of everyone's list of books one read in their lifetime. I hoped this book would answer that question. It did and more. 4 stars.
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks -- A third classic book. How odd. This one is a short one and a book club selection for later this month. I need to spend some time thinking about this one to help me appreciate it. 3 stars.
• The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras -- A memoir that reads like magical realism. This is another book club selection. 33% complete.

A functioning chapel for any traveler who wants to drop by and pray or attend services.

The mountains perfectly framed in the center window looking out.

A barn built by a family from before the time the Grand Tetons were designated as a National Park, circa 1920. Can you imagine living in such a setting?

Three more photos. All favorites taken during our bus tour through Grand Tetons.

Thanks for sticking with me and reading about our long but wonderful trip.

-Anne

Review: HEARTWOOD

Title: Heartwood by Amity Gaige

Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:

Dear Mother,

You used to call me sparrow.

Friday56 quote, from page 46, last page of preview:

I did not scream. I tried to not make a sound.

Summary:

Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when a hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental. (Publisher)

Review: In my heart I have always wanted to take on a hike on the Appalachian or the Pacific Crest trail but after reading Heartwood I am dispelled of any such notions. The Appalachian trail is over 2,000 miles long, traversing fourteen states, starting in Georgia and ending in Maine (or reverse, if you start at the top.) I'm sure parts of the hike are relatively flat and easy, but other parts are steep and treacherous. For example, the nicknames for Pennsylvania by the hikers is "Rocksyvania" or "Painsylvania". One doesn't need any more information to understand what it is like hiking there. Ugh.

When Valerie's hiking partner has to leave the trail to attend to family matters, she decides to go on alone. She is only 200 miles from the end of the trail and the achievement of her goal. What could go wrong? But when she doesn't show up at the rendez-vous spot to get fresh supplies from her husband it soon becomes apparent that something has gone wrong and the Maine State Game wardens are called to conduct a search. When days pass and Valerie is still not found everyone worries that she may not be found alive.

So begins a rescue mission of huge proportions. Tip lines are set up to enlist the help of other hikers. But what does an 76-year-old retirement home dweller, Lena, from Connecticut have do with this mystery? As it turns out Lena, Valerie, and Beverly have a lot more in common than one would think at first glance.

A solid mystery/thriller.

My rating: 4 stars.

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-Anne

TTT: Hand Lettering on Covers

Top Ten Tuesday: 

Books with Hand Lettering on the Covers

*I created this list last week and then forgot to link up on the Top Ten Tuesday Linky. I am not one to create wish lists, so here I am with last week's post instead.

This task was way easier than I anticipated. I simply asked the internet to show me covers with hand lettering. Goodreads already had a list. All I had to do was choose the first ten on that list which I've already read. Here you are ---

Room / Donoghue

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse / Mackesy

Burial Rites / Kent

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society / Shaffer and Barrows

One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot / Cronin

The Goldfinch / Tartt

The Fault In Our Stars / Green

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe / Sáenz

Code Name Verity / Wein

The 57 Bus / Slater

I love this one so much I thought I'd give you a bigger version to admire.

-Anne

Review: TODAY WE GO HOME (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Today We Go Home by Kelli Estes

Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:

April 16, 1861: Wilson Family Farm, Stampers Creek, Indiana

The sounds of gunshots echoes across the field, each one making Emily clench her teeth tighter together until her jaw ached.

Friday56 quote:

Present Day: Woodinville, Washington

The moment Larkin climbed out of her car at Gram's house she was met with a wall of sensation. (p.47)

Summary: Larkin is home from her second tour with the Army in Afghanistan with a bad case of PTSD.  The firefight which killed her best friend, Sarah, was the cause of return home and now she is left to pick up the pieces and deal with the devil in her head alone as she convalesces at her Gram's home in Washington State. One day she goes through Sarah's things in left behind in a storage unit, Larkin finds an old journal which belonged to a woman named Emily. In the journal Emily recounts her story of disguising herself as a man so she could fight alongside her brother in the Civil War.

Review: Today We Go Home was a our book club selection this month. During our discussion, which focused a lot on females in the military, we all agreed that the topics -- women in combat roles; PTSD in returning female combatants; women disguising themselves as males to serve in the military -- were ones we hadn't read much, if anything, about. The topics led to a lively and interesting discussion. (See discussion questions here.) The whole evening helped me refocus my feelings about the book, for which I was grateful.

Prior to the meeting I was afraid I'd be alone in saying I didn't particularly like the book. I liked the idea of the book but not the execution of it. It seemed over-written and too long. The characters had deep flaws and it took forever for them to get to the point where they could take a look at what was holding them back. Larkin was a tough, gritty, unlikeable character especially. In the notes at the end of the book, the author said during her research she learned about how many women likely disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War and for what reasons. She also highlighted what would happen to these women when they were found out. Then she made her character Emily run through or past all those reasons/situations. Ugh. Too much. 

That said, by the end I was satisfied. Both Larkin and Emily made some growth and were moving in the right direction. We had a fabulous club discussion and had delicious blueberry/peach cobbler for dessert afterwards. It wasn't a total bust!

My rating: 2.75 stars.

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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!

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-Anne