Novella Review: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser won the 2025 Stella Prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australia, and a finalist on the Victorian Premier's Prize for fiction. Not being Australian I had to look up all these awards to see if I could figure out an American or UK equivalent for these prizes. The Stella Prize goes to Australian women (or non-binary writers) for an original, engaging book in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. The equivalent would be The Women's Prize (UK) or the Carol Shields Prize (Canada or US). I'm not sure there is an equivalent for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. It goes to excellent writers from or permanently living in Australia. Victoria is one of six states in Australia but the award doesn't seem to go to only residents of that state. And the Prime Minister's Literary Award sounds like it is similar to the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award in the US. That said, Theory and Practice cleaned up in the prize category this year in Australia. And for good reason. It is a brilliantly literary book.

So literary, in fact, I'm afraid my daughter would hate it. She told me once she didn't usually like the books I pick to read because they are so literary (said with disdain.) I asked her what she meant and she said these books seem like to try too hard to write cleverly, using fancy techniques. Hmm. Not sure about the fancy techniques in this book unless one uses the title as a big gigantic hint as to the main theme of the book: theory and practice.

The narrator of the book is a first-generation immigrant from Sri Lanka. She is living in Melbourne and is attending Grad School in English Lit. Her thesis relates to Virginia Woolf, specifically analyzing three of the author's works on feminism and the "generated self." The narrator (Does she have a name? I can't remember!) says that Woolf single-handedly saved her during her teen years. But theory is one thing especially when it comes up against real-life experiences. Calling yourself a feminist is one thing but attending a school where the professors in the department are predominantly male is a whole other thing. As the narrator reads more about Woolf she realizes if she, a Sri Lankan female with golden-brown skin and from a humble background, was to meet the author today, Woolf would dismiss her on either a racial or a classist basis, or both. Theory is one thing. But the practice of that theory is whole other thing.

I didn't especially like this novella. The narrator spent a lot of time focused on her relationship/not relationship with a man named Kit and she got all "stalker-ish" in her behavior...very unfeminist behavior, by the way. But since I finished the book a week ago I keep thinking about how brilliant the writer was sticking to her theme of theory vs practice. In fact, I keep coming up with examples from my own life. Simple stuff like believing that plastics are wrecking our environment yet I keep buying things in plastic containers. It is fine to believe a thing but so hard to practice that theory in reality.

I rated the book 3.5 stars but let's just say, with a round up, it is a 4 stars title.

Theory and Practice is 192 pages long.

 

-Anne

Review: MY FRIENDS (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated from Swedish by Neil Smith

Book Beginnings excerpt:

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.

Friday56 excerpt, from page 22, the last page of preview:

Then he asked one of the other fourteen-year-olds: "Do you think we'll all still be friends when we're grown up?"

Summary:

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art. (Publisher)

Review: I have an uneasy relationship with Fredrik Backman books. I've read four of them: A Man Named Ove; Anxious People; Beartown; and now My Friends. All of them were slow-starters for me. I had to make myself read them (all four were book club selections) and I would put it off as long as possible. This is unusual reading behavior for me. With My Friends, I got the audiobook from the library after a fairly long wait and I still couldn't make myself listen, so I checked out the print version and made a little progress but I wasn't even a fourth of the way finished before that book needed to be returned. Once again I had to wait for the audiobook. This time, with the clock ticking, I finally finished the book and you know what? I liked it. Surprise, surprise. What was my problem in the first place?

The story is told of the four teenage friends the summer they helped launch the artist's talents, when he painted the beautiful piece of his friends on the pier, a painting now worth millions. Then a jump forward in time of 25 years when the artist and Louisa meet up by chance -- a disillusioned teenager and a dying man. This meeting changes the trajectory of her life. What follows is a road trip (via train) and the unspooling of a story of friendship and love.

Because I was so grumpy about the bad start I had with the book I was determined not to like the finished product -- my fault not the author's. But I confess that days after I finished reading My Friends I was still living inside the lives of the four +one teenager's lives. I wanted the story to go on. I missed the book when I was finished. (I'm rolling my eyes at myself right now.) And I know that is a sign of a good book.

My advice to you if you'd like to give this one a chance, don't TRY to read this book and muck around for two months, just START and KEEP GOING. The story will grow on you if you aren't all in at the beginning.

My rating; 4 stars

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

Nonfiction Review: FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE (+Discussion questions)

In a 2024 survey, 12.6% of respondents named To Kill a Mockingbird as their all-time favorite book from a given list. In 2021 a British survey found that 13% of the respondents named TKAM as the most inspirational novel. In the 2018 PBS "The Great American Read" it was named as America's best-loved novel overall. All of these surveys took place over 50 years after 1960 when Harper Lee penned her famous book and still today people everywhere sing its praises. If I were asked what is my all-time-favorite novel I'd answer To Kill a Mockingbird, too. So why, with all this success, did its author not publish another book for the next 50 years? 

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper by Casey Cep attempts to answer that question but it also shows how Harper Lee did attempt to write another book, a true-crime book, but abandoned her attempt many years into the project.

Back in the 1960s and 70s there was a black preacher in Alabama named Willie Maxwell. He was well liked and often called Reverend Maxwell, even when he didn't have a church. Then in in August 1970s his wife's bloated, dead body was found in a car in a remote area off the highway. She has clearly been beaten to death and all signs pointed to the Reverend as the suspect in her murder. A neighbor reported that around 10 pm Mary Lou had told her that Willie had called and needed a ride home, that his car was broken down. She was the last person to see Mary Lou alive. It was well know that the Reverend had many lady friends but what wasn't known was how many insurance policies were written in Mary Lou's name with Willie being the beneficiary. In those days it was surprisingly easy to take out life insurance policies on anyone and name yourself the beneficiary. It took the state a surprisingly long time to bring charges against Willie and by then the neighbor had changed her story about what Mary Lou said to her the night of her death. What the jury didn't hear was by that time Willie and this neighbor had become friendly and were planning to get married.

A year after their marriage this second wife was also found dead in a car alongside a country road. She had seventeen life insurance policies in her name. "For the Reverend," writes Cep, "becoming a widower was quite a lucrative business." After her death the Reverend took out life insurance policies on his mother, his brothers, his nephew, his aunt, even his just legitimized infant daughter and the bodies started piling up. Everyone knew it was the Reverend but getting the charges to stick was another story. Eventually justice was found for the Reverend but not through the courts. 

Enter Harper Lee and the second half of the book. It's been fourteen years since TKAM was published. Everyone is bugging Lee to write another book. Why not write a true crime story and go about the research the way she did when she was helping Truman Capote do his research for In Cold Blood? 

Eventually Lee spent a year in town interviewing and going over all the evidence she could get her hands one for the Maxwell cases. She worked with the lawyer who had been Maxwell's attorney. She uncovered every stone there was to uncover then she went back to New York to write up her book she was calling The Reverend. Unfortunately, after years of trying she gave up the project admitting she just didn't know how to organize all the information. During the intervening years between TKAM and this project the editor, Tay Hohoff, who worked with Lee at J.B. Lippincott, and Co. had either died or was retired. She floundered without the guidance of such a strong and capable editor behind her. Oddly, Casey Cep, this books author, was able to put together the whole Maxwell Murders debacle into a very interesting and compelling account in the book's first part and went on to write an excellent biography of Harper Lee in the 2nd. 

Time Magazine's Lucas Wittmann writes, "In elegant prose, [Cep] gives us the fullest story yet of Lee’s post-Mockingbird life ... an account emotionally attuned to the toll that great writing takes, and shows that sometimes one perfect book is all we can ask for, even while we wish for another."

In some ways I'm sorry I read Furious Hours because Harper Lee, the author of my favorite book, didn't come out smelling like roses here. She drank an awful lot. I'm not sure, and it wasn't said in the book, but it sure sounded like she was an alcoholic. Whether she was or wasn't, alcohol use got in the way of her ability to write from Cep's reporting. After the collapse of the Reverend project, she never again attempted to publish anything other than a few letters or essays. In fact, just this year, a collection of stories and essays by Lee was published in The Land of Sweet Forever. And right after Lee's death in 2016 her sister published Go Set a Watchman, the book she wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a book she never wanted to publish (and many people wished hadn't been published since it casts the hero, Atticus Finch, in a very bad light.)

I read Furious Hours book for an upcoming book club, though it has been on my TBR for several years. I gave the book the rating of 4 stars.

Discussion questions for Furious Hours:

1. How did the book change the way you think about Harper Lee and her literary legacy? What were you most surprised to learn?

2. What were the most disturbing aspects of Reverend Maxwell’s murder spree and the connection between him and his victims? 

3. What surprised you the most about the life insurance policies and the way these companies did business?

4. Discuss how race played into the case of the Reverend Willie Maxwell.

5. What were your first impressions of Tom Radney? How did your perception of him change as you read the book?

6. What do you think about the morality of Robert Burns’s decision to murder the Reverend Willie Maxwell? Do you think his acquittal was right? 

7. How did Harper Lee and Truman Capote’s relationship play into the larger story? How do you think Lee’s experience with In Cold Blood shaped her approach to writing her own true crime tale?

8. Why do you think the Maxwell case captivated Lee’s attention enough to dedicate years of her life to writing it? Do you think she finished it? If not, what do you think stopped her? What do you think happened to whatever existed of the manuscript?

9. Furious Hours combines the horror and mystery of a true crime tale with the in-depth history and detail of a biography. How does Cep integrate the two different pieces of the book? Why do you think Cep was able to pull off what Lee couldn't?

10. How does Furious Hours distinguish itself from other nonfiction books you have read? What other narrative nonfiction books have you enjoyed reading and would recommend to others?

(These excellent discussion questions come from the Sarasota Springs Public Library. I tweaked them just a bit but credit to the librarians at that library.)

-Anne

Reviews: TIMECODE OF A FACE and A STUDY IN SCARLET

November means novellas and nonfiction, and, if I'm lucky, two in one: short nonfiction (which is allowed for the Novellas in November Challenge!) The problem with reading short books is they often can be easily consumed in one or two days which means the reviews really start piling up. Right now I am eight reviews behind! Eek! In an attempt to catch up I shall attempt to write and publish two reviews a day. If that isn't sustainable I will at least aim for one. Don't expect lengthy reviews. Like the books themselves likely the reviews will be short.

Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki
Audio: Canongate Books, 2022, 1 hour, 51 minutes.
Originally published by Restless Books, 2015.

Ruth Ozeki, a favorite author and a Zen Buddhist priest, sets herself the task of staring at her own face in the mirror for three hours hoping to discover new aspects of herself and her heritage. According to ancient Zen traditions "your face before your parents were born is your original face." Staring into the mirror for a long time Ruth Ozeki hoped to discover her true self and her true identity beyond what she knew from her parents. As she gazes on her reflection her thoughts ripple out to memories growing up as a mixed race child -- her mother was Japanese, her father Caucasian -- and the ugly racism she endured. Her thoughts also lingered on the process of becoming a Buddhist priest and having to shave her head as she took her final vows. She also reflected on her studies of the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask, at one point even making one herself.

Throughout this essay Ruth Ozeki shows herself to be a well-grounded, interesting and interested person, a writer of great integrity. I am a big fan of her books, A Tale for the Time Being and The Book of Form and Emptiness, and now her essay writing. I am fascinated by her life story and how she incorporates Buddhist practices and beliefs into her writing. I didn't learn a ton from this essay but what I did learn about Zen Buddhism was so interesting. In fact, I found those bits of information much more captivating than what she thought of her earlobes.

I listened to the audiobook read by the author herself. It seemed perfectly paced and I was satisfied with what I got out of the listening experience. But here is one thing I've never encountered before when writing a review -- when I visited the author's own webpage, Ozekiland, she refers to this book by a different title: The Face: A Time Code. I'm not sure when and why it was changed, but if you have trouble finding it at a bookstore or library, you might want to try both title variations in your search.

My rating: 4.25 stars.

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A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Audio: Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, 2017, 4 hours and 30 minutes.
Originally published: Ward, Locke, and Company, 1887.

A Study in Scarlet is Conan Doyle's first introduction of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective who has been dominating our imaginations for over 100 years. As in subsequent short stories about the detective the narration is handled by Dr. Watson who has recently returned to London after being wounded in the Battle of Maiwand. After agreeing to share an apartment with Holmes, Watson learns that his flatmate is a detective consultant, helping the police solve cases they have not been able to handle on their own. In this case, a corpse, an American from Ohio, is found in an uninhabited apartment dead on his back. There is blood but seemingly not from the corpse. After the police bungle the case, Holmes swoops in and figures out who dunnit with, what we have come to expect, just minute details everyone else overlooked. As it turns out the murderer had a vendetta against the dead man and his story jumps back to Utah territory and the Mormon settlement there. I won't share any more details because, it is a mystery and I don't want to reveal any spoilers for you.

I expected the first half of the story -- Dr. Watson as narrator; Holmes as eccentric go-it-alone detective; incompetent police -- but I did not expect, in fact I was bowled over by, the anti-Mormon message of the second half. What? Where did that come from? It always strikes me as funny/odd when a classic book, which has been published for years and years, surprises me with a plot twist I didn't see coming and no one has bothered to mention it to me my whole life. Ha!

This is only my second Sherlock Holmes story I've read. The other, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is much better, but if one wants to start at the beginning, this is place to start.

3.5 stars.

-Anne

TTT: The First 10 Books Randomly Generated from My TBR Shelf

Top Ten Tuesday: 

The First 10 Books Randomly Generated from My Goodreads TBR Shelf

I have 250 titles on my Goodreads TBR list. I spent a few days culling that list down from 350+ titles before I found a randomizer on the internet which selected these 10 titles. Some of the books I remember why I added them, in one case I added the book two days ago. Others I don't even remember the book let alone why I added it. If you have any advisce for me concerning these books or authors, I'd love it hear it.

#163 --- Chronicles of Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm an admirer of the author and I see that this book is short, a novella, so I'm sure I added it to remind myself to read it during Novellas in November...which is now.

#168 --- Spent: a Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel. Not sure how I ran into this book but I was sold by the word "comic" and  this description "Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege?" I am not even sure if it is a graphic novel or not.

#5 --- Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. This book has been on my list for six year. I think I remember another blogger recommending it but when I look at other reviews on Goodreads some of my friends weren't that crazy for it. Another book which is considered humorous.

#38 --- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I think I have added and subtracted this classic thriller to/from my list several times. I want to read it but clearly not enough to drop everything to do it.

#138 --- Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse. Not long ago I saw a list which stated this was the best of Wodehouse's Jeeves novels. Another one with comedy as a theme?

#249 --- The Guardian and the Thief by Megha Majumdar. A 2025 National Book Award finalist. The description really drew me in: "Wondering if there's a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy's The Road a run for its money? Here you go."

#195 ---The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. I do not understand how Christians can embrace Trump and his un-Christ-like policies. This book title attracted me as I was casting around looking for answers. 

#237 --- The Sellout by Paul Beatty. The 2016 Booker Prize winner. It came to my attention when it was on the NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list. Another book with the word 'comedy' in the description.

#203 --- Edenglassier by Melissa Lucashenko. I have no memory of this book at all. I see it is a history story set in Australia but that is all I know. I don't know why I added it to my TBR list.

#129 --- Raven Boys: A Graphic Novel by Maggie Stiefvater and Stephanie Willows. I loved the book, so why not experience it through the graphic novel format? That's what I thought.

I'm seriously thinking of wiping all books off my TBR except for the books on my Classics Club list and starting over. I am not sure that the list actually helps me remember to read books or not, especially when it is so long. I sincerely wish there were some sort of TBR creator where I could be more interactive with it -- noting who recommended the book and why, prodding me when a book has languished too long, and the ability to sort books according to my directions.  

Looking over this list of ten books there are only two titles which I feel sure I will get to: The Sellout and Joy in the Morning. Using that statistic -- one in five -- I should be able to cull my current TBR down to 50 books. Hmm...Do I have it in me?

-Anne

Nonfiction November -- Week Two

Week 2 (11/2 – 11/9) Choosing Nonfiction (Hosted by Frances at Volatile Reader): There are many topics to choose from when looking for a nonfiction book. For example, there are memoir, travel, politics, history, religion and spirituality, science, art, food, and more. Use this week to challenge yourself to pick a genre you wouldn’t normally read.

I managed to finish no nonfiction last week. None. Sigh. But I am reading a book, a diary really, which I never would have selected except for the StoryGraph Genre Challenge. As soon as I finish this book, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary by Anais Nin (Erotica) I will have completed the challenge!

Here is how the challenge works: Select and read a book from all 58 genres categorized by StroyGraph. One can see how they are doing by checking out the Stats page and looking at the chart, then consulting the genre list to see which categories are still missing. 

The StoryGraph Genre Chart found on my reading stats page. One book to go and I will have read a book for all 58 of their genres.

I didn't decide to do this challenge until April when I had already read books for around 35-40 genres without trying or paying attention. How hard could it be to complete it? As it turned out, it was very difficult.  First off many genres or categories I thought would be on their list, like "Westerns" and "Satire," aren't. While other genres I'm not interested in, like "Economics" and "Computer Science", seemed difficult to find a book I was willing to read. Oddly some books which were clearly about a topic, like "Race", weren't labeled as such. Fortunately StoryGraph does allow the public to make suggested corrections to a book's record, so I was able to check off books I read that fit, but needed a genre added to do so. All of the genres aren't necessarily for nonfiction titles. Some only work for fiction (Examples: "Speculative Fiction," being one! And then the confusing "Historical" [fiction] vs "History" [nonfiction].)

Here are a few books I really enjoyed that fulfilled a needed genre for my challenge:

Bring the Magic Home: An Exploration of Design Inspired by Disney Parks by Sunny Chanel

Genre: Design

I was twirling around my little neighborhood library trying to find books to fit the challenge and wandered over to the 740s to see if I could find a design book (crafting, interior design, textile design, flower arranging) and this book jumped out at me. Literally. It is a large,  heavy, oversized book with tons of color photographs. It didn't fit on the shelf properly. It is not the type of book one expects to find at a library but instead on someone's coffee table. I sat at a library table to leaf through it and was instantly charmed. Who doesn't love the designs at Disney theme parks? I checked it out and read through the book in a few days, enjoying every moment...though I am still not sure why someone would want their spare bedroom to look like a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion. Ha!

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North American Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Continent by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek

Genre: Reference

When I think "reference" I think encyclopedias and almanacs but here is a fantastically fun book for both kids and adults -- interactive maps on topics of history, culture, and geography. For example one map shows where can you find the continent's tallest and steepest roller coasters. Another shows where can you visit the world’s largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island. Think about that. Mind-blowing stuff.

Just like the last book, I read through this book quickly, turning back pages to show my husband some of the mind-blowing things everytime he would wander into the room. I learned so much from this excellent reference book. As it turns out I got to check off another genre for this book, too: "technology." Not sure how it fits, though. Perhaps one has to use technology to figure out where there is a lake within an island within a lake.

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The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care by Carl Öhman

Genre: Computer Science

Two things happened almost simultaneously which brought me to this book. One, I was looking through a list of my Facebook friends and realized that many of them were no longer living, yet their Facebook page persisted. Perhaps I even got a notice on one of their birthdays. Secondly, my mother, who is 96, got tricked into giving a scammer some of her social media information and her whole email list got send SPAM from them. These two things got me thinking about what should happen to social media information after a person dies. This book, based on its title, seemed like a perfect place to go to find out what we should do when Mom dies and what others should do with their loved ones Facebook/Twitter[X]/Instagram/Tik-Tok accounts.

I didn't get a definitive answer to my questions but I did learn some fascinating information about after death practices throughout history and how social media sites can serve as a place for grieving family members to memorialize their loved one and hang onto their grief. Did you know in a few years (2035? I can't remember exact date) there will be more dead persons' accounts on Facebook than live persons? And businesses are attempting to monetize the relationship between social media and grief? Many have already attempted it and have failed because people only want to have these resources if they don't have to pay for them. 

Unlike the above two books, I wouldn't say I liked this book. In fact, I found myself speed-reading through sections. But it has provided me with interesting thoughts to ponder. In fact, after reading The Afterlife of Data, my husband and I had a discussion of what he should do with this blog if I suddenly died. I'd like a few of my posts to still be available for the family to read through if they wanted, like my Sunday Salon posts which are more personal than other posts, and maybe a few of my favorite book reviews. I also instructed him to post a message that I had died. I hate it when bloggers I follow suddenly disappear. I wonder what happened to them. Did they die or just fade away, disinterested in continuing to blog about books?

I think StoryGraph should add a genre to this title: "philosophy." It certainly grapples with ethical questions that "computer science" can't adequately address.

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Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg, PhD

Genres: Psychology and Self Help

I purchased this book during 2020 and just couldn't settled into it during the whole COVID pandemic lockdown. I tried to read it again a few years ago and found I wasn't interested in learning little techniques to change my life. I was ready to toss the book which this genre challenge came along and I realized I owned a "psychology" genre title.

Finally I read the dang thing and actually liked it. Not only that but I was able to make a few changes to my health practices which have (or I hope they will have) an impact on both my dental and visual health. How about that? Everytime I floss my teeth and clap my hands afterwards in a sort of a cheer, I say a little word of praise in my head for this book that showed me the value of celebrations when it comes to changing habits.

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This week, Week Two of Nonfiction November, we are asked to choose a book from a new genre, Well, clearly, I have already done that this year and this post is a celebration of my 2025 year of reading genres up and down the board (woot-woot.) So today I claim two genres which I am especially interested in reading more about: "religion" and "politics." Here are some titles I hope to explore/read soon:

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
Worth Fighting For by John Pavlovitz
Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon
(Links for Goodreads for book descriptions)

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- Back to Standard Time

Mom and her cat settling into their new home.

Weather: Lovely fall day. The last few days have been rainy and windy but not today. Today we have blue skies and lovely fall colors to enjoy.

Mom's Crew

Standard Time: Today we set our clocks back an hour. Back to official standard time. This past week we were with my mother helping her move into a retirement apartment in a very lovely facility and beginning to prepare her house for sale. My three siblings, one brother-in-law, and my husband all worked very hard to help mom pack, move, get set up, and then start the process of cleaning out a lifetime of stuff. It was tiring, but rewarding to work on a project together, all the while knowing mom is happy and safe in a new place. But each evening we would collapse in front of the TV or over a bowl of soup, tired from the physical and mental demands. As we drove back up the freeway after a week in Eugene I commented that it felt like we were returning to our life. The next day my sister called and essentially said the same thing, that she felt like she took the week off and now had to turn her attention back to all the other demands. We're back in our standard time life. (On an unrelated topic, our dog has not reset to standard time yet. He was begging for dinner an hour early...oh right. He was on time, the clocks had just changed.)

Garage Sale 2.0 spoils

"Garage sales": Mom wanted to give her things to neighbors and friends after the family claimed the items we wanted. She decided to invite them to her old house for what she kept calling a "garage sale" though I hoped no one would feel like they needed to pay if they wanted a scarf or yard frog. Many of her friends dropped by and I think mom was pleased. Don and I packed up a box of treasures to bring home to share with our daughters. Yesterday we had "garage sale" 2.0 at our house and our daughters/grandchildren took home china pitchers, table runners, games, and a braided rug. I'm sure my mother will be pleased to know these treasures are now going to live a new life in her grandchildren's homes.

Back to Eugene: We will be back in Eugene again twice this month and I'm sure many more times in the next few months until we get the house cleaned, cleared, and sold. Our daughter and s.i.l will join us one weekend so they can visit Mom in her new digs and go to a football game with us. Every visit with Mom will feel like sacred time, though she's warned us she may live for eight more years, like her uncle who lived to 104. Ha!

November reading challenges: 'Nonfiction November' and 'Novellas in November.' With any luck I can combine the two as the novella challenge also allows for short nonfiction. Here are my plans for each:

• Nonfiction November post
• Novellas read in 2025 so far (#NovNov25)
• Novellas in November planning post

Other blog posts from the past two weeks:

• Sunday Salon, Oct. 18th
• TTT: Atmospheric novels
• Audiobooks-with-Don Review: Winter Counts
• TTT: Novels with Halloween-ish Creatures
• Novella Reviews: What Does It Feel Like? + Convenience Store Woman
• Audiobooks-with-Don Review: Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Read and reading:

• White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- My current Classics Club Spin Book and a novella. 10% complete, print.
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino -- another classic novella. 10% complete, audio.
• Henry and June: the Unexpurgated Diary by Anais Nin. This will finish up my StoryGraph Genre Challenge for 2025. 55% complete, e-book.
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. An Indigenous Vampire who preys on buffalo hunters who wiped out the herd which caused a chain reaction of starvation and death among his people. Don and I both enjoyed it very much even though we don't usually read horror novels. Audiobooks. 5 stars.
• Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki. A short memoir about a favorite author where I came to understand much about her Buddhist beliefs. Audiobook. Short nonfiction. 4 stars.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen. The last of Austen's six novels. This one closes out the Austen250 challenge. I was supposed to read this one slowly, 12-pages a day, but I zoomed through it. A reread. Print. Rating this time: 4 stars. (Last time - 5 stars.)
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. A novella set in Japan. The main character is on the autism spectrum and keeps hoping she'll be cured so she can just be normal. Charming. Don and I listened together and both awarded 4 stars.
• The Afterlife of Data by Carl Ohman. Another book for the Stroygraph Genre Challenge. I didn't get out of this book what I hoped: What should we do with a beloved's Facebook account when they die? E-book. 3 stars.
• Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats. A poetry, essay, letter, illustrated cat collection from the famed Sci-Fi author. An indulgence. Print. 4 stars.
• My Friends by Fredrik Backman. A book club selection which I've been working on for months. I finally decided to bear down before it was automatically returned to the library (again for the third time). Audiobook. 4 stars.
• Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser. A Goodread Challenge book and a novella. I think I need to upgrade my rating since I've been thinking of it alot. Audiobook. 3.5 stars. 

Up next (I already have them checked out):

• Audition by Katie Kitamura -- National Book Award Finalist and novella
• Heart the Lover by Lily King -- novella
• The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri -- National Book Award finalist, novella
• All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore -- memoir

-Anne

My Year in Novellas (#NovNov25)

Novellas in November is just around the corner. Last year was the first time I participated in this particular challenge and LOVED it. I found I really enjoyed reading short novels and short nonfiction. Because of this I have found myself choosing novellas all year, not just piling them up to read in November. And why, let me ask, read a long nonfiction books when I can read a short one? I read several short nonfiction books also. I recommend all five and four star books without hesitation. The three and two star books you should approach with caution or do some homework before you select them.

Novellas:

Here are the fifteen novellas read so far in 2025 with my ratings and hyperlinks to my reviews. 

5 stars:

-How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Cruz, 195 pages

-A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, 161 pages

-Three Days in June by Anne Tyler, 165 pages

-What Does It Feel Like by Sophie Kinsella, 133 pages

4 stars:

-Candide by Voltaire, 144 pages

-Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, 163 pages

-The Most by Jessica Anthony, 144 pages

-Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico, 157 pages

-The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty, 180 pages

-So Long, and Thanks for the Fish by Douglas Adams, 167 pages

-We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, 152 pages

-A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 123 pages

3 stars:

-The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan, 162 pages

-Passing by Nella Larsen, 141 pages

-The Vegetarian by Han Kang, 188 pages

2 stars:

-The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, 131 pages

Short nonfiction: 8 titles

5 stars:

-Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green, 198 pages.

-The Serviceberry: Abundance and Repriosity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 112 pages

4 stars:

-Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley, 208 pages

-Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki, 135 pages

-What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation for the World's Most Familiar Bird by Sy Montgomery, 91 pages

3 stars:

-The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die And Why You Should Care by Carl Ohman, 207 pages.

-The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson, 117 pages.

-Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and a Town that Looked Away by Candy Copper, 192 pages.

I still hope to review several more of the books on this list and will add those reviews to the linky for Novellas in November as I complete them.

-Anne

Audiobooks with Don Review: BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Book Beginnings quote:

Friday56 quote, from page 36:

Summary: 

"In this story-within-story-within-story structure, Buffalo Hunter Hunter opens with a discovery — in 2012, a book hidden in the wall of an old parsonage is found by an unnamed construction worker. It turns out to be a journal, written in 1912 and belonging to Arthur Beaucarne, the pastor of the local Lutheran congregation. Inside it contains the story of his strange encounters with Good Stab, who, after years of carnage, has seemingly come to him to confess. Good Stab is an Indigenous man from the Blackfeet tribe living in Montana around the time of the 1870 Marias Massacre, when U.S. Army troops killed nearly 200 unarmed women, children and elderly members of the Blackfeet Nation, a tragedy that figures in a multitude of ways throughout this gruesome joyride of a novel" (NYT). 

Review: Randy Boyagoda, in his review for the New York Times, wrote the best, most appropriate title I've ever seen --

"He's Undead, He's Indigenous, and He Wants Revenge on America: In the Buffalo Hunter Hunter a Blackfeet man becomes a vampire and seeks vengeance for the country's sins."

One doesn't have to read the whole summary to figure out this is a vampire story with a huge twist. No usual vampire fare in this story -- no foreboding castles, caskets, or bats, and the setting is not Eastern Europe. Instead, the beautiful setting is Montana near the spine of the continent in the area we now call Glacier National Park, where the Blackfeet (Piikani in their own tongue) have lived and thrived for millenia. Enter the white men, including the buffalo hunters who kill off whole herds of the beasts for only the hides or just for sport leaving the meat to rot. The Blackfeet people can no longer sustain themselves and thousands starved to death even before the 1870 Marian Massacre where the cavalry slaughtered hundreds, many of them women and children. When Good Stab gets turned into a vampire, he begins hunting those buffalo hunters, those men who started the whole chain of catastrophes for his people. 

Typically I don't read horror novels and neither does Don. But when I offered this audiobook as an option to listen to together, Don chose Buffalo Hunter Hunter over the others. We got about 30 minutes in when it suddenly dawned on him it was a vampire story. I guess his brain skipped over that detail when I read the summary. By then we were both into the story and forged ahead. We just visited Glacier National Park this past summer so we could clearly picture the setting. The writing was spectacular and we were both interested in learning more about this shameful chapter of American history. Historical horror can be a good subgenre if done right and this book was done right! In fact, I think this is my favorite horror novel of those I've read. Gabino Iglesias, writing for NPR, has read all of Stephen Graham Jones' books, and says Buffalo Hunter Hunter is his masterpiece because "the prose is gorgeous, the plot is complex, engaging, and multilayered" (NPR). I agree. Don't be put off by this book because it's a vampire story, read it because this is an important historical tale, worth your time and attention.

General Sheridan is credited with saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Now there is Good Stab who quips right back, “What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” Ha, how do you like that, General?

The audiobook is expertly narrated by three voice actors: Owen Teale, Shane Ghostkeeper, and Marin Ireland. All three did a masterful job at bringing the story forward with their voices and intonation. I highly recommend this format.

Both Don and I rated Buffalo Hunter Hunter with 5 stars.

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