TTT: Authors I Would Like to Meet

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I Would Like to Meet and Visit Over a Cup of Coffee or a Glass of Wine

Lately I've been including my husband and his opinions more in the topics I am pondering for upcoming blog posts. Today when I asked him what authors he'd like to meet, he made a big deal about this being more than a handshake and getting a signature in a book. He'd want to sit and visit over a beer and really have a good chat with the authors. I mulled this over. I am much more of an introvert than he is and the idea of actually sitting down and visiting with these authors sort of terrified me. But putting my fears aside, these are the authors I really would like to chat with if the occasion were ever to arise.

In 2017 I created a list of Authors I've Met.

David Attenborough
He is one of my heroes and I know I don't have much more time to make this dream a reality since he is over 100 years old. I recommend this book: A Life On Our Planet: My Witness Statement. On my TBR, Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness.

Ann Patchett
Of all the authors on this list it sort of seems like Ann Patchett is just a regular gal who happens to write my kind of books. After she published her most recent book, Whistler, I read an interview where she said, and I'm paraphrasing, she has decided to write about normal people who don't have some huge trauma they are dealing with and who decide to be humane and kind. I like that.

Louise Erdrich
Both Erdrich and Patchett own bookstores and are leading literary features in their communities. Don and I agreed on Erdrich for our lists today. I rely on authors to help me understand other points of view so I lean quite heavily on Erdrich for insights into Indigenous cultures. My recent favorite book of hers is The Sentence, but I also am a huge fan of her Justice Trilogy with The Round House being my favorite of the three books.

Michelle Obama
I was going to say Barack Obama but when my husband said I had to sit and drink a cup of coffee with my choices, I imagined myself too tongue-tied to hold up my end of the conversation with him. But Michelle Obama is another thing. I loved her book Becoming. I even attended a book event at the Tacoma Dome where Jimmy Kimmel interviewed her. So inspiring.

Barbara Kingsolver
For years now, when asked, I will identify Kingsolver as my favorite author. Her new books are always on my TBR long before they are available. Her newest, Partita, is set for publication in early October. I hope to get my hands on it before years' end since I'm pretty far back in the line. Her book Demon Copperhead blew me away. I understand that Kingsolver used the royalties from the book to build a recovery house for drug addiction. Bravo!

Rachel Maddow
Better known as a primetime political commentator, Maddow has also written several excellent and thought-provoking books. I imagine a conversation with her could go for hours. I can't stop thinking about her book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism since it related to what is happening right now worldwide.

That's it.

A short list today.

How about you? 

What authors would you like meet over a cup of coffee?

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- September 13th

The family after the University of Oregon football game wearing duck hats given to us as a prize for winning by my younger sister, Grace. So fun.

Weather: Rain. It rained all night and hasn't stopped. This feels like Fall weather to me.

Two things you should know about politics in the USA right now:

• 1. The FCC banned James Talarico from appearing on Jimmy Kimmel's Live show. The FCC doesn't ban Republicans from Fox News, just Democrats on ABC. Anyway. To make sure the interview is seen, Jimmy Kimmel Live posted it on YouTube. Click on the link below and watch it (or at least run it in the background) so that this unfair situation is rectified by a larger viewership than they would have gained if the interview were aired on the show. Stand up for Free Speech! There were 4.9 Million views at the time I viewed it. What is the viewership number now for you?

• 2. Do not use VOTESAFE (dot) org .  Do not even go and check it out. (Read why here.) In a nutshell, the website is a fake voter registration site by Elon Musk, designed to steal your information. Any visitors to the site will unwittingly hand over their full name, birthday, home address, email address, cellphone number, IP address, browser, location, voter registration status, and district, not to mention every link they click on and every page they look at. If you visit votesafe.org . . . A code based on the technical traits of the device, known as a device fingerprint, is created so a user can be tracked even if cookies are deleted. It is so sinister. I urge you to stay away. DO NOT USE votesafe.org. This is an Elon Musk site that will feed you phony information.
• If you are looking for information on voting:
  1. Search your own state department of elections.
  2. Search your county/city/town General Registrar, talk with them — call, go to the office, send email.
  3. Use https://vote.gov
  

We are heading out for a trip to the U.K. in a few days:  We will be visiting several literary sites: Bath (Jane Austen Festival), Hill House (Beatrix Potter home in the Lake District), Scottish site of the Culloden Battle (recently made famous in the first book of Outlander series by Gabaldon), Stratford-Upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace); and several sites in London (so many books, so many plots!)

What I might read during the trip:

• Here are the books I will have with me in some format. I know I won't get to them all, but at least I'll have options.
• The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway (Print) -- I want to read this book this year as it was published 100 years ago. I purchased a physical copy to carry with me to read on the plane and at night after days of sightseeing. If I happen to finish it, I'll leave it behind someplace.
• Civilizations by Binet (Ebook) -- This is a book club selection for a meeting I'll be missing during the trip. I still want to read it. So far I am still in line at the library so it may not come in on time. When it comes in I hope it can downloaded from afar. (Update: I just ran into one of the book clubbers and she said the book is awful.  Maybe I'll just skip it!)
• Mad Mabel by Hepsworth (Audio) -- A fairly short audiobook so I may be able to finish it during our flights, if I don't fall asleep. I've heard it is very funny.
• Anything is Possible by Strout (Audio and EBook) -- This is the second book in the Amgash series. I've read all the other books in the series out-of-order: 1, 4, 5, 3. Time to finish up by reading the 2nd book! Ha! I have checked out both the audio and the ebook so I can toggle back and forth. I've heard the book reads a little like short stories. Good. I like reading short stories when I am traveling.

What I've read recently:

• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek /Richardson -- A book club selection. I'll miss the meeting where it is discussed.
• Siddhartha: An Indic Poem /Hesse -- My Classics Club Spin book for the Fall.
• London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth /Keefe -- One of the best narrative nonfiction authors out there. Wow.
• The Typing Lady and Other Fictions /Ozeki -- I love this author and everything I've read by her. Review scheduled.
• Evil Under the Sun /Christie -- The 23rd Hercule Poirot mystery. Review scheduled.

What I'm currently reading:

• Dungeon Crawler Carl /Dinniman -- Well, this book is fun! 31% complete, audiobook. If I don't finish this book before we leave, it'll jump to the front of the list of the books I hope to read on the trip.

Blogging: 

• TTT: Books with Nationalities in the Title
• TTT Favorite Books from the Top Goodreads Titles of the Decade
• WWW Wednesday 

This: Voltaire quote will make you think.

Back to school: The grandsons are back to school. Off to a good start.

Ian -- 4th grade

Jamie -- Kindergarten

Jumping for joy at a before school event for the boys to meet their teachers.

September 11th: It has been twenty-five years since the terrorist attack on the WTC.

A note from a Norwegian:

It is unlikely I will create any Sunday Salon posts while on the trip, so I will see you on the flip-flop, hopefully with some good stories and lots of photos.

-Anne

Friday Book Snippets: LONDON FALLING

Welcome to our first week as a combined Book Beginnings on Friday and Friday56 with a new name Friday Book Snippets. I am co-hosting this weekly blogging event with Olivia at Bemused & Bookish. You can link up at either of our sites but be sure to still visit and comment on other participant's blogs to increase our community.

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book's opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please. 

True confessions: I usually listen to audiobooks so figuring out if a quote is from page 56 (or any page) is very difficult for me. I just try to add some interesting snippet from somewhere in the book and I don't worry about the page number. I encourage you to think outside the page 56 parameter, too. 

Title: London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe

Chapter 1 snippet, Opening: 

After Zac Brettler died, his parents tried to decode the mystery of what happened to him, endlessly revisiting moments from his short life.

2nd snippet, page 25:

Education mattered a great deal to the Brettlers, as it did to their greater social milieu, in which families were quietly judged by other families over where their children went to school. Zac was old enough, and socially perceptive enough, to grasp this, and it must have stung. Eventually he found a place at another private school in London, called Mill Hill, and it was there that he started to change.

Summary: London Falling is the account of a family trying to make sense of the death of their nineteen-year-old son, Zac, when they discover that he had been living a double life. Prior to his death Zac had been pretending to be a rich Russian oligarch's son living alone in the city when he jumped into the Thames River. Was it a suicide or a murder? His secret life drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld which exists beneath the beautiful gilded city.

My thoughts: The book starts at Zac's death and then moves backwards to figure out what happened. The 2nd snippet needs a little context. Zac wasn't accepted to a very prestigious school where his older brother was attending. Joe, the older brother, was more academic than Zac, and it came as a blow when he was rejected. This is what must have stung. It was at the second school, Mill Hill, where Zac met rich children, some related to Russian oligarchs, and he started pretending he was one of them. 

Patrick Radden Keefe is a master at writing narrative nonfiction. He met the family several years after Zac's death and they gave him full access to all of the police reports and information the family had gathered. And he was able to do some independent research to add to their insights of what probably happened during the last minutes of Zac's life. He also gave the reader insights into all the money which has been flowing into London since Asians were expelled from Uganda in the 1970s and the break up of the USSR in the late 1980s, early 1990s. This information never became overwhelming or boring, however, based on Keefe's storytelling skills.

My husband and I listened to the audiobook this past weekend and both of us were fully into the experience. We both rated it with 5 stars. It is an amazing, eye-opening story. I highly recommend it.

LinkUp:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Classic Review: SIDDHARTHA

Siddhartha: An Indic Poem by Hermann Hesse is my Classics Club Spin selection for this Fall. The book/poem was published in German by Hermann Hesse in 1922 and translated into English by Hilde Rosner in 1951. The title of the book I read/listened to had the particular wording you see on the cover photo which included "An Indic Poem" on it. I found it interesting since I don't think of the book as a poem since it appears to be written in prose and I've never seen the word "Indic" before. Both require a bit of research. Let me see... 

A.I. was my only willing helper on the question of poetry. It said Siddhartha is poetry: "because of its lyrical prose, symbolic exploration of spiritual awakening, and focus on emotional truth over historical fact." Hmm. That is unsatisfying but I guess I will admit that the book is very lyrical. I wonder, and this is just a guess, if some of the poetry was lost in translation? I'll never know.

Secondly, the word "Indic" just means anything relating to India, its culture or its languages. When I typed it into my search bar, the computer kept correcting my spelling to Indian. Methinks they are essentially the same word.

Now that I've gotten past the title, what is the book about? In this story Siddhartha is the son of a wealthy Brahmin who decides to leave home to seek spiritual fulfillment. first he tried the life of the Sumanas who starved themselves to try and empty themselves and their desires. Next he listened to the teachings of the Gotama Buddha but he left this because he realized true understanding comes from personal insights, not just listening to another wise person. At this point Siddhartha tries the worldly life full of riches, sex, and fine clothes and food. Eventually he became disgusted with himself and left everything again. Lastly he found answers from the ferryman who taught Siddhartha to listen to the wisdom of the river. He ended up seeing the wisdom of the river as an illusion that all things in the world are connected to one another. In this life Siddhartha finally found peace.

Years ago I was asked by an English teacher to put together sets of world lit books for her classes so she could have several groups or book clubs within her class. I selected Siddhartha as one of those books, representing Indian Lit, even though I'd never read it. Later I asked my husband, who had read the book in high school, what it was about. He said it was the story of a man's search for meaning. For some reason that answer put me off reading it personally. If it spoke to him as a man, how would I, a woman, relate to it? Well it's taken me over a decade, but I've finally read it and honestly I'm not sure I made such a good choice for that long ago class book club. Why? Because I wonder at the maturity of sophomore boys to attempt to understand the underlying message of the book without them getting hung up on the sexual bits. Ha!

After completing the book I did a tiny bit of research about the author and the book on Wikipedia. What I learned led me all the way forward to my husband and why he read the book in high school. 

In his lifetime Hesse was a well-known and influential author in the German-speaking world. He won the Nobel Prize in 1946 and this still didn't catapult him to a broader readership. In the 1950s his popularity began to fade. By the time of his death in 1962 his works were relatively unread in the USA. A memorial to the author in the NYT stated that his work was largely "inaccessible" to American readers.

The situation changed in the mid-1960s when his works suddenly became bestsellers in the United States, with many of the novels republished in inexpensive paperback editions. The revival in popularity of Hesse's works has been credited to their association with some of the popular themes of the 1960s counterculture (or hippie) movement. In particular, the quest-for-enlightenment themes of Siddhartha, resonated with those espousing counter-cultural ideals. ... In large part, the Hesse boom in the United States can be traced back to enthusiastic writings by two influential counterculture figures: Colin Wilson and Timothy Leary. (Wikipedia)

When I shared this information with my husband his eyes lit up. He told me that the teacher that assigned Siddhartha to his class was the Art teacher, tapped to teach one section of English Lit. Likely this teacher, a big guy with a burly beard, was a product of the 60s and the hippy generation. He, no doubt, read the book just a generation before he introduced his classes to it. Honestly, me reading Siddhartha led my husband down a rabbit hole which ended up with him looking up the teacher in an old yearbook. Over the years, Don and I have had many fun moments with literature and our day spent reminiscing about Siddhartha was one of them.

So why read Siddhartha? If any book still has a lot to say to its readers over 100 years after it was written, Siddhartha is that book.

My rating: 4 stars.

-Anne

WWW Wednesday -- September 9th

WWW Wednesday is a weekly blog activity hosted by Taking on a World of Words. Rules: answer the three questions below and leave a link to your post in the comments for others to look at.

The Three W's:

• What are you currently reading?
• Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman // I just started this in audiobook and, oh boy, it is fun! It reminds me a little of The Hunger Games, in that the protagonist finds himself in the middle of a deadly game. The audio version is fun, too, since it has different voices for the computer when awards are won. 17% complete.
• The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie // Even if the situation doesn't match my current condition, I'm enjoying this brief, poetic blessings. Reading very slowly. 10% complete.
• What did you recently finish reading?
• The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki // A short story collection where the stories all deal with people who are facing a threshold in their life. I love Ozeki's writing and this whole collection is excellent. Finished today.
• Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie // Every once in a while I need a Hercule Poirot story as a palette cleanser. I finished this one yesterday.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
• We are heading out for an international trip soon. Here are the books I will have with me in some format. I know I won't get to them all, but at least I'll have options.
• The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway (Print) -- I want to read this book this year as it was published 100 years ago. 
• Civilizations by Binet (Ebook) -- This is a book club selection for a meeting I'll be missing during the trip. I still want to read it. So far I am still in line at the library so it may not come in on time.
• Mad Mabel by Hepsworth (Audio) -- A fairly short audiobook so I may be able to finish it during our flights, if I don't fall asleep. 
• Anything is Possible by Strout (Audio and EBook) -- This is the second book in the Amgash series. I've read all the other books in the series out-of-order: 1, 4, 5, 3. Time to finish up!

-Anne

TTT: My favorite books from Goodreads 120 Best Books of the Past Decade List

I'm off-topic today:

Top Ten Tuesday:

My favorites from the Goodreads 120 Best books of the Past Decade List

See list here.

           Contemporary/General Fiction

Historical Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Horror

Romance

I haven't read any of the best romance on Goodreads books. 😒

Memoir

History & Biography

General Nonfiction

-Anne

Friday56 LinkUp: THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK

Title: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

Book Beginnings quote: 

Kentucky, 1936: The librarian and her mule spotted it at the same time.

Friday56 quote:

Being able to return to the books was a sanctuary for my heart. And a joy bolted free, lessening my own grievances, forgiving spent youth and dying dreams lost to a hard life, the hard land, and to folks’ hard thoughts and partialities.

My thoughts: I have finished the book and loved it. The book has a lot to say which deserves a whole review which I hope to get to in the next few days. Reading the opening quote I am viewing it through new eyes, since I know what the librarian and mule saw, but I bet you wonder. That makes it a good opener. Then looking on at the next quote, I realize you must wonder where the librarian was if she is returning to the sanctuary of her books. It is a pivotal point in the story. I won't make any spoilers but I will say that the story is based on historical facts.

Now to the news: As you may know, Gillian at Rose City Reader is posting her last "Book Beginnings on Friday" today. Olivia at Bemused & Bookish and I have decided to co-host a combined weekly blogging event on Fridays called Friday Book Snippets. Our first week as co-hosts is Sept. 11th, 2026. The details won't change much from what we've currently been doing, with one exception -- instead of only pulling your second quote/snippet from page 56, you can choose a quote from anywhere in the book. Just no spoilers! 

Friday Book Snippets is a weekly blogging event co-hosted by 

Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish. 

Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a. the book's beginning and b. page 56 (or another page) in the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please.

Join the fun every Friday.

LinkUp for Friday56 today:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

PS. Blogger is misbehaving tonight and I haven't been able to make comments on anyone's blogger account. I will try again tomorrow. Gr.r.r. 

Friday morning, still not fixed. PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT BELOW so I can respond to you on my own comments.

-Anne

TTT: Books With Nationalities in the Title

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Nationalities in the Title

I had a dickens of a time finding books I've read with nationalities in their titles. I had to look way back to my pre-blogging days to find enough titles to fill out my list. I dearly wanted to find a book I'd read with "Canadian" in the title since our president is being so awful to our dear friends to the north these days. But that was not to be, sadly, so I made this sentence instead: I love the Canadian people. 

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out by Muzoon Almellehan

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team by Christina Soontorvant

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown

Almost American Girl by Robin Ha

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Love Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine by Hector Tobar

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson

The Little book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking

-Anne