Spring Goodreads Challenge Complete

Today I completed the Goodreads Spring Quarterly Challenge by finishing my selection for Pride Picks, Kin by Tayari Jones. It is the second quarter in a row where I've completed the challenge and this time with three days to spare. Woot woot.

The specific books I read for this challenge were:

2nd Quarter (Spring, April thru June)

• Page-Turner -- Read two books during challenge period (April 3)
• Speed Reader -- Read three books during challenge period (April 3)
• Book Boss -- Read five books during challenge (April 15)
• Community Picks -- Heartwood by Amity Gaige (April 23)
• Trending Books -- What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (May 11)
• Marathon Reader -- Moby Dick by Herman Melville (May 6)
• Editor's Picks -- Heartwood by Amity Gaige (April 23)
• Books on Books -- What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (May 11)
• AAPI Heritage -- Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (May 2)
• Summer Reading -- Animal Farm by George Orwell (May 28)
• Escapist Reads -- This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage (June 6)
• Pride Picks -- Kin by Tayari Jones (June 27)

You'll notice I doubled up on a few books in two different categories. That is totally legit. Goodreads gives participants lots of options of books in the different groups (usually between 75-125 choices) and sometimes the same book shows up on two lists. Bonus! Knock off two lists with one book!

In case you are wondering how you can join in to the summer challenge which starts on July 1st, here is how you find the challenge page: 

1. Go to your Goodreads home page.
2. On the left hand side of the page is a column, underneath CURRENTLY READING should be 2026 READING CHALLENGE. Click on the words "View Challenge."
3. On the CHALLENGE DETAILS page underneath the graph of how many books you've read so far this year is how many achievements you've collected. Click on the words "All achievements in this challenge."
4. Scroll to the bottom of the next page which is the 2026 Reading challenge bookmarks. Click on the words "More challenges."
5. Now you will see the words SPRING CHALLENGE (if you are looking in June) or SUMMER CHALLENGE (if you are looking in July). Click on the words "Challenge details."
6. Finally you have arrived at the book marks which explain the specific challenges. Click on any bookmark and the details of that category will be explained and the allowed books will be listed if you click on the words "Browse Books." All twelve don't open up instantly. For example, Pride Picks category didn't open until June 1st this quarter. Some books you will have three months to read and others you may only have one month to read. 
7. Once you earn a bookmark it will change from black and white to a colored picture. So fun.

Give it a try. Decide if you want to try the Goodread Challenge this summer or not.

BTW--Be my friend on Goodreads. Find me and friend me. You find me by searching my name: Anne Bennett . For confirmation you found me, my website is linked to Goodreads: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com  / How can I find you? 

-Anne

Six in Six

Emma at Words and Peace

Emma at Words and Peace is now hosting Six in Six, a flexible meme in which at or around the end of the sixth month (June) one may list six titles in six categories chosen from books one has read so far during the year. For 2026 therefore it’ll be six books in six categories in the sixth month on the twenty-sixth day of the month (for me.) 

Let's see if I can pull this off... if not I guess you'll never know I even tried! Ha! Emma has way better ideas than I do, so be sure to check out her list. (Here) I've read or reread all these books in 2026:

Around the world:

1. Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières -- GREECE
2. The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras -- COLUMBIA
3. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy -- Fictitious island off Antarctica, 1000 miles from AUSTRALIA
4. Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante -- ITALY
5. A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar -- INDIA
6. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali -- IRAN

Memoirs/Biographies:

1. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
2. Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances by Kwame Alexander
3. Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
4. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
5. The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
6. Toni at Random by Dana A. Williams

Humorous (at least partially):

1. So Far Gone by Jess Walter
2. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
3. The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
4. The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
5. Vigil by George Saunders
6. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach

Animals important to story:

1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville -- WHALES, especially one big white Sperm whale.
2. Moby Dick by Will Eisner -- See above
3. Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick -- See above
4. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov -- BLACK CAT
5. The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett -- CAT
6. Whistler by Ann Patchett -- HORSE

Classics:

1. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)
2. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks (1961)
3. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
4. Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)
5. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
6. Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life by Max Ehrmann (1927)

Poetry:

1. Startlement: New and Selected Poems by Ada Limón
2. Little Alleluias: Collected Poetry and Prose by Mary Oliver
3. Goldenrod: Poems by Maggie Smith
4. Woman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra Cisneros
5. Poems and Prayers by Matthew McConaughey
6. Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances by Kwame Alexander

How'd I do? Just a few duplicates, not bad.

Pick your categories and join in the fun! So what if you can't have it done by the 26th? Emma suggests you make the list during July!

-Anne

Review: THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History by Beverly Gage

Book Beginning/First Line Friday snippet from the introduction:

If you grow up near Philadelphia, sooner or later you eventually end up at Independence Hall.

Friday56 snippet (from page 17, last page of preview)*:

Taken as a whole, the Philadelphia area yields a remarkably efficient tour of how, in a formal sense, the United States of America came to be. All the big characters are there: Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette. So are the key moments--Declaration, Revolution, Constitution--that Americans have been debating for two and half centuries. But it wasn't the big-ticket places that really spoke to me...What stayed with me, after I departed for a long drive up I-95, were the instances in which ordinary people looked to the founding legacy and made it their own. 

        *I listened to the audiobook, so this will have to suffice for my Friday56 entry.

Summary: Beverly Gage, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, embarks on a series of thirteen road trips around the U.S.A. to highlight important moments in the country's history. Gage visits museums, roadside attractions, reenactment sites, even souvenir stores. Some of the places she visited are well known sites (Independence Hall) and others are much more obscure (spending the night in a missle silo turned into an AirBnB). She doesn't try to tell a sanitized story of only heroic moments but also uses her road trips to point out places and events that highlight our country's challenges and mistakes. The words of the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 have been consistent touchstones over the years since, but various people and groups have embraced the Declaration and molded its powerful words to fit a particular viewpoint or support causes across the political spectrum. Gage shows that Americans can honestly face their history -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- and still love their country.

Review: Don and I were on our own road trip when we listened to the audiobook of This Land is Your Land, going on a virtual audio road trip around all regions of the US. Our destination was coincidentally also an historic site - Yellowstone, the nation's first National Park.

Beverly Gage is a history professor at Yale University in Connecticut. Last year she and two other professors joined together to teach a course titled "America at 250: a History." No doubt Gage was able to use information she gleaned to write this book to teach the class. Her writing style is very accessible and engaging. She is a good storyteller, often personalizing her experiences on the road. She usually traveled alone but her college-aged son joined her on several trips. He was accustomed to family trips with multiple mandatory stops at historical sites along the way. Gage explained how she was always taking notes about what she was learning. Since it took several years to make her thirteen road trips, she experienced some personal challenges along the way, like a car that was acting up and needing time off for cancer treatments. I especially liked how Gage engaged with her material. This is anything but a sterile, textbook-style account of what she discovered on the road.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly wondered aloud at the Constitutional Convention, whether the sun is rising or setting on our republic. In an interview for the YaleNews, Gage was asked for her conclusion on this same question. I love her answer so much I'm sharing it here:

The first conclusion that I reached is that this is a question Americans have been asking for 250 years. In some ways, that question is the national tradition.

I also discovered that it’s very hard to know in our own historical moment how to judge what’s happening around you. One of the things that history does is give us some measures against which to judge our own time. But you have to really know that history. It can’t just be a matter of assuming that things were so great in the past and now they’re so horrible. I am a real skeptic of the idea that we are living through the worst and most divisive moment in American history. I don’t think that is true. I think there are some very particular things that are happening in the U.S. that are quite concerning, quite alarming, don’t bode so well for the future, but I think it is a form of historical amnesia to think that our problems are so much worse than what the country and its people have confronted over time (YaleNews).

Gage also urged her readers to get off their computers and go out and visit new places around the country. Talk with the people. She feels much more heartened about the state of the nation since her trips. Don wished aloud at the end of book that everyone in America would read this book for the country's 250th birthday. It is true. One can love their country and acknowledge it has problems.

We both rated this book 5 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

TTT: My Summer Reading List (and how I did on my spring list)

Top Ten Tuesday:

 Summer 2026 Reading List (and How I Did On My Spring Reading List)

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer Reading List. 

Below the line is how I did on my spring reading list.

Summer reading list: 

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (July) : You Before Me (Moyes)
2. RHS Ladies (July): No Meeting
3. SOTH Gals (August) : Theo of Golden (Levi)
4. RHS Ladies (August) : The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Desai)
5. SOTH Gals (September) : TBA
6. RHS Ladies (June): The Book Club for Troublesome Women (Bostwick)

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club Spin Book TBA from this list -- possibly: The Stranger (Camus)
2. Printz Award Winner or honor book -- Sisters in the Wind (Boulley)
3. Paris in July Challenge -- possibly: Fresh Water for Flowers (Perrin)
4. A NYT Book Best of Century selection -- possibly Austerlitz (Sebald)
5. Three Goodreads Summer Challenge selections TBA, starting July 1st.
1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. Kin (Jones)
2. Agnes Aubert's Magical Cat Shelter (Fawcett)
3. Enormous Wings (Frankel)
4. Land (O'Farrell)
5. The Typewriter and the Guillotine (Braude)
6. The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson)

A few unknowns right now which will become clear as the season progresses.

How I did on my spring reading list: 

 Yellow: completed. 

Aqua: in progress

Green:  not completed, DNF

Light pink: Did not get to yet!

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (April) : China Room (Sahota)
2. RHS Ladies (April): So Far Gone (Walter)
3. SOTH Gals (May) : Today We Go Home (Estes)
4. RHS Ladies (May) : Theo of Golden (Levi)
5. SOTH Gals (June) : The Man Who Could Move Clouds (Contreras)
6. RHS Ladies (June): The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Sparks)

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club Spin Book TBA from this list -- Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
2. Printz Winner/honor book -- The Legendary Frybread Drive-In (Leitich)
3.  A past Pulitzer Prize winner from this list -- American Pastoral (Roth)
4. 2026 One Big Book Challenge -- Moby-Dick (Melville)
5. Women's Prize winner or finalist -- The Correspondent (Evans)
6. Three Goodreads Spring Challenge selections TBA, starting April 1st.
1. AAPI Heritage -- Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (May 2)
2. Summer Reading -- Animal Farm by George Orwell (May 28)
3. Escapist Reads -- This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage (June 3)

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. What We Can Know (McEwan)
2. Poems and Prayers (McConaughy)
3. I'm Glad My Mother Died (McCurdy)
4. A Flower Traveled in My Blood (Gilliland)
5. Little Alleluias (Oliver)

Feeling good about the books I got to!

-Anne

Paris in July -- Getting ready for my "trip" to France via books, food, sports, and language.

Emma at Words and Peace

It is almost July and time for the virtual trip to France.

Here are a few things I hope to do this coming month related to France:

Food:

• Make a batch of chou à la crème (cream puffs). I adore them and yet have only made them once in my life. I've already asked my daughter to join me in this project.
• Ratatouille is a food I'm not even sure I've ever tried but it certainly sounds like something I would like, but I might like these even better: Pommes Dauphinoise creamy sliced potatoes in a special cheesy sauce. Which should I make? Perhaps both?

Books:

• I will just be finishing up Madame Bovary by Flaubert as the month begins. Perfect timing.
• I want to read The Stranger by Camus. I saw the movie earlier this year and think I need to reread the book since the first time through I read it in French. Ahem. I didn't get a lot out of it.
• A few others I have my eyes on:
• Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin
• Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Carlier
• The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani

Sports:

• Watch some (all?) Tour du France. I enjoyed it a lot last year.
• Watch France in World Cup, if they make it out of the preliminary set.

Music:

• Reactivate my two French music sets on Spotify and listen away!

-Anne

Sunday Salon --- Summer Solstice

The photos are all dark since it was around 7 pm when we arrived for our picnic.

Weather -- Beautiful. We went to a beach on the Puget Sound with our grandsons last night and the temperature was comfortable and we stayed too late since sunset isn't until after 9 pm these days.

There's no place like home -- Sometimes one can travel the world over and find that the most special moments are near home. See photo collage, above, of the picnic we had with our grandsons and their aunt at Owen Beach in Point Defiance Park, Tacoma.

Thomas Danbo's Mama Mimi

Mama Mimi -- Last week when I was giving you the update on our vacation trip to the National Parks (Home from our Trip, Sunday Salon) I forgot to mention that we stopped by to visit Mama Mimi at a park near Jackson, WY. Mama Mimi is a spectacular Thomas Danbo troll.

Moose gatekeeper -- As we attempted to walk around the lake to get the long view of Mama Mimi, we had to pass this female moose gatekeeper to get to the stone path across the water. She seemed pretty interested in napping so said we could pass.

After completing so many books during our trip or right after getting home -- I had to spend my week attempting to catch up on writing book reviews. Nine down, two left to go:

• Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick (Nonfiction; literary criticism)
• The Man Who Moved Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Memoir)
• Moby Dick by Will Eisner (Comic based on Melville's classic)
• I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Memoir)
• Whistler by Ann Patchett (Fiction)
• A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson (Nonfiction; inspirational/religious)
• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Sci-Fi)
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks (Classic)
• Wild Rescues: A Paramedic's Extreme Adventures in Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton by Kevin Grange (Memoir)
• Left to go:
• Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Pulitzer Prize winner 2026)
• This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage (Nonfiction, History)

Currently reading:

• Kin by Tayari Jones -- the best/most popular (?) book of the first half of 2026. It fulfills my last Goodreads challenge of the quarter. Audio. 22% complete.
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert -- My CC Spin book. I am slowly making progress, just passing the 300 page rubicon. Print. 83% complete.
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai -- I just started this popular book from 2025. It is a long one and a book club selection. Luckily I have two months to read it! Print. 2% complete, I just started it.
• Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor -- I wanted something which wasn't as heavy as the three books I'm reading so I've been making my way through this collection of poems curated by the fame radio host.

Inspirational Event -- My sister asked me to post this clip of John Legend and Common singing "Glory" at the Obama Presidential Center Grand Opening Ceremony. Everything I've seen from this event is inspirational but I particularly like this song. Skip ahead to the 4 minute mark for GLORY.

Musing on the World Cup -- Think about this and let me know if you don't agree --

“The World Cup didn’t need America,

but America definitely needed the World Cup.”

Have a good week! Happy longest/shortest day of the year depending on your orientation.

-Anne

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.

________________________________________________________________________

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 a 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 haven'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 the 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] which had been 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 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.

___________________________________________________

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

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