Sunday Salon---California Dreamin'

Our grandsons playing together on the Lil' Climber. This photo collage is so cute showing their brotherly love.

Weather in San Francisco, CA.: 65 degrees and sunny. It is lovely.

California Dreamin': Here we are in San Fran after a long-g-g-g-g drive from our home in Washington State yesterday. We are here helping our daughter get resettled after her hiatus with us during COVID lockdowns. Now she returns to work in person, at least part-time. We head to the east side of the state tomorrow to visit family and take a little vacation. Looking forward to it after the long drought from seeing family. California Dreamin' with the Mamas and Papas:

Roses: Our rose bushes have just started their first bloom. We are going to miss the peak of their bloom while we are gone. Here is what I found as I took a look with my camera before we left:

Left to right, top to bottom: Cecile Brunner climber; Peace; Habitat for Humanity; Eyeconic; Pope John Paul; Abeye du Clooney; 4th of July; Midas Touch; Voodoo.

Love rose

California Dreamin' with the Beach Boys (What is more Californian than the Beach Boys?)
 

Potatoes, fruit flies, and silver linings: When Carly left San Fran last August in the middle of lockdown, she thought she'd return within a month or two. It was actually nine months. She quips that she paid for the world's most expensive storage unit since she paid for rent every month she was gone. In August I flew down to help her move back to our house, bringing her cats with us. Prior to leaving we zoomed around her apartment, emptying garbage, getting rid of perishables, and doing what we usually do when we leave for long trips. Unfortunately, a bag of potatoes hid from our view. Over the past nine months all the potatoes rotted and provided a gross breeding ground for fruit flies. Carly's friend, who was collecting mail, alerted us that there was a problem but we had no idea to what extent. Fruit flies and dead fruit flies were everywhere. What is the silver lining, you ask? Once we started cleaning up the potato mess we didn't stop. Her kitchen is probably cleaner than when she moved in. And by doing such a deep cleaning we think we found and wiped away most of the fruit fly eggs, so there will be no further outbreaks. Keeping fingers crossed!

California Dreamin' with Sia (I haven't watched the movie San Andreas, but I enjoy her version of the song.)

Books:

• Audiobooks we were listening to as we spent 12+ hours in the cars yesterday:
• End of Watch by Stephen King---Don and I listened to this when we were together in one of the vehicles, the third book in the Bill Hodges series. Progress- 58%.
  
• The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green---Carly and I listened to essays by a favorite author about modern life and our future as members of the human race, with reviews. Very clever. Progress- 20%.
• Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford---an upcoming book club selection set in Seattle during both World Fairs in 1909 and 1962. I listened to this book the one time I was alone on the drive. Progress-20%.
  
• Print:  
• Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri---in the style of the tales of Scheherazade, Daniel tells his classmates about his life before coming to America. I am LOVING this book. Progress-25%.
  

California Dreamin' Comedy -The Sketch Show (Very funny)

When I come to San Fran I dream of pastries from Arsicault Bakery: Today, since there was no food in the apartment, we had to go to it. We stood in line for over a half hour to get delicious ham/cheese croissants and chocolate/almond croissants. We ended up running into a farmer's market en route so we stopped and bought strawberries. Yum!

Chocolate/almond croissant with fresh California strawberries

Avocados and artichokes were everywhere at the farmer's market but I was fascinated by the yellow cauliflower.

Oleander: As we drove down I-5 in Northern-Central California the median strip was festooned with huge, colorful (white, red, and pink) bushes of oleander. I gawked and gawked as these beautiful, poisonous plants. Nowhere else that I've ever traveled has such beautiful plants between the freeway.

California dreamin'---imagine miles and miles of these oleander bushes along side the freeway in white, red, or pink blooms. Lovely! (Photo courtesy of Proven Winners)

Heading out to dinner and to shop for food to replenish all the outdated foodstuffs we had to throw away!

-Anne

Review and quotes: THE EXILES

Title: The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

Book Beginnings quote: 

St. John's Wood, London, 1840: From within a restless dream Evangeline heard a knocking. She opened her eyes. Silence. There more insistent: rapraprap.

Friday56 quote (from page 16, the last page of preview):

There is was: the ruby ring, sparkling in the glow of the whale-oil lamps in the gloomy drawing room. Mrs. Whitstone held it out like a treasure hunt find. "Where did you get this?"

Summary: Evangeline's father, a rector, has died. With no money or means she is forced to work as a governess for the Whitstone family. When she first arrives for her assignment, she meets and forms an attachment with the eldest Whistone son. In her naivety she becomes pregnant. Right before he leaves for a trip to Italy, the son gives Evangeline a family heirloom, a ruby ring, with a promise that when he returns there may be more to the relationship. But before he does return the pregnancy and the ring are discovered by Mrs. Whistone who has Evangeline arrested for theft. With no one to vouch for her Evangeline is left alone in the deplorable conditions in the prison and then she is sentenced to fourteen-years to be served in the penal colony, Australia. Aboard the prison ship, Evangeline makes a few friends: Hazel, a young girl from Scotland who was trained as a midwife by her mother; and Olive, a street-smart woman who is also pregnant. Both women deliver their babies aboard the ship with disastrous results. And this is only the beginning of their problems.

Review: One thing I like about reading historical fiction is learning new information about events or time periods. I enjoy gaining new insights about situations because they are presented with a story allowing dry, dusty history to come alive. That is the case with The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline. Evangeline, Hazel, and others had to endure such horrible conditions and a complete lack of justice because they were female and poor in the mid-1800s. Though I was aware of Australia being founded as a penal colony, I had never really thought about what happened to the prisoners once they got to Australia, or what they were required to do as part of their sentences. Now I know: work and work without pay. Hmm, sound familiar? There is also a side story about an aboriginal girl who is taken from her village and kept almost like she was part of a zoo exhibit. This is the second Baker Kline book that I've read. Both this one and Before We Were Yours pack an emotional punch but one that is followed up with a good moral lesson. The ending is very satisfying.

The Exiles is a book club selection for June. I imagine that we will have a fairly good discussion about the treatment of females throughout history. Our club usually picks four or five months worth of books at a time. The Exiles was the last of five books that we selected in January and all of them had something to do with the bad treatment of women in history or in a culture. It was bad timing on our part and now we are ready for a more lighthearted book or one that deals with men's problems. Ha! Any suggestions?

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.
The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. 
Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material.     

RHS Book Club, June 2021

-Anne

20-Books of Summer Challenge

Today I am plotting my course for the next three months by joining the 20-Books of Summer Challenge. I am making a commitment to not only read 20 books this summer, but reviewing all of them, too.

My "summer" begins with Memorial Day weekend (May 29-31) and ends on Labor Day weekend (Sept. 4-6). Though I don't know exactly what books I will read for sure here is a list of some possibles:

Audiobooks:

1. End of Watch by Stephen King
2. Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
3. Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford (a book club selection)
4. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (a book club selection)
5. Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri (Printz Challenge)
   

Book club Selections (I'm in two clubs):

1. Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford (as mentioned above)
2. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (as mentioned above)
3. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris 
4. The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline
5. TBA
6. TBA

Books from other Challenges (I don't commit to reading ALL these books but they are examples of books left to read for these challenges.)

• Pulitzer Challenge
• TBA, 2021 Pulitzer Prize for literature will be announced June, 11, 2021
  
• The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham 
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
  
• Printz Challenge
• Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri (mentioned above)
• Every Body Looking by Candace Iloyh
• We Are Not Free by Traci Chee
  
• Big Book Summer Challenge (over 400 pages)
• End of Watch by Stephen King (mentioned above), 496 pages
• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (mentioned above) 443 pages
  
• Audiobook Challenge (see list above)

From my TBR (possibles)

1. Four Winds by Kristin Hannah 
2. The Color of Magic by Terry Tratchett
3. When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
5. Infinite Country by Patricia Engle

If you are interested in attempting this or a smaller summer challenge, sign up at 746 Books for a 20-book, 15-book, or a 10-Book Summer challenge.  

On your mark. Get Set. Read!

-Anne

TTT: Quotes about trees

Top Ten Tuesday: Quotes about trees.

Currently I am reading the book Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori, beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerc. It is so delightful and I am learning so much about special trees around the world that I decided to dedicate this Top Ten Tuesday post to quotes about trees.

“There's a Chinese saying. 'When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.' "
The Chinese engineer smiles. "Good one."
"When is the next best time?" "Now."
"Ah! Okay!" The smile turns real. Until today, he has never planted anything. But Now, that next best of times, is long, and rewrites everything.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory 

“My mother was right. There was a whole world in that tree, and so there is in every tree. They warrant our appreciation, and many of them need our protection.”
― Jonathan Drori, Around the World in 80 Trees 

“Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 

 

“Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park 

  “A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

 “Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,' she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. 'What nice dreams they must have!”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“You know me, I think there ought to be a big old tree right there. And let's give him a friend. Everybody needs a friend.” ― Bob Ross (painter)

 “Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“It is easy to become besotted with a willow. The Rapunzel of the plant world, this tree appears as a graceful princess bowed down by her lush tresses, waiting on the riverbank for someone just like you to come along and keep her company.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“She loved the air after a hard rain, and the way a forest of dripping leaves fills itself with a sibilant percussion that empties your head of words.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

“A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods.”
― Tim Flannery, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate

 

“Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed scientists here and abroad, my thinking on the issue has changed. Planting trees may be the single most important ecotechnology that we have to put the broken pieces of our planet back together.”
― Jim Robbins, The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet 

“Jaime had never realized that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realized it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch 

-Anne

Sunday Salon---Moving in the right direction

World War Bonsai: Remembrance and Resilience

Weather: Overcast with light sprinkles.

Cottonwood, Rhododendrons, and Bonsai, oh my!

• Cottonwood---It is snowing! Well, it looks that way. It is actually cottonwood seeds transported ingeniously by the wind in little fluffs of cotton. Everywhere!
• Rhododendrons---It is a beautiful time of year in the Pac NW with differently colored rhododendron blossoms blooming in nearly every yard. Yesterday we visited a local botanical garden that specializes in these beauties. I ended up taking more than 60 photos. The collage below is just a few of my favorites.
• Bonsai---At the same botanical garden was a display of bonsai trees dedicated to Japanese-Americans who were forced into internmentcamps during WWII. The display was called "World War Bonsai: Remembrance and Resilience." Many of the Japanese-Americans had to abandon prized bonsai plants when they were rounded up. After the war, it took years for the bonsai art to get up and running again. Several of the trees we admired yesterday were made into a bonsai in 1950. My favorites were the two blooming plants: the azalea (upper left) and the wisteria (lower left and right). If you live in the Seattle area, I recommend that you visit this exhibit before it ends. It is at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way.

  

  Part of the bonsai exhibit
  

Rhododendron blossoms

 

Upcoming road trip: This coming weekend we are moving our daughter back to California. After a year of COVID lock-downs she is going back to work in person. After we leave her we will visit my brother and his family on the other side of the state and will have a reunion of sorts with my other siblings. Later that week we have rented a cabin on Lake Tahoe for a few days of relaxation. On our way back north we will drop off and visit Don's brother and my mother. It's been a year since we've seen everyone and we are looking forward to time together with loved ones. Since we are taking two cars and there are three drivers we have an elaborate plan for rotating who is driving and  who is resting to make it fair. I will be the swing driver moving back and forth to both vehicles. Since we all like listening to audiobooks we will have several cued up. I will have three books, whereas the others will each listen to just one. Here is the plan:

• Don and Anne:  End of Watch, the third book of the Bill Hodges Trilogy by Stephen King. We listened to the first two books together last year.
  
• Carly and Anne: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. We both like this author.
  
• Anne alone: Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford. An upcoming book club selection. Plus I'll have one book in reserve, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. Wouldn't want to stuck without something to listen to.
• Print books I'll bring along for the trip:
• Everything Sad is Untrue by Nayeri
• Around the World in 80 Trees by Drori
  

Birthdays: Last weekend was Don's birthday, this weekend we are celebrating Rita's 33rd birthday. Right now the family is assembled playing games on our old Wii set waiting for the steaks to cook. The carrot cake is decorated with a side of Cecile Brunner roses---sweet, small little climbing roses. We had these sweet roses in our yard when I was child and I told myself if I ever found a plant, I would buy it. I found it two years ago and this year the plant is full of tiny, fragrant buds.

Cecile Brunner climber rose

On the lighter side:

 

And the required cat photo: It's all about perspective.

-Anne

Review: THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY. Undoing regrets.

Title: The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig

Book Beginnings quote:

Twenty-seven hours before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat on her dilapidated sofa scrolling through other people's happy lives, waiting for something to happen. And then, out of nowhere, something did.

Friday56 quote: (page 23, last page of promo)

She knew only one thing with absolute certainty: She didn't want to reach tomorrow. She stood up. She found a pen and a piece of paper. It was, she decided, a very good time to die.

Summary: Nora's only living relative doesn't want anything to do with her. She just got fired from her job. And now she learns that her cat just died. Her life is full of regrets, decisions she made or didn't make that led her to this moment. She decides that life is not worth living and swallows a bunch of anti-depressants. But instead of waking up in heaven or hell or wherever one goes after death, she finds herself in the midnight library. In this library all the books, but one, are green and all of them are about Nora. If she had made one decision differently along the path of her life how would have things been different. Each book plays out a different iteration of her life based on her choices and decisions. The off-colored book, huge and weighty, is Nora's book of regrets. The midnight librarian is Mrs. Elm, or someone who looks just like her. She was Nora's school librarian who showed her a great kindness during a time of great need. Now Mrs. Elm is directing Nora to try a new variation on her life by picking up one of the millions of green books in the library.

Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place. (from the publisher)

Review: I was very moved by The Midnight Library and about Nora's life, so stuck by her regrets. She clearly sees no value in her life and wants to die. But as she 'tries on' her other lives where different decisions were made she starts to get a feeling for how her presence in the world impacts others. In a very Jimmy Stewart/"It's a Wonderful Life" moment she realizes she has had a positive impact on others and for that she can find meaning in her root life.

This past Sunday my pastor preached on regrets and what we can do about them. I instantly started thinking about this book. As Nora went back and undid her regrets she often found the possibility that something unforeseen popped up, often just as bad or worse than what she had lived through before. Clearly one can not really go back and undo regrets so how can we live within them? Make sense of them?  Using biblical examples our pastor pointed out how some men, who were blameless in the eyes of God, still felt the need to atone for the sins (regrets) of the nation. The prophet Daniel is one example. He went to God in prayer asking for forgiveness for the actions of his nation. In Daniel 9:5 he prays: "“We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws.” (v. 5-6) After the sermon, our pastor led us through a similar activity where we entered into a "Indigenous land acknowledgment" statement with the Puyallup Nation, the original people of the land where the church resides. We, the current people in our church, didn't take the land from the Puyallup people but we acknowledged that it happened. It was not just a token thing to do but a powerful event to participate in as we acknowledged what our forefathers did was wrong and how we want to move forward in a positive way into the future. It was a public way of asking for forgiveness.

By the end of The Midnight Library Nora embraces the life she has lived, her root life, and decides to make something positive of her life moving forward. She refuses to spend the rest of her life living in her regrets. I found that message, like the sermon on Sunday, to be very affirming.

A friend just messaged me and said she was waiting for this review before she decides if she wants to read this book for book club. There is no perfect book  and this one is no different. Though I enjoyed the book very much I need to mention one thing. Nora knows what she doesn't want but she doesn't know what she wants. That was a problem for her and probably for a lot of people. But because of this she is not a completely likable character. When she finally does come around I wanted to scream out, "Well, that took long enough!" That said, however, I do think the book would provide a lot of fodder for a great book club discussion and I liked it a lot.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from current book.
The Friday56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56 to share. 
Visit these two websites to participate. Click on links to read quotes from books other people are reading. It is a great way to make blog friends and to get suggestions for new reading material.     

-Anne

Review: METAMORPHOSIS AND OTHER STORIES by Franz Kafka

So this is Kafka.

Or, so this is me reading Kafka for the first time.

And, I doubt you will be surprised to learn, that I finally understand what people mean when they say something is Kafkaeque or having "characteristics or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world?" 

In the most well-known story in the collection, "The Metamorphosis", Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover he has been changed into a big bug. (I picture him as a cockroach but "experts" assure me that the description of Gregor-the-bug and cockroaches don't match, which still didn't keep me from picturing him as a big cockroach.) The reason for this transformation, or metamorphosis, from man into bug has been intriguing literary critics for one hundred years. Most agree that there is a tinge of biographical and historical reasoning for the transformation. Kafka felt alienated. He was a German-speaking Jew living in Czech Republic in a time of great antisemitism. He also felt great pressure from his father to be a successful businessman instead of what he wanted to be...a writer. These reasons could have led to feelings of isolation and inferiority. Kafka's feelings of inferiority led him to believe that other people found him repulsive. The other characters in "The Metamorphosis" also match Kafka's family: an overbearing father, a sweet but ineffectual mother, and a favorite sister, Ottla, who is quite independent-minded. 

I've been thinking about Italo Calvino's definition of what makes a book a classic in retrospect to this Kafka collection of stories. "A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers. The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed." What is "The Metamorphosis" saying to us that is still relevant today? I keep thinking of all the people who society has made into "bugs" or "vermin." We call Latinos entering our country on our Southern border as "illegal aliens." We have set up a series of laws and customs---all racists---to keep Blacks and Natives in their place which is down. Recently a law had to be passed to help protect Asians from attacks because they are seen as "other" and have been the victims of indiscriminate attacks. If we transform another person in our mind into a "bug or "vermin" than we can justify our horrible treatment toward that person. It doesn't seem like we, as a society, are doing much better than the one Kafka knew in the early 1900s. 

There are three other stories in the collection: "Meditation", "The Judgment", and "In the Penal Colony." In addition, there is a long "Letter to My Father", from which one can gain lots of insights of how Franz Kafka felt about himself in retrospect to his father and other pieces of autobiographical information. The letter is heartbreaking on so many levels, and it explains why Kafka felt like a bug in his father's house and presence. I found this quote to be especially telling about their relationship.

Please, Father, understand me correctly: in themselves these would have been utterly insignificant details, they only became depressing for me because you, so tremendously the authoritative man, did not keep the commandments you imposed on me. Hence the world was for me divided into three parts: one in which I, the slave, lived under laws that had been invented only for me and which I could, I did not know why, never completely comply with; then a second world, which was infinitely remote from mine, in which you lived, concerned with government, with the issuing of orders and with the annoyance about their not being obeyed; and finally a third world where everybody else lived happily and free from orders and from having to obey. I was continually in disgrace; either I obeyed your orders, and that was a disgrace, for they applied, after all, only to me; or I was defiant, and that was a disgrace too, for how could I presume to defy you; or I could not obey because I did not, for instance, have your strength, your appetite, your skill, although you expected it of me as a matter of course; this was the greatest disgrace of all.

This paragraph is so telling---the authoritative person does not keep the commandments he imposes on the child yet keeps the child in a state of continual disgrace because the rules are not kept. 

At another point in the letter Kafka talks about how he was able to gain some distance from his father only through his writing. "My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast. It was an intentionally long-drawn-out leave-taking from you, yet, although it was enforced by you, it did take its course in the direction determined by me." As his fame grew in his writing career Kafka still couldn't stop himself from seeking his father's approval, which he never got.

Sadly this multiple-page letter (47-pages in this book) was never seen by Kafka's father. According to his biographer, Franz gave the letter to his mother to give to his father. She didn't do it, later returning the letter to her son, unread by the intended recipient. 

Kafka sculpture in Prague

The letter, written not long before the writings of Freud changed psychology into what we know it is today, we see clearly the writings of a tortured child and the markings of a narcissistic parent. Once again the term "classic" rattles around in my head because even the letter speaks to us today. For the past four years Americans were all tortured by the whims and machinations of a narcissistic leader (Trump) and we all watched in horror as we watched person after person fall victim to not living up to his standards. Just yesterday I read that one of Trump's water-carriers spreading lies about the election results, Rudolph Giuliani, has been left to pay his own court and attorney fees now that he is out of favor. And a "Proud Boy" who stormed the capitol on January 6th is reportedly upset that Trump has abandoned him to spend time in jail for his actions when he felt he was doing them for his "dear leader."

Reading Kafka is a little like reading someone else's nightmare. But with the historical and biographical information as context, I now can really appreciate this author's works. And though it is doubtful I will ever tell anyone to read him, I can certainly brag a tiny bit that I have finally read some of Kafka's works myself. And the next time I'm in Prague -- I hope there is a 'next time' -- I will be able to look at this sculpture with an understanding why it is so weird.

-Anne

TTT: Book Titles That Are Complete Sentences

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Are Complete Sentences

A sentence is a grammatically complete idea. All sentences have a noun or pronoun component called the subject, and a verb part called the predicate.

Let's see if I can find any book titles that are complete sentences...

 

 

I found this assignment to be more difficult than I imagined when I started searching for titles with complete sentences. For one thing, I try to only use books I've actually read when creating top ten lists. As I looked through my Goodreads account for titles that would fit the bill it became very evident that complete sentence titles are rare. Hence, notice all the funky titles I resorted to adding to the list. Ha!

Anne