"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Sunday Salon

Birthday boys, with cats.

Weather: Rainy, with sun breaks. The weather has turned this week toward more Fall-like temperatures.

Where have I been? My last Sunday Salon was posted on August 10th. What's been going on with me? I've been gone from home for the past three weeks, on the road. On August 25th we were traveling to Wisconsin for the funeral of my aunt, my father's last surviving sibling. It had been ages since I'd spent time with my cousins and their children so I am glad we made the trip. And, of course, honoring the life of Aunt Betty was such a blessing. The next two weekends we were traveling home from Oregon after spending Saturday in Eugene for Oregon Football games. Fall is officially here when we spend more time on the road getting to and from the game than we actually spend in the football stadium.

A lot has happened in the world since my last post: That is an understatement. I don't even know where to start when it comes to my feelings about the change in politics since the arrival of Kamala Harris. Just suffice it to say, I am more hopeful than I've been in a long time.

Books and blogging. What I've read and blogged since my last post over a month ago?
Grandsons: We have two birthday boys this month. Ian turned seven on Friday and his brother turns four tomorrow. We helped Ian celebrate his birthday with a chili dinner and maple bars instead of cake on Friday evening. I even made a maple bar cake but it wasn't as good as original doughnuts, so it is unlikely I'll ever make it again. Tomorrow we will take Jamie to the Puyallup Fair, rain or shine. as our gift to him. On another upcoming Saturday we will take Ian to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Our motto: do things with the kids instead of just giving gifts.

Just for laughs:
Anyone with cats know this is completely true.

During the debate Trump said he had "concepts of a plan" for health care. The Internet has had fun with that one, since he's been saying he will change Obama Care for the last nine years and he still doesn't' have a plan.




Another thing Trump said during the debate was about Haitians eating people's pets. This has been completely debunked and is having serious ramifications for the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. But once again, the Internet has stepped in to make fun of Trump and his weird beliefs. Here is an autotuned song. Watch all the way to the end for a dog's reaction.



And finally, here is the crew from Hamilton: The Musical asking, "Who's Gonna Tell Him the Job He's Currently Seeking Might Be One of Those Black Jobs?" I hope you have Twitter so you can see it. If not, I'm sorry. The link I tried to save didn't work. 😟 


Let's all have a good week.
-Anne
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Thursday, September 12, 2024

Classic review: A BELL FOR ADANO (+Friday56 Sign-in)


Title: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

Book Beginnings quote: 
Invasion had come to the town of Adano.

Friday56 quote:

The Major worried all day about the the order and wondered what he could do about it. He slept very badly during the night, because of his worry. 

Summary:  After the Invasion of Sicily in July of 1943, American forces occupied Italian villages deemed necessary for military reasons as they moved further north up the European continent. Major Victor Jopollo is the AMGOT representative (American Military Government of Allied Territories) in a small coastal, Sicilian village, Adano. As the highest ranking officer, he is tasked with assisting the villagers as they shift their thinking from fascism to democracy. One of the tasks he tries to solve is finding a replacement bell for the city's main palazzo. The old bell, which helped direct the activities of the villagers' lives for 700 years, had been confiscated by Mussolini to be melted down and made into weapons. 

In a series of closely knitted episodes Mr Hersey presents a dramatic and rapid picture of what Jopollo was up against in his day-to-day task of trying to eradicate the poisonous, black taste of fascism and restore the people of Adano the feeling of self respect they needed to become better citizens. Major Joppolo had a genius for transforming his good intentions into achievements. The tragedy of the story is that he was not permitted to complete his job. (Jerry Mangione, New York Times Book Review, Feb. 6, 1944)

Review: John Hersey, a war correspondent, published A Bell for Adano in early 1944, just six months after the Invasion of Sicily. The war wasn't over, yet Hersey could see he had an important story to tell. A story about how best to plant and represent democracy in Europe after the was won for the Allies (which he believed would happen.) Using good men like Major Victor Jopollo, an Italian-American who had the initial advantage of knowing the native language and an understanding of the psychology of the people. More than that, Jopollo had a strong desire for the people of Adano to learn the ways of democracy -- by helping them and teaching them how to help themselves. Hersey, who practiced "new journalism" fused storytelling devices of the novel with nonfiction reportage. A Bell for Adano is written is a crisp, easy-to-read style which I found charming, funny, and enlightening. No wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1945.

It is a noteworthy book for several reasons. First, the book was published before the war was over and was made into a movie that very year. I am sure the American public were thrilled to have some good news stories about the war. Secondly, Jopollo is such a good person, and a fine representative of American values. Unfortunately he runs afoul of aa American General who is not such a fine person, who doesn't think about representing democracy abroad. But it takes a long, funny, circuitous route for the General's wrath to finally reach the Major. In the meantime, the reader is treated to a series of episodes involving a whole cast of Italian characters (and sometimes caricatures!) I was surprised how much I enjoyed the book.

In fact, I liked the book so much I am attempting to talk my hubby into reading it, too.

Rating: 4 stars

Book challenges satisfied: Classics Club Spin Selection and Pulitzer Prize Challenge:





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
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Monday, September 9, 2024

TTT: Books That Provide a Much-Needed Escape


Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Provide a Much-Needed Escape

Funny/Humorous Books -- We all need to laugh more, right?
  • In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Actually most books by Bryson are quite funny. If you listen to his audiobook, make sure he is the narrator for extra funny points.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book, and others in the series, are a scream. They are so funny. Do not even try to take these books seriously.
  • A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Dry, dry, dry humor. I can still repeat lines from this one.
  • Less by Andrew Sean Greer. We read this in book club. Everyone else in the club tried to take it seriously and didn't like it. I laughed my way through it and was delighted by it.
  • Citizen Vince by Jess Walter. -- I keep finding myself reading this guy and often finding myself laughing at the inane situations his characters get into. I often think "Well, that is the last Jess Walter books I'll read." Then I find myself reading another.
  • Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. -- Many comedians write funny memoirs. This is one of the best -- humor with a point.
Poetry books -- Some poetry books are hard to read and digest, others are just fun and light-hearted. Today I'm listing those in the latter category.
  • Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems by John Grandits -- if you aren't familiar with the form, concrete poems have a shape to them. The words may form a spiral, form a picture, or bounce back and forth. 
  • Counting in Dog Years and Other Sassy Math Poems by Betsy Franco -- Lots of children's books are also poetry books. This one delighted me a lot when I read it to my grandson.
  • I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems by Kate Baer -- Ms. Baer's poems, erasure poems evolved out of criticisms given to her on her social media accounts. We all deserve a chance to tell our critics off.
Mysteries -- Not the gory kind, though, which actually stress me out.
  • The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman -- I just discovered this series and enjoyed it a lot.
  • Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb -- What's not to love? It is a musical mystery.
  • Anything by Agatha Christie
Graphic novels/biographies
  • Strange Planet by Nathan Pyle -- I love his funny aliens interpreting life on Earth.
  • Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang -- A biography of the author/artist and the history of basketball. Information can be digested easily.
  • The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy -- illustrated and inspirational.
  • Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Penelope Bagieu -- illustrated miniature biographies in bite sized pieces of information.
When I need to escape from the seriousness of our world or from my seriousness on my usual reading choices, these are the kinds of books I reach for.

-Anne
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Thursday, September 5, 2024

Review: THE SONG OF ACHILLES (+Friday56 Sign In)


Title: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Book Beginnings quote: 
My father was a king and the son of kings.
Friday56 quote:
I was at a loss. I knew nothing of how gods were made. I was mortal, only.
Summary: Madeline Miller's debut novel is a retelling of the Iliad story but with 21st Century sensibilities about love, war, politics, and heroism.

Patroclus, a minor prince/character in the Iliad and the narrator of The Song of Achilles, is banished by his father at age ten and sent to live in Phthia. In this new home he meets and befriends Prince Achilles. Over the years this friendship turns to love. When Achilles, the greatest warrior of his generation, is called to fight with the Greeks against the Trojans, Patroclus travels with him. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice. 

Review: When I was in junior high I fancied myself as a Greek Mythology fan. I'm guessing we read an abridged version of the Odyssey in class or something similar. My interest didn't lead to further reading, however, so all these years later I came to an Iliad story from the angle of a novice. The story was new and fresh to me. My husband and I listened to the audiobook, read by Frazer Douglas, and enjoyed it immensely. The pronunciation of names and places were all handled expertly. What we lacked was a complex list of the many characters, gods and heroes alike, to help us keep everyone straight in our heads. Not until I dug around the house and found the print copy loaned to me by my daughter, did I find what I needed to fill out the story for me: a character glossary, a gods and heroes illustrated closeup, and an interview with the author Gregory Maguire. 

In the interview with Maguire, Miller said she wrote the story because she wanted to give a voice to Patroclus, a character she thought of as an underdog. She never imagined the book as rewriting Homer. "Instead", she said, "I made the Iliad a fixed point on the horizon and wrote toward it."  All three tools helped me appreciate the book even more. In fact, I recommend listening to the audiobook but getting a copy of the print version to refer to as you listen.

Gregory Maguire ends his interview with Madeline Miller this way:
"Oscar Wilde said something like:"The Odyssey was written by Homer, or another Greek of the same name." But Oscar Wilde had clearly never met you yet. This is not a question. It is a salute.
Clearly he is a Madeline Miller fan, as am I!

My rating: 5 stars.



The Song of Achilles qualified for the 2024 Big Book Summer Challenge. I completed it before September 2nd and it is 408 pages long.





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
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Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Review: SYMPHONY OF SECRETS

Dr. Bern Henricks, PhD is one of the preeminent experts on the famed 20th Century composer, Frederic Delaney. When Dr. Hendricks receives a call from the Delaney Foundation to authenticate and transcribe a long lost and now found Delaney opera, "Red," he is thrilled. But with the help of a tech-savvy friend, Eboni, Bern soon finds out the truth is more complicated than he thought.

In the early 1920s Fred Delaney, a low-talent musician, met a musically talented Black woman, Josephine Reed, after she critiqued his piano playing in a jazz club one night. He asked if Reed would give him lessons to improve his playing and a friendship, of sorts, developed between the two. Reed, a neurodivergent woman, had an uncanny ability to translate the sounds she heard into music, which she wrote in her own made-up script. When Delaney learned of her unusual talent he badgered her to allow him to translate her songs into proper musical notations and then he added some lyrics. He sold the first song for ten dollars and published it in his name. This was the beginning of a very lopsided musical partnership.

Knowing nothing about this "partnership", Bern and Eboni start to investigate the "Delaney Doodles" on the "Red" score. They compare these doodles to those found on papers in a truck of Josephine's things. The light dawns that Delaney may not have been the composer they thought he was and he may have had help from an unacknowledged source. Around the same time the Delaney Foundation starts to hound and harass the experts causing them to abandon their project and run for their lives.

The Symphony of Secrets is a gripping mystery written by an author, Brendan Slocumb, who clearly knows music. He is a composer and a conductor, skills that translate well into writing mysteries. "His mastery of pacing and tempo and his natural sense of when to soothe the audience and when to jolt them out of their seats are on full display" (Cole). Everytime Dr. Henricks described something musical in the book, I could tell the writer understood his subject and it was so much more interesting and captivating than receiving information about music the author learned by looking something up first.

The story 
seamlessly jumps between Bern and Eboni’s present-day pursuit of the truth and Delaney and Josephine’s tragic story from decades before. Although the mystery is taut and the characters engaging, what makes the book sing is how it makes audible the chords that echo between present and past, coming together to create a consonant harmony. The way Josephine, a disenfranchised Black woman, has her innate talent used and abused under the guise of “being helped” by Delaney is a counterpoint to Bern’s slow and demoralizing realization that the foundation sees him as nothing more than a means to an end. Both believe their pure love of music will allow them to soar, and both end up smashing painfully into the glass ceiling of white supremacy (Cole).

Symphony of Secrets has a satisfying, if not improbable, ending. It is followed by an author's note where Slocumb asks his audience to ponder the probability that this kind of thing happened a lot in our past. Black authors, musicians, artists having their works diminished or appropriated by Whites. And now their works are lost forever to time. Perhaps it is still happening today. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

At 448 pages in length, Symphony of Secrets was my 6th book read for Big Book Summer Challenge, completed the last day of the challenge, September 2nd.


-Anne
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Monday, September 2, 2024

TTT: Food in Books

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Food in Books

Apparently I don't read a lot of "foodie" books but I do recall food/eating/food prep/searching for food in these books:

1. Crying in the H-Mart by Michelle Zauner
  •  A memoir about a Korean American girl whose mother dies before she can teach her how to prepare her favorite Korean dishes. She has to rely on her aunts and YouTube videos to learn how to cook.
2. Relish: My Life In the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
  • A graphic food-oriented memoir. I learned how to cook mushrooms from this book.  
3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • A  novel set in a post-apocalyptic time when a father and son spend their last days searching for food. At one point they find a can of coke stuck in a vending machine. It is a rare treat.
4. The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
  • Set on the Korean island of Jeju where women dive in the cold water off the coast for sea creatures which they will sell or eat.
5. The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
  • Set in Vietnam in the past century. There were many moments of deprivation but when food was available it was cooked with care and described in details.
6. Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
  • A food critic, who is dying, shares some of his memories of fantastic meals he's eaten in this novel set in France.
7. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
  • A Pride and Prejudice retelling which includes a chef who specializes in Indian cuisine and a character who loves his cooking. The descriptions of the food and its prep made me hungry.
8. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
  • Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1960s, finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary.
9. The Martian by Andy Weir
  • Astronaut Mark Watney is left behind on Mars. He has to grow potatoes to survive. While he waits for them to grow he eats the packaged food left behind.
10. Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slcumb
  • In this musical, murder mystery the two protagonists like to search the five boroughs of New York City to find the best slice of pizza.

-Anne
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End of Summer. How'd I do on my challenges?


I joined two summer reading challenges:
1. Big Book Summer Challenge
and
2. 20 Books of Summer


Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Sue at Book by Book.
Sue has been hosting this challenge for over a decade and I've been participating for nearly that long. This year I commited to reading at least three big books -- over 400 pages -- before the challenge ended on September 2nd. But instead I managed to cram in six!

Here are my big books:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel -- 653 pages. 🗸
The Women by Kristin Hannah -- 480 pages 🗸
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev -- 481 pages  🗸
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed -- 400 pages 🗸
The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller -- 403 pages 🗸
Symphony of Secrets Brendan Slocomb -- 448 pages 🗸

..............................................................................


20 Books of Summer hosted by Cathy at 746
Simple concept. After making a list of books one wants to read, read them. Ends Sept 1st. (Big books read will count toward this challenge, too!)

The 20+ I read this summer:
1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 🗸
2. The Women by Kristin Hannah 🗸
3. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev  🗸
4. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler 🗸
5. The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez 🗸
6. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 🗸
7. Wandering Star by Tommy Orange 🗸
7. The Collectors by A.S. King 🗸
8. Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan 🗸
9. Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy 🗸
10. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips 🗸
11. North Woods by Daniel Mason 🗸
12. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 🗸
13. Tenth of December by George Saunders 🗸
14. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro 🗸
15. The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka 🗸
16. The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea 🗸
17. Gather by Kenneth Cadow -- currently reading.
18. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 🗸
19. Bee Sting by Paul Murray Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed 🗸
20. Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott  🗸
21. The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos 🗸
22. Rereadings by Anne Fadiman 🗸
23. A Song for Achilles by Madeline Miller 🗸
24. Symphony of Secrets Brendan Slocomb 🗸

I finished all but two of the original books I placed on the list except Bee Sting, which I DNF'd and Gather which I am currently reading, plus an additional five titles.

-Anne
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