RULES:
Thursday, August 28, 2025
YA Review: SONG OF A BLACKBIRD (+Friday56 LinkUp)
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Classic Review: CANDIDE
"Once upon a time in Westphalia, in the castle of Monsieur the Baron von Thunder-ten-tronckh, there lived a young boy on whom nature had bestowed the gentlest of dispositions. His countenance expressed his soul. He combined solid judgment with complete openness of mind; which is the reason, I believe, that he was called Candide." (Opening lines of Candide)
This is the story of the illegitimate Candide, who is exiled from the castle where he lived because he kissed the hand of Cunégonde, the daughter of the Baron. In exile he is conscripted into the army of the King of Bulgars, followed by a series of catastrophes wherever he goes: from Europe to South America, Africa, Asia, and back to Europe. He is whipped, beat up, hung and left for dead. Everywhere he goes he encounters wars, or earthquakes, or Inquisitions. Yet, through it all he is guided by the philosophy of his mentor Dr. Pangloss, that he lives "in the best of all possible worlds." The book's subtitle comes from this philosophy -- Optimism. This is really a witty, fast-paced, absurd adventure, at least on the surface.
Candide's author, Voltaire, was one of the most significant French philosophers of the Enlightenment.
At the dawn of the eighteenth-century Age of Reason, Voltaire was part of a revolution in intellectual ferment with such thinkers as Descartes, Newton, Montesquieu, John Locke, and Benjamin Franklin upending centuries-old views of the universe, human rights, religious authority, and the concept of absolute monarchy (Davis, 48).
The tale is much more than a silly action-packed romp around the world, but a philosophical statement about all every sacred cow of Voltaire's day: the church, priesthood, royalty, government, aristocracy, philosophers, and scientists. He even went after the slave trade. Remember this was written in 1759! Even though a classic, the book is not stuffy. It is a timeless satire which can speak to us today.
"I think Candide is a lesson in the absurd, a demonstration of the difficulties of making sense of life, of all philosophies, of living a meaningful life," said Nicholas Cronk, director of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford, "...and that is why the book goes on speaking to us, and goes on making us laugh (50).
I admit I missed most of this until my husband, who was listening to the Candide audiobook with me, set me straight. People who read the book and focus only on the silliness will likely tire of it before too long. But if one changes their focus and pays attention to who and what is being skewered one can easily find modern day counterparts to these 18th century problems. Once Don pointed this out to me, I got it. Think about how some church leaders today seek power so much they are willing to abandon core principles of the faith to fit the politics of the day; or how people in power want more money for themselves and their friends so they scapegoat the little guy -- kicking people off Medicaid or deporting immigrants -- to show how tough they are; or people who have no values themselves yet cling to whatever nonsense they hear on TV. We are living through Candide all over again. What's the old adage? Those who fail to learn history are condemned to repeat it.
Source: Davis, Kenneth C. "Candide, or Optimism -1759 - Voltaire." Great Short Books: A Year of Reading--Briefly. Scribner, 2022, pp. 45-51.
Monday, August 25, 2025
TTT: Favorite National Park Memories
Glacier National Park, Montana June 2025 So many memorable moments but our tour with the whole family on the Red Bus was a highlight. A book I read in June 2025: Raising Hare: a Memoir by Chloe Dalton |
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Yosemite National Park, California July 2012. (I took a photo of a photo so I could include this marvelous park.) My parents planned a family reunion for a few days after our daughter's wedding. We were exhausted, obviously, but also exhilarated. My younger sister and her family opted to do some hiking while my older sister and her hubby joined us for a bus tour of Yosemite which really paid off. We got to take photos at all the key spots, like Half Dome behind us, without the hassle of having to find parking. The bus driver was also a tour guide and we learned a ton about the park and about the National Park system in general. We were there for such a short time. I definitely want to go back, especially in early spring when they have frazil ice. A book I read in July of 2012: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern |
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Sunday Salon -- Preparing for Grand-Adventure 2.0
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Grand-Adventure 1.0, June 2022. |
- TTT: Help Getting Out of A Reading Slump
- Review: When the Moon Hits Your Eye
- Encouragement for My Daughter: Teaching with Fire
- Four Short Book Reviews: The Deep Dark; A River Runs Through It; Road Home; Now in November
- TTT: The Longest Books I've Read in 2025 So Far
- Classic Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Review: The Emperor of Gladness
- Review and quotes: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
- The Vegetarian by Han
- The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Magnusson
- The Serviceberry by Kimmerer
- Song of the Blackbird by Lieshout
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Jealous? Can you believe our bounty? |
Friday, August 22, 2025
Review and quotes: SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH
“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.”
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
The sign read:
"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion."
“It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
“There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.
"'Make 'em dry,' is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, `make 'em rubbery.' If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing 'em once a week.'
"It is by eating sandwiches in pubs on Saturday lunchtimes that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They're not altogether clear what those sins are, and don't want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever their sins are they are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat.”
“It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere.”This is the fourth book in the series. I have managed to really spread out my reading over the years, not intentionally, but every time I read the next books in the series I wonder why I haven't zoomed thru the series in one fell swoop. Here is my schedule to date:
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) -- read March 2011, reread in Sept. 2017
- The Restaurant at the End of the World (1980) -- read May 2020
- Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982) -- read September 2023
- So Long, and Thanks for the Fish (1984) -- read August 2025
- Mostly Harmless (1992) -- TBD
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Review: THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS (+Discussion Questions)
The hardest thing in the world is to live only once.
When the tour was over, Hai followed BJ into the office, which was the size of a large porta-potty.
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. (Publisher)
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Classic Review: WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE
“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and *Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death- cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”
*A reclusive relative of England's Richard the III.