Review: THE FROZEN RIVER (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Book Beginnings quote:

Friday56 quote (from page 42):

Summary:

A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own. (Publisher)

Review: Back in 1996 my book club read A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 by Louise Thatcher Ulrich. I was completely captivated by this book and the account of an actual American midwife, practicing in the early years of our country in what is now the State of Maine. A Midwife's Tale was so well done it won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991, the year after it was published.  The book made a BIG impression on me. Barely a week goes by that I don't think of something I learned from it. So imagine my delight when I learned a book being considered for our book club, The Frozen River, was a novel about Martha Ballard. I'd be meeting an old friend after almost thirty years!

Though The Frozen River is essentially a murder mystery -- Who killed Joshua Burgess? -- it also is a book about what life was like for women in the late 1700s. Martha Ballard was unique in that she could read and write. Historians have used her journals (three decades worth) to better understand the lives of colonial, frontier life of women. Her journal played a central role in a rape trial as the lawyers were able to authenticate the truth of the statements made by the victim based on her entries. In addition, Ballad recorded the births she attended (over 1000), the autopsies she witnessed (85), and the herbs she used to treat ailments. Midwives were often called before courts to report on their findings about the paternity of children born out of wedlock. In 1789, the journal (and Martha Ballard) were instrumental in providing testimony in the trial of Colonel North, which was a central theme of this novelization of the actual events.

In the afterward, author Ariel Lawhon talked about her research process, where she stuck to the available facts and where she deviated to make the story more cohesive or, dare I say, exciting. One of these "exciting bits" was a little over-the-top for me thus I reduced my rating down to a 4.75 out of 5 stars. But I admit to splitting hairs at that point. I really do highly recommend The Frozen River and then if you'd like to know more, A Midwife's Tale.

Book Club Discussion questions for The Frozen River.

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

Classic review: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel in 1919. At the time Tarkington was considered one of America's best novelists and was often compared to Mark Twain. Tarkington was from Indiana and The Magnificent Ambersons story could have been taken from his own family's fall from fame. Though he was very popular when he was alive, publishing over 45 books and  25 plays, he did not remain popular after his death. By the middle of the twentieth century "he was ignored in academia: no congresses, no societies, no journals of 'Tarkington Studies'." In 1985 he was used as the example of the disparity of a writer's fame while alive compared to their oblivion after death.  Fortunately for Mark Twain, no one is comparing the two authors today.

In a nutshell, The Magnificent Ambersons was a story of three generations of Ambersons and their declining fortunes. Major Amberson makes a fortune after the Civil War and sets himself up in what is probably Indianapolis (it is never named in the book) where he builds a big mansion on a huge estate and sets about naming parks and statues after himself. The time period of the novel, between the war and the beginning of the 20th Century is a time of great industrialization and the Ambersons just aren't nimble enough to invest in the future and change with the times. They are still stuck in the past when a person's name, Amberson, was more important than what work one did. As one of George Amberson's friend says, "Don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

George Amberson Minafer, the Major's grandson, is a complete brat and ill-equipped for the industrial life of the 20th Century and he is the last of the Ambersons to survive and he becomes a witness to the demise of the family fortune, forcing him to work to pay his bills. Honestly he was such a brat I found myself almost cheering when he was forced to move from the family mansion to a small apartment where his only activity outside of work was walking since he still scorned the new-fangled automobiles popping up everywhere. The best part of the book was the first chapter which was a riff on what life was like for those with money:

Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog. In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or evening supper. 

Outside of the first chapter I admit I didn't care for the book which I rated with 3 stars. Just because a book won the Pulitzer Prize, I am finding, it doesn't mean the book will age well. And The Magnificent Ambersons has not aged well. (I can't even imagine anyone in 1919 liking it.) It is interesting to think about what life was like during this time period, however, and I found myself thinking of my grandparents. My grandfather was born in 1889 and my grandmother in 1892. They were both alive during the time period of this book. Of course neither of them lived around opulent wealth but they both witnessed the advent of cars, planes, radios, air-conditioning, phones (I think), television, electricity, indoor plumbing. (See list here.) Imagine a life without these things. I never gave my grandparents credit for living through such huge changes without becoming sticks-in-the-mud like George Amberson Minafer. Even my parents, who were both born in the late 1920s lived through many, many changes. My mom remembers the ice man delivering ice for their ice box, and my dad talked about pranks they played concerning outhouses. It is a minor miracle that my mom, age 96, can manage email just fine, even if texting is outside her skill set.

 

Even though I didn't love The Magnificent Ambersons I am glad I read it. It gave me so much to think about related to changes during the industrial revolution and life during the early period of my grandparents' lives.

-Anne

TTT: Books That Involve Travel

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Involve Travel

Trying to keep up with my resolve to only list books I've read, this list may contain some unlikely suspects. Let me explain....

1. Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad -- After two and a half years of battling cancer the author plans a road trip to visit some of the people whose letters gave her hope and sustenance while she was sick. The trip was over 10,000 miles long. (Memoir, 2021)

2. The Not Quote States of America: Dispatches from the Territories and Other Far-Flung Outposts of the USA by Doug Mack. Mack visits all US Territories: Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Marianas Island and reports what life is like in these territories. (Nonfiction, 2017)

3. Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. Brooks travels from her home in Massachusetts to a small island off the coast of Australia where she stays to do the grief work she needs to do after the death of her husband. (Memoir, 2025)

4. The Ministry of Time by Kalianne Bradley. Characters are retrieved from history and brought to the present day (which is our future.) They didn't choose the travel. Big time adjustments were needed when they were plucked from their time. (Science Fiction. 2024)

5. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. The Optimist's daughter, Laurel, travels from her home in Chicago to her childhood home in Mount Salus, Mississippi via New Orleans. She is there to tend to her father's affairs after his death. (Literary fiction, 1972)

6. The Book of Doors by Garth Brown. The holder of the book of doors can time travel from one door to another anywhere in the world or in time. (Science Fiction, 2024)

7. Orbital by Samantha Harvey. The travelers in this novel are in the International Space Station orbiting the earth 16 times a day. (Fiction, 2023)

8. The Great Divide by Cristina Hernandez. Characters travel from all over the world to help build the Panama Canal. Two of those characters featured in the story travel are from Barbatos and from Kansas. (Fiction, 2024)

9. The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright. Nell McDaragh must leave her home in Ireland and travel the world in order to find herself. (Literary fiction, 2023)

10.  West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. Two giraffes are transported by truck across the country from New York harbor to San Diego, California. It is the 1930s and the Great Depression and this is no easy task to transport these tall animals by truck. Based on actual events. (Fiction, 2021)

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- May!

Weather: a mixed bag: Sunny and lovely one minute, overcast and light rain the next. Right this moment (Saturday evening) it is lovely, with temperatures quite cool for this time of year.

This weekend: Sunday we will attend a concert of the Northwest Repertory Singers. Our daughter is a soprano in the choir and we always enjoy the concerts so much. Often the music is on a theme and includes songs we aren't familiar with or at least arranged differently. Afterwards the family will gather for a birthday dinner for Don, who is now as old as I am. I am posting a shortened Sunday Salon today since I will be busy all day tomorrow.

An artsy view of the front of Mom's church in Eugene (1st United Methodist)

Last weekend: We were in Eugene with my mother for Mother's Day. All week long I've been floating around, thinking how lovely our visit was. I know I am blessed to still have my mother. I treasure every moment with her.

Another blessing: We had lunch with my cousin and his wife this week. She is recovering from brain surgery and seems to be doing well. The marvels of modern medicine and the answer to prayers.

Books:

• Currently reading:
• Be Ready When the Luck Happens: a Memoir by Ina Garten. This year has been unusual. This is tenth memoir I've read this year. I ordinarily will read one or two. But ten. What has gotten into me. I was attracted to this book because a. I love the advice so simply highlighted in the title, and b. I have one of her cookbooks and every recipe has worked. Audio, read by the author. 20% complete.
• Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang. My daughter, Carly, turned me on to the monthly challenges on Goodreads, which I didn't even know existed. Now I'm all about finishing them in the alloted period of time. One current challenge is to read a book by Asian authors. A set list of books is provided. This graphic novel, by a favorite author/illustrator, was on both the list and my TBR. YA. e-Book. 52% complete. 
• Completed this week:
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. The 1919 Pulitzer Prize winner. I didn't care for the story or for the characters but it did make me think about all the changes my grandparents lived through. Review pending. e-book. 3 stars.
• The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. A fictional story about  actual, historical people, Martha Ballard and her family. I read her journal, A Midwife's Tale, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1991, so it was fun to visit this person again in a fictional novel based on her life. A book club selection. Review pending.Audio. Rating: 4.75
• Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver. Love this poet and her work. Print. Rating: 4 stars.
• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. Set in The Netherland in the early 1960s, just 15 years after the end of WWII but the trauma of the holocaust on its citizen is not healed. On the 2025 Women's Prize shortlist. Review pending. Audio. Rating: 4 stars.

Blogging, posts and reviews from the past two weeks (click on links to read more):

• TTT: Washington State Authors
• A Little Bit of Pulitzer Drama About the Winner, James
• Classic Review: David Copperfield
• Six Degrees of Separation, from Rapture to...
• Sunday Salon: Happy Mother's Day
• TTT: Books My Mother and I Have In Common
• Three Quick Poetry Book Reviews -- Mary Oliver
• Review: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
• Summer Reading Challenges

Have a wonderful, book-full week!

-Anne

Big Books of Summer and 20 Books of Summer -- Kick-off

• The #20BooksofSummer2025 challenge runs from June 1st to August 31st
• Hosts: Annabel @AnnaBookBel and Emma @Words and Peace
• The first rule of 20 Books is that there are no real rules, other than signing up for 10, 15 or 20 books and trying to read from your TBR.
• Pick your list in advance, or nominate a bookcase to read from, or pick at whim from your TBR.
• If you do pick a list, you can change it at any time – swap books in/out.
• Don’t get panicked at not reaching your target.
• Just enjoy a summer of great reading and make a bit of space on your shelves!

I've participated in this challenge for the past ten summers or so, mainly because it keeps me on track with my reading even if I'm off chasing fun in the sun.

My list of possible reads (not a hard and fast list):

1. How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
2. The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
3. American Pastoral by Philip Roth*
4. Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller*
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
8. The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier
9. Poems for Tortured Souls by Liz Ison
10. Water, Water by Billy Collins
11. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
12. The Antidote by Karen Russell
13. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
14. Watchmen by Alan Moore
15. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
16. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
17. The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn*
18. Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea*
19. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
20. The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

I've put * next to the above books I know are longer than 400 pages, making them eligible for my second summer challenge: Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Sue at Book by Book.

The Details:
Hey, it's summer, this challenge is  ow-key and easy!

• Anything 400 pages or more qualifies as a big book.
• The challenge runs from Memorial Day weekend (starting May 26 this year through Labor Day (September 1st this year).
  
• Choose one or two or however many big books you want as your goal. Wait, did you get that?  You only need to read 1 book with 400+ pages this summer to participate! (though you are welcome to read more, if you want).
• Sign up on the first links list below if you have a blog or YouTube channel, to leave your link so others can find you. 
• No blog? No problem! Just sign up in the comments below or in the Goodreads group in the Sign-Up discussion thread if you don't have a blog or YouTube channel.

Each summer I aim to read 4 big books. Last year I read seven. One never knows what will happen over the course of a summer.

I'm gathering my lists. I'm deciding where I will start. Ready for summer.

-Anne

Review: BETWEEN TWO KINGDOMS (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Book Beginnings quote:

It began with an inch.

Friday56 quote:

"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor. “Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

Summary: In 2011 when Suleika Jaouad was 23-years-old she was diagnosed with leukemia and given just a 35% chance of survival. The next three and half years were spent receiving chemo, clinical medical trials, and a bone marrow transplant. During this time she started a blog about her experiences. It gained the attention of the NYT where she was asked to write a column about her experiences. She did so when her energy allowed it. Once all that ended Jaouad has spent 1500 days trying to survive and now that survival was achieved, she didn't know how to live going forward. After a very depressing, unfocused period, she decided to head out on a road trip to meet ten or so of the people around the country who has written her during her illness. The road trip took her all across the country and back home again, over 10,000 miles. While out on the road she found herself and found a purpose for her life.

Review: Between Two Kingdoms was published in February of 2021. I became aware of the book after watching the documentary American Symphony about the juxtaposition of what was happening for Suleika Jaouad in 2022 after her cancer had returned and that of her famous husband, Jon Batiste just as his career was taking off as if shot from a cannon. 

Reading Between Two Kingdoms after seeing the documentary, likely had a dimming effect of the book for me. I knew her cancer had returned before I opened the book. Part of the focus of the documentary is about Jaouad's second bone marrow transplant in 2022, ten years after her first transplant. Knowing those two things, I just had to google to find out how she is doing now. I learned the second transplant only held for two years. Her cancer returned toward the end of 2024. I tell you all these details just to make a point -- Between Two Kingdoms is just the beginning of the story and the main character has not reached the end of the story. It is still evolving. Clearly Jaouad is still living in the kingdom of the sick but working on ways to enhance that experience with her new book: The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for An Inspired Life. it is just published this month.

My rating 4.75 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

Three quick poetry book reviews -- Mary Oliver

I've hemmed and hawed long enough. Just say a kind word about the three poetry books by Mary Oliver, still in my possession from the library, and move on, Anne.

At one point a few years back, probably around the time that Mary Oliver died in 2019 at age 83, I added all of her poetry books, or at least the ones I hadn't read yet, to my TBR list. Many of the books weren't in my library system and when I would search for copies at used book sales, her volumes were never there. She's the most beloved poet in America, no wonder I could never find a used copy of anything by her -- everyone else wanted them, too.

This past April I decided to check to see if the neighboring library system in a nearby county had any of her books and they did. I'd already secured a library card so I could cross the line and check them out. I requested three volumes and they arrived late in April. Time ran out in the month before I got to all three of them. But now that I am finished I wonder how to adequately review them.

The three volumes are:

• Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. (Beacon Press, 2003)
• White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems. (Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994)
• Thirst: Poems. (Beacon Press, 2006)

In a lot of ways, if you have read any Mary Oliver poems, you know of her focus on nature, living things-- both wild and tame-- and God. Each of these three volumes revealed an aspect of her writing. 

In White Pine I felt a deep sadness in many of her poems. As you may know Mary Oliver had a dreadful childhood where she was sexually abused. She found solace in nature and spending time out of doors. Many of the poems in this volume felt like she was trying to find the salve in nature to heal the wounds from her past. Sometimes she succeeded, I think, as in this poem "At the Lake" where she is reflecting on the life of a fish and then these lines show a shift to self--

 At the Lake

... 

This is, I think,

what holiness is;

the natural world,

where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.

Inside every mind

there's a hermit's cave

full of light,

full of snow,

full of concentration.

I've knelt there,

and so have you,

hanging on 

to what you love,

to what is lovely.

Words one can return to again and again to remind oneself that everything will be okay. Usually Mary Oliver's poems start on some point of nature -- a tree, a bird in the pond, a toad beside the road -- but then a shift will occur and now the focus will be on the human condition, on humankind. That is why I want to keep reading, not to learn about toads, but to gain insights into myself.

Almost all of the poems and essays in the next collection, Owls and Other Fantasies. ar about, um..the obvious, birds. Even as I creaked open this volume I asked myself if I really cared enough to read a whole book full of bird poems. It was as if I hadn't read any of her other poems before to even entertain such thoughts.  The very first poem in the collection, "Wild Geese" brought me back from my negativity--

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

     love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on...

What? I was expecting geese and it opened with me and you and everyone. Geese didn't even enter the poem until the 12th line. Surprise! Not an animal poem after all.

In 2006 Mary Oliver published Thirst. It was the first poetry collection she published since the death of her life partner, Mary Malone Cook, who died in 2005. Clearly Oliver was in the throes of deep grief. Thirst is also the most spiritual of the poetry collections I've read of hers up to this point. 

Here in the poem, "The Winter Wood Arrives" the poet talks about stacking wood for winter, but underneath that task is this--

The Winter Wood Arrives

...

             How to keep warm

is always the problem,

     isn't it?

         Of course, there's love.

              And there's prayer.

I don't belittle them,

     and they have warmed me,

         but differently,

              from the heart outwards.

Imagine

     what swirls of frost will cling

         to the windows, what white lawns

              I will look out on

as I rise from morning prayers,

     as I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves...

Heartbreaking yet comforting. It is hard to read a Mary Oliver poem and not feel the tug from each direction. Try reading the poem "After Her Death" without crying, I dare you. You'll see what I mean. In it she finds comfort from small birds who are content after eating small fish. "They open their wings / so easily, and fly. So. It is still / possible."

In the deepest of grief, when it doesn't seem possible, when we find nature shows us how to go on... just spread your wings out and fly. It is possible to go on.

I hope these short reviews have encouraged you to seek out a volume of Mary Oliver's poem today!

-Anne

TTT: Books my mother and I have in common

Top Ten Tuesday: Books My Mother and I Have in Common

In honor of my mother on Mother's Day/Week 2025

1. The Poldark series by Winston Graham -- The Poldark series was on PBS back in the 1970s sometime and my mother and I were dedicated to watching it every Sunday night. Soon we started to read the books that were the inspiration for the series (both then and now). It seemed like neither of us could get enough of Ross and Demelza Poldark. It was the first time I remember reading the same book as my mother for the same reason.

2. A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey -- Back in 1978 I think this book was fairly popular and when I read it I knew my mother would love it. I remember giving it to her after highlighting some of my favorite passages. This is one of our favorite quotes from the book and we talked about it often over the years:

"My darling... I was enthralled by your description of the lovers bicycling side by side along the canals of Amsterdam, the man touching the woman's handlebar. That is an image to remember as you choose the man to accompany you on your journey through life -- two figures advancing through their own efforts, neither propelling or impeding the other, simply reaching across the space that separates them for reassuring proof of the other's presence."

3.And the Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer -- I don't even remember anything about this book except it is over 1000 pages long and my mother gave it to me to read. Maybe I was staying with my parents for a few days that summer  in the mid-1980s. I also recall sitting outside in their yard as I read it. It was the longest book I ever read until I read Les Miserables many years later.

4. Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres -- I became pretty passionate about this book when I read it in 1995. I remember talking to my mother about the book and the symbolism in it around the topic of love. One again, a quote struck me as truthful and my mother and I agreed that the symbolism of the tree roots was accurate: 

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.”

5. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver -- By the mid-1990s my mother and I were both in separate book clubs but we would frequently talk about the books we were each reading for our clubs. One day as I sat at home reading I got a call from my mother telling me she was reading a book I should read, The Poisonwood Bible. It was exactly the same book I was reading at the moment. The story is about a missionary family in the Congo. We were also a missionary family in Africa when I was growing up. As we separately read the same book we were thinking of each other.

6. The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith -- I am not sure who read it first but this series was the first book either of us read by Alexander McCall Smith and we both fell in love with him and have read many, many books by him both his books in series and his stand-alones. Just this weekend I was visiting Mom and she asked me to go through a pile of books to see if I wanted any or if I would haul them to the library for their sale for her, and I noticed a McCall Smith I hadn't read on her shelf. I snatched it up!

7. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman -- If I remember correctly, both my mom and my sister urged me to read this book in the early 2000s about Hmong immigrants who got tangled up in the US medical system to tragic results. Some of the immigrants in the story lived in the same community as my parents and sister. We all had lots of talk about related to the events highlighted in the book. I love it when books help facilitate conversations which turn out to be very meaningful.

8. American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy by Bob Welch -- Bob is a writer and journalist friend of my sister, Kathy. When he published this book in 2004 she made sure everyone in our family got a copy of it. My mother, a nurse by profession, was especially taken by the story of this Army nurse who was killed after the Normandy Invasion during WWII. We were all touched by the story, made personal by the writing of a friend.

9. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain -- I read this book about Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, in 2013. As my mother has aged she seems to appreciate receiving books from family, even ones she has read before, more than going to the library herself. Every time she knows I am coming down for a visit she reminds me that she is out of books and asks if I can bring her some. (She's 96.) I scour the library book sale shelves for inexpensive used books I've read. Recently I found the second book in the series about Hemingway's second wife, Love and Ruin. I haven't read it yet, but Mom devoured it and called me to tell me how much she liked it. Just a month ago I found a used copy of the Paris Wife to give to Mom. I know she will like it, since I loved it so much.

10. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman -- I've noticed now that Mom is in her 90th decade she likes to read books about folks who are older, too. One of her grandkids gave her the first book in the Thursday Murder Club series, where all the characters are octogenarians, and she managed to get all the rest of the books in the series from the library. I have only read the first book so far. I'm behind. Must catch up.

I am so lucky to still have a living mother who, though she is 96, can still read and take joy in discussing books. I love you, Mom!

Mom reading with her great-grandsons, fostering a family-wide love of reading.

Do you have any similar experiences with your mother, or another relative, where you have some books in common? 

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- Happy Mother's Day!

Weather in Eugene: Overcast but warm and muggy.

Happy Mother's Day: We drove down to Eugene to be with Mom for Mother's Day this year. Two of my siblings are on world trips and my youngest sister is nearing the end of her school year and is up to her eyeballs in end-of-year tasks, so we represented the family. Don and I made it to Eugene yesterday in time to attend a program and meal at her church about a mission project in Cambodia. It was heartwarming to hear the stories of how successful the children are who stick it out. After the church service this morning Don and I made a lunch for Mom and one of her friends. Menu: pork tenderloin, risotto, fresh green beans, homemade applesauce, and a tuxedo cake, not homemade.

Views from Mom's yard, inside and out.

Azaleas and rhododendrons: A few weeks ago I was all about flowering trees now I am all about flowering shrubs. Mom's yard is so lovely this time of year. She must have at least 20 of the flowering shrubs in her yard (and one blooming rose). I took the photos in her yard this morning before church. It is a little like heaven on earth sitting in her living room looking out the window. It is a very pretty time in the Pacific NW.

Books:

• Don and I are listening together to Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, a fictional story about an actual midwife, Martha Ballard, who lived in what is now Maine in the late 1700s. So well done. Audio. 53% complete.
• I am alternating reading and listening to Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, a Pulitzer Prize winner from 1919. It is my 12-page-a-day book but I'm having a hard time judging that page assignment on my e-reader. I'm nearing the midway point.
• Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver is the last of all the poetry books I checked out last month. 88% complete.
• I finished What the Chicken Knows by Sy Montgomery this past week. Now I want to raise chickens! And Thirst by Mary Oliver. This poetry collection is much more religious than her other books.
• Up next: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.

Have a lovely week!

-Anne

Six Degrees of Separation -- from RAPTURE to ...

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as all participants, add six books, and see where we all end up.

Six Degrees of Separation. We begin with

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Rapture by Emily Maguire.
I haven't read the book, but the word "rapture" is a term used by Christians to describe a future event when believers will be caught up and taken to heaven in one big time event. The word 'rapture' is not actually found in the Bible.
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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
Another book with a biblical title. Gilead is mentioned in the Old Testament and it refers to a place, the land of Gilead or Mount Gilead. In the book a father is writing letters for his young son to read when he is gone.
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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
A Black father writes letters to his teenage son about the racist world he lives in.

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Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.
This book is decidedly spiritual also. The book is about a father and his relationship with his children who are all very different from each other. It is a great favorite of mine and I've read it several times.
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The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea.
A Mexican-American family whose father, Don Antonio, named his oldest and youngest children Angel. Big Angel is hosting a birthday party for himself before he dies from a cancer that will take him soon. His siblings are all there including Little Angel. The two brothers, both Angels, haven't seen each other for a long time.
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East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
The sibling rivalry is strong in this book, an allegory of the Cain and Abel story in the Bible.
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The Brothers Karamazov (correct title) by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Another book about brothers. This particular cover is off. Even the title isn't right. It is sort of chilling and disorienting.
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Rapture by Emily Maguire.
This edition of the book, published by Sceptre, has a very chilling cover. The first cover, published by Allen and Unwin, is so lovely and this one is frightening and disorienting.

Well, I ended back where I started, but landed on a creepier cover.

If you want to give this task a try, check this website for information about the meme:

BooksAreMyFavoriteAndBest

  -Anne

-Anne