Sunday Salon -- Remembering Dolly!

Weather: It is raining (Saturday) and all prayers are going out that this rain is for real, not the kind that delivers a few drops of water here and lightning east of the mountains causing more wildfires. 

Dolly Parton: I, like the rest of the world, am in shock that Dolly is gone. All week I've been listening to her music and watching and reading tributes to her. Today I dedicate my post to her.

Dolly in concert: My husband and I went to a Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers concert in Tacoma on New Year's Eve 1988. We went with some precious friends, Charmaine and Bill, who came into our lives during a time when we needed family nearby and didn't have that. They stood in as foster grandparents to our newborn daughter. They loved her and we loved them for it. Anyway, the four of us went to see Dolly and Kenny and had such a good time. Of course, it being New Year's Eve, the concert was supposed to end with the stars singing Auld Lang Syne at midnight. The program ended before midnight and Dolly and Kenny tried to draw it out as long as they could, singing several unplanned songs trying to reach the magical hour. It is a fun, happy memory. This week I learned that Dolly truly loved Kenny Rogers and considered him one of her best friends. It was obvious to me that the two really liked each other. "You never know how much you love somebody until they're gone." --Dolly on the death of Kenny Rogers

On looks: “I’m not offended by all of the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know that I’m not blonde.”  and “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”-- Dolly Parton

On positivity: “You have to work at being happy. Some people work at being miserable. If I wake up in the morning and don’t feel great or things are not great, I try to think about what I can do to make things work better, rather than just falling into that deep hole, because then you just go deeper and deeper.” -- Dolly Parton

In 2020, Dolly kicked up a fuss by admitting she supported the Black Lives Matter movement:

“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” --Dolly Parton

On her music: “I think in a way, my music has been almost like my ministry. Hopefully, it’s healing in some ways, just having a good sense of humor to be able to lift people up, to have songs that people can relate to.”--Dolly Parton

On relationships: “I was blessed to have family members who encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Whether it is your parents, or your uncles or your aunts or even the neighbor down the road, it’s important that kids have someone who encourages them to chase their rainbow.” --Dolly Parton

On same-sex marriage: “I think everyone should be with who they love. I don’t want to be controversial or stir up a bunch of trouble, but people are going to love who they are going to love. I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals.” --Dolly Parton

From her 1991 song "Family": 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮 "Some are preachers, some are gay, some are addicts, drunks and strays / But not a one is turned away when it's family." 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Dolly Parton’s imagination library: a book gifting program that sent hundreds of millions of books to kids across the country. It was a simple, profoundly generous act. "Elected officials spend their careers in the business of improving people’s lives and do far less. Our modern-day elites devote their fortunes to rockets for themselves. We need more Dolly Partons in our lives these days, which is why it was so painful to hear that the one we had passed away." -Daily Bulwark. So far her Imagination Library has gifted over 325 million books to children, ages 0-5 years old, in five countries. These books may be the only books they ever own, but just imagine what a thrill to receive a package every month addressed to you with your name inside the cover! In this day and age of people trying to ban books, here was Dolly give them away no strings attached!

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.” --Dolly Parton on her Imagination Library project

"He's Alive! by Don Francisco, sung by Dolly Parton

"As my mama always said, ' I hope this is a blessing to you.'" --Dolly Parton

(Ignore the closed captioning. It is completely goofy. Or, pay attention to the closed captioning and have a good laugh.)

"In a world where we can't agree on anything, we all agreed on Dolly" -- the NYT

Books and blogging:

• Books I read in August, click on hyperlink to see my review:
• The Book Woman from Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson -- based on historical people, the blue people from Kentucky, and the horseback librarians who delivered library books to the people in Appalachia under FDR's Public Works Administration projects of the 1930s. Well done. 4.5 stars.
• Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald -- A man searches for himself as he discovers he was part of the Kindertransport from Prague to Wales before WWII. My rating: 3.5 stars
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: A Graphic Adaptation by James Loewen, illustrated by Nate Powell. Oh man, so many lies or partial truths. 4 stars.
• The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov -- A family cannot face the fact they no longer have any money and must sell their beloved cherry orchard. Chekov's last play and his best. 4 stars.
• Country People by Daniel Mason -- An academic and her family move from California to Vermont expecting to meet country people and ways. Quite funny. 4 stars.
• Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe -- A twelve-year-old girl's view of life in the projects as they are overrun by drugs and gang violence. 4 stars
• The Astral Library by Kate Quinn -- The astral library is a portal to sanctuaries within books. So fun and quotes about the value of  libraries abounded. 4.25 stars
• Land by Maggie O'Farrell -- A mapmaker and his family and particular plot of magical land in Ireland. I enjoyed this but it wasn't an easy read. 4 stars.
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai -- Two post college students from India experience loneliness in the US. Crammed full of stories and Indian culture. This book is long and scattered and took me two months to read but it was worth the effort. 4.5 stars.

• Books I'm currently reading:
• The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki -- a favorite author and a new form. I am enjoying the short stories very much.
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse -- I am beginning this book today for my Classics Club Spin selection of the season.
• The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie -- from our church library. The book is a blessing and it is about blessings!

• Blog posts in the second half of August:
• Books that Make Me Feel Uncomfortable for all the Right Reasons
• Sunday Salon, August 16th -- Sorority sisterhood!
• TTT: Books Series I'd Like to Catch Up On
• TTT: Bookish Places I've Visited
• Summer's End: How I Did on My Summer Challenges

See this and other editorial cartoon in tribute to Dolly at The Week

Prayers:

• for a friend Carol who lost her beloved husband yesterday.
• that we may all be more dolly-like in the future!

-Anne

Summer's End: How I did on my reading challenges

How Did I do on All my Summer Challenges?

20 Books of Summer is one of the longest-running events in the book blogosphere and is so low-pressure, a perfect reading challenge for summer months. Here are the details. The #20BOS26 challenge runs from Monday June 1st to Monday August 31st. It is hosted by AnnaBookBel

I read 31 books this summer, exceeding my goal.

Some of my favorites (in no particular order):

1. The Stranger / Camus.

2. Angel Down / Kraus

3. The Astral Library / Quinn

4. Kin / Jones

5. This Land is Your Land / Gage

6. Land  / O'Farrell

7. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny / Desai 

8. Whistler / Patchett

9. Enormous Wings / Frankel

10. Year of Wonders / Burton-Hill

Sue Jackson of Book by Book hosts a Big Book Summer Reading Challenge.

The Details: Anything 400 pages or more qualifies as a big book.
The challenge runs from the Friday of Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

I read 5 big books this summer and made a good stab at one other (3/4th of way through)

The books are:

1.  Land  / O'Farrell (400 pages)

2. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny / Desai  (671 pages)

3. Year of Wonders / Burton-Hill  (416 pages)

4. The Warmth of Other Suns / Wilkerson (640 pages)

5. Austerlitz / Sebald  (415 pages)

GOODREADS SUMMER CHALLENGE

I finished all eleven summer challenges for Goodreads with time to spare.

3rd quarter (Summer, July thru September 14th)

• Page-Turner -- Read two books during challenge period (July 5)
• Speed Reader -- Read three books during challenge period (July 8)
• Book Boss -- Read five books during challenge (July 10)
• Community 90s Picks -- Brokeback Mountain by E. Annie Proulx (July 10)
• Challenge Favs -- The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (August 4)
• Chart Toppers -- Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (July 3)
• Staff Shelves -- Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel (July 8)
• Worlds Away -- Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (July 3)
• Fact or Fiction -- Land by Maggie O'Farrell (August 4)
• Literally Summer - Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe (August 10)
• Summer Encore - Land by Maggie O'Farrell (August 4)

FAMILY SUMMER LICENSE PLATE GAME

Not a bookish challenge. Every summer my family attempts to find all fifty states' license plates. We do this from Memorial Day to Labor Day, end of May to beginning of September.

This year we saw our last plate, Mississippi, as we were driving past Mt. Hood on the road to Central Oregon. It was the the last week in July. Woot. Woot. We hardly ever find all fifty of the plates but our trip in the early summer to Yellowstone was a big help in finding them.

-Anne

Review: COUNTRY PEOPLE (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Country People by Daniel Mason

Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary: Kate has been offered a one year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, who has never quite finished his dissertation on Russian folktales in the twelve years since he started working on it, looks at the move as a chance to finally get going on it again. The kids, Wesley, age 12, and Olive, age nine, are along for the adventure.

But when they get to Vermont, Miles finds lots of things to distract him from his dissertation: helping a colleagues husband in his orchard, being a parent volunteer at Olive' school, figuring out how to fix everything that keeps breaking down in the rental house, ski lessons, and getting to know a cast of characters as colorful as folks in his fairytales. Then Miles runs into a local very bizarre legend which seems circumstances lead to a conclusion that it might not be a legend at all, possibly true.

"Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world" (Publisher).

Review: Kate and Miles are from California where they both worked at a large university in an urban setting. Moving to Vermont is almost like moving to another country for them and meeting the folks who live in Vermont (country people) is almost like learning about a new culture from them. Miles, as you have probably guessed, never does get to work on his dissertation, but he sure has a magical year with his new friends and his family.

My husband is from a rural town in Eastern Oregon. I, on the other hand, grew up in a city and have never lived in a rural setting. The drive to visit his parents involved driving through lots of little towns along the way. One time as we drove through one of those little towns, Don tuned in the radio to a local station. The news of the area came on. There was an announcement of who had anniversaries that week and then they named folks who were galloneers -- people who had donated at least a gallon of blood (over time, of course) at the local blood bank. I was charmed. Don laughed and told me that was the same thing they did in his town. In case you are wondering the connection, part of Country People involves a weekly radio programs with a DJ who always has a topic but has a hard time keeping the callers from going off topic. 

When we go back to Don's hometown now, he always sees people he knows -- a friend of his brother's, a Sunday School teacher, a person he swam with, a gal who played bridge with his mother -- here in the "big" city we rarely bump into people we know. This dawned on Miles, too, and at some point he came to expect and enjoy bumping into the same people over and over.

I was a huge fan of Mason's book North Woods, published in 2024. It wasn't a terribly serious book but it was certainly more serious than Country People so I wasn't expecting the silly situations and corny humor. At first I was put off by it but then I relaxed into the story and found myself laughing along with it. At one point there was a tiny bit of tension and I realized this was NOT the type of book where something awful would happen. I was right. It didn't. My rating: 4 stars.

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Note: Gillion of Rose City Reader is retiring soon from hosting Book Beginnings. And I've been wondering if it is time to retire Friday56, too. There seems to be so little interest based on the shrinking number of participants and the low number of comments made on each other's blogs, including mine.  I'm willing to stick with it for a while if you think you want to continue. Let me know what you think.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Bookish Places I've Visited

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Places I've Visited (or Plan to Visit)

Have visited:

The Strahov Monastery Library in Prague, Czech Republic.

Make Way for Duckings sculpture by Nancy Schön in Boston Common Garden celebrating the children's book: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

Winnie-the-Pooh original stuffed animals on display in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York City Public Library.

'The Art of Eric Carle' exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Home to over 420,000 rare books and seven million documents.

Juliet sculpture in Verona, Italy.

"Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

-Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

221b Baker Street, London, home of Sherlock Holmes.
Actually it is a fictitious address.

Franz Kafka sculpture in Prague, Czech Republic, the author of The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.

Chincoteague, Virginia
We visited the island to see the horses because our daughters were crazy for the Marguerite Henry book, Misty of Chincoteague.

The Mark Twain Cabin.
Located on Jackass Hill, near Angels Camp, California. Supposedly this is where Twain wrote his short story, during the winter of 1864-5, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." We bumped into this historic landmark on our way back from Yosemite National Park. The gate was locked and the fence you see above was covered with little stuffed frogs of all shapes and sizes and they were also hung from the tree branches. It was very tacky!

Plan to Visit:

(We are heading to the UK in a few weeks)

Jane Austen Festival , Bath, England.
Austen book set in Bath: Persuasion.

Hill Top House, home of Beatrix Potter, author of Peter Rabbit, Sawrey (Lake District), England.

Culloden Battlefield in Scotland, featured in the book by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander.

Stratford-Upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare.
We have tickets to see "As You Like It" while we are there.

I look forward to reading other TTT posts for new ideas for bookish places to visit in the future.

-Anne

Review: LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Lies My Teacher Told  Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong: A Graphic Adaptation by James W. Loewen and Nate Powell

Summary: In the 1990s James W. Loewen, an American History Professor, published Lies My Teacher Told Me. It was highly regarded, winning both praise and awards. Now in this edition, published in 2024, Loewen has partnered with graphic artist Nate Powell to bring the original back to life with updated information and fantastic illustrations.

Using several American History textbooks currently in use as his examples, Loewen points out why American students are so bored by the subject and find nothing within these textbooks to inform their current situations. Dividing the book into twelve themed chapters he makes a case for truth and honesty about our past and giving students the tools to examine our past to inform our futures.

With the help of one illustration per chapter I shall attempt to summarize the book. Obviously this is just a tiny piece of the book and I encourage you to read it for yourself.

The introduction is very uncomplimentary to the teaching of US history. "History is the only field in which the more courses students take the stupider they become." Ouch. Yet, of all subjects it is the most dependent on textbooks.

 

Ch. 1, American Heroes -- Loewen starts off with a bang. He talks about how we make people into heroes (Betsy Ross, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller) without teaching anything about these individuals and what they actually did to deserve our attention. I proved his point when I had a conversation with an adult not long ago and ask why was Helen Keller an American Hero. The person replied "because she was deaf and blind yet she learned to read and write." That is all we know about her. Not that she was a remarkable person concerned about inequality and how impoverished persons did not have access to health care and other services she had at her avail. She spoke out publicly and wrote about these types of issues. 

Ch. 2, The True Importance of Christopher Columbus -- Up until recently we have made Columbus a hero by saying he discovered America. This idea completely discounts Indigenous people that lived here. It also makes him into a hero even though he was very ruthless in his approach to these people. When we removed Columbus Day or renamed it to Indigenous People's Day many celebrated, but some insist of that Columbus is a hero and think his holiday should be restored.

Ch. 3, The First Thanksgiving. We like to think that colonists and Indigenous folks held hands and enjoyed peace right from the start. Unfortunately this is far from the truth.

Ch. 4, Read Eyes -- Deciding who is civilized and who is not based on a Euro-Centric notion. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America is our ORIGNIAL SIN." -Sol Tax, anthropologist.

Ch 5, The Invisibility of Racism in textbooks -- This amounts to early forms of anti-woke publishing. Because something is bad, will make people feel uncomfortable, or controversial, leave it out. Ch 6, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln -- John Brown, a white man who was killed for trying to save slaves has gone through a revisionist history. He is portrayed a mentally ill in the textbooks rather than a man who was very concerned about the way slavery considered Black people as subhuman. Don't like something a person does or says? They must be crazy.

Ch. 7, the Land of Opportunity for some -- Though we tell each other we are a classless society that is not true. "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons -- a very much larger class of necessity in every society -- to forego the privilege of liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific manual tasks." Woodrow Wilson. Oh boy, are we ever living through this today with Trump politics.

Ch. 8, What the Federal Government is doing and has done -- We hold ourselves up as good paragons of justice in the world, yet reading the above examples, one has to wonder. "As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything." - Malcolm X. Think about the way we recently bombed Iran. For what?

Ch. 9, The Vietnam War -- Most textbooks spend about as much coverage of the Vietnam War as they do covering the War of 1812. Why? Because we didn't win this war so we can't tell ourselves we were heroes?

Ch. 10, Ignoring the recent past -- What can be learned by studying the Civil Rights Movement, 9-11, the War in Iraq, climate change, pandemics, or the impact of A.I? A ton!

Ch. 11, History and the future -- Shouldn't we study the past to help inform our future? That isn't what most should textbooks do?

Ch. 12, Does this way of teaching work? Imagine being a student today and getting ahold of this book in your school library. You read it as your teacher is following the curriculum as set by the textbook. Wouldn't you be angry as you notice the book skips climate change, says next-to nothing about the Black Lives Matter movement, glorifies Betsy Ross who really didn't make the American flag, downplays George Washing and Thomas Jefferson's owning of slave, etc.?

Afterward: Honestly, don't we want a citizenry that knows how to learn and to think for themselves. Shouldn't that be the goal of education?

Review: "Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should red this book." - Howard Zinn. I feel the same way. Unfortunately, the book is also quite overwhelming. Most of the points I was aware of, but not all. I had a really terrible experience in high school and didn't even take an American history class, somehow escaping it in the experimental 1970s. So I didn't realize to what extent information was altered or left out of textbooks. I knew Christopher Columbus wasn't a hero, yet I hadn't realized what a tyrant he was, for example. As I read each chapter I found myself angry and angrier so I had to read slowly and take breaks. I even had to skim some of the chapters just to save my sanity. I've been working on this book almost all summer. But I finished and I still want everyone to read it. My rating of 4 stars reflects the value of the book and how difficult I found it digest.

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Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Book series I'd like to catch up on

Top Ten Tuesday: Book series I'd like to catch up on

1. The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
I've read the first two books and purchased the third and fourth. This is high on my list of series to finish.

2. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
My hubby and I listened to the first book and my mother gave me the second book in the series. I hope to read on and finish this series before year's end.

3. The Harlem Trilogy by Colson Whitehead
The third book just came out but I haven't read the second book yet. My husband liked the first book very much so we may try to listen to the last two books this fall as we drive to Eugene for football games.

4. The Amgash series by Elizabeth Strout
I read four of these books out of order (1,4,3,5) all I have left is #2, Anything is Possible, which seems like an an appropriate title for this project.

5. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy by Douglas Adams
The funniest book ever written has a joke for its readers -- a trilogy is made up of five books! I still haven't read the fifth book, Mostly Harmless. When I need something very lighthearted I will seek this one out.

6. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
There are 41 novels in this series. I've read the first and the last and maybe six or seven in between. I want to keep reading but get overwhelmed at the enormity of the task. Which book to read next? What are your favorites from the series?

7. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I've read and loved The Shadow of the Wind #1 in the series. I've read The City of Mist, #5. I own The Angel Game, #2. I at least want to read that book.

That's all I can think of at the moment

-Anne