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.

__________________________________________________________

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

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.

__________________________________________________________

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

Reading books that make me feel uncomfortable for all the right reasons

I've been grappling with the criticism in some circles that being "woke" is undesirable. Why would any educated person think it's a bad idea to be aware of what others go through on a daily basis? Why is it "woke" to read about what happened to others [POC, women, children, Indigenous people ... fill in the blank] in history books or for those history textbooks to correct misinformation as new information comes to light? I've come to a recent observation that the critique comes from people who don't want to put in the work to learn about unpleasant and uncomfortable truths. 

Don and I recently finished the Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction book by Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, which examines the great migration out of southern states when six million Black Americans left their homes for locations in the North and West starting in 1915 and continuing until 1970. The book is organized around the lives of three of these migrants: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, who fled Mississippi for Chicago in 1937; George Starling, who had to leave Florida for Harlem in 1945 in fear for his life; and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of being able to use all of his medical skills in California. 

The book, published in 2010, clearly took Wilkerson years to compile. She conducted a series of extensive interviews with the three protagonists over many years so she was able to give readers a very complete profile of their lives before, during, and after they migrated. By focusing on three individual stories Wilkerson was able to show aspects of life in the South which led to the need/desire to move and the migration routes which generally followed train lines. After conducting over 1000 interviews and doing a deep dive into a broad swath of research on the migration, Wilkerson was able to dispel the many misconceptions that transplanted Blacks were more uncouth, ignorant, and impoverished than the Black people who were already in the northern cities. Extensive scholarship shows them to be more like immigrants from Europe, who arrived in the new land ready to work hard, improve their economic conditions, and ready to assimilate into their new land.

The Warmth of Other Suns wasn't an easy book to read, both Don and I agreed. The stories of terrible inequality and unfair treatment of Blacks, where ever they lived, was depressing and maddening. Typically we can listen to hours of audiobooks on long car trips without pausing. Not so with this book. The stories kept hitting us like gut punches and we would have to take breaks from listening as we digested the new information. Fortunately we were together so we could stop and talk to work through our feelings. It was hard work but we were learning and waking up. It took us over a month of listening, an hour here, an hour there for a total of 22+ hours. When we finished we both were very glad we read the book, but relieved we were done. I rated the book with 4 stars for the above reasons. Don rated the book with 4 stars for its content and 3 stars for entertainment value. Like I said, it was hard work reading this book and most people want to enjoy what they read. Isn't that fair?

A week after we finished The Warmth of Other Suns I found myself reading Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe, as part of the Goodreads Summer Challenge. It is set in the South Side of Chicago in the late 1990s during the process of dismantling the housing projects built to accommodate many of the migrant Blacks who made their way to the city in the 1930s and 40s. By the 90s people living in these projects found themselves crammed together in inhospitable conditions, beset by the crack-cocaine epidemic, and overrun by rival gangs. The story is told by a 12-year-old girl who loses all her friends, and nearly loses her brother, in this one fateful summer. It is a heartbreaking story, though the girl makes it out of the projects with help from a special teacher and her church. But like the previous book, I found reading Last Summer on State Street was hard work. It gave me an updated look at other effects of the Great Migration, too. 

I am never upset when I learn something new from a book, even if I find it difficult to read. My discomfort is, after all, helping me to become more "woke" and hopefully a better antiracist. My rating of this book was 4 stars.

Challenges: 20 books of Summer (#26 & #27); Big Book Summer (640 pages); Audiobooks with Don; and Goodreads Summer Challenge (11/11).

-Anne

Review: LAND by O'Farrell

Title: Land by Maggie O'Farrell

Book beginning/First Line Friday quote: 

His father was ever the man of a few words. Even when Liam is on the other side of the world, with a new name unfamiliar clothes, facing a committee of robed men who have come to sit in judgement of him, he will be able to recall the astonishing day that turned his father garrulous.

Friday56 quote: 

Tomás will not repent. He has nothing to repent for: he is as certain of this as he is of his own name, as he is of the orientation of magnetic north.

Summary:

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse of trees. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. (Publisher)

Review:

O'Farrell, author of Hamnet, opens her latest book with the above epigraph -- the definition of the Irish word "seanchaí". It seems to me that the author has assigned herself as the custodian of tradition and a reciter of ancient lore in her book Land. And it may explain the way that the story often uses fable-like elements even when the majority of it is very realistic. Though the story uses the omniscient 3rd person style, sometimes the point of view shifts from its human characters to dogs, the house, the land, even an unborn baby. The land looks back into prehistory and then later it zooms the story forward way past the lives of the characters in Tomás' family. these time shifts are a bit confusing.

The book begins with Liam, the oldest son in the family, looking back on the day when everything shifted for him and his family...the day his father stepped into a magical copse of trees and drank from a well he found there. This well seemed to have magical abilities and creatures one might expect to find in Celtic mythology. When Tomás, an Irishman, emerged from the forest he was a changed man, one determined to no longer work for the English by making their maps for them. But his mapmaking was how Tomás supported his family: Phina, the mother, Liam his son, daughters Enda and Rose, and an unborn son Eugene. Ultimately the episode in the copse also led Tomás to sell everything and move his family, against their wishes, out of Dublin to the lonely plot of land near the special, magical forest.

The scene from the Friday56 quote is during an attempted exorcism by a Catholic priest on Tomás. It is the first of a lifetime of disasters which befall the family, perhaps as a way to highlight Ireland's dismal history. Fortunately the book ends on a sweet, positive note, otherwise I'd say a lot of the story is very dark.

I thought the writing was beautiful and would often find myself swept up in the epic story. I also found it a tremendously hard book to read very fast. I just poked along for over a month making little progress even though I was listening to the audiobook. That is the second week in a row where I've confessed to my slow reading. Maybe it is me, not the books? My rating: 4 stars.

At 400 pages, this qualifies for Big Book Summer Challenge

-Anne

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” —Oscar Wilde

Review: THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY (+Discussion Questions)

I just finished The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. It took me two months to read and it felt like it, too. I just piddled along reading maybe ten pages a day, not feeling like I was making any progress, because I wasn't. I liked the story, in fact, I liked the story a lot. I just couldn't make myself read it. It was the oddest thing. When I discussed my problem with a nephew at a recent gathering he suggested I needed to set aside a block of time with the book so I could immerse myself in it. He also suggested trying the audiobook. I did and that did the trick. Within a few days of switching formats, I found myself completely captivated by the story. When I wasn't listening, I was wishing I was. Within a week I had finished the book -- no easy feat since the book is 670 pages long and over 26 hours of listening time. No wonder I felt like high-fiving myself when I completed it.

Oddly now that I am finished, I miss the book. Ever feel that way? It makes sense, though, for it was my constant companion for the better part of the summer. I just learned that the author, Kiran Desai, took 20 years to write the book. Gulp! In an interview with Alexandra Alter, Desai said she didn't realize how thoroughly the story would swallow her and she feared she would never finish the book. Now that it is done she feels lonely without it. "It was so much my entire world that life seems very thin on the other side of this book. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. It was my companion all these years,” she said. (NYT) I thought 2 months was a long time to be immersed in a story, just imagine living inside a story for 20 years!

The book starts in India with Sonia's grandparents and aunt, Mina Foi, discussing what the cook should make for the day's meals since the cook must go directly to the market. This begins not only to show the stark differences between Indian and American cultures but also a recurring theme of kebabs.

It was Mina's fifty-fifth birthday, the first day of December in the year 1996, and the mutton for the dinner kebabs had been marinating overnight in the kitchen. 'Rice or Roti?' Ba [grandma] shouted. She was growing deaf, but she knew she must raise her voice over the morning traffic thundering past the front gate and the cawing of hundreds of crows -- their racket and the sun's struggle so closely linked, it was as if each morning the crows gave birth to the light. --Mina Foi, Ba, and Dadji, pg. 1

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny deals with, um, the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, two Indians living in the United States, feeling displaced and isolated from family and culture. Yet when they return to India, each doesn't feel quite at home there either. 

'I spend all my time trying to pretend I am not lonely! If you are lonely, you feel ashamed, and the only relief to your shame is being alone, which is what makes you lonely in the first place.' -Sonia, p. 49

One thing seemed certain: If India existed, then America could not, for they were too drastically different not to cancel each other out. Yet despite this fact, they refused to remain apart. India invaded his life all the way from the other side of the world, and then life here became instantly artificial, a taunt. He became an impostor, a spy, a liar, and a ghost. -Sunny, p. 82                                       

The book begins with Sonia attending college in Vermont with dreams of becoming an author. Sunny is living in Brooklyn after graduating college and working for the AP as a copy editor in the New York office, with dreams of becoming a journalist. As their loneliness and sense of isolation deepens both try to find ways to cope. Sonia by starting a relationship with a mentally ill artist who is very controlling and demeaning. Sunny by disappearing as a whole person.

There was so much life in this country that Sunny needn’t bother to create one. His life could be simply looking upon life. -Sunny

As both Sunny and Sonia pursue their writing careers separately, their lives seem to be on a collision course. First Sonia's family proposes an arranged marriage with Sunny, which he dismisses out of hand. Later in a pivotal moment in the story back in India, they are on the same train heading to Allahabad, where their families have a connection. This brief encounter sets up future interactions. Still later they meet up on in Goa (Southwest India on the coast) where they get to know each other better and love blossoms. It would seem that a full throttled romance was on its way but what happens is much more tangled and twisted.

So what is the story about? It is about culture and displacement. It is about family and traditions. It is also about post-colonialism, superstition, and magic. And ultimately it is about finding self awareness and acceptance. Maureen Corrigan, reviewing the book for NPR described The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny as a book of ideas. Nalini Iver, writing for the International Examiner, says "The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a deeply satisfying, profoundly moving, witty, and occasionally heart-rending novel that explores immigration, alienation, the relationship between art, the artist, and artistic subject. It also probes the changing role of women in contemporary society." Nobody can quite put their finger on all the themes covered in this book. Just suffice it to say there are a lot!

My favorite parts of the book shined a light on differences in cultures and the ways that people within those cultures view property, nature, parenthood, etc. and how the characters viewed themselves in those other cultures. For example, here Sonia is talking to Babita, Sunny's mother, trying to explain what it is like in America:

'It was all the things I’d have to do alone.' 'Why would you have to do anything alone?' asked Babita. 'It’s the premise of being American: You are an individual, therefore you are alone. Therefore you must be able to do everything by yourself. Rent a car at an airport, drive yourself cross-country to a job in a place you’ve never heard of, defeat your enemies, trap a rat, make money to pay bills to look after yourself even when you are dying—' -Sonia to Babita

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny was a 2025 Booker Prize finalist, therefore I thought the Booker page would be a great place to start as I looked around for book club discussion questions. I will be leading the discussion on the book the end of this month. Here are two resources which should be helpful:

• Booker Prize Readers' Guide: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
• LS&S: Sweet Shoppe Sugar Babe

My rating for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is on a sliding scale. I give the book a 5-star rating for the writing, the complexity, and the epic nature of the story. But I give the book a 4-star rating rating based on my reading experience with it. I just had such a hard time actually reading it. Suffice it to say, it is a beautiful, rewarding, yet hard book to read.

At 670 pages, this qualifies for Big Book Summer Challenge

__________________________________________________________

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Discussion Questions

1. What rating would you give the book? Separate your reading experience from your thoughts about the writing and the complexity of the text.

2. The author, Kiran Desai, said she tried to write a book about love and loneliness. Did she succeed? Give examples of the different types of loneliness she probed. Today, much more than yesteryear, loneliness seems to be epidemic in our culture. Do you agree? What are some examples of loneliness you've noticed in society?

3. What are some of the other themes in the book? Which of these did you find the most interesting? Why?

4. The story followed the characters all over the world -- the USA, India, Goa (Indian coastal community), Italy, and Mexico. Which of these settings was your favorite? Why?

5. Miscommunication often seemed to hamper relationships not only between Sonia and Sunny, but also between other characters. Why do you think were the characters so reticent to communicate openly? Give examples.

6. Desai took 20 years to write The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Thinking back over the past twenty years, do you notice the passage of time in the author's world on the scope and plot of this novel? did you notice this as you were reading or only now that you reflect back on the book?

7. Desai ‘gave Sonia a background much like her own, including a boisterous Delhi family with a beloved household cook who excels at making kebabs.’ And, like Desai, Sonia is a writer who struggles with ‘how to portray her homeland, and worries that if she writes about arranged marriages or magical realism, she’ll be trafficking in cultural clichés.’ How much of the book do you think is autobiographical? Does it affect how you feel about any of the characters? (Booker Prize Reader's Guide)

8. Sonia had a relationship with a manipulative and abusive artist, Ilan. Why do you think she stayed with him as long as she did? What did you think of Ilan's art and how he saw himself? Was he necessary to the story? Expand on your thoughts.

9. Sunny lives with his girlfriend Ulla when the story opens. Neither was completely honest with each other. What issues played into the demise of the relationship?

10. Both Sonia and Sunny were students in America, leaving their home and culture in India to do it. Both found fault in America, not feeling like they fit it, yet when they went back to India visit or to live, they also felt like misfits there, too. Do you think this is a typical reaction for immigrants to America? 

11. When Sonia returned to India after her breakup with Ilan much of the story shifts its focus to India -- its culture, food (kebabs), marriage, parenting, land rights, animals, etc. What did you find interesting, funny, insightful from these stories?

12. What aspects of the story would you like to discuss not covered in the questions above?

13. Share a favorite quote or two from the book.

14. In what ways did Sonia and Sunny grow and mature during the arc of the story, making a lasting relationship possible? What did you think of the ending?

15. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny was a Booker Prize finalist and was identified as one of the top books of 2025. Do you think it deserves these accolades and will you recommend it to friends?

-Anne

Review: YEAR OF WONDER: CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR EVERY DAY

Cue the music to listen to as you read this post: Gregorio Allegri -Miserere

Title: Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hall

Book Beginnings / First Line Friday quote from introduction:

Friday56 quote  (56% of sample):

Summary:

Year of Wonder is a unique celebration of classical music by an author who wants to share its diverse wonders with others and to encourage a love for this genre in all readers, whether complete novices or lifetime enthusiasts.

Clemency chooses one piece of music for each day of the year, with a short explanation about the composer to put it into context, and brings the music alive in a modern and playful way, while also extolling the positive mindfulness element of giving yourself some time every day to listen to something uplifting or beautiful. Thoughtfully curated and expertly researched, this is a book of classical music to keep you company: whoever you are, wherever you're from. (Publisher)

Review: This past week I spent at a family reunion with 20 others. At one point I asked each person to tell me what they were currently reading, their favorite book of the year, and how they would describe themselves as a reader/ what they prefer reading. Among the 20 of us several people, including myself, described themselves as reading omnivores -- as long as a book is interesting, we will read it. I think the fact that I read this book (and loved it) is proof of my status as an omnivoric-reader (I think I just made up a word.) Not only did I read it, but nerded out on it.

As you see from the Friday56 sample, each day highlights one specific classical piece. It didn't take me long to figure out to enjoy the book, I'd have to listen to each piece in addition to reading the information about the piece and the composer. Luckily for me someone else took the time to place all 365 pieces on a Spotify playlist and all I had to do was push play to hear and enjoy them. Here it is: Year of Wonder on Spotify. Now here is where the real nerdiness came into play -- I had the audiobook for Year of Wonder, so I would listen to Clemency Burton-Hall read her own text on my phone while I listened to the Spotify playlist on my computer. It absolutely drove my husband crazy when he walked into the room while I was juggling the two. I couldn't listen to the book with my headphones or I couldn't hear the music or vise versa. So he just had to put up with it or leave the room himself.

Since the book is designed to be a daily activity for a whole year and I only had the book for the three-week checkout time from the library I really had to listen to at least 18 entries a day to stay on a completion schedule. In doing this I never, or rarely, was able to listen to all the pieces in their entirety. I would listen to the song until the narration of the text was complete and I'd skip on to the next piece. Since I sped through all 365 days in 21 days, I have vowed I will go back and relisten to the whole playlist at a more leisurely pace since I can access it any time. For example as I am writing this I am listening to the "Oboe Concerto in D Minor, Op. 9, No 2: II Adagio" by Tomaso Albinoni, (January 17th) which is a personal favorite, one I've heard before.

When I think of classical music I tend to think Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, and these three are certainly represented on the list, but my definition was expanded well beyond these popular three. Classical music is a broad tradition in Western music from the 11th century to the present which uses formal compositions, standard notations and traditional instruments. This collection had examples of music from all the musical eras: Medieval/Renaissance; Baroque; Classical; Romantic; and Modern (20th Century to today.) Burton-Hall also highlighted music from all over the world and explained how the folk traditions of those regions factored into the pieces. I really enjoyed my musical education while I listened to each piece.

At one point while I was listening to the book in the presence of my husband, he wondered if he had heard a piece before. I thought I had to and we asked our daughter, who has a lovely soprano voice and has sang in several choirs over the years, if she was familiar with a piece or composer. This simple question opened up a whole new dialogue with her. She talked about the composers whose choir pieces she has sung and her favorites. It was like a whole new aspect of her emerged before our eyes. One of those modern composers, Morten Lauridsen, she lovingly referred to as "Morty" and knew he was born in our state, Washington. I love it when when reading projects lead to get-to-know-you better moments among family and friends. (If you want to listen to a Morten Lauridsen piece try "Les Chanson des Roses"  from the January 18th offering.)

I didn't love every piece, some of that modern atonality is pretty weird to me, but most of the pieces were the perfect accompaniment to my days and I never would have found them without this project. Clemency Burton-Hall did a great job including female composers in this list, which I really appreciated. (An example you might like to try: Paradis: Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis / or Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello in D Minor by Ethyl Smyth.) Smyth and Paradis are two female composers I've never heard of before.  Women's contributions have been so downgraded over the years it was good to see them elevated to the places they deserve in musical history.

My rating: 5 stars.

At 416 pages this book is my first Big Book of Summer 2026.

-Anne

Review: ENORMOUS WINGS

Title: Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel

Book Beginning/First Line Friday blurb, p. 1:

Friday56 blurb, p. 33 last page of sample:

Summary: Pepper Mills is 77 when her adult children encourage (force) her to move into the Vista View Retirement in Austin, Texas and to give up her driver's license. She doesn't expect it, but she finds that she makes new friends and falls in love. Then she starts feeling sick, exhausted, and confused. Pepper worries that she has something very serious like a brain tumor. But when she goes to the doctor she finds she does have something serious... and inexplicable... she's pregnant. How can that be?

Review: In the book's blurb the publisher sums up the book this way:

Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore.

OMG. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this book. Pepper Mills, a retired English teacher is my kind of gal. She is long divorced, happily so, and enjoys her independent life. When she moves into Vista View she is not thinking about love and yet it happens. Then she is not thinking about pregnancy. What 77-year-old would?  But now that it has happened she is suddenly confronted with the laws in Texas which make getting an abortion a crime, even if the person getting the abortion is 77 and a pregnancy may very well kill her.

The lack of consideration for personal choices and the morality and mortality issues involved all make this book very complex and thought-provoking. Yet, the dialogue and the characters are all filled with charm and humor. Heavy topics with a light touch. I think the book would make a great book club, for sure.

Lest you think I am giving away spoilers, I haven't told you anything you can't find on the book's blurb by the publisher. I guess the surprises aren't in the physical details but in the conversations and relationships with the characters.

I was attracted to the book initially because I am a Laurie Frankel fan, in fact I've met her. She wrote a fantastic book, This Is How It Always Is, about a family with a trans kid which was the first time I'd read anything on the topic. I found it eye opening. I was also attracted to the book because my siblings and I just finished helping our mother move into a retirement apartment. She has since given up her driver's license. I felt like I could relate to Pepper's dilemma about moving and making new friends because I've seen it happen with my mom. Even though I had read the blurb, I wasn't really prepared for the emotional impact the other main theme of the book would hit me. Egads, why are non-doctors making decisions about laws which affect so many people and then treat them as if every situation is the same? Women everywhere should be fighting for their rights to personal autonomy and for making decisions about their own health.

I tell you what -- this book really got me going!!! I just bought a copy for my sister. Can't wait to talk to her about it.

My rating: 5 stars.

__________________________________________________________

Anne

Review: ANGEL DOWN (2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner)

You know that opening bell followed by the words "And they're off!" to start a horse race? Well, that would be a perfect way to begin reading Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner. Ron Winters, writing for the NYT, described the work as "a thunderous gallop of a novel, starting off midsentence and mid-battle." That galloping pace doesn't let up for the whole race book. It goes on and on, one sentence in "285 dizzying, blood-soaked, astonishing pages." Yes, you read that right. One sentence. As the family grammarian, my husband observes that even though Kraus doesn't use periods, you can't really call this one sentence. 

Daniel Kraus typically writes horror novels. He swerved into historical fiction in Angel Down to write a WWI novel, albeit one filled with horror -- the man-made horror of war. In the first half sentence of the novel, Pvt. Cyril Bagger wakes up from a near-death experience in a field littered with the bodies and body parts of his fellow soldiers. The most terrifying scream ever heard by anyone arises in the midst of all the carnage. Before his commanding officer leaves the area with the rest of his unit, Bagger and four other soldiers are ordered to find and euthanize the fallen comrade in obvious misery. The team is forced to go into No Man's Land to find the screamer. What they find is not a wounded soldier but a fallen angel, one of God's best, tangled in barb wire, emitting the mournful wail. For the rest of the novel Pvt. Bagger tries to defend the angel, guarding her from the threats of battle zones and other soldiers, now turned predators. His goal is to deliver her to safety. But where is that exactly?

Cutting through the rot and horror, like a system of trenches. is a savage satire of war, reminiscent of Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove. Kraus’s most indelible creation in this vein is the sneering Major General Reis, so desperate for a Medal of Honor that he’d single-handedly prolong the war until he gets one (Winters).

The angel is prepared to perform miracles, she is all-powerful after all, and to provide the soldiers what they desire. But are their desires what they really need? Each soldier in the rescue squad succumbs to one of the deadly sins trying to exploit the angel and her powers, except Bagger who above all wants to deliver her to safety -- the only selfless act. The angel seems to hold the key to ending the war, but none of the mortals can get their act together to make that happen. Kraus resisted the temptation to rely on the usual angel tropes of easy redemption and he also avoided reciting any syrupy moral lessons. Instead, readers are left to figure out for themselves what the angel might represent and what one should think about the morality of war.

Don and I listened to the audiobook of Angel Down on a recent road trip, so we weren't always aware of the whole "book-in-one-sentence" thing. Don commented at some point how every transition started with the word "and" which makes sense but it was irritating in the predictable repetition. However, we weren't aware at the time that the opening begins mid-sentence and the book ends with a comma -- which implies there is no end to war and turmoil. We were very conscious of the galloping pace. Don wondered if the narrator was reading at breakneck speed on purpose and we decided it was intentional. Narrators will usually drop their voices at the end of every sentence when reading aloud. Since there was not a period in sight, the narrator could never drop his voice. The technique was both disconcerting and thrilling at the same time, creating the sense of frenzy and urgency of a war zone.

And then there was the stunning conclusion. Stunning. I'm still rendered speechless weeks after finishing the book.

Don and I were both prepared to not like the book, this being a(n anti-) war novel with a steady dose of blood and guts, but we both ended up liking it a lot. We had good discussions about the imagery and moral dilemmas presented and we thought the author made brilliant points about the inanity of war. 5 stars from both.

-Anne