I adored this book. I got it from a little free library in the neighborhood. I took it to Montana December 2024 when I went there to help Adam and Danette after Eliya was born. It’s a little book so was easy to stuff in my carry-on. Twelve mysteries set in England, the Riviera, and a Greek Isle, all involving an elderly man, Mr. Satterthwaite, and a mysterious Mr. Harley Quin, who shows up unexpectedly whenever humans need a little help, or a death needs to be solved. Each story took me away to a wonderful, rich world.
The last story, though, ends with Mr. Satterthwaite in Mr. Harley Quin’s Lovers Lane, a beautiful lane that ends in a dump. I am not sure about it:
Adam’s book. He loaned it to me when I told him about my greatest fear is that he will be hurt. He read it on his way to Las Vegas in March 2024 for a Christmas Light seminar. His boarding pass was tucked in page 38. Page 38 is about a purposeful life being an adventurous, risky life. “Life is full of danger and threats and scary things that go bump in the night. Nobody is getting out alive. We may feel secure or safe because we’ve reduced our life to a level where we don’t have to face anything we fear–but that security is an illusion. It just means it will eventually show up in your nice, safe little world and shock you.” This is an excellent book! It’s a road map on how to navigate the life of faith. It describes a circular pattern of life and faith, starting with a turning point, then courage, then the Guide (the Holy Spirit), then the decision, the adventure (challenge), the dark cave, the resolution, the new perspective, and lastly, the message. He used his time in Acapulco, Mexico, to demonstrate each of the stages. He was asked by missionary friends to take over their ministry in Acapulco. The ministry was extraordinarily dangerous – drug cartels, corrupt cops, violent gangs – and difficult – no conveniences, everything broken and rotting. But, he got the clear message to do this so he and his wife did. The whole thing felt like an overwhelming failure and disaster. But he realized in retrospect that he grew immensely in his walk with God. The ultimate goal of life is to grow more and more Christ-like in humility and love.
Adored this book! Danette loaned it to me in Montana December 2024. I read it in about 3 days. It was wonderful. True story about the life lessons learned from a donkey that showed up in their driveway one night. Tom and Rachel live in the country in Texas. They have started their own indoor painting business – painting murals in homes. It’s rough and they are exhausted and angry with life and each other. They are coming home one night and a donkey is in their long driveway. They could have just driven around it and ignored it, but Tom gets out and coaxes it step by step into their pasture. They try to find its owner but no one ever claims him. They end up keeping him, caring for him, naming him Flash, loving him.
Rachel learns 11 lessons from Flash.
Remember your name. Know whose you are. (A neighbor insisted on calling ‘Flash,’ ‘Hay-sus’ and it really bothered Rachel until that same neighbor kept pressing for friendship, and Rachel came to love that neighbor.)
Know where to find refuge. True sanctuary is found in God alone.
Run with horses. The pursuit of excellence conquers fear. Flash loved being near the horses in the pasture next door.
Find your passion. Passion leads to purpose. (Flash breaks down fences and any obstacle in his way to mate with a mare next pasture over.)
Be a trailblazer. Persistence makes pathways for grace to follow. (I think this was about the trails that Flash made all throughout his pasture, just plodding along one foot after another.)
Wear your donkey heart on your sleeve. A well-lived life is an authentic life. (This is when her classy, elegant neighbor reveals to Rachel she’s envious of Rachel’s perfect life. Rachel realizes she hasn’t been showing her true self – the messy, chaotic, never quite right life – to this neighbor. She comes clean and then true, deep friendship results.)
Stand where fruit is falling. The secret of abundance is in choosing gratitude. The Texas landscape is drought-ridden and everything is dying, except there is a tree that drops ugly fruit and Flash loves that fruit, and there are lots of them. He stands near that tree to give Rachel the hint to toss the fruit to him.
Be a service animal. You are made to serve in love.
Embrace change. Don’t let fear of the unknown keep you from moving forward.
Make things right with others. Don’t miss your chance to forgive, accept, and love.
Your journey isn’t about fixing donkey problems. It’s about transformation.
Dee lent me this book to read while in Montana with Adam and Danette in December 2024. It was EXCELLENT! I read it in 2 days. It’s a re-telling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Set in Utah, the main character is James Kier. He’s a ruthless, rich businessman who uses people, hurts people, screws people. One morning, he wakes up in a lodge in Park City to read his obituary. Apparently, he died the day before in a fiery wreck. He reads the comments on the on-line obituary and discovers how much he is despised. It hurts him deeply. He returns home and, with the help of his loyal secretary, he tries to right the wrongs to a list of 5 people he has hurt deeply. What happens is some very realistic story-telling. What a fast-paced, fun read! Thank you, Dee!
I learned about this book from The Island of Missing Trees book about Cyprus. It’s by Lawrence Durrell, the eldest brother of the Durrell’s in Corfu. I’ve read Gerald Durrell’s books and love them. I liked this one, too. That is one talented family! Lawrence bought an old, charming place in Cyprus and lived there from 1953-1956. The village he lived in is called Bellapaix. He takes us through the early months of living with his friend and his family in Kyrenia, then hiring a Turk businessman, a very shrewd “rogue,” to find him his charming abode in Bellapaix, then hiring locals to refurbish and modernize the place. It is the happy, fun part of the book. He then covers troubled times. The Greeks wanted their independence from Britain and to be united with Greece, called Enosis. But the local Greeks also loved the British people individually. The British Government refused to listen to the Greek Cypriots and that was the beginning of the end. Lawrence saw it all, living with and working with the locals, working for a British news agency his last two years in Cyprus, and even being consulted for his expertise on the local situation. All for naught. It was a tragedy and is a warning to listen to the people.
Excellent book about how to go about having a natural childbirth in the hospital. Adam recommended it. Very easy to read. It started out with writing a birth plan, and then went into detail on the stages of labor and what could happen to thwart your plans for a natural childbirth in a hospital. Again, the most important way to prevent the medications and the interventions is to not arrive at the hospital too early, especially if your waters have broken.
I still prefer Susan McCutcheon’s, Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. This book is a kinder, gentler version of that book. Cynthia Gabriel provides you a way to prevent interventions – “We’d like to wait an hour.” That is a brilliant line. Again, it is best to forgo every single medical intervention in labor! Each one leads to problems and more interventions! Listed in the Appendix, here are the interventions to avoid and how to avoid them. The main reasons our medical establishment pushes these interventions are that either you’ve gone past your due date, or your waters have broken, neither of which is typically a medical emergency:
Induction by Chemicals (prostaglandin gel, then Pitocin by IV). “Almost 40 percent of American women have inductions. Yet about a third of all inductions do not work…Women whose labors are induced are more likely to have C-sections than women who begin labor naturally.” To avoid this, recognize that “going past your due date is not a serious medical reason.” Try to start labor naturally: “long walks, nipple stimulation, sexual intercourse (but not if your waters have broken), acupressure points, herbs such as black or blue cohosh, homeopathic remedies, or, as a last resort, castor oil.” (Also, try eating dates and spicy food.)
Breaking the bag of waters. This can cause infection which will result in needing to do a C-section. Avoid this by saying, “We’d like to wait an hour.” Also, avoid this by trying natural methods of starting labor.
Foley Bulb – if you truly need to be induced, this is the best option because there are no chemicals or hormones involved. However, it sounds like it hurts. Again, going past your due date and your waters broken are the two most common reasons for induction; neither of which is a medical emergency.
Vaginal Examinations – they can cause disappointment because you might not be as far along as you’d hoped. They can cause infection if your waters have broken. You can say, “I’d like to wait an hour.” It sounds like the only time you might really want one of these is in late labor. “…and especially if you have been pushing for a long time…By touching the bones of the baby’s head, your caregiver can determine whether the baby is in a favorable position.”
Electronic Fetal Monitoring – all I can say about this is NO! They screw an electrode into the baby’s head! It requires you to lay flat on your back. It provides way too much information that can be alarming, leading the staff to think there is an emergency when there is actually nothing wrong. It also causes your support people to start watching the machine, rather than you. Ask the hospital staff to use a handheld Doppler or better yet, a fetal stethoscope that does not use ultrasound.
Epidurals – this is a shot of pain killer. This procedure can cause temporary (or permanent) paralysis and/or intense headaches that last for days or weeks. It requires you to lay on your back for the rest of your labor. You may not be able to push effectively so the baby will be delivered by forceps or vacuum. To avoid this, in your birth plan, write, “Please help me achieve the most natural birth possible” and “Please do not offer any pain medication during labor, even if I look like I am in pain.”
Episiotomy – this is the incision they make in your perineum to keep you from tearing. It actually causes worse tears and they take longer to heal than natural tears. Use hot compresses and push slowly or not at all when the baby crowns.
Routine Pitocin after the placenta is delivered. Unfortunately, this is done often without your knowledge “to help the uterus clamp down and stop bleeding.” You may need this if you had a long labor, are low in iron, or previously experienced a hemorrhage after birth. To avoid this, avoid induction with synthetic oxytocin (such as Pitocin), do eat and drink during labor, make sure you are not anemic during the last trimester. However, if you have had a long labor (longer than 24 hours), you may decide you want this intervention.
I LOVE Trevor Noah, author of Born a Crime! (Everyone in the U.S.A. should read Born a Crime.) This is his latest book. It’s a children’s book for adults, an adult’s book for children. It’s about a little boy and his teddy bear, Walter, who wake up on a Saturday morning and rebel against the rules (make your bed, brush your teeth, wash your face) and run out the door and go through the gate into the uncut grass. Where they go, what they see, who they talk to, the decisions they make, each page illustrated by Sabina Hahn. I read it very quickly – in less than an hour. It’s about a hundred pages long (there are no page numbers), but some of the pages are illustrations only. Walter, the teddy bear, wants to follow the rules, and then eat the waffles that the little boy’s mom is making in the kitchen (while she sings). The little boy wants to run away – even though he’s hungry, too. It’s a sweet, sweet book.
Adam recommended this book. Adam took him fishing. See picture above. There is no picture of the author on the back of the book, either. I think he likes to remain anonymous. He’s been buying houses and leasing them out since 1975. He is extremely hard-working, smart, logical, fair. He covers everything a person needs to know to buy houses, lease them, and build wealth, one house at a time.
His advice includes his 10/10/10 rule: buy a house 10% below market price, with no more than 10% down, and with an interest rate below 10%.
He recommends buying single family houses, not apartment buildings or commercial real estate. Buy in neighborhoods with good schools, good lots (not corner lots), with yards that are fenced or can be fenced, with enough room for children and pets, in good repair, with good neighbors. He walks neighborhoods (walks them, doesn’t drive them). He knocks on doors. He asks good questions, and he provides you with those good questions. If a house is not for sale, he can end up buying it because he knows the neighborhood and asks the right questions. He used to own houses in 10 different states but that cost him too much time and money in managing them, so now he only owns houses that are within a 10-minute drive of his office.
He has never borrowed from a bank to buy any of his properties! He talks about how to do that; mostly involving seller-financing. If you find a motivated seller, with a house you want to own and rent, you can make a deal to purchase it without a bank loan. He solves the seller’s problem: maybe they need to move quick for a new job, or they just got divorced, or they are about to be foreclosed on, etc. By learning what their problem is, and solving it, he helps them out and, at the same time, gains a good house in a good neighborhood.
Recommended by Adam. This one was not as organized as the Susan McCutcheon book, Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. Ina May is a midwife. She has been for decades. Her book, Spiritual Midwifery, was first written in 1975 and has been updated 7 times. She started a birthing center in Tennessee called The Farm. Pregnant women were welcomed there to live and work and have their babies naturally. They had very successful outcomes, story after story, even with breech babies and other complications. The book starts with many (49) personal birth stories. There are all types; young, old, easy labor, hard labor, single mothers, married, breech, etc.! I didn’t read them all.
The second part is all of the information and evidence for natural childbirth, given in a very conversational style, but not as organized, nor as forceful or convincing as the Bradley book. The same conclusions are made, though, and that is that our modern medical establishment has botched childbirth, and most of the interventions we do are not necessary and actually do harm. We make women think their bodies are faulty, when in actuality, a women’s body and mind, left to themselves and with the loving care of a knowledgeable midwife or Doula, is more than capable of having a completely natural birth experience. Natural childbirth is immensely safer and better for everyone involved.
Interesting book giving lots of history about the island of Cyprus, including the Civil War that erupted between Greeks and Turks on July 20, 1974. The main characters are Kostas, a young Greek man, and Dephne, a young Turkish woman. They live on the island and fall in love. They meet clandestinely at The Happy Fig, a charming tavern owned by Yusuf and Yiorgos, a Greek and a Turk, forbidden gay couple. A central character is the fig tree that grows in the middle of their tavern. The story is told by the Fig Tree, who is sentient. You learn about what happened to Kostas and Dephne in 1974, how they were separated for 25 years – he in London, she in Cyprus. How they got back together in the early 2000s, and left Cyprus with a twig of the dying Fig Tree, and went to London, planted the fig tree, and were blessed with their daughter, Ada.
It’s a good book, but a bit tedious. There are lots of secrets – people not telling each other things, when they really needed to spill their emotions. Also, not sure I like the idea of a sentient tree. The last chapter, you find out Dephne, who died of an overdose, entered the fig tree. I didn’t like Ada, the daughter. She is 16 when we meet her in class at school, where she has had an uncontrollable screaming session. One of her cruel classmates records it and it goes viral right before the Christmas break, at the same time a huge storm hits London. She’s supposed to be this empath, but she refuses to talk to her dad, Kostas, nor her Aunt Meryem, who arrives during Christmas break from Cyprus. Gradually, finally, they open up and the hurts of the past – mostly coming from the hatred between Greeks and Turks on Cyprus – are talked about.
There are a lot of science lessons relayed by the fig tree: about mosquitoes, mice, honey bees, ants, birds, trees.
I liked reading about the Flora and fauna of Cyprus. The beautiful villas and a hotel enjoyed by the rich and famous – a tropical paradise – all destroyed by the civil war.
One very sad thing they do is that they eat songbirds, catching over a million song birds each year, so cruelly. They put sticky glue on the trees and trap them. How awful! Kostas was a sensitive man and it broke his heart when his own mother was pickling songbirds to sell. He asked her to please stop. She did. I googled to see if the trapping of songbirds on Cyprus was still going on, and it is, as of 2016, unfortunately. They estimate a million and a half birds are trapped and killed every year. The dish is called “Ambelopoulia’ and it is a delicacy. It’s illegal but enforcement is lax. The trapping methods are exactly as she described, nets between Acacia trees, or glue on the branches. So sad!
Interesting book. She mentions Lawrence Durrell and something he wrote about Cyprus called Bitter Lemons. I requested it from the Library – Prospector. Wayne’s British tennis buddy, Richard, visits Cyprus where either his mother or his mother-in-law lives. The British controlled Cyprus in one form or another from 1878 to 1960, when Cyprus gained independence. Now, Britain has overseas territory on two islands near Cyprus: Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
This was the Old Town Library Book Club selection for the night of December 16th.
Incredibly “eye-opening” book about the importance of sleep! Wayne’s tennis buddy, Andrew, recommended it. I wasn’t going to read it – I got it from the Library for Wayne – but I’m so glad I did. Wow! Sleep is so incredibly important all throughout life and our modern world has decimated good sleep, all throughout the life span, and we are reaping the consequences. Every single physical disease, every single mental illness, every single health challenge, and many of our social problems (drowsy driving deaths, addictions) can result from too little sleep. And we just don’t listen. We don’t teach good sleep habits (like we do nutrition and exercise) and the bad habits just get passed on to the next generation. We think sleep is a sign of laziness, but lack of sleep causes laziness, in addition to memory issues, poor learning and poor grades, bad judgment, lack of social skills, infertility, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, depression, anxiety, suicide, schizophrenia, ADHD, Autism, and on and on. It’s so important to get a good night’s sleep, at least 7 to 8 hours a night as an adult, far more for children and teens.
I read something amazing on almost every single page. This book should be required reading for everyone!
by Susan McCutcheon, 2017 (1984, May 1996, June 2017)
Adam recommended this book. He listened to it while on the way home from Alaska. He and Danette own a copy of it. It was where he learned about how X-rays were done on fetuses and it took 20 years or so before this completely unnecessary practice was stopped – it was causing children to have leukemia! But because they thought they could find too small pelvises and do C-sections and save the baby – all completely unnecessary – it became common practice before it had even been tested, and once it was common practice, it was extremely difficult to end. “Along came Dr. Alice Stuart in the 1950s. Leukemia and other malignant tumors in young children had increased significantly (by 50 percent) and no one had a clue as to why this had happened. Dr. Stuart looked for anything that might be a common denominator and she found it! By a rate of 2 to 1, the children who died of leukemia had mothers who were X-rayed in labor.”
The author is an experienced birth coach in the Bradley Method – completely natural childbirth. It advocates this because it is the easiest, safest, and ultimately best way to have a baby. I am convinced. Even the IV drip they put in you routinely should not be allowed. Here’s the couple of paragraphs on that:
“After the nurse hooks up an IV, she will often say, “You may notice your contractions slowing down.” Isn’t it just common sense that dripping fluid into an open vein is going to dilute the bloodstream that carries oxygen and nutrients around the body, as well as the hormone the body produces to make the uterus contract? No wonder an estimated 30 to 40 percent of women in labor have so-called uterine inertia or dystocia and then need some artificial hormone added to the IV to force the uterus to contract. Having caused the problem with the intervention of a routine IV, it is necessary to solve it with a drug that has numerous known side effects and risks.”
She advocates a high protein, nutritious diet, and not to worry about gaining weight. She advocates certain exercises to aid in the natural childbirth. She explains about the stages of labor and how it can vary from woman to woman. There are Speedsters and Putterers, and other variations – some where the water breaks before labor, and even then, you don’t fly to a hospital, you wait (sometimes days) for actual labor to start. For first time mothers, she recommends not going to the hospital until contractions are a minute long and 3 minutes apart. Going to the hospital too soon is a sure way to foil your attempt to have a natural childbirth. There are emotional stages of labor – the first is excitement – do not go to the hospital yet. The second is Seriousness and you can go to the hospital if you are definitely in the serious stage and your contractions are a minute long, 3 minutes apart. You measure from its beginning to the peak of its strength. Then you time several of them and take an average because they will not all be the same.
There are 6 needs of the laboring women: Darkness and Solitude, Quiet, Physical Comfort (ice chips or water, back rubs, pillows to maintain perfect sideways position – everything supported in a line from head to foot, a bathroom nearby, being asked to turn over from side to side about every hour), Physical Relaxation (the coaches job to ask her to release tension everywhere), Controlled Breathing (the Lamaze method of breathing is wrong, wrong, wrong!), the Appearance of Sleep and Closed Eyes.
It’s too bad some of the things our medical system has done in regards to childbirth. Just about all of the interventions that routinely occur are not only not necessary, have caused damage (Episiotomies are one example, they actually cause damage and more tears than the possible little tear that would happen maybe without one. If the doctor knows to tell the woman to stop pushing when the baby crowns, so the baby can turn naturally and slip out, there is usually not even a tear).
In-depth study of London from the eyes of a diverse caste of characters: 1. Bangladeshi immigrants, Samad Iqbal, his wife Alsana, and their twin sons, Millat and Magid. 2. Archie Jones, and his wife, Clara, who is black and the daughter of Hortense, a Jehovah’s witness born in Jamaica. 3. Archie and Clara’s daughter, Irie, the one I loved the most. 4. The Chalfen family, white, educated: Joyce, the mom, a horticulturist; Marcus, the proud dad scientist working on “FutureMouse,” Josh, the oldest son, who becomes cool when Millat and Irie enter his life.
I learned about this book from the British Classics puzzle. It is extremely well-written, and a deep-dive into the thoughts and feelings and antics of lower and middle class immigrant, minority Brits.
I liked it. It took a while to read it. It is a long book, 448 pages. Irie is my favorite character because she just is the way she is. The one time she tries to be something different, she has her beautiful wavy long 1/2 black, 1/2 white hair straightened, but she didn’t tell the stylist she has washed it and the straightener burnt her scalp and her hair. They had to cut it off and attach fake hair. She learned to love herself the way she was – big and beautiful. She adored the twins, Millat and Magid, loved them both. Samad, the dad of the twins, decided to send one of them back to India (Bangladesh) because he didn’t like them becoming so English. He chose Magid, who was a young budding scientist, and he tricked him into going to the airport and then sending him on his way. Samad’s wife, Alsana, didn’t forgive him until Magid comes back, a young man, very atheist, and very much an Englishman, and a scientist. The Chalfen’s, Marcus and Joyce, have 4 sons of their own but take on Irie and Millat as their project when Irie and Millat and Joshua, their son, get caught smoking pot at school. The punishment is for Irie and Millat to go to the Chalfen’s for study sessions several times a week. Joyce falls in love with Millat and he becomes her special project. He’s a hopeless bad boy – then becomes a member of an Islamic Militant Society – KEVIN – Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, “We are aware that we have an acronym problem.”
The patriarchs, Samad and Archie, were in WWII together, in a tank. Archie was the driver, Samad was the radio operator. They were very, very young. Archie becomes a paper folder (!) in London, Samad becomes a waiter in an Indian restaurant. Samad married a younger woman, Alsana, and tells Archie that is the key to happiness. Archie meets Clara at a New Year’s Eve party, the morning after, and she is much younger than him and black. He’s at the top of the stairs and she is sitting on the bottom step. She looks up and he looks down from the heights. She marries him. Neither marriage is happy, but they stay together. Clara has Irie, and Alsana has the beautiful twins, Magid and Millat. The story is mainly about these three children growing up in London.
Zadie Smith is an incredible writer. She doesn’t mind giving lots of interesting detail. She is laugh out loud funny in spots. She can really create people and places you can see and feel. Alsana has a niece who is a lesbian and Alsana calls her “Niece-of-shame” always and to her face, and Niece-of-shame just loves her back and stays always and forever in her life. Just one example.
This is our second book for Old Town Book Club 2024-2025, to be discussed on November 4th. Such a readable book! It’s about the people who live on raw land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He is an investigative journalist, grew up in Denver but now lives in New York City. It is after the 2016 election and Trump has been elected. He wants to discover more about the people who live out of the norm, away from it all. He volunteers with La Puente (“the bridge”), which is an organization to help the poor in Alamosa. He meets many, many off-gridders and we get intimate with them. His writing style is so smooth and easy, yet detailed. We learn all about these people. There are sexual predators, alcoholics, meth-heads, unhealthy obese smokers. Many are Trump supporters. Almost all love guns. But he is non-judgmental. He lives in a trailer alongside a family with 4 daughters who own lots of animals. The mom and dad, Stacy and Frank, have had rough lives but are making it on the prairie as best they can. Neither graduated from high school. Stacy is home-schooling the 4 girls. They are happy, active girls. Almost all the people on the prairie grow marijuana and smoke it. There is animosity between the Costilla County code enforcers (Hispanic) and those who live on the flats (mostly poor whites). The code enforcers will give tickets for not having a septic system and give them 2 weeks to get one or they have to leave or face steep fines. A septic system costs $19,000 and it takes a year sometimes to get one. There are some established homesteads but most are derelict trailers running generators or solar powered or wind-powered. The winds and the cold are brutal. The author falls in love the San Luis Valley and buys his own place and builds a fence to keep the cows out.
Very good book – really takes you into the lives of the people who choose to live out there. I don’t like them at all. They believe bullshit, they support Trump, they are unhealthy and ignorant. But Ted Conover is completely unbiased in his writing – he just gives the details in very smooth and picturesque and flowing words. Good book!
Sweet, romantic book about an older man, John “Jack” Hale, and a “little girl,” June Tolliver, who meet in the Lonesome Cove up in the hills of Virginia, near the giant pine, the “Lonesome Pine.” They fall in love. Incredibly romantic. Set in the early 1900’s, when the railroad and coal mines were just beginning in the hills of Virginia near Cumberland Gap. John Hale was an engineer and explored the hills and discovered good coal on June’s land. He buys up the land and for a little while, everything is booming. He saves June from her backward, feuding family. He sends her to school in Cumberland Gap, then on to New York City. She learns to be a lady, to speak well, she can sing beautifully, and she is intelligent and beautiful. The coal mining boom ends, though, and the feuding starts again between June’s family, the Tolliver’s, and the Falin’s from Kentucky. Old evil Rufe Tolliver, her step-uncle, returns from out west and shoots and kills a policeman. John Hale, one of the lawmen in Cumberland Gap, helps to get him convicted, but it tears June apart, having to choose between him and her family, her beloved daddy, Old Judd, her little brother, Bud, and her cousin who loves her and wants to marry her, Dave. Eventually, all’s well that ends well. Old Judd takes her and all the Tolliver’s out west. She learns the truth about John “Jack” Hale, whom she has loved since first sight; that he has been supporting her and bought the Lonesome Cove for her, and she returns to find him waiting for her at Lonesome Cove, still in love with her. They get married by sweet Uncle Billy and live happily ever after.
I wanted to read this book for a long time. I once had it from a Little Free Library but redistributed it before I read it. Once Trump selected him as his Vice Presidential running mate, I put it on hold at the library.
Fantastic book! True story about his life in Middletown, Ohio, with roots and visits to Jackson, Kentucky. His grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, Mamaw pronounced “Ma’am maw”, moved from Jackson, Kentucky to Ohio in search of a better life. Papaw got a job in the steel mill, Armco. He was a drunk when he wasn’t working and eventually changed his ways and was a good grandpa to J.D., but his unpredictability, addictions, and violence passed on to JD’s mom. She was a good mom at first but then become a drug addict and was a terribly mom. JD was raised by his grandma mostly, Mamaw. She was a smoking, cussing, mean, gun-toting grandma but she loved JD and was always there for him, when no one else was. It’s a story of the culture of poverty and the ignorance, violence, addictions, angers, blaming, abusiveness, hopelessness, laziness goes on and on. He grew up with it, he lived it, he knows it. Somehow, he broke the chain in his family. He had a good older sister, Lindsey, who protected him and cared for him. He had his Mamaw and Papaw, especially his Mamaw who always told him he could do it. He had a few members of his family who showed him there was a different way to live. He joined the Marines and served 4 years, including time in Iraq, right after high school. He could have gone to college but he knew he wasn’t ready for that. He went back to college 4 years later and then on to law school. He applied to Yale and got in and received a scholarship and financial aid that made it affordable. He is only 40 years old, born 8/2/1984, and is the VP candidate for the Republican Party for the 2024 election. He could save us if Trump, please God, NO!, gets elected again.
Lots of firsthand pictures of the poor white people of the Rust Belt. Good look at them. Maybe having J.D. Vance, one of their own, being a voice of reason out there, might pull them out of the muck and mire they live in. I pray so. God bless J.D. Vance.
I ADORED THIS BOOK!!!! I learned about it from my British Classics puzzle. It was one of the classics in that puzzle, and the cover had a little blurb, “Very probably the funniest book ever written.”
It was a delight from start to finish. Set in 1930’s England. The main character is a young (19, I think, or early 20’s) and beautiful orphan named Flora Poste. She writes to her relatives seeing which ones will take her in, along with her 100 pounds a year. The only one that accepts her satisfactorily and with a bit of mystery is her Aunt Judith of Cold Comfort Farm. She telegrams her friend Miss Smiling upon arrival at the farm: “‘Worst fears realized darling seth and reuben too send gumboots.’
It’s a dark and brooding farm filled with crazy, unhappy characters, and Flora loves it and them, and wants to fix it – bring order out of chaos. She loves her bedroom but the first thing she does is have her curtains washed. Then she buys old Adam a dish mop to cletter the dishes with, rather than a thorny branch. But he hangs it up in the window because it is so pretty. Then she sets about saving lovely Elfine from marrying crazy Urk. She transforms Elfine into a ravishing beauty and young Richard Hawk-Monitor falls madly in love with her and proposes, just like Flora hoped and orchestrated. Then she saves handsome Seth by introducing him to her American director friend. He whisks him away to become the next film star. Cousin Reuben, she arranges to take over the farm when Amos leaves to be a traveling preacher. Unhappy Aunt Judith she saves by having her sent away ostensibly for treatment and then to become obsessed with old churches. Most difficult is Aunt Ada Doom, who wants no one to be happy and “saw something nasty in the woodshed” and has been cursed, and cursing others, ever since. Flora spends an entire day with her, having special meals brought up at exact times, to the room Aunt Ada Doom has lived in and only left two times a year for decades. Flora had requested from her friend in London, the latest vogue, the Hotel Miramar in Paris prospectus, and ‘photographs fanny ward.’ With these items and a full day with Flora, Aunt Ada Doom is cured. She happily departs Cold Comfort Farm on the day of Elfine’s wedding. The farm has been transformed from a dark and dying place, to the beautiful, happy place it was always meant to be. And Flora made it all happen! She accepted each person as they were, and met them where they were, but then orchestrated the things to happen that each person deep-down wanted to happen. It’s delightful. I loved it!
Flora is so exhausted after the wedding day, and even a little depressed. She gets a ride into town and and calls her cousin Charles, and asks him to come pick her up in Speed Cop II, his airplane. He is SO HAPPY she called him. He picks her up at 8:00 p.m. that night in the field by the farm, and they fly off into the sunset, deeply and madly in love. I almost cried! Such a beautiful book and a beautiful ending.
This book was suggested to me as his favorite classic during the FAC at Susan and Doug’s, by the retired cancer doctor from Indiana who lives in the new MCM house on E. Myrtle Street. I think his name is Jim.
This was a soap opera! Main character, Michael Henchard, gets drunk and sells his wife (Susan) and baby girl (Elizabeth-Jane) to the highest bidder, a sailor. He regrets his actions so deeply, he vows to not drink again for 21 years (twice his then age). Skip ahead 18 years and he is the mayor of Casterbridge, successful and prominent. His wife and daughter (who is now 18 years old) come looking for him because the sailor has died. He takes them back but jilts a lover (Lucetta) at the same time. They never tell each other the truth in this book. It turns out this daughter, with the same name, Elizabeth-Jane, is not Henchard’s daughter at all. His daughter died 3 months after he sold them. This Elizabeth-Jane is actually the sailor’s daughter. Oh my! Henchard doesn’t find this out until he convinces Elizabeth-Jane that he is her real father. That very evening, he reads a letter Susan left for him to read when Elizabeth-Jane is to be married, and learns that Elizabeth-Jane is really the sailor’s daughter; that his Elizabeth-Jane died shortly after he sold them. He immediately despises the sweet Elizabeth-Jane he has just convinced she is his daughter. Oh my! He spends the next months being unloving and unkind to her, while she wonders and wonders what is going on.
Then, Lucetta comes back into the scene and wants to marry Henchard now that he is available again, since Susan has died. Unfortunately, they mess this up badly by getting hurt and playing hard to get. While Henchard is playing hard to get, Lucetta falls in love with the young Scot, Donald Farfrae, and things get really messy.
Lucetta and Donald marry. Elizabeth-Jane and Henchard finally get together and are living a somewhat peaceful existence. But then, Lucetta dies after the scummy townspeople find out her indiscretion with Henchard and do a “skimmity-ride” of effigies of her and Henchard down the main street. She is so upset, worried that Donald will find out, she actually dies after a night of anxiety. Wow!
Then, it turns out Elizabeth-Jane’s sailor father is not really dead and he comes looking for Elizabeth-Jane, who happens to be out at the time. Henchard lies to him and tells him Elizabeth-Jane died a few years ago.
Elizabeth-Jane and Donald slowly fall in love and are going to be married. Then, the sailor finds out he was lied to, and returns to bless Elizabeth-Jane and Henchard disappears in shame. He returns the night of the wedding, Elizabeth-Jane tells him how his deceit hurt her deeply and how can she love him, he leaves in sorrow, and dies 3 weeks later!
Such a soap opera!
Henchard is deceitful, rash, pessimistic, and always thinking the worst of what others are thinking of him. This causes so much harm to himself and others! I haven’t told how Donald Farfrae was such a blessing to him but because of Henchard’s jealousy, he turns him out and treats him as an enemy. Donald Farfrae ends up successful and happy while Michael Henchard falls deeper into poverty and wretchedness.
Throughout this, Elizabeth-Jane was an innocent and loving character, always thinking the best of others, always true and honest. Try to be like her, not like her step-father, Henchard!
This is an autobiography of the author of The Little Prince. He was a French pilot in the 1930’s and 1940’s, flying the mail from France to Africa and then in South America over the Andes. He writes about the dangers of flying – mountains, storms, sand, sometimes the planes themselves falling apart in mid-air. He crash-landed, hit a sand-dune in the dark in the Libyan desert. He and his mechanic survived and were rescued by a Bedouin in the nick of time, after about a week of rambling around in the desert with only a liter of water and half of an orange between them.
The last part of the book was about the Spanish Civil War. He was with soldiers and writes about the tragedy that war is. Very philosophical, but I agree with him.
I read this book because it is by the author of The Goldfinch, which I loved, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. This was a page-turner, very dark in personalities and setting and plot. Six college-aged students, most very wealthy, are the sole students in a professor’s Greek class. The college, Hampden College, is located in Hampden, Vermont, where the winters are icy cold and snowy and dark, and all the other seasons, stormy and wet. One of the rich kids, Francis, owns a mansion in the country where the 6 go to drink and frolic on the weekends. One weekend, four of them succeed in going completely berserk – outside of themselves – which they had been trying to do secretly for awhile – and they accidentally murder a farmer – mutilate him. They leave him and drive home still wearing their bloody sheets. Bunny, one of them who wasn’t with them on this night, discovers the truth a few months later, and he is becoming a threat, so Henry arranges to kill him, too, by pushing him off a cliff into a ravine. There is so much angst and psychosis in these rich, godless characters.
I almost didn’t read it because I knew from the very beginning that it was going to be dark, but she is such a good writer, I couldn’t stop. The narrator was one of the six, Richard, from Plano, California, and he is such a likable character, and you are living the story through him. I learned a lot from him – it is okay not to answer people’s questions. It is okay to just be silent sometimes, or change the subject.
In the end, there is not the redemption that The Goldfinch had, but Henry, the main perpetrator, does kill himself, and the rest of them can go on, trying to make the best of their lives.
She is an excellent writer! In Yellowface, the main character mentions that Donna Tartt only writes one book a decade. That intrigued me, and The Goldfinch is on the best books of the century lists, and one of those lists talked about her prior books, so I decided to read this one. She is a very interesting author – no pictures of her on the books, no short bio.
