This is the last story in the Pudd’nhead Wilson book. It’s about a town, Hadleyburg, in which the residents pride themselves on their honesty. A man comes to town once and is hurt so badly, he devises a plan to get back at the town and expose their hypocrisy. After a year, he comes back with a supposed sack of gold and a letter with instructions, and deposits them in the home of the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Richards. Mrs. Richards tells her husband when he comes home and rather than keep the money and tell no one, he publishes the letter, which is a contest to find a supposed man who helped the gambler by giving him $20 and telling him something that changed his life. What were those words? Each of the 19 families receives a letter telling them that they were the ones and giving them the phrase. The night of the contest, the joke is on the 19 families, except for some reason, the Richards’s note is lost and they are believed to be the only honest family. But they know they are not. They get the money but it makes them crazy and they die a few weeks later in torment.
It’s a story about self-righteousness, greediness, dishonesty, suspicion, etc. I was convicted – I’m afraid I might have been one of the dishonest ones, lying in order to get the $40,000 sack of gold. There was one honest man in the town, Jack Halliday, who really was incorruptible, full of humor and honesty.
This is the second story in the Pudd’nhead Wilson book. It’s about true Siamese twins, Luigi and Angelo, and it’s crazy! He presents them in all seriousness, though. They come to live with Aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter, Rowena. The whole town comes to love them. One is serious (Angelo) and the other is a carouser (Luigi). They have two heads, 4 arms and one pair of legs. Each twin gets the pair of legs for exactly one week. It changes at the stroke of midnight, no matter what time zone they are in, on Saturday night. Angelo gets drunk when Luigi drinks. Luigi wants to drink and carouse and stay up all night. Angelo wants to become a Baptist, but Luigi is afraid the baptism will drown him. It’s weird and a bit crazy, and in the end, the town hangs Luigi, because he was guilty of something. “And so ends the history of ‘Those Extraordinary Twins.'”
Danette recommended this book. It was very, very good. Took you into the lives of Lale and Gita, two Slovak Jews who meet in Auschwitz and it is love at first sight. Lale is the tattooist, the man who tattoos the numbers on the inmates. They somehow survive Auschwitz-Birkenau and, when the Russians arrive in 1945, and everything is in disarray, they escape, but not together. Lale cannot forget Gita, and he searches and finds her on a street in Slovakia, and they get married and live happily ever after. They move to Australia and that is where the author meets Lale and decides to write down his story, first as a play, and then as a novel. I’m not sure why it is considered a novel, since it is a true story. Excellent book.
They survived from 1942 to 1945 by being young and hard-working. Also, Lale bought extra rations from some Polish workers who came in every day to build the crematoria. Lale was given money and jewels by the female prisoners who went through the belongings of each new train load of prisoners brought to Auschwitz. The girls would hide money and jewels and give some to Lale, who hid them in his mattress. One day, the stash was discovered, and he was almost killed – spent three weeks in a torture chamber. But, again, he was saved because the man assigned to torture him was a prisoner whom he had saved. The torturer made it sound like he was killing Lale, but he didn’t, and Lale was able to survive without telling on any of the female prisoners.
It amazed me what Lale and Gita were able to get away with while in prison. Lale used some of the jewels to bribe a female guard, who would let Lale and Gita have time alone together.
The author did a good job exposing the horrors of the camp without destroying the reader. In the beginning, she describes how Lale was taken – innocent people tricked into volunteering to go to the camp to save the rest of their family (who ended up being taken anyway), or innocent people who were rounded up off the streets all over Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Romania (gypsy’s were rounded up); some immediately killed in the gas chambers, some worked to death, some able to survive and tell their stories. The world must never forget this evil. We must not let it happen again. God save us, God have mercy on us. ICE agents are rounding up so called “illegal” immigrants, many because they have a tattoo, and are making them sign papers under duress, that they don’t understand, and shipping them to a prison in El Salvador. Stop the madness! Stop the evil! Please God!
Found this book in a Little Free Library and it happens to be the Old Town Library’s April 2025 book selection. It was a good book, very well written with really interesting characters, but sort of wandering. It’s about a Traveling Symphony in a world after a flu kills 99.9% of all the people on earth in a matter of weeks. It’s about what happens to the people who are left, some of whom were connected to a really popular actor named Arthur Leander. Arthur dies of a heart attack doing King Lear in Toronto, just hours before the pandemic takes hold. She does a deep-dive into his life – three wives, one son, a good friend, and a little child actress named Kirsten. He gives Kirsten a copy of a comic book his first wife created, called Station Eleven. She carries it with her all through the decades following, as she travels with the Traveling Symphony. The Traveling Symphony walks, they have horses and wagons. It’s all very primitive. The stars are visible again. There are plants and animals everywhere. No one knows anything except their little bit of space and time. Except the Traveling Symphony – they get around a bit more. They run into an evil guy, The Prophet, who thinks the pandemic was God’s judgement and he is the light and he needs to spread it around. He kidnaps his multiple wives, brainwashes his followers, etc. Thankfully, she doesn’t go into a lot of detail regarding his sick mind or his sick actions and he is murdered towards the end. But right before he is murdered, he starts reciting parts of Station Eleven, and Kirsten, who he is about to murder, starts reciting it, too. That saves Kirsten and gives time for the good guys to kill the evil guy. Kirsten thought she had the only copy of Station Eleven, but realizes he had a copy of it, too. It turns out, The Prophet is Arthur Leander’s only son, and Arthur had mailed him a copy of Station Eleven, the only other copy, right before he died.
This book was written 5 years before Covid-19 hit. I wonder what Emily St. John Mandel thought about COVID when it first hit. It sure changed our world but not as drastically as the mutated swine flu in her book.
From Esquire in December 13, 2021: “Who was she, a novelist who’d fictionalized a thoroughly researched but “not particularly scientifically plausible” pandemic, as she describes it, to be viewed as an authority?”…“If it helps, as alarming as this moment is, I remain certain that this isn’t going to end with a traveling Shakespearean theatre company traversing the wasteland of the post-apocalypse,” Mandel offered kindly to one supplicant. The response was textbook Mandel: wry, warm, and unfailingly generous.”…
“It’s a story where civilization collapses, but our humanity persists—maybe there’s something there that people wanted to absorb,” Mandel says. “At the same time, at the beginning of the pandemic, I remember the difficulty of adapting to a life of pure uncertainty. I wanted clues about how this might go, or how it might end. I wanted certainty about the future. Maybe that’s why people reached for Station Eleven, to try to force ourselves to confront what could happen.”…
“What becomes really obvious, if you research pandemics, is that there was always going to be another pandemic,” Mandel says. “It’s just something that happens in our history. There will be something else after Covid-19, and something else after that. It’s like if a novelist had written a novel in the sixties about a fictional war. Does that mean they predicted the Vietnam War? No—there was always going to be another war.”
HBO Max made a 10-part series of Station Eleven. Emily was writing The Glass Hotel, so she didn’t have anything to do with the making of it, but she watched it when it came out – we were 2 years into the COVID pandemic. “But the show moved her deeply, and rang true to the novel’s indefatigable spirit. “It’s weird to say this about a story where almost everybody on earth dies, but it’s rendered with such joy,” Mandel says. “There’s just a lot of love in that story.”…
“That sweetness is all around us. It’s in tea on a terrace, readers grasping for truth in the dark, a writer’s words tattooed on someone’s skin. It’s in Mandel’s urban garden, one of her great pandemic-era sources of beauty and pleasure. Around us bloom the fruits of her labor: over a dozen potted trees, dappled with radiant morning light. “I’m so incredibly grateful for this life,” Mandel muses.
“This life, this world. It’s still here. So are we.”
Beautiful article about Emily St. John Mandel and Station Eleven, written by Mike McGregor for Esquire in December 2021.
Adam asked me to read this book. He forewarned me that it would make me mad. I should have asked him why he thought it would make me mad. I think the thing that makes him mad is how when Tulsi was running for President, and had completed her first debate for the Democrats, something happened with Google so people could not find her campaign ad when they looked her up. She thinks the “Democrat elite” were behind this. She sued Google for $50,000,000 but lost. The same thing would have happened if she had been a Republican candidate for President and done a debate with the Republicans. A little known website all of the sudden starts having tons of activity and money, Google shuts it down until they can determine if it’s legal. That’s all. So, had she been a Republican candidate, the same thing would have happened. She blames the “Democrat elite,” the same ones who didn’t realize that the Russians had infiltrated Facebook and flooded social media with trolls spreading lies and disinformation about Hillary. So, now Tulsi has aligned herself with, and is working for, Trump, who is the antithesis of honesty and decency, who is doing everything he can to end democracy in America; ignoring the rule of law and the Constitution, not caring about the American people at all, befriending dictators, causing chaos and destruction and hurting people. The fears she has about the Democrat elites are the exact things we are experiencing under Trump: Someone who ignores the rule of law, is doing all he can to remain in power, wants to change the Constitution so that can happen, alienating the world, silencing dissent, trying to destroy our free speech, unlawfully rounding people up and shipping them off, working to undo any hope we had for curbing climate change, destroying the world economy, calling evil good (Putin) and good, evil. And on and on and on. Today is April 5th. I’ve been writing on this since April 1st. There is something new everyday, but I will end this on April 5th, 2025.
What makes me angry about this book is how blind and deceived she is to the evil Trump is doing. She writes over and over again about how much she cares about our country, that there is a threat to our democracy. In the Prologue: “The insanity and threats to our constitutional democracy will not fade away and will only increase unless we stand up and remind those trying to destroy this country that ours is a government of, by, and for the people.” There is one person who is a threat to our democracy and is trying to destroy our country, and that is Trump. He has now been in office for 75 days. In that 75 days, we have turned our back on our allies. He is attempting to silence all dissent. He is attempting to undermine fair and free elections. He is trying to become President for life – just like Putin. He wants us to be like Russia, a country where millions live below the poverty level while the ruler and his men are fabulously wealthy with palaces, yachts, luxuries. Where there is only one television station, Russia Today, which spews propaganda all day, and which Tulsi Gabbard believes tells the truth. Where anyone who tries to reveal the corruption is poisoned, and if that doesn’t work, put in prison under false charges, and murdered. Where there is no truth, only lies, from the top down, invading every part of life. Where there is hopelessness, despair, alcoholism. That is where America is headed under Trump. There is so much hatred and division now, we are going to be a nation high in suicides, divorces, alcoholism, and domestic terrorism. And all this because some people are so afraid of transgender rights that they are willing to vote for a despicable person who cares absolutely nothing for them, who has not one iota of integrity, dignity, grace, or heart.
by Alexei Navalny, 2024, translated by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel
Memoir written by one brave man who tried to bring truth to Russia in the last 25 years. He was murdered by Putin for his efforts. He was too popular, spreading truth, revealing the lies and corruption of Putin. He loved his country and decided to go back to it after being poisoned with a nerve agent by Putin. He could have stayed away and lived (perhaps), but he had to go back. He was arrested in the airport in Russia in January 2021 and taken from one prison to another for 3 years, until he was murdered in prison in Siberia in 2024. He wrote most of this memoir in the hospital in Germany where he recovered after being poisoned. The last quarter of the memoir are his Instagram posts and his prison diaries, which he managed to smuggle out to his lawyers, when he was allowed to meet with them.
I got this book from a little free library and finally read the first story, Pudd’nhead Wilson. I loved it so much! It’s a treasure of a story. Pudd’nhead Wilson is actually a very smart, very kind, very wise man, who moves to Dawson City and wants to be a lawyer there, but he crosses a dog owner first thing, a little yapper who would not stop yapping the entire time they tried to have a conversation. He said something like, If I owned half that dog, I’d kill my half, or something like that. He stays even though no one would ever come to his office because of that one comment. He has hobbies and one of them is to take the town-folks’ fingerprints.
This comes in handy when a thief, supposedly a woman, kills the beloved Judge with an Indian knife that was stolen from two twin brothers from Italy. Pudd’nhead Wilson is defending the innocent twins and it doesn’t look good. But the actual thief and murderer, Tom Driscoll, can’t keep his mouth shut and the night before the last day of the trial, goes to harangue Pudd’nhead and gives him exactly what he needed to figure it out. Sure enough, the fingerprints on the knife match Tom Driscoll’s and all is found out. The guilty party is convicted and the innocents are absolved of all guilt, in front of the whole town. It’s a wonderful, intriguing, amazing tale, and I absolutely love Mark Twain!
Each chapter starts with a pithy quote from Pudd’nhead Wilson’s calendar. I love this one: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Another: Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear…
My Favorite: October 12. –The Discovery.–It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
I got this book from a Little Free Library. It is wonderful! It is 9 short stories about East Indians or Bengali immigrants to the United States, or one or two take place in India. She is such an excellent writer! Each story is so different from the others but each one takes you away to a different world. I cared about each character. Keep this book forever! It was wonderful!
Jerome K. Jerome, 1889 (born May 2, 1859; died June 14, 1927-68 years old)
This was one of Mom’s Time Reading Program editions. I remember her reading it and saying it was the funniest book she had ever read. I kept it when she moved, and I agree, it is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read! I LOVED IT!!!! Jerome K. Jerome is hilarious!!!
The book is about a river trip up the Thames River, from London to Oxford. He (J.), two of his friends (George and Harris), and his dog, a Fox-Terrier named Montmorency, take a two-week vacation (a fortnight) up the river in a boat. It’s 211 pages of fun! Every single scene, from the gathering of supplies to the final scene in a French restaurant with full stomachs looking out at the rain, is laugh-out-loud funny.
There is a sober moment, when they come upon a dead woman floating in the river, and he tells her story as they come to find it out, with a lot of care and sadness and regret. But mostly it is funny. I especially like his description of work and his attitude toward it in Chapter 15: “It seemed to me that I was doing more than my fair share of the work on this trip, and I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject.
Moving Forward When You’re Skeptical of Others, Afraid of What God Will Allow, and Doubtful of Your Own Discernment
by Lysa TerKeurst Adams, 2024
Lysa is the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. She was hurt deeply by her first husband, and by other ministry organizations. This book is about how she got through the pain and learned to trust again. She is now married to a wonderful, trustworthy, godly man named Chaz. Her writing is personal. She is a gift to the world. She is beautiful, inside and out, and so courageous. She is willing to lay bare all the deep, dark places inside of her, and show them to all who want to know. Her purposes are to show that people are not alone in their pain, and that Jesus is there with them, through it all, and they can emerge victorious; stronger and wiser and seeing the beauty of the world, with more joy and peace.
I love one of the stories she tells. It’s about a fallen oak tree she came across on a gentle hike, with a sign posted in front of it: “The Resilient Oak Tree: The storm that felled this tree didn’t stop it from protecting both the forest and island community with its thriving canopy.” The tree had fallen but it didn’t die; it grew new roots and is still living, providing shelter and beauty. She said it was the most beautiful tree in that forest; broken but re-created into a beautiful, living tree, providing shelter and life.
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.
