Blog

Flashback

by Nevada Barr, 2003

Took me too long to finish, but it was interesting. Ranger Anna Pigeon is on temporary assignment on Dry Tortugas National Park, where Fort Jefferson was built during the Civil War to house war prisoners. She intersperses Anna’s mystery – finding out why she’s seeing ghosts and why her assistant was almost killed when a “go-fast” boat he was approaching exploded – with old letters from her great-great Aunt Raffia, who lived at Fort Jefferson at the end of the Civil War at the same time it was housing famous prisoners accused of aiding in the assassination of President Lincoln.

Love her descriptions of the islands and the water. Here is part of the first paragraph of the book:

Until she ran out of oxygen, Anna was willing to believe she was taking part in a PBS special. The water was so clear sunlight shone through as if the sea were but mountain air. Cloud shadows, stealthy and faintly magical at four fathoms, moved lazily across patches of sand that showed startlingly white against the dark, ragged coral. Fishes colored so brightly it seemed it must be a trick of the eye or the tail end of an altered state flitted, nibbled, explored and slept. Without moving, Anna could see a school of silver fish, tiny anchovies, synchronized, moving like polished chain mail in a glittering curtain. Four Blue Tangs, so blue her eyes ached with the joy of them, nosed along the edge of a screamingly purple sea fan bigger than a coffee table…

(more…) “Flashback”

Tennis

by Joan Johnson and Paul Xanthos for Brown Physical Education Activities Series, 1967

Short book (88 pages) describing everything you need to know about tennis. Under “Values:”

Tennis can truly be called the sport of a lifetime, since youngsters can begin at about six years of age and their grandparents may still be playing even past age sixty!

This was written in 1967 when rackets were still wooden and were 27″ long and 9″ wide.

(more…) “Tennis”

The Arrow Writer’s Handbook

The Arrow Writer's Handbook, Scholastic Inc., 2000

Short book (32 pages) for children packed with tips on writing. I particularly liked the tips on how to get more details into your writing:

  • Use names.
  • Think about exact colors, shapes, and sizes.
  • Use comparisons.
  • Notice all the details, even those that might not seem important at first.
  • Use all five senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
(more…) “The Arrow Writer’s Handbook”

The Flame Trees of Thika

by Elspeth Huxley, 1959

Beautifully written autobiography about Elspeth’s childhood years in Kenya in the early 1900’s before World War I. Her Mom and Dad, whom she calls Tilly and Robin, are determined to make it as coffee farmers in Kenya, despite no one having done so before and them not having the skills or the knowledge. But, they did have the determination and the heart, and they would have made it had the War not forced them to leave their beloved farm. Beautiful descriptions of the animals, the people (Kukuyu and Masai) and the land. Robin bought the farm sight unseen and when they finally got there after train, wagon, mule, walking, it was a desert.

…Robin pulled up and said, ‘Here we are.’ We did not seem to be anywhere. Everything was, just the same, biscuit-brown, quivering with heat and grasshoppers. There was not even an erythrina tree.

(more…) “The Flame Trees of Thika”

Simplify Your Life

100 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy the Things That Really Matter, by Elaine St. James, 1994

Easy to read, fun little how-to book on simplifying your life. Some parts are outdated (“Drop call waiting,” “Stop the Junk Mail,” and “Get rid of your car phone”) and there is no mention of social media, e-mail, internet, etc., because they weren’t around yet in 1994. But our lives have only become more complicated because of technology, and much of the advice can still be applied in 2018. The chapters are only one to two pages long and cover how to simplify “Your Household,” “Your Lifestyle,” “Your Finances,” “Your Job,” “Your Health,” “Your Personal Life,” “Special Issues for Women,” and “Hard-Core Simplicity.” If you only had time to read the chapter titles in each section, you’d come away with ideas to simplify your life. Here are some examples:

  • Reduce the clutter in your life
  • Work less and enjoy it more
  • Beware of exercise equipment, fire your personal trainer, and go take a walk
  • Throw out everything but the aspirin
  • Leave your shoes at the front door
  • Don’t answer your phone just because it’s ringing
(more…) “Simplify Your Life”

Last Seen Wearing

by Colin Dexter, 1976

I love Inspector Morse mysteries. I miss them when I’ve finished because Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis are so likable, so human, and I just want to be with them. They take me to England and back to a time before much technology, except for color TVs. Morse consults maps, phone books, a rolodex (a new invention in this book), and when he wants to know what time it is, he turns on the radio:

Morse, newly woken and surprisingly refreshed, switched over to Radio Three; and thence to Radio Oxford. But none of the channels seemed anxious to inform him of the time of day, and he turned back to Radio Four…

When the radio stations didn’t tell him the time soon enough, he “got out of bed, pulled on his clothes, walked downstairs and dialled the speaking clock.”

(more…) “Last Seen Wearing”

The Story of Ferdinand

by Munro Leaf, 1936

Drawings by Robert Lawson

Ferdinand the Bull just wanted to sit under his favorite cork tree, “smelling the flowers just quietly.” I loved this book as a child and they made a movie of it, which is pretty good, and made me want to read the book again. Learned about cork trees and makes me want to visit Spain, where cork trees grow (Andalusia and a town called Ronda).

The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George, 2013

Jean Perdu owns a book barge in Paris. He is 20 years into grieving his lost love. She gave him a letter but he never opened it. Finally he does and she left him because she was dying of cancer. He unhooks his barge and travels south with Max Jordan, a young author with writer’s block, and 2 cats. They meet Salvatore Cuneo, also looking for a lost love, and who eventually meets the love of his life – an author – and Jean gives them the boat and travels on by car to Sanary de Ser or something like that where he swims, gets tanned and in shape and discovers he loves Catherine and they live happily ever after. Book Club book – no one liked it except Mom and 2 others. Mom fell in love with lavender after reading this book and makes lavender snickerdoodle cookies, drinks lavender tea, and wants to see fields of lavender in bloom.

Roughing It

By Mark Twain, 1872 (I own this book)

Hilarious account, especially in the beginning, about Mark Twain’s trip out West in the 1860’s.

The stage coach trip took 20 days from St. Joseph, MO, to Carsono City, NV. It’s mostly hilarious!

He talks about the Mormons and includes a history in the appendix – they’d only been around 40 years at that time.

He also tells the story about the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Appendix B where some Mormons disguised as Indians attacked and killed a wagon train of emigrants. They couldn’t vanquish the emigrants as Indians so they disbanded, came back as settlers, cooked up a story that they would protect the emigrants, and had the emigrants march in front of them as part of the ploy. Then they slaughtered them – 120 people; men, women, children, Sept. 10, 1857. “Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history.”

He talks about Nevada – Silver mining, dust, wind, “Washoe” wind, Lake Tahoe – BEAUTIFUL – “Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor…The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? – it is the same the angels breathe.”

“So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air! … So empty and airy did all spaces seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions “balloon-voyages.”

“We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite – they could see the line too plainly, perhaps.”…

“I resolved to have a horse to ride…He bought a ‘Genuine Mexican Plug’ at an auction for $27. Ended up to be a bucking horse; hilarious stories about him. “Everybody I loaned him to always walked back.

He and his friend Higbie, really Higbie, discover a blind lead and claim it. They only have to work it within 10 days for it to be their’s. But Twain gets called to the sick bed of Capt. John Nye and leaves that 1st day. Higbie also left, to find the secret cement mine So they lost their claim on the blind lead.

He goes to Virginia City and works for the newspaper. Then to San Francisco. Here is a beautiful passage:

“…The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and sombre California, when that man has seen New England’s meadow-expanses and her maples, oaks, and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes very near being funny – would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces – and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.”

In San Francisco, he experiences “the Great Earthquake” in October of 186?.

He became broke, hungry, and homeless in S.F. He tried pocket mining, then back to S.F. to write for the Enterprise. Then he got to go to the Sandwich Islands and write letters for the Sacramento Union! Hawaii in the 1860’s!!! First Oahu “(pronounced O-waw-hee)” – lots of information on the Hawaiians – Kanakas – and their ways. All whites are either preachers, whalers, or gov’t workers. Hilarious episodes.

Then he goes to the island of Hawaii, 150 miles distant, on the schooner, Boomerang.

…”Mauna Loa is said to be 16,000 feet high. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit like a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we were in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped in blankets and furs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle to quench his thirst he could look down the long sweep of hits sides and see spots where plants are growing that grow only where the bitter cold of Winter prevails; lower down he could see sections devoted to productions that thrive in the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of the mountain he could see the home of the tufted cocoa-palms and other species of vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal Summer. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance of the eye, and that glance would only pass over a distance of four or five miles as the bird flies!” (Written in 1872!!)

“By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing to ride horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is well worth taking. the trail passes along on high ground – say 1000 feet above sea level – and usually about a mile distant from the ocean, which is always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried in the forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a dense growth of trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and everything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisible singing birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the ever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the inspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage.”

“Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to every school-boy in the wide world – Kealekekua Bay – the place where Captain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the natives, nearly a hundred years ago. [1778] The setting sun was flaming upon it, a summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you at every turn, they are common in all the islands; they are visible every day, and frequently at night also – not the silvery bow we see once in an age in the states, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful colors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few nights ago. What the sailors call “rain dogs” – little patches of rainbow – are often seen drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, like stained cathedral windows.”

…”Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook’s assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide. Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment…”

He talks about seeing the natives surfing – he calls it “surf-bathing. “Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell!”

He went to Honaunau – City of Refuge – in a hired canoe.

He explored thoroughly the volcano, Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). Got to see it at night, right above it – very impressed.

“The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was black as ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire!…” He describes it in detail over a whole chapter. Nearly the last sentence: “The smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner.”

“We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked road making the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very much. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka horses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping – whip and spur could not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it economized time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery was explained: the natives are such thorough-going gossips that they never pass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses learn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty of man, and his salvation not to be compassed without it.”

“In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataract of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high…” (Akaka Falls?)

Then he went to Maui – a picnic excursion to the Iao Valley, a lush valley in cliffs of green – beautiful.

Then he climbed Haleakala – saw the sun rise above the clouds – “A growing warmth suffused the horizon and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blessings and combinations of rich coloring.

“It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.”

He returns to S.F., no money, no job – decides to do public lectures! “Doors open at 7 1/2. The trouble will begin at 8.” “That line has done good service since.”

He was so anxious before that 1st public lecture, couldn’t sleep, sick to stomach, never spoke publicly before, coerced friends and strangers to buy a ticket – waited in horror in the theatre – lo and behold – he had a full house and the lecture was a rousing success!

“All the papers were kind in the morning: my appetite returned; I had abundance of money. All’s well that ends well!”

Last paragraph: “MORAL.”

“If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are “no account,” go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them – if the people you go among suffer by the operation.”

Cats in Hawaii: “…I saw cats – Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy, and sound asleep.”

Roughing It:

“To

CALVIN H. HIGBIE,

of California,

An Honest Man, a Genial Comrade,

and a Steadfast Friend,

This book is Inscribed,

By the Author,

In Memory of the Curious Time

When We Two

Were Millionaires for Ten Days.”

Evil Under the Sun

by Agatha Christie, 1940

Hercule Poirot solves the murder of Arlena Stuart, strangled on the beach of a beautiful English sea-side resort hotel called the Jolly Roger. This one had me fooled – I could not figure out who did it. Could have been her husband, Capt. Marshall, who was fed up with her cheating on him. Could have been Linda Marshall, the young teen-age step-daughter, who hated Arlena with a passion. Could have been the Rev. Stephen Lane, who seemed psycho about evil, especially evil women. Or it could have been Christine Redfern, young wife of Patrick Redfern, who was having an affair with Arlena. Turns out it was Patrick and Christine Redfern working together. She posed as the dead woman on the beach, used suntan liquid on her legs and arms. Then when Emily Brewster rowed the boat back to get the cops, Patrick went into the cave where he had warned Arlena to hide, and strangled her and put her body on the beach, while Christine scampered up the ladder, took a quick bath, and met 3 others for tennis.

Fun book, beautiful setting in the coast of Devon in Cornwall. The Jolly Roger Hotel is on a promontory that becomes an island at high tide. There are cliffs and beaches and all sorts of “nooks” and “paths.”

Need to read her debut novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” (1920) and also “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” (1926).

Birds of a Feather

by Jacqueline Winspear, 2004

So-so book – Maisie Dobbs, the WWI nurse turned private investigator, discovers the murders of 3 young women are linked – she finds a white feather at each of the scenes. The women were part of the “Order of the White Feather” and handed out white feathers to men who were not in uniform – the white feather being a sign of cowardice. Many men joined up because of them, and went to their deaths. The murderer ended up being Mrs. Willis, the head housekeeper of Joseph Waite, whose daughter, Charlotte, started her and her friends – the 3 that were murdered – into handing out feathers. Charlotte was to be the next victim but Maisie saved the day. The editing was horrible in the book! Double words, etc.

Thereby Hangs a Tail

by Spencer Quinn, 2010

A Chet and Bernie Mystery. Fun read! Chet and Bernie catch the murderer – an Italian count married to Adelia Borghese – who owns “Princess,” a dog show star. They also save Susie, trapped in a lunatic’s basement, in the nick of time. Love Chet and Bernie! Chet loves grass – the feel of it under his paws makes him run crazily, back and forth, esp. the putting green grass. He loves treats and he loves getting petted – never long enough. Set in Arizona – Phoenix, “The Valley,” although the city is never named. But Bernie hates what he sees happening in the Valley; the endless development, and worries about the aquifer running dry. In this book, he’s mad at Susie because he thinks she’s gone back to her L.A. boyfriend. He discovers the boyfriend in Susie’s apartment with another woman – his fiance – who he brought to town to meet Susie and to go on a double date with Susie and Bernie. “She’s crazy about you!” Glad they found her alive in that basement.

Death on the Nile

by Agatha Christie, 1937

Rich English girl, Linnet Ridgeway, steals her best friend’s fiance, Simon Doyle, and marries him. They go on their honeymoon to Egypt, where Hercule Poirot is also vacationing. Jacqueline deBellefort, ex-fiance of Simon and ex-best befriend, turns up in Egypt and stalks the couple – turns up everywhere they go. Wants to kill them, has a gun. Many other interesting characters are also along for the voyage down the Nile. One night, Linnet Doyle is murdered, shot in the head while she slept. Hercule Poirot figures it out. It appeared that Simon Doyle and Jacqueline deBellefort had perfect alibis – Jacqueline had shot Simon in the leg in the salon. He supposedly couldn’t move. Jacqueline was taken to her room where a nurse stayed with her all night. Hercule figures it out. Jacqueline and Simon planned it all – he would marry Linnet, they would pretend to be happily married – he hating Jacqueline. Simon would kill Linnet after Jacqueline pretended to shoot him in the leg. Then, he would actually shoot himself in the leg. They had to plan and commit 2 more murders, though. Jacqueline kills the maid who saw Simon Doyle running from Linnet’s room. Then Jacqueline kills Mrs. Otterbourne who saw her leaving the maid’s room.

Two other criminals are caught on the boat – the jewel thief (Poirot lets him go so he can marry Rosalie Otterbourne), and another killer, Richetti, posing as an Italian archaeologist.

Very fun and interesting book. I had it figured out though. I knew Simon and Jacqueline were in cahoots.

In the end, Jacqueline kills Simon and then herself rather than face life in prison.

Borderline

By Nevada Barr, 2009

Anna Pigeon and her new husband, Paul Davidson, a wonderful man, priest and cop, go on a raft trip in Big Bend N.P. on the Rio Grande which borders Texas and Mexico. The border has been closed since 9/11 and the book opens with a young pregnant Mexican woman crossing with her grandmother and mother from Mexico to Texas to have her baby in Texas so it will be a U.S. citizen. The border guards turn them back in the river, she loses her footing and drowns. That’s the prologue. Anna starts her raft trip with Paul, 4 college kids from the East Coast, and Carmen, their raft guide. Non-stop action. First, they rescue a cow stuck on a ledge in the canyon. Then, they lose the raft and all their stuff on a rock in the rapids. Then they find a woman trapped in the water, they pull her out, she’s pregnant-her last words to Anna are, “Take my baby.” Anna delivers the baby, performing a C-Section on the dead woman, with Paul’s pocketknife. Carmen climbs up the canyon to get into cell phone range to call for help. She gets shot by someone on the rim. Then Lori, one of the college kids, gets shot. The rest, with the new baby, Helena, make it out. Find Freddy Martinez camped on the rim, a ranger. He takes Anna, Paul, and Helena to his house. His wife, Lisa, has a new baby boy and takes care of Helena. The Mayor of Houston, Judith Pierson, and her security team are in Big Bend for a big to-do to announce she’s running for governor. Meanwhile, 2 pretend social workers come to Lisa’s house and try to take Helena. Anna figures out they are thugs and beats them up. When all is said and done: the shooter was Judith Pierson’s hired gun, and the woman and baby are Judith’s husband’s mistress and child – Judith wouldn’t give him a divorce – he wanted to marry the woman. Judith’s head of security, Darden, figures it all out and kills Judith before she kills Anna and the baby.

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque, 1928, Translated from German by A.W. Wheen – (not a good translation – is what I thought in 2013)

Preface: “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

WWI trench warfare from the German side. How the horrible war, on the front lines, robbed young men of their spirits, so even if they lived through a battle, what they saw and did haunted them and ruined them. War destroyed beautiful young men physically, mentally, spiritually; just like it destroyed the beauty of nature, including horses and dogs. The only thing that kept them going was their comrades, their fellow soldiers, and stealing what joy they could grab between trips to the front lines with whatever they could find – playing cards in a meadow of flowers, stealing geese and cooking a feast, trysts with french women, sleeping, etc.

In the trenches, there was so much horror – fear, noise, rats, wounds, death, pain, hunger, waiting, anguish. By the summer of 1918 – the most horrible bombardment – all 6 of the original 7 buddies have died. Only Paul is left. Last 2 paragraphs (Paul’s death):

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confided itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

‘He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.”

About the Author: “Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) was himself in combat during World War I, and was wounded five times, the last time very severely…” “Remarque came to the United States in 1939 and remained for the duration of World War II, but returned to Switzerland afterward…”

Last scene: Paul and his best buddy, Kat, are in a shell-hole together – 3 years of war behind them – having survived 3 years on the front line. Kat falls while bringing food, “his shin seems to be smashed.”

Paul carries him on his back to a dressing station. On the way the shells and explosions force them to take cover in a small hole. “The anguish of solitude rises up in me. When Kat is taken away I will not have one friend left.” He picks Kat up again and runs “a slow, steady pace, so as not to jolt his leg too much…and at least reach the dressing station.”

“There I drop down on my knees, but have still enough strength to fall on to the side where Kat’s sound leg is…” “…the orderly whistles softly. “I know better than that. He is dead…I shake my head: “not possible. Only ten minutes ago I was talking to him. He has fainted.”

“Kat’s hands are warm, I pass my hand under his shoulders in order to rub his temples with some tea. I feel my fingers become moist…On the way without my having noticed it, Kat has caught a splinter in the head…Kat is dead…All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died.”

‘Then I know nothing more.”

Jayber Crow

by Wendell Berry, 2000

Very sweet tale about a sweet man, the town barber, in Port William, Kentucky. Full of love and pain, the beauty of nature, hard-work, relationships, and faithfulness and steadfastness, forgiveness along life’s journey. Jayber’s life starts out by the river and ends by the river. He’s an orphan sent to live in a Christian orphanage where he learns to cut hair, then to college to be a minister, then because of all his questions about the Bible, and not having any answers, he decides he can’t be a preacher and leaves college. Makes his way to Lexington and partners with a barber, turns his shop around and one night when the rivers are rising, he leaves – packs his belongings in a cardboard box and finds his way back – a long hard cold walk, to Port William. Burley Coulter picks him up by the river and sets him up in Port William in the barber shop. He lives and works there and becomes one of the community. He gardens and cares for his home and shop (same building) and becomes the gathering place for the men of the community. He becomes part of it. He falls in love with Mattie Kieth and even though she marries Troy Chatham, a man no one respects, he loves her until she dies. He dated another woman, Clydie, for many years, and one night at a dance, he sees Troy dancing with another woman, and Troy gives him a big smile. Jayber is immediately sick at heart (at the thought of Troy cheating on Mattie, and he, himself cheating on her, too). He goes to the bathroom, climbs out the window, leaves, and never sees Clydie again. He decides he will be true to Mattie, and he is for the rest of his life, even though she remains married to Troy, a despicable man.

After 32 years in Port William, as the town barber, the grave-digger and the church janitor, he decides to close up shop and move down to the river in a cottage that Burley Coulter lets him use. He is very happy by the river, gardens, fishes, and still barbers. He runs across Mattie once in awhile in an old growth forest of her dad’s – a beautiful spot with birds, trees, and the play of light. They never plan to meet, it just happens they both love it there.

Years later, Mattie gets sick and is in the hospital dying. Jayber knows and vows to not go see her – he has no right to, he thinks. Then one day, he hears terrible crashing and walks to find out that Troy is logging every tree in the forest to sell and try to pay off his debts.

He leaves to find a place to lay down, by a “drift log.” He sleeps – like death itself – a dreadful sleep. When he awakens, he goes home, cleans himself up, takes Danny Branch’s boat up the river, goes into the hospital at Hargrave to see Mattie. Last few paragraphs:

“When she saw it was me, she said, “Jayber. Oh, he’s cutting the woods.”

‘And so she knew.

‘Her eyes filled with tears, but she said quietly, “I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it’s being ruined is hard.”

‘Then, in the loss of all the world, when I might have said the words I had so long wanted to say, I could not say them. I saw that I was not going to be able to talk without crying, and so I cried. I said, “But what about this other thing?”

‘She looked at me then. “Yes,” she said. She held out her hand to me. She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light.”

Saving Fish from Drowning

by Amy Tan, 2005

Strange but interesting book about 12 tourists who went to Burma (Myanmar) and got kidnapped by jungle tribe who thought one of them was the Young White Brother who would save them from the SLORC – the military junta, make them disappear, etc. Told from the point of view of Bibi Chen, who was their leader who set up the trip, but was killed a few days before they were to leave. The whole book we think she was brutally murdered but in the last pages, it turns out she fell and impaled her dead mother’s jade hair comb in her throat. She is not very likable, and most of the tourists are not very likable. But, all-in-all, a pretty good book. Learned quite a bit about Burma and its repressive military regime.

Life after Life

by Kate Atkinson, 2013 (same author who wrote Started Early, Took My Dog)

Never read a book like this before – like different courses through time that a person’s choices make.

Little Ursula is born on a snowy night in English countryside home, “Fox Corner,” on February 11, 1910. First time she dies because the doctor couldn’t make it in time to save her due to snow. The chord was wrapped around her neck. Begin again. This time she lives – he makes it just in time. The whole book is like that – Ursula lives through tragedies, then lives through them again but this time prevents the tragedy. We go through WWII about 5 times (all bad – once she is married to a German and has a little girl. They get trapped in Germany and Russia is on its way – they commit suicide.) But twice in the book, there is a chapter set in about 1930 where Ursula shoots Hitler (before he becomes the leader that causes so much pain and heartache).

Once she is raped at the age of 16 by her brother’s friend – she gets pregnant. Izzie, her aunt, takes her to have an illegal abortion, and she continues on after almost dying, to marry an abusive man, who ends up beating her to death. Begin again – she avoids the rape and her life takes a completely different and much better course, although marred by WWII.

Good book but very different than anything I’ve ever read. Read it in Alaska, Cooper Landing.

Here’s the little book review from the Parade Magazine: “Life After Life. In this fascinating novel, Kate Atkinson takes her English heroine, Ursula, through both world wars in a series of stop-and-start lives and “what if?” scenarios. It’s a tour de force that ponders memory and deja vu–and puts history on a very human scale.”

Here’s the book review from my 2016 Book of the Day Calendar: “This incredibly original novel features a woman named Ursula Todd who, throughout the course of her life, dies and is reborn over and over again, from 1910 through World War II. The daughter of a British banker and his wife, Ursula suffers a variety of demises, from crib death to drowning to being beaten to death by a brutal husband; but every time she is reincarnated, she returns as herself. The book explores the many turns that any individual life could take, given a slightly altered circumstance or two. It’s a thought-provoking story that makes a wonderful book club choice.”