Wayne read this book; I only read the last chapter (at his instruction) and skimmed some of the other chapters. It’s an interesting theory – as we “Progress,” we also increase the “fallenness” in our world: “Because our world is fallen there is at least something wrong with everything.” We are hurtling toward oblivion, the line on the graph going up and up and up, growing closer and closer and closer, faster and faster toward an ultimate end point. There is a “Threshold of Lethality.”
Jennifer bought this book for Chris and Stufi and it looked intriguing so I got it from the library. She recommends 5 cups of green tea per day. She lists food high in Polyphenol antioxidants: Spinach, Acai Berries, Walnuts, Wild Blueberries, Tea Leaf, Goji Berries, Broccoli, chocolate, Pecans, Pomegranate. She talks about tea that comes from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, which are all the White/Green teas, Oolong tea, Black tea, and Pu-erh tea (pronounced poo-air). That is the order of antioxidant content from highest to lowest. I’ve started drinking up all my teas since reading this book. After my coffee, I have a cup of black tea in the morning. She says drinking tea on an empty stomach is best, but always seem to drink tea after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Herbal teas are mostly made of Hibiscus which has very high Vitamin C content so they are good for you, too.
Fun mystery set in Zambia in the 1960’s. Mrs. Pollifax is sent on safari to take pictures of all the others on safari in hopes of finding the assassin, Aristotle. She does eventually much more than that and saves the beloved Zambian President from being assassinated. Loved the characters, the setting, the mystery. Laurie is the one who first told me about Mrs. Pollifax mysteries. I found this one in a ‘Little Free Library.’
Learned that Zimbabwe was once Rhodesia. In this book, they have not achieved independence yet and spies and freedom fighters are crossing from ‘Zambabwe’ (Rhodesia) into Zambia, which was Northern Rhodesia until its independence in 1964.
Our neighbor, Kim (of Kim and Richard), gave me this book to read because it was recommended for people who liked Lab Girl. It was a very quick read, a novel, a love-story, about scientists investigating the DNA of the sense of smell. The author was a research scientist who studied the sense of smell. Most of the science-y details were impossible for me to follow – like “knocked out” genes of mice, axon guidance genes, etc. The love story between the main character, Emily, and fellow scientist, Aeden, is wrought with difficulties and misunderstanding. Aeden smokes but Emily, who is really into smells, loves him. She’s a loner and always has been. Aeden and she work together and fall in love, but it doesn’t work out due to her insecurities and his trying to manipulate her into coming with him to another lab. He does this by switching the mice and making her think her theory is a failure. She finds out and can’t forgive him until it’s too late (10 years later). She’s famous, still alone, and now he’s married and has a son. They both still love each other, though, and lament what could have been if only Emily had forgiven him.
I love how the book ends: Emily goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at a painting of a man that looks like Aeden that she found years ago (a real painting of Garshin). When she was there years ago, an employee explains to her that it is not a self-portrait because that would have required a mirror. That gives her the clue to her theory that she needed that makes her famous. Ten years later, after finding out Aeden is married and has a son, she goes back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and cries her heart out looking at that painting that started it all. That same employee is there and he lets her cry and then gives her a tour of his part of the museum and you can tell, they will be friends.
Steve Green is the president of Hobby Lobby. This book was recommended by Al. It’s a short, sweet little book about the Bible. You can tell Steve Green loves the Bible. I think it would appeal to brand new Christians. It’s a chronological recap of the most important stories and truths of the Bible and how everything fits together even though it was written by many different people over a span of 1500 years. God created the world, man chose to rebel and sin entered the world, God chose a people to whom to reveal Himself and bless the world through, God sent Jesus (who is God and fulfilled all the Messianic prophesies throughout the Old Testament) to solve humanities’ sin problem, the New Testament is about Jesus and the early church and Revelations reveals what is to come. He ends the book with the Bible’s claims: There is a God and the Bible is His Word, the Bible is inspired by God, the Bible is alive and judges the heart, the Bible is relevant-a source of instruction, the Bible will last forever. I read the book very quickly.
I really like how he opened the book – with the story of Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 4:4 and 2 Samuel 9. Who is Mephibosheth and why is his story in the Bible? He’s the grandson of Saul, the son of Jonathan. He is injured and becomes lame when his nurse picks him up and flees in haste. Years later, when David is king, he asks if there are any descendants of Saul. Most kings would have killed any descendants of the prior king, but David rescues Mephibosheth, restores him and invites him to live out his days with David, eating at his table every day. This is what God does for us – we are outcasts, living in fear and hiding, but God comes to us, finds us, invites us to live in His kingdom as His child, restoring us, removing all of our fears, and letting us enjoy Him and His blessings every day forever. Thank you, God Almighty, through our Lord and Savior Jesus!
by Ernest Hemingway, 1970 (Ernest Hemingway shot himself in July 1961 with his favorite shotgun in the entryway of his Ketchum, Idaho home. Mary Hemingway, his 4th and final wife, and Charles Scribner, Jr. published this book from Ernest’s original manuscript: “Charles Scribner, Jr. and I worked together preparing this book for publication from Ernest’s original manuscript. Beyond the routine chores of correcting spelling and punctuation, we made some cuts in the manuscript, I feeling that Ernest would surely have made them himself. The book is all Ernest’s. We have added nothing to it. Mary Hemingway”
Loved reading this book. Got it from a “Little Free Library.” It’s a man’s book written by a real man, and I love the tropical island settings in Bimini and Cuba and the action: seaside home on a tropical island, snorkeling (“goggle-fishing”), deep-sea fishing, island scenery, love of sons, friendships on a tropical paradise, followed by wartime camaraderie on a small ship in pursuit of the enemy off the coast of Cuba.
Natasha (with Tim and Lily) came to dinner and saw I was reading this book. She loves it and told me about Key West and seeing Ernest Hemingway’s home and places he used to go to and kitty-cats that are supposed descendants of his cats. Cats play a major role in the book – there is one cat, Boise, that Thomas Hudson absolutely adores.
A translation of the book of Job, but he doesn’t include Elihu, saying that it was a later addition and of inferior writing. He also leaves out Chapter 28, the Hymn to Wisdom.
He calls God the “Voice in the Whirlwind.” In his Introduction, he talks about the prologue where God talks with Satan (the Accuser), that “Compared to Job’s laments (not to mention the Voice from the Whirlwind), the world of the prologue is two-dimensional, and its divinities are very small potatoes.” And, “No, the god of the prologue is left behind as utterly as the never-again-mentioned Accuser, swallowed in the depths of human suffering into which the poem plunges us next.” About Job’s asking God to hear him, he says in the Introduction: “God will not hear Job, but Job will see God.” About Job’s response after God speaks: “Job’s response will not accommodate such whimpering. He has received his answer, and can only remain awe-stricken in the face of overwhelming beauty and dread.” Here’s some deep philosophy: “Once the personal will is surrendered, future and past disappear, the morning stars burst out singing, and the deep will, contemplating the world it has created, says, “Behold, it is very good.”‘…”He has let go of everything, and surrendered into the light.”
He also says of the children restored to Job, “Here the new children are the old children: even though Job’s possessions are doubled, he is given seven sons and three daughters, as before, all of them instantaneously grown up…” He talks about the significance of the daughters – that they are named while the sons remain anonymous: “The names themselves–Dove, Cinnamon, and Eye-shadow–symbolize peace, abundance, and a specifically female kind of grace.”
My favorite verse in Job is 19:25 from the NIV: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.” Here’s how Mitchell translates it although he says in his notes: “25-27 These famous verses are so filled with obscurities and corruptions that they are “impossible of textual solution on any theory” (Orlinsky, HUCA xxxii 248). I have had to omit them and improvise drastically.” But this may be his improvisation of 19:25: “Someday my witness would come; my avenger would read those words. He would plead for me in God’s court; he would stand up and vindicate my name.” I love the NIV: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.” Yes, Jesus – come, Lord Jesus, come!
Another of my favorite verses of Job is 13:15a “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in him…” Mitchell translates this as: “He may kill me, but I won’t stop…” The NIV does have a footnote for 15a: “Or He will surely slay me; I have no hope…“
Also, Job 1:21 in the NIV: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” Mitchell translates it the same: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken; may the name of the Lord be blessed.”
Wayne’s antennae went up when I told him about this book and the bit in the prologue about God and Satan perhaps being constructs of Job’s imagination (or something like that – the bit about the divinities of the prologue being small potatoes). I love Wayne’s interpretation of the ending of Job when God shows up – God was not talking to Job, He was talking to Satan. That just seems right.
Adorable little children’s book, full of adorable illustrations and cute definitions like, “A hole is to dig…Hands are to hold…Mashes potatoes are to give everybody enough…The sun is so it can be a great day.” Recommended on the book a day calendar that Christie gave me.
Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race, by Lara Prior-Palmer, 2019
This was the first book for the 2020-2021 Old Town Library Book Club. It was a fast read, like the 1000-kilometer horse race over the Mongolian Steppe it describes, in which 19 year-old Lara incredibly wins. She competed in it on a whim in the year 2013. She is ill-prepared and unconcerned. She is very deep and philosophical at times. She is an odd ducky from England. She has had an almost constant tummy ache since she was a teenager and this followed her and plagued her throughout the race. She doesn’t start out competitive but ends up being very competitive and wanting to beat Devan, the prideful blonde from Texas. And the reader wants her to beat Devan, too. Lara is asked if this is a UK vs. USA thing, and Lara answers, No, it’s a UK vs. Texas thing-the rest of the US is okay. She was born in 1994 and this book was published in 2019, so she wrote it in her mid-twenties or younger. She journals throughout the race in a Winnie the Pooh notebook which becomes soggy and the ink runs because of all the rain she has to ride through. She comes across as really thoughtful, lonely, and aching – physically and mentally, and I’m left with wanting her to find peace and comfort and solace. May you find that, Lara Prior-Palmer. You write a good book!
The race involves riding a different Mongolian horse (pony) from one ‘ger’ to another across 1000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. You pick the horse you ride at each ger from among 40 or so available. I love how she comes to know each of her 25 horses; she gives them names, like Barbie and Stripes and Steppe Orchid. She seems to constantly be lost, has a GPS but doesn’t know how to use it. Not sure how she actually found her way to the finish. Sometimes she rides with a fellow racer or two, sometimes she rides alone. She ends the race alone on a plodding horse that would not run. She thinks she has come in 2nd to Devan’s first place, but Devan is penalized and Lara ends up winning. Time penalties occur if your horse’s heartbeat doesn’t lower to an acceptable level within 45 minutes of each leg.
Fantastic book about pack-horse librarians in Kentucky during the Depression. This book has everything: Characters you love, characters you hate, a couple of mysteries, well-written, deep sense of place, and a very good ending. Loved this book! It was recommended to me by Christie.
Delightful tramp through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy with Mark Twain and his mysterious agent, Mr. Harris, in the late 1800’s; funny, beautiful, and educational. The landscapes in Germany and Switzerland are beautiful, except there seem to be some villages in Switzerland that are full of manure (walking through “fertilizer juice.” His descriptions of the countryside make me long to see Europe, but before cars, planes, industrialism, and terrible wars. He is hilarious! He comes up with preposterous scientific theories that he tries to get real scientists to publish. He boils a thermometer and comes up with elevations of 200,000 feet. He sees that the moon never rises above a certain mountain so proposes the moon never goes higher than 12,000 feet. He describes mountain climbing attempts; one by telescope and another, which I think is a simple walk of less than a day, but with him it’s a huge undertaking involving about 17 guides, 22 bartenders, 18 chaplains, miles of rope, ladders, umbrellas, mules, and on and on. They get lost almost immediately and it takes them 7 days to get to the hotel, with many a mishap/disaster along the way. He learns that glaciers move so decides to go back down a mountain on a glacier, and waits, and waits, and waits, checking the time-tables, etc.
Throughout the book, he retells legends and stories from old and he includes illustrations on almost every page. A few of the drawings are his and they are hilarious. At the end, he talks about wanting to eat American food again and drink American coffee. Sounds like European food and coffee were awful back in the 1800’s. He makes a list of the meal he has requested once he arrives in New York City and it includes EVERY food and drink he’s missed. I LOVED this book, and I LOVE Mark Twain.
Enthralling short novel about a talented spy who gets caught seeing if it would be possible for him to assassinate an evil dictator. He escapes after a fall from a cliff, and the suspense begins. He is badly injured but makes his way out of this country, which may be Poland, and into the English countryside with his adversary hot on his heels. A very entertaining novel. We do not know his name but the spy is very likable, ingenious, talented, smart; it’s captivating to be with him as he escapes, hides, escapes again, and eventually conquers his foe. It was a recommendation from the ‘book-a-day’ calendar Christie gave me. Here are just a few of the quotes I liked:
500 of the World’s Greatest Trips, National Geographic, Second Edition, 2018
Beautiful “coffee-table” book describing 500 trips by water, road, rail, foot, culture, gourmet, action, flight, or following historical footsteps. I liked the following:
Utah: Driving Route 12 from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef, highlight is hiking slot canyons and below red rock spires on the 1.3 mile Navajo Trail in Bryce Canyon. It’s 140 miles and takes about 5 hours to drive this route.
California: Driving Pacific Coast Highway 1 through Big Sur. Best to go from south to north, starting at San Simeon and the Hearst Castle north to Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterrey. Highlights are picnic at Ragged Point overlook, 15 miles north of San Simeon – the view has been called “the most breathtaking coastal vista in America.” Also, highlights include hiking Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and strolling the beach at Carmel.
Colonial Virginia: Williamsburg and Jamestowne
Illinois: Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park bicycle tour–tour by bike as many as 27 houses and 60 other architecturally significant buildings. Website: flwright.org/wrightplus
Pennsylvania Amish Country
England’s Gardens – “Come in June and smell the roses.” Highlights include a maze in Hampton Court; Polesden Lacey’s walled rose garden at Great Bookham, near Dorking; Sheffield Park; the gardens at Sissinghurst; and Hever Castle.
The page describing Belize’s barrier reef warns of the dangerous depths involved in diving the Blue Hole, but they mistakenly call it ‘Blue Lagoon.’ Makes me wonder how many other typos there might be in the book. It’s a fun book, though.
This book is a hilarious trip through England with the funniest writer alive, Bill Bryson. What a joy! What a great escape! It’s laugh-out-loud funny on every page. I didn’t realize that Wayne would be interested in reading this book, but he was. And what’s more, he’d like to spend a month in England. We’ll go when Jojo dies and drown our sorrows walking about the English countryside. That is what Bill Bryson does; he takes lots of long, long walks, describing the people and places he sees along the way, his likes and dislikes. Often times, he complains – mostly about how much litter there is and how the government’s austerity measures are ruining England – but mostly he describes the beauty of the countryside, the warmth of the pubs, the quaintness of the villages. There is one part, however, where he lost Wayne’s respect; he describes seeing a little boy fall in the river while standing on a bridge above him. He shouts from the bridge above and this alerts the boy’s mother who then saves him in the nick of time. He tells someone the story at lunch and the person credited the miracle to God. Bill Bryson ends the story with this:
I nodded and didn’t say anything, but thought: “Then why did He push him in?”
from page 354
That’s the line that lost Wayne. Wayne says, “Atheism is the spiritual affliction of intellectuals.”
Beautiful “coffee table” book listing the 100 best dives in the world. Definitely for scuba diving, not snorkeling–deep and full of sharks. The book is divided into dives for beginners, intermediate, and advanced & all-levels. Here are notable dives that maybe we could do?
South Water Caye in Belize
Something Special in Bonaire
Cuba – Los Jardines de la Reina (if you can get there, this is diving as the Caribbean used to be)
Fiji – Great Astrolabe Reef
Greece – Chios Island (under the radar Greek Island)
Honduras – Mary’s Place
Mexico – Afuera (whale sharks)
Kona,Hawaii (they talk about diving at night with the manta rays)
At the end, they have a section called “Diver Conservation” which has 7 steps we can take to help conserve the ocean:
Vote
Support science
Watch what you eat
Use sunscreen smarts. “Every year, about 14,00 tons of sunscreen find its way into the sea. (Even if you aren’t swimming, the toxins still go down the drain.)”
This book was our last book selection for the Old Town Library Book Club for 2019-2020. Mandy selected it because it was one of the Great American Read 100 best books. It’s a short book and wasn’t about what I thought it was going to be about. It’s about a beautiful black woman (Janie) in early 1900s Florida who finally finds the love of her life (Tea Cake) after being unhappily married twice. She is about 10 years older than Tea Cake but they love each other madly. They work hard, love hard, and play hard mostly in the Everglades by Lake Okeechobee. When a hurricane hits, they have to outrun the lake. When they are resting, Janie spies a piece of roofing that she decides would protect Tea Cake. She lifts it up and the wind carries her into the water where a mad dog is about to bite her. Tea Cake saves her but is bitten on the cheek by the mad dog in the process. Three weeks later, they are back at home and Tea Cake is starting to act strangely. Janie calls the doctor. The doctor says it’s too late, they could have given him serum and saved him three weeks ago but now it’s too late. He advises Janie to stay away from him and protect herself. Janie ends up having to shoot him in self-defense when he tries to kill her. She is put on trial for murder and all the black folks from the area are against her. She tells her story and the judge and jury proclaim her innocence. She had to kill the love of her life in self-defense. What an interesting book! The dialect is hard to read but it is authentic. Here’s an example: ‘”Ah’d rather be dead than for Jody tuh think Ah’d hurt him,” she sobbed to Pheoby.’
I expected another book describing the evils of racism and Jim Crow but there wasn’t any of that until almost the very end and that only a mild taste – some white men forcing Tea Cake to help bury the dead after the hurricane. There are almost no white people at all in the book and those that are presented are good and kind. The town Janie and her 2nd husband, Jody, lived in, called Eatonville, is an ‘incorporated black town’ in Florida, inhabited and run solely by African Americans. This is a real town and, in fact, the town in which Zora Neale grew up. Very interesting, slice-of-life, romance.
Loved this book! Suggested by Christie. Set in Cornwall, England, in WWI, WWII, and modern days (2003). Wonderful setting – a beautiful lake house in Cornwall, near the sea. Interesting characters: a spinster mystery writer and her sisters and mother and father, and a precious baby brother who disappears and is never found. After 70 years, a young detective, Sadie Sparrow, reopens the case and by doing so, dark secrets are divulged which end up being simple misunderstandings and many, many questions are answered and healing and happiness in the end. Love the setting – I want to go to Cornwall! Love the characters-at first I thought there would be so many that I wouldn’t be able to remember who is who, but you end up knowing each character deeply! Loved the mystery-so many possibilities but it ends up being the best one. Loved the ending – Everyone lives happily ever after. Great book!
Also touches on shell shock and its aftermath.
I liked this line near the beginning of the book: “Her father had once said that the poor might suffer poverty, but the rich had to contend with uselessness, and there was nothing like idleness to eat away at a person’s soul.”
And along those same lines: “‘My father, Mrs. deShiel, has seen, as have I, what becomes of bored, privileged men who’ve been spared the effort of wage earning. I don’t plan to spend my days sitting around looking for ways to fill the stretch of time. I want to help people. I intend to be useful.”
Adam and Danette recommended a documentary about fasting that was by the same author. We weren’t able to get it from the library but the book was available, so that is why I read it. It is causing a paradigm shift for me because I always thought going on a “starvation” diet would cause your metabolism to drop and set you up for a lifetime of gaining weight despite hardly eating anything. Well, it turns out low-calorie diets do just that – but fasting actually raises your metabolism. Fasting also lowers your blood sugar and prevents Type 2 diabetes, it cleans out dead or sick cells (autophagy) and could prevent cancer and Alzheimer’s. Learned so much from this book! Thanks, Adam and Danette! What I’ve decided:
I need to do a 12-hour fast every day, which means no more snacking after dinner;
We need to try and eat our biggest meal at noon rather than evening. There was a study done comparing women who ate 1400 calories/day but one group ate their big meal at noon and another group ate it at night. The group who ate it at night lost very little weight. The group that ate their big meal at noon lost a lot of weight.
Eat only at the table. Stop eating in front of the TV after dinner.
Excellent book! I’m not sure where I heard about it but I’m so glad I read it. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who started the Equal Justice Initiative. We needed him and, unfortunately, we still do. He works tirelessly to free innocent men from death row, to end the death penalty for children, and for fair sentencing. The main story in this book is the story of Walter McMillian, who was an innocent, hard-working black man, who was wrongly accused of murdering a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama, by a corrupt white sheriff and detectives completely fabricated a story just to get a conviction and bribed people to lie in court, and sentenced him to death. He was on death row for 6 years. It took 6 years for Bryan to clear his name, even after the main witness swore in a new trial that everything he said in the first trial was a lie. Unbelievable how these southern white men can be so dishonest, despicable, hateful, racist, and feel no qualms about condemning a black man for a crime he didn’t commit.
All the racists need to die, and if they raised their children to be racist, they need to die also. But Bryan Stevenson is not an angry black man; he is so calm, so loving, so respectful, so hopeful, so humble. At the end of the book, he thanks those he helped: “I want to thank the hundreds of accused, convicted, and imprisoned men, women, and children with whom I have worked and who have taught me so much about hope, justice, and mercy.”
Loved this book and love this man. God bless him richly. He is doing God’s work in an extremely dark part of our world.
Heard this book mentioned by Karen, our Old Town Library Book Club leader. True story about the building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair, in Chicago in 1893, and a psychopathic serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The fair is completed against all odds: Architects not completing their designs on time; Extreme cold, snow, wind, rain; Labor unrest; Deaths and illness, etc. The fair opens and is awe-inspiring. It included the first Ferris Wheel, designed by George W. G. Ferris in an attempt to “out-Eiffel” the Eiffel Tower of the Paris World’s Fair. His design was approved, finally, after his third submission of the idea: “…this wheel would carry thirty-six cars, each about the size of a Pullman, each holding sixty people and equipped with its own lunch counter, and how when filled to capacity the wheel would propel 2,160 people at a time three hundred feet into the sky over Jackson Park, a bit higher than the crown of the now six-year-old statue of Liberty.” Miraculously, it was built and it worked and was safe and withstood extremely high winds. The entire fair was built in an amazingly short period of time. The main architect and leader, Daniel Hudson Burnham, should be given most of the credit. He was the one who led the charge and coordinated all of the thousands of details to pull off the building of this amazing world’s fair. The story of how he accomplished this is expertly told by Erik Larson.
At the same time, an extremely evil man, Herman Webster Mudgett, begins his grisly murders. He charms young women into trusting him, falling in love with him, and then they disappear. He is a doctor by training and goes by the name of H. H. Holmes. He builds an ugly hotel near the World’s Fair, full of gas pipes, a vault, and strange rooms. He only allows single women to stay there. Many disappear without a trace. No investigations are ever conducted. He lies convincingly about everything. He never paid the workers who built the hotel. He just fired them and hired new ones, so no one ever got the full drift of what he was doing. It isn’t until Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company investigates the suspicious death of a policy holder, along with the talented detective-work of Frank Geyer, that this monster is finally brought to justice and executed in May of 1896. They don’t know how many people he murdered; it could number in the hundreds. When they investigated the cellar of the hotel in Chicago, they found:
…a vat of acid with eight ribs and part of a skull settled at the bottom; mounds of quicklime; a large kiln; a dissection table stained with what seemed to be blood. They found surgical tools and charred high-heeled shoes.
And more bones:
Eighteen ribs from the torso of a child.
Several vertebrae.
A bone from a foot.
One shoulder blade.
One hip socket.
Articles of clothing emerged from walls and from pits of ash and quicklime, including a girl’s dress and bloodstained overalls. Human hair clotted a stovepipe. The searchers unearthed two buried vaults full of quicklime and human remains.
When he is hung and then buried, they filled his coffin with cement and then inserted his coffin in a double grave filled with cement. His disorder is called antisocial personality disorder.
Very interesting book about urban life in the late 1800s. Loved the details about the building of the fair. Loved the architects and their personal stories. The murderer’s story was shocking; that someone so evil could exist and could get away with murder for so long.
