book blog

Sorry to have been silent so long! Putting a house on the market does take the energy out of a person. As do the constant whinings of three small very bored children. When does school start again?

I've actually gotten through a surprising number of books, though, for all that. Starting with:

Noble Brutes: Camels on the American Frontier, by Eva Jolene Boyd. A history of the ill-starred camel experiment of the mid-nineteenth century. Then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis devised and put into motion a plan to bring camels over to work in the American West. This admittedly biased pro-camel account makes it seem that military small-mindedness and the unfortunate eruption of the Civil War (along with the taint of the project having been started by the Confederate President-to-be) killed the camel experiment before it had a chance to prove what a stellar program it could be. Most, if not all, of the camels and their descendants have died out of the West, but they are remembered fondly. The book, however interesting, wasn't that well written, was a little too pro-camel, and I'm just not interested enough in the topic to keep it.

Against the Odds, a book of short stories by L.M. Montgomery. A mixed bag, but a little repetitive, this collection really pointed up the similarities in Montgomery's basic choice of protagonist. Other than "The Strike at Putney," which is a masterful example of Montgomery's basic genius, most of the stories are eminently forgettable. But sweet!

Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Deadly Toy and The Case of the Daring Decoy. Deadly Toy was certainly a departure from the usual formula ... but I was left feeling a bit of dissatisfaction with the resolutin of the "B" plot. Just a loose end getting wound up in what felt like an unnatural way. And Daring Decoy had a lot of interesting twists and one really great character (Myrtle Bailey, the elevator operator), but otherwise didn't strike me as all that special.

Richard Wheeler, Sherman's March. Much like the wagon trains book of a previous review, this book was a compilation of contemporary accounts of the March to the Sea. Very complimentary towards Sherman himself, it relied heavily on a few sources, and gave unquestioning credence to the commentary of the people from the areas the army passed through—chiefly outraged women. For all that, though, it was an interesting read and valuable for a glimpse at the perspectives of the people involved in the event. I'd have liked to see the civilian accounts balanced a little more by the soldiers' accounts, but I suppose you can't have everything!

Thomas D. Clark, Pills, Petticoats, & Plows. I'd had this book on my shelves for probably a decade before it popped up in the rotation recently, and I was thrilled to sit down with it. Definitely not a polished work—it could have used some reorganization, some clarification in places—it was still a very intreresting read, detailing the history of the Southern country store from its birth shortly after the end of the Civil War up to the early 20th century when cars and catalogs began to take over the country store's place in the lives of the people it served.

Finally, When the Century Was Young, by historian and author Dee Brown. This was a fascinating memoir of Brown's childhood and experiences as a young man. The tidbits and anecdotes that filled it were rich and varied, and Brown's life as he describes it involved him in a lot of the major experiences of his era. The entire section on his World War II service was a lesson in and of itself. If you can ignore the constant derogatory references to the way the world has clearly gone to hell in the modern era (the book was published in the early '90s, and Brown was not a fan of the '80s or the people in them, to say the least), it's a very good read.

Whew! All caught up for now.

book list

I've never done a "meme" before (or am I "gakking"? I'm such a novice blogger!), but thanks to Marsha for this one!

(The idea is you leave plain the ones you haven't read, italicize the ones you want to read, and bold the ones you have read.)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden).
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

(Wow, less than half! Of course, this list has a lot of contemporary fiction, so a significant number of the books I've never heard of. That's what I love about books—there are always more!)

book report

It's so demoralizing when the books go straight into boxes instead of on the shelves! Can't wait to have this whole move over with so I can put all my books back out the way they belong.

George Howe Colt, The Big House. This is a memoir of the author's family and their summer house on Cape Cod, and really of the author's love affair with both. Reminded me a lot of my feelings toward my own family and how they were bound up with my love for the house I grew up in. The last few chapters, while the "Big House"'s future hung in the balance, were particularly compelling.

James Hewitt, editor, Eye-Witnesses to Wagon Trains West. This is a woven thread of chapters covering the major events in the history of the wagon trains, with author's narrative and excerpts from diaries, letters, and other contemporary publications forming the tapestry. Frankly, I found it a depressingly slow read, and I have better volumes on almost every chapter. Many of them are the source material for this book. Not a keeper.

Scott Zesch, The Captured. This is a tale of Indian captivity, but truly in-depth. It covers the history of Indian abduction in frontier Texas, and uses a fairly large group of abductees to illustrate the history. One of them was the author's great-uncle, making the book a very personal journey. Very well-written and -researched, very interesting.

Guy de la Bedoyere, Defying Rome. A history of rebellions in Roman Britain, this book started off well, but petered off into a fairly dry work. It may well be that the book just wasn't written for the lay reader, and my own lack of knowledge of Roman Britain was the real problem, but bottom line, it just didn't grab me.

Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation. The author chose a stunningly large topic circle to write about—the history of spices, their uses, origins, and places in society. Amazingly, he managed it rather well. The chapters are densely packed, but the information is interesting and I didn't come away feeling that there were major gaps in the subject area.

Finally, Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan. A very comprehensive history of the Salem witch trials. Well-written, character-focused ... but still left me wondering about the lives and the histories of the people who were hanged. So many of them (anyone who didn't get a speaking role in The Crucible) are just faceless names on a list of "the victims." At any rate, this gap aside, A Delusion of Satan was definitely a good read.

a simple day

I'll admit, this summer has been fairly stressful. And my level of tolerance for my children in general has been pretty low. I've ended most days glad to see the door close behind their constant stream of needy noise. So it was a huge relief to have one shining day in the midst of it all when I remembered all the reasons why I wanted to be a parent in the first place and got to see my sons (especially Charles) in a new light.

A couple of weeks back, with MIL in town to watch the mischief-meister, Lou and I took the boys to a local amusement park. I'm a big fan of rides and coasters, and we've been counting the days until the kids are old enough for Disney and Cedar Point. (Yes, I know they could go now, but would we enjoy it? Almost certainly not. After all, these vacations are supposed to be for the WHOLE family.) But I realized, we had to take them somewhere. Imagine, we take them to Cedar Point, we're standing in front of the Blue Streak, and they're scared to get on because they've never been on a roller coaster! The horror. So we found a small park nearby, lots of rides geared toward kids the ages of ours, and a fair number that were good for parents and kids.

When we got out of the car, the first thing we saw was the ferris wheel, rising up in the sky. Charles pointed at it, and in an awed voice asked if we could go on it. So we did. Daddy was very nervous about the kids falling off, but they loved it! Next ride they went on by themselves—they really handled themselves very well, and stuck together like good brothers. Kiddie rides were a definite success. Next up, our very first family roller coaster. Greyson went with Daddy, Charles went with me. Charles and I were whooping it up, sliding back and forth in the seat, when I heard tears behind me. Greyson, unprepared for the motion, was not enjoying the ride. So I looked, panicked, down at Charles, expecting similar tears—to my delight, his grin was a mile wide.

From there, we did a flume, enjoyed by all, then a water ride 2x2 on rafts going down a big tube. Charles and I had a blast. Not sure how Daddy felt about that one! Meanwhile, we had seen a big boat ride that was a guaranteed super soaker. Charles fell in love with it on first sight, and spent the rest of the day asking to go on. Daddy had the camera, and neither of us was prepared to get soaking wet. But Mommy rallied and took the hit for the team. So while Charles and I prepared to to take the big plunge, Daddy and Greyson went off to do a ride of Greyson's choosing. Impressively, Greyson decided he wanted to ride the roller coaster again! This time, prepared for the experience, he enjoyed the ride much more.

Charles and I climbed into the big boat, buckling ourselves in. His grin was about to split his face open. Me, I figured we'd get to the bottom, he'd get soaked, the crying would commence. Up and around and down we went, swoosh! Splash! And I looked over at Charles, and nearly cried myself. He loved it! He was so happy—and the memory of that moment still makes me glow. It was so exciting to see Charles in his element the way he was that day, to be surprised by his willingness to try everything, his excitement, his enthusiasm. By mutual agreement, we did the ride again immediately. I was soaked to the skin, riding home half-undressed while my pants dried, but it was totally worth it.

It sounds like a simple day, but it was really important to me. It was one of the few days this summer that I ended exhilarated and in love with my children. I was so proud of Greyson for going back to the roller coaster and being willing to try it again, even though it scared him the first time. And I was delighted to see a whole new side of Charles and find a kindred ride-loving spirit in him.