It's Monday 3/6! What Are You Reading?

Hello Monday! I have a packed-full, crazy week ahead, so I am enjoying a quiet Monday morning to catch up. Last week was writer's bliss: a whole week all to myself. Then, mid-week, my husband and I decided on a last-minute mini vacation getaway for a chance of pace. We drove just an hour away to a nice little town west of Philadelphia, Downingtown. We stayed in a guest house that is a renovated old one-room schoolhouse (it has more than one room now!), enjoyed some great meals out, finally tried out the dine-in movie theater up that way, and roamed around the RV Show yesterday. It was wonderful to get away, even for just 28 hours, and was definitely just what I needed. Unfortunately, we returned home to all kinds of family emergencies, so re-entry was tough last night! But, it's good that we at least got away on our own for a bit.

We also enjoyed our books last week, as always. Here's what we're reading:

• Last Monday, I started The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen for my neighborhood book group this week. This was one of my choices, and I was eager to read this Pulitzer Prize winning novel that also won many other awards last year. I'm about halfway through (need to pick up the pace to finish in time!), and it is excellent so far, about a Vietnamese man in the late 1970's who works for the Secret Police and is airlifted out to America at the end of the war. His secret, though, is that he's really a spy for the Communist side. The writing is excellent, with many laugh-out-loud moments and sentences I marked for their pure brilliance.
• On audio, I finished listening to a teen/YA novel, The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron. It was intriguing, about a dystopian world where everyone forgets everything every 12 years...except the main character who remembers everything but keeps that a secret, as she begins to uncover the secrets of her community. I was slow to get into this one, but after a plot twist in the middle, I found it more compelling and ended up enjoying it. Now I need to pick a new audio today!
• My husband, Ken, finished a review book I got, a noir thriller, Lucky Supreme: A Novel of Many Crimes by Jeff Johnson. The author (it's his debut novel) has been compared to Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane, and my husband enjoyed it. The novel is due out April 4.
• Now, Ken is reading a novel that I read two years ago and loved, The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley. I was greatly moved by this powerful novel about aging, memory, and family, so I'm glad my husband is getting to read it now, too.
• Jamie, 22, has been reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. He is up to book 3, The Dragon Reborn, and enjoying it. Even though he's been sick a lot, I think he's been watching more TV than reading lately.

 Lots of blog posts last week - trying to catch up!

Movie Monday: Spectre - the latest James Bond film that I enjoyed more than I expected

Celebrate Mardi Gras! - the holiday is over, but there are links here to excellent books, TV, and movies, plus recipes you will want to add to your meal plan all year round!

TV Tuesday: Sneaky Pete - about a con-man taking over someone's life; we love it

Memoir Review: Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies (with Alison Leslie Gold), one of the people who helped hide the Franks - stunning & powerful

Memoir Review: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - compelling story of an ordinary teen girl living in extraordinary circumstances

What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

What are you and your family reading this week?   

Me enjoying fish tacos on our mini getaway!

 

Memoir Review: The Diary of a Young Girl

After listening to and reading Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies, a woman who helped hide the Franks (highly recommended - my review at the link), I was so moved and inspired that I wanted to read more about Anne Frank and her ordeal, in her own words. I hadn’t read her diary since I was a teenager, so I grabbed my copy off the shelf and started reading it. Well, that copy used to be my mother’s and originally cost 35 cents, and as I tried to turn each page, it fell out! I ran to the library and grabbed another copy – which turned out to be slightly different – and re-read this astounding memoir that recounts both an extraordinary time in history and the ordinary adolescence of a teen girl.

Most people are familiar with Anne’s now-famous story. Her family were German Jews who moved to the Netherlands when it became dangerous to be a Jew in Germany. They lived in Amsterdam, where her father ran a business making kits and supplies for jam-making. The Germans occupied the Netherlands and began enforcing their rules to limits Jews there. Anne and her older sister, Margot, were attending an all-Jewish high school, per the Nazi rules, when Jewish friends began to get taken away to concentration camps, and the Franks realized they had to go into hiding. They moved into four small rooms at the back of Otto Frank’s office building, behind a hidden door, along with four other people. They stayed there for the next two years, while Anne grew from thirteen to fifteen.

Anne received the diary for her thirteenth birthday, shortly before they moved into hiding, and later wrote in additional notebooks or stacks of paper (paper was sometimes hard to come by). She wrote in her diary throughout the two years spent in the Annex, as their hiding place was nicknamed. Actually, she wrote to her diary, writing as though to an unseen friend named Kitty.

I tried to jump right into the library book where I left off in my own paperback, but I was confused by some changes, so I went back and read the foreword. It turns out that there are three different versions of Anne’s diary in print! Version a was her original, unedited version. In 1944, while in hiding, Anne heard a member of the Dutch government on the radio talking about the need for first-person accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under German occupation, to be published and made available to the public after the war. As an aspiring writer, Anne decided that she would publish a book based on her diary after the war, so she went back through it (at age 15) and edited some earlier passages, improving the writing, deleting passages she thought were dull, and adding some extra passages from memory, in what is now known as version b. After the war, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, decided to comply with Anne’s wishes and publish the diary, and he selected passages from versions a and b for a shorter version, c, that was titled The Diary of a Young Girl. Also, some versions use pseudonyms for some of the people (which was quite confusing at first). I found this history of the book fascinating. So, it turns out the library book I had was version b, and I was likely reading version a or c before. I was disappointed to see that some language had been Americanized for this edition, though I enjoyed the more complete diary that included more personal and intimate details, as well as the photos included.

It had been over 35 years since I first read Anne’s diary, so I really didn’t remember much. What surprised me the most is that this memoir actually has two different but interwoven threads. There is the historical thread, as most people assume, that recounts her experience as a Jew in hiding during the Holocaust. Anne relays news of the war that they hear on the radio or from their helpers, including news of friends and neighbors being taken away. She describes the fear they feel, both those in hiding and those helping them to hide, the constant danger, and the scarcity of food and other supplies.

But this is not just a historical account. It really is, as the title says, the diary of a young girl. It’s a classic coming-of-age story, written in the first-person by a teen girl. I was shocked – and pleased – to read many passages in Anne’s diary that could have come directly from my own journals that I kept as a teenager (I really should get rid of those!). She was a normal teen – complete with angst, moodiness, crushes, and feeling that no one (especially her parents) understood her – in a very abnormal environment. It was comforting in a way to read this perfectly typical teenage diary from this girl who we think of as having suffered so much. Her feelings and thoughts were very normal in many senses for any adolescent, except that she was trapped in a tiny space with seven other people, with no girlfriends to confide in…so she confided in Kitty, her diary.

This normalcy set against the backdrop of such horrifying events and in such unusual circumstances is part of what makes Anne’s diary so powerful. We see clearly, as readers, that even during the most disturbing world events, life continues: children grow up, teen girls fight with their mothers, and adolescents yearn to discover the world and experience love. After more than 70 years, Anne’s words and her experiences are still just as moving and relevant. Even knowing how her story ends, it is still a compelling and captivating book.

I would love to visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam to see the Annex for myself. I imagine that must be a very moving experience, especially after reading these two books. I would also like to see one of the film adaptations…but there are so many of them to choose from! Any recommendations?

274 pages, Everyman’s Library

  

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, read by Selma Blair, and/or download it from Audible.

 

Here is one of several movie adaptations, this one available on Amazon Prime.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

Or you can order Diary of a Young Girl from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

    

Memoir Review: Anne Frank Remembered

Way back in early January, I began listening to an audiobook, Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold. As the subtitle indicates, Miep is one of the people who helped to hide the Franks during their now-famous exile during the Holocaust. Despite already knowing the basic story, I was absolutely riveted by this compelling personal account of the events surrounding the Franks’ hiding, from a whole new perspective. Toward the end of the book, my audio suddenly quit (a defective download), so I quickly requested a replacement from the library. After waiting a month for the audio, I gave up and requested the book and was finally able to finish this remarkable memoir (with the added bonus of photos).

Miep was an immigrant to the Netherlands. She’d been born in Austria, and at age 10, sick and undernourished from food shortages during WWI, was sent with other Austrian children on a train to the Netherlands, where she then lived with an adoptive Dutch family. As a young woman in Amsterdam, Miep got a job at Otto Frank’s company that supplied jam-making supplies to housewives. She quickly bonded with Mr. Frank and his wife and their two adorable daughters and soon became a close family friend (as did her boyfriend and then husband, Jan, known as Henk in this book). Miep describes those joyful days of a job she loved, colleagues she enjoyed being with, and many happy dinners at the Franks’ house on Saturday nights, as she watched Anne grow up.

When the 1940’s arrived with rumors of horrifying Nazi activities coming from Germany, the friends began to worry because the Franks were Jewish. By 1942, Germany had already invaded Holland – something the Dutch thought would never happen – and Jews were being taken away. Mr. and Mrs. Frank realized that their family needed to go into hiding to protect themselves and especially their daughters, and they asked Miep and Henk for their help, as well as help from other trusted colleagues at work.

In July 1942, the Franks went into hiding, along with another family, in four small rooms at the back of their office building, on the upper floors and behind a door concealed by a bookcase. For more than two years, eight people lived in that small space together, never going outside. They relied heavily on their protectors, including Miep and Henk, to bring them food, help with repairs when needed, find necessary supplies on the black market, and to keep their existence a secret, even from others who worked in the office’s warehouse on the first floor. Obtaining enough food and other supplies was a constant problem, especially in the later years of the war. These brave people put themselves at great personal risk to protect their friends.

However, in the prologue to this book, Miep says:

“I am not a hero. I stand at the end of a very long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more – much more – during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.”

And she concludes the prologue with:

“My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinarily terrible times. Times the like of which I hope with all my heart will never, never come again. It is for all of us ordinary people all over the world to see to it that they do not.”

Just those two short passages from the prologue put a lump in my throat. This was a powerful, compelling book, especially when listened to on audio. The narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, does a wonderful job. She has the perfect accent so that it sounds as if Miep herself is sitting next to you on a sofa, telling you her remarkable story. I was completely captivated. So, I was understandably frustrated when my audio quit unexpectedly; however, it all worked out in the end because the book itself had a bunch of photographs in the center – of Miep and the rest of the office staff, of Anne and her family, and of most of the people that Miep refers to in her story. Besides, as I finished reading the book, I could still hear Miep’s voice (really, the narrator’s) in my head.

This is not only the familiar story of Anne Frank in hiding, told from a different perspective. It is also Miep’s story, of a life just as fascinating (though less devastating) as Anne’s. Besides providing some unique insights into Anne as a younger child, Miep also tells of her own unusual childhood. We hear the story of ordinary citizens living in the midst of a horrible war. Miep and others like her watched many of their friends get taken away, struggled to feed themselves and their families (and in Miep’s case, the eight people in hiding she was responsible for), and lived in fear every moment of every day. This powerful, moving memoir of war and friendship is just as Miep says: “a story of ordinary people during extraordinarily terrible times.”

252 pages, Touchstone

Note: This memoir touched me so deeply that I felt compelled to re-read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank to re-experience this story from Anne’s own words. I hadn’t read it since my own teen years, but it was just as moving and compelling as Miep’s memoir. Review to come later this week.

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

(The audio sample at this link is not of the narrator reading Miep’s words but of an interview at the start of the audio book with Alison Leslie Gold, the co-author.)

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    

 

Or you can order Anne Frank Remembered from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

TV Tuesday: Sneaky Pete

Last summer, Amazon released a pilot for a new show, Sneaky Pete. My husband and I watched...and loved it! But then, there were no more episodes. We were thrilled to hear they finally posted more episodes in January and have been enjoying this unique show with a great cast, about a conman who steps into someone else's identity.

The first episode opens in prison, with a guy named Marius, played by Giovanni Ribisi (who will always be Pheobe's brother from Friends to me), getting really sick of listening to his cellmate, Pete, reminisce about his idyllic childhood on his grandparents' farm. Then, Marius realizes there is an opportunity here. He'll be getting out soon (and Pete is serving a long sentence), and he'll need a place to hide out from the gangsters that will come after him as soon as he's released. So, he changes tactics and encourages Pete to talk, describing the farmhouse, telling him all about each member of the family, and more. It seems that Pete's grandparents have a lot of money hidden in a safe in their bail bonds office, which could help Marius pay off his debt to the gangster and finally be free.

So, when Marius is released, he heads to Pete's grandparents' house and presents himself as Pete. Since they haven't seen Pete since he was 8 years old, they have no reason not to believe him. His grandfather, played by Peter Gerety, welcomes him home with open arms, while his grandmother, played by Margo Martindale, is a bit suspicious at first. His cousins - Julia, played by Marin Ireland, and Taylor, played by Shane McRae - have fond memories of playing with Pete as kids, so they are thrilled that he's back. Grandma and Julia even begin to teach the phony Pete the bail bonds business. Marius kind of likes being a part of this family.

Meanwhile, back in NYC, Marius' brother, Eddie, is in big trouble because the gangster Vince, played by Bryan Cranston, is using him as leverage to try to get the money that Marius owes him. Marius always protected his little brother growing up, so he's frantic to pay Vince off and keep his brother safe. However, his scheme to get at Grandma & Grandpa's money runs into a few snags.

With each episode, Marius gets deeper into his role as Pete, with plenty of close calls and being constantly worried that someone will figure things out, particularly his teenage cousin, Carly, who is quite sneaky herself. Meanwhile, he's trying to get at that money and keep tabs on Eddie. Oh, and he - Marius, not Pete - is supposed to be checking in with his parole officer in NYC regularly (played hilariously as a positive-thinking zealot by Malcolm-Jamal Warner). To keep things interesting, it turns out that Pete's family has some secrets of their own.

We are really enjoying this show. The cast is superb, the writing is excellent, and the twisty plot is very, very clever. It's always fun when you, as the audience, knows more than the characters in the midst of the story. It is suspenseful and action-packed and will keep you guessing, but it is also full of warmth and humor. There are 11 episodes so far in this season, and I see that IMDb already has a season 2 listed for 2018.

Since this is an Amazon Original series, it is available only on Amazon Prime (link below).

Celebrate Mardi Gras!

A float in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, circa 1988

Happy Mardi Gras, ya'll!

Today is Mardi Gras day - we used to live in New Orleans, so this is a major holiday at out house! We had our annual party with a few friends (many of whom also lived in New Orleans when we did) on Saturday, and today, we will finish off the season with our annual tradition of Popeye's at a friend's house.

Want to join the fun today? Here is a collection of ways to celebrate Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Louisiana today...including food, recipes, travel tips, movies & TV shows, and, of course, some great books!

Great Adult Books Set In/About Louisiana

• The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - I listened to Calla Lily's story on audio and laughed out loud & bawled my eyes out! It takes place in southern Louisiana, with plenty of local color.
• Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen - I loved this memoir about the food, history, people, and unique culture of New Orleans.
• Trail of Crumbs: Food, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée - although this food-focused memoir covers everyplace from Sweden to France to Korea, the author grew up in New Orleans, where the food culture impacted the rest of her life.
  

Middle-Grade and Teen/YA Books Set In/About Louisiana:

• Ruined by Paula Morris - a teen/YA mystery/ghost story set in New Orleans (the perfect setting for a ghost story!)
• The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman - a compelling middle-grade historical fiction adventure (with a touch of time travel), where a girl from 1960 travels back to 1860 Louisiana
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick - a middle-grade novel about Hurricane Katrina - powerful and gripping
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys - most people are familiar with her two YA novels set during WWII (Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea), but this historical novel is set in New Orleans in 1950

Movies & TV Shows

• Chef  - a wonderful, uplifting movie about a family food truck that travels from Miami to LA, with a stop in New Orleans, of course! My favorite movie of the year in 2015.
• NCIS: New Orleans - though it's a crime show, it includes many scenes of New Orleans, mention of local restaurants and landmarks, and other local tidbits. They usually do a Mardi Gras episode around this time of year, so check your cable On Demand.

One of the locals in Louisiana

Travel
All this talk of Louisiana making you want to visit? I have written articles about visiting New Orleans  and Exploring Cajun Country - check them out and start planning your trip (plenty of food recommendations in both!). I'm certainly ready to go back!

Crawfish!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!
Notice that many of the books and movies about Louisiana are focused on FOOD? Yes, Louisiana - and especially New Orleans - is known for its amazing, unique food. This blog post on how to celebrate Mardi Gras includes my own recipes for some classic Louisiana dishes, plus food you can grab locally today and webcams where you can vicariously experience Mardi Gras - there are plenty of suggestions in this post that you can still manage to do TODAY! Or save it for tomorrow if you like - we eat this food all year round. 

NOTE that Zapp's potato chips - which you absolutely MUST try) are now distributed up north by Herr's (I think they have other regional distributors in other parts of the nation, too), so you don't have to get them by mail-order. We can now find them in local stores like WaWa here in Delaware....though we still ordered an 8-bag carton for Mardi Gras!

Me & my sons, about 8 years ago

Movie Monday: Spectre

With our oldest son home from college all last week with the flu, the three of us watched a lot of Colony and Travelers (our latest TV obsession) but broke things up with a movie mid-week. They talked me into Spectre, the latest James Bond film. Now, let me be honest right from the start - I'm not a huge fan of James Bond movies in general. Fast cars, cool gadgets, hot women, lots of fighting & guns - it seems to be a guy thing to me. That said, however, I ended up enjoying this one!

This is Daniel Craig's 4th film as James Bond, and it starts out as you'd expect - with an action-packed sequence, this time in Mexico, complete with gunfire, falling buildings, speeding cars, and, of course, some spectacular moves by Bond (while wearing a neat suit). This was all to thwart a terrorist attack planned later in the day for a packed stadium. Bond discovers there is a secret global organization called Spectre behind both this attack and many other international threats.

Back home in London, there is a new M, played by Ralph Fiennes, who is fighting a political battle to keep the 00 program alive, as others in MI6 want to dismantle it and replace it with a new 24-hour electronic surveillance system. So, for pretty much the entire movie, Bond is on his own, supposedly on leave and with no authority from MI6. But he does have help behind the scenes, including some cool technology provided on the sly from Q. As usual, Bond's exploits take him across the globe, from snowy mountains to the hot desert and everything in between. And, of course, there are a couple of gorgeous women along the way.

One of my problems with many Bond movies is that the plots are so complicated you can barely follow them. This one is complex, but I had no trouble keeping up, and I found it engaging - something solid to hold all those action scenes together. I also enjoyed the side plot about the 00 program itself being in danger. Other than that, I'm not sure exactly why I liked this Bond movie better than other recent ones. I asked my husband, and he said he liked it but that Quantum of Solace was his favorite of the Daniel Craig era.

We watched Spectre for free on Amazon Prime (link below). It is also available on DVD, including from Netflix and Redbox.

Are you a fan of James Bond movies? Which one(s) are your favorites?

It's Monday 2/27! What Are You Reading?

Happy Mardi Gras!

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras day (Fat Tuesday), but Mardi Gras season began way back on January 6. We used to live in New Orleans, so we brought our annual celebration here to Delaware with us. Saturday night, we had a fun gathering of friends (including several who also lived in New Orleans at the same time we did, in the 80's), with loads of food, colorful decorations, and great music. It was a lot of fun, and our house is still looking very festive, until tomorrow, when we will finish our annual Mardi Gras celebration with Popeye's at a friend's house (yes, Popeye's is authentic Louisiana food - the chain started in New Orleans).

Oh, and both of our sons are finally well again and back to school. It took all last week for our oldest to fully get over the flu, due to his immune disorder, but Tamiflu helped immensely, and they were both feeling good by the party!

So, not a lot of reading time last week - mostly cooking, cleaning, and fun with friends! - but here's what we're currently reading:

• I am re-reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, after getting inspired by Anne Frank Remembered: the Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Glies and Alison Leslie Gold. I haven't read it since I was a teenager. My own copy (which was my mother's originally) cost 35 cents and every time I turned a page, it fell out! So, I got a copy at the library and am almost finished. Even knowing what happens, it is still a compelling, amazing story, for so many reasons.
• On audio, I am still listening to a teen/YA novel, The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron. It's intriguing so far, about a fantasy dystopian world where everyone forgets everything every 12 years...except the main character who remembers everything but keeps that a secret, as she begins to uncover the secrets of her community. I was slow to get into this one, but after a plot twist in the middle, I found it more compelling.
• My husband, Ken, is reading a review book I got, a noir thriller, Lucky Supreme: A Novel of Many Crimes by Jeff Johnson. The author (it's his debut novel) has been compared to Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane. The novel is due out April 4.
• Jamie, 22, has been reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. He is up to book 3, The Dragon Reborn, and enjoying it. Even though he's been sick a lot, I think he's been watching more TV than reading lately.

 Last week's blog posts:

 Movie Monday: La La Land - a joyful, original musical that won 6 Oscars last night

TV Tuesday: Travelers - we LOVE this new Netflix show!

Fiction Review: The Whip - a Western adventure based on a real-life woman who posed as a man and drove a stagecoach

Books Read in January - a great reading month for me!

Saturday Snapshot: National Parks of the Southeast

What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

What are you and your family reading this week?   

  

Saturday Snapshot: National Parks of the Southeast

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Continuing from last week's Saturday Snapshot, I am paying tribute to our nation's amazing National Parks. This week, moving south, I'll focus on the mid-Atlantic/Southeast region. Really, I am focusing on just two parks, but they are two of our favorites that we have visited many times: Shenandoah in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. Here are some highlights - tough to pick just a few!

Our fave trail at Shenandoah: Bearfence Mtn Trail goes mostly UP!

My son and I at the top of Bearfence Mtn

Another fave: Shenendoah's Blackrock Summit Trail at dusk

Waterfall in Smokies

Double Waterfall in Great Smoky Mtn NP

Standing on the TN/NC line in Smokies

Shenandoah's Stony Man peak - view of Blue Ridge Parkway

Hope you are enjoying the weather! I am out on our deck savoring this 70 degree weather before this big rainstorm hits later today.

Books Read in January

It took me a while to catch up on reviews, but here - finally - is my January summary of books read. It was an excellent reading month. Starting the year out sick for two weeks gave me extra reading time!

• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (IL), adult fiction
• Friends for Life by Andrew Norriss (UK), middle-grade fiction
• Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill (NY), adult fiction

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (France, Germany), adult fiction
• Mighty Jack by Ben Hatke, middle-grade graphic novel 
• The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart (WA), middle-grade fiction

• 'Round Midnight by Laura McBride (NV), adult fiction - reviewed an outside publication
• The Whip by Karen Kondazian (RI, CA), adult fiction

 Wow, 8 books in all! That's a lot for me in one month. It was an all-fiction month for me, with a mix of adult and middle-grade fiction, including one graphic novel. Not a single audiobook because the one I was listening to at the start of the month quit suddenly, and the second one I started went into February. I enjoyed all of these novels - most very much - but it's easy to pick a favorite. I LOVED Dark Matter, as did my husband - sooo compelling & original!

Progress on 2017 Reading Challenges:
This is my favorite part of my monthly summary - updating my Reading Challenges! I kicked off my Read Your Own Damn Books Challenge in a big way, with 6 TBR books! For the Monthly Motif Reading Challenge, January was Diversity month - 'Round Midnight fit that bill, with plenty of diverse characters.  No classics yet for the 2017 Back to the Classics Challenge. I slotted all 8 books into categories for my Well-Rounded Challenge. For my Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge, I kicked off the year with 2 international books, set in the UK and France/Germany. I added 5 states to my 2017 Literary Escapes Challenge.


Finally, Bookish Bingo hosted by Chapter Break - not really a challenge per se, but a fun game that I play each month! Here is my Bingo card for January, with 12 squares filled in - not very good for 8 books!

Books Read for each square:

Dark Matter - Rated 4 or more stars
The Honest Truth - pets, exercise, winter weather
Mighty Jack - Pictures in a book, free book, zombie/plague/mutations
Dept. of Speculation - blue cover
'Round Midnight - diversity
Friends for Life - shelf-love book (aka TBR)

All the Light We Cannot See - more than 400 pages

What was your favorite book read in January?

Fiction Review: The Whip

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I’d never before heard of The Whip by Karen Kondazian until one of my neighbors chose it for our book group selection recently. It is based on the true story of a woman who lived as a man, driving a stagecoach, in the Old West of the 1800’s, though so little is known of her life that it is mostly fiction.

Charley Parkhurst was one of the best, most renowned stagecoach drivers employed by Wells Fargo in the 1800’s, when the job was very dangerous and required great skill (and bravery). When he died in 1879, his employer, colleagues, and even friends were astonished to discover that Charley was actually a woman. Originally named Charlotte, little was known about this Old West character except that she originally came from Rhode Island, was an orphan, and moved out West as a young woman, where she lived out the rest of her life as a man and a well-known stagecoach driver. The rest of Charlotte’s story is imagined in this novel.

Charlotte is orphaned at a young age and brought up in an orphanage in Rhode Island. Though in real life she ran away at age 12, in this fictionalized account, Charlotte grows up alongside a boy named Lee who is like a brother to her. Lee protects her when they are children, but an abusive incident changes him and a new head of the orphanage insists on boys and girls being separated. Charlotte never fits in well with the other girls, but she soon finds a place for herself helping out the black man who takes care of the horses and enjoys the stable work.

Charlotte grows up and lives in a women’s boardinghouse, until she meets someone she falls in love with. Tragedy hits, though, and Charlotte sets off on her own for the West, enduring a long voyage by ship to finally arrive in California. She’s seen ads for stagecoach drivers, so she dresses like a man and attends a try-out for new drivers, where her skills with the horses help her beat out the men there. She is hired by Wells Fargo as a driver, a job that she will continue – and love – for the rest of her life, never giving away her tightly held secret.

This is one of those historical novels that takes a small nugget of real-life fact and builds a fictional story around it, to fill in the missing information. Charlotte/Charley’s life was fascinating in and of itself, and author Kondazian creates an intriguing story and motivation behind her unusual actions. Along the way, she paints a vivid picture of life in California during the Gold Rush years and even more interestingly, the challenging and dangerous life of a stagecoach driver. I read a lot of historical fiction, but rarely covering this period of American history, so I enjoyed being immersed in this era.

It’s an original and captivating story, though not everyone in my book group enjoyed it to the same degree. Some were frustrated that so much of the story was pure fiction, though that makes sense when you realize that little was known about Charley’s past before moving to California, and she closely guarded her private life. Others felt that the writing was too light and superficial, while some of us just went along for the ride and enjoyed the story. It makes sense when you realize that this first novel was written by an actress and screenwriter – several people commented that it felt more like a movie (it would make a great movie!). So, while everyone was intrigued by the story, ratings of the book ranged from 4 to 9 (out of 10). I think if you start this novel recognizing that it is mostly fiction, based on a fascinating real-life person, then you will enjoy this exciting Old West story of a woman who lived her life as a man and became a famous stagecoach driver.

302 pages, Hansen Publishing Group

Whip by Whipple, Beverly and Perry, John D. and Ladas, Alice Kahn
Trade Paperback

TV Tuesday: Travelers

If you've been missing the awesome Eric McCormack since Will & Grace went off the air and Perception was cancelled, your wait is over! He stars in a new sci fi show on Netflix that my husband, son, and I are completely hooked on: Travelers. Our son has been home sick from college a lot the past few weeks, so we have been binge-watching this intriguing, original, exciting show!

The premise of the show is that the Earth is dying in the future, hundreds of years from now. Much of the destruction can be traced back to a disaster occurring in the 21st century that set off a series of devastating effects across the globe. Their solution is to send people - Travelers - back to our present day to try to stop the disaster and change the course of history. In the opening scenes of the show, we see four different people almost die and then, within moments of their death, their bodies are suddenly taken over by Travelers, and they live.

The Travelers have been trained to assume the identity of their host body's life, without letting anyone around him or her know that anything has changed. This is a challenge because these people from the future are totally unaccustomed to life in the 21st century. They have studied their host's life, through official records and social media, but that only tells them the basic facts. They operate according to strict rules - called Protocols - designed to keep from alerting anyone to their presence or disrupting 21st century life (other than saving the world, of course).

Because they are limited to host bodies in the same region who die at roughly the same time and are suitable to be hosts, the team at the center of the show is a motley crew. Marcy, played by MacKenzie Porter, is a mentally challenged young woman who can barely take care of herself and is under the care of social services (a bit of an error in planning for the Travelers). Trevor, played by Jared Abrahamson, is a high school football champion. Nesta Cooper plays Carly, a young single mother with a baby and an estranged, abusive husband. And Phillip, played by Reilly Dolman, has the bad luck to be a heroin addict. Though there is an intelligent, highly motivated mind from the future inside, he is stuck with his host's addiction. And finally, Eric McCormack plays Grant, an FBI agent and the leader of this away team of Travelers.

There are two integral pieces to the show: each of the travelers trying to fit into his or her new life and the missions they are given from their leaders in the future for trying to alter the course of history and save the planet and the human race. Both aspects are fascinating and ever-changing and make for a very immersive and suspenseful storyline. All three of us love this show. Our son was a little slower to get into it, but after a few episodes, he was hooked, too. As you watch each episode, you learn a little more about the future world that the Travelers come from (our future) and the events that lead to such a disastrous outlook. It is exciting, fast-paced, and completely gripping. I can't wait to watch the next episode tonight!

Travelers is a Netflix original program, so it is available exclusively on Netflix.

Have you watched Travelers yet? What new shows are you hooked on?

Movie Monday: La La Land

Last week, on Valentine's Day, my husband and I went out to dinner and then to the theater to see La La Land. Fortunately, Valentine's Day fell on a $5 Tuesday at the local theater, and this seemed like a nice choice for the holiday. We both very much enjoyed this joyful, original movie that harkens back to Old Hollywood.

The opening scene gives you a good idea of what the rest of the movie has in store. In the middle of a traffic jam in LA, we see the drivers of the stuck cars suddenly jump out of their vehicles - dressed in bright, primary colors - and do an awesome song-and-dance number in the street and on the roofs and hoods of the cars. It's pure Broadway musical and full of joy! Then, the traffic begins to move, everyone gets back in their cars, and we catch our first glimpse of the main characters.

Mia, played by the adorable Emma Stone, is in the way in her Prius, and Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, is behind her, gets impatient and honks, and drives around her car with a snarl at her out the window. Not a very auspicious start for this love story. Mia is an aspiring actress, working in the coffee shop on one of the big movie lots, dreaming of the day when she will be the big star turning heads as she grabs a coffee. Mia goes on one audition after another, but the competition and her lack of success are depressing...and these aren't even good parts.

Sebastian is a jazz musician who dreams of having his own jazz club one day. He even has the spot picked out - a famous old jazz club that is currently a Samba & Tapas place. For now, he has a job he hates, playing piano in a restaurant. It's the holiday season, and the owner makes it clear that he wants him to play only classic holiday standards, no jazz or anything creative. For Sebastian, it's a soul-sucking job.

Mia and Sebastian meet up again, at a Hollywood party, and soon begin to date. So, yes, this is a romance, but it's not at all predictable or formulaic. It's about love, yes, but even more about reaching for your dreams and being true to yourself. It's a wonderful story, where people occasionally burst into song and start dancing. Both Stone and Gosling are wonderful in it - who knew with the dark, brooding roles Gosling usually plays, that he can dance and play the piano and smile like that? La La Land is an homage to Old Hollywood and to Broadway musicals, but it is also a story with emotional depth. This is definitely a feel-good movie, filled with the joy of art - drama, music, and dance - that will leave you tapping your feet and smiling.

La La Land is currently in the theaters. It swept the Golden Globes, winning 7 awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor Awards for both Stone and Gosling, and has been nominated for 14 Academy Awards. I'm glad we saw it on the big screen, with all that glorious color and sound, but it will eventually come to DVD and streaming (no release dates have been announced yet, though DVDs are already available for pre-order).