Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams

My husband has changed my life.  Before I met him, there is no way I would have picked up this book, let alone requested it from the library the way I did.  He has an unsatiable appetite for political and historical biographies.  He talked me into getting the HBO miniseries of John Adams on netflix a few years ago.  I was surprised to find it very interesting.  Since then, reading a biography on Abigail Adams has been on my list.

I finally picked one up and I wasn't disappointed.  Abigail Adams is a remarkable woman.  She raised their four children, managed their farm and finances and was John's closest advisor during their long separations.  At one point, they did not see each other for five years and the five years before that they had only had intermittent and short visits.  John was not there when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter.  She would go months (even up to ten!) without receiving even one letter from him.  Not only did she do all of this with strength and grace, they were truly in love which made the separations much more difficult. 

This book highlighed each phase of her life, giving insights into her character and providing details on the chronicles of their lives.  I was fascinated throughout but found a few parts were a little bit dry and difficult to get through.  If you are interested in learning more about her, this is a great book to read.  If you aren't, I don't think this book will change your mind. 

Bottom line:  Enjoyable and interesting for the person wanting to know a little bit about the only woman ever to be both wife and mother to an American President

The Lake of Dreams

I thought The Memory Keeper's Daughter was a great book - it drew me in and fascinated me.  When I saw another book by the same author on one of my quick pass-throughs of the adult section of the library, I grabbed it quickly. 

Edwards didn't disappoint.  Not only is the story interesting, but the langauge of this book is poetically beautiful in places.  It is vivid and draws you on in spite of the story, which is strong in its own right.  A story of how the past determines the present, infused with dreams and dream metahpors, this is a beautifully woven novel.

A definite summer recommendation!

These Things Hidden

My grandma recently gave me a stack of books about the time another friend gave me a stack of books.  I've been slowly working my way through both of them.  This is one of my favorites.

Every bit a page-turner, the author is masterful at creating and building tension.  I could figure things out as I read, but was still a bit surprised by the ending.  This would be a great beach read or airplane book.  It's not light and fluffy, but it's also a very quick read.

Stumped?

Check out What to Read Next.

Awesome.

Summer Book Stack

 Whew.  Montana summers are just BUSY.  I have been reading, and I have a stack of books to post about, but I thought I'd start with a great stack of books for summer.  I was just at Hastings and the used book deal was 5 for $25!  How great is that?!

        

You Know When the Men Are Gone

I picked this book off the shelf while spending a rare hour in Barnes and Noble by myself. 

I quickly settled in and hated to leave it behind when my time was up.  I had read so intently that I hadn't even noticed the man sitting across from me had left while I had been sipping my toffeenut latte and reading, something that rarely happens when I read in a place with distractions.  I found it at the library and finished it in one sitting.

A collection of short fictional stories that share a common theme and events, this book is a fascinating look at life on a military base during a time of war.  Each story is really about the women left behind to continue their lives yet is pivotally dependent on the men that leave them.

This book is poignant and painful, more about brokenness than reunion.  While uniquely military, the stories contain the same elements of love, pain, betrayal, and hope that mark all human relationships.  Definitely a good read.

The Thirteenth Tale

Don't pick this book up unless you want to give up extrarraneous activities and sit and read for hours.  It will draw you in and keep you turning pages until you get to the end and feel disappointed that it is over.

A bit of a ghost story (which I don't normally like) and a mystery quite unlike those typically in that genre, it tells the story of a strange place called Angelfield, a set of twins, a biographer dealing with her own grief and a story that once it is told, changes everything you believe at the beginning of the book.

Pick it up and read it but don't expect to get much done until you turn the 408th page.

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

I was excited when my friend Jessi gave me this book.  I got hooked on the online version of the famous Pioneer Woman's love story but I never got around to finishing it.  I love the Pioneer Woman - her cookbook is phenomenal and her blog is one of the best out there. 

The book did not disappoint.  I stayed up late to read it several nights.  The book is light, easy reading.  It is full of witty remarks and hilarious stories.  I found myself wiping tears away a few times from laughing so hard. 

If you want a fluffy love story that is actually true and contains hilarity along with some serious moments, put this one in your stack.  You won't be sorry!

Book Club Review: The Map of Love

I was so excited to read this book...but I think I'll have to give it a mixed review. 
I enjoyed the imagery in this book and the overall storyline...two love stories that entwined with a shared history.  In light of all that is happening in the Middle East currently, I found it fascinating to read of Egypt's history.  And I always enjoy reading books about other cultures and those set in times and places that I haven't read much about.  I also really liked the parts showing the roots and connections of the Arabic words - something I know nothing about but find interesting.  I also liked how the book was divided into sections:  A Beginning, An End of a Beginning, A Beginning of an End, An End - very clever.

However, I got really bogged down in the middle of this book.  I considered not finishing it, but I have such a hard time doing that and I am glad I stuck it out.  I would have enjoyed it a lot more if there had been a bit less political and historical information and more development of the characters.  The back of the book makes it sound like it is about the characters' love stories while it seemed to be more about the political situations.  And I suppose given the nature of the tale, the characters' stories were incomplete without a description of the times they lived in.  The other thing that frustrated me - I didn't discover until I finished it that there was a glossary of terms in the back that would have really helped me. 

Overall, it was an interesting book, but not one I'll ever feel the need to read again.

The Falls

I love me some Joyce Carol Oates.  It amazes me how she churns out the books and all that I have read, I have liked.

Her books are mostly dark.  But, she deeply psychologically mines her characters.  I think that is what I love the most.  If you are at all interested in character development and character driven writing, Oates is your gal.

Ariah is honeymooning in Niagara Falls when her husband throws himself over the railing, leaving her the "Widow Bride of the Falls".  Ariah determines that she is damned.  Enter Dirk Burnaby.  He is a well liked and rich man from Niagara Falls and falls inexplicably in love with Ariah.  They marry and have a few years of happiness and three children.  Dirk then becomes involved in "Love Canal", a lawsuit against toxic dumpers in the area.  The waste is making people sick and Dirk becomes consumed with the case.  The Burnaby children and their eccentric mother, Ariah, are left to deal with the aftermath of the case.

If you like Oates, I'd recommend this book.  If you are new to her, start with We Were the Mulvaneys.

Little Golden Books

We've received two of these Golden Book Collections as gifts.  They are probably geared towards kids more in the preschool age range, but there are a few stories that Caleb likes.  Each collection has nine classic Golden Book stories, all bound into one big book.

And guess who showed up a few times in each book?  Margaret Wise Brown.  I think we have most of her books now.  The Wonderful House and Home for a Bunny are probably my favorites in these books.  I've starred all the books by MWB.

Animal Tales includes:  The Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse, How the Leopard Got Its Spots, Mister Dog*, Animal Friends, The Big Brown Bear, Home for a Bunny*, How the Camel Got Its Hump, Tawny Scrawny Lion.

Sleepytime Tales includes:  The Poky Little Puppy, Baby Dear, The Color Kittens*, Good Night Little Bear, The Wonderful House*, The Sleepy Book*, The Three Bears, The Boy and the Tigers, How the Turtle Got Its Shell.

See any that you loved growing up?

Little Blue Truck

We love Little Blue Truck.  Our wonderful library has many of the picture/kids fiction books in bins by author last name so you can just flip through them without taking them off a shelf.

I usually do judge a book by the cover...if it has an appealing cover, I'll grab it and scan it to see how much text there is.  If it looks like something that will hold Caleb's attention, I get it.  I often pick books about things he is interested in - animals and vehicles primarily.

Little Blue Truck has plenty of both and it's a feel good story with a little moral.  It rhymes and has a rhythm.  Little Blue Truck Leads the Way takes the hero of the first book in to the city. 

"Little Blue Truck rolled into the city.  Beep! Beep! Beep! Isn't it pretty?"  How can you not like a book that starts out like that?  If my kids needed any more books for their personal library (ha!) then I would definitely purchase these!

Freddy and Fredericka

This book has been the bane of my existence for the last couple of weeks.  Probably not the best way to start a book review...let me explain.

My feelings about this book were all over the place.  It was so difficult to get into.  The first chapter was tedious and wordy.  I flew through the second chapter actually laughing out loud.  And so the book went, from tedious to delicious and back.  There were many times that I was going to put it back on the shelf.  The last time I thought that I was on page 426, so I thought I had a bit invested in it.  I should see how it turns out.

Freddy and Fredericka are the prince and princess of Wales (fun to read and think about with the upcoming royal wedding).  They are constantly getting into trouble and embarrassing for the crown.  Freddy comes off as a bumbling fool and Fredericka wears plunging necklines.  The part of the book describing Freddy's antics made me laugh so hard.

The Queen decides to teach them a lesson and literally drops them from the sky, naked, into America.  Thus begins Freddy and Fredericka's real education.  It was fun to read about them taking real jobs and living on and with nothing.  And then discovering their love for one another and their resulting acceptance of what their royal life needs to be like.

And all through the book it was love/hate.  I'd love one part and be so carried away that my heart would break when I got to the next tedious part.  It is an amazing read if you love language and play on words and grammatical play.  It was a fun read if you like imagining what a royal life is like.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think.  I think this book would make an amazing movie...

The Known World

Our library is great.  It is well-stocked, new, cool to be in, and has its own children's room with toys and activities and a pet fish named Blueberry.  There are many programs if you want to be involved from reading with your dog to books & babies to traditional storytime. There is even a great coffee shop where we often stop to get a treat.  They have lots of healthy kid-friendly snacks too.  And Big Train chai.  And, you can take your drink into the library. 

On one of my stops into the coffee shop, I inquired about the books on the shelves around the shop.  I found out they were used books that had been donated and were for sale; all profit from their sale goes to the library.  I pulled this one off the shelf, excited to read it because of its content and the fact that it won a Pulitzer.

This book was so hard to get into.  I bet I started to read it a half dozen times before I really got into it.  Mostly because I had a few brain candy books I was reading and whenever I picked this one up it took so long to remember the context, I could only read a few pages before drifting off.  But once I finally got into it, I enjoyed it.

The book's timeline is fluid as are the characters.  The central event is the death of Henry Townsend, a black slave owner (I learned there were African Americans who owned other African Americans).  The story shuttles back and forth among the slaves on his plantation, his early days as a slave himself, the story of his parents, his owners, the local sheriff, and numerous other characters.  That was part of what it made it difficult to get into.  I think if I read it again, I will see how beautifully woven the story truly is.  It is a remarkable story of human character and the things that we both need to see and shudder at.  If you've got some time to sit down and read it, do it...but this is anything but brain candy...consider yourself warned.

Book Club Review: The Weird Sisters

I loved so much about this book.  I loved that the characters always had their nose in a book.  I loved that it was told from the first person using "we" instead of "I".  I loved the father who would always quote Shakespeare and leave his family to search out the meaning.  I loved the stories of sisters.  And, I loved how real and flawed the characters were.

Bean flees for home after a disastrous stint in New York where she stole money from her employer to buy clothes.  Cordy, the baby, flees for home after she finds out she is having a baby.  And, steadfast Rose, is home thinking she is the glue that holds it all together.

I enjoyed reading about how they navigated each other and plodded their way through their messes.  Eventually they each let go of their expectations of how things were "supposed" to be.  

Reporting In

After my post on Margaret Wise Brown, I did go to Amazon and buy a couple of her books.  Imagine my joy at finding a book about trains, which my two-year-old loves.

This book has the same cadence as Goodnight Moon and The Big Red Barn.  At times, it nearly rhymes.  From what I can gather, after MWB passed away, she left the rights to her unpublished novels to her sister, who has since published some of them.  I think this book is one of them.  The illustrations are well-done although Caleb has asked what several of the pictures are, so maybe they are not that clear to a two-year-old.  The book shows the travel of two trains side by side - one an actual streamlined train, the other a wooden toy train.  One is going through the countryside, the other going through the house.  The comparison between the trains on each page is creatively illustrated.  We've already read this book about two dozen times and I'm not sick of it yet, and needless to say, neither is Caleb.

I also ordered  The Fathers Are Coming Home, thinking it might be a good one to have on hand when we start reading books about homecomings when my husband's deployment is over.  This one is cute, but not as interesting as the other book.  The text is simple.  The pictures are more cartoon-like.  There really isn't a storyline, just a series of animal daddies coming home to their babies, and then a sailor daddy coming home to his little boy.  The one thing that bugs me about the book (and others commented on it in their reviews), is that one line is about the lion daddy who lives alone and comes home to himself.  That just seemed weird to me, given the point of the book.  Overall, though, it's a pretty cute book and I think will be one I'll pull out when the time comes to read our other homecoming books.

In order to get free shipping, I also ordered this boxed set, which was an incredibly good deal.  I had checked out Mommy Hugs and Daddy Kisses from the library and my son had loved both books.  The additional two books in this set aren't quite as good, but still really cute.  The illustrations in this series are adorable.  The animals look lovable and somehow convey quite a bit of emotion.  These books work well as an avenue of expressing love to your child.  As I read them to Caleb, he always has a big smile on his face and if I act them out (Mommy monkey hugs her baby with a pat), I always get a happy giggle.  This would make a great baby shower gift, or just a collection into your board book library.  I don't foresee these books being entertaining beyond the toddler years but we are sure enjoying them now.

April's Pick

We'll be reading this novel, The Map of Love, for the month of April!  Enjoy!

Perennials For Every Purpose

Yesterday was the first day of spring.  Today it is snowing.  Sigh.

In my spring fever, I found this used book at Hastings for $6.50.   In addition to our raised veggie beds, we are planning three flower beds.  I love tulips, but am too late for this year.  I'd like to do a couple of peonies because they are stunning and I have the perfect south facing spot for them.  But, other than that, I am clueless when it comes to plants and flowers.

I think this is a great resource for the clueless type.  It has big and colorful pictures.  And, it assumes that your are a beginner gardener.  The author shows you his favorites and breaks them up into categories like No Work perennials (plant and go!) to minimal work perennials to perennials to attract birds and butterflies.

What I found especially helpful was that each entry has a Good Neighbors section that lists other plants that would look nice and work well with that plant.  And, the beginning has some sample garden plans with a nice illustration and how many of each plant and where to plant it.  Hard to mess that up!

When planting annuals I am totally haphazard and anything goes.  But, I understand the need to plan when investing in long-term landscaping.  Of course, knowing me, it will end up jungle looking!

Margaret Wise Brown

I was browsing in Barnes and Noble with a friend, looking at the Easter display in the children's section, when she exclaimed, "OH!  I had this book when I was little.  I loved it." and she hugged it to her chest.  I picked it up and leafed through it and it was adorable.  Then I noticed the author, Margaret Wise Brown. 

I had no idea the author of Goodnight Moon was such a prolific writer.  We love Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny.  And The Big Red Barn is one of my all-time favorite books.  We've also bought The Train to Timbucktoo. 

I love classic/retro books.  Of course, some are too wordy or the pictures are too dull for my 21st century kiddos to enjoy.  But many of Brown's books are not like that.  Illustrated by different authors, the pictures certainly evoke different feelings but the overall cadence and almost-rhyming nature of most of her books draw my kids and I both in, making reading it over and over again an actually enjoyable experience.  Heading to Amazon now!

The Girl Who Chased The Moon

Another one of Sarah Addison Allen's books.  They are like candy and I can't get enough.  She also wrote Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen.

This is by far my favorite of her books.  All of them have been fun to read and all have been read in one sitting.  I love the magical elements, the food, and the mystery.

After her mother dies, Emily moves to a small North Carolina barbeque town to live with her grandfather whom she has never met.  She soon learns that her mother left after something horrible happened and now Emily has to live down her mother's reputation.

There is a little bit of romance.  A lot of cake baking (recipes included at the end of the book).  Mysterious lights and wallpaper that changes on a whim.

I would recommend this book when you are in need of something light and fun.