Thirty-four

Well.  Here I am again.

Year eight of book lists, 2017.

I'm rather embarrassed by the dwindling number of books read over the last few years, but I can either dwell on that, or I can move on.

Moving on...


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Past book lists are linked below and are also accessible on the bar below the blog header.  Thanks for reading.
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016

* fun
# favorite
AB audiobook
GN graphic novel

Jennica-Ayelet's 2017 Reading List

Children's Books/Young Adult
The Secret Keepers, Trenton Lee Stewart
A lonely boy finds a secret device that can actually make you invisible.  A bad guy is out to get it, and the boy meets the family who is sworn to protect its secret. By the author of The Mysterious Benedict Society.

A Maze Me, Naomi Shihab Nye
A poetry collection written for girls by one of my favorite poets.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room, Lemony Snicket
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny lose their parents in a house fire.  That is just the beginning of their troubles with Count Olaf.
I don't remember much about these books, except that Klaus likes words and Sunny likes biting (out of self-defense).  The writing was fun, but I lost interest while reading book three out of thirteen when Amos said, "They didn't catch the bad guy yet?  I think I'd be bored by those books."

*# GN Snow White, Matt Phelan
A graphic novel retelling of Snow White, set in the Great Depression.  One of my favorite books of the year.  The "witch's" downfall is epic, haha!

The seven dwarves; from YouTube

GN The Storm in the Barn, Matt Phelan
A graphic novel set during the Dust Bowl.

Emily's Quest, L.M. Montgomery
I read the other Emily books back in 2015. In this final book, Emily decides to stay home with her family, continue her writing, and make terrible choices regarding the men in her life. ("Okay, I'll marry you, even though you are terrible, and can be cruel, and are an atheist, and don't appreciate me, and..." [insert eye roll]).  In the end, she marries the right one.  It was a good wrap-up to the trilogy, but as my roommate Kat and I agreed, you just want to shake Emily.

# AB Bomb: The Race To Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin
Did you know that Americans traitors gave the secret of the atom bomb to the Russians?  Neither did I, until this book.  This book is historical nonfiction, but it was very well-written and moved at a good pace.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, Jonathan Auxier
Peter Nimble is an eyeless orphan (his eyes were pecked out; ow).  Using miscellaneous magical eyes, Peter is taken on a journey to free a kingdom from its evil ruler and to learn his true identity.

Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White, Melissa Sweet
A biography of E.B. White, complete with pictures and scrapbook-style artwork!  E.B. White was the author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan, and innumerable excellent essays, many of them written for The New Yorker.

from Jewish Standard

* GN The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wit and Wisdom in the Wild West, Steve Sheinkin
* GN Rabbi Harvey Rides Again: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Folktales Let Loose in the Wild West, 
* GN Rabbi Harvey vs. the Wisdom Kid: A Graphic Novel of Dueling Jewish Folktales in the Wild West
Rabbi Harvey is a rabbi living out in Colorado during the Wild West days.  He is also the sheriff. He dispenses wisdom and outsmarts bad guys, including the Bad Bubbe and the Wisdom Kid.

Strider, Beverly Cleary
This is a follow-up story to Dear Mr. Henshaw.  Leigh (a boy) gains a dog and makes friends at his new school.  He also learns to deal with his troubled family life (divorced parents with his dad on the road) and finds out that no one's family is perfect.


Etc.
# AB Dracula, Bram Stoker
One of my favorite books of 2017.  I listened to it as an audiobook as well as read it as a regular book.  It is written as a series of letters from several main characters.  It is very well-done and extremely suspenseful!
Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to complete a business deal with Count Dracula.  Jonathan soon determines that not all is right with this mysterious, strange man...

GN The Professor's Daughter, Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
I didn't like this graphic novel very much; it was a bit creepy.  I think a mummy falls in love with an Egyptologist's daughter.

# AB The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Look-alike ladies.  An artist-tutor.  An ugly woman.  A church fire.  An Italian anarchist.  A bastard baron. A hypochondriac.  A dastardly plan.
I really liked this one.

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, Michael Finkel
Non-fiction about Christopher Knight, a man who lived as a hermit in rural Maine for twenty-seven years and was discovered in 2013.  He survived by stealing food, bedding, books, fuel, etc. from nearby homes and a summer camp.  He only talked to people twice during that time.
It was rather interesting to read about how and why Christopher Knight chose to live this way and what his burglary victims thought about him.
(Michael Finkel wrote an article for GQ that he later stretched into this book.)

# Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, Billy Collins
Picnic, Lightning
Ahhh, Billy Collins.  Billy Collins' poetry is about everyday objects or happenings, usually with a surprising or delightful twist at the end.

from amazon

# GN The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir, Thi Bui
Thi Bui's illustrated memoir, recounting her memories, her parents' memories, and her relationship to family.
I also wrote about it here.


ReReads
In My Uncle's House, Julie Nye
A set of siblings lose their parents and go live with their non-Christian family.  This is especially hard on the boy, who has to learn that he doesn't have it all together, either.

AB Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

AB Anne of Avonlea, L.M. Montgomery

AB Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery

AB Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling

AB Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

AB The Four-Story Mistake, Elizabeth Enright

Happy Valentine's Day!

AB Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

AB Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling

AB Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

AB Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling

AB Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling

Book Journal

My 2017 book list is not up yet, but I do have another post about books to share.  Ever thought of having a book journal?  One of my college friends expressed an interest in keeping a centralized book list, but she wasn't sure how.  Here's how I do it; maybe it will be of interest to one of you!

In 2010, I decided to start keeping track of all of the books that I read in a given year.  I bought an ugly journal at Target and made some decorative covers for it. Much better.

How do I use this journal?

I make a list for every year.  I write down the books as I finish them and add a few labels, if applicable.  My current labels are:
AB: audiobook
GN: graphic novel
PB: picture book
RR: reread

I count audiobooks, graphic novels, and rereads in my list because I try to read or listen to every word and thus can say that I read the whole book.  I add, but don't count, picture books when I find a really fun picture book that I want to remember, either for my annual book list, for myself, or for a friend.

At the end of the year/beginning of the next year, I write a long post of reviews of all that year's books.  These annual reviews are linked at the top of my blog, right under my blog banner (Twenty-Six, Fifteen, Forty-Seven, etc.).  After I've written, proof-read, edited, and published my list, I still find typos...I mean, I print out my list and glue it into my book journal.  That way, I can see my lists and my reviews all in one place.

My journal only has my book lists in it; no losing lists in another journal or on random scraps of paper or in a planner. I keep my book journal in the same spot at all times (on my nightstand).  I do write down quotes and notes in a separate spiral notebook. (I want things to be organized and simple; nothing jumbled up together.)

So, there you go!  My book journal. :)

One more note:
Sarah Mackenzie at Read-Aloud Revival has her kids fill out their own simple reading journals (you can watch a free master class on how they do this).  I like my current method of separate notebooks, but I do think it would be really cool to start reading journals when you are very young so that you can look back on all of the books you read as a kid, especially if you want to find those books (which may be rare or out of print) as an adult.

Read, Reading, To Read

Here we go again, another month, another post about...books. :D

Books I finished recently:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
For the seventh time

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir, Thi Bui
A memoir in graphic novel form of Thi Bui's parents' experience in Vietnam before and during the Vietnam War, the family's transition to America, and the author's wrestling with how to relate to her parents and to her own young son.
I really liked this book; it was a good introduction to the Vietnam War, a war I know very little about.  I have Ken Burns' new documentary, "The Vietnam War," on hold at the library.  I am number fifty-five, in line for eight copies...for volume one.


A poem:

I Go Back to the House for a Book

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,

another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,

a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me--
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.

But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in sync,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,

but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.
He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,

shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid--

I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

-Billy Collins
from Picnic, Lightning


Books I am reading now:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
For the seventh or eighth time...

Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers
A body is discovered in a bath, and Lord Peter Wimsey sets out to find out whose it is.

The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie
Tommy and Tuppence are "demobbed" after World War I and go into business together, being hired to find a person who is supposedly holding a potentially dangerous international secret...

Picnic, Lightning, Billy Collins
More poetry


A few books on hold at the library:
Exiled: Memoirs of a Camel, Kathleen Karr

Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites, Deb Perelman


Number of books purchased on our epic Goodwill day in Lincoln, NE:
Eighteen, plus one to give away

Poetry and time and stairs

Poetry is best read while climbing stairs.

I work on the ninth floor of a fifteen-floor building. On the days that I arrive a few minutes early, I take the stairs. I start on the first floor, walking through the elevator lobby and turning right at the security desk.  I open the door next to the letter drop, step inside the stairwell, adjust my lunch bag and Nalgene in my left hand, and dig out my poetry book with my right.  I read two or three poems as I climb up to the twelfth floor, cross the elevator lobby, and walk back down to the ninth floor, where I emerge right next to our office door.

Currently I am reading Aimless Love: New and Selected Poetry by Billy Collins.

Why am I reading this particular collection?  Well, a few months ago I visited a nearby library (versus the library right across the street :D ), and I saw this book of poetry sitting on a shelf.  I remembered something our Sunday School leader and church elder, Brian, had said a few months before, something about Billy Collins being his favorite poet.  I opened the book at random and read the poem "Hangover," which is hilarious.  I promptly added Aimless Love to my stack.  I read many of the poems at home, one right after another, but I was pretty sure that poetry is better spread out over time.  I took the book to work and tried it out as my stair-climbing read.

Fast forward a few months, and I was once again taking the stairs to my office, reading the poem "Quandary."


Quandary

I was a little disappointed
in the apple I lifted from a bowl of fruit
and bit into on the way out the door,
fuzzy on the inside and lacking the snap of the ripe.

Yesterday it was probably perfect,
I figured, as I held it out before me,
soft red apple bearing my tooth marks,
as if I were contemplating the bust of Aristotle.

I considered all the people
who would be grateful to have this apple,
and others who might find it in their hearts
to kill me before slipping it into a pocket.

And I considered another slice
of the world's population, too,
those who are shielded from anything
as offensive as a slightly imperfect apple.

Then I took a second bite, a big one,
and pitched what was left
over the tall hedges hoping to hit on the head
a murderer or one of the filthy rich out for a stroll.

-Billy Collins


Later that day, I ate a fuzzy apple.  Haha!  When Amos got home, I read him "Quandary."  (He had eaten the other half of the fuzzy apple at lunchtime.)


Why do I read poetry while walking up stairs?  For one, it helps me to keep going.  Climbing twelve floors is not easy, and sometimes I want to give up.  The poems keep me focused on the word pictures he is painting, rather than on my legs that want to ditch the stairs and take the elevator at the sixth floor ("Come on, some exercise is better than none!  Maybe the elevator would be good today...").  For another, I am easily distracted these days (stupid social media).  Billy Collins' poems are all short stories, usually with a surprise or a twist in the last few lines; I can easily visualize the short scenes of his poems.  Also, I just love words.

In discovering this combination of poetry, limited time, and stairs, I feel like I have discovered a secret.  I am almost done with Aimless Love, and I wonder what poetry I will find next...

Just a note

I sometimes see manufactured items in a new light.
Who made this toothpick?  Who gets to say, "I work in a toothpick factory"?  Somebody's gotta do it.
Or what about a perfume or lotion company?  Who watches over the vats of Bath & Body Works lotion?  Does their husband or wife get tired of smelling "Sweet Magnolia & Clementine"?

I decided to start in on my audio copy of Dracula a few weeks ago, obtained for free from Audiobook Sync, which I link to every year. :)  Unfortunately their selection doesn't look very interesting this year.  BUT, I really lucked out in 2015 because my version of Dracula, from Naxos Audiobooks, is great.  Dracula is a very creepy story, but Bram Stoker was a brilliant writer; he had a gift for writing suspense.  Dracula contains so many twists, turns, and surprises that I wonder how I have not just sat down and read till I am done or my eyes fall out, haha! I still have about sixty pages or three hours to go. What more can happen?!

Amos is at a men's dinner at church tonight.  I suppose I shall go make a smoothie, do some dishes, and find out what happens next...hold on Madam Mina! Help is on the way!

Friday

In my eleven years of blogging (!), I have never used "Friday" as a blog post title.
How odd!
I changed that today. ;)

I did a few things this Friday.

Rain...LOTS of rain... :)

Ten books for $10.00 at a local library sale! :D

A present for Baby Goforth

Listening to the Read Aloud Revival podcast

Drinking coffee

Baking chocolate muffins (pictured) and banana muffins (not pictured) ;)

More rain!

Forty-Four

At long last, I bring you my seventh annual book review post!  This post is eight-plus hours in the scheming, planning, typing, editing, deleting, and pasting. I hope you enjoy this post and even more, some of the books mentioned herein.

This year I read twenty-nine new books, reread fifteen, and tasted several more.
I'm slightly embarrassed by that number, even though I know I've read more books than many other people did in 2016.

The culprit?
Me + social media.
Yep.  Too much time on the internet and not enough time on the pages.

I intend to fix that this year...though I already said that I spent over eight hours on this...oh dear!

- - - - - - - - - - -
Past book lists are linked below and are also accessible on the bar below the blog header.  Thanks for reading.
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

* fun
# favorite
PB picture book
AB audiobook

Jennica-Ayelet's 2016 Reading List

Children's Books/Young Adult
*# The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Maryrose Wood
AB Book Two: The Hidden Gallery

via Wheeler Studio

AB Book Three: The Unseen Guest
AB Book Four: The Interrupted Tale
AB Book Five: The Unmapped Sea
I love the Incorrigible Children books!  The saga of the three Incorrigible children and their plucky governess, Penny, continues in many different settings, including London, the woods on the Ashton estate, Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, and Brighton.  The story is slowly unraveling of how Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia came to be abandoned and how they are related to Penelope Lumley.  It is hard to distinguish between each of these books because I listened to the books in a short period of time, but basically, the children were raised by wolves and thus have wolfish tendencies...but so does their patron, Frederick Ashton.  A curse has been pronounced upon the Ashton family because of ruthless action by an ancestor, and Penny, her friend Simon Harley-Dickinson, and a few others are working to unravel the mystery before the curse becomes permanent...or they are wiped out by Frederick's thought-to-be-dead father.  The books are hilarious and punny.  Katherine Kellgren is a talented and flexible narrator.
I am anxiously awaiting the sixth and final installment!

AB Ivy and Bean, Annie Barrows
Ivy and Bean, two neighbor girls, find out that they enjoy being friends, after all (their moms tried to get them to play together, but both resisted until one fateful day).  I don't remember much about the book, except that the girls pretend to be witches and run through the neighbors' backyards...or something like that.  I can't even remember Bean's real name. :P  It was cute, but obviously not memorable (at least not at this stage of my life).

Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered, Gary Paulsen
An unnamed city boy is taken from his chronically drunk, irresponsible parents to spend a summer with his cousins in the country.  The boy and his cousin, Harris, have all sorts of adventures, from escaping the terrifying rooster to tackling pigs in the pigsty to riding into town to watch the same old movie week after week.  The synopsis sounds interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it; the boy could use a filter.

* Ramona books, Beverly Cleary
AB Ramona the Brave
AB Ramona and Her Mother
AB Ramona's World
I love the Ramona books.  Ramona is such a character!  I got all of the Ramona books as a bundle when I had my Audible account, so I can listen to her adventures over and over with the click of the mouse. :)

Treasures of the Snow, Patricia St. John
Lucien and Annette learn to forgive and be forgiven after each holding grudges following a serious accident involving Annette's little brother, Dani.  Written by Patricia St. John, who lived in Switzerland for a while as a girl and later moved to North Africa as a missionary nurse.

Click on the picture to read the quote from Annette's grandmother

Fun fact: The movie version of "Treasures of the Snow" was filmed in the same Swiss village where Patricia St. John and her family lived for a brief time when she was a girl.  The village didn't want to permit the filming at first (they had had bad experiences with other filmmakers).  But when the villagers learned that it was Patricia St. John who wanted to film there, they agreed out of love for her mother; they still remembered her, decades later.

Back to Blackbrick, Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
This was a sad book based on an interesting idea.  Cosmo has experienced a lot of loss in his young life, the most recent loss coming in the form of his beloved granddad slipping away into Alzheimer's.  Cosmo is not coping well, but, in a moment of rare clarity, his granddad gives him a key to a place called Blackbrick Abbey and tells Cosmo to go there.  Once there, Cosmo meets his granddad as a young man  and tries to change the past in order to stave off the Alzheimer's in the present.
It is a strange story of time travel...or is it time travel?  Is it really a story of Cosmo's inner thoughts? Is it all his imagination?  Even at the end of the book I wasn't sure.  I did appreciate the love between Cosmo and his granddad.

Pax, Sara Pennypacker
Peter rescued Pax, his pet fox and best friend, as a young kit.  Through a series of circumstances, Peter's father decides that the fox must go.  After abandoning Pax in the woods, Peter realizes what he has done and runs away to find his fox.  Pax, meanwhile, sets out to find Peter, learning about living in the wild at the same time.  Both characters overcome obstacles along their journeys, but the outcome is not what you might expect.
The book switches between Peter's and Pax's viewpoints.

via wikipedia

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
The Harry Potter books mention several made-up books, such as A History of Magic, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  J.K. Rowling chose a few of these titles and wrote them out as actual books as a way to raise money for a few different charitable foundations.  The Tales of Beedle the Bard contains a few fairy tales/parables/morality tales and plays a major role in the last Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2, a play by Jack Thorne; based on a original story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
Harry's second son, Albus, ends up in Slytherin House and becomes good friends with Draco's only son, Scorpius.  Albus and Scorpius go on a series of adventures to bring Cedric Diggory back from the dead using a Time-Turner.  Their actions have unintended consequences, and soon the whole gang is involved to put everything back to rights and to heal the relationship between Harry and Albus.
I didn't like this book that much.  The play was not written by J.K. Rowling herself, though she did authorize it.  The characters and tone were largely inconsistent with the original books, and after reading several reviews on Goodreads, I can see some gaping plot holes.  I'm glad I read it, because it is a Harry Potter book, but I doubt I will buy, even from Goodwill.
Best part:
"Ethel!  Cancel the goblins!"
~Hermione, Minister of Magic

Quidditch through the Ages, Kennilworthy Whisp (J.K. Rowling)
Another book written as a fundraiser, this one on the history of Quidditch, the best sport in the magical world.  It was pretty funny.

Biographies/Autobiographies
# An Ordinary Woman's Extraordinary Faith: The Autobiography of Patricia St. John, Patricia St. John
Patricia St. John was born in England, spent some time in Switzerland, worked as a nurse in London during World War II, served as a house mother at a Christian boarding school, and moved to North Africa where she worked as a missionary and nurse.  I can't remember many details about this book, but I really enjoyed it.

# These Strange Ashes, Elisabeth Elliot
The story of Elisabeth Elliot's often discouraging, disheartening, and seemingly fruitless mission work in Ecuador before her marriage to Jim Elliot.
"Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God's story never ends with 'ashes.'"

via Goodreads

Maud: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, Harry Bruce
As the title says, this is a book about Lucy Maud Montgomery's life.  It is rather informally written, though the facts are all straight (as far as I can tell).  It was a very interesting introduction to the details of her life, including her mother's early death; abandonment by her father; living with her grandparents; working at a newspaper office in Halifax, Nova Scotia; teaching on PEI; taking care of her grandmother for several years; marrying a depressed pastor; and writing her famous books.  I am looking forward to reading a more serious biography of L.M. Montgomery...one of these days.

# One Vision Only, Carolyn L. Canfield
The biography of my favorite missionary, Isobel Kuhn.  Carolyn Canfield met Isobel Kuhn before she died and wrote her biography after death.  This book contains a section called "Vistas" which were Isobel's own writings about real missionary life and marriage.  My favorite "vistas" were about the cleaning of the filthy rental house and John's reaction to the birth of their daughter, Kathryn.  I don't remember much about this book, unfortunately, but I did learn some new things about Isobel by reading it.
Isobel grew up in a nominally Christian home, went off the deep end in college, and became a Christian after she graduated.  She went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago where she met her future husband, who was accepted as a missionary to China before she was.  Isobel eventually sailed for China, where she and John were married.  They worked in various towns and cities in China before being assigned to their hearts' desire, the Lisu people in rural China.  John and Isobel were forced out when the communists took over after World War II.  They later ended up in Thailand, working with the same people group.  Isobel died from cancer at age fifty-five.
Here's an article about her from The Traveling Team website.

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, Marja Mills
Marja Mills was tasked with writing about a city-wide book initiative in Chicago which involved reading To Kill a Mockingbird.  On a research trip to Alabama, Mills, amazingly, was able to meet Harper Lee's sister, Alice, and struck up a friendship.  She eventually moved to rural Alabama, right next door to the Lee sisters, and got to know them over a few years.  She wrote this book about Harper Lee and her family, the context for TKaM, and her experiences in the South.  Unfortunately, controversy surrounds this book.  In her later life, Harper Lee said that Mills had exploited her and her sister, but Alice denies this.  I side with Marja Mills and Alice on this one.
All in all, it was very interesting book about Harper Lee and her context in the South.

* AB This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection, Carol Burnett
Carol Burnett is a well-known TV personality and comedian.  This book is a series of short chapters about many different experiences of hers, some of them questionable, a few sad, and many hilarious!  She shares stories from her childhood days, Broadway days, TV show days, and recent days.  She also talks about hilarious encounters and misunderstandings with famous people such as Carey Grant, Julie Andrews, and Lucille Ball. Carol Burnett reads the book herself for the audio version, and it is great.

Etc.
The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir, Roma Ligocka with Iris von Finckenstein; Margo Bettauer Dembo, translator
Shaunna: Do you want to have a small book club?
Me: Okay.
*we read one book over a series of a few months*
Well, that didn't last long!  It was fun, though. :)
This book was suggested to me by Irene, who was tickled when I told her Shaunna and I were going to read it.  It is the true story of a Polish Jewish family caught up in World War II.  The mother and daughter are not sent to the camps, but the father was taken away to a work camp, I think.  This is the story of their life during World War II and the years following.
This was an interesting book, though not uplifting or inspirational.  The most interesting part to me was the memory about returning to school after the war.  The school was filled with traumatized children who acted and reacted in all sorts of unpredictable ways, led by a teacher who herself was traumatized.  How sad!  How daunting!

Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose, Naomi Shihab Nye
I found this book at the OKC book sale last year and read it before sending it off to one of my friends (who had inspired me to read Nye's work in the first place).  As a book of poems and short prose, it doesn't tell a single linear story.  I haven't read much poetry, but so far, Naomi Shihab Nye is my favorite poet.
One poem:

The United States Is Not the World

and this I was reminded of by
mamas in silk saris
grandpas in burgundy turbans,
smoky overcoats
Sikh boys with powder-puff topknots
braided girls munching Belgian chocolate
and a gloomy little lad with a strange
golden cone on his head

Thank you, I said. O thank you Gate
D-4, Amsterdam to Delhi
months of smug Americana dissolving
quickly
as tiny white no-jetlag pills
on the tongue

via Amazon

# I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?  Tales of Driving and Being Driven, Naomi Shihab Nye
One of Naomi Shihab Nye's stories includes the line, "On the night the first car crashed into their home, they were both sleeping."  Wait, the first car?  Yep.
IAYTTAYOK is a book of short chapters, all dealing with some kind of car or transportation.  She talks with taxi drivers, worries about her son as he bounces around the bed of his grandpa's truck on a country lane, tells about running over a brick mailbox while her friend was driving another friend's car, and escaping from a potential kidnapper (don't take rides from strangers, kids!).  I really like this one.

Peace Child, Don Richardson
The Richardsons moved to a rural part of Papua New Guinea to share the gospel with an unreached people group. They had a hard time communicating the gospel to this group because of ingrained cultural values that were contrary to the values of Christ.  Eventually God revealed the key to their understanding, and the tribe was transformed by the gospel.
The big idea that I pulled from this book was God's kindness and grace in providing a cultural key in every group of people that can be used to unlock the truth in a uniquely effective way.

Operation Ajax: The Story of the CIA Coup that Remade the Middle East, Daniel Burwen (artwork) and Mike de Seve (text)
This is a graphic novel telling the story of the US- and UK-sponsored coup in Iran in 1953.  The US and the UK were interested in exploiting Iran's oil resources.  When Mohammed Mossadegh and others figured out what was going on, they nationalized the oil industry.  The US and UK worked with people within and without Iran to destabilize and eventually overthrow Mossadegh and the fledgling Iranian democracy...and the Middle East was never the same.
This graphic novel was inspired in part by Steven Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

Humans of New York: Stories, Brandon Stanton
Brandon Stanton runs a famous blog and Facebook page, filled with images and stories of everyday people he meets in New York (or Iran...or Turkey...or Ohio...or, currently, Argentina).  This is his second book of selected pictures and stories.

Pokeweed...it's poisonous

*# The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery; Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, Mary E. Doody Jones, editors
I have decided that I like annotated books.  I read Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder in 2015, and I read the annotated notes in The Annotated Little Women in 2016 (I didn't finish all of the articles in the Little Women book).
Anyway, I really, really enjoyed Annotated Anne, though it took me a while to get through it all.  In the course of my reading, I learned about pokeweed (and discovered that it grows here in Oklahoma, too), the Scottish heritage of Prince Edward Island, the treatment of orphans in the early 1900s, and many other interesting things...that I can't remember right now. :P  I thought the articles in the back of the book were fascinating.  This book was very well done.

# Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance
One of the books of the year.  J.D. Vance weaves cultural and economic commentary in with his personal experiences.  J.D. grew up in unstable environment, to put it mildly.  His mother was an addict, an emotional abuser, and a serial girlfriend/wife.  The constants in J.D.'s life were his sister and his grandparents, and their belief in him made all the difference.  In spite of the poverty, the upheaval, the emotional abuse, the instability, and the suppressed anger, J.D. broke the vicious cycle and is a successful lawyer and author today.  He is not a Christian...or at least not yet.
Some observations:
He is a political conservative, despite the welfare system being created for families like his
This is the first non-fiction book that I've read that was written by a peer (he was born in 1984)
This book really helps explain the viewpoint of those angry, middle class, white people we have heard so much about
There is a reference to Harry Potter (J.D. mentioned that he read a lot as a kid, and I was waiting for him to mention Harry Potter...which he did, haha!)
Highly recommended; Amos read it, too.

Rereads
In the order I read them...
* AB Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

via Amazon

* # AB More about Paddington, Michael Bond

* AB Ramona Forever, Beverly Cleary

*# AB Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

*# AB Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

*# AB Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling

* AB Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

via Amazon

# Lila, Marilynne Robinson
The last time I "reviewed" Lila, I did not do it justice.  I love this book.  It is beautiful.
Lila is "stolen" by a woman named Doll.  Her life is one of upheaval and deprivation as she and Doll toil as migrant workers during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  Through a series of circumstances that I don't want to give away, Lila arrives in Gilead, Iowa.  There she meets a kind, old pastor and marries him, though she is much younger.  As she is expecting their child, Lila thinks back on her life, wondering at the meaning of it all and wondering if she can trust both the old man and herself with this next stage in her life.
The story moves backward and forward in time as Lila reflects on her past life and adjusts to her new one.  This is not a light read, and it takes concentration, but I love it.
A word to the wise: Do not listen to this as an audiobook.  The narrator sounds stiff and odd; the voice you give Lila in your head will be much better. :)

Weekend doings

Amos went to Men's Retreat this weekend (and is currently on his way back! :D), so I had a series of adventures on my own!

Yesterday I took two walks, baked some pita chips, read a good bit of Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (very interesting, by the way), painted a few tiny paintings, started on a Christmas present (I might need to redo it), and watched "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix."

Today I watched a few episodes of Good Mythical Morning, visited a new coffee shop, bought a brand-new, never-been-worn sweater for $2.70, with tax, tried out a new bookstore (not very good), and trekked around the Ray J. Harral Nature Park!

Click on the pictures to enlarge them. :)

Treasures from one of my walks yesterday

$2.70 from Goodwill, never been worn!

Tiny paintings, inspired by other paintings on Instagram

Slightly creepy turtle...with a creepin' frog

Some strange corrugated metal yurt...?

Moss

That oak leaf is as big as my face!

Looks like Anne of Green Gables

Walking

I don't work on Fridays, so yesterday I went on a walking adventure!  Here are some of the beautiful things I found (not pictured: a redheaded woodpecker, monarch butterflies, feisty squirrels).

Toxic pokeweed!

This plant is referenced in Anne of Green Gables as "pigeon berries."

Creek and shoes

Through the fence

Self portrait

Virginia creeper, also referenced in Anne of Green Gables...and elsewhere