Debi Cates
Bummer. This short story just never gave up any shining gems for us. Since I joined The Short Story Club group* this year, the anthology we are reading from, [b:Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature 53080 Black Water The Book of Fantastic Literature Alberto Manguel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1725495868l/53080.SY75.jpg 51764] Alberto Manguel as Editor, has normally invoked lively conversations. This one fell flat. Not horrid, just predictable and not at the usual caliber of the other short stories in the anthology.Well, there was one tidbit that member Petergiaquinta shared from the author's New York Times obituary. During the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1957, the House Un-American Activities Committee summoned him to testify in San Francisco, where he delivered what may well have been his finest performance.When asked to state his profession, he answered: “I am a gardener. I do underground work on plants.” He then refused to answer questions about membership in the Communist Party, “on the grounds that this hearing is a big bore and waste of the public's money.”I dug that inspiring historic moment of Truth to Power.In addition, from another person in our group, one of the moderators, Cecily, I learned a snazzy new word, shibboleth. I can't wait until I have the right opportunity to use it.So, no, not a sparkling story this time. The members of the group, though, can make almost anything at least a bit sparkly.*You can join us here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035. One of the moderators, Leonard Gaya, usually hunts us up a PDF to read online in case you don't have the book.
“You can't be safe and cautious all the time. If you're too timid in this life you'll miss out on all the fun and adventure. You'll just stay home and snap at flies.”
–a little philosophy from Hank the Cowdog.
What? None of the readers I follow have read Hank the Cowdog? How is that possible? Boy howdy, let me say that y'all are missing out on good laughs and high (plains) adventures.
Hank is Head of Ranch Security on a ranch up in the Texas panhandle, near where the canyons are. One morning, at first light he learns is that there has been a murder on the ranch. Someone has killed one of the big leghorn hens. Never fear, Hank is on the case. And dad-gummit, he's gonna get to the bottom of it.
Eventually.
Right after he has a refreshing morning roll in the overflow sewer.
Hank is one of a kind. Just like all good old boy cowboys, God love ‘em.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”“Little House” is another stop on my casual journey to read classic children's books that I should have read when I was a kid. Merely 50+ years late. This project started in earnest when I made a friend, a booktuber, who did read all those books as a kid. Some she read many, many times over. Among all sorts of books she reads now, she discusses and still cherishes the childhood ones on her channel too. Once I asked her what would a book have to contain to be perfect for her as a lifelong reader. She answered that it had already been written. It was the Little House on the Prairie books.So now I feel part of that cozy Love Wilder tribe. This tale of family and friends is kind and joyful. The many preparations for each season and their self-reliance is astounding. Hard-working doesn't even begin to describe what life must have been like for them. Makes me plumb ashamed at how much complaining I do over mere inconveniences. I admire that combination of goodness and fortitude.The beautiful spirit in this book might be considered naive. But, like time with my friend, it is invigorating, even healing, to be wrapped in kindness and joy. I do have to laugh, though: what an unintentional contrast it makes to the very last book I finished, [b:Independent People 77287 Independent People Halldór Laxness https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1282892439l/77287.SY75.jpg 1391302]! It was also a great book about self-sufficiency, but with an ironic view. It could hardly be more different than Wilder's.I wouldn't ever pit the viewpoint of the two stories against each other, one right one wrong. Since time immemorial there are all kinds of experiences available in this world and reading gives us access to many lives and ways of living. Our own reality is, like those writers, a canvas.And so, like little Laura Wilder, this is my now,, one that has real hardships but also has an overflowing fullness of simple joys. One of the duties to being alive is to actually be alive.
Wormy sheep, a mangy dog, a dilapidated hovel–priceless possessions of an independent man.
How can a novel be so base, vulgar, cold, despairing and yet be beautiful, hopeful, funny, sad, and evoke real and deep empathy, empathy for us all?
I don't know how but Laxness did it. I'm at a loss at how to even describe the experience. Icelandic sheep farmer Bjarthur of Summerhouses is someone you must meet for yourself.
What a man. Exasperating and admirable. Idiotic and poetic. Sympathetic and misery-making. I won't soon forget him.
E.M. Forster wrote genre fiction. Who knew?
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The “panic” takes place when a group of generally obnoxious English tourists in Italy go on a picnic. After the group experiences an eerie panic, one of them, the one who did not flee, is quite transformed to the point of ecstasy. That transformation does not sit well with the fellow tourists.
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This early work, you will recognize, includes Forster's later themes. Just today, I picked up this from astute reader, Fionnuala: Forster often includes a natural event that takes on a significance. That event challenges the idea that the stiff upper-lipped Englishman of the Empire is in full control.
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You are so cool, Edward Morgan Forster. I need to read everything you wrote.
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- You can join The Short Story Group here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035
- See my review cross-posted here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7329065408
Here's an idea for a kids book title: Orangeface Grandpa
The story would be about a 78 year old man who has the vocabulary of a 4th grader, the morals of a diapered infant, and the compassion of an invading species from outer space, but who is in charge of the richest democracy on Earth. He hates a lot of things and makes people miserable. In this story we learn he hates freckles and has begun to deport people who have them. Even though he has only read 2 books in his whole life, he also bans books about freckles.
Freckles? Yep, and sadly, it wouldn't be fiction.
This is just such a book that has been “suspended,” under one of many erratic Presidential orders, and no one could be more surprised or saddened than the author Julianne Moore.
Message from her Instagram account:
“It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run by the Department of Defense.
Freckleface Strawberry is a semi-autobiographical story about a seven year old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she is different “just like everybody else.” It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but are united by our humanity and our community.
I am particularly stunned because I am a proud graduate of Frankfurt American High School a #DOD school that once operated in Frankfurt, Germany. I grew up with a father who is a Vietnam veteran and spent his career in the #USArmy. I could not be prouder of him and his service to our country. It is galling for me to realize that kids like me, growing up with a parent in the service and attending a @dodea_edu school will not have access to a book written by someone whose life experience is so similar to their own.
And I can't help but wonder what is so controversial about this picture book that cause it to be banned by the US Government.
I am truly saddened and never thought I would see this in a country where freedom of speech and expression is a constitutional right. “
deluge of orders.
I read this with The Short Story ClubWho is this Marcel Aymé? I don't know except that he was a French writer who had a wickedly funny sense of humor! i chuckled throughout this story of a pious man who is rewarded by God with a permanent halo. That addition is much to the unhappiness of his goodly wife who is “ruled by the cult of the absolute norm.” The rest of the story is about his attempts to rid himself of the offending nimbus in order to have peace in his home again.MAJOR UPDATE: Our discussion by The Short Story Club went on for almost 2 weeks! We got intrigued by the mention of a date in this story (Feb 22, 1944). It was too specific to be a mere offhand detail. We went round and round with the date, trying to figure out what happened of significance then. It led us to dig into this Ayme guy's life and times. Then, one tenacious long-time GR reader discovered a significance to the date, a political detail about another writer that would have had a personal impact on the author Ayme. It was that tiny clue that unlocked and transformed the story as being a covert and powerful one about the Nazi regime in France. That tenacious reader was PattyMacDotComma. Read her review here, which in an addendum she explains: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7352962165.I am loving this group and their lively discussions. For this story, I especially thank Patty who found the little almost lost key, the one that changed everything!You can join The Short Story Club group here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035
We learn so little.
I'm beginning to be convinced that when “New York Times Bestseller” is emblazoned on a book cover, I should instantly understand that is a flashing sign to “Come join!” American mediocrity (and capitalism).
I had hoped to learn about the about Afghan culture. Maybe the first part of the book, about kite-running in particular, is that, but as it progresses, the story weakens under the heavy weight of a Western sensibility, so blandly familiar. Its plot and polemic is a mere flyover of a difficult and troubled area. This in spite of the author being Afghan.
The story's protagonist, a writer, warns himself about using cliché. Yet the novel itself is written in a series of them, so we are also denied an authentic voice born out of a long and rich Persian literary history.
But, hey, the novel has a long list going for its success:
It presents no difficult nuance.
It was written in mundane prose.
It sold millions.
It launched two more similar novels by the writer.
It was made into a film.
It was banned in schools in many U.S. states.
It has a 4.35 rating on Goodreads.
And, don't forget, it has that New York Times Bestseller moniker!
Those are, my friends, the new classic signs of a dumbed-down West.
DNF'd Feb 2025
I made it to Book 2 (about the half way mark) and it just wasn't for me.
I liked that there was a strong female character. (But soon replaced by her son, a male instead.) I liked the “world building,” up until, well, until the world has been built and then it is all story. I also see that so many important analogies can be and have been made with this sci-fi story.
But, that's sort of the problem. All that fighting, death, racism, battles for resources, bad ecological stewardship and cut-throat politics could be read in a newspaper in 2025 instead. And just like the newspaper, I'd rather not read about it.
Read this with The Short Story Club group.It begins,“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius—the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world—a Newton, grown up in a thieves' den, might have devised little but a new and ingenious picklock. . . .”Diversions of Historical Thought byJohn Cleveland CottonThe story continues from there, about a man–who should be a military genius–but who did not conjoin with his time. A story that will give you a little pondering about such men for a little bit after reading it.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club?
A dead man's corpse is dumped out of his coffin, an ogre is killing young suitors just to eat their eyes, a young maiden is used as bait and also whipped until she bleeds.
Hans Christian Andersen? Yep, Hans Christian Andersen.
Never fear. It ends happily ever after for simple John because he is a “good” person who trusts a peculiar stranger.
Don't ask me. I have no idea what the lesson of this story is or what modern child would enjoy it.
Read with the GR group The Short Story Club. You can join here https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035
UGH. What a load of tripe!And its age is no excuse, either. Contrast with [b:The War of the Worlds 8909 The War of the Worlds H.G. Wells https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320391644l/8909.SY75.jpg 3194841] written a decade before. What is most amazing about this extremely badly-written dross is that it was from the mind of a 37 year old grown man, not an awkward 13 year school old boy with a C+ grade average (its intended audience, I would guess). It would be laughable if it wasn't so thickly sickening in so many ways, some overt and some covert. Burroughs world view dripped its offensive ignorance onto every single page. He was, according to Wikipedia, “an explicit supporter of eugenics and scientific racism.” Um, yeah, not surprised.Between rolling my eyes at the ridiculous writing style, laughing out loud at the testosterone-fueled wish fulfillment, and feeling ill at its repugnant message, I wondered why– Why, why, why?–a 3.81 average rating.I hated it. And John Carter, too.
Tony Hillerman's name is as familiar to me as that of Charles Dickens. For decades his books were in every bookstore I ever visited. I knew he was a fellow New Mexican and I always meant to read something by him.
I just did.
The entire novel was a trip down memory lane for me, with all the references to NM town and city names, the state's scenery I know so well, and even old Kit Carson that we studied in middle school mentioned. In addition to the NM references, it was a flashback to familiar American culture like CB radios, rotary dial telephones, drive-in movie theaters, and even an old Western movie by John Ford, “Cheyenne Autumn” starring Jimmy Stewart, where the Cheyenne extras were played by Navajos, speaking and singing in Navajo.
All that was fun. But it was more than fun.
In spite of being a New Mexican, I knew little about the tribes there. Hillerman seemed to know a lot, and shared his knowledge, their history and culture with a lot of respect in his novels. This novel is part of a series about two characters, policemen for the Navajo Tribal Police in NM, older Joe Leaphorn and younger Jim Chee.
As I read, I wondered if a white man writing about Native Americans would have fallen out of favor by now. But apparently, he has not. I think that must be because he wrote with respect and knowledge, while addressing many of the major issues facing the various tribes even to today.
Mysteries are not a genre I often read, but this book was much more than a mystery. It was a bit of an education for an old homesick New Mexican.
Listened via Libby with narrator Christian Baskous.
Addendum
Well, blow me down. There is a 2022 streaming series based on Leaphorn and Chee, Dark Winds. I'll have to give that try sometime soon.
Being part of the world doesn't only come from the news.My favorite read of 2024, [b:Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile 243519 Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile Verlyn Klinkenborg https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389062963l/243519.SY75.jpg 1425439] by Verlyn Klinkenborg, introduced me to this classic. I've spent the last few days listening, a section or two per day, to 18th century Gilbert White's gentle, soothing voice. Well, no, it wasn't White's voice, but I can't imagine that the man himself could have narrated his own letters with any more conviction, curiosity, and calm pleasantness than did Peter Yearsley at Librivox.Yearsley even read White's Latin additions. That was a treat as I've never had the opportunity to hear Latin spoken. Yearsley then translated it into English with a “Reader's Note.” How kind!In my 1977 Penguin paperback (I sometimes listened, I sometimes read, the paperback has a map, besides) there was an introduction by the inimitable Richard Mabey. Yet another perfect addition to the circle of White's hodgepodge of twenty first century friends. Klinkenborg, Yearsley, Mabey, and me!White observed all variety of living things in his native Selborne, recorded the weather, bird migrations, villagers observations, and also posed many scientific questions with his pure delighted curiosity. Meanwhile as he tended to his little world, the wider world of man was ever spinning its politics, its chaos, its commerce, its crimes, and even a maniacal revolution.But here was one man for decades recorded the weather, closely observed living things like crickets, swallows, eels, and turnip crops, and in doing so created for the first time what is now the modern naturalist.As I listened, I was reminded of long New Mexico car trips as a kid. My parents in the front seat, me and my brothers in the back seat, mellowed by Mom and Dad's soft voices discussing mundane windshield observations, things that we kids only half-heard. We understood the meaning, though, it was “these small things are important to us.” Highly recommend if you, contrary to the news, need to remember the importance of small, good things.https://librivox.org/the-natural-history-of-selborne-by-gilbert-white/
You go, Maggie Hobson!
Miss Hobson, you won't get the vote for another dozen years, but you used your brains and will to mold your life with a happy marriage of mutual respect and well on the road to a successful and honest business.
While you were at it, you saw to it that your two younger sisters were able to marry the suitors of their choice and got your misogynistic alcoholic father on the road to sobriety.
So much for being insulted by being called “bossy.”
This makes a fascinating comparison to the previous fiction I just finished, written 4 years before, the idiotic A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This play was immensely more enjoyable and proves that in the 1910s not all male writers were blathering juveniles.
I rejoiced. And my reading palette cleared.
Watched the Granada play with the magnificent Patricia Routledge as Maggie and a young, cute Michael Caine as reluctant husband, aired in 1962.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96sFgmD3pTg
That was surprisingly satisfying.
I say surprisingly because I read this on a whim. Ordinarily, I don't read crime mysteries. I don't even read much contemporary fiction which I often find annoyingly yikyakky. I know it sounds like faint praise, but this novel didn't annoy me.
College student Joe Talbert, the story's narrator, is so very likeable with his self-deprecating humor, his politeness, and his fierce protection of his younger brother who has severe autism. Life hasn't been easy for him and it seems that he attracts others for whom life hasn't been easy either, good people with troubled pasts.
With Talbert as his protagonist, a cast of characters to root for, and an old solved murder that deserves a second-look, Allen Eskens succeeds in writing a decent mystery. And there were some exciting escapes. What more could a reader want?
I wouldn't be surprised if someone decides to make a movie out of this.
Listened via Hoopla, read by Zach Villa who gave perfect narration for the protagonist, as well as for the other characters. Praise-worthy, really.
This title has been on my TBR for almost as long as I can remember having such a thing as a TBR.
However, upon finally reading it, I felt a little aloof with this story, a story that takes place at a boys private school attended by sons of the privileged in the 1940s, boys ripe for the picking just as WW2 began in earnest. I was struck, as I believe the novel intended, by how remote and ennobling the war seemed to these boys even as they discussed it and planned ways to sign up instead of being drafted. They were still boys, at 16 and 17.
The story was compelling enough, though, that I did take an absorbed interest primarily in the growing and changing nature of the friendship of Phineas and Gene which is the key theme in this novel. It was interesting to see how Gene, the narrator, felt he misjudged Phineas' true character and by the end of the book, Gene's opinion has elevated his friend to nearly an ethereal quality which was both beautiful and seemed like the thing you might do with guilt and in acknowledgment of such a formative friendship.
3 stars means I liked it fine but won't read again and can't think of anyone I would recommend it to.
Listened via Hoopla, narrated by Spike McClure who had a voice that simultaneously straddled the timbre of youth and of a man in his 30s, aptly done.
A cheerful story about a sheep who doesn't feel like a sheep and so embarks on an adventure, educating herself along the way. As you read along, traversing Scotland and some of northern England, you get swept up in the spirit of a sweet, sheep that is not like other sheep.
Which is kind of nice, you know?
And apparently others think so too as there is a subsequent series of Skye the Sheep books.
“The main thing was to be open, to listen, to know when and when not to speak.”
What an amazing little book with a big story. One that is about family relationships, how the immigrant experience effects the relationship between parent and child, how memories can be confused and how history is lost. It is also about the effect of art and nature on the human psyche. And lastly, it's a pleasant visit to Japan, richly described, for the armchair reader.
All in 95 pages.
The heart of the novella is the poignant relationship between the mother who is originally from Hong Kong and her adult daughter born and raised in the West (Australia, I'm assuming) and the various divides of experience and personality that separate them revealed during a mother-daughter vacation to Japan
The daughter is interested in art and open to new experiences; the mother prefers simpler more practical things like the little shops that have bargains where she can buy gifts to bring home. The daughter is confident and adventurous, living a happy life with her husband and generally optimistic. The mother is aging, living alone, exhibits the mild fearfulness that comes with age, somewhat forgetful, pessimistic and has concluded that life is something to endure.
There is mutual ground, though. Meals together are refreshing and enjoyable for both. They treat one another gently, are polite and strive, mostly ineffectually, to please the other, kind testaments to their familial love and commitment.
The daughter, the narrator, doesn't make the overt conclusions as I've just done. Instead, her thoughts wander, recalling memories that potentially hold insights, and the reader is left to ponder them as well, to perhaps think of our own mother-daughter relationships.
After a day's hike alone, the daughter thinks,
“I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them.” I cried at that part, feeling the deep truth of that.
Oh my! How funny! Never mind that no one writes and mails letters any more, the stories and comical illustrations should tickle the heart of any child.
My favorite was
“Your friend the balloonist has invited you up for the weekend. You spend your time bird-watching and having high tea, and it is all very pleasant. When the weekend is over, the balloonist drops you off. Unfortunately, you land on a desert island full of rather strange beasts.Whereupon you pick up your pen, and this is what you write:Dear Balloonist:Thank you for the delightful weekend. I had a very lovely time.Affectionately yours,”
LOL. Ah, the 60s, back when we still were striving to save a polite civilization even if stranded on a desert island. This book was an imaginative and humorous effort to teach children how to actually compose all kinds of letters.
I picked this up from a Free Little Library today; it came from our own local library. (Wouldn't I just love to have all their old 60s kids books, to inundate myself with the joy in them!!) I'm sending this one off to a friend in Idaho, for one of her granddaughters who actually looks a little like the girl on the cover. If the granddaughter doesn't enjoy it, my friend certainly will.
Ah, brings me back to my childhood...............
No, I don't believe I ever read this book but everything about it reminds me of the kinds of books we read. Not only that, it reminds me of the freedom to discover nature that we had as kids.
The realistic illustrations by Symeon Shimin are lovely and dynamic. There is one picture that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was like it was an actual picture of my brother, Mike, now deceased. Oh. How I wish I could call him up and remind him once again of our pet rabbits, Daisy and JoJo. Turns out that Daisy, my pretty ginger rabbit, was a boy and JoJo, his smokey gray rabbit, was a girl. We always laughed about that. Sigh. But, back to the book...
The story is told as a long poem–the best kind of poem, one that doesn't feel forced, one that is easy to read aloud. The story's ending is sweet as it can be (and with rabbits, always, er, “expected”) and should delight any little boy or girl.
This book and one other I picked up today from a Little Free Library will be going in the mail to two other Littles that live up in Idaho, granddaughters of a friend. The youngest Little loves rabbits.
Dem bones
I now have this set aside for my first grader Little's school March Read-A-Thon. She loves humor and silliness, being quite humorous and silly herself. Let's hope these three nighttime wanderers tickles her funny bone.
P.S. I have no idea how I know the song “Dem Bones” but I do. (“The foot bone is connected to the leg bone...”) I'll be sure to find a good YT video of it to share with the littlest Little.
3 stars for the personal experience.Otherwise, it would have been 2. If I were feeling generous.We read this in The Short Story Club group* and the discussions it launched were quite lively with readers trying to make sense of it. It was akin to detective work, going through the text with a fine tooth comb trying to determine Okay, but what really happened? and tangentially, What was the point?Henry James' notoriously difficult writing style got little love in the group. One reader did like the story having taken a different tack which was to let go of all that reader angst and just enjoy being immersed in the surreal aspect, which isn't bad advice. About many things in life, actually.I have to laugh at myself because after attempting my last HJ novel, [b:What Maisie Knew 392452 What Maisie Knew Henry James https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504719418l/392452.SY75.jpg 319546], I had written, “This is emphatically my last stab (and jab) at James.”Sigh. But that old circumlocutorian just won't go away. * Link to The Short Story Club grouphttps://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club
Where I live we have 8 foot tall Jackrabbit statues all over town in commemoration of the history of the town's early 1930s entertainment: Jackrabbit roping and rodeo. Today a sort of scavenger hunt for these jackrabbit statues is a fun grandparent-grandchildren entertainment. Well, until everyone gets tired of driving all over town and then gets hangry, speaking from experience.
This 1959 non-fiction primer is a little thin on specific information about the jackrabbit. Instead it includes other general information and types of rabbits, and other animals used for concepts, like camouflage, for example.
But I did learn to my great surprise that there is another species of jackrabbits that live in the Northwest US, the white-tailed jackrabbit that changes to a white coat in the winter! Here in the desert our ubiquitous jackrabbit is the black-tailed type who stays the same, often tattered, gray color year round.
The thing that makes this book a real standout are the illustrations done by Carol Rogers, done in fine and dramatic pen and ink. Books with her art work are worth keeping an eye out for.
I've slated this book to read with my two granddaughters, the Littles. I don't want them to wait until they are old ladies to learn there are two kinds of American jackrabbits.