After You by Jojo Moyes

I heard that the sequel to Me Before You was even better than the first. I did enjoy it just as much.

The book picks up when Louisa is working as a waitress again, after her travels that began at the end of the other book. She enjoys waitressing -- which is hard for me to imagine since I am, I believe, pretty much the worst waitress in the world. I'm too forgetful.

It continues with Louisa trying to figure out what to do next in her life. She liked traveling but after a while decided she had had enough of that. She starts going to a grief therapy group and those people become her friends. Also through one of them she meets a new man who becomes an important part of her life. Her parents go through a crisis but they also grow close to her again through a close call that Louisa goes through. And Louisa meets a daughter of her previous love who neither he nor anyone else knew about it. This leads to more connections with his family.

So, as you can tell, it's an eventful book. It kept me turning the pages. I was interested in what Louisa would do and her thought process for making decisions about what direction to go. Besides being event-filled, Moyers writes with some humor as well. I definitely recommend both these books.

The Arsonist by Sue Miller

The Arsonist was recommended to me by "the librarian", my friend at Sinaloa Cafe where we go for Mexican dinner nearly every Friday. Way back years ago when I met her it was because she was reading a book while we were waiting for a table. I asked her what she was reading, and that started a friendship that includes exchanging book recommendations nearly every time we see each other.

Aileen was a librarian at a school when I met her. She and her husband are retired now. We don't see them every Friday, but they are regulars at Sinaloa, just as we are.

This Friday Aileen recommended The Arsonist and You Before Me. I ordered both of them and started with The Arsonist, which I finished yesterday.

When I read the summary on the back of the book, I thought it would be a mystery. That's why I chose to read it first, because I enjoy mysteries. I would not call it a mystery, though. There definitely is a mystery involved -- who is the arsonist -- but even though the fact that there are fires set by an arsonist as a central part of the book, the story is not about figuring out who is setting the fires.

The story is set in "a New Hampshire village" (says the synopsis on the back of the book), Winslow. The main character is Frankie Rowley, whose family has a summer home there, and where now her parents are living year round. Frankie is in her forties, single, and has a career as an aid worker in Africa. When she goes back to Winslow at the beginning of the book, she is not sure whether she'll go back to Africa or not, nor is she sure of what she will do at all.

I hesitated to write "the main character" because two other characters are featured prominently and the author reveals their thoughts and feelings, in the same way she does Frankie's. One of these is Frankie's mother, Sylvia, and the other is her romantic interest in the story, the town's newspaper editor, Bud. Frankie is the main character, but I feel like Bud is a close second, and Sylvia is in third place.

I like the writing, and I thought the story was compelling -- I wanted to keep turning the pages and find out what was going to happen. It's set in nearly present time, but not quite. There are no cell phones, but there are pagers. Some of the sources of uncertainty, making you want to keep reading, are the growth of Bud and Frankie's relationship, her growing awareness of her father's dwindling mental capacities, her mother's feelings toward her husband (Frankie's father), the differences of the town "year-rounders" vs. the summer people, and, of course, the mystery of the fires.

All in all, I recommend the book as a good read. I wouldn't consider it a contender to be a favorite, but I enjoyed it and I could even see myself re-reading it at some point in the future.

Food & Friends - A Feast of a Book

I'm reading a book I picked up on sale at a cool bookstore in Santa Cruz. The first time I went there I took a picture of the shelves full of handwritten notes by the staff. Love that.

That was when I was on our "Woman Time at the Ocean" weekend.

A couple weeks ago Cori and I went to Santa Cruz for the day and spent quite a bit of time in the bookstore. I picked up 6 books on the way from the bathroom back to where Cori was. Bookstores are dangerous locations for me.

Right now I'm reading one of those books. It's called Food & Friends, by Simone Beck. She was the co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Julia Child.

I'm really enjoying this book. I like that it's a feast for the eyes as well as a good read. Look at these details.

Look at these hand drawn illustrations. And the borders around the pages. And the different fonts. And the little decorations between the headings.

See the first letter of the chapter?

Here's one of the many recipes in the book. Pretty to look at, and I like the little personal note, "Orange-flavored chocolate cake, for Jean." (Jean was her husband.)

Even the photos are kind of old-timey and nostalgic.



























Beyond that, I'm enjoying the read. Simone was born in France before World War I. Her father was a soldier in that war. Then she lived through World War II. I'm not finished with it yet. I've read through her description of her childhood, which included recipes of foods she learned from her family's cook, Zulma, and through her first marriage, that includes recipes she learned while living in Paris. Now I'm at the part where she's divorced her first husband and has just married Jean, the love of her life.

I am looking forward to finishing the book, and also trying some of the recipes.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

The author's website

I really liked this book. I guess it would be categorized as a memoir. Cheryl Strayed walked a part of the Pacific Coast Trail (kind of the West coast version of the Appalachian trail) about 14 years ago, as a young woman in her twenties, and alone.

It was shortly after her mother died, which was a traumatic event for Strayed. Of course, that would be true for most of us but Strayed really seemed to fall apart when her mother died, and it also seemed to pretty much end her family life. Her stepfather became more and more remote and married a new woman after a while. Her brother and sister did not keep contact. Cheryl pretty much went off the deep end. She got into drugs, cheated on her husband who, she said herself, was a wonderful, selfless man who loved her very much.

After several years, Cheryl decided to start hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. It was kind of a flukey thing. She had never heard of it (neither had I) and saw a brochure/booklet about it in a random store and for some reason it just stuck in her mind and she felt she needed to go.

She bought clothes and read up about the trail and hiking and stuff, but she really did not prepare much. She didn't get herself in shape. She didn't break in her shoes. She didn't manage to save up much money, either, but she did plan ahead and gave a friend boxes with supplies and money to send to various places on the dates she expected to get there. In spite of that, she had a way-overfilled backpack that she could barely lift, let alone get on her back. She walked all hunchbacked when she finally got up with it on. She called it Monster.

Her shoes were a big thing. They were too small, but even when she learned that the store would replace them with a bigger size for free, and she got the bigger size, they still did not fit right. She ended up losing most of her toenails. And besides her feet getting all messed up, she got all kinds of scrapes and stuff from the backpack hitting her in different spots. It sounded like torture. But, pushing herself through all the problems and slowly getting in shape and figuring things out somehow made it all worthwhile to her, something she feels great about. My sister-in-law, who hikes, said something about that feeling, too. It's hard to believe that would happen to me, I'm so incredibly out of shape and so hate sweating. But good for those who do, right?


Speaking of my sister-in-law, when we talked about this book (I sent a copy to her, I knew she would love it), she said the one thing she felt was missing was faith. And I felt that way, too. I wish that Cheryl had faith, as I often wish for people. I feel sorry for them. But there were a couple of references to God and faith. Here's the one that sticks most in my mind. She's talking about when her mother was dying.

I prayed and prayed, and then I faltered. Not because I couldn't find God, but because suddenly I absolutely did: God was there, I realized, and God had no intention of making things happen or not, of saving my mother's life. God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

"God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch." Wow. I quoted that to a group of my friends the other day and they all looked shocked. But I think it's powerful. It's one of my favorite things in the book. It's so honest. It's how it feels. For me, though, even though it feels that way to me, too, it doesn't change my faith. Somehow -- by the grace of God -- I can rest in the love of my Lord and Savior, even though it seems like God is a ruthless bitch. 


I don't take comfort in thinking, either, that someday I'll understand it or somehow I'll see how the terrible thing that happened was actually a good thing. To tell the truth, I get more comfort by thinking about and imagining that God is at my side crying with me. He hates the bad, sad things that happen probably even more than I do, just as I feel terrible when something awful happens to one of my children. I know that he loves me. That's it. He loves me, he's full of infinite mercy, he's got it all in his hands.


Anyway, I absolutely enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to you. And you can get even more content by checking out Oprah's Book Club 2.0 website. She started her book club again with this book, and she's got videos of interviews and other interesting things about the author and the book.

Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction by Richard J. Mouw

link to book in Amazon

I read this book because it's the choice for my "theological book club" this month. I voted for this selection because I've wanted to learn more about both Abraham Kuyper and Richard Mouw.

Mouw begins with a reference to Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism, the "Stone Lectures" he delivered at Princeton Seminary in 1898. Mouw said, "In Kuyper's robust Calvinism I discovered what I had been looking for: a vision of active involvement in public life..."

Mouw goes on to reference what is probably Kuyper's most well known statement: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'"

And, several more sentences I highlighted:

For Kuyper, every Christian is called to be an agent of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, wherever they are called by God to serve.

He called them to organize their lives so as to show the rest of the world what it is like to live in obedience to the will of the Creator in all dimensions of human life.

The important question, of course, is: How are we to do that? How are we as Christians to work at redeemed cultural activity? What does this say to nurses and artists and lawyers and corporate managers?

Either God is at the center of our lives or something else is.

Kuyper would urge business people to see their places of work as providing important opportunities for Kingdom service.

What people need from the church is what is essential: the gospel and the way it sets forth the basic patterns for living the Christian life. Whether Christians happen to spend most of their time in our homes or in the marketplace, we need to know what is central to the biblical message and the Christian tradition, and we must be nurtured in our growth in the faith by Christian fellowship, spiritual formation, and the sacraments. For the church to be faithful in a changing world, performing these tasks well is challenge enough.

When we leave church each Sunday, we should have marching orders for service in the Kingdom.

There is so much to think about from these and the many other things written about in this book. The above list of quotes speaks to me as I continue to think about what the church's work should be. At our last book club meeting we were discussing the church and its role in the community. I was saying that I didn't think it made sense for the church to try to be a social agency unless we somehow made it a professional enterprise - with paid employees. I think it's just not feasible to expect people to work as volunteers in efforts such as food pantries or providing other social services, in addition to all the rest they do in their own lives.

When another member of the book club asked, "What do you think the church should do then, Mavis?" my answer was, "We should provide a place of worship." I don't think that's a complete, thorough answer, so I liked reading what Mouw/Kuyper said about the church and Kingdom service in all that we do.

Mouw had much to say, too, about Kuyper's understanding of grace, my very favorite thing about Christianity. There are too many to list here, but one was, "Grace, for Calvin, is simply undeserved favor," and then he goes on to discuss common grace and the way God's grace is revealed even through sinful people and our fallen creation. It gives me optimism and hope to be reminded of this.

I thought it was interesting when he started talking about the humble family meal, of all things. What a practical thing to discuss in a theological book. He talks about citizenship being in trouble, and the rise of incivility, the way we shout at each other and don't listen, and says, "One cause of all this, as I see things, is the decline of the family meal," at which, in other times, "children learned manners" and "cultivated patience -- by being forced to sit at a table for forty minutes with people they found irritating. This prepared them for citizenship." He says the church should support and strengthen families, and he also writes about the value of inter-generational worship and relationships.

All in all I got a lot of food for thought from this book. I appreciate Mouw's easy writing style and the many nuggets of wisdom he gives us.

Still by Lauren Winner

Lauren Winner's website

I heard Lauren Winner speak at the Faith & Writing Festival one year. It was several years ago and she seemed quite young but I liked her a lot. I liked the way she just said whatever, even if it wasn't something you'd expect from a literary, highly educated writer.

This book, Still, has the subtitle "Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis." It's written shortly after Winner divorced her husband of, I think, 7 years. Winner grew up "with a Jewish father and a lapsed Baptist mother who had agreed to raise my sister and me as Jews." She writes that she loved Judaism and everything that went with it - the food, the songs, even "every letter of the Hebrew alphabet." But in college she had a dream about Jesus, read Jan Karon's Mitford novels, bought a Book of Common Prayer and after graduating from college she was baptized. After seeing her at the Festival I read and enjoyed her book Girl Meets God: On the Path to Spiritual Life.


I suppose you could compare Lauren Winner to Anne Lamott, who I love, but I didn't even think of that until now, when I was trying to figure out how to write about Winner and this book. It is a memoir about faith, as some of Lamott's books have been, but Winner has a very different style of writing. She's more serious, for one, although not heavy or preachy or anything like that.

Winner is writing about "middle" in this book. She feels she's in a mid-Faith crisis, when she is no longer as certain and joyful in her faith as she was in the past. Yet even while she expresses doubt, I never felt she'd lost her faith. One thing I thought was notable is that she continued to go to church, to kind of go through the motions, even when she didn't feel like it, and she found that was good. It helped. That's good to hear.

I liked all the meditations and musings on the word "middle." I had never heard of the "middle voice," a grammatical term. She says that we don't have the middle voice in English but it's found in ancient Greek, Sanskrit and some other languages. She says it's "somewhere between the agent and the one acted upon. When you have something done to you. I will have myself carried. I will have myself saved." She said she started listening for hints of the middle in English and heard it in sentences like "That scotch drank smoothly; politicians bribe easily." She says the middle voice is used "when the subject has some caracteristic, some quality, that makes it partly responsible for whatever has happened in the sentence...The subject is changed....but the subject is not just being...acted upon; something in its own qualities...is necessary for the action, too--if the scotch weren't smooth, it wouldn't drink well."

I don't know why I think that is so interesting, but I do. She writes about middle verbs being verbs that "name a change in bodily posture but not much motion (lie down, kneel). Also...verbs for speech actions with emotional overtones (confess), verbs of cognition (think), and verbs of spontaneous happening (grow, become, change) and she says "these middle verbs...are religious; they are the very actions that constitute a religious life: to forgive, to imagine, to grow, to yearn, to lament, to meet, to kneel." Cool. Never thought of that.

Finally she writes, "If I could make English speak middle, I would use it to say this: I wait; I doubt; as the deer yearns for a drink of water, so I yearn. I long. I praise."


I highlighted this quote from a historian Christopher Grasse who, she said, was writing about the religious late-eighteenth-century America: "Faith...meant more than intellectual assent to a set of doctrines. It was a commitment of the whole self, a hope and trust that, if genuine, ought to be the foundation of an entire way of life and vision of the world."

I also liked this: "I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God."

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

"Fresh Air" interview w Isaacson

Steve Jobs is a fascination. He was so mysterious. You heard so many rumors about him, you saw him on t.v., you heard him quoted, you were amazed at the products his company produced, he was like a rock star for many of his years yet he disappeared from the news for quite a space of time. He started Apple, they kicked him out, he came back, Apple became amazing.

Reading this biography was very enjoyable to me. I wanted to know more about Steve Jobs, what he was like as a person and as the man who ran Apple. It was great that Jobs gave Isaacson so much access to himself.

I came away thinking that it would have been hard to live or work for Jobs. I have a feeling I would have been unhappy if I'd actually ever been around him. He was unkind, more than that he was just plain mean to people. He loved his wife and kids but he was still odd and basically selfish.

One thought in my mind after reading about how Apple started and some of the people who worked there and had the ideas that produced the products such as the ipod, ipad, the Mac and so on was I wondered if he, or Apple, would have been as successful as they were if he had not been such a difficult person to work for. Would they have succeeded if he'd actually treated his co-workers with respect?

Some people who worked for him said they didn't think so. They felt like when he made them feel so bad, it inspired them to prove him wrong. I'm sure that's true for some people. But I thought that one incident in the book showed he probably could have succeeded without being so mean. There was one time when Jobs was talking to a supplier about what he wanted. The supplier was saying there was no way he could give Jobs the product he wanted and no way do it in the time Jobs wanted. Jobs stared at him in the way he was famous for staring at people, and said something like yes, he could do it. And he told the supplier not to be afraid, he knew he could do it. And the supplier did it. To me, that shows that he could have worked that way with others and gotten results, too. But who knows?

Anyway, I thought it was a good book. I plan to reread it sometime to refresh myself on the details. There's no doubt he was an incredible person who made a company that created some amazing things.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

New York Times Article

I liked Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking and I liked this one, too. They are similar in that they are both memoirs about the death of a beloved family member. Magical Thinking was written during the year after her husband suddenly and unexpectedly died, and Blue Nights is about surviving the death of her daughter, who died tragically young.

You'd think these would be depressing books but for some reason they did not affect me that way. When other people say about a book that it has beautiful writing, I immediately become skeptical that I won't like the book. I'm all about the story, I think, and often say. But these books by Joan Didion are not books with a story of the traditional sort - with the beginning at the beginning, then the middle, then the end. They are like listening to Didion's thoughts.

I could say that I like them because she so eloquently says what I feel, what I think we all feel when such sad, inexplicable things happen. One of the reasons I admire writers is their ability to do that -- to express what I feel, but so much better than I can. And that is one of the reasons I like these books.

But you wouldn't think that would be enough to make you turn the pages and keep reading the whole book. Just because she is so good at expressing feelings isn't enough. But I can't really figure out how to say much more than that about why I like the books.

Another thing that makes my liking of the books somewhat surprising is that Joan Didion has no faith, or at least she does not profess any faith or belief. She doesn't even bring up the subject of what she believes. She certainly does not say that her faith is giving her strength and helping her to get through these tragic events. And it seems impossible to me to even understand how anyone can get through things like this without faith. Yet I admire the way she gets through them.

I read this book from Kindle on my iPad. A nice little bonus in that format is it includes three videos of Joan Didion reading chapters 1, 2 and 7. The filmmaker does a good job showing scenes of Joan in her apartment, in New York, the city skyline, and so on. I love the smell, feel and look of paper books, but I do also love the richness of this kind of additional material in digital books.

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

Our book club chose this "old school" book. Alexandre Dumas is most famous for having written The Three Musketeers. This book is much shorter than that one.

It's set in Holland, and the title is referring to an actual flower. The government offered a large prize to anyone who could produce a truly black tulip, and the quest to get that prize is central to the plot.

The beginning of the book is quite exciting. Two men are fleeing for their lives from a mob who thinks they are traitors and liars. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what the two men did but some papers they had hidden with a friend led us into the actual story. That friend, Cornelius Van Baerle (Dutch enough for you?), is the main character.

Cornelius has not read the hidden papers, and has actually almost forgotten them. He took on a quiet life, devoting himself to gardening and breeding tulips, trying to produce that pure black tulip. Because of the papers he is arrested and put in jail. In prison he falls in love with the guard's daughter and entrusts her with the 3 bulbs that he is sure will produce a black tulip. His fiendish neighbor, though, is watching and determined to steal the bulb. He does, but his evil plans are foiled in the end.

This is a good story. It's a little old fashioned but not enough to bother you. The story moves along like a rollicking movie. I felt like I could see the characters, scenes, landscape and action in my mind. According to Wikipedia, it has been made into a movie and BBC miniseries. It'd be fun to see a movie version.

I'm glad to have read this. If you want a good, historical adventure, I recommend The Black Tulip.

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass

I enjoyed this book. The main character is Greenie, wife of Alan, mother of George. They live in a small apartment in New York. Greenie started her own business as a baker, and Alan is a psychoanalyst. George is 4 years old.

Greenie gets a call from the assistant to New Mexico's governor who has tasted her coconut cake and fallen in love with it. He asks her to come to New Mexico and be his chef. She decides to do it, as a kind of adventure. She takes George and goes out to New Mexico. Alan stays in New York. Greenie ends up loving New Mexico and encourages Alan to join them so he begins to "wean" his patients (which are very few anyway) and prepares to move.

But that move doesn't happen. Greenie meets an old boyfriend and falls in love with him. She decides to separate from Alan. Some things happen that end up with Alan taking George back to New York with him. Then September 11 happens and everything changes again.

It sounds kind of shallow as I describe it, and I was kind of disgusted with Greenie for leaving Alan. But she still was a likeable character. There are a lot of other characters, too. The governor, his assistant, the restaurant owner next door, the bookstore owner across the street, a woman named Saga who has brain damage from an accident, memories of Greenie's mother. Somehow it all works. I liked the characters and the writing. It was a good story that kept me turning the pages. I enjoyed being in New York and New Mexico, especially New Mexico. I thought it was a good presentation of what marriage can feel like, too.

It was interesting to read a novel with September 11 as an event within it. That's a first for me. The author described one of the characters in New York looking out her window and seeing paper falling like snow. I suppose that happened. I had not thought of it, although I saw the photos of all the debris at the towers and on the people there at the scene. It sounds like paper fell in a similar way to ashes falling when a volcano happens.

I recommend this book, and I think I'll try another book by Julia Glass. The book references "the National Book Award-Winning" Three Junes. That sounds familiar; I'm not sure if I've read it or not.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

I liked this book a lot. At first I thought it was kind of confusing. There were a lot of characters, and their names were either Japanese or Dutch, both kind of strange to remember, although the Dutch ones had a ring of familiarity. But it wasn't long before I was caught up in the story and enjoying it very much.

Jacob De Zoet works for the Dutch East Indies Company in Japan, in 1799. I didn't (and still don't) know much about this period of Japan's history, but the book talked about it being after Japan had thrown out all the Christians, and killed many, then tried to keep themselves isolated from the Western world. But they did allow the Dutch Indies Company to have this one port and conduct trade.

The Japanese were so anti-Christian that they actually had a holiday where the people stepped on a picture of Jesus and gave an oath to declare their hatred of Christianity. There were "Hidden Christians" who were killed if discovered. The people of the Dutch East Indies Company were not allowed to bring any religious material into the country. Jacob, though, smuggled in a Psalter, of the Dutch Reformed Church, which had been his great grandfather's. It had a bullet hole where the book had stopped a bullet while being carried by his great grandfather during a war. Jacob felt he could not be so disloyal as to give up that Psalter so he hid it among many other books and hoped it would not be discovered.

It turned out his translator did see it but did not inform on Jacob. This translator had loved and wanted to marry a woman named Aibagawa, but his family would not let him marry her. Aibagawa is a midwife and, rare for a Japanese woman, was studying medicine with a doctor from the company. Jacob becomes infatuated with her, but they cannot pursue a relationship either and Aibagawa is sent to what is almost like a convent run by a secret society.

The author goes back and forth between Jacob and Aibagawa as the story unfolds. He does a good job of telling enough from one character's perspective before changing to the other. I did not get at all frustrated at the switches. There are even a few places where other characters are telling the story and that works, too.

I thought it was interesting to be in another time and country like that, and to get to know these characters. I would definitely recommend it.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

So very British. That's this novel -- Anglophiles, you'll love it.

I was trying to underline very British-sounding sentences but, of course, I got caught up in the story and only remembered once or twice. Here are a few.

And yet there was that fine line across which one might be betrayed into womanish fretting over details...He decided that perhaps he would undertake a brief, manly attempt at carpentry...

...the color seemed incongruous, thought the Major, in a woman who preferred mushroom-brown tweeds. Today's dull burgundy and black blouse and dark green stockings would have rendered her invisible in any mildly wet woodland. 

"My dear lady, what is there to fear?" he said. "Except putting the other ladies quite in the shade."

"Oh, it's simple pragmatism, Dad. It's called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable,...then where would we all be?"  "On a nice dry spit of land known as the moral high ground?" suggested the Major.

The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry.

The story is about Major Pettigrew who lives in a small British village. He is a widower with one grown son. When the story begins, the Major's brother has just died. He and his brother each have a "Churchill gun," a pair of valuable guns which their father had given them with the dying promise that they would be joined back together as a pair when one of the brothers died. The other main character is Jasmina Ali, a woman of Pakistani background who owns and runs a shop in the village. She, too, has lost her spouse and her nephew is helping her to run the shop, which sounds kind of like a 7-11, a convenience store where they have a little bit of everything but no one does their full shopping there.

The Major and Mrs. Ali start to enjoy each others' company. They both love books and they like to talk and spend time with each other. This is a little extraordinary because there is some prejudice against the two of them having a relationship, including from Jasmina's nephew and family.

There are several other characters who play a part in the story -- the Major's son, Mrs. Ali's nephew, a young woman who has a child who turns out to be the nephew's, a nice woman in the village who seems like a more perfect match for the Major, and the Lord of the manor in the village.

An exciting climax happens when the nephew threatens to kill himself. Everything isn't tied up into a completely happy ending for all concerned, but it definitely is wrapped up well & tidily at the end.

I highly recommend this book. I felt it was charming and just a joy to read.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

I finished The Postmistress this week. I liked it a lot. It definitely kept me turning the pages. In fact, I finished it very late at night because I didn't want to stop reading.

The book starts with a kind of prelude where one of the characters is seemingly at a dinner party and asks, "What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?" Those first couple pages are written in first person, by one of the main characters, Frances Bard, a woman who'd been a reporter with Edward Murrow, in England, in the years before the US joined World War II.

Then it switches to third person and gets into the full story. Most of the characters come from a small town in Maine. There's Iris, the postmistress (except the author says it is incorrect in the US to say postmistress even when the person is female); Emma a young wife of the town doctor; and Henry, Iris' boyfriend. The author begins with these Maine characters -- Iris realizing she's falling in love at  rather a late age with Henry, Emma ecstatic at being loved by her husband Will, the doctor, after a fairly unloved childhood.

We pick up with Frances, called Frankie, the reporter, in London. It doesn't state it explicitly but you get the feeling that Frankie is thrilled to be working with Murrow, living in such exciting times and reporting on it all.

The lives of the characters in Maine progress, and it's fun to read about it. Because of a crucial event in his career, the doctor decides to go to London to help in the war effort. When he and Frankie end up together in a bomb shelter, the stories and characters become connected.

I won't give away any more. I recommend the book. I felt like I got a little better feeling of what it felt like to be in that time, which seems kind of limbo-like to me just because the US wasn't in the war yet -- and how strange is that since I wasn't even alive then? Anyway, good writing, excellent storytelling, characters you like getting to know.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken is by Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote Seabiscuit. I like both these books. Hillenbrand is a good writer who can make non-fiction interesting. I don't read as much non-fiction as fiction but I've always liked biographies because they are still a story.

My brother and father both mentioned reading this book, which is why I picked it up. It's about Louis Silvie Zamperini. I'd never heard of him but it turns out he was quite a famous runner. He came close to breaking the 4-minute mile record back in the days when everyone was trying to beat that mark.

The book tells about his childhood. It sounds like he was a naughty boy and got into more serious trouble in his teenage years, but his brother encouraged him to put his energies into running and that turned out to be something he could do well at. He went to the Olympics and would have continued competing in running except the war started -- World War II.

Louis joined up and became a bombadier. I never knew that the saying "bombs away" came from such a literal source. As a bombadier Louis would sit by the bomb doors, open them, and when the bombs had gone out he'd yell, "Bombs away!" so the pilot knew he could start climbing higher.

Louis was in the Pacific arena in the war. It was interesting to read about the way the war went over there, some of the strategies and reasons the U.S. was fighting for these islands, and also the way the mechanical abilities of the planes had a lot to do with those strategies. That may sound dry but, trust me, it wasn't, which is why I say that Hillenbrand is good at making non-fiction interesting.

Louis' plane was shot down and he was one of 3 survivors. The tale of their survival for more than 3 weeks on an inflatable raft is amazing. One of the 3 died during that time and then Louis and the other, the pilot, were captured. Japanese prisoners of war had a horrible time, much worse than those taken in Europe, another thing I had never known. Louis' experiences in prison were horrible and unforgettable.

After the war Louis' body had been so wrecked by prison that he couldn't go back to running. He bacame a kind of celebrity for the military but started drinking and went into a downward spiral. He also started to be obsessed about killing a particularly horrible Japanese officer who had singled Louis out for torture during the war. Hillenbrand also chronicles that officer's life.

Louis' wife persuaded him to attend a Billy Graham crusade. What Graham said affected him so much and reminded him of his childhood plus the promises he'd made to God during the war and he absolutely turned his life around. He opened a nonprofit boys camp where he helped boys learn how to turn their lives around, too. He also went on speaking tours and was given many awards. He lived a long, active life, even skiing at the age of 90.

As you read the book you get to know other people important in Louis' life, such as the pilot who survived the plane crash and prison with him, his brother, and others. I just found it very interesting to get to know Louis and these others and to hear how they lived and changed.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The librarian at Sinaloa recommended Wolf Hall to me, and then so did several other people. It's about Thomas Cromwell, a novel but historical fiction.

When I first opened the book I was worried I might not be able to keep track of things. It starts with a list of characters and also some family trees. This is during Henry VII's time. I decided to read slowly and not skim things, which I often do otherwise, and so far so good (I'm a little over halfway through the book). The only thing that makes it a little difficult is that the author often doesn't use Cromwell's name as she's describing his actions, just "he" and since the sentence before often is about a different male person, I sometime realizes after several sentences that this must be Cromwell and not the other person. It's rather annoying. Why would she do that?

But, besides that minor complaint, I'm very much enjoying the book. The writing is good, and you really feel like you're in England in the 1500's. It's incredible what life was like then. It's horrible the way they burned people at the stake and tortured them in the Tower. She writes about Tyndale and Luther, not as main characters, but several people are killed or tortured because they have Tyndale's book in their possession. Sir Thomas More is rather obsessed with finding those people, it seems. How we take things for granted -- these people were killed for believing that we should be allowed to read the Bible in our own native language.

The peoples' belief in what the Roman Catholic church proclaims is also remarkable. It's a novel so you don't know how exactly right this is, but she writes about King Henry being very worried about whether he'll go to hell if he divorces his wife Katherine and marries Anne Boleyn, although that is most definitely what he plans to do. He, and those who are helping him, do all kinds of things to try to get the church to declare Henry was never married to Katherine in the first place. So far the book's been during that time -- when Henry's trying to get Anne Boleyn. Since I'm over halfway through, I wonder if it'll end when he finally does. The author is working on a sequel.

..............................
later addition
My sister wrote the following about this book. Thought it would be good input to include. She knows her stuff:

I liked Wolf Hall but I was disappointed at the portrayal of Thomas More. He may not have been as wonderful as he was portrayed in "A Man for All Seasons" (or maybe he was), but Hilary Mantel goes to the opposite extreme to make it seem like he really didn't have a redeeming feature--even his martyrdom was just showing off for his European fans. It seemed spiteful. I looked her up on Wikipedia and it seems she grew up in Catholic schools; maybe she's one who has turned against her upbringing.
 
From what I've read elsewhere, I could buy her portrayals of Anne Bolyn and Henry VIII.
 
I'm not sure I believe in her Jane Seymour, however. From what I've read, Jane Seymour did her best to turn Henry back toward Catholicism. She also did her best to bring his daughter Mary back into his favor, while trying to undo Anne Bolyn's legacy. On the other hand, her brother who was regent for her son, Edward VI, promoted more Protestant reforms than Henry VIII had ever implemented.
 
It was interesting to learn anything at all about Thomas Cromwell, the central character of the book. I'd read his name in reading biographies of other figures of the time, but never knew much about him. I was always curious if he was an ancestor of Oliver Cromwell. I looked that up too, and it seems Oliver Cromwell is a descendant of Thomas Cromwell's sister.
 
One thing I was dubious about as a part of Thomas Cromwell's life was the description of really brutal abuse by his father. It seems unlikely to me that someone whose dad beat him up regularly and neglected his education as described in this novel would grow up into the cultured, multi-lingual, Latin-speaking, and humane person Mantel shows Cromwell to be as an adult.
 
Just a few thoughts. And, below, a poem by Thomas Wyatt, reputed to be about Anne Bolyn.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." 

My Life With the Saints by James Martin

Doesn't it just figure that when I finally sit down to blog about some reading again, I can't find the first book I want to write about? I found it in Google Books, though. The main thing I am left with after reading this book is the feeling that my life is meaningful and worthwhile just by living a life of faith and prayer.

The other night at a meeting Brad said he finds that when he reads books by some great theologians their message is: Read Scripture. Pray. Be in community.

There you go. In My Life With the Saints, James Martin writes about one saint per chapter. He writes them in the order that he "met" them in his life. In each chapter he tells about how the saint came to his attention and attracted him, then he writes the story of the saint, then he reflects on the saints' life and what he can see as he relates his life to that, and finally summarizes how and when he prays to that saint.

In the first chapter he writes about why he decided to write the book. He says he started researching and learning about the saints and "Gradually, I found myself growing fonder of these saints and developing a tenderness towards them. I began to see them as models of holiness relevant to contemporary believers, and to understand the remarkable ways that God works in the lives of individuals. Each saint was holy in his or her unique way, revealing how God celebrates individuality. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, 'How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.'" He quotes someone who says the saints are like "older brothers and sisters to whom one can look for advice and counsel." He says "Some might argue...that all you need is Jesus....But God in his wisdom has also given us these companions of Jesus to accompany us along the way, so why not accept the gift of their friendship and encouragement? ....Everything the saints say and do is centered on Christ and points us in his direction."

Over and over as I read about the saints, people so very much dedicated to living a life in Christ, I saw that in many cases it was not because of some spectacular contribution to mankind that they were saints. In fact, some of the saints lived secluded lives and performed menial tasks in a religious community. But, they read Scripture, prayed and were in community.

I'm sure I'll find the book again, and I am confident I'll re-read it.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

I am loving this book. It's cracking me up! I heard about, and saw, this writer at the Festival of Faith & Writing. It's a memoir. She grew up in a Mennonite family, moved on to live outside the Mennonite community, and then went home after her husband left her and she had a bad car accident.

She writes in a very witty way. I wish I could talk and write that way. Here's an excerpt. She is writing about after coming home from the hospital with a catheter, and planning a shopping trip with her friend.

And so it was that I sallied forth into public carrying my pee bag in an aqua patent tote, shopping with urinous enthusiasm...And less than a week later my doctors upgraded me to the kind of pee bag you strap on with Velcro around your leg, under your skit, like a nasty secret. I taught for half the semester like that. And dang, I'm here to tell you that when it's ninety degrees outside, nothing reminds you of your own mortality like a steaming hot bag of urine hugging your thigh.

I'm happy to report that I made a full recovery from the netherworld of tube and clamp...Whereas before I had taken for granted my miraculous ability to run without wetting my leg, I now silently praised my bladder, "Good show! You're holding up great in there honey!" I'd sneeze and think, Bravo! You have achieved true excellence, my friendly little sphincter!

Some parts where she writes about her mother made me laugh out loud until I cried. I'm not finished yet and I'm not looking forward to being finished. Always the sign of a good book.

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott

Good book. It's a story of a family with a daughter, Rosie, in high school who gets into drugs. The mom and dad have to figure out how to handle it. Rosie excels at academics and is great with kids, but she lies repeatedly about where she is and what she's doing.

The characters are in a previous novel, according to what I've read. She's got a novel called Rosie so I imagine that's the one. I need to go back and re-read it.

I liked this book. It's not funny or sad, it's just a good story, well written. It felt real, the way the parents reacted, what the mother was thinking. The end does not tie everything up but it still felt like a decent ending. You don't know what's going to happen, you hope for the best.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So, it's been forever since I've written, but I'm going to try again. I won't try to go back and do all the books I've read since my last post, but I'll do a couple anyway.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a very good book I read for a couple of my book clubs. It's set in Mississippi (how fun is it to write that, thinking "M-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-humpback-humpback-i"?) right at the beginning of the civil rights movement. Three women are the "voices" in the book. One is a young white woman who wants to be a writer and decides to write the stories of the black women in the town. The other two are two of the black women.

I was afraid it'd be more of that Southern women's book kind of stuff but it really wasn't. The women's voices seemed genuine, and it felt like you kind of got in their heads. The women served as maids/housekeepers and also nannys. There was definitely a comment on the way that these women were trusted so implicitly with such an important task as raising the family's children, yet they were not allowed, in some cases, to use the same bathroom facilities. And then those children grew up to have servants of their own.

I recommend it.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Although it's not really the same, as I began it I thought this was kind of like when I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time. The story was so good. I was reading every word - no skimming, as I often do when there are descriptions or long passages not central to the plot. After that thought came to me, it occurred to me that might mean something sad was going to happen, as when Matthew died. When I read Green Gables I had no idea it was coming and it was the first book that made me cry.

Something sad does happen, several times. But even though it's not a happy story, it's a good one. It's a nice, thick book and one where I didn't want it to end.

The main character is Edgar, who is growing up on a farm owned by his parents. They raise a particular breed of dog that Edgar's grandfather began, based on breeding for an ideal dog, not a show dog. Edgar is born with no voice. He can hear but can't speak. The doctors don't know why. When I read that in the summaries and reviews I was afraid I wouldn't like the book. It sounded too odd. But I was wrong.

It was a good thing I didn't read what some wrote, that it was part ghost story. That would've turned me off. But when those scenes happened, they didn't seem out of place. In that way it reminded me of Leif Enger's book, Peace Like a River.

And, really, it's not just a story of a boy and his dogs. Not at all. All the characters are so well drawn. And you really are IN the book. You see his life, the characters, the setting.

I guess I can't really write too much about the story or I'll give a lot away. I liked the book very much.