Maggie1944's 2016, second half reading journal

Hi, I used to be a busy bee here in The Green Dragon but I was seduced away by the busy bees over in the 75 Book Challenge group.

Ha! Well, I'm back!!!!

Just purchased 10 books for my 9th Thingaversary. Yay! Lots to read.

This morning I'll report that I finished reading Gary Paulsen's This Side of Wild, a short memoir about his relationship with animals. Quite interesting and his observations on how intelligent animals are, and how most humans are too "dumb" (my word) to see the smarts, are a joy to read. Recommended for lovers of animals, and those fascinated by adventuresome people.

Books on my TBR shelf, next to my reading chair, are too numerous to list here, but I'll list those I just purchased:

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick was purchased because I think I should read at least one of this famous early science fiction writer's books.

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs because a friend in the 75 Books group praised it, and I was curious based on the cover illustration. There I go, judging a book by its cover!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Bravely, felt I'd like two of his books. We shall see

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. I really loved her River of Doubt and historical fiction is one of my main reading genre and it was recommended. What more do I need?

Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker is recommended by many here, and I like reading about France.

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson - another historical fiction about "before the great war", a favorite period of history for me.

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, because my name is Karen (not Maggie as one would think seeing my "screen name".) and the cover looks cool. Once again a totally shallow reason for picking a book off the shelf and paying good money for it. And I do like Elizabeth Bear's writing.

Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline, because.... I read a recommendation of it somewhere, by someone, and it looked good.

Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O'Dell and Across Five Aprils because I recommended these two books to many of my 5th and 6th grade students back when I was teaching (before 20010, and I believe I should finally read them own self.

I also have Alan Furst's newest book here next to my chair. A Hero of France looks very attractive.

Good reading to us all! Happy Summer in the northern hemisphere!

Hi, Karen. I will be lurking as you read and record your 2016 progress through the pages.

Happy reading!

Welcome back! :o)

>1 maggie1944: Nice to see you back here in the Green Dragon! I've added this thread to the GD Reading Journals Master List.

You'll find that The Summer Before the War is more about the war itself than the summer before. I read it a couple of months ago, and liked it (mostly).

So good to see you here again! You have some great reading lined up. I hope you enjoy Martin Walker's books as much as I have.

Karen Memory is a very good book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Nice to see you back!

Hi, Karen!

That's an excellent tbr list up there, and it has a number of books I've read and liked. You've probably seen that I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan. The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream are quite different; the former is an alternative history and won the Hugo award, while the latter was the basis for the Blade Runner movie, but has significant differences in the story. The guy was brilliant, IMO.

Welcome back! I look forward to following your reading, not least because Karen Memory and the PKDs are on my tbr pile.

I've said elsewhere that Karen Memory is a great book I really enjoyed. If you do too, you might check out the same author's New Amsterdam.

great to read some recommendations for Karen Memory; I did just pick it up cuz it looked interesting, and my name is Karen.

pretty flimsy excuse, but perhaps a good choice

You're brave to wander into phildickian territory. Some folks seem unable to deal with his writing. I like some of it; High Castle was a big favorite many years ago. Poor, honorable Mr. Tagomi. Just in case you decide to go further, the other one of his that I found pretty good was Martian Time Slip, but others have probably read him more recently than I have.

Ah, interesting comment. We shall see....

Finished reading Cry Wolf and completely enjoyed a romping good story. Nice to know a bit about dog behavior as it made some of the wolf behavior in the book totally believable. A good job of world building, and characters which were real, and changing as the story unfolded.

>15 maggie1944: I keep meaning to pick up something else by Farley Mowat but never seem to see anything. That's the only one I've read by him so far and quite enjoyed it. Glad that you did also.

You may be thinking of Never Cry Wolf by Mowat. Cry Wolf is by Patricia Briggs. Both have wolves and snow 😉

I just went to kill some time at Barnes and Noble: books from the wish list!

2 A.M. At the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

OH, good for you!! Which one are thinking of starting with?

The 2 AM one. Should be funny!

Nice haul, Karen. I'm a fan of Lab Girl. She has a really appealing conversational writing style.

Finished reading Pax! by Sara Pennypacker. What a great last name!

Written for 10-14 year old readers this is a heart-wrenching tale of a boy and his pet; and his father and war. Pennypacker does a superb job of describing the experiences of this boy in a way which captures both the "coming of age" elements in the story and the much more adult issues of war and destruction, both of humans and of the earth. It is also an odyssey of classic proportions with a mythical goddess smack dab in the middle of the story crying to be healed. Read it. Its a good tale, and a well written book.

>22 maggie1944: Yay! Another fan of Pax here.

It feels like a classic to me. We'll see how it does over time, but I think it has that staying power.

It's on my to be read list already! Glad to hear it's a good one!

OK, I"ve been neglectful here, and everywhere on LT. Been adjusting to my new home, and staying very busy here. Also, had a bunion operation on my left foot, so I's working twice as hard to do what I need to do.

Oh, well, I have news: I finished reading Believer, My Forty Years in Politics and I recommend it highly. Fascinating political biography, filled with good stories and hopeful ideas. I know we don't talk politics here, now more than ever, but I can recommend this book! Very good.

Books Finished in 2016

1. Winterdance by Gary Paulsen
2. Lumberjanes: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson
3. Huck #1 by Mark Millar and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque
4. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
5. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
6. Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max
7. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
8. This is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison
9. Tisha: The Wonderful True Love Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness as told to Robert Specht.
10. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
11. The War That Saved My Life
12. The Rainbow Comes and Goes by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt
13. This House of Sky by Ivan Doig
14. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
15. Woof: Twenty-Five Years as a Dog Trainer by Mordecai Siegal (6-6-16)
16. This Side of Wild by Gary Paulsen
17. Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs
18. Pax by Sara Pennypacker
19. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
20. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
21. Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
22. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
23. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod

What did you think of #8?

I love Gary Paulsen!

And I really want to read Pax one of these days.

I hope your foot is healing well. I had a bunion operated on 7 years ago. Not an easy operation to go through. And mine is starting to bug me again.

Oh, darn! I'm sorry to hear your foot is bothering you. What seems to be happening?

My foot is about 8 weeks out - and is definitely healing, but is not finished. It is still sore, and I spend a lot of time sitting in my reading chair. That is not a bad thing! Ha ha ha

I was not overwhelmed by Evison's book. This is the second I've read, and I liked the earlier one better. This one was a woman mulling over her life and a reconciliation wth a daughter, I think. I'm sort of putting it in the 5 cents the psychiatrist is in - Lucy - category. Not overwhelmingly profound, but I do give the author some credit for dealing with an issue most do not think about often.

Yeah, I thought the book was just "meh". I was hoping it would be more like Where'd You Go Bernadette.

The bunion just hurts some days. If it gets too bad, I'll have it looked at. But I do not look forward to ever having that surgery again, so it's going to have to get pretty bad. :) I got a lot of crocheting done when I was recovering.

What did you think of The Summer Before the War? I enjoyed most of it, except for certain bits, but some of the ladies in one of my online reading groups were upset because they expected it to be more lighthearted.

Oh, I think I thought it was OK, but have sort of burned out reading about Great Britain before and after World War 1 and 2.

I did not expect it to be lighthearted so that would not be my take on it. But I did not find it all that "new".

*waves* Hello!

Hi, MrsLee. Nice to see you stopping by....

I had been wondering if you were otherwise engaged with real life. Glad to see you swing by here and in some of the other threads!

Yes, RL has been keeping me jumping, and I am falling to sleep with my books on a regular basis.

I'm enjoying life, though, just not spending as much time on LT as I used to do.

I am reading All the Light We Cannot See right now along with a half a dozen other books I dip into and out of from time to time.

>35 maggie1944: We read that for a book club earlier this year and loved it.

How was 10. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng? His The Garden of Evening Mists was one of the most amazing books I've ever read.

I also liked The Gift of Rain although without looking back at review (if I wrote one) or at the book I could not tell you anything about it. I do remember stuff from The Garden of Evening Mists without having to look. I guess that tells you something.

I have been very remiss in writing about the books I've been reading. I'm sorry for that.

I forgot to post here that I finished reading Cheaper by the Dozen and Auntie Mame, two "lighter" books we chose for December's book group meeting.

I love this little book group which struggles along trying to continue our face to face meetings and reading a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. It started from a Meet-Up of Green Dragon/LibraryThingers several years ago. Cool.

BTW, Cheaper by the Dozen continues to be a worthy light hearted book but I think Auntie Mame has too much dated racist stuff in it for me to recommend it to anyone. I think the author of the latter is a fascinating guy and I might try to dig up a bio of him, but I'll not read any more of his books.

Both were laugh-out-loud funny in spots but it helps to be a wee bit "older" in order to remember the context within which they were written.

I actually have read and enjoyed both of those titles. The Gilbreath book was one of my father's favorite ones and he would occasionally joke about not being in the mood for an organ recital! OTOH, I read Auntie Mame in my teen years. I remembered laughing out loud the first time 'round on it, but haven't really felt compelled to seek it out a second time to re-read.

Books Finished in 2016

1. Winterdance by Gary Paulsen
2. Lumberjanes: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson
3. Huck #1 by Mark Millar and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque
4. Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
5. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
6. Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max
7. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
8. This is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison
9. Tisha: The Wonderful True Love Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness as told to Robert Specht.
10. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
11. The War That Saved My Life
12. The Rainbow Comes and Goes by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt
13. This House of Sky by Ivan Doig
14. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
15. Woof: Twenty-Five Years as a Dog Trainer by Mordecai Siegal (6-6-16)
16. This Side of Wild by Gary Paulsen
17. Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs
18. Pax by Sara Pennypacker
19. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
20. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
21. Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
22. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
23. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod
24. Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister
25. Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.
26. Auntie Mame by Jerome Lawrence
27. Unsaid by Neil Abramson

I am of two minds about this book. First, it grabbed me and held me down all day yesterday. It has been sitting on my shelf for months after I picked it up at a book store because I loved the picture of a dog on the front of the book. It's cover advertised it to be about the bonds between people and animals and it certainly was. I raced through it and cried more than once as some of the people and animals do die, and I did care about multiple characters, and multiple animals.

Second, it was written by a lawyer who has been associated with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and reflects this bias.

I don't like it much when a fiction writer uses a tear-jerk story to "argue" in favor of a point of view, even if I happen to agree with the point of view. I like my fiction to be about the human condition in all its complexity and without having come to firm conclusions about any of the issues we face. This book clearly wants our legal system to stop treating animals as if they were things, and not sentient beings. I agree, but I don't like fiction to be the avenue for discussing this important issue.