LyndaInOregon's 2023 Yarns #1

Discussions75 Books Challenge for 2023

Rejoignez LibraryThing pour poster.

LyndaInOregon's 2023 Yarns #1

1LyndaInOregon
Jan 2, 2023, 12:38 pm

Might as well start with a cross-post of my personal challenge -- to acquire and read one book per month from my PBS Wish List.

JANUARY: Adult Assembly Required, by Abbi Waxman (Just placed a hold on this one at my local library and will pick it up tomorrow)
FEBRUARY: Bad Days in History, by Michael Farquhar (Received notification this morning that the swap request has been filled and the book is on its way!)
MARCH: The Cadillac Cowboys, by Glendon Swarthout
APRIL: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
MAY: The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey
JUNE: A Fine and Private Place, by Peter S. Beagle
JULY: Girls Like Us: Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, by Sheila Weller
AUGUST: He Was Some Kind of a Man, by Roderick McGillis
SEPTEMBER: I Never Sold My Saddle, by Ian Tyson (Tyson just died last month, but I'd had this on my Wish List for some time.)
OCTOBER: The Journal of Mortifying Moments, by Robyn Harding
NOVEMBER: Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
DECEMBER: Ladies of the Canyon: A League of Extraordinary Women, by Lesley Poling-Kempes

2drneutron
Jan 2, 2023, 1:21 pm

Welcome back!

3PaulCranswick
Jan 2, 2023, 2:31 pm



Nice to see you back, Lynda. Wishing you a great reading year.

4Berly
Jan 2, 2023, 9:31 pm

Hi Lynda in Oregon! I'm Kim(berly) in Portland!! Happy New Year!

5alcottacre
Jan 3, 2023, 3:42 pm

>1 LyndaInOregon: Looks like a great personal challenge! I need to do that too, one of these days.

Happy New Year!

6LyndaInOregon
Jan 3, 2023, 8:48 pm

First book of 2023 finished. I started this one between Christmas and New Year's, so you can tell it's a chunkster.

#1 - Panther in the Sky, by James Alexander Thom
Full review is here, if you're interested.

7figsfromthistle
Jan 3, 2023, 8:49 pm

Happy reads in 2023!

8Whisper1
Modifié : Jan 3, 2023, 11:31 pm

Your review of Panther in the Sky is wonderful! I will add this book to the tbr pile.
It is so good to see you here! I like your monthly challenge. What a great idea!!!

9LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Jan 5, 2023, 10:36 pm

#2 - Adult Assembly Required, Abbi Waxman (January Wish List Challenge book)
This so-so romance isn't one of Waxman's better efforts, lacking the zany zing of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill or the laugh-out-loud humor of Other People's Houses.

10LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Jan 8, 2023, 12:28 pm

#3 - A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower, Patricia Bernstein (December LTER)
Slow-moving and generally disappointing. Full review is here

11LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Jan 10, 2023, 10:48 am

#4 - Thin Air, Robert B. Parker
A cop friend of Spenser's has been shot, and his wife has disappeared. Spenser is on the trail. Parker uses a little different style here, with about half the book told from the POV of the missing woman, whose character is developed much more fully than the usual damsel-in-distress types.

ETA - Don't know why this one posted twice, unless it had to do with my trying to fix the Touchstone!

12LyndaInOregon
Jan 9, 2023, 4:31 pm

#4 - Thin Air, Robert B. Parker
A cop friend of Spenser's has been shot, and his wife has disappeared. Spenser is on the trail. Parker uses a little different style here, with about half the book told from the POV of the missing woman, whose character is developed much more fully than the usual damsel-in-distress.

13LyndaInOregon
Jan 10, 2023, 10:49 am

#5 - The Uninvited Guests, Sadie Jones
Almost DNF this clumsy amalgam of ghost story, wicked look at British class-ism in the Edwardian era, and a soupҫon of grown-up 'Lord of the Flies', all bound up by an unlikely resolution.

14Whisper1
Jan 12, 2023, 1:06 am

Lynda, You are off to a good start. Congratulations on reading five books thus far this year.

15FAMeulstee
Jan 12, 2023, 9:30 am

Happy reading in 2023, Lynda!

16RebaRelishesReading
Jan 12, 2023, 12:16 pm

Hi Lynda, I'm Reba from just north of the river. Looking forward to following your reading this year.

17LyndaInOregon
Jan 12, 2023, 1:52 pm

>16 RebaRelishesReading: North and a good bit west!

18LyndaInOregon
Jan 14, 2023, 12:02 am

#6 - A River of Stars, Vanessa Hua
Sent to California so that her child will have American birthright citizenship, Scarlett Chen runs from the gilded cage of her maternity home when she learns that her lover's longed-for son will in fact be a daughter. How she makes her way in a strange country with not much more than determination and the questionable help of another runaway mother-to-be, forms the backbone of this charming tale of perseverance, grit, and -- eventually -- forgiveness.

19Whisper1
Jan 14, 2023, 12:10 am

Hi Lynda. I hope you are enjoying the 75 challenge group. I joined in 2008, and I've met some incredible people. The first year, I visited many threads, and that's how I got to know people. Last year, I didn't visit threads as much, and I vow to correct that this year. There are so many wonderful folk here, and my reading genres have expanded quite a lot.

I've added A River of Stars to my TBR pile. It sounds like a book I would enjoy.

20LyndaInOregon
Jan 15, 2023, 1:14 pm

#7 - Educated, Tara Westover
I found a lot of echoes of Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle in this book, as Walls, like Westover, survived a childhood within a profoundly dysfunctional family and ultimately found recognition through education.

21LyndaInOregon
Jan 17, 2023, 9:29 pm

#8 - Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth
This thoughtfully written memoir forms the basis for the fictionalized television series of the same name. Worth's experiences in one of London's poorest neighborhoods in the 1950s is full of laughter and tears as she describes her experiences.

22PaulCranswick
Jan 17, 2023, 10:05 pm

>21 LyndaInOregon: My late mother loved the TV series, Lynda.

23Berly
Jan 18, 2023, 8:22 pm

>20 LyndaInOregon: I enjoyed Educated a lot and was very happy to not be brought up as she was. It was a great RL book discussion, especially since one of our members used to live out that way.

24figsfromthistle
Jan 18, 2023, 8:37 pm

>20 LyndaInOregon: That was a great read for me as well. Westover is also a good writer.

25LyndaInOregon
Jan 19, 2023, 12:40 pm

Educated provoked a fair amount of anger in me, and most of it was directed at Westover's mother, who I think was actually more of a "villain" in the story than her father. (He at least was almost certainly dealing with mental instability.)

Faye knew early on that she didn't want her mother's white-picket-fence life, and chose (consciously or not) a partner whose general gotohell attitude guaranteed she wouldn't have one, then apparently went meekly along with whatever cockamamie, abusive, or dangerous decisions came out of his paranoid visions and patriarchal tyranny. The only two exceptions we see are the end-run Faye did to allow Tara to participate in student theater, and the single email in which she allegedly apologizes to Tara for being "a bad mother" to her, and for not protecting her against what she acknowledged as abuse.

That apology somehow made her subsequent actions seem worse.

26The_Hibernator
Jan 19, 2023, 5:47 pm

That's an interesting review of Educated. I've been wanting to read it, and have it in my Kindle library. But I never get to it.

27LyndaInOregon
Jan 20, 2023, 3:32 pm

Best Line In The Book: Apples Never Fall, Liane Moriarity. A woman has disappeared and her husband is the main suspect. A neighbor asks her teenage son to take the family a casserole. He asks why she would cook for a guy who probably killed his wife. "Innocent until proven guilty," she replies, and then adds "I overcooked it. Just in case."

28LyndaInOregon
Jan 20, 2023, 7:11 pm

#9 - Apples Never Fall, Liane Moriarity
Twisty whodunnit about the disappearance of a retired tennis instructor and the tensions within the family she left behind. Moriarity manages to pull off a conclusion that will surprise everyone, but the pace drags as she continues to double back and nail down plot noodles.

29LyndaInOregon
Jan 23, 2023, 4:35 pm

#10 - Death du Jour, Kathy Reichs
A disappointment. Reichs' Tempe Brennan series is generally a winner, but this one, with its mysterious international cult background as villains, stretches coincidence far past the breaking point and ultimately depends on the most unlikely bits of blind luck to reach its resolution.

TW: Graphic descriptions of violent death, including that of two infants.

30LyndaInOregon
Jan 25, 2023, 7:51 pm

#11 Bold Spirit, Linda Lawrence Hunt

In 1896, a 36-year-old Norwegian immigrant named Helga Estby set out with her 18-year-old daughter, Clara, to walk from Spokane, Washington, to New York City, in hopes of winning a $10,000 cash prize. She wanted to use the winnings to prevent foreclosure on the family’s Washington farm and to provide a more secure life for herself, her husband, and their eight children.

Bold Spirit is the story of that walk – of the culture that formed Estby, of the personal and national events that led to the family’s distress, of the changing roles of American women as the Victorian era waned, and of the societal norms that nearly resulted in the story disappearing from the pages of history.

It’s a huge, complex, and ultimately distressing story, and one that Hunt keeps firmly within the realm of scholarship, which is probably the book’s biggest flaw. Like Lauren Kessler’s Stubborn Twig, which dealt with a Japanese-American family’s internment during World War II, Bold Spirit is essentially stripped of its inherent drama and keeps the reader firmly at arm’s length.

There’s still a lot to digest here, though it takes some reading between the lines. The story is worth knowing, and Hunt’s retelling simply cracks open the door. One hopes a writer who is as interested in the heart of this amazing woman as in the journey she made will revisit this rich and multi-faceted American tale.

31PaulCranswick
Jan 25, 2023, 7:55 pm

>27 LyndaInOregon: So if my food is too salty or overcooked then I need to understand I am under suspicion at home, Lynda!

32LyndaInOregon
Jan 26, 2023, 12:02 pm

>31 PaulCranswick: Only if a nosy neighbor cooked it for you!

33LyndaInOregon
Jan 27, 2023, 1:36 pm

#12 - The Homewreckers, Mary Kay Andrews
So-so entry from Andrews, who is threatening to become formulaic with her tales of spunky heroines whose careers are threatened by disaster but who pull through with pluck and luck. This time, the story features rehabbing and flipping a century-old beach house for a "reality" TV show, and is spiced up by the possibility that the property is tied to a 17-year-old mystery.

34LyndaInOregon
Jan 29, 2023, 11:30 pm

#13 - Catwatching, Desmond Morris
Mildly interesting collection of short articles about the behavior, psychology, and physical attributes of domestic cats.

35Whisper1
Jan 30, 2023, 1:45 am

I enjoy your reviews and comments. I had the same reaction to Educated.

Congratulations in reading 13 books thus far this read!

36LyndaInOregon
Fév 1, 2023, 3:53 pm

January Round-UP

Off to a strong start for the year with 13 books read! Highlight of the month was Tara Westover's Educated, with Vanessa Hua's A River of Stars a strong second. Down at the bottom of the list was the LTER Noble Cunning, which just never managed to make any emotional connection with the reader.

Currently working on another LTER, Aquarius Rising, and looking forward to starting the Discworld group read with Mort.

37LyndaInOregon
Fév 3, 2023, 4:55 pm

#14 - Aquarius Rising: The Complete Trilogy, Brian Burt

This LTER set in an Earth that has been rendered largely uninhabitable due to global warming gets 3.5 stars from me. Full review is over here.

As a long-time Oregonian, it was fun to be able to recognize the locales used, even if some phantom auto-correct did render The Dalles as “the Dalles”. And it was particularly fun to see that Pendleton had become a haunt of the primitive Saurians. Serves them right for stealing the county seat in 1868. Karma may be slow, but she’s thorough.

38PaulCranswick
Fév 4, 2023, 7:45 pm

>37 LyndaInOregon: I also enjoy fiction set in places that I am familiar with, Lynda, as it sort of adds context but also draws you into the story more.

39LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Fév 4, 2023, 8:22 pm

#15 The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman, Sue Townsend
Collection of Townsend's columns originally published in Sainsbury's Magazine. Most are amusing, but on the whole, this is better dipped into over a period of time than read in long stretches.

40LyndaInOregon
Fév 5, 2023, 5:58 pm

#16: Mort, Terry Pratchett
Book one of the Discworld Group Read.

41LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Fév 7, 2023, 3:37 pm

#17: Buffalo Soldier, Tanya Landman

This new-to-me author was a pleasant surprise, and the book won the CILIP Carnegie Medal in 2015 (awarded by UK children’s librarians for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people), though it deals with adult concepts and experiences.
My full review is over here.

The notion of young women disguising themselves as male for convenience or survival isn't new, and does have some historical precedent in American history. Landman cites the story of Cathay Williams, a freed slave who disguised herself as a man and joined the U.S. army as William Cathay, serving for two years. "Charley O'Hara's" story is different in substance, but shares the same milieu and spirit.

Recommended.

42LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Fév 18, 2023, 1:17 pm

#18: Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years, Barbara Leaming

Many thanks to Whisper1 for sharing her copy of this book with me. It was, at times, an extremely difficult read, emotionally speaking. I was a college student at the time of the assassination, and certainly naive about the real people behind the political figures. I can remember saying, after the Warren Commission Report came out, that I hoped to be around in 50 years "when the real truth about the Kennedy family can come out". Be careful what you wish for.

Anyway, my full review is over here.

43LyndaInOregon
Fév 18, 2023, 1:21 pm

#19: More Bad Days in History, Michael Farquhar

This was the February book for my 2023 Wish List Challenge, and it was basically a dud. Farquahar has created a brief entry for each day of the year, wandering randomly through history for goofs, faux pas, bad judgment calls, and catastrophes. There's no unifying theme here, and Farquhar sometimes attempts to be too cutesy when dealing with death, disaster, and defeat. Two and a half stars.

44LyndaInOregon
Fév 19, 2023, 8:15 pm

#20: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen

Petersen's study takes a look at 11 contemporary women whose careers challenge the boundaries of what is "acceptable" for women to accomplish or champion. There are a lot of cogent ideas here, even if Petersen has chosen some subjects whose work may not be familiar to the reader.

I'm not going to do a full review, as there are some very fine ones already posted, including a very interesting one from rocketjk.

However, Petersen does pose an excellent question in the essay about Jennifer Weiner, and I'd be interested in seeing how others feel about it.
Women make up around 80 percent of the fiction-buying public, making them an incredibly powerful market force. They're just not buying the right books -- at least according to pervasive and problematic cultural assumption. The right books are "difficult": experimental, impenetrable, male. They get written up in prestigious book reviews; they win awards that place a tasteful gold stamp in their corner. Their authors don't blog or tweet about them, because they don't blog or tweet. They take decades to write. They're released in hardcover, the robust carapace of high literature. They occupy the rarefied air of high art. And the majority, but certainly not all, of the authors of these books are men.

So ... do you think that's an accurate statement? Petersen (and Weiner) go on to support that argument by citing statistics from publications such as The New York Times Book Review, whose reviewers and authors are overwhelmingly male and whose subject matter tends overwhelmingly to "the rarefied air of high art".

Yes? No? Does it matter when you select a book to purchase?

45LyndaInOregon
Fév 22, 2023, 11:19 am

#21: Sarek, A.C. Crispin

A.C. Crispin is among that small handful of pro writers who can be counted on to handle classic Star Trek fiction well, but this is not her best effort, as the Family Sarek Saga threatens to be overwhelmed by the action-adventure portion of the novel. Full review is here

46LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Fév 26, 2023, 12:44 pm

#22: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

In addition to writing a formal review for this on the workpage, I'm going to write about it here, in tandem with #20 above, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. And just because I have lazy fingers, they're going to be referred to as WBW and TFTS.

In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to read WBW and TFTS almost back-to-back. While both deal with feminism and women’s history, the writers and their approaches could not be more different.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of WBW, is a professor of women’s history at Harvard. While she does look at those titular women whose everyday labors have largely disappeared into the historical record but whose activities built the world we have today, she also writes about iconoclasts like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Virginia Woolf. Anne Helen Petersen, who penned TFTS, spent several years writing mostly about pop culture for Buzzfeed, and her subjects – as one might guess from the title – lean toward the outrageous, who may or may not be remembered a century from now. It’s a hard lift to convince me that Kim Kardashian will redraw the rules for female entrepreneurs, or than Nicki Minaj’s butt-cheeks will leave a permanent imprint on the music industry. (I’m sorry. I cast that sentence 17 different ways, and each butt-cheek reference turned into a pun, regardless of how I tried to word it.)

There is, however, a unifying theme running through both works. As I wrote to a friend, “different veggies, same soup.” And that theme is that to be noticed, to change the status quo, one must be willing and able to bring that soup to a boil. Stanton did it with her tireless work for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. Minaj does it by insisting on total control – both financial and artistic – of her music. All the women in TFTS, and many in WBW, raised eyebrows and outrage by their firm insistence on holding the course. As Stanton wrote, “…those who demand larger liberties are ever a small, ostracized minority, whose claims are ridiculed and ignored”. It is generally those individuals who refuse to be silenced by that ridicule who actually accomplish their goals.

Ulrich at times seems to be arguing against her own declaration – well-behaved women seldom make history … but sometimes, they do. A great deal of WBW is devoted to the roles women have played throughout our culture, often unrecognized but nonetheless vital. The notion of “it had to be done, so I did it” comes back through letters, journals, and oral histories as women took on non-traditional roles as circumstances demanded it. As Ulrich points out, “if well-behaved women seldom make history, it is not only because gender norms have constrained the range of female activity but because history hasn’t been very good at capturing the lives of those whose contributions have been local and domestic.”

In other words, maybe sometimes you have to be too fat, too slutty, or too loud.

47banjo123
Fév 26, 2023, 6:01 pm

>44 LyndaInOregon: Interesting! I think that used to be the case (men's writing seen as more important), but I am not sure it still is.

48Whisper1
Modifié : Fév 26, 2023, 8:15 pm

>41 LyndaInOregon:, I've added Buffalo Soldier to my TBR list.
>42 LyndaInOregon: What an amazing review!!! Your writing is stellar, and contains a marvelous objective view of the Kennedy relationship. I also found it quite disconcerting that Jackie purposely was absent so that Jack could have his trysts. Why did she stay? I think she liked the limelight and the attention his position afforded her. Plus, she did get a lot of perks -- beautiful gowns, clout, and attention which she said she didn't like, but I think at times sought it. Your writing is excellent!!!
>44 LyndaInOregon: My answer to your question regarding an opinion of NY Times or male reviewers determining outcome if I purchase a book is NO. I don't tend to follow their suggestions. Interestingly, it is this group and their opinion of books is what has determined books I want to read. I've been a member since 2008, and increasingly, I listen to people whose opinion I trust.

49lauralkeet
Fév 27, 2023, 6:38 am

>46 LyndaInOregon: Brilliant review, Lynda! It was fun to read it because of your writing (love that soup metaphor!), and I enjoyed learning about those two books as well.

>48 Whisper1: Like the other Linda, this group and their opinions/reviews have become my primary source for recommendations on what to read next ("next" being a relative term, you understand).

50LyndaInOregon
Fév 28, 2023, 6:03 pm

>48 Whisper1: I'm putting Buffalo Soldier in the mail to you tomorrow. I received another of her YA biographies, The Goldsmith's Daughter, the other day but haven't read it yet. It's set in the Aztec civilization, pre-European contact.

51LyndaInOregon
Fév 28, 2023, 6:05 pm

#23: Deadly Decisions, Kathy Reichs

This is the third in the Temperance Brennan series, and I'll probably work my way through the others eventually, but am taking a break for a while.

52LyndaInOregon
Modifié : Fév 28, 2023, 6:16 pm

February Reads

No Touchstones, since all have been mentioned upthread. Ten books this month. Standouts were Mort, by Terry Pratchett, and Buffalo Soldier, by Tanya Landman.

The others, more or less in ranked order:
-Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen
-Mrs. Kennedy, Barbara Leaming
-Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
-Aquarius Rising, Brian Burt (an LTER)
-Sarek, A.C. Crispin
-Deadly Decisions, Kathy Reichs
-Public Confessions of a Mddle-Aged Woman, Sue Townsend
-More Bad Days in History, Michael Farquhar

53LyndaInOregon
Mar 1, 2023, 1:23 pm

Thread continues here.