A Life of Reading Words
DATE: 1/6/26
Challenge Titles Finished (Totals To Date):
Titles Finished: Totals for 2025:
All titles left to go for Challenge: 3,540
Next count: 1/1/27
Weimer, Anissa. Composting Simplified for Beginners: A Complete Guide to Fix Common Compost Pitfalls, Create Fertile Soil and Enjoy a Lush Productive Garden. W4 Publishing LLC, 2024.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I often get to read interesting books. This is one such book.
Why I Requested This Book: I have a very modest raised garden and a few containers where I grow tons of herbs, tomatoes, jalapenos, and the occasional tomatillo. I would like to expand the annual bounty.
This book is true to it’s title. Simple and to the point. Despite its beginner language and content I did learn a few things. For example, never heard of Bokashi composting before. I also never considered composting to have its own mythology, but I am glad Weimer separated fact from fiction. Additionally, I appreciated Weimer mentioning browns and greens and making sure there is an even balance of the two, but she mentions this a lot. There is a little repetition to Composting Simplified for Beginners. Weimer mentions landfill methane gas more than once and don’t get me started on how many times odors or smells were covered. She spends a lot of time addressing the potential smelliness of composting.
The most useful section (for me) was the pest prevention information. I currently deal with woodchucks, squirrels, racoons, chipmunks, rabbits, coyotes, deer, bears, voles, mice, foxes, stray dogs and cats, snakes, skunks, opossums, and even a mountain lion has been in my yard once. Knowing how to keep these critters away from my composting is critical.
The second section most useful to me was the 30 Day Checklist. Knowing when and how to start being spelled out makes the process less daunting. Watching for the different colors of mold was also helpful information.
Less helpful was all the information about involving family members. What if the reader is a single male with no children or even roommates? Least helpful were the testimonials by fellow composters. They seem to reiterate the information already given. Despite the book only being 160 pages long, I skipped these sections.
As an aside, I wasn’t sure of the purpose of the QR code to scan for the supply guide. If the information is included in the book, why do I need to download the information as well? The list of supplies looks pretty straightforward and logical: outdoor bin, indoor bin, pitchfork, thermometer, and tarp.
Author fact: Kasey Bayr’s name is on the cover while in the copyright Anissa Weimer “has the moral right to be identified as the author.”
Book trivia: there are some great photographs and illustrations to emphasize the information.
Lovelace, Maud Hart. Betsy and the Great World. Harper Collins Publishers, 1952.
Reason read: Reason read: In February there is a carnival in Venice. Betsy and the Great World takes place partly in Venice.
Elizabeth “Betsy” Ray wants to see the world instead of the four walls of a classroom. After two short years in college she convinces her family she needs to travel. At twenty-one years old there is little her parents can say so Betsy sets sail to discover the world. She spends the first part of her adventure aboard the Columbic, a floating society of friendships and crushes.
Despite being an adult, Betsy travels with companions who are not really part of the story. She spends a considerable amount of time in Bavarian Germany and Austria. She turns twenty-two in Sonneberg, the doll capital of Europe. She spends six weeks in Venice and takes Italian lessons. [As an aside, there are a bunch of locations in Venice I would like to visit while I am there.] She spends another four weeks in Paris, France. Along the way her family and friends send her letters, money, and gifts. But the one person she does not hear from is joe, her ex-beau. Throughout the entire journey she thinks of him.
Betsy demonstrates a combination of naivete and intelligence. She speaks up for the campaigning for votes for women and in every country she visits she tries to learn the native language. Throughout her journey she refused to worry about much except for Joe.
We leave Betsy just before the start of World War I.
As an aside, I want Betsy to demonstrate her debutante slouch, the move she kept practicing throughout the story.
Author fact: Lovelace wrote a bunch of “Betsy” books. I am only reading Betsy and the Great World for the Challenge.
Book trivia: Betsy and the Great World are full of wonderful illustrations, but I have to admit the one on the cover makes me think Betsy is trying to strangle herself with her own scarf.
Music: Straus, Debussy, “O Sole Mio,” Ravel, “Debutant Slouch,” Stravinsky, Madame Butterfly, “Long Way to Tipperary,” La Boheme, Tales of Hoffman, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Carmen, Barber of Seville, Die Meistersinger, “Annie Laurie,” Tavern in Town,” “Down By the Old Mill Stream,” Shine On Harvest Moon,” Peg O My Heart,” “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” Giannina Mia,” Kathleen Mavourneen,” “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls,” “Over the Wave,” “Beautiful Blue Danube,” Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Il Trovatore, “Funiculi, Funicula,” “Marseille,” “Rule Britannia,” “Rock of Ages,” and “God Save the King.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “”Veni, Vidi, Venice”” (p).
Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Shadow. Starscape, 2002.
Reason read: even though the Ender series ended with Children of the Mind many people consider Ender’s Shadow book #5. Orson Scott Card admitted Ender’s Shadow is not sequential to Children of the Mind because it does not continue the story, but rather goes back to the beginning of Ender’s Game.
In a dystopian world of twelve year old hookers and grade school street gangs, this is the story of undersized and super smart Bean. You might remember him as a minor character from Ender’s Game when Bean was in battle school with Ender. In Ender’s Shadow Orson Scott Card takes us back to Bean’s beginning where survival was only for the smartest. Bean is so smart you have to wonder if he is indeed human and not some genetically altered freak. This was my favorite Card book yet. I loved the character of Bean. I liked seeing a different side of the same story as Ender’s Game. The end of Ender’s Shadow was also a welcomed surprise.
Line I liked was actually spoken by Bean when talking to Sister Carlotta, “He can kiss you and kill you, if he hates you enough” (p 52).
Book trivia: Card said that Ender’s Shadow is a companion read to Ender’s Game. They are actually the exact same story, just told from different points of view. It reminded me of Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris. The same story told three different ways.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).
Thirkell, Angela. Pomfret Towers. Virago Press, 2013.
Reason read: Angela Thirkell was born in the month of January.
Taking place in Anthony Trollope’s fictional Barsetshire, Pomfret Towers is Thirkell’s sixth book in her series. First and foremost, it is not a book with an adventurous plot. Not a whole lot happens at Pomfret Towers. The entire book is based on human relationships and their interactions with each other.
Lord Pomfret is considered rude, but for the sake of status no one will turn down an invitation to dine at the Towers with him. They put aside their pride and self worth to grovel at the feet of an annoying man. He likes to invite the townsmen (without their wives) to dine with him. Considering Pomfret does not have chain stores or even cinemas, what else does the community have to do?
Teenager Alice Barton with no small trepidation accepts an invitation to a weekend-long party at the famed Pomfret Towers. Her nervousness over Lord Pomfret’s invitation borders on a deep psychological phobia. Even though Alice would be accompanied by her brother, Guy, Alice has always been a timid girl and dreads going to this party. She simply cannot picture herself laughing and carrying on with the other guests no matter who they were in society. Meanwhile her mother thinks a social event of this magnitude might do her daughter some good. Lord Pomfret has quite the weekend was planned: Friday – guests arrive in time for playing games.
Saturday – the men go shooting while the women go to see a castle. At night there is dancing, which Alice is surprisingly good at.
Sunday – guests can attend church, enjoy a luncheon and look at horses.
When Alice develops a crush on the one man everyone else thinks is horrible she finds her voice to defend her love. This is a pivotal moment for the young girl. [As an aside, I found Alice to be annoying for the following descriptions of her: delicate, uneducated, timid, semi-invalid, miserable, terrified, unhappy, despairing, hopeless, frightened, dreading, horrified, cowardice, mortified, shy, fearful, humble, meek, anxious, nervous, cautious, scared, alarmed, bewildered, and oblivious.]
A secondary plot in Pomfret Towers is about Mrs. Rivers negotiating her advance on her next book. She claims she found someone else who will give her two hundred pounds.
Pomfret end with the hint of a relationship moving in the right direction. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Author fact: Thirkell also wrote What did It All Mean (#23 in the Barsetshire series). This is the only other Thirkell I am reading for the Challenge. A second author fact: I consulted the Angela Thirkell Society of North America website to make sure I was reading the Barsetshire books in order.
Book trivia: The New York Times called Pomfret Towers a “gay and sparkling social comedy.”
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).
O’Brien, Shannon. Stray. Roam Light Publishing, 2025.
Reason: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read fun books. This is one such book.
When her ex-boyfriend John committed suicide in 2006, his sudden death prompted Shannon O’Brien to live her life a little differently: she became more fully aware of life passing her by. She decided to see the world with eyes wide open and a promise to be ready for anything. For more than fifteen years she has been doing exactly that. As a Lonely Planet enthusiast she planned to to spend six months in South America, traveling through Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
Shannon kicks off Stray with her best friend and a tour of La Paz’s famous prison (and tourist attraction) where the prisoners give tours and rule the prison. In Bolivia the pair volunteer for Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi – a nonprofit deep in the jungle which cares for exotic animals of all kinds. Fun fact: O’Brien was in charge of feeding twenty spider monkeys. Next, she and a new travel companion named Noah get lost hiking in a canyon without food or water. They celebrate their survival with a trip to Argentina to rent bicycles and drink Malbec and fernet con cocoa before moving on to the Australian Outback for a year. After Noah came teaching in Nepal and experiencing the Teej festival. After meeting Xander, it’s to India in time for the Diwali festival. Her experiences in Thailand are harrowing. Then she meets Blake in Cambodia. They travel to Thailand before partying and paying for it in Portugal. Where she ended up is anyone’s guess. The story ends there.
What I appreciated most was that throughout Stray Shannon displays a deep knowledge about the cultures and histories of each region she visits. While it took me a very long to finish Stray is/was enjoyable.
As an aside, some of Shannon’s details didn’t make sense to me. For example, it seemed as if she and her family (father and sister) were staying in a little town two hours south of Bangkok. When her sister and father had a tragic swimming accident Shannon traveled between Hua Hin and a Bangkok hospital to see them. Does that mean she spent four hours a day going back and forth between the two Thai towns?
Music: The Doors, The Who, U2, Dark Angels, Los Blinkers, Fleetwood Mac, Arctic Monkeys, Backstreet Boys, “Sexual Healing,” and Keith Richards.
Stark, Freya. Valleys of the Assassins, and Other Persian Travels. Century Publishing Company, 1936.
Reason read: Stark was born in the month of January. Read in her honor.
There is no doubt that Freya wanted to live a life full of adventure that was challenging, rewarding, and more than a little dangerous. While she carried letters of introduction to give her access to key people, Freya relied heavily on her own wits to maintain her safety while in Persia. She recognized villains when she saw them. She played upon her novelty, knowing no European woman had ever been in various regions before. She would further confound the natives by putting the fragments of a skull in a jar as a keepsake or best them at their customs of all possible polite greetings and the responses one could go through. Freya demonstrated her sense of humor even when she was in sticky situations. Her attempt to find hidden treasure in a cave was both heroic and hilarious.
When people asked Freya why she wanted to travel the way that she did she blamed “the trouble” on an aunt after this relative sent Freya a copy of Arabian Nights for her 9th birthday. Freya was instantly bitten by the adventure bug. Most children would snuggle down in their beds and dream of spitting camels and endless sand, but Stark’s dreams took her to ride real camels across real deserts. Confessional: Freya never mentions camels. Her mode of transportation was a mule.
Part One takes the reader through Luristan, as it was a country where one is less frequently murdered, but the threat is not completely out of the question. As Freya maps the area for British Intelligence her actions put her in constant danger of being thought of as a spy. At the same time, Freya becomes a healer of sorts; being called upon to parse out quinine and castor oil; administer care for for snake bites, broken limbs and mysterious ailments.
Throughout Valleys of the Assassins are wonderful full page photographs. My favorite is of Keram Khan with his majestic horse and magnificent coat.
Lines I loved, “…looking at me with the calm innocence of a Persian telling lies” (p 38), “This would have proved a perfectly sound and successful theory if a buried treasure had not come to complicate my plans” (p 62) and “The study of history necessarily leads one into lonely places” (p 136).
Who knew Stark had such a sense of humor, “The great and almost only comfort to being a women is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one in and no one is surprised” (p 67). She says this while trying to argue the truth about a lunar eclipse.
Here’s one more, “So kind is fortune if you trust her” (p 195).
Author fact: Stark wrote a plethora of books about her various adventures. I am reading a total of five for the Challenge. I have finished all but one.
Book trivia: the reprint of Valleys of the Assassins coincided with Freya’s 90th birthday and the cover is of a Garabagh carpet in detail.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lady Travelers” (p 142). Pearl says this is the one to read if you are only going to read one Freya Stark book.
Peace, Jeff. The Wrong Kind of Son: Salty Driftwood Publishing, 2025.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing, I get to read heartwarming books. This is one such book.
Jeff Peace wanted nothing more than to purge the past to “[name] what it felt like.” It took real courage for him to lay it all out in the pages of Wrong Kind of Son. What started as a letter to his father turned into a book about surviving abuse. [Confessional: I also wrote a letter that turned into a publication. I only wanted my parents to understand where I was coming from without having the necessary confrontation.] Wrong Kind of Son opens with Peace wanting to connect with his father during the holidays. I say wanting because there is a sense of family obligation that cannot be ignored no matter how one tries. Father and son live thirty minutes from each other but hadn’t seen each other in a year. The connection goes badly as it always does. That is the pattern. Throughout Wrong Kind of Son Peace illustrates the anatomy of neglect without being overly dramatic or playing the martyr. There is a difference between stating simple fact and hurling blame. Peace sticks to the former. By the end of Wrong Kind of Son Peace finds the strength to break the patterns of abuse. Through other avenues of love he is able to forge a new path. His courage is astounding.
As an aside, this is my third early review book about a narcissistic parent. By reading the stories of backhanded compliments, off-color jokes, and empty promises my own story has become clearer.
Author fact: Peace is a thoughtful author. He has a disclaimer about the abuse depicted in Wrong Kind of Son, urging his readers to take care.
Book trivia: there were so many brilliant lines I wanted to quote. Intelligence without empathy is a good one. Hope being a habit is another.
Music: Nickelback
Card, Orson Scott. Children of the Mind. Tor Books, 2002.
Reason read: started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.
Children of the Mind is the second half of Xenocide which explains why the residents of planet Luistania are still looking for a way to escape the decimation of their planet. This is also the final book in the Ender quartet. The survival of the children of the mind hinges on Computer Jane’s ability to move the humans, buggers, and pequeninos to a more hospital planet for colonization without overtaxing her bandwidth. Every jump takes her down a notch. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Ender’s older brother, travels to meet with the Starways Congress to convince them to stop their campaign to destroy Lusitania. Only Peter isn’t Peter. He is another entity of Ender. In fact, Ender has three bodies: his own, Peter’s and Young Valentine’s. Children of the Mind, like the other books in the series gets a little didactic and preachy.
I have to wonder how many people freaked out when they got to the demise of Ender as we know him.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 224).
Kavenna, Joanna. The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule. Viking, 2006.
Reason read: I read somewhere that the Shetland Viking Fire Festival takes place every January.
Kavenna blames her obsession with Thule on Pytheas, stating he began the story when he claimed he had been to the mythical land of Thule by way of Marseilles. But what or where exactly is Thule? Is it a place of barren rocks, howling winds, and flinty skies? Is it a Nazi organization, a secret society borne out of prejudices and hate? Is it an ancient calling to barbaric Vikings and long-forgotten mythologies? Kavenna travels the globe looking for answers. She meets with the former president of Estonia, Lennart Meri, searching for the true Thule. She travels to a former Thule settlement in Greenland and talks with scientists about global warming and the threat to the region’s polar bears.
Throughout Kavenna’s journey her descriptions of the landscape and people are stunning. Her words crackle with the cold and demonstrate the warmth of the people.
Eye opening moment: I guess I never thought about it before. Nazis believed Iceland was the cradle of Germanic culture. That makes sense with the blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin of its residents.
Favorite description of Iceland, “A land like a disaster film, a natural gore-flick- the country scattered with the innards of the earth” (p 68).
Here is another line I liked, “the past and the future lurked at the edges of the day time dusk” (p 288).
Author fact: even as a small child Kavenna was urging her parents to travel with her.
Book trivia: there are no photographs or illustrations of any king in The Ice Museum. Not even the author has representation.
Music: “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).
Cherryh, C.J. Downbelow Station or the Company Wars. Daw Books, 1981.
Reason read: January is another science fiction month.
Confessional: I felt like Cherryh was speaking directly to me when she said she wanted to write a book for readers who love to detect connections between books. Cherryh called Downbelow Station a “novel of interstellar conflict and ambition” as part of the Alliance-Union Universe series. Above all else, it is a human story, a love story even. Cherryh wanted to create a wider universe that would be consistent in a series set in the future a few centuries from now. Her story is populated with tribes of spacefarers and groundlings. We begin Downbelow Station with Book One Earth and Outward between the years 2005 and 2352 but most of the action is nestled comfortably between the years of 2352 and 2353 on a space station orbiting the Downbelow in the Tau Ceti star system. During this time space is not explored by NASA or the like. Private corporations rule the galaxies with their exorbitant wealth. Sound familiar? Old River is angry and the mill is not to be lost. The surviving companies need to plot an attack against the Union or else become refugees and, if that happens, where would they go?
Downbelow Station is packed with action, but as I mentioned earlier, hidden amongst the sci-fi is a human story and maybe a little romance. I appreciated the friendship Damon and Elene extend to Josh Talley, the prisoner who had his memories erased. He becomes the unlikely hero in the story. More human emotion is displayed when Elene Quen goes missing.
Author fact: C.J. Cherryh is Carolyn Janice Cherryh. I loved, loved, loved C.J. Cherryh’s advice at the end of her introduction – go out to where city lights don’t block your view and look up. Interesting fact about Downbelow Station – the stars are in real locations. Another fact – Cherryh worked with multiple cardboard clocks to make the multiple timelines agree.
Book trivia: Downbelow Station won a Hugo award and the story was so popular it was made into a board game.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Space Operas” (p 210).
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.
Reason read: every January people make resolutions all about bettering themselves. It’s all about them. In honor of those “it’s all about me” resolutions I am reading a book about being selfish and the explanation for why.
Richard Dawkins wants you to ignore the word selfish in his book’s title and concentrate more on the word gene. He confessed that “misunderstandings of Darwinism” are what originally “provoked” him to write The Selfish Gene. [Point of view: At the time of publication he was a professor at Oxford University and considered The Selfish Gene a “new” way of looking at ourselves. Keep in mind Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene fifty years ago.] Like a chef laying out a beautifully set table before his meal, Dawkins takes care to define the words selfish and altruistic. He wants to make sure you are grounded in the facts he is about to present before you. He is careful to explain how words get lost in translation. For example, take the Septuagint – Hebrew for young woman into Greek for virgin and what transpires is the virgin giving birth to a holy son.
Dawkins repeatedly uses the word “simplified” to assure his readers that he has dumbed down his scientific subject matter as much as he could without turning The Selfish Gene into a See Jane Run book for toddlers. He uses humor and folksy language to further put his reader at ease. Fear not! This is a good book.
Quote to quote, “For instance a ion wants to eat an antelope’s body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body” (p 89).
Author fact: Dawkins published seven books after The Selfish Gene. I am reading one more, The Blind Watchmaker. At the time of publication, Dawkins was working on the computer simulation of cricket song to determine the basis of female attraction.
Book trivia: as an aside, Dawkins tells a story about the underground “parasol” ants of South America. They live in colonies of over two million and live deep underground.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Genuine Genes” (p 96).
Shute, Nevil. The Chequer Board. William Morrow & Company, 1947.
Reason read: Shute celebrates a birthday in January.
John Turner has been having attacks of giddiness and fainting spells. As a veteran of World War II he lives with inoperable shrapnel in his head. The story opens with him learning he has maybe a year to live because of this horrific wound. There is nothing the doctors can do. This abbreviated time on earth has prompted John to want to reconnect with three men he met in military hospital: Philip Morgan, a soldier prisoned in Burma during the war; Pfc Dave Lesurier, a soldier accused of attempted rape of a naive English girl; and Corporal Duggie Brent, a soldier who had killed a man during a bar fight. What had happened to these troubled men? Turner wants to find them and improve their lives if he can.
A side story is John’s relationship with his wife. His marriage to Mollie has strained for normalcy. From the very beginning the reader learns that Mollie did not visit Turner in the hospital; not even once despite the fact he was there for a week. She claims he hasn’t needed he. Neither has done anything kind for the other. A death sentence changes both of them. As a way of understanding Mollie urges John to find his former friends from the hospital.
Shute has a funny way of describing things. [She was] “about to produce an infant” (p 29) instead of saying she was pregnant once a year.
Quote to quote, “He like to drive for an hour to some country pub or roadhouse and drink beer in an atmosphere of smoke and laughter and good company” (p 31). That sounds like an amazing time. Can I come, too? Here is another, “Rather than fall into their hands, it was preferable to fall into the hands of death” (p 100).
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Nevil Shute: Too Good To Miss” (p 198). Pearl warns her readers that there would be racist language in The Chequer Board. I expected the derogatory name calling but not the all out blatant racism. Even in the twenty-first century, there is a lot of that going around. With the death of Rob Reiner there is a resurgence of people watching “All in the Family.” The character of Archie Bunker is not exactly all that politically correct. Those were the prejudices of the time and somehow acceptable.
Stout, Rex. Three Doors to Death: a Nero Wolfe Threesome. Viking Press, 1949.
Reason read: I first started the series fifteen books ago in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.
Man Alive (published in December 1947) – A man once thought to be dead of suicide is found dead again.
Omit Flowers (published in November 1948) – as a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe takes on the wrongful accusation of murder. Virgil Pompa, a restaurant chain manager has been fingered for the crime.
Door to Death (published in June 1949) – my favorite of the bunch. Nero’s caretaker of over 10,000 orchids, Theodore Horstmann, has taken leave indefinitely to care for his ailing mother. This abandonment is absolutely unacceptable to Wolfe. The travesty forces him to leave his beloved brownstone to recruit a replacement who has, of course, been charged with murder.
As an aside, for as many times as Archie says Nero never leaves his brownstone, I wonder if someone has actually counted up all the times he has and why.
Author fact: Stout passed away at the age of eighty-eight.
Book trivia: to track Stout’s publications one has to be pretty savvy. Three Doors to Death is comprised of three novellas which were published as stand alone stories. The three stories were republished in a collection called Five of a Kind.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).
Wozniak, Bruno. The Reinvention Playbook: Self Published, 2025.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program from LibraryThing every once in awhile I get to read interesting books.
In a nutshell, The Reinvention Playbook is about navigating the loss of a job and all that that end entails. It is about rebuilding a new identity outside of what the job made you. Is it possible to find meaningful employment and emotional connection after ending a self-defining career? Wozniak urges his readers to try, try, try. It is all about moving forward, one baby step at a time. At times I found the advice to be a little repetitious with emotional signatures: disorientation, low energy, aligned with the adverse of curiosity and confidence.
I appreciated his phrase “identity earthquake” for when a job ends, it truly is a restructuring of everything you knew about yourself. Think about it. You spend a solid eight hours a day as one entity. That is a good chunk of time. Routines are established; a rhythm solidified. You need to reconcile the inside voice with the outside noise. Do not let the fear of urgency create chaos before you have had a chance to heal. You have to let go of who you were before you lost the job and take note of what remains after the work is gone. The diagnostics are sometimes hard to decipher if you do not know how to read the emotional cues or cannot resist the urge to stay busy. Wozniak’s book enables you to navigate those efforts to rebuild.
Author fact: I instantly connected with Wozniak’s example of running. Without the analytics to “prove” the effort, is it worth it? Can you go for a run without tracking pace, distance, heart rate, route?
Book trivia: The Reinvention Playbook is best read after losing employment as a tool for grounding yourself in reality, but what happens if you read the book with one eye on the approaching cliff you just know you are going to fall from? Would you read the book differently if you were secure in your employment or foresaw no immediate danger?
Long, David. The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux. Scribner, 2000.
Reason read: Sisters Week is in January.
The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux has been described as the “effect of not knowing on a tragedy’s survivor.” I lost a friend two years ago (it’ll be three at the end of June) and I have absolutely no clue what happened. Was it suicide? Possibly. He mentioned ideation more than enough times. Was it an accidental overdose? Possibly. He admitted he was addicted to pain killers. Was it the damage from the near-fatal stroke he had? Possibly. He was still struggling with his health. But. I will never know.
Hartford, Connecticut (1973). Miles Fanning and Caroline (Carly) Lamoreaux are typical teenagers, skipping out on choir practice for the sake of young love. Only Carly does not meet Miles at the prescribed spot nor is she ever heard from again. Fast forward twenty-four years later Fanning is the founder of SunBreak Records and still does not know what happened to his old girlfriend all those years ago. He has since married and moved to Seattle, Washington. In all honesty he hasn’t thought about Carly all that much. Life has carried him in a different direction…until suddenly Carly’s sister, Julia, sweeps into his life, dragging the memory and mystery of Carly behind her. Julia’s line of questioning is off-putting and abrasive; the way your teeth feel when you bite down on eggshells in an otherwise fluffy omelet or finding sand in your ice cream. Julia interrogates Fanning like his soul has committed a serious crime. She is a strange woman to whom Fanning cannot help but be drawn. What I found so interesting about The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux was the lack of detail about the investigation into the disappearance of Carly Lamoreaux. Miles Fanning is an obvious suspect but once he is cleared, the reader does not get a sense of urgency to find Carly. It led me to think more about the title. The focus is on the father, Simon. Does he hold the key to the mystery? In the end I found myself saying, yes, he does.
Author fact: Long also wrote The Falling Boy which is on my Challenge list.
Book trivia: this should be a movie.
Real music: Count Basie, Te Deum, Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus, Keith Jarrett’s Koln concert, Soundgarden, Chopin, and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedies.
Fake music: Billy Caughan’s “Hard Knock Turn,” and Nella Randolph,
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Sibs” (p 199).
~*LunaSea*~ 