Non-Review: Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

 The next random book on the list was Swan Song, available on Hoopla.  I cannot make myself continue to read this one, not right now anyway.  Post-apocalyptic, it seems that one main character struggles with mental illness and addiction.  Full of violence and people being horrible.  I don't want to sit in that world right now.

Review: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

 I randomly selected this book from the list I posted yesterday.  I knew very little about it, just that it was most often on reading lists for older children.

Coming to this book in 2021 was very different than if I had read this when I was a kid.  The main subject is hunting and a rather grisly form of hunting at that!  The author was born in 1918 and clearly has a great fondness for coon dogs and racoon hunting.  He also seems to be a Christian and proud American as well.  All of these things are handled gracefully and I can see why it was seen as a children's book.  The killings are mostly off-screen and there is no romance.  Even most of the challenges the main character takes on are described as almost easy.

It is a pleasant story, couched as the reminiscence of an older man back to a time he remembered fondly from his childhood.  But, it is also the story of a very young boy who trains two dogs to kill hundreds of animals for their pelts.  Sad ending, too.  I have very mixed feelings about it.  It has some of the same feel as To Kill a Mockingbird although there are no racial overtones here, and no moral lessons beyond "dogs love people".  And a little bit of "God answers prayers mostly".

I was able to check this out of my local library electronically and it is a short book.  I don't feel the time spent reading it was wasted.

My Reading List 2021-2022

 I have no idea if I can read these in 1-1/2 years, but I'm going to give it a try.  I find the bottom of the list a little more interesting than the top, so I'm going to try alternating between, working towards the middle.  I also may read the first book of a series for those I haven't already read.  Link to source of the list at the bottom.

Books

• To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
• Pride & Prejudice - Austen
• The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
• Gone With the Wind - Mitchell
• Charlottes’ Web - White
• Little Women - Alcott
• Jane Eyre - C Bronte
• Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery
• The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Smith
• The Book Thief - Zusak
• The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
• The Help - Stockett
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Twain
• 1984 - Orwell
• And Then There Were None - Christie
• Atlas Shrugged - Rand
• Wuthering Heights - E Bronte
• Lonesome Dove - McMurtry
• The Pillars of the Earth - Follett
• The Stand - King
• Rebecca - du Maurier
• A Prayer for Owen Meany - Irving
• The Color Purple - Walker
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Carroll
• Great Expectations - Dickens
• The Catcher in the Rye- Salinger
• Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls
• The Outsiders - Hinton
• The Da Vinci Code - Brown
• The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood
• Dune - Herbert
• The Little Prince - Saint-Exupery
• The Call of the Wild - London
• The Clan of the Cave Bear - Auel
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
• The Joy Luck Club - Tan
• Frankenstein - Shelley
• The Giver - Lowry
• Memoirs of a Geisha - Golden
• Moby Dick - Melville
• Catch 22 - Heller
• War and Peace - Tolstoy
• Their Eyes Were Watching God - Hurston
• Jurassic Park - Crichton
• The Godfather - Puzo
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
• The Notebook - Sparks
• The Shack - Young
• A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
• The Hunt for Red October - Clancy
• Beloved - Morrison
• The Martian - Weir
• Siddhartha - Hesse
• Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
• The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon
• A Separate Peace - Knowles
• Don Quixote - de Cervantes
• The Lovely Bones- Sebold
• The Alchemist - Coelho
• Invisible Man - Ellison
• Gulliver’s Travels - Swift
• Ready Player One - Cline
• Gone Girl - Flynn
• Watchers - Koontz
• The Pilgrim’s Progress - Bunyan
• Things Fall Apart - Achebe
• Heart of Darkness - Conrad
• Gilead - Robinson
• Flowers in the Attic - Andrews
• The Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut
• This Present Darkness - Peretti
• Americanah - Adichie
• Another Country - Baldwin
• Bless Me, Ultima - Anaya
• Looking for Alaska - Green
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz
• Swan Song - McCammon
• Mind Invaders - Hunt
• White Teeth - Smith
• Ghost - Reynolds
• The Coldest Winter Ever - Souljah
• The Intuitionist - Whitehead
• Doña Bárbara - Gallegos

    Series

• Outlander (Series) - Gabaldon
• Harry Potter (series) - Rowling
• The Chronicles of Narnia (series) - Lewis
• The Hunger Games (Series) - Collins
• Game of Thrones (series) - Martin
• Foundation (series) - Asimov
• The Wheel of Time (series) - Jordan/Sanderson
• Hatchet (series) - Paulsen
• The Twilight Saga (series) - Meyer
• Tales of the City (series) - Maupin
• Alex Cross (series) - Patterson

Not Gonna

• Left Behind (series) - LaHaye/Jenkins
• Fifty Shades of Grey (series) - James

source

Review: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

 I had a hard time with this book.  It was written from the point of view of someone struggling with mental illness and it tended to make me feel a bit mentally ill as well.  Also, the plot lines are contrived to keep the ending a mystery and I didn't really appreciate that.  It was a bit like "I see dead people" and since I had an inkling about the "twist" at the end, it wasn't really worth all the back-and-forth.  I read it for a book club otherwise I might not have finished reading it.  I also got it through Kindle Unlimited so I didn't have to pay for it, another good thing.

I didn't know a single thing about the book ahead of time, which was good.  I jumped right in without any warning and I think that helped.  On the other hand, I could tell that there must be a reason the author kept manipulating the timeline and that brought me out of the story a lot.  It is also a pretty bleak sort of place where this takes place, a sort of parallel world and it was HEAVY on my heart to dwell there.  There was an impossible happy ending, but it felt a bit too tacked on for me to feel as if the ending redeemed the dark journey it took to get there.

Human Soup

I was recently reading a blog post by an artist I follow.  He was saying that each of us is made up of the various things we have seen/heard/read/etc.  We're a sort of soup of each of these things.  Some of them stay nearly whole and others dissolve into the background, each adding their own flavor that makes up the unique "me".

I also had a friend on Facebook ask if we should allow ourselves to watch violent television shows.  He is a fan of the Fire and Ice books, but was contemplating watching any more of the television version since there is apparently a LOT of violence, especially towards women in the HBO show; more than the books, apparently (I'm not familiar with either).

I think those two ideas are very closely linked.  What flavors do you want in your "me" soup?  What do you want others to "taste" in you?

Mary Russell

I don't know why it has taken me so long to think of writing this entry, but better late than never.  I have been completely enthralled by listening to the Laurie R. King series of Mary Russell stories on audio.  Read by Jenny Sterlin, they are WONDERFUL.  The plots are intriguing, the characters are believable and the stories are so witty!  I hate to give too much away, because I hate to plant expectations in your minds, but I want to encourage you to read them, so here goes:

Unlike Elementary or Sherlock, this series has a very traditional version of Sherlock Holmes as the secondary character.  Set in the early part of the 20th century, the author has captured the best things about the Conan Doyle character and created a world where a smart, confident woman is still expected to down-play those traits.  Mary Russell is a smart, clever woman who captures the attention of Sherlock Holmes and eventually becomes his partner.  Unlike most murder mysteries today, the action is slower, there is not much violence and there aren't bad guys waiting around every corner.  Some of the investigations the two undertake are for crimes that happened many years previous, so there is no Jessica-Fletcher-like problem where every single character is either a potential victim or suspect.  So good!  They are so well written - LOVE THEM!!!

Knowing God

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it--the fact that HE KNOWS ME. I am graven on the palms of his hands.  I am never out of his mind.  All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.  I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me.  He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.
This is momentous knowledge.  There is unspeakable comfort--the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates--in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.  There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.
There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough).  There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.
J I Packer

Time

Time is the comforting blanket that cloaks all our days, and the rug that we are constantly pulling out from under ourselves.
Nancy Peacock

Kurt Vonnegut on writing fiction

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Reading on a Reader

I have a Sony Reader, and I really like it.  It was a special gift from a friend, and it saves my sanity while I'm waiting for one thing or another (a grumpy teenager, mostly).  I have no extra money for books, and the local library leaves something to be desired.  I am particular about what I put inside my head, and so I prefer older books.  The Reader is perfect for this, since I can download more free books than I can ever read from either Project Gutenberg or Google Books (public domain books).  I am currently reading Robinson Crusoe because of a comment I heard on Moody Radio.  I've even managed to get some John Piper books and Classic Christian Books Online and Christian PDF Books etc.  I also found that Calibre was a very helpful tool for getting stuff from .pdf to the ePub format that makes for better reading.  I already have a little over 800 books lurking in the shadows of my hard drive, just waiting for the miraculous day when I have time to really read.  That's another reason I prefer the Reader, because I don't like the constant contact of the Kindle with the internet, and I don't like the idea of storing my stuff on their server.  (This is the same reason I prefer my MP3 player over an I-pod; which my son heartily disagrees with!)