Category Archives: Authors F-J

The Sunday Salon: A Tale of Three Lauras

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Over the last week or so, I’ve been living on the prairie. Not the North Texas prairie that is still crusty with drought, despite recent and forthcoming rain, though of course, technically our city IS on the prairie, but the prairie as brought to life by Laura Ingalls Wilder and two of her modern fans.

The Long Winter

I grew up reading the Little House… books, and re-read them when I moved to South Dakota to marry Fuzzy in 1995. They have new dimension when your husband is from a town just half an hour from the real Little Town on the Prairie, and your new niece and nephews attend Laura Wilder Elementary School!

I read The Long Winter last winter (and early Spring) after we returned home from a trip to Iowa in early February (for a family funeral) and after I found the amazing blog/website Beyond Little House. The members of that site were in the middle of a read-along of that book, and I wanted to participate, but was so busy…and then life exploded in other ways.

During the intervening years, I’ve visited a few of the home sites (De Smet, many times, Plum Creek, Walnut Grove, keep meaning to visit Independence, but never have), read a good portion of the published literature about Mrs. A. J. Wilder, and considered a Laura project of my own.

That consideration has been sparked, recently, by two new(ish) Laura-related books by fans who are roughly my age.

The Wilder Life

The first I encountered is a humorous memoir by Wendy McClure. It’s called The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, and it’s about the author’s journeys to the various homesites, and her attempts to bring a bit of “Laura World,” as she calls it, into her own world. (It’s at this point that I must confess: My mother used to make sunbonnets for me, I dressed as Laura for Halloween, 1977, and I have boiled syrup to pour over snow, but I have never considered buying a churn and making my own butter.)

McClure’s book resonated with me for another reason – her partner’s name (at least, the one in the book) is the same as Fuzzy’s real name.

Unlike McClure, however, I loved the television show. Oh, I knew it wasn’t accurate, but just as I’ve often said of the Harry Potter movies, that show was what might have resulted had the real Laura sold her story to the media herself. Also? It was fun to watch. My friend Jill would come over on Monday nights and we’d do our homework while waiting to see if Laura and Almanzo would finally kiss.

I was, however, a fan of the books first, and there were times in Colorado when there were three feet of snow on the ground and school was closed for days because the buses couldn’t get over the pass that I had the barest glimpse of what that Long Winter might have been like. (After my first real winter in South Dakota, I realized that Colorado winters were mild by comparison. I also realized that as much as I might like to imagine living on the prairie in a claim shanty, I’m a modern woman, and I am DONE with serious winter.)

My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself

I devoured McClure’s book and wanted more. Coincidentally, I was led to my other Laura-book of this week, another memoir, by a woman just two years older than I am. Her name is Kelly Kathleen Ferguson, and her book – which I read in one day, and finished while soaking in a tub of lavender-scented bubbles – is My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself.

Ferguson is a bit wilder than McClure, in that – on a mission of self discovery – she donned a prairie dress, and wore it on a two week marathon visit to all of the midwestern homesites of the Ingalls and Wilder clans. Her book is also funny, candid, and, at times, poignant, and as I read it I almost – ALMOST – wanted to be single again, so I could just uproot myself and move to another city and write.

Her description of her time at Prairie Manor, specifically, made me want to go back to Dakota and spend the night there, even though I HATE the prairie in summer. I was even ThisClose to calling Fuzzy’s family and asking if we could drive up and crash their Thanksgiving, just so we could drive a few miles on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway during the trip.

But that’s the beauty of books – they allow you to live vicariously through another person, and then, put them down having learned something about yourself as well as something about the author.

I enjoyed both of the books I read this week, and have arranged to interview Ms. Ferguson for All Things Girl. I’ve also started a fresh re-reading of all the Little House books, because even if I don’t do anything with it, I have to write the Laura-related story that has been perking in my brain for the last 16 years.

And if I’m sort of wishing I could have a Christmas party where we all get a tin cup, a penny, and a stick of candy, in a room decorated by paper chains and popcorn strings, well, I know of at least two women who probably have the same kind-of wish.

Sunday Salon: Re-discovery

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The Sunday Salon.com

Have you ever bought or borrowed a book, either because it looked interesting, or because a friend recommended it, and then found that you’ve actually read it before?

That happened to me recently. I was exchanging emails and blog comments with my friend Becca, because I’d mentioned that one of my favorite books to re-read was Bread Alone. She suggested I might like The Whole World Over, by Julia Glass. Later that weekend, I bought a copy at the local used bookstore, in hardcover, for under $5.

That evening in the bubble bath, I cracked open the book, only to find the opening pages eerily familiar. Sure, there’d been a sense of deja vu when I’d looked at the cover in the store, but I’d just assumed I’d seen similar cover art. Nevertheless, I began reading the book anew.

And the thing is, I don’t mind this sort of rediscovery. I remember that I’d enjoyed the book the first time I’d read it, but I read very quickly, so there are times when, depending on my mood in the moment, certain things catch my attention differently. Example: When I was little, and read Little Women for the first time, the part that I cried through was when Beth died. When I read it again as a young adult, who’d had some experience with love and relationships, I was moved by the scene where Jo refuses Laurie, because on one level, we want these two brash kids to be together, but anyone who’s had a best friend of the opposite gender knows that those relationships never work when they cross into romance.

The Whole World Over, then, is going to remain my “bathtub book” for the next couple of weeks. I know the story well enough that I don’t need to race through it to see what happens, but that doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate a slow, savoring read of it while I soak in lavender-scented bath bubbles.

What about you? Do you ever “re-discover” a book? Do you embrace the situation, or feel cheated out of a new story?

30-Day Book Meme #5: Bread Alone

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Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks

The 30-Day Book Meme asks me to write about a book “that makes me happy,” and the first title that popped into my head is Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks. I love this book so much – about a woman who is dumped and left mostly penniless by her cheating husband, moves to Seattle, works in a bakery, and eventually rediscovers her best self, her romantic self, and her love of baking and fabulous bread.

Partly, I love this book because it’s a cafe story, and partly it’s because – except for the cheating husband part – she’s living one of my fantasies. I’ve bought and given away multiple copies of this novel. It’s well written, draws you in, and has vivid characters.

If only it came with freshly-baked sourdough, it’d be just about perfect.

Review: Megan’s Way, by Melissa Foster

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Megan's Way by Melissa Foster

Megan’s Way
Melissa Foster

Description (from Amazon.com):

What would you give up for the people you love?

When Megan Taylor, a single mother and artist, receives the shocking news that her cancer has returned, she’ll be faced with the most difficult decision she’s ever had to make. She’ll endure an emotional journey, questioning her own moral and ethical values, and the decisions she’d made long ago. The love she has for her daughter, Olivia, and her closest friends, will be stretched and frayed.

Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Olivia’s world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, her life will hang in the balance.

Megan’s closest friends are caught in a tangled web of deceit. Each must figure out how, and if, they can expose their secrets, or forever be haunted by their pasts.

Review:
I was introduced to Megan’s Way when it was included in a daily mailing of free kindle books. Some of those free offerings are fabulous, some not so much, but this one is definitely in the first category. It’s warm, human, and really well constructed. The characters sing. Their environments feel three-dimensional. Had I actually paid full price for this, I would be equally happy with the purchase.

At the heart of this book is a mother-daughter relationship, between the title character Megan and her teenaged daughter Olivia that hits all the right notes to feel real, even though a sense of magical realism is overlaid upon the entire story. This woman and this girl are completely believable – Megan, the free-spirited artist who embodies the concept of “spiritual, but not particularly religious” and Olivia, the girl who hasn’t quite come out of her shell, and who is as much a friend as she is a daughter to Megan. Their relationship reminded me very much of my own relationship with MY mother, who remains my closest confidante even now.

But vignettes of mother-daughter moments do not a novel make. Foster has crafted a lovely story of friendship, intrigue, love, and truth in Megan’s Way. Megan’s best friend Holly, who gave birth to a baby we’re told didn’t make it, at the same time that Olivia was being born, finds herself unable to have children at the same time that Megan’s cancer returns, and it is their intertwining stories that balance the sweetness of the mother-daughter scenes.

The men in this novel aren’t given as much page-time, but their presence is felt, even so. This book won an award for being a beach book, and I can’t help but notice that Holly’s husband Jack (a long-time friend of both women) and their other friend Peter both live on the page in ways that the men in Elin Hilderbrand’s (probably the queen of beach reading) books never do. These are real men, with distinct emotions and opinions.

Yes, there is a fair amount of drama, yes there is emotional intrigue lacing the book, but there’s nothing soap-opera about the story. Instead, Foster has painted a picture of a plausible family-by-choice, made more vivid by hidden truths, human imperfections, everyday magic, and tons of love.

Goes well with: a strong cup of tea, and New England clam chowder, with oyster crackers.

Megan’s Way
Melissa Foster
304 pages, Outskirts Press, July, 2009
Buy this book at Amazon.com

The Sunday Salon: Free Kindle-ing

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The Sunday Salon.com

It was roughly a year ago that I received my Kindle e-reader as a birthday present from my aunt. I fell in love with it almost immediately, although I confess that the ability to have a new book in just a few seconds means that I spend far more on ebooks than I ever did on physical ones, especially since I still buy paperbacks to read in the bath!

Soon after I received my Kindle, I was introduced to ereaderIQ.com, a website that compiles new releases, price changes, and even free books for ereaders, and helpfully shoots you a daily email message with links to them.

Now, some of the free books are obviously free because they’re self-published (which that doesn’t mean they’re BAD, though it often means they’re either explicit sexual or explicitly Christian), but others are the first books in established series that are free to garner new audiences, or free because they’re backlisted, or free because they’re previews…

Blue, Lou Aronica

The thing is I’ve discovered some amazing work that people are literally giving away for free. The week before my nephew died, I downloaded a free book called Blue, by Lou Aronica, which was about a divorced father trying to maintain a relationship with his teenaged daughter, while she struggled with a relapse of cancer. It sounds really sad, and I guess parts of it are, but it was also a lovely fantasy, a brilliant father-daughter piece, and actually, I found it to be full of healing and hope.

I didn’t review it, because – well, I didn’t review anything, or maintain any of my blogs, really, between April and August. But I thought it was a great read, and I heartily recommend it.

Then, last week, as part of my self-indulgent birthday week of reading as much as possible, I downloaded a free copy of Megan Foster’s award-reading novel Megan’s Way. I finished it on Thursday or Friday, and tweeted about it, and ended up in a brief chat with the author. It, too, was a lovely book with a really beautiful parent-child relationship at its heart – this time with the title character – Megan – and her teen daughter Olivia.

Megan's Way, Melissa Foster

More magical realism than true fantasy, this was exactly the book I needed to read at the time that I downloaded it, and I loved it so much that I’m eager to read more of Foster’s work. Look for the review of Megan’s Way here on this blog in the next day or so (I meant to get it done over the weekend but life conspired against me).

These are just two examples of books I’ve read for free (or very little money) via my Kindle. Do I still love cracking open a paperback, or going to a reading and buying a signed copy? Of course! But I love being able to have a portable library as well.

My only dislike of my Kindle – and the technology in general – is that not EVERY book is lendable. After all, every hardcover and paperback is.

Booking Through Thursday: National Book Week

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Kiss My Tiara, by Susan Jane Gilman

On Thursday, August 11th, Booking through Thursday asked:

It’s National Book Week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status

My sentence is from Kiss My Tiara by Susan Jane Gilman:

I’d been reading a lot of Rimbaud and I guess something about the situation struck me as daring and fantastically romantic and sophisticated.

Kiss My Tiara
Susan Jane Gilman
224 pages
Grand Central Publishing, February 2001
Buy this book from Amazon.com>>

Review: Semper Cool: One Marine’s Fond Memories of Viet Nam by Barry Fixler

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Semper Cool
Semper Cool
Barry Fixler
Exalt Press, 320 Pages
December, 2010
Buy from Amazon >> or Read the first chapter for free

Description (from Publishers Weekly):
From Publishers Weekly
Many Vietnam veterans look back in anger on their wartime experiences, but Fixler, who endured one of the bloodiest battles of the war, isn’t one of them. The gruesome 77 days he spent defending an isolated hilltop near the border with North Vietnam forms the core of this nostalgic memoir. Growing up in a predominately middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Fixler was dazzled by his father’s stories of WWII and volunteered for Vietnam to earn his respect. As a teen, Fixler got into his fair share of trouble and that cockiness seeps into these pages. Arrival at the Marine Corps’ Parris Island boot camp is compared to “being thrown into a Nazi concentration camp.” He celebrates his sexual escapades and never sugarcoats the nasty business of war; he’d do “everything again in heartbeat.” Yet as wistful as he is about the “discipline” and “camaraderie” of the Corps, he’s unrelenting in his scorn for the soldiers who return in psychological pieces, suggesting that soldiers should just get used to killing. Nowhere near the league of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, Fixler is nonetheless an intriguing, rare bird: a man who survived “hell in the raw” without a trace of trauma-or remorse.

Semper Cool is an interesting book. You don’t expect to find veterans talking about Viet Nam as if it was a long, black comedy bit, and yet at times Fixler seems to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong – this book is eminently readable. Fixler’s voice is alternately self-deprecating and wise-cracking. He doesn’t shy away from visceral description, and his scene-painting is very vivid. It’s just jarring to read something where someone comes home from a tour of Viet Nam seemingly unaffected.

And maybe the fault lies with me – maybe I have come to expect jarring horror stories about this period so much that when I read a story that doesn’t dwell on the horror my brain can’t accept it.

Bottom line: If you’re reading this for an unbiased look at Viet Nam, don’t. If you’re reading it for an entertaining look at one man’s experience, and how he personally grew after an experience that broke others, you’ll be satisfied, as I was, once I stepped away from the book, and stepped back with a fresh perspective.

Teaser Tuesdays: Slipknot

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Slipknot

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

– Grab your current read
– Open to a random page
– Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
– BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
– Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m still in the mood to read books that involve the ocean in some form. I suppose at some point my mood will shift and I’ll want books full of pretty clothes and romance and bridal gowns, but right now, seafaring stories are making me happy.

Recently, I started reading Linda Greenlaw’s fiction, but even though I began reading this book last month, I’ve had NO TIME to read in the last several days, so it’s taking me longer than any book generally does. In any case, since it’s the Kindle edition, I can’t give the page number, but my teasers are from “locations 527-40.”

“That larger island is Acadia, right?” I asked, pointing offshore.

“Yes. Look, you can see the houses. Only see them when it’s wicked clear. The eastern shore is where all you Bunkers are from. That great span of open water to the right of Acadia is known as Penobscot Ridges.”

“Isn’t that the proposed site for the wind farm?” I asked, ignoring the comment about my family. I knew the answer but was looking for an opinion, or at least another detail.”

“Yes. That tiny puddle of the North Atlantic Ocean is causing quite a ruckus around here. It’s been the most productive bottom for cod since before I was born. Green Haven’s bread and butter for decades. It’s been closed to fishing for the last five years or so, to allow the fish a breeding ground. Now the fishermen want to harvest what’s there, and the wind farm people want it for their own.”

— from Slipknot by Linda Greenlaw.

You can buy the book from Amazon or read the first chapter for free.

Review: Under Orders, by Dick Francis

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Under Orders
Under Orders
Dick Francis
Buy it from Amazon >>

Description (from Booklist):
After an absence of six years, Dick Francis comes thundering up the track with a thriller that resoundingly demonstrates that the acclaimed author, if anything, may have gained a few steps. Francis re-summons his most popular protagonist, Sid Halley, a champion jockey turned sleuth, whose racing career was shattered when a horse fell on him and then an adversary mangled his left hand. Last seen in Come To Grief (1995), Halley, who brings racing knowledge, spirit, and resilience to whatever case he tackles, remains one of the most exquisitely developed characters in crime fiction. This adventure starts with Cheltenham Gold Cup day, during which one racegoer drops dead, a horse collapses after a stirring win, and the victorious jockey is discovered shot to death in the parking lot. Juggling several sleuthing assignments, Halley finds himself working not only for the father of the slain jockey but also for a Lord who wants to know if the races his horses run in are being fixed. The plot keeps delivering shocks as Halley’s investigation is derailed by threats and violence against his new love. And Francis once again proves himself a master of detail, seamlessly incorporating fascinating facts about DNA technology, myoelectric hands, Internet gambling, and even stitches. Wow. Connie Fletcher

After seeing Secretariat the other week, I was desperately craving Dick Francis novels. I’m sure there are other writers who bring the racing world to life just as well, but his books always offer the perfect blend of mystery, horses, humor and even a touch of romance, all dressed up in British English. I mean, you get the sense that former jockey-turned-detective, Sid Halley would even remember to send thank you cards after going to dinner, without being reminded.

As this was my first Dick Francis novel in years (I’ve read almost everything he wrote prior to about 1998, and am now catching up), it took me a few pages to get back into the rhythm of his writing – but only a few. Soon enough we were clipping along at a lovely canter, and I enjoyed reading about Sid’s trouble with his artificial arm (nice use of that to foreshadow the climax of the novel, btw), his lovely, solid relationship with his Dutch scientist girlfriend, and his continued friendship with his ex-father-in-law.

I also enjoyed the mystery (two, really, one involving an online betting system, the other involving race performances) – and the fact that even in his last years, author Francis continued to embrace modern technology. Cell phones, online gambling, fixing races – his research is always evident but never showy, and really, the only flaw in Under Orders is that, like most Dick Francis novels, it ended too quickly.

Goes well with: fish and chips and a beer

Teaser Tuesdays: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

If this was something I planned to submit to directories of book reviews, I’d have to confess that my “current read” really isn’t a book, but a 23-page long short story. But it’s a famous short story, and one most of us never read any more, learning the legend only from movies. Nothing against Johnny Depp’s performance – I own Sleepy Holloy on BluRay, after all, the original is better, moodier, darker, and, well, authentic.

So, for this Teaser Tuesday, which comes during the Halloween week, I offer this excerpt from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before daybreak.

I should add: this is the piece I gave the young man I tutor in English for his assignment this week. He loved it. And you will too, I’m sure.