"Unfortunate Incident"

No USPS-I don't accept your apology for this "unfortunate incident". Apparently this book I ordered went through a fire, then was doused with water!

Christmas Books

Merry Christmas to me!!!  Can't wait to get started on these!  Never mind the piles TBR sitting all over the house!!!

Two more in the Outlander Series

Over the last two months I completed two more books in the Outlanders Series.  I read Voyager and Drums of Autumn.  And again, I loved them both.  They continue the story of Jamie and Claire Fraser.  So now I am halfway through the series of eight books.  They are huge books averaging over 1000 pages each.  I am going to try to make myself take a break and get some other reading in.  I have been able to keep up with both book groups, taking breaks with the Outlander series as needed, but am always anxious to get back to them.   So, I have left off with the Frasers now in the United States, with the Revolutionary War looming. 

If you have the time, I still highly recommend reading this series!

Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls is described on the cover as "A True Life Novel".  It is by the author of The Glass Castle and is about the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.  If you have read The Glass Castle, you know that the author's mother had many issues, to put it politely.  Reading about the grandmother's life explains a lot about how her daughter, Rosemary, turned out.  Although, that is somewhat misleading and unfair as Rosemary had rather severe mental health issues that were certainly not caused by her mother.

Lily Casey Smith was quite an interesting woman.  She was born in 1901 in Texas and by age six was helping her father break horses.  Breaking horses  seemed to develop a theme for her life.

"The problem with half-broke horses like these was that no one took the time to train them."

It appeared to me that this was pretty much her parenting style.  She believed in training her children (certainly a good thing), but to the point that she ignored the children's desires, personalities, traits and abilities. She always seemed to be afraid that her children wouldn't be able to make it in the world.

Lily left home at fifteen when she was offered a position teaching in remote frontier country.  She rode her pony five hundred miles alone to take the teaching job in Arizona. Later she went to Chicago by herself to try to attend college to get a teaching degree and experienced hard times in the big city including a marriage that was a disaster.  Lily then returned to Texas, met and married another man, Jim Smith, and together they amassed a large ranch in Arizona. Over the years, Lily learned to drive a car and fly a plane and was a staunch advocate for women's rights.  She was an interesting, strong woman.

The story is written with Lily as the narrator.  The author wrote that she saw the book as an "oral history" and wanted it told with her grandmother's voice.

Kindred

Kindred by Octavia Butler was a book chosen by one of my book groups.  It was an interesting story, but I was not taken with the writing.  It felt too simple, as if it were written for pre-teens maybe.

Kindred is the story of twenty-six year old Dana, a black women living in Califormia with her husband.  She was suddenly "taken" from her home and woke up to living in pre-Civil War times.  There she saved Rufus, son of a vicious plantation owner, who was drowning. When Dana's life seemed threatened she was sent back to modern times.  This scenario played out over and over, as Rufus grew to adulthood, but it was only a few months time for Dana in real life.  Confused?

I find it amusing that I can totally go along with time travel in the  Outlander series, but found the premise of Kindred ridiculous.

Dragonfly in Amber

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon is the second book of the Outlander series. This book is once again, incredibly researched and fraught with Scottish history. Another one I couldn't put down!

Twenty years had passed since Claire Randall had returned to "real time".  She had completed medical school and she and her husband Frank and their daughter Brianna lived in Boston.  Two years after Frank died, Claire and Brianna went  to Scotland so Claire could show her where Claire and Frank had gone after the war.  Shortly after arriving, they went to visit Roger Wakefield, a historian.  His uncle had been a friend of Frank and Claire's and had recently died.  While visiting with Roger, Claire became interested in his work and over the next few weeks, Roger helped Claire discover that Jamie Fraser had not died in the battle of Culloden as she had always thought.  She also got the courage up to tell Brianna about her time travel and that Brianna was really Jamie's daughter.

News of the World

News of the World will definitely be in contention for my best read of the year. I loved it. The author is Paulette Jiles.  I had read Enemy Women by her several years ago and liked it.  I may re-read it to see if it was better than I remember. This book (News of the World) was a National Book Award finalist. The story takes place in 1870.  Captain Jefferson Kidd was a seventy year old widower who at the time was in Wichita Falls. Kidd was a "reader".  He chose articles from national or local newspapers and read them to audiences who usually did not have access to news. That evening an old friend of Kidd's appeared.  He had a ten year old girl named Johanna who had been taken captive by the Kiowa tribe four years before. He was returning her to her aunt and uncle who lived in Texas and who were all that remained of her family.  The friend convinced Kidd to take the girl to Texas for him. He agreed and thus began the three week journey with Johanna.  She wanted to be back with the Kiowa tribe and did not remember her life before being taken captive, so Kidd had to very slowly re-introduce her to her old life and ways.  They encountered difficulties on the journey and as they went on they began to get close to each other.

Jiles does a great job letting the reader get to know the characters intimately.  It's touching story and told well.  I loved the writing in this book.

"Maybe life is just carrying news.  Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed."