flight paths discussion

for the softening light
for the lengthening days
February is fabulous
in unexpected ways

I'm liking February so far (although Friday temps are predicted to drop to 7 degrees). Doing lots of reading and getting back my energy.

Books: Essence of Prayer by Ruth Burrows; Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System by Jeff Hobbs which I'm finding fascinating (he also wrote The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League which was very sad but also tremendously interesting)
Continuing with Demon Copperhead
Also reading a book I won (I put in for it because of my son's great interest in the topic) about Norse Paganism

I hope you all are well and reading happily

well blah
instead of publishing my reply I got the sorry with a long explanation in pink
will this get through?

Happy February!

Ellie, those are two heavy books of thought. I look forward to your reviews.

I finally finished American Dirt and did not like it. It's fluff. It's silly. The heroine had no sense at all. In real life, she wouldn't have made it past the first few pages. I forgave that because her survival allowed the story to go on. But that senselessness continued.
I really dislike a book where the main protagonist is surrounded by danger/peril/bad events and nothing happens to them. They are in a bubble of protection from the author. But.....beware.....anyone they know or befriend will have the awful things happen to them.

I got The Golden Enclaves back from the library. I was about half way through when I had to return it. I'm looking forward to continuing the story.

I am still reading and enjoying Sacajawea.
Magdelanye, as you said, the book is long but it reads quickly. I'm enjoying the story a lot.

once more with feeling!
My comments on Ellies post and my new array of currently reading did not post. I should have realized when the links didn't work that my connection was untrustworthy and at least copied before getting that Something went wrong message
(as I typed the word message, the dj on the radio said it)

Next visit I saw Petras update and wrote a whole new message on the fone this time but how could it be??? the fone swallowed it. so this time I will break it up

How are you liking the Kingsolver Ellie?
-interesting, when I asked that before, the spell check did not recognize but just now it offered the word immediately.

I too will be interested in your thoughts on those two nf, especially the Peace man in prison.

Actually I'm surprised Petra , not that you didnt care for American Dirt but that you found it fluffy. How can you fluff up a story about people fleeing for their lives?

The Golden Enclaves series sounds provocative, kind of blend of mysticism and horror. That's rather awful to have to return a book before you are ready. was it electronic?

It was relief to finish up with The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria by Janine Di Giovanni because it was agonizing to read.
The luck of the draw has me starting Ravensbruk next and it could have the same title because that was when the Nazis liked to visit. Some of the women arrived in pajamas

I loved Monoceros, an earlier work of Suzzette Meyer, more lively than the sophisticated Sleeping Car Porter.

Started Maps of our Spectacular Bodies yesterday and its amazing

Still reading a chapter a day and halfway through Bill Bryson sThe Body

sounds like we are all well engaged....

Magdelanye, American Dirt should have hit the hard spots of what is happening to migrants, but it manages to skirt around the issues. That took the depth away from the story; hence "fluff".

The Golden Enclaves series is a fun read. It's kind of like Hogwarts but harder on the students. Not horror, or mysticism.

that's a polite way Petra of saying, as some do that the book exploits rather than illuminates the situation.

The Golden Enclave does sound fun. will you read the whole series?

Reading Ravensbruk is hard

Yes, "exploits" is a good word to use about this book.

I have read the whole series. It's best to start at the beginning. The Golden Enclaves is the third book.
It is a YA series. I enjoy a good YA story occasionally. This series is a very good story and well told. I'm enjoying it.

The other books are:
1. A Deadly Education
2. The Last Graduate

Petra I'm with you on this, and I think Ellie too includes YA in her net of possibilities. Actually, I have often been surprised to discover a book I have enjoyed is considered YA, like The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

I am completely caught up in Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm. It is still agonizing but here is no mechanical listing of horrors. Sarah Helm gives names and identities to the women who bonded under such atrocities and by reading this I feel I am honouring their memory.

Finished In the City of Pigs by André Forget which was quite a mindbender. The leading reviews slam it but I have a hunch they both might be real estate developers and I agree with the other reviewer who found it more genius. The part about the hydroorgan transported me to a profound place and though I can barely read music and do not understand music theory I found the conversation here to be mostly fascinating.

Needing something lighter, I picked up The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick
and finding it quite a letdown in comparison. It's kind of like a murder mystery with no murder, which is nice, and there are some sharp observations but it reads like a harlequin for the most part, trying too hard to be trendy.

I am thrilled that the link feature seems to working today.
Just hope this will post

Ellie hope you are feeling better!

Hi

I'm still very tired but I think it's getting better. Just very slowly.

I started Viola Davis' memoir, Finding Me--grabs you right away. What a rough life!

For fun, I'm reading The Hunting Party--I feel like I'm in the middle of a "Vera" episode which I'm enjoying.

Also, I keep reading Olivia Laing's Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. I read 2 or 3 essays at a time and then get back to the book a few weeks later. Slow progress but I like spreading it out.

I'm very excited: I just finished Viola Davis' memoir, Finding Me. I thought it was amazing--one of the best memoirs I've read. It is very well-written--she's so articulate. And her life--I think most people would have been destroyed by it. Funny--I just tried to read Matthew Perry's memoir (I loved Friends) but couldn't get through it no matter how hard I kept trying. Anyway, I'm still feeling "high" from the experience of a great book.

I'm also reading The Hunting Party (Lucy Foley) which I'm enjoying. I'm about halfway through and my attention is beginning to flag--partly my problem, I often get restless about half-way through a book. It's a mystery and at this point I just want to know the solution. So far, we don't even know who the victim is!

How is everybody else?

That's wonderful Ellie. I liked your formal review too although I wondered why most of it was underlined. I'm planning to grab it next time I go into town.

I think that one of the things that differentiates a good book from a great one is the middle: a great book leads you deeper without aimless filler.

I've been reading the Canada Reads list (not American Dirt lol) and I quite liked Finding Edward, enjoying Hotline. And I ended up getting into the Messy Lives of Bookpeople, even though my hunch was correct and hidden in the publication details is the harlequin stamp. Ellie, this is actually a mystery too that doesn't announce itself until about halfway. There's no murder.
I can imagine that this might be fun for the whole Flight Paths.


At Ravensbruk they are trying hard to stay alive as the war draws to a close.

now how about that Moore book? I'm ready

last night finished Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah. For such a short book it raised a lot of contradictory feelings in me. For the most part DN does an admirable job of channeling a single mother, a refugee from Lebanon. His politics are skillfully sprinkled throughout in a way that does not trip up her story.

At first I easily identified with Muna, especially loving the way she overcomes her apprehension and disappointment to do whatever she can to support her son. Although she is qualified to teach French, no one will hire her.
Desperate, she takes a job as a nutritional consultant for a growing company selling meal plans for weight loss. While she is a success at this, I fully expected that at some point her niggling suspicions about the nutritional value of the product she is marketing, especially when she is told by a doctor attending her sick son to immediately stop feeding him this junk food, she would have to quit. Am I being unreasonable when I see her promotion as ethically dubious, and her aspirations as hopelessly tainted by conservative values? I am sorry to say it was only then that I allowed myself to acknowledge the unease I felt about her tv watching, and using the TV as a babysitter. Sure, it's 1986 but I couldn't help but want more than that for her and her poor son.

So I am primed for This is How We Love and am planning to start today after finishing up a review or two.

Magdelanye wrote: "That's wonderful Ellie. I liked your formal review too although I wondered why most of it was underlined. I'm planning to grab it next time I go into town.

I think that one of the things that diff..."

The underlining was a mistake on my part--I must have left off the stop feature! Thanks though--I'll go back and edit

I've been hovering over this space, needing to discuss my uneasy feelings as I attempt to write an honest review. Have you looked at others? I am not really wanting to rain on peoples love parade but I can't honestly share it. Perhaps that is part of the point DN is trying to make, that people hoping to integrate, to find meaningful employment and live a prosperous life are forced to sacrifice not only their own traditions but also their uniqueness to conform to the materialistic standards advertised on TV. Do we gloss over the child neglect and the ethical implications of her job?

I started Lisa Moore. My first impression is crowded with characters I have only begun to differentiate.

so I finished This is how we love and gosh, it might have been nice to have read it together but I can recommend it now and look forward to others impressions

I'm excited to begin Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal

I am still seeking your input on Hotline, not wanting to be too utterly picky in my reveal because I empathize with the situation

Started reread Henry Green's Party Going--I don't remember it at all, I'm not even sure I read this one of his--I read several when I was in my 30s but that's a long time ago!

Anyway, I'm loving it.

Magdelanye wrote: "so I finished This is how we love and gosh, it might have been nice to have read it together but I can recommend it now and look forward to others impressions

I'm excited to begin Dancing Lessons..."

I'm curious about Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: what a great title! I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of it.

well Ellie, it's hard to say. On one level it's quite an achievement, and not nearly as hard to follow as I feared, with all the jumping around. There's an element of pretension in his decision to have the entire book be one sentence, that might be camaflouge for his subversive thinking or just an attention grabber. He could at least given the reader a break with few periods.

It's almost as if he is throwing up 4 yrs worth of undigested lunch.

Just finishing Ravensbruk, reading the epilogue.