Books!
A short book post, to get caught up. So short I'm not going to bother with a cut. Sorry, f-list.
A few weeks ago I read Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and found it delightful. D. J. Schwenk is an unlikely main character heroine. She lives on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and--almost single-handedly--keeps the farm going after her father hurts his hip. Her two older brothers, both HS football stars, are at college, her mom is a school principal, and her younger brother helps when he's not busy with sports of his own. D.J is a solitary, silent girl but we're in her head so we hear her thoughts about life and family. Her older brothers had a falling-out with her parents and she misses them terribly, she's a big girl who considers herself unattractive, she's secretly resentful of the never-ending work on a dairy farm, and she has a crush on Brian--the star quarterback of the rival high school. Her dad hires Brian to help out on the farm, and soon D.J. finds herself in a pact to help Brian in his conditioning and training to prepare for the upcoming football season. And why not? She helped her brothers all those years and is a decent football player herself.
I wouldn't have thought I'd be interested in a book with a lot of cow-milking and football. But the characters reeled me in and I rooted for D. J. all the way. She made Brian into a better person than he was before, and took the first steps towards communicating with her family and finding her place in the world. I've heard the second book, The Off Season, is even better than the first and I'll be reading it as soon as I can.
On my trip I read A Compact History of Ireland by Sarah Healy because it didn't take me long to realize how ignorant I was about the country. It's sort of the Cliff Notes of Irish history and though it's written in a very scholarly way, it was interesting enough and gave me a quick, basic understanding of the country's ancient history, the relationship between the Irish and British, and the Catholics and Protestants.
I slogged through Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner but it wasn't the book for me. Enough said.
Carry on, Jeeves was a reread but I enjoyed it as much as the first time. Arrow Books has reissued P.G. Wodehouse's books in the UK, in paperback with perfect new covers. I laughed at every silly story and each clever sentence.
I'm so sorry I put off reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog all these years. I'd looked for it half-heartedly in libraries and used bookstores but if you haven't read it go RIGHT NOW to a bookstore or Amazon and get it. Quickly. It's hard to describe--it involves time travel, Oxford University, WW ll, and the Victorian Age, which all sounds like a bizarre combination, but it works and is hilarious. I haven't had so much fun reading a book in ages.
A few weeks ago I read Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and found it delightful. D. J. Schwenk is an unlikely main character heroine. She lives on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and--almost single-handedly--keeps the farm going after her father hurts his hip. Her two older brothers, both HS football stars, are at college, her mom is a school principal, and her younger brother helps when he's not busy with sports of his own. D.J is a solitary, silent girl but we're in her head so we hear her thoughts about life and family. Her older brothers had a falling-out with her parents and she misses them terribly, she's a big girl who considers herself unattractive, she's secretly resentful of the never-ending work on a dairy farm, and she has a crush on Brian--the star quarterback of the rival high school. Her dad hires Brian to help out on the farm, and soon D.J. finds herself in a pact to help Brian in his conditioning and training to prepare for the upcoming football season. And why not? She helped her brothers all those years and is a decent football player herself.
I wouldn't have thought I'd be interested in a book with a lot of cow-milking and football. But the characters reeled me in and I rooted for D. J. all the way. She made Brian into a better person than he was before, and took the first steps towards communicating with her family and finding her place in the world. I've heard the second book, The Off Season, is even better than the first and I'll be reading it as soon as I can.
On my trip I read A Compact History of Ireland by Sarah Healy because it didn't take me long to realize how ignorant I was about the country. It's sort of the Cliff Notes of Irish history and though it's written in a very scholarly way, it was interesting enough and gave me a quick, basic understanding of the country's ancient history, the relationship between the Irish and British, and the Catholics and Protestants.
I slogged through Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner but it wasn't the book for me. Enough said.
Carry on, Jeeves was a reread but I enjoyed it as much as the first time. Arrow Books has reissued P.G. Wodehouse's books in the UK, in paperback with perfect new covers. I laughed at every silly story and each clever sentence.
I'm so sorry I put off reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog all these years. I'd looked for it half-heartedly in libraries and used bookstores but if you haven't read it go RIGHT NOW to a bookstore or Amazon and get it. Quickly. It's hard to describe--it involves time travel, Oxford University, WW ll, and the Victorian Age, which all sounds like a bizarre combination, but it works and is hilarious. I haven't had so much fun reading a book in ages.