Wyoming Summer is one of my comfort reads, but I didn't realize O'Hara had two more nonfiction books! This one is the story of writing her novel The Son of Adam Wyngate. It begins with her driving east with her collie after her divorce from Helge Sture-Vasa to re-establish herself in Connecticut, and thinking on what she wants to write next, a family drama based on her own father. I was heartened by reading about how many false starts she had! At one point, she envisioned it as a trilogy and began writing the second book first. It was quite encouraging to know that even as an experienced writer, she had so many false starts.
The book also makes me glad I live in the computer age: her talking about having to edit her drafts by cutting and taping multiple pages of typewritten manuscript together made me exhausted.
Margot Bradley's once-flourishing romance writer career has gone down the tubes: someone found her private file, the one the now-cynical author kept to herself because she wrote unhappy endings to all her famous rom-com epics after an epic breakup with her fiancé, and broadcast it to the world. Her sister Savannah, who has chronic autoimmune disease, proposes that she go away for six weeks to a lodge in Alaska and write in a new genre: mystery. But no sooner does Margot arrive in Alaska than she runs afoul of Forrest Wakefield, a former researcher who is now taking care of his invalid father and is guilty because he wasn't there to care for his mother.
Two cynics, in this genre, equal romance, although neither of them will admit it at first. Great fish-out-of-water protagonist who discovers the "cozy lodge" comes with physical challenges, and a hero with heart.
The Dutch are different, but then so are the Germans. And the Swiss, and all the other countries along the length of the Rhine River. Starting in Amsterdam, Ben Coates follows the path of the Rhine all the way to its source at Lake Toma, covering the history, sociology, and current political and social customs of the countries he travels through, comparing and contrasting the people, the food, and the treatment of the river.
Sometimes Coates has his tongue more firmly planted in his cheek than perhaps he should have, but I enjoyed his journey up...down?...along one of the most notable rivers in Europe. I bought this book because I was tired of all the good travel narratives being about France!
Grosset & Dunlap's "Famous Dog Stories" series. I ate these up as a kid. Nope, didn't want to read about girls dating and gushing over boys, or, when I was younger, little girls simpering over their dollies and having tea parties. Adventures. I wanted adventures! These, along with Albert Payson Terhune's wonderful collie stories, captured my imagination.
Got this from a friend who knew I liked old dog books. It's a corker: an engineer and his son are on vacation in Alaska. Dad is called away unexpectedly for a few daysand wants to take son Pierre with him, but Pierre persuades him to leave him at the cabin with Juneau the husky, knowing a neighbor, Andy, will help him if there's a problem; besides, he's in the care of their Native-American guide Ka-uk, a member of the Tlingit tribe.
Alas, these books were not exactly enlightened: Ka-uk deserts the boy and proves to be treacherous, and Pierre and Juneau are obliged to fend for themselves. Considering when this was written, I was impressed that Ka-uk's problem didn't stem from being "naturally bad" due to his heritage, but because he was an outcast from both his own people and from white people. Pierre gains maturity and experience during his unfortunately long ordeal, and the dog is magnificent.
Nobody's perfect.
This is a book about ten heroes--historic and celebrity-- whose lives were not what the public believed. I admit, I bought this book because the first chapter was about Douglas Bader, a World War II pilot whose positive press covered up the fact that he wasn't who he seemed; my husband, the consummate fan of aviation heroes, had read about him and scorned his fame. My mother, the ultimate JFK fan, knew all about his peccadillos and, later in life, knew about his illnesses. Almost everyone knew he didn't write Profiles in Courage; Ted Sorenson did. And once Mother Teresa died, the word about her forcing people to suffer without painkillers because "suffering was good for them" became known. And how many people didn't know Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator?
English offers up as well, in each of ten chapters, people he believes more worthy of the honors.
Ruby Vaughn had one chance at a good marriage, but was "ruined" by an in flagrante reveal. After serving in the first World War, she now lives in England working—and sharing a house with—an elderly bookseller, who unexpectedly asks her to travel to Cornwall to deliver some esoteric books to a folk healer. Ruby is reluctant to go because her old friend Tamsyn lives there after marrying an English aristocrat. Mr. Owens' client turns out to be the town Peller, a cross between a healer and, from what Ruby can gather, some type of witch.
When Tamsyn's husband turns up dead, everyone is under suspicion, including Tamsyn.
An atmospheric thriller set in the 1920s with lots of twists (although the characters seem to spend most of the book soaking wet).
There is some meat to this collection of Wilder letters,
including some of the letters she and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane
shared about the editing of the "Little House" books. Sadly, Rose burned
most of the letters, especially those from the 1940s, so we will
never know the full editorial partnership she shared with her mother.
There is an impassioned letter of Laura's insisting that The Long Winter
be confined to the Ingalls and Wilders with a few supporting characters
rather than a full pallet of townspeople as Rose wanted to give full import of the isolation families faced during that hard winter
of 1880-1881, which showed she did have the flair for storytelling that
some literary scholars have denied her. But most of the letters are
banal little responses to schoolchildren, with a few lovely gems.
The trouble is, I've read so many books about Wilder, including the recently published Pioneer Girl,
that I've already seen many of these "surprise bits" (like the fact
that a young couple and their baby lived with the family during the long
winter), so the revelations aren't. It's also sad to read Wilder's last
letters with her longing for her late husband clear even in the few
paragraphs, and it's also obvious that the sisters did not remain very
close after Ma and Pa and Mary died.
I've been a Laura "junkie" since I first saw the television series and
wanted to know "the real story," so I'm glad I picked this up, but if
you have less of an attachment to her, I would invest in one of the
biographies instead.
What's the one thing women always complain about in modern clothing? Of course, not enough pockets. From 1660 through 1900, however, most women did have pockets, often capacious ones, which tied around the waist and went under their skirts (the skirts usually had a slit/slits to access the pocket(s).
This is a history of those pockets, most made of cotton, some of wool or leather or linen, some embroidered and many plain, and what women kept in them, from valuable things like coins and keys, to items for beauty (powder compacts, rouge), to things like snacks, books, visiting books, and sentimental objects. Often the pocket(s) were the only private places women had for their cherished items and they were often stolen by cutpurses who cut the tie strings or brazen thieves who reached under a sleeping women's pillow for her stash. Other women used their pockets as shoplifters hide things under their coats, to steal.
This is a scholarly study, but an interesting one.
These are selections from a website called "Modern Loss," where stories of grief are shared. One of the stories from the co-authors sounds like it came out of a Law & Order episode: her father and stepmother were killed by a handyman who, a few weeks earlier, had done repair work at their home. He intended to just rob the house, but when he found them at home, he beat them both to death.
This book made me more depressed, so, obviously not what I needed to be reading at this time.
This book was interesting to me not only about how she developed, then wrote and re-wrote,
her musical play The Catch Colt, but how much work some of the process was. Since she was composing the music and writing the
book, she had quite a load on her shoulders, but I never realized how laborious the orchestrations were! Fully half the book is about how she had to
work and work on these orchestrations, and then she had to finally sell
the play. I've seen behind-the-scenes of play production, but not ones
that include the writing and the music. Pretty much just for O'Hara or
play fans, though.
Anything from Nothing, edited by Mercedes LackeyThe 2023 collection of Valdemar short stories. Much better than Shenanigans, which I really didn't like at all. The quality in this volume is pretty solid, from the opening story about a blacksmith's son who feels stifled in his small town and requests that a Herald take him away to Lackey's own tale of a small town under siege. Several of the stories are serial in nature, so we continue the stories of Healer Erenal and Nwah the kyree being held captive. One of my favorites was the story of a traveling carnival, "What a Chosen Family Chooses," and how they help a captive in a stifling village. "Needs Must When Evil Bides" is another good one, about a herbalist who helps a servant rescue a wealthy family taken hostage by bandits.
All the stories are worth reading.
