Sunday, August 30, 2020

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

The day of John Lewis' death I began reading the egalley for His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and The Power of Hope by Jon Meacham.

It was a hard book to read, and heartbreaking, for Lewis was willing to lay down his life to achieve a just society, and he faced the most vicious violence. 

Lewis has left behind a country still divided and angry, the dream of a Beloved Community unfulfilled. The struggle for the promise of America continues.

Meacham writes, "John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term," a man who answered the call to do the Lord's work in the world. A man who faced tribulation and persecution for seeking the justice we are called to enact as our faith responsibility. A man who sought redemption for his country. A man whose faith never flagged, not in the face of hate and blows, not when the movement shifted away from non-violence. He was faithful to his Gospel call of peace and the establishment of The Beloved Community.

"The tragedy of man," the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, "is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it," Meacham quotes, adding, "And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it."

I was only twenty when I married a seminary student. Professors and the school Dean had worked to integrate churches in the South. (see NYT article here.) I audited classes taught by these men. One wrote a seminal work on White Privilege, Segregation and the Bible. Another taught Niebuhr Moral Man in Immoral Society. It was an atmosphere that believed in faith in action, changing society to bring the Gospel to fulfillment.

The world has changed, including the church. Personal salvation and sanctity replaced social justice. Church as entertainment and community evolved. Separation from general society was the norm, with Christian music and businesses arising. We hardly recognize contemporary Christianity, especially it's alignment with Trump's divisive and racist actions.

We are at a decisive moment in history. What future will American choose?

Meacham is an inspirational and eloquent writer. His portrait of Lewis begins in his childhood through the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights act, ending with the rise of  Black Power.

Meacham calls for us to be inspired by the life of John Lewis as we decide on our future in America. Will we remain divided and filled with hate? Or will we embrace love and faith in the value of every being? "God's truth is marching on," he reminds us, "We can do it...I believe we can do it."

Meacham ends his book with hope that America will yet achieve a just society.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by Jon Meacham
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781984855022
hard cover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher
An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America 
 John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” 
From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. 
Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Lila by Marilynne Robinson


I have been listening to audiobooks to cram in more 'reading', using them when I am working on quilts.

After reading the galley of Marilynne Robinson's new book Jack, I borrowed Lila from Overdrive.

Robinson's Gilead novels began with Gilead, an extended letter by an aging and ailing John Ames to his young son. Home, Lila, and Jack continued the stories from the viewpoints of other characters in Gilead.

It is a beautifully presented audiobook, the text flowing and the narrator Maggie Hoffman giving the characters individual voices.

The story of Lila is heartbreaking. She was a neglected child stolen from her family by a woman who shows her the only love and care she experiences before meeting John Ames, the narrator of Robinson's novel Gilead. Lila grew up a migrant, outside of society and untutored in religion. But her native intelligence brings her to struggle with the Big Questions of life.

Lila is a survivor who relies only on herself after losing her surrogate mother, Doll. On her own, she works in a St. Louis brothel, becoming the maid when the men don't want her.

She goes on the road again, stopping in Gilead, a town she despises. She wanders into church one day to escape the rain. The minister notes her and pursues her, showing her consideration and Christian love, with patience and acceptance she has never experienced before.

The 'beautiful old man,' the Rev. John Ames, wants to help her. She asks Ames to marry her.

Ames had lost his wife and child as a young man, and assumed his golden years would be as lonely and cold as they had been ever since. He loves Lila, but understands she may flit away back into her accustomed life on the road where she does not have to rely on anyone else. She struggles to trust even Ames.

Lila's struggle to understand baptism, the Bible and the mystery of life, takes up a great deal of the book.

Lila's life as a migrant worker, the utter poverty, was relieved by a spunky friend and Doll's love. Lila worries about what happened to them, and puzzles over the fate of their unbaptized souls.

When Lila becomes pregnant, Ames feels blessed at this second chance. Even in the womb, Lila talks to her child, vowing to protect it and care for it. She thinks about stealing off with her baby, still uncertain about human love's immutability.

This is a novel that offers a great deal to contemplate. I do not feel adequate to delve into its deeper meanings after only one reading.

I prefer reading books to listening, but have found audiobooks useful for getting in more reading. I am a quick reader, so spending eight hours listening to a book I could read in four means the story felt dragged out, the introspection endless. Also, I can't note places I want to return to or quote!

I was surprised to hear John Ames voice as quivering. It was not how I have heard it in my head over my three readings of Gilead.

This may not have been the best book for me to listen to. But I am glad to have finally encountered Lila.

Read a fantastic review in the New Yorker Magazine here.

Last to read, I have Home on by TBR shelf.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Exploring Art Quilts

The Studio Art Quilt Associates new book Exploring Art Quilts, Volume 1: New Directions showcases sixteen contemporary quilt artists and offers themed galleries that illustrate how contemporary fiber art is breaking new boundaries.
The Introduction asks, "What is an Art Quilt?" In the next section Art quilts from France, Japan, and the United Kingdom are showcased. The judied galleries are based on themes from portraits to surface design to text messages.

The artists interviews are fascinating, offering insights into their development and techniques.

Many of the artists I am familiar with; I have seen their quilts or heard them speak or have their books or follow them on social media such as Julia Graber whose quilt is shown below.


But I have also discovered a multitude of new artists! I love that their websites are included with the quilt information and I intend to visit them.

With 350 illustrations on extra large pages, this volume will offer hours of study. It is quite overwhelming!


I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher
This high-powered mix for all who make and appreciate contemporary art quilting begins the creativity-inspiring series Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA. Its book-and-journal-blend format with 350 photos reveals today’s latest work and designs and also serves as a long-term creative reference. Be inspired by interviews, gorgeous art quilt photos, and current creations by members of Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA), the renowned international organization dedicated to promoting the art quilt. Meet 16 artists living around the world, including stories on their beginnings as art quilters. Peer at every detail in photos from four of SAQA’s recent exhibitions, showing the range of content being produced today. A series of articles examine art being made in various locales; France, Japan, and the United Kingdom are included in this volume. Finally, learn from the work of SAQA’s Juried Artist members in 10 themed image galleries highlighting the range and complexity of their art.
New Directions: Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.)
Schiffer Publishing
$22 soft cover
ISBN 13: 9780764359989

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It by Erin Brockovich


Erin Brockovich warns us that we the people are the only ones who can save us. Grass roots efforts by moms have stood up to power to save their children. Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom, and Leeann Walters of Flint, Michigan are two of the most recognized citizens who have stood up to power in defence of families. For change to happen, more ordinary people need to become involved.

Superman's Not Coming describes the problem of providing clean water under a dysfunctional EPA and climate change. Brockovich offers resources to empower Water Warrior wannabes.

I have spent a good deal of my life a few hours drive (or less) from one of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater source in the world. I grew up boating on the Niagara River, and later vacationed at Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron.

I also remember in the 1970s seeing yellow foam at the base of Niagara Falls. I remember algae blooms poisoning Toledo's water, Love Canal, and the Flint Water Crisis. I have lived near lakes made toxic by industrial waste. My state is dealing with PFAS contamination.

Across the country, Americans--today--discover their water isn't safe to drink. And they endure limits on water use because it is in short supply.

It's only going to get worse as temperatures rise.

Brockovich presents her information and argument with passion. The book is upsetting but it is also empowering. If we have the will, we can create change. It starts with people like us.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher
From environmental activist, consumer advocate, renowned crusader, champion fighter-maverick, whose courageous case against Pacific Gas and Electric was dramatized in the Oscar-winning film--a book to inspire change that looks at our present situation with water and reveals the imminent threats to our most precious, essential element, and shows us how we can each take action to make changes in our cities, our towns, our villages, before it is too late.
In Erin Brockovich's long-awaited book--her first to reckon with conditions on our planet--she makes clear why we are in the trouble we're in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change.
She shows us what's at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, along with cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact. She writes of the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who responded to his customers' concerns and changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; of the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; and about how we can protect our right to clean water by fighting for better enforcement of the laws, new legislation, and better regulations. She cannot fight all battles for all people and gives us the tools to take actions ourselves, have our voices be heard, and know that steps are being taken to make sure our water is safe to drink and use.
Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It
by Erin Brockovich
Pantheon/Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date: August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781524746964
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England by Meg Muckenhoupt



The history of food has interested me for a long time. I wrote a paper at Temple University on the roots of American cooking, how the first Europeans adapted their traditions to the foods available in the New World.

Meg Muckenhoupt's The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England caught my eye a looked like a fun read. I expected it to cover regional and social history and regional foods and cooking.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the author goes further--considering the wide variety of immigrants whose contributions to American cooking have been overlooked and eclipsed.

The first European settlers did not have sweeteners available. They imported honey bees! Later, maple syrup and molasses were added to the kitchen basics, and plain recipes using cornmeal and baked beans became sweetened--and sweetened!

Corn, squash, and beans are considered essential New England foods...and they all came from Central America.

Mythic idealizations of historical New England cooking arose during the Centennial and 'scientific' movements promoted non-ethnic foods in favor of white, bland foods.

Readers learn of the real first Thanksgiving foods and how the traditional eating holiday developed over time. And, finally, settled the question of what are 'real' New England foods; would you believe it includes Marshmallow Fluff and Whoopie Pies?

The book includes recipes for those mentioned in the book, including historic, updated, regional favorites, and restaurant favorites.

I found the book to be as enjoyable to read as I had hoped.

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History
by Meg Muckenhoupt
NYU Press
Pub Date August 25, 2020 
ISBN: 9781479882762
hardcover $29.95 (USD)
Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods. 
New England foods were selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution—while pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders, especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry and taking over farms around the region.
The Truth about Baked Beans explores New England’s culinary myths and reality through some of the region’s most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. 
From 1870 to 1920, the idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. 
This toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these foods, and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant New England—the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England food. 
Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth about Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine, explaining why and how “New England food” actually came to be.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Book Club Reads: Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg and The Bear by Andrew Krivak

The local library book clubs are meeting using Zoom during the pandemic. Turnout is greatly reduced, from 12-14 members to five.

Our August read with the Clawson library book club was Elizabeth Berg's Dream When You're Feeling Blue, historical fiction about the home front during WWII.

My husband said it reminded him of Little Women, Louise May Alcott's novel about the March sisters during the Civil War.

Three sisters from a large Catholic Irish Boston family are at the heart of the story. The men they love go to war.

Berg embellishes the novel with details of the girl's lives, bringing alive the deprivations and challenges of the home front. One sister takes work at a factory to earn more money where the women are subjected to harassment. Their patriotic duty extends to writing letters to a dozen or more soldiers and attending dances so the soldiers have happy memories before they are shipped abroad. Tough work, dancing the night away. But it is, since these girls spent all day on their feet working!

Berg's story includes a 'dear John' letter and losing a fiance, an underage boy trying to enlist, and a child who makes a bargain with God to protect the boys.

The readers found this to be a light, quick, enjoyable read. All were confused by the added final section set in near the end of the character's lives.

from Berg's website
What's it About?The time is 1943; the place is Chicago, Illinois. Three Irish-Catholic sisters, the Heaney girls, spend part of every evening sitting at the kitchen table in their pincurls, writing to their boyfriends and to other men fighting in World War 2. Observing the daily life of these girls as well as their parents and three brothers, we get a glimpse of what life was like on the homefront; in the letters the women receive from the men, we get an idea of it was like "over there." This novel is an evocation of a time gone by, a purposefully nostalgic and sentimental — and fun!-- look at the forties: the clothes, the music, the language, the meals, the sentiments. It is a dramatic example of how a certain period in time can shape a person. Most of all, it demonstrates how much we are willing to give in the name of love.
What was the inspiration?There are a lot of books written about World War 2, but not so many about the home front. I'm always interested in the details of ordinary life, and particularly the lives of women leading those ordinary lives. I wanted to write about the women who did so much to support the soldiers. I wanted to write about rationing and USO dances and drawing seams on the back of your legs with eyebrow pencil because silk stockings were no longer available. A bigger reason for writing this book, though, was to pay tribute to a generation of people who are slowly leaving us. There is so much to learn from and admire about them. On a more personal note, this is one I wanted to "give" to my Dad. You can see a photo of him and my Mom in the front of the book. My Dad's wearing his Army uniform; my Mom’s wearing the yellow dress she was married in.

When I heard that another local library book club was reading The Bear by Andrew Krivak, which I reviewed earlier this year, I signed up to be included.

Two of my Clawson book clubbers are also members of the Royal Oak Library book club. While they were tepid about Berg's novel, everyone raved about The Bear. They found it moving, profound, and deep.

 One reader said she read it in one sitting. Beautiful nature writing was a plus. We discussed the magical realism in the second half when the bear helps the girl survive after her father's death. Although it ends with the death of the last human, it was not found to be a sad book.

from the publisher
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.
What was the inspiration for The Bear
What if, in the twilight of human experience, one were to see that what we lay claim to and cling to as quintessentially human is actually quite limited compared to a wider, more transcendental experience of Nature itself? What if, in fact, an entire world of activity — an entire story, if you will — has always been present in Nature, but we (most of us, at least) have not been attuned to it? What if human consciousness has crowded out the understanding of an entire natural consciousness waiting, in all of its ancientness, to return not to a past but to a present wherein it lives out its own struggle of beginning, middle, and end? And if so, would the last human actors, by virtue of their aloneness, be initiated into this mystery, not a loss to be mourned but a passing to be revered? What would that story be like, and who or what would tell it? I pulled in my line, rowed to shore, and went up to the house where I sat down and wrote the first line of the novel that would become The Bear: “The last two were a girl and her father who lived along the old eastern range on the side of a mountain they called the mountain that stands alone.” 
read more at https://www.powells.com/post/original-essays/if-nature-told-the-story-andrew-krivak-on-writing-the-bear
It was decided that even during a pandemic and contentious election, we did not want escapism, but books that made us think.

What are other book clubs doing during Covid-19? Are you looking for books with depth, or summer beach reads? Books that affirm, escapism, thrillers, romance, or literary fiction that offers something to 'sink your teeth into'?

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Covid-19 Life: Quilts, Reading, and News

It has been dry in Michigan. We get a good rain then weeks of sunshine and dry weather. So watering the garden becomes a daily task. The bees are all over the flowers, and butterfly and Goldfinch come to the Zinnia.

I have the center of the Waterlily quilt hand appliqued and sewn together! I had to switch the background fabric for the blocks as my first choice did not provide enough contrast.


Somehow I have been busy and not getting in my reading! I have only a few reviews scheduled for the rest of August, but several books I should have read and reviewed.

And the galleys are still coming in...my own fault, of course.
New to my reading list:


  • Day of Days by John Smolens is another on the 1927 school shooting in Bath, Michigan 
  • Brood by Jackie Polzin, compared to Elizabeth Strout in the promo
  • The Invisible Women by Erika Robuck, WWII historical fiction
  • Nora by Nuala O'Connor, fiction about James Joyce's wife

And from Goodreads, a win

  • The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves

I am writing a review for Marilynne Robinson's upcoming Gilead novel, Jack, and listening to an audiobook of her novel Lila. And reading Dr. Paula Byrnes The Real Jane Austen: a Life in Small Things.

A friend called me to help her identify a pile of vintage quilts. I donned my mask and went over.

Many were not in very good shape, like this turkey red single Irish Chain.

 Others were very appealing, like this Log Cabin.

 Then there was this stunner, another Log Cabin variation. The fabrics include wool, velvet, cotton, and rayons.
 The chintz backing was this wonderful paisley.


There were a number of scrap quilts, too. I love to look at the vintage fabrics.

How about that sashing fabric!

 Several were tied.


I bought a cement Shiba Inu statue. We are going to finally bury the ashes of our four Shibas, Kili, Kara, Suki, and Kamikaze. 
Sunny and Hazel had a quiet moment on the guest room bed where our son's partner's home office is situated. Hazel likes the Baby Cactus quilt I made!
Ellie had a broken tooth removed, poor girl! She is recovering nicely.
We had a beautiful cool day and invited our son and his girl and the grandpuppies over. They all had a grand time. We visited outdoors, wore masks except to eat. It was a risky thing to do, I know. But I can't go six months without seeing my family.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Moss by Klaus Modick



Order, control, separation from nature. That is what his father had taught. Upon arriving at their woodland cabin, as a child his duty had been to scrub the moss from the stone pathway. The child objected, "But the moss is so lovely."

Now, he is old and endeavoring to form a lifetime of insight into his final paper critiquing nomenclature. He questions his father's teaching and the science of his academic career as a biologist. 

Why do we divide ourselves from nature? What can we learn from moss? Shouldn't our goal be wonder and joy of beauty, not arcane facts and artificial categories?

Returning to that family cabin, surrounded by the forest, he embraces death as part of life, the natural cycle.


Science gives way to connection.

When his manuscript is found after his death, it was not what people expected. He renamed it "Moss."

Oh, I thought, another novel about age and death! I am already too aware of the passing years, how I have outlived so many family members! And with a pandemic, every one of us is faced with our mortality and aware of the uncertainty of life.

I feel the depth of this story eludes me, calling me to reread and grapple with all that lies beneath it's misleading simplicity and the beauty of its poetry. 

I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

by Klaus Modick
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication Date August 25, 2020
Trade Paper US $16.99
ISBN: 9781942658726
Ebook ISBN: 9781942658733

An aging botanist withdraws to the seclusion of his family’s vacation home in the German countryside. In his final days, he realizes that his life’s work of scientific classification has led him astray from the hidden secrets of the natural world. As his body slows and his mind expands, he recalls his family’s escape from budding fascism in Germany, his father’s need to prune and control, and his tender moments with first loves. But as his disintegration into moss begins, his fascination with botany culminates in a profound understanding of life’s meaning and his own mortality.

Visionary and poetic, Moss explores our fundamental human desires for both transcendence and connection and serves as a testament to our tenuous and intimate relationship with nature.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald


I heard so much about Helen Macdonald's book H is for Hawk that I picked it up but had not had time to read it because of all my egalley reviewing. When I saw her book Vesper Flights  I requested it--I would finally have to read Macdonald!

The essays in Vesper Flights include a broad range of subjects including climate change, species extinction, migraine headaches, bird migration, and solar eclipses. The wonder of the natural world is beautifully experienced through Macdonald's words.

When Macdonald talks about viewing the migration of birds from the top of the Empire State Building, I remembered one of the most extraordinary sights of my life. My husband and I were at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania when we saw the sky darkened with migrating birds, an endless stream that filled the sky! To this day, forty years later, I remember the dark silhouettes winging against a sky filled with streaks of dark clouds backlit by an autumn sun.

A chapter that caught my attention describes her trek with Nathalie Cabrol, an explorer, astrobiologist and planetary geologist specializing in Mars. They went to the high altitudes of Antofagasta, Chile, to an environment that may be like that of Mars. "They higher we climbed, the further we'd go back in time--not on Earth, but on Mars," Macdonald writes.

I love armchair travel that takes me to such extraordinary places. Cabrol takes the author to the desert salt flats and gypsum sands, a brutal environment with its dangerously high UV radiation, thin atmosphere, and volcanic activity.

"Above me, the Southern Hemisphere stars are all dust and terror and distance and slow fire in the night, and I stare up, frozen, and frozen in wonderment," MacDonald recalls.

Cabrol says the Earth will survive us after we have destroyed what has made our existence possible. It offers little comfort to humans. But we ourselves have created this legacy.

I have savored the book a little at a time, delving in when I need a break from the sad news of the world. 

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Vesper Flights
by Helen Macdonald
Grove Atlantic
Pub Date August 15,  2020
ISBN: 9780802128812
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher
Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.
Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.
By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa


Why do I keep choosing to read such hard books, books that wring my heart, cause my eyes to burn, and challenge my comfort with things I wish I did not know?

In this case, my husband heard of the book on the radio and recommended I look into it. It was publication day, but I was granted my request for the galley.

I really had little idea of the Japanese people's WWII experiences other than America's internment camps and the effect of the Atom bomb. The war divided families, soldiers endured horrors and then were pariahs, women sold their bodies to put food on the table, doctors were forced to perform horrible experiments for the war effort. 

Extraordinary and profound, Inheritors encapsulates a family's history over generations. You won't be the same after reading it.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Inheritors
by Asako Serizawa
Doubleday Books
Pub Date  July 14, 2020  
ISBN: 9780385545372
hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher
Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, Inheritors paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of its characters as they grapple with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war.
Written from myriad perspectives and in a wide range of styles, each of these interconnected stories is designed to speak to the others, contesting assumptions and illuminating the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories. A retired doctor, for example, is forced to confront the horrific moral consequences of his wartime actions. An elderly woman subjects herself to an interview, gradually revealing a fifty-year old murder and its shattering aftermath. And in the last days of a doomed war, a prodigal son who enlisted against his parents' wishes survives the American invasion of his island outpost, only to be asked for a sacrifice more daunting than any he imagined.
Serizawa's characters walk the line between the devastating realities of war and the banal needs of everyday life as they struggle to reconcile their experiences with the changing world. A breathtaking meditation on suppressed histories and the relationship between history, memory, and storytelling, Inheritors stands in the company of Lisa Ko, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Min Jin Lee.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

COVID-19 Life: TBR, WIP, And Sunny, Too

Our little 2-Mile town has seen rising cases of Covid-19, 22 in the last month. Much of the county is seeing rising cases again. I worry about the vibrant downtown surviving. DPTV, Detroit Public Television, aired a story about our city, found here. 

On my walks around town, I have seen parties and even tents and tables set up for bigger events. The school sports teams have been practising in the stadium. 

We continue to have our groceries delivered from Imperfect Produce and have been going to a local grocery chain that for $4.95 shops for you and brings it to the trunk of your car for pick up. We get a delivered restaurant meal every week. This week I will fill the gas tank for only the third time since February. 

The Clawson Quilting Sisters meet in the pack, socially distanced 6" apart, for show and tell and lunch every week. 
Show and Tell in the Park
The Great Gatsby Quilt

And the library book club is Zooming next week to discuss Elizabeth Berg's WWII homefront novel Dream When You're Feeling Blue. Sadly, the library had to close for a deep cleaning and testing of staff after someone was exposed or tested positive to Covid.

Apart from a walk and gardening (mostly watering!), life is centered around reading, writing book reviews, and working on quilts.
This week I machine quilted a top made of Row By Row patterns from years ago.
I am working with the Hazel quilt center block (from Esther Alui). I had trouble with Esther's patterns so I am make up my own design I finished hand appliqueing four of the center blocks of the Water Lily quilt.

New books on my NetGalley shelf include:
  • Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall, recalling Detroit's vibrant African American neighborhood
  • My Bed by Rebecca Bond and Sally Mavor, a children's book about how children around the world sleep. The art is amazing!
  • Rita Blitt: Around and Around, the artist's work donated to the Mulvane Art Museum's collection


I have read 104 books this year!

Our grandpuppy goes to doggy day care three times a week. Her people both work from home and Sunny has to burn off all that energy! This week she was Dog of the Week! Her fur sister Ellie enjoys being the only dog for those hours.
Sunny
When I don't feel like working on the applique, I color in the birthday Jane Austen quotation coloring books.

My brother and his girlfriend are still uploading photographs from their trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula. I loved Martha's photo of an old wagon wheel.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions


Hooray for Annik LaFarge for giving us Chasing Chopin! I was transported into another time and place, immersed in gorgeous piano music, and enthralled by the unlikely romance story.

LaFarge uses Frédéric Chopin's music to reveal the history of his beloved home country of Poland, a country only in spirit during his lifetime.

Plagued by tuberculosis, Chopin preferred to play in small venues and publish his music. At a time when Berlioz's bellicose works for large orchestras and opera were esteemed as the highest musical art forms, Chopin remained true to writing for the piano, an instrument still in development.

On first sight, Chopin thought George Sand unattractive. Their next meeting they fell in love. Their relationship traversed from lovers to estrangement.

Chopin par Calamatta 1838
Frédéric Chopin par Luigi Calamatta 1838, collection particulière.

After every chapter I turned to the companion site WhyChopin  where I listened to the music discussed in that chapter. LaFarge offers a variety of artists on instruments contemporary and from Chopin's time. I personally loved hearing the music on Chopin's preferred  Pleyel pianos.

I loved this book for so many reasons: because I love piano music; for learning more about author George Sand; for the insight into the history of Poland; and the portrait of the Romantic Era.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions
by Annik LaFarge
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: August 11,  2020 
ISBN: 9781501188718
hard cover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher
The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile.
In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837–1840, when he composed his iconic “Funeral March”—dum dum da dum—using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads—musical, political, social, personal—is woven through the “Funeral March” in Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it’s known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know.
As part of her research into Chopin’s world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists.
The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways.
A companion website, WhyChopin, presents links to each piece of music mentioned in the book, organized by chapter in the order in which it appears, along with photos, resources, videos, and more.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin



The Bronte family history is filled with so much drama it would make a bingeable television mini-series. Charlotte, Emily and Anne are well known. Their only brother Branwell is not.

Branwell felt the loss of his mother and two older sisters keenly.  Branwell and his younger sisters created an alternate reality, detailed in books and drawings. His father homeschooled him with a Classical education while his sisters went away to school.

Branwell was a product of the Romantic Era, and inspired by poets and painters, he hoped to make his mark as a poet or artist. 

As too often happens to precocious geniuses, Branwell never  achieved his best at anything. In fact, he failed in everything. His last years were spent in ill health, alcohol and drug addiction complicating his tuberculosis, despairing over unrequited love while his sisters cared for him. Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter, 'the faculty of self-government is, I fear almost destroyed in him.'

Famously, Branwell painted a group portrait of his sisters and himself, then later painted out his image. That portrait inspired my Bronte Sisters quilt.


Branwell's last position was as a tutor for the family where his sister Anne was governess. Over those 30 months, Branwell and his charge's mother, Lydia Robinson, had a love affair. Her husband was sickly and she was a charming woman of 43. Branwell, like his famous sisters, was small, fair with red hair, a prominent nose on which sat spectacles--nothing like the typical romantic hero. 

In her biography of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskill paints Mrs. Robinson as a wicked women. After her husband's death, she did not run to Branwell's arms. She married a wealthy man of 75. Whatever she may have felt for Branwell, money and a safe social status was more important. Branwell died heartbroken.

In Bronte's Mistress , Finola Austin imagines Mrs. Robinson telling the story of her love affair with Branwell.

In the novel, Lydia Robinson sought the attention and affection of the man she married and gloried in their early passionate affection. Throughout the novel, she still seeks his attention. Lydia struggles with aging, and worried about the loss of her beauty, she craves affirmation of her continued attractiveness.

To complicate her life, Lydia has contentious relationships with her teenage daughters and her overbearing mother-in-law.

Lydia can be cold and imperious toward her daughters. She married for love but does not countenance her daughters doing the same; she knows how unreliable love is, while money lasts.

Mr. Robinson treats governess Anne Bronte with dignity, but Lydia does not care for her. The feeling is mutual. Anne thinks her mistress is vain and shallow and ill-tempered.

When Mr. Robinson hires Anne's brother Branwell to tutor their son, Lydia notes his spirit, his intelligence, and his good looks. Attraction grows between them, and Branwell being a true Romantic, throws himself into the fire of love. Lydia revels in the attention, teaching her young lover how to please her.

Austin's portrait of Lydia Robinson is interesting and complex. Austin uses the character of Lydia Robinson to explore the constraints the Victorian Age placed on women, particularly their sexuality. In seeking their own destiny, the daughters show they share their mother's spirit if not her values.

Austin's portrayal of Branwell portrays his charms and his demons, and his inexperienced naivety. She incorporates his poetry into the novel. Lydia comes to realize that Branwell is weak, unreliable, and not as great a talent as he made out.

I wish that Mr. Robinson's motives were clarified. Why has he rejected Lydia's advances? Was it the death of their youngest child? Did he want to avoid another pregnancy, knowing he was ill? Did his illness affect his ability to fulfill his wife's needs? Clarification would turn him from cold villain to frail human.

Austin shows Anne incorporating her experiences into her novels, and imagines Lydia Robinson's second marriage as inspiration for Charlotte Bronte.

Austin's deeply flawed characters are desperate for love. In his time, Branwell's addictions would have been considered character flaws, weakness. And Lydia's sexual desire an aberration.

As someone who loves 19th c fiction and the Bronte's novels, I enjoyed Bronte's Mistress. I look forward to reading more by the author.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher
Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson—mistress of Thorp Green Hall—has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more.
All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Branwell has his own demons to contend with—including living up to the ideals of his intelligent family—but his presence is a breath of fresh air for Lydia. Handsome, passionate, and uninhibited by social conventions, he’s also twenty-five to her forty-three. A love of poetry, music, and theatre bring mistress and tutor together, and Branwell’s colorful tales of his sisters’ elaborate play-acting and made-up worlds form the backdrop for seduction.
But Lydia’s new taste of passion comes with consequences. As Branwell’s inner turmoil rises to the surface, his behavior grows erratic and dangerous, and whispers of their passionate relationship spout from her servants’ lips, reaching all three protective Brontë sisters. Soon, it falls on Lydia to save not just her reputation, but her way of life, before those clever girls reveal all her secrets in their novels. Unfortunately, she might be too late.
Meticulously researched and deliciously told, Brontë’s Mistress is a captivating reimagining of the scandalous affair that has divided Brontë enthusiasts for generations and an illuminating portrait of a courageous, sharp-witted woman who fights to emerge with her dignity intact.
Bronte's Mistress
by Finola Austin
Atria Books
Pub Date September 2, 2020 
ISBN: 9781982137236
hardcover  $27 US, $12.99 ebook