Mini Reviews, Life Stories Real and Imagined

I read that A Whole Life was an international bestseller similar to John William's Stoner and Marilynne Robinson's Lila. And since I was very impressed with Stoner and have read Robinson's Gilead THREE times I put in my request at NetGalley.

I woke one night and couldn't get back to sleep so I got up and read this short novel in one sitting. It is the story of Andreas Egger, a woe-begotten man for whom life was one disappointment after another. Orphaned, beaten, suffered WWI in battle and in a Russian prison camp, tragically widowed, and then he dies. What he does have is a love for the landscape of his isolated village.

"Scars are like years", he said,"one follows another and it's all of them together that make a person who they are."

Andreas survived "his childhood, a war and an avalanche." He lead a clean life, turning from worldly temptations. And he had loved. He had no regrets. Andreas learned that "Every one of us limps alone."

This novel is far darker than Stoner. I felt more pity and felt a lack of affirmation. But thousands across the world have catapulted the book into an international best seller.

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

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins
Picador
$23 hard cover
ISBN: 9780374289867

I bought John Muir and the Ice that Started a Fire on Kindle after watching Ken Burns' National Parks on PBS. I wanted to know more about Muir.

Although I read this ebook over many months, mostly in waiting rooms, I enjoyed it and found it informative, moving, and inspirational. Heacox offers a wonderful biography of a man who could have had a lucrative career but gave it up for his love of nature and the wild. Muir dared to stand against a country worshiping wealth, a nation that had lost it's vision of the sublimity of America's unique landscapes.

Dedicating himself to research, educating and writing and pushing for polity to protect his beloved lands, Muir had a mystical belief in the healing property of the environment which today is becoming recognized as truth.

The book's particular focus is on Muir's enraptured love of Alaska's glaciers. I appreciated that the book does not end with Muir's death, but continues to the present day, addressing how climate change is affecting the glaciers (which were already diminishing during Muir's lifetime.)

John Muir and the Ice that Started a Fire: How A Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America
Kim Heacox
Lyons Press
Published 2014

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates won the National Book Award. I borrowed it from my public library. Written as a letter to his teenage son Coates offers an unvarnished and appalling condemnation of race in America and what it means to be born 'black' in a 'white' dominated culture. I have thought about this book for several weeks. I don't feel qualified to make a statement. Just read it.  Read the Atlantic Magazine article written by Coates here.

Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Spiegel & Grau

Another book I borrowed through Overdrive was Mary Gaitskill's novel The Mare. The characterization and story is captivating and I read it in two days.

A woman with a troubled past and unable to ground herself hosts an inner city girl through the Fresh Air Fund, changing their lives and the lives of their families in complicated and unexpected ways. The girl Velvet connects with an abused mare; together they cobble together their redemption.

I loved the juxtaposition of the two worlds, the inner city and the suburbs, peeling back the pressures and stresses of each. My favorite ah-ha moment is when Velvet's host mom recognizes her own latent racism, the sad and horrible tragedy of American society that affects us all.

The Mare
Mary Gaitskill
Pantheon

Works in Process--Books to Come

I have the corner appliqué to finish on these new 1857 Album blocks from Sentimental Stitches. I will do the embroidery on all of the blocks when the blocks are all finished. I am so enjoying these blocks.

Since making my William Shakespeare portrait I want to make more poet portrait quilts. Next up is Edgar Allan Poe. He was quite a craftsman as a writer. You can read how he wrote The Raven in his Philosophy of Composition here.

I want to drape a 'purple curtain' over the quilt because of the beautiful lines in the Raven: "And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain/Thrilled me-- filled me, with fantastic terror never felt before."

Little Hazel by Esther Alui is sadly being neglected. I failed at machine piecing this block and started hand sewing it. I dislike hand sewing (although I like hand appliqué--go figure) and this is as far as I have gotten...a quarter of a block.

I finally started hand quilting my Austen Family Album by Barbara Brackman, finished a year ago. I expect it will take me a year of quilting to finish!

Quilt Books news:

I will be reviewing Suzie Parron's Following the Barn Quilt Trail from Ohio U Press! They are sending me the book. Perfect timing since last month Suzi was at my quilt guild and I took her workshop.

I have Bill Volckening's new book Modern Roots--Today's Quilts from Yesterday's Inspiration from C&T Publications to review. Bill has an amazing quilt collection. You can see his quilts shared on his blog Wonkyworld.

And the Schiffer Publication's books Inspired By The National Parks and Hmong Story Cloths are on my NetGally shelf.

Also, my review of Thomas Knauer's The Quilt Design Coloring Book will come out in August.

Fiction & Nonfiction

I was happy when St. Martin's Press reached out to offer me Lisa Scottoline's new book Damaged. Apparently they liked my review of Corrupted shared on Amazon. Having lived in Philly for 15 years my hubby and I appreciate Scottoline's books for the setting and enjoy her characters and stories.

I am currently reading Mad Enchantment about Monet and his water lily series and the novel Lucky Boy through NetGalley, and from Blogging for Books The Apache War.

Scheduled reviews to come include the Antarctic love story My Last Continent by Midge Raymond; David Abram's Iraqi war novel Fobbit; the Taming of the Shrew re-imagined in the Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler; Larry Tye's new biography of Bobby Kennedy; an exploration of race in Absalom's Daughters by Suzanne Feldman;  Angels of Detroit by Christopher Hebert; Rae Meadow's Dust Bowl novel I Will Send Rain; the time spanning Mr. Eternity by Aaron Thier; first published in 1864 The Female Detective; The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore (soon to be a movie); The Illustrated Book of Sayings from around the world; and Tara Clancy's memoir The Clancys of Queens.

My NetGalley shelf also holds Victoria:The Queen by Julia Baird; Candace Millard's Hero of the Empire about Churchill during the Boer War; Alice Hoffman's Faithful; The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City by Margaret Creighton about Buffalo, NY during the 1901 Pan American Exhibition; and The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinbourough called "A beautiful book, honestly told" by Neil Gaiman.

Whew!