Books I Have Read But Missed Reviewing

When I got my first Kindle I bought up bargain books, many of which were wonderful discoveries. I did not review them at that time.  I thought it's time to share books that have stuck with me.

I was looking around Netflix and happened upon the film Harry and Snowman. It rang a bell. It only took a minute before I realized I knew Snowman from The Eighty-Dollar Champion, which I had read quite a few years ago.

This book by Elizabeth Letts is one that has stayed with me. The story of an immigrant who buys a horse on its way to become dog food and how the horse becomes a champion is an inspirational story.

"Harry knew what it felt like to be powerless. Beat up or not, this horse seemed brave." from The Eighty-Dollar Champion

Harry de Leyer grew up on a farm in Holland during WWII, hiding Jews and working in the resistance. He helped to save horses abandoned by the retreating Nazis. After the war he was sponsored to come to America to work on a tobacco farm. Harry was 22 years old. But his passion for training horses was noted. He worked his way up to teaching riding at an elite girl's school.

Harry needed an easy riding horse. He was late to the auction and the only horses left were on the trailer going to the slaughter horse to become dog food. He noted a horse who seemed to have something special. The horse looked him in the eye and nuzzled his hand. He bought the horse for $80. When he got home it was snowing and one of Harry's children thought it made the horse look like a snow man. And he got his name.

Harry ended up selling Snowman but the horse kept jumping fences and returning to Harry. So Harry bought him back and began to work with Snowman. The horse had a love of jumping.

"There was more to horses than columns of numbers, the profits and losses in his farm ledger. There is one thing no horseman can ever put a price on, and that is heart."from The Eighty-Dollar Champion

Snowman was not pretty. He did not have a pedigree. Harry was not a college-educated, East Coast elite like the competition. What Harry and Snowman had was chemistry, heart, and the desire to be winners.

Their achievements brought international fame.

Who can resist a tale of the underdog stealing the win?

I can't. And that is why I remember this story and this book.

In 2014 I read An Unfinished Season by Ward Just. I enjoyed it immensely and later read The Eastern Shore and liked it even more. I have his novel American Romantic on my TBR shelf. An Unfinished Season is the story of a young many who falls for a girl from the upper crust. The young man discovers that all that glitters is not gold. Through the story of one young man, Just considers the American psyche and the choices we make.

I bought the book for 50 cents at Big Lots. It sat on my shelf for at least a year. I picked it up and fell in love. I did not want to read it too fast, yet did not want to put it down. In his blurb, Pat Conroy confesses, "I love this book." Well, Pat, I do too.

Corey, the son of a blue-collar, working-class man, shares his father's high standards of careful workmanship. While helping his father replace a drain, and saving the roots of an aged oak tree, he is noticed by Liam Metery, who has inherited the wealth accumulated by his Gilded Age grandfather. Corey is asked to help around the Metarey estate, and as Liam Metary and his family come to respect Corey, he is invited into their lives. Liam himself is a man who loves workmanship, and the simple pleasure of hands-on industry. He is also a progressive liberal who decides to back the great Liberal senator from New York State, Henry Bonwiller, in his run for the presidency in 1972.

As Corey becomes involved with the behind-the-scenes machinations of politics, his world widens. Corey is especially taken by a journalist, who becomes his role model, leading him to his life's work in journalism. Corey is also affected by Liam's dreams of a better country, the end of the war in Viet Nam, and a government that aligns itself with the common man's good. Liam recognizes the boy's potential and assists him with a scholarship to a private school, and later leaves him money for a Harvard education.

The fairy tale unravels, dragging Liam and Corey into the ambiguous black hole created by Bonwiller, and their loss of innocence reflects the national loss of idealism in the 1970s.

What would you do to protect your most sacred dream? How reliable are the human vessels in whom you place your dreams? Can you live with the knowledge that you have compromised yourself?

One reviewer wrote that the title "America, America" should be heard like a sigh for what might have been, knowledge of what has been lost.

I later read Canin's novels Carry Me Across the Water, which I reviewed here, and  The Doubter's Almanac which I reviewed here.

I remember Song of the Orange Moons by Lori Ann Stephens as a lovely book. I wish I could tell more about the plot but it's been a long time since I read it in 2012. The blurb reads,

A mosaic of stories that follow the intertwined lives of three girls coming of age. Two young girls from Jewish and Christian families and their elderly widow next door try to find happiness in a seemingly cruel world. In spite of their different cultural and economic backgrounds, Rebecka, Helen, and Adelle all share the delicate and self-conscious journey to womanhood. In their search for they find lasting strength in the power of their friendships. 

 My highlights from the book include:

Those church-ordained picnics and prayer lines and ladies groups are the finest excuse for conjuring up rumors I ever heard, and just more evidence that God is a woman. 

For the first time since I moved, I felt the immense emptiness caused by grief. I cried for the loss of my friend, and for my inability to find her again. 

Skin is not like love or morality. Love is just a tradition that people follow. A word that means “you must.” Morality is a death sentence to the imagination, a noose for passion—I’d seen the hand of morality in torn pages of the library books. 

Being cynical is better than walking onto cattle cars on a direct route to the incinerator and still hoping that humans are basically good at heart. 

...feel his sadness like a blanket covering us both. 

They feel a terminal loneliness. They feel like a misplaced foot or a forgotten ear. 

Of course she was lonely. Everyone is swimming alone. But we are swimming alone together, sometimes bumping into each other, sometimes rubbing our fins together awkwardly against the current, and sometimes floating at the top with our bellies exposed to the dry air.

...telling me the facts of life that I knew couldn’t possibly be true, but telling them with such conviction that the truth seemed to bend like a spectrum, into so many beautiful colors.

Well, now I want to read it again!

MODA All-Stars on a Roll!

Quilters know that a "jelly roll" isn't something to eat with coffee but a delectable collection of 2 1/2" strips of fabrics, coordinated and ready to sew.

If you haven't yet developed a sweet tooth for these enticing treats, MODA All-Stars On A Roll might just have you running to the quilt shop for a quick fix.

Fourteen patterns from top designers are offered with something to appeal to every aesthetic. Each of the designers is introduced with cute Q&As and hints.

Just look at Square Dance by Karla Eisenach! This subtle plaid pattern at once modern and traditional. Karla used one Jelly Roll of assorted red and tan prints. I just love it.

Square Dance, 58" x 58", 12" blocks

Betsy Chutchian's Mountain Climbing has a traditional Country look. She used contrasting colors, one set "north" and one set "south," from a Jelly Roll of assorted prints set against a dark gray.

Mountain Climbing, 54 1/2" x 64 1/2", 9" x 8" block

The adorable Sweet Butterfly by Stacy Iest Hsu is a pattern any girl would fall in love with. She used a Jelly Roll of assorted pastel prints. Imagine it with bold colors!

Sweet Butterfly, 63" x 68 1/2", block is 17 1/2" x 14"

Lynne Hagmeier employed strip piecing for Chain Reaction. She used a Jelly Roll of tan and dark prints.

Chain Reaction, 62 1/2" x 76 1/2", 6" x 8" block

Trifle by Janet Clare is inspired by the British dessert that is to die for, made with layers of sponge cake, fresh fruit, custard, and whipped cream. She used two Jelly Rolls of assorted brights and 81 5" x 5" squares in assorted prints. This is a foundation pieced pattern.

Trifle, 63 1/2" x 63 1/2", 7" x 7" block

Maisy Daisies by Joanna Figueroa is another sweet pattern that can be made in the pastels she shows or in brights. Joanna used an assortment of Jelly Roll strips for this beautifully coordinated palette.

Maisy Daisies, 56 1/2" x 71 1/2", 9" x 9" block

One Roll Wonder by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson uses one Jelly Roll of assorted pastels. This is a simple pattern to construct and would be a quick gift quilt to whip up.

One Roll Wonder, 60 1/2" x 60 1/2", 10" x 10" block

As a quilter who loves applique, one of my favorite designers is Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill. She offers Rule the Roost.

Rules the Roose, 40 1/2" x 40 1/2", 8" x 8" chicken blocks

I wondered what it would be like to hand applique these Jelly Roll pieced hens. So I made a table topper with my precut strips of fabric which I keep in a bin.

 I just loved it!

If you need more reasons to buy MODA All-Stars on a Roll, the royalties from the book are donated to School on Wheels which provides educational opportunities for homeless children.

That's a win-win for me.

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

MODA All-Stars On a Roll
Martingale
Lissa Alexander
On Sale Date: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 9781604689884, 1604689889
$25.99 USD

The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

For several years my husband's department secretary was a Japanese American who came of age in a WWII internment camp. Her stories were the first I had encountered. Later I learned that German Americans were also identified as suspect hostile aliens and sent to internment camps. But before reading The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner I had not heard of the repatriation program, exchanging interned families for POWs held by Germany and Japan.

The Last Year of the War is Elise's life story. Her parents were born in Germany and love their homeland but embraced America wholeheartedly. Elise is a typical American girl.

Mariko is another American born child of immigrant parents. Her Japanese parents have held to their heritage and identity.

Circumstantial evidence flag their fathers as potential alien enemies, their goods and money confiscated, and the fathers interned. At Crystal City their families can join them, but with the agreement that they may be repatriated to their homelands.

Elise is lost and angry until she meets Mariko. They bond and become best friends, sharing dreams of turning eighteen and moving to New York City together to pursue careers.

Through these sympathetic characters, readers learn about life at the internment camps, and, when Elise's family is sent to Germany, life in war-torn Germany.

Elise struggles with being an American in the land of her enemies, while to her parents it is their homeland. Mariko's America dreams are shattered by her traditional parents' expectations.

Readers of Historical Fiction will love this book. I commend Meissner for bringing this aspect of American history to light, especially in the context of America's current distrust of immigrants.

Meissner sidesteps vilification of the German people, noting that Elise's German family were required to hang a portrait of Adolph Hitler on the wall and describing the destruction of German cities and civilian losses and hardships. The perils of war are addressed, including the harassment and rape of German girls by the occupation army after the war.

Elise does find her place in the world, not the life she dreamt of as a teenager, and she finds love.

Learn more about Crystal City here.

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

The Last Year of the War
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date: 19 Mar 2019
Hardcover $26.00 (USD
ISBN: 9780451492159

Thomas Cole's Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek by H. Daniel Peck

In 1825 the artist Thomas Cole visited the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Within a few years, he had set up a studio in Catskill and married a local woman. By 1836 he wrote in his journal that it's "quietness & solitude is gone."

It was his Catskill paintings that led to his discovery by John Trumbull, who brought his work to the attention of the New York City art world, propelling him to fame. He was inspired by the Catskills, even painting his favorite scene from memory while studying abroad.

Thomas Cole's Refrain by H. Daniel Peck considers  Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, probing deep into the subtleties Cole hid in plain sight--images of the human relationship to nature, the tension between civilization and nature, and the human experience as we journey through life.

Thomas Cole always intrigued me because of his use of art to convey his vision of life in his painting series The Course of Civilization and The Voyage of Life. I was interested in this book as an exploration of Cole's vision through the landscape he painted over and over, the application of his "deeply literary imagination" to create a narrative in his art.

Viewers may puzzle over just how different each version of the Catskill Creek is from another. He painted one scene ten times! The creek and the trees and the misty mountains on the horizon are seen in various lights, time of day, and seasons. There is often a man rowing and human and animal figures, sometimes barely seen. Peck zeros in on the details, looking for themes and interpreting Cole's intentions.

The paintings are reproduced in whole and in detail. There are fascinating maps showing Cole's vantage point from which he sketched.

Readers learn about Cole's theories, his Essay on American Art as it applies to his art, his career and personal life, and his travels across America and Europe.

From the vantage point of a time when we are under threat of climate change and in the throes of the struggle between industry and business and environmental protection, even our national parks unprotected from commerce, it might surprise that two centuries ago Cole was already mourning the loss of America's pristine natural abundance.

Born in Lancashire, England, a hotbed of textile mills, Cole understood America's future under the relentless industrial growth powered by capitalistic greed. Cole's art reacted to the changing American landscape under the Industrial Revolution. He deeply felt men's "insensibility" to the sublime "beauty of nature" which "commerce" was destroying. Forests were cut down, Native American burial grounds desiccated, and train tracks altered pastoral scenes and rattled the foundations of early colonial homes.

In some of the paintings, dark storms are rushing toward the sun-filled scenes, only stumps remain of once splendid primal trees, or vultures hover.

Wild nature, the agrarian life, and industry's impending alteration are part of the cycle of civilization. But not all "civilization" is welcome. Case in point: Niagara Falls, my girlhood Sunday afternoon jaunt--oh, to have seen it before the forest was torn down and the cement and shops grew to the very water's edge!

Cole was one of the first American artists to portray the American landscape, inspiring and influencing the artists of the Hudson River School and Luminists such as his student Frederick Church. I enjoyed this deeper look into Cole's art.

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

Thomas Cole's Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek
by H. Daniel Peck
Cornell University Press
Pub Date 15 Mar 2019
ISBN 9781501733079
PRICE $34.95 (USD)

Learn more about Thomas Cole at
The Thomas Cole National Historic Site

from the publisher:
Thomas Cole, an internationally renowned artist, centered his art and life in Catskill, New York.  From his vantage point near the village, he cast his eyes on the wonders of the Catskill Mountains and the swiftly flowing Catskill Creek.  These landscapes were sources of enduring inspiration for him.

Over twenty years, Cole painted one view of the Catskill Mountains at least ten times. Each work represents the mountains from the perspective of a wide river bend near Catskill, New York. No other scene commanded this much of the artist's attention. Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, which include works central to American nineteenth-century landscape art, are an integral series. In Thomas Cole's Refrain, H. Daniel Peck explores the patterns of change and permanence in the artist's depiction of a scene he knew first-hand. Peck shows how the paintings express the artist's deep attachment to place and region while illuminating his expansive imagination.

Thomas Cole's Refrain shows how Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, while reflecting concepts such as the stages of life, opened a more capacious vision of experience than his narrative-driven series, such as The Voyage of Life. Relying on rich visual evidence provided by paintings, topographic maps, and contemporary photographs, Peck argues that human experience is conveyed through Cole's embedding into a stable, recurring landscape key motifs that tell stories of their own. The motifs include enigmatic human figures, mysterious architectural forms, and particular trees and plants. Peck finds significant continuities—personal and conceptual—running throughout the Catskill Creek paintings, continuities that cast new light on familiar works and bring significance to ones never before seen by many viewers.

Helen Korngold Diary: March 10-16, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO.

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

March

Monday 10

School- Delightful conversation with Dr. Usher. He told me I was a joy to him as a pupil! Gee, I was so puffed up. I didn’t see how I was to squeeze out o the door, but I did. Home – rested–letter from Ida. Study.

Tuesday 11

Class. Study. Home. Lecture Langsdorf – good

Seniors won basketball championship.

Wednesday 12

Wellston – School – Home- Study.

Thursday 13

Exam Ed.14. Not so bad. Basketball party. Had a fine time. Judy & Barbara were presented with “W”. All star game. Greens won. I won game of Jerusalem – “slick fingers” that’s me – was presented with grand candy prize.

Friday 14

Downtown – School

Sunday 16

Study Shakespeare. Sleep in afternoon. Bonnie Youngs entertained in the evening, so we went there after we visited Jennie Goldstein who is engaged to a Sen. boy.

March 1919 Kroger Ad

Notes:

March 11

Dr. Langsforf

Dr. Alexander Suss Langsdorf lectured on “Industry, Research and the Engineer.” He was Dean of the Schools of Engineering and Architecture. He graduated from Central High in St. Louis, attended Washington University, Cornell University and Harvard. He became a physics instructor at W.U. in 1898 and in 1904 advanced to Asst. Professor teaching electrical engineering. He appears in the 1943 Hatchet still as active Dean. He is in the Book of Louisans, which shows he was born in 1877 to Adoph and Sara Suss Langsdorf.

March 13

 A Barbara Carper was on the Women’s Athletic Council in 1917.

“W” presentation for Women’s Sports started in 1901 and ended in 1947, awarded for sports participation. Women earned 100 points for each participation in a major sport, including basketball, hockey, and soccer. 50 points were earned for minor sports like swimming, hiking, rowing and archery. http://artsci.wustl.edu/~whhep/WomeninAthletics.html

Jeruselum is short for Trip to Jerusalem, another name for musical chairs.

March 16

Bonnie Gaylord Young's WWI Draft Card shows he was a produce merchant born October 28, 1890, and was married. He was of medium build and height, with dark blue eyes and black hair. His death certificate shows he died on September 4, 1921, at age 30 of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Jeanette Helen Goldstein of Beaumont, Texas, appears in the 1918-1919 Washington University Freshman class.

Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

As a girl in the 1950s, I grew up watching my grandmother bowl. It came about like this:

The fire department burned down the house across the street from us, an early 19th c house like ours, one built by a founding family in the area. It was scheduled to be demolished and the volunteer fire department decided to burn it as a training exercise.

My parents and I watched from our second-floor windows as the house became enveloped in orange flames that lit our faces, the heat nearly too much to stand. My father recorded it all on the home movie camera, bought at my brother's birth, so I know it was around 1960 when the house was burned down.

In front of our house was the gas station built by my grandfather. What were they thinking of, starting a fire so close to gas pumps?

And on that newly vacated land, a bowling alley was built. My grandmother, who lived with us, joined a league and bowled with her lady friends. I would go with her to watch the games. I remember having to put on special shoes that always smelled funny. I recall the snack bar, the bright lights, the balls rolling back to us, and especially the noise of the balls knocking down the pins.

Once there was another kid at the alley with his grandmother. He talked about baseball the entire time. I don't know why I listened, I had no interest in Little League or baseball--or in even boys.

Reading Elizabeth McCracken's novel Bowlaway brought back those bowling alley memories. But the novel's bowling is of a different sort than the nine pin I grew up watching.

Our subject is love because our subject is bowling. Candlepin bowling. This is New England, and even the violence is cunning and subtle. It still could kill you. A candlepin ball is small, two and a half pounds, four and a half inches in diameter, a grapefruit, an operable tumor. You heft it in your palm.

Our subject is love. Unrequited love, you might think, the heedless headstrong ball that hurtles nearsighted down the alley to get close before it can pick out which pin it loves the most, the pin it longs to set spinning. Then I love you! Then Blammo.  

from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

There is it! In the first pages of the novel, the theme laid out for the observant reader to see. We become addicted to the very act that knocks us off our pins--Love--which can even kill us. Bowling as metaphor.

I loved this novel for the many lovely tricks of language and quirky descriptions.

Joe sat down on the bed and pulled the animal close, one of those accordion cats that got longer when you picked it up by the middle. from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

And how McCracken sums up things that knock you over with unexpected truthfullness--why didn't I think of that? you wonder.

But sorrow doesn't shape your life. It knocks the shape out. from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

McCracken tells us that this is a story about genealogy. We read about generations of the Truitt family and the people whose lives they touched.

Just before the turn of the century, a century ago, Bertha Truitt is discovered in a cemetery by Joe Wear, an orphan boy who works as a pin setter in a bowling alley.  Bertha is attended to by another visitor to the cemetery, Dr. Sprague, an African American doctor with a penchant for deep thought--and drink.

Bertha has arrived with a candlestick bowling ball and pin and a pile of gold. She builds a candlestick bowling alley, hires Joe, and marries the doctor. The local women come to bowl. Bertha builds an octagonal house for her and the doctor and their daughter Minna.

But tragedy strikes (pun intended) in the form of a molasses flood. The doctor sends Minna away to his people and he slowly lets grief consume him. First, he and Joe fashion a Bertha doll with carved candlepin appendages and a stuffed body.

Joe had hoped to inherit the bowling alley, as Bertha once promised. It is assumed that everything goes to Minna, but she never returns. When a Mr. Truitt comes along saying he is Bertha's heir, showing a family bible with the handwritten family births, he takes the alley over, banning females and marrying a local woman. Their children are yoked to the alley unwillingly.

When he was a young man the mysteries of the world seemed like generosity--you can think anything you want! Now the universe withheld things. from Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

It is a story of revelations, sudden deaths, marriages, love, and how life slams lovers apart. The characters and plot may be Dickensian, but the truths are spot-on. As one character says, "Lady, lady. All sorts of things happen in this world. This is only one of them."

I purchased the book from the publisher.

Bowlaway
by Elizabeth McCracken
Ecco
ISBN: 9780062862853
ISBN 10: 0062862855
On Sale: 02/05/2019

WIP, TBR, News

It has been a hard few weeks. I haven't been able to see properly! I have had cataract surgery and decided to pay extra for fancy lenses to correct my astigmatism. So for two weeks, my 'new' eye has 20-20 vision but was farsighted, and my 'old' eye was nearsighted and needed correction for astigmatism. I couldn't see with glasses or without them, or with reading glasses.

As you can imagine, this has put a crimp on what I have been able to do.

I have done some reading on my tablet, enlarging the typeface so I can see it--blurred without glasses or with readers--but I could still do some reading. I have watched some movies but it tires my eyes. I tried to listen to audio books but I fell asleep or my attention wandered.

I took a lot of unnecessary naps! I couldn't trust myself walking in the snow. I couldn't judge distance very well and I was clumsy. I have been BORED.

Because my new sewing machine is self-threading, I tried making some blocks for my Winter Houses quilt. The pattern is from Bunny Hill.

Things went fine until I accidentally hit the computer controls and changed the settings. Then I struggled to read the small print in my manual to correct it. And when I ran out of thread I didn't notice. I managed to make a half dozen star blocks.

Quilt in progress!

And no way could I see to thread a needle! No hand work. I have the applique block ready for when my surgeries are done.

The Winter Flurries fabric line I am using was from Connecting Threads and is on clearance now.

Thankfully, I could listen to the Detroit Symphony--in person at the Berman Center for the wonderful Vivaldi Four Seasons concert with conductor, violinist, and contratenor Dimitry Sinkovsky. And also I listen to the webcasts.

Now the surgeries are over and I am ready to hit the ground running! Books and quilts are waiting!

Today we see our grandpuppy Ellie. Here she is at my son's house with her sister Hazel, looking out the back door at squirrels.

My surgeries were on Tuesdays so I missed my weekly quilt group, but in between surgeries I was able to go and show my finished Fiona Block quilt, which I hand quilted before my surgery.