Lonesome Dove

Lonesome Dove 

by Larry McMurtry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book! I wouldn't have expected too, but I did. It is quiet, and thoughtful, and full of complicated people doing the best they can in a challenging world. Lots of hard things happen--but ultimately I found the book to be optimistic. The descriptions of the landscape of the American west were beautiful. Harsh at times, but beautiful. It felt like you were riding along with the herd seeing what the cowboys saw. 

“It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.”

The point of view in the novel moves around --you are in the thoughts of most of the characters at some point in the story--so you get a full picture of events from all the sides. The main characters have both lived long lives by the time the story begins so they are able to both look back and have a more experienced perspective on things than some of the younger characters. 

“Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.”

Augustus McCrae was my absolute favorite character. He is a charming loafer, but ultimately he is a solid, dependable man who is standing up for what he believes is right as he works his way through a complicated world. 

“My main skills are talking and cooking biscuits,' Augustus said. 'And getting drunk on the porch.”

He is also very self-aware and practical about it.

“I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice. . . You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day--that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.”

This Pulitzer-winner is on my Classics Club list and was part of Nick's 2025 American classics chapter-a-day read-along. 

July Book Report

I finished 5 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice." --Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings

Here are the books I finished in July 2025: 

1. A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War by David S. Brown (4-stars)
2. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (5-stars)
3. The French Paradox by Ellen Crosby (3-stars)
4. Mastering the Art of French Murder by Laura Stoddart (audiobook, 3-stars)
5. Bait and Swiss by Korina Moss (3-stars)

My spin book for Classics Club was 3 Lives by Gertrude Stein -- I read more than half of it and decided that it was not for me and did not finish it. I understand that the tempo is supposed to be part of the genius of the book, but I found the repetition of phrases very irritating and the characters were not people I wanted to spend any time with. 

June Book Report

I finished 8 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.” --Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Here are the books I finished in June 2025: 

1. Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station by Dorothy Gilman (audiobook, 4-stars)
2. Ultralearning by Scott H. Young (3-stars)
3. The Angels Share by Ellen Crosby (4-stars)
4. The Sweet Life: Reflections on Home and Garden by Laura Stoddart (3-stars)
5. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (3-stars)
6. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovich (audiobook, 4-stars)
7. Fondue or Die by Korina Moss (4-stars)
8. The Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins (5-stars)

Small Gods completed my reading of all the Terry Pratchett novels. 

May Book Report (a bit overdue)

I finished 8 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.”― Jasper Fforde, Early Riser

Here are the books I finished in May 2025: 

1. Early Riser by Jasper Fforde (4-stars)
2. Love the Home You Have by Melissa Michaels Moss (3-stars)
3. Mrs. Pollifax on Safari by Dorothy Gilman (audiobook, 4-stars)
4. Harvest of Secrets by Ellen Crosby (3-stars)
5. Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett (5-stars)
6. The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilley (5-stars)
7. Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd (4-stars)
8. How to Retire by Christine Benz (4-stars)

Spinning the Classics

It is time for another Classics Club Spin. The last one resulted in a DNF for me, but I am going to try again! 

On Sunday 15th June 2025 the spin number will be posted and the challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by the 24th August, 2025.

1. Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty, 1946
2. Aesop's Fables
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
4. Come and Get It, Edna Ferber, 1935
5. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1867
6. The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922
7. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847
8. Howards End, E. M. Forster, 1910
9. A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift, 1704
10. Song of the Lark, Willa Cather, 1915 [TCL has Cather at this # too]
11. 3 Lives, Gertrude Stein, 1909
12. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945 [Wordsworth and Watercolors picked this too]
13. Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
14. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985 
15. Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965
16. The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham, 1944
17. Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy, 1955
18. The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer, 1968
19. Russia House, John le Carre, 1989
20. Steamboat Gothic, Francis Parkinson Keyes, 1952

The Barn at the End of the World.

The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd 

by Mary Rose O'Reilley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came across this book when I was working on a readers' advisory project at work several years ago and added it to my list of books I wanted to read to expand my familiarity with various kinds of books. 

This book felt very similar to a number of other books I have read in recent years and really liked: All Fishermen are Liars, Uncommon Carriers, the novel Search, and pretty much all the essays of Anne Lamott. 

Mary Rose O'Reilley was raised as a Catholic, started down the path of becoming a nun, and by the time she is writing this memoir she is in her 50s and is a Quaker practicing Buddhism and learning how to farm sheep. She is a complex woman. She is also very down-to-earth and imperfect which made her story something I could identify with and was happy to follow along with her as she tried to figure stuff out about how best to live her life. The book was full of thoughts and observations that I want to remember. These jumped out in particular:

"One of the dicey things about teaching English or lamb haltering is that, in order to focus a student's attention, you have to hammer away at a few central principles which, to the conscientious learner, begin to have the force of law. But they are merely transitional truths, and when you see them start to harden in the learner's mind, you have to gently nudge him or her out of security and inculcate what is always the final lesson: there are, in fact, many ways to reach a goal--several of which are logically opposed to each other. Much of what we call 'knowledge' is merely a temporary frame around chaos." [p. 279] 

"We all see the world so clearly and crisply through our own glasses that it's a difficult imaginative leap to believe another person sees a different scene, logically incompatible with yours." [p.104]

O'Reilly also quotes numerous other people in the course of her explorations:

"'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it,' Flannery O'Connor said, speaking of the Eucharist, but perhaps she was joking."

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about." -- the Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi

And this, which made me think about my father's approach to childrearing:

"As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift, but generosity and indifference to money; not caution but courage and contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." -- Natalia Ginsberg, in her essay "The Little Virtues"

I now know WAY more than I ever wanted to about sheep, but I am very glad I read this book.

20 Books of Summer

The 20 Books of Summer challenge completed its 10th year last summer and this summer it is back with new hosts -- Annabookbel and Words and Peace. 

I am taking on the challenge this year, but with a few changes from my normal plan. I am only making a list of 10 books this time (partly because I love the new graphic for 10 books!) I always end up swapping out a bunch from my original list and I expect that will happen again. However, and I am adding the additional rule for myself that at least 5 of the books I count toward this challenge must be ones I have on my shelves right now (including the ones in my audiobook.com account).

Here is my preliminary list, all of which are currently on my shelves:

1. Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge [read July 2025]
2. 3 Lives by Gertrude Stein [DNF'd June 2025]
3. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch [read June 2025]
4. The Sweet Life by Laura Stoddart [read June 2025]
5. Enquiry by Dick Francis [read August 2025]
6. Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince
7. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
8. Daughter of Ruins by Yvette Manessis Corporon
9. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
10. Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen
11. Interdiction by Michael Davidow (my most recent purchase)

The #20BooksofSummer2025 challenge runs from Sunday June 1st to Sunday August 31st. That means that if I can read 2 books from my shelves in June and 4 each in July and August I can complete the challenge. 

April Book Report

April 2025, Manchester, NH

I finished 9 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn’t live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it’s possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother’s milk made possible the life of privilege they led.” ― Alex Haley, Roots

Here are the books I finished in April 2025: 

1. The Author's Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams (4-stars)
2. Curds of Prey by Korina Moss (3-stars)
3. LifeStyled: Your Guide to a More Organized and Intentional Life by Shira Gill (4-stars)
4. The Vineyard Victims by Ellen Crosby (3-stars)
5. The Happy Writer by Marissa Meyer (4-stars)
6. Case of the Bleus by Korina Moss (4-stars)
7. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang (audiobook, 3-stars)
8. Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (5-stars)
9. Heart of Barkness by Spencer Quinn (3-stars)

I also read several essays and articles about Jane Austen last month, in preparation for hosting Mansfield Park as part of the Classics Club Austen 2025 project. 

Roots

Roots: The Saga of an American Family 

by Alex Haley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had a lot of trepidation about reading this book. I knew it would include a lot of really hard things and I am not good with that. However, it is an important book and I wanted to have read it for myself. Nick's chapter-a-day read-along pushed me to finally pull this off my shelf and read it. I am so glad I did!

The story starts in a Gambian village where we meet Kunta Kinte and learn about his life and his family through his own eyes. He is a very sympathetic and interesting person and incredibly resilient. A large portion of the novel follows him across the ocean on a slave ship and then through his life as a slave in the American south. Haley moves the story from generation to generation by changing the narrative point-of-view as various people leave one place for another (the reader follows the person leaving).

There were a LOT of really difficult things that happen in this book, but in the same way that Colson Whitehead is able to carry his reader through horrors by focusing tightly onto what is happening in the mind of the person things are happening to and how they are working to survive these events, Haley carried us through as well. 

The characters feel like real people -- they were based on Haley's actual ancestors-- and are people whose stories I am very glad to have learned. 

March Book Report

March 2025, Manchester, NH

I finished 5 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us.” ― Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Here are the books I finished in March 2025: 

1. Gone for Gouda by Katrina Moss (4-stars)
2. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (5-stars) 
3. The Champagne Conspiracy by Ellen Crosbie (4-stars)
4. Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home by Harry Kemelman (3-stars)
5. Poirot Loses a Client by Agatha Christie (4-stars)

I also DNF'd a book this month: my classics club spin title, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. My sister told me it was terrible, despite really liking other books by Dickens, and she was right. 

February Book Report

Feb. 2025, Manchester, NH

I finished 7 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“You don’t turn a river by abruptly trying to get it to change direction. You don’t have that much power. No matter how strong you are. The river will just overwhelm you and obstinately carry on pretty much as before. You can’t make it change direction overnight. No one can. On the contrary, you have to start by flowing with it. You have to capture its own force and then slowly but surely lead it in the desired direction. The river won’t notice it’s being led if the curve is gentle enough. On the contrary, it will think it’s flowing just the same as usual, seeing as nothing seems to have changed.” ― Jonas Karlsson, The Room

Here are the books I finished in February 2025: 

1. The Room by Jonas Karlsson, Neil Smith, Translator (3-stars)
2. The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman, Virginia Johnson, illustrator (4-stars) 
3. Blood Rubies by Jane Cleland (4-stars)
4. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten (audiobook, 4-stars)
5. The Sauvignon Secret by Ellen Crosbie (3-stars)
6. The Searcher by Tana French (4-stars)
7. Brie Careful What You Wish For by Linda Reilly (3-stars)

Spinning the Classics

I'm getting this Classics Club Spin list posted just under the wire, but the number hasn't turned up anywhere I have seen it yet so I'm in. 

1. Aesop's Fables
2. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck, 1931
3. Song of the Lark, Willa Cather, 1915
4. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859
5. Come and Get It, Edna Ferber, 1935
6. Howards End, E. M. Forster, 1910
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
8. Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey, 1912
9. Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
10. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
11. Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965
12. Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy, 1955
13. Steamboat Gothic, Francis Parkinson Keyes, 1952
14. Russia House, John le Carre, 1989
15. The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham, 1944
16. True Grit, Charles Portis, 1968
17. 3 Lives, Gertrude Stein, 1909
18. A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift, 1704
19. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
20. Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty, 1946

Most of these are books I have on my shelves (or should be easily obtained at the library) so whatever number comes up I should be able to get it read by the April 11th deadline.