It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

My summer has begun! Late last week I wrapped up my spring semester at an Atlanta-area homeschool group where I teach middle school American history, and high school American literature and advanced literature and composition. These past two semesters have had me reading a lot to keep up with them. Now that school is out for me until the fall, I've got an ambitious reading list planned for the summer. Here's what's at the top of my stack:

In the car on audiobook: I'm waiting for one of several options to come up for me at the library. So for now, just a lot of 90s on 9.

On my iPod: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion: A Novel by Fannie Flagg

For fun (and variety): 
Jason Priestley: A Memoir by Jason Priestley
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

What are you reading?

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

Book Review: White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse

White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Published by: Viking Books
Published on: Hardcover April 4, 2013, Paperback December 31, 2013
Page count: 369
Genre: fiction
My reading format: paperback provided by the publisher
Available formats: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook, Audible

My review:

The story begins with an air of mystery: Isaac, a black man from South Africa, travels over the border into Botswana underneath a casket inside a hearse. He's dropped out beaten, broken and barely alive. A white dog notices, and once Isaac is well enough to walk, the dog, which Isaac names White Dog, follows him. To sustain himself, Isaac needs to find work in a place where he knows no one. After a long and dusty walk he comes upon a town where he meets Alice, an American white woman who hires him to tend her garden. Alice immediately trusts Isaac, even when he can't understand why, and he begins to creatively transform her outside space.

On the inside, Alice struggles with a marriage to an unfaithful husband, uncertainty in her career and a mother who wishes her to be back home in the United States. She sets off an a business trip with several colleagues, one of whom she becomes involved with, and doesn't return right away. While she is gone, Isaac is unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is deported back to South Africa and imprisoned. When Alice returns to find Isaac missing, she is determined to find him and bring him back to Botswana. While she tries to get through government red tape and other complications, a special delivery intended for Isaac arrives at Alice's and she must look after it until Isaac can be found.

I both enjoyed and struggled with this book. I loved how Morse wrote so beautifully about the setting. I could envision Botswana and Alice's home most vividly, and was reminded of how the setting of a book can become like a character, so ingrained in a book's plot and resolution. I cared immediately for Isaac's well-being. I was heartbroken when he was transported back to South Africa after such a successful tenure with Alice. It was Alice I struggled with the most. I was invested in her initially, but that began to wane when her romantic flings took center stage in the novel when it was her locating Isaac that I wanted most to see. I wanted her to be as honorable and likable a person as Isaac.

I like that even though I felt sidetracked by her business trip and subsequent romantic relationships, the importance of finding Isaac never changed for Alice. It was that part of the story that kept me quickly turning pages, wanting to know more and see a good outcome for Isaac. The ending, though abrupt and a little vague, did give me, I think, most of the satisfaction I was hoping for.

Three and a half out of five stars

If you liked White Dog Fell from the Sky, you'll like A Different Sun by Elaine Neil Orr, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and anything by Willa Cather. 

Recent Read: The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick

Have you ever had really high hopes for a book and are so disappointed when that book doesn't meet your expectations? It happens.

This summer I went to Atlanta's High Museum's exhibit, "Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshaus." It featured 35 paintings by Dutch artists of centuries past including Vermeer and Rembrandt. I enjoyed it. I loved the beautiful colors and the simple lives portrayed in many of the works. Then, the last painting of the exhibit was "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and seeing it in person was fantastic.

Years ago I read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and saw the movie. It's the kind of historical fiction I just love.

Then shortly before I visited the High this summer I read the New York Times story, "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar" and was fascinated. This summer in Austria and Germany my family and I learned about the treasures Adolf Hitler and his cronies stored up during the Third Reich.

After that news story I was ready to read The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick, a book I'd bought at the exhibit this summer. I was excited about reading it on my Thanksgiving break. I didn't finish it until the day after Christmas (yes, it's completely unheard of for it to take me a month to read a book). Part of the reason is because I had a busy work life wrapping up 2013. The other reason it because I just plodded through it. It didn't hold my interest and was really a disappointment considering how I'd worked it up beforehand.

The book focused nearly entirely on the forger, Han van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who found he could make more money forging the work of the famous Dutch painters of the previous centuries than selling his own original works. Long story short, the book focused way too much, for my taste, on the specifics of how van Meegeren pulled one over on the art world and not nearly enough time talking about the Nazi party officials and their desire to get their hands on the artistic and cultural works of the countries they occupied, and how he was finally found out. Admittedly, I don't have much of a background in art but I do enjoy it. I also enjoy a good story that's told well. If it's historical nonfiction it needs to keep my interest and unfortunately this just didn't measure up.

Recent Read: Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton

For a variety of reasons, I've been really intrigued lately by Abraham Lincoln, and I've read several books about the wives of famous men. A friend loaned me a copy of Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton and I breezed right through it over the July 4 weekend when it wouldn't stop raining in Atlanta. It was a fascinating read. A lot of what's in it sounded somewhat familiar from the recent historical fiction book I reviewed called Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, which was about Elizabeth Keckly, Mary Lincoln's dressmaker and assistant who turned out to be one of her only friends near the end of Mary Lincoln's life.

Even so, there was plenty I learned about Mary Lincoln by reading this book that were just too interesting not to share. For one, it sounds like the First Lady was a bit difficult to handle throughout her life. She had a mind of her own as a child and continued to do things the way she wanted for the rest of her life. That meant advising her husband on politics in a way that wasn't done (or at least done more privately). A Kentucky native and an Illinois resident for much of her life, Mrs. Lincoln continued to keep one foot, so to speak, in the South and one in the North for all her days. She had family members who served on both sides of the Civil War, and had to do quite a balancing act while her husband was president. I think most of all, two things bothered me about Mrs. Lincoln's life after her husband's assassination: her mental illness (real or supposed) and her financial troubles.

I can't imagine what it would be like to deal with the kind and amount of loss Mary Lincoln experienced in her lifetime: her mother at a young age, three of her four sons and her husband, the president, right before her eyes (well, she was shoved out of the room and missed being by him as he passed). No one can take that kind of loss without being changed in some way. Her changes, though, just made me sad. It seems like she was a lot for her remaining son Robert to handle. His solution was, at times, to have his mother live with him and his new wife, have her kept at a mental institution and to manage her finances the best he could (I'm not saying his choices were right or wrong. I'm sure he did what he felt was best.). It also sounds like Mrs. Lincoln was a compulsive spender. Even when she knew she couldn't afford it, she shopped and spent money lavishly, owed her creditors tons of money and continued to spend further. 

This book was very well written. It reads more like a novel than a dry biography; I liked Clinton's writing style. I learned a lot and still want to know more about the Lincolns. What a truly interesting couple.

If you want to review what I've read and written about the Lincolns previously, here are a couple posts to check out:

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
Lincoln, Inc.: Selling the Sixteenth President in Contemporary America by Jackie Hogan 
John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson

Book review: John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson - See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/#sthash.uuzCA08v.dpuf

Book review: John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson - See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/#sthash.uuzCA08v.dpuf

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

Free Books!

I could never afford to read all that I do without borrowing books from friends and public libraries, and other good resources that are out there. One of my favorite ways to get a free audiobook is through LibriVox. I've listened to countless classic novels (many of which I'm revisiting for the first time since high school) on my iPod while exercising or cleaning the house. I've particularly enjoyed blogger Annie Coleman's versions of Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables, two of my favorite novels. LibriVox seeks volunteers to read and record stories like these.

Project Gutenberg is also a volunteer organization that provides free ebooks for download to computer, Kindle or Android phone. I don't often read books on my computer (preferring the handheld, old fashioned method or reading, or listening to a book best), but if I wanted to, this is where I'd go.

Free books! It just doesn't get any better.

What will you be reading over Thanksgiving break this week?