Review 373: The Dawn Country

The Dawn Country by W. Michael Gear
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

People of the Longhouse #2

North America's Forgotten Past #18

This second book in the sub-series People of the Longhouse was not as dark as the first one. Yet, it still is darker than the typical books in the series overall: North America's Forgotten Past. These book I generally do enjoy but so far, not as much for this set. There are four books in this sub-series, so I'm half-way through. Going to continue on and hopefully they do get better.

This book is shorter than many other of the books in the series and continued just after the first book, that perhaps they should have been combined.

This story line is the rescued group of children along with a small group of warriors set out to find the evil witch that had held them captive. They want to rescue the rest of the children, and kill her. We also have the story of the other children that are still being held captive. Not much else happens except for this rescue operation. But it does set the stage for what happens next. 

Review 372: Heat and Light

Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is somewhat a sequal to Haigh's previous Bakertown book called Baker Towers. It's at least a generation later, and now the coal mining town is being drilled for natural gas, or fracking. The time line here jumps around and have many different characters, overall it comes together in the end but at moments seems a little disjointed. All in all I did enjoy the book. 

This was on my want to read list for many years, but couldn't pass up buying a copy at a library sale for ten cents! 

Review 371: Common Sense

Common Sense by Thomas Paine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is a short book of essays, that I listened to entirely in one day. 

A complete dig at a monarch system of government and for independence and self-rule. 

I've wanted to read some of Paine's writings for a long while, other than the excerpts I read while in college. Maybe more of his writings later this year. Next is a biography.

Read in one day: January 23, 2023

Review 370: Boulder Dam

Boulder Dam by Zane Grey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A classic, Zane Grey is known for westerns, but this one isn't that genre.

This book takes place during the depression. We have Lynn Weston who works on building the dam, an engineering marvel. Weston himself failed out of engineering school, but works his way up on the various jobs. Meanwhile he saves a young girl from white slavers, and saves the dam being blown up.

The book was okay, but doesn't make me want to read many more of Grey's books. I'm definitely not interested in westerns..

Review 369: Big Girl

Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a sad book. We have a young girl Malaya who is overweight, so is her mother. The focus of the book is on food and the weight, but also the family. It is told from the girl’s point of view, so there is not complete understanding of things. She seems to try to disappear, hardly talks about herself or feelings, things that happen to her.

The grandmother is a mean person, hardly says a kind word to her granddaughter only platitudes and focus on how large Malaya is, how she needs to lose weight and eat only a small amount of healthy foods. Unfortunately, she stays with her grandmother during the summer, so she is subjected to this meanness. 

Malaya worries about her parent’s relationship; she makes herself feel better with food. Her other outlet is drawing and art.

Later we see Malaya as a teenager, nearing the end of her high school. She is smart, been in a gifted school all through the years, but it doesn’t translate into anything we see in the book.

I kept wishing Malaya would speak for herself, would do more for herself. The few moments that she does is a shining light. 

Review 368: The Deluge

The Deluge by Stephen Markley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A deluge of words and pages, later becomes a deluge of rain and flood waters then finally a deluge of people.  

This is an impressive book, it takes us from current time into the near future, incrementally year by year. It gives us a horrifying look at what climate change might look like, and US politics. 

There are a large cast of characters, in the beginning of the book they each get their own chapter, with some depth, that it feels like you are untethered. But later they do start to intertwine and recur with subsequent chapters. There are some unusual aspects to the book; one character’s chapters always contain side boxes with extra information, there are some articles interspersed, and occasionally a full page with headlines and snippets.

While I am impressed with the scope of breadth of this book, part of me thinks it is too much too soon. Many of these events take place ten to fifteen years from now and seem too extreme for possibility (or at least that’s my hope!). The book is overwhelming, impressive, and frightening. 

Certainly, the author is hoping this epic book will serve as a warning. Perhaps one take away from the book is that one person can make a difference, as we see several versions of that here. 

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for an advance print copy of the book. 

Initial thoughts: I need a breather after this one.

Yet, I didn't wait to start a new book....only a few hours later began something new.

Review 367: Letters From An Astrophysicist

Letters From An Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A book of curated letters sent to Tyson throughout the years, with the answers. There is a bit more as well, such chapter of rebuttals to responses or tweets he sent, and the epilogue as an eulogy to his father. There is one section devoted to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, as Tyson and his family lived only blocks away. This part was more letters he sent out to family and friends giving them an account of what he lived through that day.

I listened to the audiobook, where Tyson does most of the narrating. Different narrators took on the role of reading the questions. It was a good way to read this book, but I did find that Tyson seemed to be trying to hard in his narration. Happily there were moments when proving his answers to these queries his voice was more conversational, and easier to listen to.

Review 366: The Poet's House

The Poet's House by Jean Thompson
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This was a decent book, but I kept thinking that the main character certainly fell in with these people - a group of poets - too easily. I had to suspend my belief a bit more than usual, but I did enjoy seeing poets as characters.

The main character Carla is a landscaper. She has difficulty in reading, maybe dyslexia or something similar, so she isn't really college material. Carla is young, in her 20s, and still trying to figure out her path in life. She lives with her boyfriend of a little more than a year, and figures they will soon be married and have kids.

A job at an elderly woman's house, who turns out to be a poet, changes Carla's life. This idea of poetry and poet writers is something completely new to Carla and peeks her interest.

Soon she is enveloped in their lives and her boyfriend is resistant to this change. Their perfect love is now crumbling. Add to the tension, Carla lost her job at the landscaping business and is again forced to consider college.

I listened to the audiobook and the narration was done well enough that it propelled me along even when I was having doubts about the storyline. A bit contrived at times, these situations seemed a bit unlikely. Having poets as characters is unique enough it made me intrigued and perhaps enjoyed the book a little more than it should.

2022 Year in Review

Some thoughts on the books I read during 2022

First thought...I didn't read a lot of stellar books. Maybe a disappointing year of reading.

One goal I set out was to read entirely a long anthology of eco-poetry. I did that, and quicker than I expected: February to November. But the poems overall didn't inspire me. Many I just read and was well, okay. A few spoke to me, were enjoyable...anyway see a bit more below, and on my review page linked there. 

I mention this book because it has the same type of feeling as my year of reading overall. A few good ones but many just didn't inspire me.

Not all books I read ended up in the blog, no review written. If ever inspired I will go back and add those missed ones in. There weren't too many.

Surprises and favorites:

Bacon and Beans from a Gold Pan - I've got this on a road trip in 2008 and finally read it, and was happy to find how readable, and enjoyable it was. I may be pressed to say this was my favorite read of the year. 

Gilded Mountain - What a book. Okay, this may be my favorite for the year.

Lost Memory of Skin - another book by Russell Banks. I read two of them this year, and this one well, I liked a bit better. He's a decent writer, and this one reflects on society as there are people in situations where we consider them as throwaway people. As a society, we can do better.

A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird - I didn't expect to get so enthralled with pigeons. This was such a cute book, informative and just wonderful.

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement - This was much more readable than I expected (a surprise) and I learned much more about the history of the people who did all they could to help enslaved people be free. Definitely one of the top reads of the year.

Oh, and I don't want to forget one of the first reads of the year:

The Contemporary American Essay - a collection of essays curated by Phillip Lopate. I bought the set of three and read this volume first. I expected it to take me a while, but was surprised at how much I was enjoying it and read the book quickly. Should have gone to another volume this year, but maybe next. 

Disappointments:

The Ecopoetry Anthology - (as mentioned above) Although I did rate this book at 4 stars, I'm listing it as a disappointment because there so few that really stuck me well. I took almost all year to read this book, and much of it was okay, but I had hoped for much more.  Perhaps it was my expectations for something more spectacular in this collection. 

Alone on the Wall - A co-written book so it's both an biography and autobiography, but fails at both. It was not written well at all, and there was so much climbing technical language that at times it was hard to understand what they were trying to say. 

I could go on these disappointments, but I'd rather not focus on these...

Finally conquered:

This new section is for the book that I owned the longest and finally read this year.

Fall on Your Knees  - It's hard to say you enjoy a book that gives you the creeps as well.  I didn't write a full review, just leaving it. It was a long book and I have another by the same author, also a long book that perhaps I will get to in 2023.

Final Note:

High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson

Wanted to mention another long read, took me nearly two months to get through the book, listening to the audio version. Near the end I managed to get hold of a print copy in order to view all of the photos. It would have worked better to have that earlier.

Looking forward - Goals for 2023:

• Focus on longer books, or non-fiction books that take a few weeks to read. 
• This means fiction books over 500 pages (or nearly)
• Or those books with small print
• Keep up with NetGalley books and not add very many throughout the year.
• Focus on owned books instead of library books (hopefully with audio as well).
• Read around my bookshelves - continues
• Reduce own to read - buy/acquire less than I read.

Some of the books on the to read pile I'd like to read:

• 1492: The Year the World Began
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
• Uncommon Carriers (not owned)
• Fire & Blood 
• Cloud Cuckoo Land
• Termination Shock
• Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
• The Stations of Still Creek
• One of the Essays books edited by Phillip Lopate:
• The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present 
• The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970
• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
• Continue the People of the Longhouse series:
• The Dawn Country 
• The Broken Land 
• People of the Black Sun
• Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade's Journey

This is a long list, and most very long...let's get to it!

2022 Year in Review: Summation and Statistics - facts and details

2022 Year in Review post will be about the numbers.

Books read: 87

including 4 partial read books.

A considerable decrease from the year, well several last.

I had ambitious goals for 2022 and only achieved two of them. The main goal of reducing my owned books backlog failed. The last two months I went on a bit of a book buying spree. Most were books on my to-read list, but did not own. So, it doesn’t feel like a complete failure, but now I have quite a few books with no bookshelf space. 😞

Numbers: as of Dec.31, 2022

Own-to be read total: 1,053

• 📘 Print books: 688
• 🎧 Audio books: 142
• 💻 eBooks: 223

The only format that was reduced overall was eBooks. Well, there’s always next year.

2022 goals:  - How did I do?

• 📚 At least one book from each shelf I own. (28 shelves) ❌ Read from 15
• 📚 Clear out the backlog from netGalley (around 30 books) ✔️ complete
• 📚 Read at least 12 books from owned audio books (mainly audible) ❌Read 7
• 📚 Read at least 1 book from my Nook (prefer to read 6) ✔️ Read 4
• 📚 Overall gain less new books in the year than I read (net zero/negative) ❌ fail
• Total gain: 12

Some of the books on the to read pile I'd like to read carried over from prior years:

• 1492: The Year the World Began
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
• People of the Longhouse ✔️
• Uncommon Carriers
• Fire & Blood 

• Cloud Cuckoo Land
• Termination Shock
• Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
• The Stations of Still Creek
• One of the 3 American Essays books edited by Philip Lopate ✔️
• The Contemporary American Essay ✔️(see review# 292)
•  The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present 
• The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970.

Since I read only two...the list will carry onto 2023.