Whirlwind

Author: Janet Dailey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2020
Pages: 272
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Everyone's talking about Whirlwind at this year's Professional Bull Rider's Competition. But the promising young bull is the last thing on Shane Tully's mind once he lays eyes on the lady responsible for bringing Whirlwind to the arena. Beautiful, smart, and sexy as hell, Lexie Champion has this rodeo man hungry for more than the thrill of his next competition. But the daughter of bull rancher Bert Champion wants nothing to do with a daredevil, despite the powerful attraction between them.

After losing her beloved brother to a bull riding accident, Lexie is not stranger to the dangers of rodeo life. Which is why resisting Shane's rugged allure should have been easy. But nothing is simple about her reaction to the handsome cowboy, from their first kiss, to the terrifying moment Lexie watches Shane go down in the ring. Faced with a devastating decision, will Lexie make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love?

Review: I'm still on a Texas kick, but not in the mood for historical fiction so I opted for this Janet Dailey novel. Ever since I saw the movie 8 Seconds back in college, I've been more than a little interested in rodeos. When we were in Wyoming a few years ago we saw a statue in Cheyenne dedicated to Lane Frost, the subject of the movie. It was a moment.

One small detail in this books threw the story off for me, but I can't say any more than that without spoiling it. I just wish the author had been a little more creative. I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

This book had me googling upcoming rodeos in Texas, but it seems out of the question for 2024. I watched plenty of reels and youtube videos to make up for it.

Hidden Potential

Author: Adam Grant
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: We live in a world that's obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travle. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn't knock, there re ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirtations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess - it's about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

Many writers have chronicled the habits of superstars who accomplish great things. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you've reached, but how far you've climbed to get there.

Review: This book was a voted on by members of a corporate-wide book club. It's our first book selection, and I have to say, a disappointing one at that. My supervisor and I were discussing it, and I think she said it perfectly, this should have been condensed into a long essay.

In a different place in my career maybe this book would have unlocked some secrets, but I have almost 30 years of professional working experience behind me. There was one key takeaway for me though, "strive for excellence, not perfection." Perfection is unattainable. Excellence is a goal. 

I also strongly agree with his conclusion that giving yourself permission to try and even fail is okay. Some personalities do a lot better with this concept than others. I'm a person who grew up believing that failure is not an option. I haven't failed to catastrophic levels, but I've learned a lot in my "failures," when outcomes weren't what I expected, in my missteps. 

It was a lot of reading to be affirmed in areas that I didn't need it.

Paper Roses

Author: Amanda Cabot
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group, 2009
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Her future is stretched out like the clear blue Texas sky. But a storm is coming. Leaving the past behind in Philadelphia, mail-order bride Sarah Dobbs arrives in San Antonio ready to greet her groom - a man she has never met but whose letters, her paper roses, have won her heart from afar. But there is a problem - Austin Canfield is dead, and Sarah cannot go back East.

As Sarah tries to reconcile herself to a future that is drastically changed, Austin's brother Clay wants nothing more than to shake the Texas dust from his boots, but first he must find his brother's killer.

And then there's Sarah.

Something is blooking out in the vast Texas landscape that neither Clay nor Sarah is ready to admit, and the promise of redemption blows like a gentle breeze through the prairie grasses.

Review: There is something about Texas that captured my imagination when I was young, I suspect it was an old book called Old Blue about an longhorn so black he looked blue, but regardless, there's something about cowboys, the wild west, longhorn cattle, ranching etc that just appeals to me. I even took a semester long class on the history of Texas and its independence from Mexico in college.

I had been to Texarkana a few years ago. We were in Hot Springs, Arkansas and the Texas border wasn't far so we hopped on over. Over Spring Break last month we decided to return to Texas. We flew into Hobby Airport, spent a couple days in Galveston, and then went to Houston for the Astros Home Opener.

This trip especially reignited my interest in Texas so you may see a few more books set in Texas pop up in blog over the next few weeks and months.

Paper Roses also touched on another of my interests, mail-order brides. I cannot imagine taking a train from the East to some unknown place to meet a stranger and get married. It's wild, and women did it. I imagine most out of desperation.

The Enchantment

Author: Kristin Hannah
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1992
Pages: 416
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Emmaline Hatter was a beautiful, brilliant, and rich Wall Street financier in the nineteenth century until the crash of 1893 wiped her out completely. Desperate to recoup her losses, she joins Dr. Larence Digby in his search for the legendary lost city of Cibola, rumored to be rich in gold. Emmaline was used to getting her own way, but Larence was not about to give up control of his expedition to a woman. Somehow, in a world of enchantment, each would have to learn to believe - to trust the other with their lives, their secrets, and their hearts.

Review: I've been reading Kristin Hannah for years, even before she published The Nightingale, which I felt was her best book to date at the time. After reading The Women, I wanted to read some vintage Kristin Hannah. What were her earliest books like?

I enjoyed The Enchantment, her second novel as far as I could tell, and it felt like a novel that was published in the 1990s. She's always been a storyteller, but her style and characters have matured over the years. 

Other Kristin Hannah Novels
Angel Falls
Home Front
Summer Island
The Four Winds
The Great Alone
The Nightingale
The Women
True Colors

The Haunted Showboat

Author: Carolyn Keene
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Younger Readers, 1957
Pages: 192
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Bess and George invite Nancy on a trip to New Orleans, to help their relatives solve a mystery. Their uncle wants to restore an old showboat, the River Princess, but no one will go near it. Mysterious occurences are making everyone believe the boat is haunted.

Review: My mom read The Little House books to me when I still pretty young, and they certainly captured my imagination. However, Nancy Drew were the first chapter books I remember reading on my own, and I flew through my mom's many books that she had kept from her pre-teen years. She didn't own all of them though, and I recently decided to see if Nancy still held the same appeal now, 70 years after they were first published and decades after I read them.

They do.

I enjoyed reuniting with Nancy (and Bess and George), and going on this adventure. They certainly read different now that I'm not years younger than Nancy her and pushing Hannah Gruen's age.

The Haunted Showboat is book #35.

The Berry Pickers

Author: Amanda Peters
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Catapult
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: July 1962. Mi'kmiq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister's disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Normal slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

Review: I've seen some comments that this is the best book a person has read, or it will be their favorite this year, all sorts of rave reviews. For me it was good, not great. I read most of it on a plane and it was a good distraction on a bumpy flight. I will likely not remember it in December when I start thinking about my favorite books.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Author: George Saunders
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2018
Pages: 368
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, the president says at the time time. "God has called him home." Newspapers reprot that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commisterate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state - called in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo - a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Review: I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but this book was challenging to follow. I had read that it's a complex and sort of twisted novel, so I opted to listen to it thinking the different voices would help. I was wrong. I was in and out of following the plot. What I liked was the historical references and the unique look at the afterlife. On the downside, there were entirely too many characters.

Interesting concept; failure to fully execute.