How May I Offend You Today

Author: Susannah B. Lewis
Genre: Humor / Non-Fiction
Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc., 2020
Pages: 224
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Lewis turns her trademark humor to ordinary events that work her nerves - from people who wear t-shirts with indecent images to public displays of affection in the plumbing aisle of Lowe's - while keeping a wry eye on herself and her own temptation to vent grievances "like a teenage girl in overalls and Birkenstocks."

Wearing together anecdotes from her distinctly Southern life with frequent references to the Bible, what she calls our "manual for living," Lewis says what many of us have thought, and in the process encourages us to stand firm in our views.

Review: I follow Susannah on Facebook (Whoa! Susannah), and find myself chuckling or nodding while reading her posts. She's a likeable person. That said, I struggle with this type of book; anecdotal and each chapter a new "story" or theme. I'd love to read a novel she's written because she does have story-telling and writing skills. This just isn't my genre.

Bright Lights, Prairie Dust

Author: Karen Grassle
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: She Writes Press, 2021
Pages: 349
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on the Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc. In this candid memoir, Grassle reveals her journey to succeed as an actress even as she struggles to overcome depression, combat her own dependence on alcohol, and find true love. With humor and hard-won wisdom, Grassle takes readers on an aspiring journey through the political turmoil on 60s campuses, on to studies with some of the most celebrated artists at the famed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and ultimately behind the curtains of Broadway stages and storied Hollywood sets. In these pages, readers meet actors and directors who have captivated us on screen and stage as they fall in love, betray and befriend, and don costumes only to reveal themselves. We know Karen Grassle best as the proud prairie woman Caroline Ingalls, with her quiet strength and devotion to family, but this memoir introduces readers to the complex, funny, rebellious, and soulful woman who, in addition to being the force behind those many strong women she played, fought passionately - as a writer, producer, and activist - on behalf of equal rights for women. Raw, emotional, and tender, Bright Lights celebrates and honors womanhood, in all its complexity.

Review: As a child, I was a huge fan of the Little House books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mom read the series to my sister and I more than once, and I read it on my own as well as I got a little older. However, I could not get into the tv show. It just didn't follow the books closely enough, and the characters didn't look as I had imagined in my head - you know, typical reader probs.

I read a memoir (Prairie Tale) written by Melissa Gilbert, the tv Laura, a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. I'm always interested in reading other's experiences and enjoy a memoir from-time-to-time so Bright Lights, Prairie Dust it was.

Reading about Karen Grassle's family history and childhood was interesting to me. Reading about her struggles as an actress prior to the Little House show was not. Once she was cast as Ma, the memoir took off again. All in all, an interesting, quick read.

1491

Author: Charles C. Mann
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2006
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man's first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways were are now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this is a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Review: For as long as I can remember, I've had an interest in Native American history. As a kid, I thought it would be so cool to visit Peru to see the land of the Incas. I'd still like to. This book sounded right up my alley, although I was hoping for more information about the tribes that lived in what is now the United States. 

Really interesting book, but thank God for audio. The sections of this that don't interest me so much would have been quite tedious to read in print.

I recommend this only if you have an interest in the subject matter. This isn't the book to pick up if you're just looking for some good non-fiction reading to fill your days.

Memphis: A Novel

Author: Tara M. Stringfellow
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2022
Pages: 272
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family's trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass - only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secretas case a longer shadow than any of them expected. 

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. one of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother's mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would have to be defined by loss and
anger - that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paintings an indelible portrait of inheritance celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

Review: I wanted to love this novel, and I did get caught up in Hazel's story. I would love a stand-alone novel about her.  

Memphis succeeds in transporting the reader to the city itself, and that was probably the strongest/most memorable thing about this novel.

The timeline's structure felt scattered and jumbled. I had a hard time remembering who I was reading about and what year it was. I kept trying to root out the plot, and then I thought maybe it was supposed to be character-driven. However, it was missing development and growth.

This author has potential so I'm interested to read what she publishes next. 

Until Leaves Fall in Paris

Author: Sarah Sundin
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group, 2022
Pages: 416
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: As the Nazis march toward Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. Lucie struggles to run Green Leaf Books due to oppressive German laws and harsh conditions, but she finds a way to aid the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books.

Widower Paul Aubrey wants nothing more than to return to the States with his little girl, but the US Army convinces him to keep his factory running and obtain military information from his German customers. As the war rages on, Paul offers his own resistance by sabotaging his product and hiding British airman in his factory. After they meet in the bookstore, Paul and Lucie are drawn to each other, but she rejects him when she discove
rs he sells to the Germans. And for Paul to win her trust would mean betraying his mission.

Review: I started this novel in March, and it has taken me this long to complete it. I liked it, but I kept waiting for some horrible atrocity, which prevented me from actually being absorbed into the story. I should have just buckled down and read it. It's a good story, a little too neatly wrapped perhaps, but good.

One of the Boys

Author: Daniel Magariel
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Scribner, 2018
Pages: 192
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: The three of them - a twelve-year-old boy, his older brother, their father - have won the war: the father's term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave their Kansas home and drive through the night to Albuquerque, eager to begin again, united by the thriller possibility of carving out a new life together. The boys go to school, join basketball teams, make friends. Meanwhile their father works from home, smoking cheap cigars to hide another smell. But soon the little missteps - the dead-eyed absentmindedness, the late night noises, the comings and goings of increasingly odd characters - become worrisome, and the boys find themselves watching their father change, grow erratic, then dangerous.

Review: This novel had potential, and I've read other dark, disturbing novels and liked them, difficult though it was. However, there was a disconnect in this novel. The characters aren't named, the motivations not always understood, and the epilogue adds nothing to the story. Disappointing.

At least it's a short novel so it wasn't a huge time commitment.

The Atomic City Girls

Author: Janet Beard
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn't officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months - a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines who purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders.

The girls spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiers, scientist, and workmen at dances and movies, bowling alleys and canteens. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins and affair with Sam Cantor, the young Jewish physicist from New York who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too well, while her beautiful roommate Cici is on her own mission: to find a wealthy husband and escape her sharecropper roots. Across town, African-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government's plans, only that his new job pays enough to make it worth leaving his family behind, at least for now. But a breach in security will intertwine his fate with June's search for answers.

When the bombing of Hiroshima brings the truth about Oak Ridge into devastating focus, June must confront her ideals about loyalty, patriotism, and war itself.

Review: This book has been on my radar for quite some time, and when "a novel about a historical event" popped up in a reading challenge I'm doing for a Facebook group, it seemed like a good option.

If I have one complaint it's that there are so many characters to follow. However, I believe the author wanted to show life in Oak Ridge from various points-of-view: the women who were taking the place of the men in the workforce since so many were fighting oversees, the scientists, the black laborers, all are represented in this novel. Eventually, it is revealed how all the characters are linked. Unfortunately, character development was lacking.

Where this novel succeeded though was that it brought Oak Ridge to life in a way that a museum exhibit cannot.

Along with actual pictures provided by the Department of Energy, this is an excellent book about a secretive time in American history.

I highly recommend a novel I read a few years ago, The Wives of Los Alamos: same time period, related topic, and really well done.

The Second Mrs. Astor

Author: Shana Abe
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2021
Pages: 336
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Madeleine Talmage Force is just seventeen when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Madeleine is beautiful, intelligent, and solidly upper-class, but the Astors are in a league apart. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialist. Jack is dashing and industrious - a hero of the Spanish-American war, an inventor, and a canny businessman. Despite their twenty-nine-year age difference, and the scandal of Jack's recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love - and becomes the press' favorite target.

On their extended honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time - and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner. When the ships hits an iceberg close to midnight on April 14th, there is no immediate panic. The swift, state-of-the-art RMS Titanic seems unsinkable. As Jack helps Madeleine into a lifeboat, he assures her that he'll see her soon in New York. . .

Four months later, at the Astor's Fifth Avenue mansion, a widowed Madeleine gives birth to their son. In the wake of the disaster, the press has elevated her to the status of virtuous, tragic heroine. But Madeleine's most important decision still lies ahead: whether to accept the role assigned to her, or carve out her own remarkable path. . .

Review: Every time I read a novel in which Titanic sinks, I hope the outcome is different. This was no different. I fell in love with Madeleine Force and John Jacob Astor and so wanted them to have a long, happy life together. 

I really enjoyed this author's writing style and the details of the Astor's courtship, life, and marriage, brief though it was.