The Girl With The Louding Voice

 Abi Dare is the author of The Girl With The Louding Voice. Set in Nigeria, the story is about Adunni, a 14 year old girl who grew up in poverty. Her mother made a promise that Adunni would go to school. Her mother died when she was 13. Her father sold her to an older man who already had two wives. Her worth? Four goats, some chickens, two bags of rice and a television set. Adunni has had a tough life but her struggle to get an education continues. She knows English but is not fluent. I listened to an audio book of this story and I recommend it because I think it would be easier to hear it than read it. For example, Adunni uses off and on as verbs. Instead of saying, "He turned on the light," or "She flipped off the light," Adunni says, "He oned the light," or "She offed the light." This story, set in a third world country, reminded me of a female version of Le Miserabe. Great story.

 

 

Happy Longest Day of Sunlight Of The Year

 

Steamboat Days

Today is the end of a five day celebration here in Winona called steamboat days. There was a carnival a few blocks away on 2nd Street. Here on 3rd Street was a classic car show. Musicians performed at Levee Park. Food trucks were available. Princesses were elected.

This afternoon a parade was held on Broadway. I brought a chair and watched the performance. Here are the Clydesdale horses. My favorite are the marching bands. I saw high school bands from all over SE Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Richfield and Montevideo high school bands came too. Parades get a little crazy. Tiny children run into the street for tootsie rolls and starbursts while giant machines with big wheels go by. There was a pumpkin thrower from a rural Wisconsin town. Instead of pumpkins they loaded the explosive device with 2 inch plastic balls. The kids enjoyed catching the balls. Another refuse hauler had a t-shirt bazooka that threw blue company logo t-shirts into the crowd. I don't know why some of these events are so popular.

 

Whistler

 Whistler is Ann Patchett's newest novel. The story is about Daphne. Daphne and her husband are visiting the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City. An older, white haired man seems to be following them. The man turns out to be Daphne's stepfather who was married to her mother for a year when Daphne was nine years old. Daphne and her stepfather were involved in a car accident one winter night when she was nine. After the accident Daphne's mother divorced her step-father and she never saw him again. Daphne and her step-father were quite close. Her mother never explained why she divorced him. Once they met again at the art museum, nothing could keep them apart. Sometimes family fiction is the best.

 

 

Bad Move

Linwood Barclay is the author of Bad Move. This mystery/comedy fiction novel is about a guy name Zach Walker. Zach is very concerned about safety. Prior to his wife and two teenaged children moving to the suburbs, they lived in the city. Lately their neighborhood had taken a turn for the worse with drug users and prostitutes frequenting the area. He decided to move to a new subdivision in the suburbs. His wife worked for a local newspaper. He worked from home. The two kids attended high school. Zach has a problem with his wife leaving her keys in the vehicle or hanging from the front door lock. Zach has a problem with his two kids leaving their backpacks at the top of the stairs which is a serious tripping hazard. Zach is a nagger about safety. Sometimes he makes bad moves. When he found his wife's keys in the car he decided to move the car around the corner and out of sight leading her to believe the car was stolen. She did not appreciate his safety lesson. Zach makes a series of bad moves like this when an actual crime occurs in his neighborhood. Two people are murdered and thanks to his bad moves he is implicated in one of the murders. This is a somewhat humorous story about a paranoid freak of an anxious and unlikable character. 

 

 

The Lost Story Of Eva Fuentes

I read a book set in Cuba. The Lost Story Of Eva Fuentes was written by Chanel Cleeton. The story is told by three women in three timelines. Eva's story is told in 1900 before Castro came to power. With other Cuban teachers, they traveled to Massachusetts to study at Harvard for the summer. She writes a book while she is there. Pilar's story is told in Havana in 1966. Pilar is a librarian trying to save books from being destroyed by the government. Any books critical of the government are banned. People who leave Cuba are not allowed to take their belongings with them. Pilar hides books for families and arranges for them to get their books back in the United States. Margo's story is that she is working for people who have lost art or rare books. Her job is to track down their belongings. Her job in searching for Eva's book puts her in danger. The writing was beautiful and the history was richly detailed.

 

 

Weaver Dunes

Today I volunteered to collect seeds at Weaver Dunes Scientific and Nature Area which is run by the Nature Conservancy. The location is near the town of Kellogg. I was the first  person to arrive. On the driveway I spotted this mature Blandings turtle. I stopped the car and approached the turtle. I waited a few minutes. I talked to it. I explained the danger of waiting in the road. I touched it with my foot. The turtle wouldn't move. Another car approached. A man got out. Together we went to see the turtle which had decided at that point to move off the road. We followed the trail of it's tail and found it waiting in the tall grass on the way to a pond. The female Blandings turtle are sexually mature at age 14 so seeing one this size was very satisfying. This is turtle nesting time.

This is a hairy puccoon.

Our goal was to collect porcupine grass. I put a bungee cord around some belt loops and ran the handle of a milk jug through the cord. I think I gather a little more than half a cup of seed. Porcupine grass has sharp seeds. Seriously sharp seeds. You could remove a splinter from your skin with one of these seeds. One seed even punctured the plastic of the milk jug. The seed tips are heavy and have a long attachment called an awn. We removed the awns so the seeds wouldn't get all twisted together.

The prairie was very pretty. I have never seen so much healthy and lush poison ivy in my life. I washed my clothes and took a shower when I got home. This delicate beauty was all over the hills. This is called a larkspur which is in the delphinium family.

Besides our leader from the Nature Conservancy, four other men made up our group.

This is called goat's rue.

Our leader said they found a new species of milkweed on an east facing hill. She spent an hour looking for it. Last week it was knee high and had a flower bud on it. She found it but most of the plant had been eaten. This is a clasping milkweed. The leaves attach to the stem in a different way that other milkweed.

I always thought of this as goat's beard but the actual name is salsafy. Salsafy sounds much like satisfy. Salsafy is how you feel after you eat a tasty taco.

Our three hours were almost up when we found this fawn lying next to the roadway. I thought one older man in our group would really enjoy seeing this fawn since he seemed to love nature so much. I point out the fawn and wait for his reaction. He pretends to shoot it with a gun. You can never tell with some people.

 

Martha's Vineyard Beach And Book Club

 If you like historical fiction I think you would like Martha's Vineyard Beach And Book Club written by Martha Hall Kelly. The author has family ties to Martha's Vineyard as her grandparents had a grocery store on the island. The story is about two sisters who lived on the island year round. They weren't as wealthy as the summer visitors. They lived with their grandmother on a farm near the end and high point of the island. Their brother also lived with them. Before he went off to fight in Normandy in World War Two their brother planted a crop of potatoes that should ripen before other potatoes guaranteeing them a high price at harvest time. One of the sisters, Briar, was unconventional. She wore men's clothing. She spotted German submarines offshore and reported their presence so often no one believed her. The other sister, Cadence, loved to read. With a group of friends they started a book club on the beach. A mysterious man washes ashore and is taken in by Cadence, Briar and the grandmother. A enemy spy is on the island but Cadence and Briar have a hard time figuring out who it is. The title of the book and the picture on the cover would lead you to believe that this is a romance book but that is false. This is historical fiction at it's finest.

 

 

Taft

Ann Patchett is the author of Taft, a fiction novel set in Memphis, Tennessee. John manages a bar in Memphis. Before that he was a drummer in a jazz band. He chose to take a steady job in an effort to convince his girlfriend that he can be a responsible parent and should be able to see his son more often. One of John's new employees is a young girl named Fay Taft. Fay and her brother Carl become regulars in John's life. John tries to figure out what kind of life Fay and Carl's father provided for them. His obsession with the Taft father takes over his own life and concerns. Like other Patchett novels, the story is about a regular person living a regular life.

 

 

Prudence

 David Treuer wrote the historical fiction novel called Prudence. Set in northern Minnesota in the early 1940's, some guys come back from college to the family resort before heading off to World War II. Across the river is a German POW camp. One of the prisoners escapes the camp and the young, macho college boys take off into the woods with rifles to find him. They don't find the prisoner but someone else gets shot. The violence of that day lasted for decades. This book is a poignant saga of a tale about race, relationships, and forgiveness.

 

 

Talk Before Sleep

Elizabeth Berg is the author of the novel called Talk Before Sleep. This novel isn't for everyone but I liked it. The story is about a pair of women friends. One of the friends is married with a young child. The other in divorced and living with terminal cancer. The book is sad, of course, given the plot but also humorous.  This is a great story to take your mind off your troubles.  

 

 

A Rare Event

Offspring #2 and I like to play scrabble. I lose 96% of the games but this time I won by a mere 4 points. Even though they got a bingo (ringtones/shrimgtones) I won anyway. They get a bingo nearly every game. I have never gotten a bingo yet although I have come close. Anyway, it feels good to win.

 

The Moonlight Runner

 I learned a lot of facts about the relationship between Ireland and England by reading The Moonlight Runner written by Karen Robards. This historical fiction novel starts out in Ireland in 1918. The Great War and the Spanish flu have taken a toll on Ireland. Rynn Carmichael is a nurse working with wounded veterans at a country estate in Ireland. Some locals are fighting British rule. The Brits aren't having any of it. Every time the Irish try to enforce their right to be a separate country the British react with punitive measures. I knew India and Kenya struggled to be free of British rule but I never knew the Irish had it this bad. The Irish tried to be reasonable but being reasonable didn't work. Previous to this book I had thought of Winston Churchill as a mostly likeable character. I did not knew he called in a mercenary militia called the "Black and Tans" to inflict pain and suffering on Irish people who ended up having zero civil rights. Only when the Irish leaders took the facts to other countries who stood up the the Brits did they finally agree to negotiate. I will have to look for more historical fiction novels written by this talented author.

 

 

Too Bright To Hear Too Loud To See

 I read an incredible story about a man with bi-polar disease called Too Bright To Hear Too Loud To See. The author is Juliann Gary. At the end of the book I was surprised to see that she was female because the whole book is from the male perspective. Having this mental illness herself she writes a true story. The story is about a fictional character named Greyson Todd. Greyson is a Hollywood studio executive who has spent years covering up his mental illness. Eventually he abandons his wife and daughter and travels around the world displaying all of his symptoms. He goes from South America to Africa to Asia. After ten years he ends up in a psychiatric institution in New York City. Here he undergoes electric shock treatments. He comes to enjoy being strapped down, medicated and treated. At his worst he heard bees buzzing in his head and glass shards in his veins and arteries. This dramatic story helped me learn more about what it is like to have a mental illness.

 

 

 

 

Far And Away

 Far and Away was written by Amy Poeppel. I listened to the audio book which took about 12 hours. In this story a woman who lives in Dallas impulsively decides to switch homes with a woman from Berlin. The woman in Dallas is named Lucy. Lucy has a boy who is a high school senior and twin tweens who are girls. Jack, the high school senior, gets in trouble in high school and gets expelled. Neighborhood families disapprove of Jack and are taking it out on the family by vandalizing their home. Greta, who lives in Berlin with her orthopedic surgeon, Otto, is completely taken by surprise when Otto announces they will spend the summer in Dallas. This humorous story about two very different families switching homes for the summer kept me completely entertained.

 

 

The Calamity Club

 I was lucky to get a hold of a bestselling book. I loved Kathryn Stockett's book The Help. I also loved The Calamity Club. The story is set in Oxford, Mississippi during the great depression. Times are hard for everybody. Birdie is taking care of her mother and grandmother at home. She is sent to her sister's house in a bigger city to ask for funds to save the family farm. Birdie seems to get along with her sister's mother in law when  her sister can't. No one in the family knows that they are out of money too. Birdie helps her sister at a local orphanage run by one of the most evil characters you will ever read about. This is a great story written by a great author.