Nelio Bidemann wrote Lazar at the tender age of 22. The story is based on his ancestors who were noble owners of a castle in Hungaria. Three sets of owners are covered. The time period runs from 1900 to 1956. Once rich they are now impoverished. The story ends at the time of the Hungarian National Uprising.
Owen Wister is the author of The Virginian. Published in 1902, the story takes place in Wyoming Territories in the 1880's. The story is about a tall young man known as the Virginian. He arrives in town on the stage. He has another 200 miles to ride on horse back before he gets to the ranch where he will work. He starts out as a cowboy. After a couple of years he is promoted to foreman. He becomes the Judge's most trusted worker on the Sunk Creek Ranch. Another man on the ranch is an enemy of the Virginian because he was a sore looser in a card game. The Virginian is honest and ethical. He will not use his position as foreman to take advantage of anyone. The Virginian attracts the attention of a local school marm. I can see why this was a very popular book. The story made it into plays and movies too.
Today I attended a meeting of the Winona bird club. The speaker is a naturalist in La Crosse, WI. He spoke about a wetland in southern Brazil called Pantanal. This is the largest tropical wetland in the world. He said the wet season is from October until March. He went in September which is a good time to go because the water levels are way down and the wildlife is concentrated in smaller areas. He stayed at 5 lodges or hotels. He usually traveled by boat. He saw three kinds of kingfishers, 5 kinds of herons, five kinds of hawks, three kinds of toucans, ibises, spoonbills, trogans and 4 species of macaws. He saw lots of caiman. He saw 8 jaguars. Jaguars have the strongest bite. Their bite is stronger than lions and tigers. Their method of killing is crushing the skull. Their primary targets are caiman and copybaras. He saw giant anteaters and giant river otters (six feet long). He saw 3 species of monkeys. He had great photos and an abundance of quiet enthusiasm.
The pantanal is the area of lime green. The river across the top of the map is the Amazon River.
One of my favorite authors is Anne Tyler. She doesn't write often but her stories are about quaint, ordinary people. I just finished reading Three Days In June. In this story Gail is preparing for her daughter's wedding. The rehearsal dinner is on day one, the wedding on day two, and the day after the wedding is on day three. On day one Gail goes to work at her school job as assistant principal. The current principal says she will retire over the summer. Earlier Gail had been promised the job. Now the principal says the board decided (at her encouragement) to bring in another principal from the south. The new principal wants to bring her own assistant. Gail is upset and empties her office and goes home. At home her ex-husband comes to the door with a suitcase and a cat. He was planning to stay at the daughter's place but her fiancee is allergic to cats. Gail lets him stay for a few nights. She helps him buy a suit. The next day they attend the wedding. I know this doesn't sound like much drama. There is no mystery and no conflict. But it was a very pleasant book to read.
Gardiner Harris is an investigative reporter. He wrote No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson and Johnson. Johnson and Johnson, J & J, was a trusted pharmaceutical company. As this books points out repeatedly, that trust was undeserved. J&J knew there was asbestos in their baby powder but claimed there was none. They knew Tylenol overuse was dangerous but kept that information to themselves. They knew the medical mesh they made to hold up bladders was ineffective. They knew a drug used to fight cancer actually caused more tumors to form. They illegally bribed psychiatrists to prescribe Risperidol to children who did not need it plus they hid the side effects. The FDA does not keep us safe and we cannot rely on pharmaceutical companies to put consumer safety above profits.
Amanda Peters is the author of The Berry Pickers. This is a story of a young girl named Ruthie. She is the youngest in her family. They live in Nova Scotia. In the summer of the 1960's, they travel to Maine to pick blueberries. She has three older brothers and an older sister. One day, after lunch, she is sitting on a rock waiting for her family to return when she is kidnapped. She is taken into an unhappy family. Her mother is worried her family will come to get her so she keeps her close. She is now named Norma. She dreams of campfires and family but is told she has an active imagination. Not until both of her parents have died does Norma figure out she was once named Ruthie. This is a tale about determination and unrelenting hope.
Like jumbo shrimp and deafening science, I always thought political science was an oxymoron. I still believed this after Offspring #2 got a degree in political science. The past two weeks I have been taking a political science class designed for seniors at Winona State University. Our second class was today and we have three more to go. We have been studying the importance of the midterm elections. We studied partisan balance in congress and why the party of the president usually loses seats. We studied the changes in election laws since 2024 and gerrymandering. We analyzed house races and identified competitive districts. We analyzed senate and governors races. We spent a little time forecasting results of the midterm elections. I now have changed my mind. There is such a thing as political science. We can study data from the past and try to predict the future. Live and learn!
How far would you go to protect your children from legal consequences? In the book by Herman Koch, a Dutch writer, the parents go way farther than I ever would. The book is called The Dinner. The narrator of the story is Peter, a former history teacher. He and his wife are meeting his brother and his wife to discuss their two sons. They meet at an expensive restaurant. Peter's brother is up for election to be prime minister of the Netherlands. He has plenty of money and likes to flaunt it. Peter is irritated with his brother. Each chapter is named after a course in the dinner from aperitif to digestive. Both brothers and both wives love their sons. After reading this, I believe all four of them were psychopaths. This is a book with an ending you will not see coming.
I was lucky enough to come up on the waiting list for Barbara Kingsolver's latest book called Partita. This story is about Livia Bohusz. Livia grew up on a dairy farm in Tennessee with her parents and older brother. She is talented at the piano. The local church allows her to practice on their piano and also play at services. Her father is busy with the farm. Her mother doesn't encourage her musical talent. Despite the lack of support she wins a state piano contest. She won a full ride to the University of Indiana University to study music. While there she has a torrid love affair with Sigurd who abruptly leaves her to work with the Marxists in Arizona. She returns to Tennessee a broken person. She gradually heals. Eventually she ends up falling in love with the farmer next door. He works the farm and she teaches piano lessons. One day she gets a call from Sigurd after 30 years of no contact. This visit causes Livia to dwell on her past the the choices she made. Although this is not my favorite book by this author, it was a good one.
Rachel Hawkins is the author of The Storm. The story is set in the fictional town of Saint Medard's Bay, Alabama, near Gulf Shores. Geneva is the owner of The Rosealee Inn. When she hears that an author from California is coming to stay she has hope for her business. Saint Medard's Bay is famous for the number of hurricanes that come through. So far the Rosealee Inn has survived all the storms. The author is coming to investigate the murder of a politician's son. A local girl, Lo, was accused of the murder but was never found guilty in court. To Geneva's surprise the author brings Lo who is now 60 years old. As the book progresses we learn who was responsible for the death of the politician's son. Other surprises about parentage turn up too.
This is a novel that takes place in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980's. Shuggie Bain was written by Douglas Stuart who also grew up in Scotland. The story is about Shuggie, the third and youngest child of Agnes Bain. Shuggie's older siblings have left home to avoid living with Agnes who is an alcoholic. They live in poverty. Agnes tries sobriety several times. She goes to AA meetings. One time she was sober for over a year and working nights at a gas station. Her boyfriend wants her to have one glass of wine with dinner and bingo, she is back to being an alcoholic again. Rather than playing with his friends of the neighborhood, Shuggie is making tea for his mother or cleaning her. This is a heart breaking story. Some of the Scottish slang was impossible for me to understand.
Wally Lamb is the author of The River Is Waiting. This is an Oprah book club book and like all the books Oprah likes it is full of broken people and tragedy. Corby Ledbetter is the protagonist in this book. He is young, married, and the father of twins. He makes a huge mistake. Is his mistake unforgivable? Corby pays the price that it is unforgivable. In the meantime he tries to be a good person. He tries to help others who are in need. He tries to stay clean and sober. I liked the book but towards the end I was overwhelmed by tragedy piled upon tragedy. The author didn't have to make the story this tragic. It was over the top.
I got lucky today. I already have 4 apples in the fridge. No matter, I found a bag of Haralson apples at the local supermarket and I bought it. These Haralson apples were local from the Eckart orchard in Trempeleau, Wisconsin. I like Haralson apples because we had some Haralson trees in my back yard when I was a kid. The Haralson apples are medium sized which I like a lot better than some of the giant apples I normally find in the stores. Haralson apples are not as sweet as many of the apples. Now, let me think. Should I make a pie? Apple crisp? Apple sauce?
Today I went to a lecture at the history center about the flood in 1965 that took place in Winona. The east side of town (where I live) was hit hard. My street was under water but two blocks away from the river from my house was not underwater. The flood crested at 20.77 feet on April 19th. Lake City and Wabasha also crested that day. People had to be evacuated. The mayor hired young men and high school boys to build dikes and fill sand bags for $1.50 per hour which was good pay in those days. The dikes were made of piles of dirt lined with plastic and covered with sand bags. People walked the top of the dikes to make sure they didn't fail. The mayor hired girls and older people to make sandwiches. Several people in the audience remember the flood and did help with the dikes and the sandwiches. The sandwiches were baloney or spam. The sewer system was so inundated with river water that manhole covers were flying into the air followed by a stream of water. They solved this problem in two ways. They build pipes in the road that went 12 feet into the air. The excess water could go up that pipe and stay contained until the river level decreased. The other way was to take large rubber bags, fill them with water, the plug the man holes from below. If the dikes had failed Winona would not continue to be an island city. Winona would have been a two island city. The lecture was interesting. Having audience members who were actually there share their memories was very nice.
Tayari Jones is the author of Kin. This is a story about two girls who grew up together in Honeysuckle, Louisiana. Both girls are motherless. Vernice's mother was killed by her father in a murder/suicide before she was six months old. Her Aunt returned from Ohio to raise her. Annie's mother abandoned her soon after birth. She was raised by her grandmother. Annie left high school early to find her mother in Atlanta. Vernice left after graduating high school to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Both girls struggled to be without parents but in different ways. This book, published in 2026, gave an interesting outlook on what it is like to be young, abandoned, black, and poor in the deep south.
Renee Rosen is the author of Let's Call Her Barbie. The book is about a woman named Ruth Handler. Along with her husband she founded a toy company called Mattel. She was an inventor and a business magnate. She excelled in selling. While on a trip to Europe with her son, she came across a doll in Switzerland named Bild Lilli. At the time all the dolls were babies. Bild Lilli was an adult doll with adult features. After that, Ruth's passion was the Barbie doll (named after her daughter). She neglected her children and spent all her waking hours at work. Ruth was the only person who believed Barbie would become a hit toy. Together with another inventor named Jack and several clothing designers they made a fortune on the Barbie doll. Later came the Ken doll (named after her son). She suffered sexual discrimination from bankers and investors along the way. Later, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she stopped paying close attention to what was happening at Mattel. Someone mishandled money and Ruth was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. She paid her fines. Later she invented a prosthesis for mastectomy patients. I enjoyed reading about such a strong woman.
Jesse Q. Sutanto is the author of Ms. Mebel Goes Back To The Chopping Block. This is a humorous fiction book about an insuppressible Ms. Mebel. Ms. Mebel is a wife and mother living in Indonesia. She and her husband are of Chinese/Indonesian descent. They have a son, a daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. One day Ms. Mebel's husband comes home from work to announce he is seeking a divorce and is going to marry the cook Ms. Mebel hired to please her husband. Ms. Mebel's whole life was in helping her husband and her son. Now she is lost. Ms. Mebel has no filter. She says things that are rude. She has a tendency to invade personal boundaries. She is concerned what other people in her society will think once she is divorced. At first she copes with the divorce by spending money on designer clothes, shoes and hand bags. Then she copes by signing up for French cooking lessons. She thinks if she can cook French food well enough her husband will take her back. She ends up at a culinary school in rural England. As the weeks pass by the things that were important to her (social standing, designer clothes, her husband) become less important. New things become important such as friendships, good tasting food, and having a skill. When I first started reading this book her character was so over the top I thought the entire book would be silly. By the end of the book I changed my mind and I now think this is a book worth reading.
Laura Dave is the author of the mystery novel called The Night We Lost Him. The story is about a father of three, an ex-husband of three, and the owner of luxury rentals on both the east coast and the west coast. Liam is the father and he kept his three children very separate. When he suddenly dies falling from a cliff outside one of his favorite homes on the California coast, his children try to figure out how he could fall from a property he was very familiar with. The authorities rule his death as accidental but his children don't believe that. The story is narrated in half by Nora, the daughter. The other half is narrated by Liam himself and it is unclear why he kept so many secrets. The book moves a little slow but the character of Nora is completely relatable.
I enjoyed reading The Night We Became Strangers by Lorena Hughes in part because it is set in Quito, Ecuador which is a city I have been too. In this story a family radio station decides to put on a radio play much like War Of The Worlds that aired in the United States eleven years earlier. The people in Quito took it seriously. Panic spread throughout the city. Even though various sodas were advertised throughout the broadcast the idea that Martians had landed near Quito was real for many people. When it was over anger set in. People rioted at the radio station and set the building on fire leaving Valeria an orphan. Her uncle sends her to a boarding school outside of the city. When she graduates she tries to find out what happened that night. Her uncle is unwilling to talk about. Her former friend, Matias, and his mother also refuse to talk about it. Valeria does not give up though. This book had a surprise ending and a nice writing style.
Nelio Bidemann wrote Lazar at the tender age of 22. The story is based on his ancestors who were noble owners of a castle in Hungaria. Three...
