When I was a child, I loved Anne Lindbergh’s books. Since grownups knew that I loved to read, they would ask me what authors I liked, and every time I mentioned Anne Lindbergh, they’d say “Ah, yes! Anne Morrow Lindbergh.” No, actually, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the mother of the children’s author (whose full name was Anne Spencer Lindbergh).
Right? Plus, some of the slang used has sent me to Google more than once, and my mother is British.
Recently finished:
Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman. Part of the Newbery book club. It’s good, though biography is not really something I tend to read.
Rest You Merry, by Charlotte MacLeod. I didn’t end up really liking any of the characters, so I felt disengaged. It’s fairly funny at times, though.
A Gathering of Days, by Joan W. Blos. Part of the Newbery book club. A gentle, easy read, though nothing stellar.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor. Part of the Newbery book club. I was expecting a gut punch and got something less devastating (though still sad). Good characters, except the inconsistent narrator.
Murder by the Seaside, by Julie Anne Lindsey. To quote my own Goodreads review: " An absolute mess of a plot, with a protagonist randomly deciding she MUST solve a mystery for REASONS and then randomly getting assaulted, doing something stupid, fainting, being rescued, wondering if the boy who just kissed her might like her “in that way,” wondering if another boy might like her “in that way,” being scared then doing something scary, swooning, throwing a tantrum about her independence, assault, faint, stupid, rescue, swoon, scared, tantrum, swoon, assault, faint, stupid, rescue, faint, swoon, faint, scared, assault, stupid, rescue, assault, scared, tantrum, swoon, swoon, faint, stupid…"
Currently reading:
The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander. Newbery.
Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell. Newbery.
The Body in the Belfry, by Katherine Hall Page. Cozy.
Wildest Dreams, by Kristen Ashley. I thought fantasy, but I think now it’s romance.
And I still have a list I’ve started and haven’t finished. Bah.
The first one is a bit rough, the Sarah & Max books, and Madoc Rhys ones are the best in my not even remotely humble opinion.
I’ve started another James Willard Schultz book, Rising Wolf, The White Blackfoot. Hugh “Rising Wolf” Monroe was Canadian-born, but left home at 18 to see the West (Montana and other areas). This was three years before Lewis & Clark made their journey through the area. He quickly went to live with the Blackfoot tribes, learning their languages and marrying into the Blackfoot tribe. He spent many years living among the Kootenai and died at a very advanced age, estimated to be at least 108 years old. This book is an account of the first year of his life on the frontier.
An instance here: where there may be uncertainty as to whether “does”, or “doesn’t”, is appropriate. One of the writers concerned, showed up briefly and incidentally in another recent Cafe Society thread. Two British female novelists who were great-grandmother and great-granddaughter: Elinor Glyn (1864 – 1943) and Caroline Glyn (1947 – 1981).
Elinor – as Wiki puts it – “specialised in romantic fiction considered scandalous for its time”, though “relatively tame by modern standards”. Her output of such novels was considerable, in the early years of the 20th century; later, she spent time as a scriptwriter for Hollywood film-makers. The lady’s personal life was reputedly, also amorously colourful. Her best-known novel is Three Weeks, published 1907: “about an exotic Balkan queen who seduces a young British aristocrat”.
Caroline’s life was much shorter than her great-grandmother’s – she was born with a serious heart defect which more or less guaranteed that her lifespan would be fairly brief. She had a “precocious talent”: her first novel, *Don’t Knock The Corners Off * – about British schooling for those of teenage years, and its flaws, at that time; and about being a teenager – was published when she was aged 15. She had published, another half-dozen novels and a fair amount of poetry (was also into the visual arts). At the age of 20, she became a nun in the enclosed Poor Clares order, and remained so until her death aged 33. (It would seem that some arrangement must have been come to, to enable her to combine “nunning” and novel-writing.) The only work by her that I’ve read, is Don’t Knock… (impressive, for a fifteen-year-old author): I gather though, that her later novels (which I must try some time) partake of familiarity with the world, and humour – in her teens she was apparently an engagingly kooky lass, with a great love of the natural world and, especially, trees; it would seem for sure, that she was not a closed-minded, sanctimonious, censorious kind of “monastic person”.
I just started The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. A friend of mine lent me some of her books and I’m getting them read to return to her. I’m not usually into this subgenre of fantasy, but I’m really enjoying them. I read The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls first. I like her worldbuilding. I’m always happy to find a writer that I enjoy who has a ton of books!
Next up will be The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. The Fella already read it and said it was great.
I greatly liked Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels, but couldn’t get, much, into the Chalion material. I found *The Curse of Chalion * good-ish; but got bogged down in, and came to find annoying, Paladin of Souls – packed it in maybe halfway through. Have tried no more “Chalion”. Feel sometimes that I’m hard to please, not in a good way !
I find that I like Carol Berg and Martha Wells in the same way.
Finished Cartoons for Victory by Warren Bernard, a collection of cartoons and comic strips during World War II, with some explanatory material. Nothing here I wasn’t familiar with, but it was interesting to read the comics from the times. My favorite was about tire rationing; bank robbers were racing away and one cop yells to another, “Don’t shoot the tires, McShane!”
Just started And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life, by Jane Christmas. It’s her memoir of visiting various religious orders when she was interested in joining one herself.
I’m binging the audiobooks of Adrian McKinty’s Detective Sean Duffy series. Set in Ireland during the 80s, our hero busily checks underneath his car for mercury tilt bombs as he solves crimes with “The Troubles” as a backdrop. The plots meanader a bit, but D.I. Duffy is an appealing character, in the world weary tradition of a younger Harry Bosch, and he has excellent taste in music. 
(I guess I should admit that I am a bit hypnotised by the lovely accent and cadance of this Irish narrator, who I would happily listen to read Danielle Steele …so I would.)
Flipping through the index on Boardwalk Empire, I find that there’s not a single mention of the Steel Pier! That’s kinda like writing a history of Manhattan and not mentioning Times Square!
I finished Necropolis by James Silverstein this morning. I enjoyed the book thoroughly.
I started The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker this morning. So far so good.
I read Jewel’s book Chasing Down the Dawn, written while she was on tour back in 2000. It was sort of a memoir, but more of a journal than anything. And, well, I think it kind of suffered for that. Her more recent memoir, Never Broken, is my favorite book. I love her insights, her writing style, her personality. Chasing Down the Dawn still has her beautiful writing style, but it lacks organization, and I wish she (or someone, at least) had spent more time editing it to read more like an actual book. I still enjoyed reading it, though.
Also read Penpal, which I learned about in one of these monthly threads. I completely recommend it. The book got me so hooked, to the point where I’d be staying up past my bedtime and jumping if my husband came into the room because I was so engrossed in the book that I was losing track of my surroundings. But it’s also creepy, so don’t read it if you don’t like horror.
Then I read Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Perceptions. The book looks at magic tricks and explains how they’re performed, then goes on to explain how our visual and neural systems work in such a way that the magician successfully manipulates our attention. It was engaging, and I was frequently (very frequently) putting the book down to pull up YouTube and Google whatever magician they were talking about, so that I could see the actual trick rather than just a written explanation of it. The videos greatly enhanced my reading experience. I wasn’t a fan of the epilogue, where I feel like they were trying too hard to make the stuff in the book practically useful for everyday life. Just knowing the stuff about contrast detection and change blindness and eye tracking was cool enough, I don’t need to be advised on how to charm my boss or confuse a salesman.
IfinishedThe Gentleman by Leo Forrest…what can I say about it that hasn’t been said about horse dung already?
Oh darn, I just picked that up at the library. 
Finished And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life, by Jane Christmas. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very interesting, either. A man had just proposed to the author, and she visited three convents and a monastery to see if she’d rather become a nun or get married. It’s a memoir, by the way. The man was remarkably okay with this, waiting over a year for her answer. Reader, she married him.
Just started Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins, for the Newbery Club.
snerk
Your mileage may vary, reviews called it hilarious and I …had an entirely different experience.
Just finished my audiobook of Ernest Hemingway’s 1932 nonfiction book Death in the Afternoon, about what he called the “decadent art” of bullfighting. He didn’t shy away much from the blood and suffering of the ring, but argued that the skill, showmanship and courage of the best matadors made it worth observing, and an important part of Spanish culture. Reading the Wiki article on bullfighting, it’s interesting to see just how little has changed since he wrote it.
Still reading Dan Chaon’s creepy, present-day thriller Ill Will, as well as the histories Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 by Richard R. Beeman, and A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon. All different; all good.