⧫ November ⧫ 2022 ⧫ Recap

HA! WP just prompted me to share 5 things I’m good at…

1. Maintaining a passion for writing letters
2. Being a pie ambassador
3. Loving on the dogs
4. Keeping up with this blog, even if inconsistently
5. Picking myself back up when I fall

 Monthly Recap Time! November

• 5 books; 91 for the year
• 1317 pages, 21.75 hours | 25775 total pages, 217.8 hours for the year so far

I continue to have a flailing ability to focus on reading. I have managed to do more audiobooking due to being in a car more than ever, commuting to the J-O-B. It’s been cold and the old dog has been off & on with wanting to walk so that has diminished, AND!!!

EXCITING NEWS! We got another dog! Who is *not* leash-trained so managing an audiobook/walk is a future goal with this boy:

His name is Copper. He is a 3 yo Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. Esther is not amused…

I started an abandonning of more books lately, or acquired-and-not-even-started!! library books lately, … you may not even be able to call me a “reader”. Oh well, I still managed 5 titles, short as one might be. I finished the Bookclub pick (Into the Abyss) and did OK on adding in some Nonfiction, so I am reasonably satisfied with the results.

Into the Abyss, which I convinced club to read because it was #NonfictionNovember (yay me!) also gave me a pie mention which was delightful to encounter.

…, so he asked me if I would make pies out of them.

~80% in when sharing about Paul peeling a bunch of apples.

Write For Your Life was my favorite. It would be a good gift if you have a letter-writer/reader in your life.

and finally, we come to December. I know blogging has been hit or miss with me but I do love to track my books. The TOB Long List has been out a few weeks now and the Short List should be any day; I hope I get more excited but I do not think I will be as obsessed with the Tournament as much in 2023, what a new family member to work with and distract from sitting around and, well. SITTING. He is high energy!

What was YOUR favorite book of November? Especially NONFICTION so I can add to my list for next year.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Jolly Jolabokaflod!!!

Copyright © 2007-2022. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

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⬥OCTOBER⬥ 2022

 Monthly Recap Time! October

• 8 books; 86 for the year
• 2740 pages, 25.78 hours | 24462 total pages, 196.1 hours for the year so far

I have had a rollercoaster of an emotional month. But I read these! And they were all 4 or 5 slicers of pie reads: I gave 5s to World Piece, Address Unknown (a short story about how seemingly nice people buy into evil rhetoric and then join radical movements that justify other people as subhuman), and Fidelity. The rest got 4 slices. I didn’t even know who Tom Morello was – interesting guy. I do love the Audible musician stories. I wish I had read + listened to the Cruz, but that is all on me. I recommend it; definitely a terrific immigrant story with humor and love.

I had an increase in blogging, too. Thanks for the comments and support there.

October was the BRING BACK of audiobooks. I listened to some. I have a new job that gives me drive time in the car.

Of course, World PIEce had pie. And The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek had a lot of pie, too. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water featured pastelitos, a fried handpie of goodness on many Dominican menus.

November is another month; I hope it brings you HOPE. Hope is the belief in things unseen.

What was YOUR favorite book of October? ARE YOU PLANNING ON READING FOR NONFICTION NOVEMBER? Tell me your recommendations.

Copyright © 2007-2022. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Thoughts by Maggie O’Farrell, Blackstone Audio, 7 hours 18 minutes

Challenge: none

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; Sisters

Type/Source: Tradeback / Purchased at Half Price Books, I think

What It’s About: Told in flashbacks and from the perspective of three characters: Esme – the youngest sister, Kitty – the eldest, and the granddaughter Iris. Esme has been locked away since she was 16 and now 60+ years later, while Kitty is suffering from dementia in the nursing home. Then there is Iris, the only living relative who owns a vintage clothes shop and pines for her married step-brother. It gets even more complicated when Iris is contacted about Esme when her facility is being shut down. Iris has never heard of Esme and didn’t realize Kitty was not an only child.

Thoughts: Despite the showing of audiobooks this month, I’m still not at my former levels of audio-focus. That or this one just starts confusing, gets muddled and wilding messy in the middle, and might also suffer from cultural unknowns. (Like, what WAS that red cord?! What that MEAN? Do I really know how it ended? I have made assumptions that work for my interpretation of the story, but this would be a terrific one to discuss. With a Scottish person!)

But boy do I love the feisty old ladies. Both of them had feistiness and secrets and regrets and ambition. No excuses for Kitty, but Esme and Iris could have benefited from asking and expressing and having a true exchange of what was going on. Of course, the plot wouldn’t have thickened if they were able to truly share and connect.

She has no idea that her hands and eyes and the tilt of her head, and the fall of her hair, belong to Esme’s mother.

We are all just vessels thru which identities pass. We are lent features, gestures, habits and then we hand them on. Nothing is our own.

We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.

Rating: Four slices of pie. No pie mentioned; a fabulous story idea and not quite convincingly executed. Though a fun ride anyway, I think this one is likely better in print. The stories just bounce between narrator and time with no introduction — it was hard to tell when those changes occurred.

I read this because… I think it was an Audible freebie by an author who has a new book out that looks phenomenal, The Marriage Portrait, which follows a successful Hamnet. Possibly a writer that will go on my “must-read-everything” list.

 

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

Thoughts by Kim Michele Richardson, Sourcebooks 2019, 309 pages

Challenge: What’s in a Name 2022: Category Person with Description

What’s in a Name Challenge: Description category

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; history, pack horse library, blue people of Kentucky

Type/Source: Tradeback / Purchased at Half Price Books, I think

What It’s About: This story focuses on the last of the Kentucky blue people and how our protagonist worked to make her own journey in the world, as a Pack Horse Librarian, during the Depression. The story isn’t light – it contains disturbing violence, racism, and death. There are also tender moments and some humor.

Thoughts: I actually allowed myself to get swept away in this and it could be because I needed a hero to truly cheer for after a struggle with NightBitch, I’m not sure. It certainly is more plot and story and not the introspective contemporary snob-literature that I often find myself really falling for. I didn’t notice, for example, all the melodrama and the repetition of her being blue, over and over again until I read it in a review. Oh. Yeah, perhaps. Maybe it was all the references to pie. It surely gained it an extra slice on the rating for pie being a many-mentioned element.

And I also agree that the ending was … a bit much. Too much for only a few pages! WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Good thing I didn’t have a chance to go read reviews before I finished which is what happens when I have doubts mid-way. But I just kept trucking with the story until the last page.

“The first Friday in June, Troublesome always held its pie bake dance, a pie auction to hitch unmarried folks.”

page 60

Rating: Four slices of pie. Because of the pie and the fast flow.

“Winnie‘d been … the only one to bring a pie and sit with me one long Sunday, and then the next, reading to me while I recovered.”

page 73

Question: Will I read the second in the series? The Book Woman’s Daughter, published in May of this year. I don’t know. I’m not rushing out to get it, and I rarely read series books… I probably won’t, to be honest.

 

 

Status ⬥ The Month After July ⬥ 2022

 Monthly Recap Time! August

• 7 books; 72 for the year
• 2740 pages, 28.5 hours | 21128 total pages, 169.3 hours for the year so far

“… a party being made better because of the pie you brought…”

LESSONS in CHEmistry

Pie for the win. EVERY BOOK I READ HAD PIE! Pretty impressive..

“Maria helped herself to the last bites of Eddie’s apple pie and unfolded her notes on the table, but instead of Devil’s Bargain she found herself thinking of the scale model of Mercury.”

– MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS

And my audiobook game has returned. THREE audiobooks finished and meaty books, too — not just a 1 hour created-for-Audible nibble.

My favorite was Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry. Hands down, my kind of book. Strong female character, touches all the ugly bits of reality yet balanced with love and humor, plus a cool dog. Some reviews recommend print over the audio, though I didn’t catch the mispronunciations or chemical terms …. oops. I did notice a long “e” sound for the word “been” and something else with an eeeee sound that to me should be more of an “i” sound like “bin”.

I read French’s The Searcher for book club. It was good but not my favorite of hers. And another book that suffered I HOPE! from bad mood and poor timing, was Anthony Marra’s Mercury Pictures Presents. I want to try it again someday.

“He finds a café and gets himself a slice of apple pie and more coffee to pass the time till his laundry is ready.”

the searcher

Perhaps, August was just meant to be devoted to nonfiction? I really liked Destiny of the Republic by Candace Millard. She’s good! and she wrote a lovely tribute to David McCullough, a favorite of mine for readable fascinating enjoyable history, who died August 7. I’ve not read near enough of his oeuvre and now I need to add all of Millard’s.

I read The Sum of Us. Fascinating and sad how systematic racism is sneakily argumented away and seems invisible to sum. Why don’t towns have a city pool? because they didn’t want to share with ALL the citizens of the town. Stupid. Evil.

Which brings me to share that I finally finished brown girl dreaming by the lovely Jacqueline Woodson! Here memoir in verse, my mid-year, many months, poem-a-day project. LOVELY.

“…Remember the time, they ask,
when we stole Miss Carter’s peach pie off her windowsill,…”

brown girl dreaming

Then I listened to Taste by Stanley Tucci, because I think celebrity memoirs are a great way to break a slump. Plus, the lack of audiobooks in prior months meant I had credits to burn. I have a print of this at the library to pick up so I can get the recipes. (His cookbooks have hold lists but this I got right away.)

What was YOUR favorite book of August?

September has a couple of pie days. The 15th is Butterscotch Cinnamon Pie Day! (A healing pie in the video game UnderTale.) Sept 23 is Pot Pie Day (Lessons in Chemistry has pot pie! and a terrific explanation of pie pastry. KFC’s chicken pot pie is decent, too. Look for a coupon.) Sept 26 is Key Lime Pie Day – read a book set in Florida! LOL — and Raspberry Cream Pie Day is Sept 28.

Today, as I write and prep this post, I’m contemplating a Grape Galette. You can see a photo (it’s readable! perhaps I should add a link to my pie page… Hmmmmm) of my recipe in a post from 2017; enjoy.

Copyright © 2007-2022. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

A View of the Harbour

Thoughts by Elizabeth Taylor, Virago Modern Classics 2006 (orig 1947), 304 pages

Introduction by Sarah Waters

Challenge: Buddy Read with Laila of Big Reading Life; Set At or By the Sea Category of #ReadICT

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; quiet small British seaside village post-WW2

Type/Source: Tradeback / Purchased at Watermarks Indie bookstore

What It’s About: This story focuses on the inter-relationships of the neighbors living directly on the harbour; from the doctor’s family, the pub workers, the widowed proprietor of a tourist wax museum, the librarian, the vicar, etc. The pivot view to all begins with Bertram, a painter who has moved to the area for the season: to catch the right light off the sea, to capture the perfect seascape, to be “an artist”. He fancies himself a man-of-the-people as he rudely? comically? insinuates himself into the neighborhood. A lot of life happens in this book.

“Always intelligent, often subversive, and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person’s dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, ice wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail – the perfect toast to the quiet horror of domestic life.”

—Valerie martin

Thoughts: I love this author. True, her stories do not have a lot of action exactly, but they have drama! and depth and comedy, beautiful sentences and interesting glimpses into every character – the good and the bad, the endearing, the appalling. Ah, not really! not that much appalling exactly. Well, maybe. (One more reason I love classics – humans have always been dastardly and behaved badly, amiright?)

“I know who to,” Beth said, shocked to find herself ending with a preposition. But she was much thrown out by the surprise of it all.”

Rating: Four slices of pie. LOTS of whipped cream. Shepherd’s Pie mentioned

“Forking up shepherd’s pie with an expression of contempt.”

 

 

All Boys Aren’t Blue

Thoughts by George M Johnson, Macmillan Audio 2020, 5 hours 12 minutes

Narrated by the author.

Challenge: What’s in a Name: Color category

Genre/Theme: Nonfiction, essays, LGBTQ+

Type/Source: Audiobook / eLibby

What It’s About: This is a collection of essays detailing the author’s growing up in a loving family and also identifying with interests more socially conditioned to be typically girl things – like double-dutch jump rope at recess. They talk about trauma of bullying, wanting and fearing being different, identifying as queer, how much their Nanny provided in love and support, their education from a black perspective, and their sexuality.

The memoir is a firsthand account of trials, tribulations, and triumphs that have made George M. Johnson into the person they are today.

—Coryandre Wright (IMDB link)

Thoughts: I learned a few things! Important work – they’re willing to share and I am willing to know more and do more about how to promote respect for all humanity and be a good human.

This book was requested via my library because school districts near me have banned it. I wanted to know why and I wanted to show community support for books and marginalized people. I believe a couple of things when the topic of books and age appropriateness is discussed; 1) if a kid reads something they don’t understand, they look it up and/or ask a trusted adult to explain more, or 2) they just skip over it because they don’t understand it or it’s just not relevant to them to relate to. They aren’t groomed or seduced or corrupted. If a kid is seeking out this book, they just might need it and it would be best for all to be able to discuss and pour love not judgement onto the situation. Education, education, education. I respect the parents that take the tough questions and build trust rather than promote fear and shame. Love and respect. Stand up to hate. Have the tough conversations.

Rating: Four slices of pie.

 

 

Olga Dies Dreaming

Thoughts by Xóchitl González, Flatiron Books 2022, 349 pages

Challenge: Recommended by a friend.

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction, Puerto Rico Independence, American Dream Pursuit

Type/Source: eBook/Libby Library – 14 day loan

Rather than be irritated, she thought, she should focus on the infallible hilarity of the ultra-wealthy to be penny-wise when it came to compensating human sweat, and dollar-foolish when it came to everything else. She shouldn’t be irritated at all, she counseled herself, and instead laugh her way to the bank.

What It’s About: Olga is a high-achieving owner of a wedding planning business to the wealthy of NYC. Her every move is calculated to take advantage of opportunities to make money and gain status. Her brother is a US Representative from and for Brooklyn. Their father is dead from HIV drug-use and their mom is a fugitive revolutionary-mercenary.

New York had a shocking way of spiraling into chaos whenever met with precipitation, as though the entirety of its infrastructure was actually made of sugar and the water triggered dissolution.

Thoughts: I won’t lie, this was hard to get into. The first third had me pushing myself to keep reading and I wouldn’t give myself permission to DNF because a friend recommended it to me. A friend that I greatly admire. Then I began to wonder, ‘What *IS* this? a love story? A whodunnit tale of treachery? (I was worried that the romantic interest was going to be a bad guy — spoiler: he is a good guy.) A family drama child abandonment story? or an incitation to Revolution, on the part of Puerto Rico?

Yes, and I support PR being granted statehood. The status of this island and these citizens is unjust; to be dependent and taxed, without representation.

She was less uncomfortable than she thought she would be, the realization of which made her uncomfortable.

However, all the stories do come together and I admire this as an author’s strong debut, in mostly– for me– what it accomplishes and addresses, a passionate statement in support of Puerto Rico. I learned a lot more about Puerto Rico.

If your rights are less because you’re born in one place, not another, how meaningful are those rights in the first place?

Rating: Four slices of pie.

 

 

The Optimist’s Daughter

Thoughts by Eudora Welty, Vintage Books 1990 (orig 1969), 180 pages

Challenge: Classics Club, CC50_part2, WiaN – inspired by Ann Patchett

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction, Southern Lit, Grief

Type/Source: Tradeback/Book-A-Holic purchase

Carolina Book Nook hosts the WiaN Challenge

What It’s About: Laurel is the daughter of the “Optimist”. She is in her mid-forties, and her mother has been dead over 10, maybe 15 years already. Last year, her father the Optimist up and married Fay, who is maybe forty but probably only late 30s and looks even younger.

Let’s just say that Fay is a piece of work. The southern ladies would say, “Bless her heart”. Actually, I don’t think they even bother with that. All the menfolk think Fay is tender and helpless and to be pitied. The women, not so much.

UGH. (Fay really appalled me.)

Father dies, Laurel manages (by which I mean that she “processes”), Fay annoys and despairs.

Thoughts: Please please please let me know your thoughts if you have read this. I wrote on a Litsy review:

So very much to think about! Packs a punch and not only because it is about grief but about personality, society expectations (and burdens) and perception. Would be a terrific book club book.

Rating: Four slices of pie. Probably on me that I kept getting confused who was who at the funeral. Could be a fiver.

You’ve got pies three deep in the pantry, and an icebox ready to pop.

 

 

In Concrete

Thoughts by Anne Garrétta, Deep Vellum 2021, 185 pages

Translated by Emma Ramadan, co-owner of one of my favorite indie bookstores: RiffRaff in PVD

Challenge: TOB 2022

Genre/Theme: I have no idea!

Type/Source: Tradeback / Personal purchase from Watermark Books

What It’s About: Two precocious French girls adore their tinkering big-idea whacky fix-it father and help him pour concrete to fix up the summer house amongst other things/places/etc. They defend the honor of neighbors and attempt to ditch school (well, our narrator does) and she tells her little sister stories of the escapades while waiting for rescue when said sister becomes encased in a cement mixing & pouring mishap. FULL of amusing wordplay and punny turns of phrase.

Thoughts: A fun book — if you aren’t trying to rush through it to get it done. Alas!

I really had to force myself to slow down and not rush this. I became enthralled with curiosity for HOW the translator managed to capture and play with the words in English, only assuming the jokes must have been different in the French. My questions were answered; the book includes notes from the translator. Fascinating stuff.

No grout about it!

Very clever, a lot of fun. Their POOR MOTHER! The entire family is quite endearing. I get how some thought it a bit overdone, perhaps; but I decided to relax and go with it and feel rewarded for my effort.

Rating: Four slices of pie. Easy as pie? no way.

“Once little sis and I had unblocked our glands, it was easy as pie.”