Library Loot!

This week's loot:

 
Flat Broke with Two Goats, by Jennifer McGaha.  See review posted previously. 






The Jane Austen Project, by Kathleen A. Flynn.  Time-travel, anyone?









Library Loot is courtesy of :  The Captive Reader

Flat Broke with Two Goats - Now There's a Title!

A raise for whoever thought up that title!  It truly grabs the reader's attention.

I've often had mixed feeling when finishing the last chapter of a memoir.  When someone asks you what you thought of a particular memoir, how fair is it to give your opinion about what happens in the book (the "plot" if you will) and the people in it (the "characters").  I suppose you could take the stance that the author wrote, had published, and is reaping the financial benefit of the book and therefore has opened him or herself up for comment.  But often I find myself judging the people and their actions as I'm reading the memoir, and not always in a good way.  It's one thing to be critical of a fictional character, another to be critical of someone telling you their life story.  

That said, I'll be discussing the writing in Flat Broke with Two Goats: a Memoir of Appalachia, by Jennifer McGaha.   Goodreads' blurb reads: "A charming memoir of one woman’s unexpected journey from country chic to backwoods barnyard."  "Charming" is not the word I'd use.  Anything that involves domestic violence, foreclosure, marital separation, and oh yes, venomous copperhead snakes in the kitchen is not charming.  Eventful, definitely, but not charming.

There are really two parts to the memoir - before the foreclosure of Jennifer and her husband's home outside Asheville, NC, and after as they must both make decisions about what kind of lives they want to live.  Before involves a bad and violent first marriage, and a second marriage, and children, and it details the family's fall from affluence during the great recession of the 2000s.  Afterward, Jennifer briefly separates from her husband, unwilling to follow him to their new home, an old and decaying mountain cabin a mile from the main road without many of the comforts most of us take for granted.  She returns after a few months and they slowly work on repairing the house, the land, and their marriage.  That's where the goats come in.  If you ever wanted to know whether two people with no farming experience can successfully raise a herd of goats, this is the book for you!  

The author does do a fine job of writing about the beauty of the mountains and the deep-rooted family pull the Appalachians have on her. 

"There, in a mossy hollow, three springs emptied into a creek that gathered momentum as it flowed down the mountainside.  I loved knowing that - that the waterfall was higher than I had ever imagined, that it sprang from the earth in a place where the soil was rich and loamy, that the part I could see from my porch was just a small fraction of the whole.  Watching the sun dip behind the mountain and the moon rise high in the sky, I realized that the waterfall I saw in front of me was not the exact waterfall I would see tomorrow.  It was continually reborn, renewed, restored....what I did now know without a doubt was that I was not alone, that I had never been alone, that the people who came before me were still here, would always be here."

I wish that she had incorporated more of the story of her grandparents and other ancestors; we barely get to know about them, but they're quite interesting and there's definitely a story there (perhaps for her next book?). 

Library Loot

This week's loot!

Queen of Scots: the True Life of Mary Stuart, by John Guy. "A long-overdue and dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians at work today."  This book won the Whitbread award for biography in 2004.  My question when checking it out from the library was: Is it as good as Antonia Fraser's biography?  It's interesting (hard not to be with her scandal-ridden life), very readable, and detailed without being dull.  But.  The author wears his heart on his sleeve and gives Mary the benefit of every possible doubt.  Fraser's is a more even-handed portrayal, and remains the gold standard. 






Library Loot courtesy of The Silly Little Mischief Blog

Library Loot

 Loot from the last few weeks:


Kurinji Flowers, by Clare Flynn.  "Set in South India during World War II and India's struggle for independence, Kurinji Flowers traces a young woman’s journey through loss, loneliness, hope, and betrayal to unexpected love and self-discovery."   I can't say I cared for the last quarter of the the book, but the first 3/4ths were quite good.  Strong sense of place, strong plot. Terrible cover.







The Outcasts of Time, by Ian Mortimer.  "December 1348. With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and go to Hell. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries – living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last."   Requires suspension of disbelief; an interesting idea that I didn't feel was really as well developed as it could have been.  Still, well-written and worth the time.  Gorgeous cover.





Library Loot courtesy of The Captive Reader

Six Degrees of Separation - January 2018

Today, I'm joining in Six Degrees of Separation starting with the first in the well loved series No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith with its wonderful character, Mma Ramatswe.

I didn't think I'd read many series of books with strong female protagonists, but it turns out I have, starting with A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw, the story of former British spy and current amateur sleuth Lane Winslow in post-WWII British Columbia, which leads to:

Black Roses by Jane Thynne, a series featuring Clara Vine, British actress and part-time spy living in pre-WWII Berlin, and on to:

A change from those darker series with The Lanvin Murders by Angela M. Sanders.  This series brings its readers to the world of vintage fashion in Portland, Oregon with heroine Joanna Hayworth.

Next we move to the historical fiction genre and Evelyn Anthony's oldie-but-goodie series about Russian Tsarinas, starting with Rebel Princess, the story of Catherine the Great.

A fine example of dystopian fiction/sci-fi from the brilliant Margaret Atwood is the MaddAdam trilogy: Oryx and Crake is the first in the series.

And finally, the bring this full circle, let's go back to Africa, South Africa this time with Sally Andrew's wonderful Tannie Maria mystery series Recipes for Love and Murder


Six Degrees is courtesy of:  Books are My Favorite and Best