I started listening to this audiobook on the 25th of October this year. I finished it on the 27th of November. Before November 5, I thought it made so much sense, and I wanted everyone to read it. After November 5, it just made me cry. Everything she says is so reasonable, and so well-researched and thought out. Now, I'm not sure it's ever going to happen. I know there are restrictive laws to keep us safe. I just don't believe that they will end up being restrictive. Sorry to get political, but you should read this book. She explains the laws and the constitution in an easy to understand way, and with any kind of luck, all will be well.

Probably the best book I've ever read about World War I (and I've read plenty) and all of the incidents leading up to it. Thorough, well-written, entertaining, and most of all, the realization that there was SO much more leading up to it than just one assassination. Every country involved did something stupid along the way to make those things coalesce into a deadly and useless war. Highly recommended.

I’m a little bit embarrassed that I enjoyed this book so much….

Tom Petty = *****
Book = ***

Same old story, but with new illustrations, and signed by the illustrator.

This is an excellent biography of one of my top potential Presidents, James A. Garfield. Had he lived, I expect he would have been one of our best. This book takes us from his birth to his death, and the more I learned about him, the more impressed I was with him. A lot of of things got reformed, many because of his assassination, but I think his short term set a lot of things in place. He was mostly well-liked, and I suspect that had he been born in another generation, he could have done wonderful things. Goodyear has created an immensely readable 500-page biography, and it's one of my favorite biographies of all the presidents I have read.

RIP, Chris Fowler and Arthur Bryant...I will miss you. :(

Well-written, well-researched, and absolutely nauseating story of the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana in the 1920s. We should be so ashamed...

After a DNA test, the (white) author learns that she has African blood and goes on a quest to learn about her ancestors. She manages to track down some "cousins" who have kept track of ancestry, and learns that she is descended from a sister of Benjamin Banneker, a prominent black man in revolutionary days, who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, and was involved in the surveying of Washington DC. They have researched to a white indentured girl, who married a black man. The history is recounted, sometimes novelized by necessity, along with alternate chapters describing the people she meets as she follows the trail and the further research that they do.
This was interesting, and a fairly easy read, except that the characters were difficult to follow. So many had the same names, and it wasn't always clear which the text was referring to. At one point, i became confused, as it seemed that a couple had taken the woman's last name, and it was never addressed. Some of the conversations she discussed with her cousins seemed difficult to follow and didn't seem to advance the story at all.
I'm not sorry I read it, as it highlights the silly racial issues we see. I would bet that there have been a lot more "passing" over the years, and I think some people would be surprised to learn their own history.

Well-written, well-researched, and absolutely history of many Black Americans in the South between the Civil War and World War II.

A cute children's book about an owl with a "food truck," coming along at night to feed the animals. A little mouse watches the proceedings, looking for crumbs or a penny to buy something. The owl notices, and sets out a spread for him. The story is short, but sweet, and the illustrations are fabulous!

I am a great fan of Langston Hughes' poetry, and this compilation did not disappoint. Divided into 7 sections by "narrative" (The Weary Blues, Dream Variation, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Black Pierrot, Water-Front Streets, Shadows in the Sun, and Our Land), the poems in each section match to the titles. Hughes' poetry has such a rhythm to it that I found myself reading most of them out loud!

Vivien, Grace, & Evie are the only women employees at Bloomsbury Books, in 1950’s London. They make tea, take dictation, and catalogue books, while the men in the store are doing the ordering and buying, and doing the sales work. Vivien’s fiancé died in the war, and she has built a wall to keep other men out. Grace is looking for an opportunity to leave her emotionally abusive husband, but with 2 young sons and a low-paying job at a bookstore, she may never find one. Evie is searching for a very rare book that she knows is in the bookstore, and she is sure no one knows about it.
It's great to see these three form a friendship, learn what is possible for them, meet famous people who can help them, and find a way to end up happy. Everything tidies up in the end, and although sometimes a happy ending can be treacly, this one seems to work. I wasn’t sure I would like this one, but once I started, I couldn’t put it down. Recommended.

This is a delightful book about a rabbit family that is forced to leave home and find a new place to live. Father has disappeared, assumed dead, and Mother wants to live with others around. They rent a place from an owl and make friends with the squirrels and birds and the mouse super who are also living in the Broken Arms. Cress, the elder daughter, is unhappy about the move, but she has no choice, so Mother, Cress, and her baby brother Kip settle in.
On the surface, it sounds like a children's book, and I suppose that it is. But it's a bit longer, and a little more complex than children's books generally are. It has The Gregory Maguire touch to it, so there are a lot of undertones that will amuse adults. They amused me.
Loved this book!

Eugene (Yevgeny) Yelchin was a child in Russia during the Cold War years. This memoir, although marketed to "Age 10 and Up," was fascinating for me (an older adult), and probably would be for anyone who lived through those years. I don't feel like I ever had a good idea of what life was like in Russia. We all heard stories, but I don't think they resonated. This memoir, written as though he was still a child, really brought it home to me. I loved his illustrations! I would recommend this to anyone who has any memory of those years, or even to anyone who realizes that this was real life in Russia at that time. An excellent history lesson.

I'm not usually a big thriller fan. I'm probably a bit of a book snob. But I read the first book in this series, and it was good, so I thought I'd read this one too. Wow. I started reading this book this morning, expecting to do a hundred pages and then move to something else. Didn't happen. I couldn't put it down. This one blows "Revenge at Sea" out of the water (so to speak). Quint is a lot smarter in this book, and he does a great job of chasing down the killer. Too many people die before he does, but that's the nature of a thriller, I guess. It's fun to try and work out the clues myself, but I did a very poor job on this one. I'm pretty stingy with five stars, but this is deserving. Bravo!

5 stars for the illustrations.

Quint Adler is a reporter for a small newspaper on the West Coast. While celebrating his 40th birthday, he has an accident that puts him in a hospital, with a mysterious roommate. He tries to look up his roommate after discharge, and finds him dead. This leads to other murders, and Quint can't seem to keep his nose out of it all.
A fast-paced thriller that kept my attention all the way through, although with a protagonist that I wanted to reach out and slap more than once! 😉

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Laura Ciardi lives in New York with her grandparents. Her father and brother have died; her mother has had a breakdown, she has no friends, and as the story starts, she has just been expelled from school. The story takes place close to Christmas, and her grandparents are expecting company for Christmas Eve dinner, company that must be impressed. Several days prior, Laura opens her window to find a boy with only one arm, the other being a wing. She is reminded of the Hans Christian Anderson's story, "The Wild Swans." Laura has to keep him hidden until she can decide how to help him get away.
Of course, disaster ensues, but it's such sweet disaster.
I think what I like most about (most) of Gregory Maguire's books is that they stretch the imagination a little bit, but he makes it seem like it's perfectly normal.

This was a good one!

A Death in the Family: 4.5
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: 3

The book moves around in time between when Ginny Beale is in high school, with her three best friends and her brother/best friend Travis, to when she is a married adult with her own daughter. When a fire is set in the school during a football game, her friend Gray's father, a firefighter, is killed. Ginny learns a horrible secret about the fire, and as a result, she cuts off connections with her friends. Her brother leaves after a fight with their mother, and Ginny goes on to a different life, marrying someone else and having her daughter.
When her daughter is in high school, the events of the past come blaring back, and it appears everyone is keeping secrets,
I enjoyed this book and read it in one evening. It could easily have gone into something maudlin and ridiculous, but it didn't. Marisa de los Santos does a great job of keeping the action moving, and even insignificant characters turn out to be significant in the end. A good mystery, a good character study, and over all, a very good book.

The beginning of this book is deadly dull, probably because most of Copley's early life is conjecture (WAY too frequent use of "perhaps"). However, once the American Revolution begins, it gives one a different perspective of the war that is very interesting. When the war is over, it becomes ordinary again. I suspect that the difference is that Copley moved to London at the start of the war, and the correspondence between him and his wife and other relatives gave a lot more information than was available about Copley in his youth. I wouldn't dismiss the book out of hand, but maybe start in the middle. ;)

Generally, I love this series. But this one was a disappointment. It was definitely good, just not up to par with the rest of them. I think there may have been too many stories going on, and the fact that everyone was so certain at the start "who did it," was a sure sign that this isn't what happened. There were also, to the point of distraction, too many "This's" instead of "This is." Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but I've not noticed it in previous books.

Certainly, if you're a fan of this series, I would absolutely recommend it. But I was somewhat disappointed.

The Adler family (Jane, Brian, Jordan and Eddie) is moving from New York to Los Angeles. They board Flight 2977 on the morning of June 12, 2013. The flight crashes, and 12 year old Eddie (now Edward) is the sole survivor.
The chapters alternate between Edward's life after the crash, and the thoughts and actions of the others on the plane. It's a story about growing, about finding your path and carrying on, in spite of the ever-present pitfalls. He moves in with his mother's sister and her husband, who are struggling with their inability to have a baby. He becomes attached to Shay, his next door neighbor who is wise beyond her years. There are ups and downs, funny moments and sad moments, and as we learn about Edward's growth, we also learn about the hopes and dreams of the other passengers on the plane.
I finished this book in two short reading periods. Highly recommended.

This was an Advanced Reader's Edition provided by Random House/The Dial Press, on sale 1/14/2020.

Not as good as the original Dr. Seuss Goes to War...

4 stars for Russell's essay, 3 stars for Greive's commentary.

I tried on three separate occasions to read this book, but I couldn't get past the first 20 pages, and I wasn't sure what was going on then. Perhaps it was the translation, but I couldn't force myself to try it again.
:(

Stephan Orth couchsurfed his way across Russia. It was an entertaining book, but I never quite got what he was getting at. Kind of like a diary, but mostly about people he met, and although many of them were "off the grid," I don't feel like I learned very much about Russia, or about Putin. As I said, it was entertaining, but it was like Chinese food--I was hungry an hour later.

Two short coming-of-age novels: nothing fabulous or grandiose, just some low-key, entertaining reading. The Duplex follows the lives of kids growing up in a neighborhood just on the edge of the "bad" part of town. We see their ups and downs, learn their secrets, and see how they turn out in the end. The House on River Road is a little more edgy, focusing on a college-age group sharing a large house.
Once in a while, it's good to read something you don't have to think very hard about, and this book fit the bill. I liked The Duplex better, but both were good!

A fascinating history of the female aviation pioneers. Yes, Amelia Earhart is there, but so are several others, and the struggle was real. Parts are very sad (many crashes), and parts are very aggravating. I don't know that I realized how chauvinistic the men could be then (okay, maybe now too). Women aren't constitutionally able to fly an airplane, no woman was allowed to fly a plane when she was on her period--when men crashed, they were lauded. When women crashed, they were ridiculed. The injustice really made me angry, but not with the book. The stories are told well, and are nicely read by Erin Bennett on the audio CD. You know it's a good book when it sends you to Google to find out more about these women!