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cultivating-wildflowers · 3 years ago

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Books of 2021, August

#54 - Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (re-read) - 5/5 stars

Each of these books seems sweeter than the last. Even knowing how it ends, I was in agony over Anne continually rejecting Gilbert. I wept over Ruby and laughed with Phil and highlighted so many bits and pieces. The next book in the series is where I left off ages ago when I first picked up these books, so I’m doubly excited to get to it.

#55 - Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery - 4/5 stars

Had to get the audiobook for this one. It’s such a different style and tone in the beginning than the others in the series that it was a little difficult to keep engaged. I discovered only after that, while chronologically it’s the fourth in the series, it was the seventh published. It felt sleepy compared to the prequels.

#56 - Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery - 5/5 stars

This whole series really is a love song to life, isn’t it? And we finally get a bit more of Anne and Gilbert’s romance, which is always great. Did enjoy that little twist near the end. (Honestly should have seen it coming.) As always, I adore the characters.

#57 - My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - 4/5 stars

This book was plain fun. I read it as an audiobook during a slow period at work and kept struggling not to laugh out loud.

#58 - A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (re-read) - 4/5 stars

It’s taken me so long to get to this one that I finally caved and just listened to the audio again, making notes in my hard copy as I went. And then I listened to the whole thing in a day.

While this isn’t my favorite of the series, I do still very much love it (particularly the gun gag, but who doesn’t love that?). Sophos is in my top four favorite characters. The way he constantly tries to emulate Gen and constantly underestimates his own strength kills me every time. Also, while I love reading about Gen and Irene’s romance, Sophos and Helen’s is more what I crave, so of course I adore them.

#59 - A Wind from the Wilderness by Suzannah Rowntree - 3/5 stars

For the life of me I can’t remember where I first heard of this book. I know I ended up getting it on Kindle a while ago and then forgot about it until I was searching for a different book. Decided to read it on a whim and enjoyed it pretty well, overall. No I lied this story frustrated me to no end.

Like, for a while there I could kind of enjoy it. The romance felt a little forced to me, and the book had a couple of basic editing issues (might have been related to ebook formatting, really), but I enjoyed the historical setting and details (minus the inaccuracy about the size of an average Crusades-era warhorse), even if the plot didn’t really grab me.

Then a lot of stuff happened in quick succession near the end and I just kind of gave up. Here I was hoping for a slightly happy ending and did I get that? Oh, no.

I don’t plan to finish the series.

#60 - Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff - 5/5 stars

This one ended up on my TBR after I saw it rec’d in the Queen’s Thief Fandom (I want to say it in someway inspired TQT but not 100% on that). Got it as an audibook and listened to it during a housework Saturday.

The audiobook was all of 4.5 hours, tops, and the narrative style is very easy to listen to. Not a lot of high action, but a solid adventure all the same. Reminded me a little of Stephen Lawhead but that could just be the Roman Britain setting.

There is a short series that follows, but I like this as a standalone.

(Tried recommending it to my dad since it seems in his taste, but he remembers the movie and I don’t think he liked that one. Said something about it being less accurate than Gladiator which is low abuse for him. So I don’t think he’d willingly read this.)

#61 - Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card - 4/5 stars

And that’s the first Ender series finished!

I listened to the first three in audio form (library didn’t have the audiobook for this) so actually reading was kind of weird. That and it’s been a while since I read the other books so half of the details were lost to the ether and I had to keep looking up summaries.

I really struggled with the first half of this book. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for it, but it felt a little slow (that and I kept reading it before bed and falling asleep). It proved to be just as introspective and challenging and surprisingly emotional as the rest of the series. I love the way Card’s experiences and research are clearly evidenced, just off the page. I love how I’d be reading along and bam! Bit of poetry on the gentle and reliable nature of real love here; hilarious and witty dialogue there; oh, and we��re back to discussing the nature of humanity.

Yes, I definitely cried at one point, quite to my own (hormonal) surprise.

On one downside, while I like a lot of Card’s ideas and especially how he communicates those ideas, I do not like how he (or at least many of his characters) treats marriage. It’s a little too flippant for my taste. Especially among the cradle Catholics in his cast.

Also how DARE Card make me sympathize with Peter 2.0?

#62 - Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson - 4/5 stars (original ‘21 TBR)

My first nonfiction of the year! And wow, this one was good! (Yes it took me a while to get through but I kept getting distracted.) I’ll be coming back to this one again and again. So much wisdom here, and I love how Peterson writes like it’s a conversation with the reader. It’s such a warm, welcoming style.

It did get a little long-winded and rambly at points, hence the four stars.

(I definitely prefer this to his children’s fiction but that’s down to taste.)

#63 - Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery - 4/5 stars

My only true complaint of the series at this point is that SO MANY characters have been introduced up to now that I’ve lost track of all of them. Took me forever to remember who Rebecca Dew was.

As always, I adore Anne and her family.

#64 - Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner (re-read) - 4/5 stars

Listened to this at warp speed during work on the 31st. It remains my least favorite of the series (for whatever that’s worth). I miss Gen.

That said, there’s plenty I appreciate about this installment: the different pantheon to explore, the myths and appearances from those gods and heroes, the fulfillment of Gen’s promise made to Costis in KOA, the shift from straight-up court intrigue and trickery to adventure, and getting to see Costis from an outside perspective that isn’t Gen’s.

It was also interesting reading this after finally getting ROTT and knowing now what was going on back on the Little Peninsula at the same time.

And HELLO PHERIS IS RIGHT FRICKIN THERE. No wonder I recognized his POV of that scene in ROTT. AND THE LETTER KAMET WRITES HIM.

DNF:

Fable by Adrienne Young - Irritating MC, bland story building, and I didn’t like where the romance was headed.

Heartless by Anne Elisabeth Stengl (original ‘21 TBR) - unsympathetic MC (another princess who complains about her lessons and her clothes and refuses to marry a man because he’s “stodgy” and “probably doesn’t read poetry” and “isn’t romantic”). Writing style wasn’t terrible, but didn’t hold my interest. Also the cat creeped me out. I read a book once that included a horse that was born without eyes and I have never recovered. (Several reviews also mentioned this was allegorical, though I’m not entirely sure how.)

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leonbloder · 4 years ago

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Fake Plastic Trees & Blank Screens

I'm staring at a blank screen and wondering what to write, which is pretty much how I start at least half of the days of the week.

The other half of the days seem to take care of themselves somehow---the words are already there waiting for me when I get to the screen, if that makes sense, and it doesn't stay blank for long.

But the blank screen today is staying blank---the cursor blinking at me like a faint heartbeat, waiting for breath, words, ideas... anything to get it racing again, to bring it to life.

There's something about the blank screen that is exhilarating when I'm at my best, but utterly exhausting when I'm not.

It has occurred to me how so many of us are facing blank screens in this new world we are living in right now. Those blank screens might not be waiting for words to be typed, mind you, but they are waiting nonetheless.

And when we are struggling, the waiting, the exhaustion is too much for so many of us to bear. We are tired, and we are on edge. We want the world to be better, to be sane, to make sense, and to stop being so damned uncertain.

And the blank screens keep staring at us, accusingly---waiting for us to fill them, only we feel like we haven't anything left to say, or we are too weary inside to say whatever is in there, somewhere.

I have had so many conversations with people over the past couple of months that have included these phrases: "I feel tired all the time..." "I worked all day and feel like I got nothing done..." "I can't think about [the crisis du jour] right now, it's too much..."

There's a song that is on about three of the acoustic singer/songwriter playlists I've been listening to lately--"Fake Plastic Trees" by the British artist Holly Humberstone. The song is a cover of the original, which was recorded nearly thirty years ago by Radiohead.

These lyrics jumped out at me, so I wrote them down a week ago, and have been reading them just about every day since:

But I can't help the feeling

I could blow through the ceiling

If I just turn and run

And it wears me out

It wears me out

Maybe some of you have felt like that during the past few weeks. You want to turn and run from the blank screens in your life, the ones that are indicting you, accusing you, wearing you out.

But you can't run. Because the world needs you now more than ever. Whatever the blank screen is in front of you, can only be filled by you, no one else. So as much as you would like to "blow through the ceiling," or "just turn and run," you can't.

Besides, where would you go at this point? Everything is pretty much closed.

So listen, if that's where you are right now... let me share with you this line from singer/songwriter Andrew Peterson's book Adorning The Dark that's been encouraging me lately:

Sometimes you have to do the work even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you have to put away your wants and do what needs to be done, which really means dying to self in order to find life. This is a way of practicing resurrection.

The first part of that quote is tough to hear when you aren't feeling your best or when you are feeling too empty inside to start filling up that blank screen in front of you. But when you keep reading, it begins to hit you...

Dying and rising... it's all about dying and rising.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die..." That quote has both troubled and encouraged me from the first time I heard it until now. It's the death part of practicing resurrection that hangs most of us up, am I right?

But if we are going to experience the incredible joy of rising again, we are going to have to die to the parts of ourselves that want to run... that want to leave the blank screens that only we can fill behind.

May you be filled with the courage to die to yourself and to your fears, and feelings of not being enough. May you be filled with the courage to die so that you can rise again to truly live the life that God dreams for you to live.

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.

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