I am currently reading Prairie Fires, The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I like the Little House books, but putting the stories in the context of well researched biography deepens my knowledge of the time period in unexpected ways. Such a pleasure! I’m sure it has been mentioned in this thread previously, however.
Just finished The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton and loved it. Lovely writing, weaving a story across 150 years, told mostly by a ghost!
I just read The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason. The front cover blurb is by the author of All the Light We Cannot See, and they are not dissimilar. The novel is set during WW1 in the Austro Hungarian Empire. I highly recommend it. I’m going to be looking for his earlier work.
Just finished Amy Bloom’s “White Houses”, about the love relationship between Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, from Lorena’s perspectives. Beautifully written, a very sad story, as I could envision how different their love would have resulted were they live in today. Even though it is a fiction, it has many historical references and direct quotes from letters written between the two ladies.
I do have questions regarding books like this, most main characters are historical figures, while the author stated emphatically, that the story is fictional. Maybe biography or historical book would not tolerate having so much emotions and sentiments conjectured by a sensitive author’s imagination.
Just finished the first book in the C.S. Harris series. I think I’m hooked.
We just read Less in one of my book groups. I enjoyed it, but most of us did not fine it incredibly funny or perhaps worthy of the very high level of praise it got. However, when someone read a passage out loud, we all laughed! It made me wonder if the way I read (too fast some times) make it harder to find things really funny.
I really enjoyed Prairie Fires as well. Very interesting relationship between Laura and her daughter Rose.
@cartera45, you will be glad to know they get even better. I love the C.S. Harris mysteries.
I am about half way through Prairie Fires. I really want to wring Rose’s neck. I am finding the book interesting with today’s political drama. I keep thinking about who Laura would have voted for in 2016…if she would have voted.
I bought the audio book of Prairie Fires after reading about it here. It’s 28 hours long! I did a 10 hour round trip drive to see my Dad, so I got in a lot of hours then, and I turn it on in the car or on my bicycle every chance I get. I have 9 hours left.
I thought I’d read every biography about LIW, but had heard nothing about this book until it was mentioned on this thread.
I agree with the comments about Rose. It seems like she had some sociopathic tendencies-lack of empathy, no conscience, etc. I’m not saying she was a sociopath, just that she had some of the characteristics. Not impressed with her as a person at all. I also never knew that Laura had such a temper. Almanzo saying that he knew she had a temper when he married her, but was still upset by it years later was a surprise for me. I’d never read that.
Thanks for the recommendations.
Oh-did anyone else get the feeling that Rose had bipolar disorder? Or borderline personality disorder maybe?
I just finished Susan Meissner’s As Bright as Heaven. Wow. I loved it. Historical fiction with very realistic characters, set in the early 1900s - primarily around the 1918 Spanish Flu season in Philadelphia and its aftereffects. An easy read but boy was I immersed in the story. Overall an uplifting and heartwarming tale but I did find myself bawling my eyes out in a couple of spots. I highly recommend it.
I just finished The Unwinding of a Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams. She was a frequent poster on a cancer website that I was a member. It was a club no one wanted to be a part of. She wrote a beautiful blog about being diagnosed at age 37 and the mother to two young daughter. There is a lot more to her story. She was born blind in Viet Nam. Her family survived a dangerous escape on a sinking boat to Hong Kong, and less than a year later made their way to the United States, where at 4 years old, Julie had a surgery that granted her some vision. She defied expectations and graduated ultimately from Harvard Law and worked at a prestigious law firm where she met her wonderful husband. This book was published posthumously. Eighty percent of the book is the blog that she wrote. I got a lot out of reading the book, but maybe because I “knew” her and colon cancer has been my life for the past 12 years. I was wondering if it would have wide appeal, but judging by the buzz it sure seems to. They are comparing it to the Randy Pausch book and the Nina Riggs book as well as When Breath Becomes Air. I read today that there will be a podcast from her book called Julie. What an amazing, bittersweet legacy.
It is a book that will inspire you.
Entertaining book (because of and despite the infuriating main character): “Lake Success,” by Gary Shteyngart.
@ams5796 Tracy Smith did a wonderful story on CBS Sunday Morning about Julie last year before Julie passed away. I think they archive segments on their website if you’re interested in seeing it. Thank you for letting us know about the book. I send you my best wishes for your health.
Thank you @alwaysamom. I’ll check that out. I love all the attention that Julie’s book is getting.
I appreciate your well wishes too.
Yes, the parts in Prairie Fires about Rose and her endless dysfunction are hard to read. As is some of the distancing between her and family back in South Dakota. Though it was not uncommon in those days to never visit, and moving away meant never seeing family again, despite decades and the arrival of the car.
Has anybody else read Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows? It was a bestseller in the 1950s, fell out of print, and was brought back to life a few years ago. It’s a slow read but a wonderfully rewarding one - rich in priceless descriptions of settings and bygone habits and practices, but also full of life and humor, and a great deal of insight into the way children actually think. In a way it reminded me of the Neapolitan quartet, but there’s something more loving and humane, maybe more forgiving, about this than I find in Ferrante’s books (though I love them too).
Christian Wolff, Writings & Conversations (Schriften und Gesprache)
Recently finished Come With Me by Helen Schulman. Set in Silicon Valley, there’s a bit of everything: millennial malaise & mindset (lots of texting and face timing and virtual reality), midlife crisis, entrepreneurial careers, obsolete careers, nuclear meltdown, suicide, and much more. (Possibly a bit too much?) Everything collides over the course of a few days. At the heart of the novel is the precariousness of life–all those roads not taken and sliding doors. Made me feel old! She also wrote This Beautiful Life (teenage sexting gone awry) which I sort of liked but didn’t love. This one felt a bit more ambitious.
^I had mixed feelings about Come With Me. Very readable. I thought that the it’s supposed main trope–the VR program the kid wrote, was the weakest part of it. I never bought its supposed reality and thought that the story actually didn’t need it. Like, that was the author’s initial idea, but seemed to me to have ended up a distracting artifact.
I just finished Golden State by Ben Winters. It was a great read