End of an October

 First of all - so many trick or treaters! We had one single person last year. This year: eight!! Huge increase. I only got a box of 20 treats. I should have said "Take two!" But...I didn't want to run out. (No danger of that!)

In the library, we (and by we I mean Matt and Teresa and their committee) made a bigger display for Dia de los Muertos, and also started earlier, and are leaving it up for an entire week, Oct. 27 through Nov. 4.

This year, there are two ofrendas, so that people on campus can add their own pictures and remembrances, which some people are doing.

As for October reading, I managed to read six books again this month.

1. My reading got off to a fitting start for the month of Halloween--Thirteen Witches book 1: The memory thief (2021) by Jodi Lynn Anderson. Rosie Oaks discovers that there is more to herself than she supposed. She thought her mother was just terribly negligent, but it turns out that all of her memories of Rosie had been stolen! Further, she learns that her mother was a witch hunter, and so is she!! She, her friend Germ (Gemma) and a ghost boy named Ebb try to set things right. One interesting concept this book introduced from p.219: "made up things make up the world." Rosie doubts herself--all she can do is write stories, and that's just making things up. But...all the things we have in the world started out as just an idea that someone thought up, and then worked to make it real. Isn't that so?

2. I was very glad that I picked up A tale of highly unusual magic (2017) by Lisa Papademetriou. What a well-told tale. The author's choice of narration--to have the narrator sometimes apparent and other times not--was very interesting and suitable to the telling of this story. Two girls, one in Texas and the other in India, somehow have copies of the same unusual book. How the auther joined these tales, and brought characters and places together--masterful story telling! The unusual book the girls have is called "The Exquisite Corpse." A quote from p.218 really rang true to me for reasons outside of the scope of the book, but in life: "Somehow, she always managed to say the wrong thing to Rabeea. It was more than just a language barrier; it was that Rabeea always assumed the worst possible interpretation for Leila's words." Quote from the author's website: Two girls on opposite sides of the world each find a magic book, and each becomes entangled in a story that seems to be writing itself.

3. Gina Capaldi and Q.L. Pearce retold the life of Zitkala-Ša in Red Bird Sings: The story of Zitkala-Ša, native American author, musician and activist (2019). I am reading several books about her because we are working on a small case exhibit for next Spring, hopefully to coincide with the release of the new quarter which comes out in 2024. This book was important to me for the illustrations that I might be able to use in the exhibit, relating to her career as a musician. This telling is adapted from her own articles that appeared in the Atlantic, and making use of materials in our special collections at BYU. 

4. Thirteen Witches book 2: The sea of always (2023) by Jodi Lynn Anderson continues the tale of Rosie Oaks, witch hunter. She and Germ and another (! Who knew?!) witch hunter named Aria continue their quest to free the world of the enroaching darkness the witches are inflicting on the world. Will they find Ebb? Will they find Rosie's missing brother? A thought-provoking quote for me, on p. 199 "Beings misfits is, maybe, what everyone in the world has in common most of all." Josie is always saying our entire family is neuro-divergent. Nancy calls us neuro-spicy. Maybe everyone is? 

5. Stranger than we can imagine: making sense of the twentieth century (2015) by John Higgs was probably one of my favorite non-fiction reads of this year. By the time I got to the last chapter, I was filled with hope for the future of the planet. I mean, so many terrible things happened in the last century, but also many wonderful things. And young people, who tend to be more skeptical and less materialistic, seeing the rampant greed they are surrounded with--I think that if they will step up and start leading, they will take us better places. I hope so. Chapters on relativity, modernism, war, the Id, capitalism etc. I learned that the 14th amendment, meant to give freedom to the slaves, also resulted in corporations being interpreted as "individuals" with too many rights to protect us from their greed. Also, while individual people die, and make way for new people and ideas, corporations live on and that is not always a good thing. Well, I can't tell it very well. Read the book.

6. A Cuban girl's guide to tea and tomorrow (2020) by Laura Taylor Namey introduces readers to Lila Reyes, sent to spent the entire summer in England with a relative to soothe her soul after a trio of losses left her spinning off-kilter. Lila learns to know herself, and to appreciate those around her while baking her way into the hearts and minds of new friends.

So--on to November! All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day, the end of daylight savings time...

Six for September (Books, that is)

 Six September Books

1.       The adventures of a girl called Bicycle by Christina Uss (2018) – Bicycle was left at, and raised in, a monastery. When she is 12, she gets on her old clunk of a bicycle and sets off to for San Francisco from her home in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to meet an important bicyclist. Along the way she meets interesting people (and ghosts) and learns a lot. This was a fun read and well-told story. No reason for reading this book—I just found it in the library, and was intrigued by the title.

2.       The sky is falling by Sidney Sheldon (2001) – Dana, a newscaster, is trying to figure out why the entire Winthrop family, parents and three grown children, have all died accidentally in the course of about a year. It seems too coincidental! Someone does not like her investigation! I read this book because Bruce and I have been watching I Dream of Jeannie reruns. When I was young, I never paid attention to writers and producers; when we watched this series about twenty years ago, I realized this show was a Sidney Sheldon production, and as a librarian, I knew that he was a best-selling author. I thought, “Huh!” This time of watching the show, I thought “I have never read a Sidney Sheldon book.” So I thought I would correct that. It was a well-told story.

3.       The great dead body teachers by Jackie Dent (2023) – Australian journalist Jackie Dent got interested in body donation because her grandparents, Julie and Ruby Dent, both donated their bodies. She wondered why they did it—her grandmother died before she was born, and her grandfather when she was quite young—and nobody seemed to know why. (And yes, her grandfather’s name was indeed Julie. Julie Kelly Dent. When I looked him up in Family Search, someone had tagged him as a female. He is not. But his name, let’s face it, sounds female.) I read an article by Jackie Dent in The Atlantic about the book, and so I asked our library to purchase it. It was so interesting. I learned a lot!!! A friend of mine donated her body a few years ago, so I was also interested in the why and what happens after because of her. They are called “great body teachers” because doctors NEED them in order to learn. While the technology now perhaps renders real dead bodies less important, there are things you can only learn from an actual body or body part. Every operation that is successful—thank the great dead body teachers from whom your surgeons learned.

4. As long as the rivers flow: the stories of nine Native Americans by Paula Gunn Allen & Patricia Clark Smith (1996) – two native scholars collaborated on this book. The nine people featured were Weetamoo, Geronimo, Will Rogers, Jim Thorpe, Maria Tallchief, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Wilma Pearl Mankiller, Michael Naranjo, Louise Erdrich. I was most familiar already with Jim Thorpe (having watched the movie about him) and Maria Tallchief (who was featured in the first biography I ever read, To Dance, To Dream). I had no clue that Will Rogers was a native! I had no clue that Maria Tallchief was Osage, the “rich” Indians. This was an interesting read.

5.       The other side of me by Sidney Sheldon (2005) – This is Sidney Sheldon’s biography, which I read because I like biographies, and I was still interested in the life and career of Sidney Sheldon. The title is a play on the title of his successful (NYT #1 best selling) novel The other side of midnight (1973) which was made into a successful movie in 1977. We sometimes think that the lives of celebrities are smooth sailing, and biographies help us to understand that life is hard for everyone. Mr. Sheldon was bipolar and had mental health struggles his entire life. He only has one daughter, Mary, because a second daughter, Alexandra, died after a few months of struggle with spina bifida, and a third daughter, Elizabeth Aprille, was adopted and loved, but her birth mother took her back just as the deadline for doing so approached. The family was heartbroken. Sheldon discusses his successes and failures frankly and with good humor.

6.       Pandora Brown by Mary Sheldon (2004) – Since Sidney Sheldon’s only daughter, Mary, is also a novelist, I wanted to see if she was also a good writer. And she was! Interesting modern take on the Greek myth Pandora’s Box. The story is told from three points of view—Pandora, Gary, and Lori each act as narrators as the story unfolds. I disliked Lori sooooo much that sometimes I would stop reading for a couple of days because I knew a Lori chapter was next!! I guess that is also good writing—that my reaction to that character was so visceral!