All Together In One Place, Jane Kirkpatrick

All Together In One Place, Jane Kirkpatrick

Growing up in Eastern Oregon, along the Oregon Trail, I have always felt like that's all you ever hear about here. Half the businesses in town are named after the Oregon Trail, and tourists come from all over for that Oregon Trail history. I think, and it's probably this way for whatever historical claim to fame one's region has, that it can do one of two things for the locals--they can either wholly embrace it, or just get tired of hearing about it. I have always been tired of hearing it. It wasn't that I didn't respect those who came over on the wagon trains, I just always got tired of it being pounded into my head that this was all that was important, IS important where I live...so I have always steered clear of books about The Oregon Trail. 

However, how can I turn my back on anything written by one of my favorite authors, Jane Kirkpatrick? She actually has written a lot about the general area that I live in, and although it hasn't always been my first choice of subject to read upon, each one of her stories helps me understand and appreciate the history of this land and the people in it. And so it is with this story, the first in a trilogy, about a wagon train that lost its men to cholera, and the women had to continue on without them. This story is based on a remark made by Ezra Meeker about eleven women on a wagon train whose men all died; the author has done an excellent job researching the time, location and details of when Meeker recorded this bit of information; unfortunately, there is no more information on who these women were, but in this book, there are a variety of women with different backgrounds---farmers, store owners, a woman running from her past, Asian mail order brides, and more, and how they deal with their loss as they work together to survive and move along to their destination in the West. 

I look forward to reading the next installment. Her work is always so good.

Also of note, I picked up this book at a thrift store, and it is autographed! That's always a bonus!

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Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair

Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair

How do you eat a whale? The answer is, one bite at a time. And that's what I did with this whale of a reference book. I have been working on it for at least six months, and I was determined to read through the whole thing, even though much of it went over my head, as I am inexperienced with most construction. Sometimes I just took two pages a day, depending on the subject, so as to be able to retain it. 

This book is a must have if you have your own house and plan to do any repairs. It gives you step by step instructions for home improvement and repairs, troubleshooting many problems. After reading this, I know I will be able to pull it out and maybe try some things myself, direct my husband, or just say screw it, let's call someone to do it for us, this is going to be more than we can handle!

You can find this book at any Lowe's, and Home Depot also has their own version, very similar to this one. Definitely a good one to pick up and have handy, just in case.

Would you like to buy me a book, or help keep my little free library stocked and maintained? You can donate here: paypal.me/AmyVanGaasbeck 

 

Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan

Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan

Believe it or not, with my love of Asian-themed fiction, I have never read any of Amy Tan's work before. I have some in my TBR pile, but this was the first to surface, and I think it was a good one to start with. It's interesting how the other authors I have read, though not connected to this story at all, give background information that becomes relevant in this story. It's like reading this type of fiction can help you learn and retain more history and geography. 

Anyway, this book starts out with a foreword by the author, explaining how she came across a story written by a ghost and written down by a medium. (That could have put me off, but part of Chinese lore/beliefs is that when someone dies, their spirit stays around for a while before being released to the underworld/afterlife and they can communicate with the living at times. This was kind of along the lines of the book written by Lisa See, Peony in Love....so knowing that she was just using this as a literary device and it wasn't in fact how she got the idea for the book, I went along with it.) The book is written as a narrative by the ghost, Bibi Chen, and is about a trip to China and Myanmar that she was supposed to guide with her friends; however, she died right before the trip. She decided to tag along as a ghost anyway so she could watch over them.

Her friends go on this trip after Bibi's funeral, starting out in China and moving on to Myanmar (Burma) and there is one debacle after another, and eventually they all, except one, go missing.

This book shows how if you travel into another culture and you don't understand that culture, you can commit a lot of wrongs and offenses, and often, Americans do this, thinking that people think and act the same way that Americans do about everything...and they don't.

I don't want to give away the true meaning of the title. It literally comes from the story of a fisherman who says that by catching fish, he is saving them from drowning, being noble...but by the time he catches them all and saves them from drowning, it is too late, they have all died, so he shouldn't waste their bodies, and so he sells them for money so he can go out and save more fish from drowning.

This idea comes to fruition near the end of the book, I initially thought it would be about Americans trying to reform other cultures to progress in society, but has more to do with someone well-intentioned trying to save those he loves. I am going to leave it at that because I don't want to give it away.

I really enjoyed this book, and having traveled to another country with a culture far different from my own, I could understand how necessary it is to be considerate of the country's culture in which one is visiting.

I look forward to reading more of Amy Tan's books.

Would you like to buy me a book, or help keep my little free library stocked and maintained? You can donate here: paypal.me/AmyVanGaasbeck 

 

Making a Living: How to Craft Your Business, Sophie Rochester

Making a Living, Sophie Rochester

My daughter found this book for me on the Book Outlet website. It is geared more toward creative arts entrepreneurs, such as artists and craftsmen, right up my alley. However, it's written from the perspective of a maker in the UK, so a lot of the legalities are tailored more for UK rather than US (totally fine, but if you are Americentric at all, you just have to deal with it!)

This book is much more current than the Etsy business book I read earler, also not centered on just Etsy but talks about other venues for selling as well. I was able to find some good advice and perspectives in this book regarding business, so into my bookshelf it goes!

And yes...I do have a creative entrepreneurial business---I am a fine artist, so I make a lot of oil paintings and prints, as well as jewelry, and license my art to places like Redbubble, and sell things at a crafter's/antiques mall!

Would you like to buy me a book, or help keep my little free library stocked and maintained? You can donate here: paypal.me/AmyVanGaasbeck 

 

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

This book is a quick read, but I believe very important to read. It's all about censorship, book burning, and losing the freedom to speak , write, and think for ourselves, and what a meaningless and self absorbed, cruel the world becomes because of that lack of freedom. 

I found a paragraph in the afterword that was very important to us in the current era: " For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conservationist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicago intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot", may the belt unravel and the pants fall. "

We are living in a world where everybody finds offense at something--either not enough diversity, not enough LGBTQ support, not enough sensitivity to this or that minority or faction, and the end result means that stories are not written with the power and meaning that they should be written with because the writer has to put first and foremost equity and diversity and careful treatment of each faction as priority. He must not write them in a negative light, and I have even heard some people are now boycotting some authors because they are writing books about people that are not their race and crying "cultural appropriation". So you can't write about a person or culture unless you ARE that person or culture??!

And if the writer does not please all,  the writer is blackballed or fined, boycotted for being bigoted, destroyed for not pleasing everyone. In this story, book burning and banning happened because of the offense of each diverse faction, race, religion, or ideology. If someone didn't like how something was portrayed, then they would rip the page out or burn the book. The people, and the government, decided that thinking for oneself was divisive, that all needed to be united, and that the government was to be the one to tell people how they should think. We must be careful that we don't let this book become a reality, because it very well could become such.

 

Trouble with Lichen, John Wyndham

Trouble with Lichen, John Wyndham

I had a tough time getting into this one at first...the language is a little dry and formal. This was written by the author of Day of the Triffids. It's the story of two scientists who discover a lichen that can prolong life by a couple centuries. Word gets out about it, however, before they were prepared to deal with the public knowing and all hell breaks loose. This book does bring up some interesting perspectives, however, like if man's life was extended by 200 years, how would that affect food and supplies, and unemployment rates, since there would theoretically be a larger population to take care of. And how would it affect families, if some took it, and others did not--or would it be reserved only for the elite? Interesting to think about.

 

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Dr. Seuss

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Dr. Seuss

I just love library book sales, which is where I got this great, very used ex library book dated 1958. This is the sequel to The Cat in the Hat. The Cat visits his two friends on a snowy winter day, and he ends up making a mess, and to clean it up, he transfers the stain to other items, then eventually transfers the stain to the snow outside. He requires the help of all the Little Cats A-Z but Little Cat Z has a secret weapon that cleans it all up. 

Despite all the mess and chaos in the story, I think having this cat visit for a day would be great, especially if he brought Little Cat Z and his secret weapon Voom to clean up my house!