Her Mother's Hope, by Francine Rivers

Her Mother's Hope,

Francine Rivers

I picked this one up at a rummage sale along with its sequel---SCORE! I really enjoy Francine Rivers' writing. She seems to really research before writing her stories and I think I have enjoyed each one so far. 

This story is a generational series, starting with a young girl who is abused and controlled by her father, who seeks to enslave her to keep his business going, but she has other plans, and she leaves and ends up travelling through Europe and settling in America. 

Eventually she marries and has children, and in order to keep something she feels was a terrible mistake from happening to one of her children who she considers weak, she goes overboard in her tough-it-out attitude towards her child, and becomes unknowingly like her own father in some ways. 

The second half of the book is about her daughter, who doesn't understand why her mother has always hated her, and her struggles she has to overcome .

It is based on Rivers' own family, the division she saw but could never understand between her own mother and grandmother.

 

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

I have been a big fan of Bill Bryson's for years. I really enjoy his style, and he makes pretty much everything he writes about interesting. 

This book, however, I had some issue with. Yes--it was interesting and he did a great job writing it. My issue is with the blind acceptance and treating as fact some of the popular theories, such as the big bang theory, evolution (one kind of creature turning into a completely different kind), that all dinosaurs died from a meteor hitting the earth etc. 

Yes, I believe in creation by intelligent design and it makes more sense than blindly accepting that nothing magically exploded and created the building blocks of everything which magically and randomly came together into the exact proportions of elements etc to create and sustain life. I just can't get past the blind acceptance of that.

Whether you are an evolutionist or not, though, I think this is a good read. If you don't believe in the theories in this book, it still gives the explanation of how they came to be accepted and what they all entail. I think it's important to know the history of the ideas. And for all the other stuff in the book, it is quite fascinating and put in a way that the lay man can grasp and enjoy, even.

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Creating Art at the Speed of Life, Pam Carriker

Creating Art at the Speed of Life, by Pam Carriker

This is the second art journaling book I have picked up, and like the first one, it's a mixed media collage type of book, with 30 days of exercises. However, each day explores a different aspect of design, such as exploring the color wheel, or composition, line, or texture. I haven't actually done this type of art, as I am an oil painter, but I do like the book and the ideas, and I think it would be fun to explore when I have time to create just for fun rather than for commission. And this book might be good to use if one wanted to teach a class. It's very well thought out.

 

Flower Net, Lisa See

Flower Net, by Lisa See

I am so glad I stumbled upon Lisa See's books. She writes about Chinese and Chinese American culture, and she comes from Chinese stock herself.

Flower Net is the first book in the Red Princess Mysteries, about a Chinese detective, Liu Hulan, seeking to solve the mysterious deaths of two young men, one found in China, one found off the coast of California, both with similar deaths. 

This book, being a mystery rather than just historical fiction, is a little different than her other writing, but can still be appreciated for its authenticity of writing about the culture. I have two other books in this series, looking forward to reading them.

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 

 

The Blue Tattoo, The Life of Olive Oatman, by Margot Mifflin

The Blue Tattoo, The Life of Olive Oatman

Margot Mifflin

When I first picked this up at a rummage sale, it looked interesting, but I thought it was historical fiction. However, it's an accurate gathering of information and the history of Olive Oatman.

Olive was a young girl whose family was from a Brewsterite family of pioneers (a branch of Mormonism), they were seeking a "promised land" out west. They branched off from the party they were traveling with, and were attacked by Yavapai Indians. All of them were massacred except for Olive, a younger sister, and a brother. Olive and her sister were taken by the Yavapais as slaves, and the brother was left for dead, and later came to, and found his way to some friendly natives who nursed him back to health.

The girls lived as slaves with the Yavapais for a year and were then sold to the Mohave Indians, and that tribe welcomed them in as family. They were well taken care of, and inducted into the tribe with tattoos on their chins. 

They were happy with the Mohaves, and had assimilated. They expected to spend the rest of their lives with them, and loved their Mohave family. A time of famine came, and the younger sister, who was fragile, died.

All this time, a search had gone on for the missing Oatman girls, and when word came that they could be with the Mohaves, steps were taken to get them back. Threats were made to the Mohave tribe, and so they gave Olive back to the white men, even though she did not want to leave.

She then had to re-learn the English language and white man's way of life, grieving and mourning the loss of here Mohave family.

Eventually a preacher heard of her story and wrote it down, embellishing it, making the Mohaves out to be heartless savages, romanticizing her ordeal. He had it published, and it became a sensation. Olive became a public speaker, but instead of telling it how it was, she was coerced into telling the romanticized version. She pretty much betrayed her Mohave family out of fear of being an "Indian lover"

This book discusses the historical events of the Oatman ordeal and the surrounding circles, and also discusses the discrepancies in the book that was written, along with how her story has influenced books and media. It also follows her life from birth to death.

I really enjoyed this book, a fascinating glance into a life that I had never heard about before. I highly recommend it.

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 

 

Thunder from Jerusalem, Bodie and Brock Thoene

 Thunder from Jerusalem, Bodie and Brock Thoene

This is the second book in the Zion Legacy series, this is based in the era immediately after World War 2 when many Jews chose to go back to Israel when Israel became a nation, and the terrible battles that were fought there in the midst of those decisions.

This is a good series but I do have a hard time reading it, it feels like there are so many different characters and sub stories it's a little hard for me to track sometimes. However, I do learn history better if it is told in story format, so it has been good for me to read this and understand at least a glimpse into what life was like in post-war Israel and how the war did not end for them with the end of WWII.

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 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen

Out of Africa is a memoir by Baroness Karen Dinesen Blixen, who ran a coffee plantation outside of Nairobi, Kenya, for 17 years in the early 20th century when Kenya was still a British colony. She tells anecdotes of the squatters who lived on her plantation, her servants, and her friends and colleagues. 

I greatly enjoyed reading this book, as so much of it reminded me of the people and culture of Kenya both times that I visited there. Yes, things have changed quite a bit since the early 1900s. Nairobi is a very large city and has giant slums full of poor people, it has skyscrapers, all kinds of farming, but the people are in many ways the same. 

I felt like the author had a gentle and great love for the people of Africa, as well as the land. 

I watched the movie after reading the book. Glen Close played the Baroness, and Robert Redford played Denys Finch-Hatton, her close friend or so I thought until I saw the movie, and learned he was her lover. It was modestly hinted at in the book, so I looked her up on Google, and interestingly enough, he was her lover, after divorcing her husband who married her mainly for convenience. 

The movie was a bit different from the book, no surprise at that---but the movie, I feel was based half on her book, and half on the events of her life that were recorded in history but not recorded by her in her book. It is well worth watching, but I would read the book and read a little more about her before watching the movie, for a greater appreciation of it.