Finished: Go Set A Watchman (Lee) I'm so very torn and confused about this sequel/prequel/rumored springboard/disillusioner of To Kill A Mockingbird, but what an amazing writer Harper Lee is. Sigh. I'm very much so still trying to take in everything I've just read, but the gist of the story is that twenty-six year old Scout Finch goes home to Maycomb for her biannual, two week vacation from her current home and work place in New York City and gets slapped in the face, both literally and figuratively, with her father's about face in regards to Civil Rights. And the father we're talking about is, of course, the epitome of all good men, Atticus Finch. It's a life-shattering moment for Scout, who now goes by her given name, Jean Louise, when she witnesses both her beloved father, and her nearly betrothed, longtime best friend and love, Henry, at a citizen's counsel meeting that opposes the recent creation of the NAACP and all it stands for. When the guest speaker gets up and spews the most vile, racist remarks about the lowly "niggers" and her father does nothing but sit and listen, Scout is devastated. Everything she knows, all her morals, her inherent "color blindness", her compassion towards fellow human beings, she has learned from her father from the day she was born. Rather than leaving town, she does confront Atticus, and he tries to explain his reasoning to her, but she tears him to pieces verbally. I don't know that I fully understand his reasoning, even for a white man in 1960's Alabama. I mean...he's the one who defended the innocent black man who was accused of raping the white girl! He's the one who said equality for all! Who would have thought that he did it because it was the right thing to do because the man, not the black man, but the man was innocent? He didn't do it because the defendant was black, he did it in spite of the defendant being black. Anyway, he tries to explain to Scout that the NAACP shouldn't be swooping down in southern states and trying to change things so fast...that the black people aren't ready themselves for such a drastic change, aren't educated enough, are still children in their social growth. He tries to explain that the black people are the majority of the population in many towns and that they'd be suddenly thrust into running towns, etc. without the proper idea at all of how to do it. He wasn't against equality for all, but he thought it needed to work about slowly? I just don't know. Anyway, Scout rails against him and heads for home. Her father's brother, Uncle Jack, slaps some sense into her when she's packed up and ready to leave Maycomb forever. He says, congratulations, you just grew up. Your father and I were waiting for the day when you would finally realize that you have your own conscience. All your life you've taken on Atticus' conscience as your own. And now, you've finally realized that your father isn't perfect, and you disagree with him to the core on this important issue...you've finally grown up. I don't know. I'm still reeling a bit myself at this change in Atticus, so that's about all I'm going to say about the book. I'm not sure if I believe that this was the first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird, as is touted by some...and that it took major rewrites (obviously) to this manuscript before To Kill A Mockingbird was born. There are just too many differences to me. It's an entirely different story. And another thing...Jem Finch is dead. Scout's beloved big brother and protector, another of my favorite characters has been dead for two years when the story takes up. He was 28 and suffered the same heart condition his own mother did, who died when the kids were so little. That was so, so sad for me. :-( I think I might go re-read To Kill A Mockingbird now and pretend this one doesn't exist? Still....such great writing. What a terrible shame that Harper Lee didn't write so much more in her lifetime!

Finished: Written In My Own Heart's Blood (Gabaldon) Book #8 of the Outlander series was one I could hardly put down....but it is the last book that is currently out, meaning now I've got to wait possibly another three or four years for the next book! It becomes a contest of patience...just like waiting for the next Game of Thrones book. Agghh! I'm so happy that this Outlander book didn't end with any major cliffhangers...no one in peril or distress. :-) Even though the American Revolution is ongoing, and Jamie and Claire were both heavily involved in this book, Jamie has resigned his commission as a General in the Continental Army and taken Claire and most of the rest of his family back to Fraser's Ridge to live their lives as peacefully as possible, and rebuild their house that burned down before they left the ridge. Jamie is no coward, and fought valiantly in the battle, nearly losing Claire in the process, as she was shot while doctoring wounded soldiers. They are still going strong as ever. Young Ian falls in love with Quaker Rachel Hunter and they are finally married and have just had their baby son when the book ends. Ian and Rachel have moved back to the ridge with Jamie and Claire. Ian's wolf dog, Rollo, finally died of natural causes, which was very sad. :-(  Ian's mother, and Jamie's sister, Jenny, having come to America with Jamie after her husband Ian died, is now happily ensconced in their lives, relishing in her time spent with her youngest son after so many years, and in being a Granny to the children of Fergus and Marsali. Fergus and Marsali are raising their four young children, and still in the dangerous business of printing their newspaper and pamphlets in the war-heightened city of Philadelphia. Towards the end of the book, their print shop and home is burned down and their youngest son, Henri-Christian dies in the melee. It's so very, very sad and the entire family is devastated by his loss. Fergus and Marsali take Jamie's printer, which has been shipped from Scotland and safely stored away and begin anew in Charleston. John Grey and his brother Hal are also in the mix. They are both still officers in the British army and spend their later time in the book trying to find Hal's captured son, Ben and Ben's new wife and son. At the beginning of the book, though, John tells Jamie that he married his wife (to keep her safe of course) but that he also bedded her. This brings a fury in Jamie and he beats John up and leaves him to some Continental army soldiers. Jamie's conscience bothers him later, as he worries whether his former dear friend may be hanged, but he's relieved to eventually see that John escaped and is back with family. Sadly, their friendship will probably never be the same. Hal's daughter, Dottie, is also a factor in the story, as she has fallen in love with Rachel's Quaker brother, the doctor, Denzell. They also get married, finally with her father's blessing, and are expecting their first child at the end of the book. And then...there's William...Jamie's son, the Duke of Ellesemere, who doesn't know he's Jamie's son...who was raised by John, and who is also a young officer in the British army. We get quite a bit of his story, as we see that his morals, honor and personality are very much a lovely combination of both his fathers. When he finds out that Jamie is his real father, though, by basically coming face to face with him, he's feels heartbroken and betrayed by all and spends most of the last part of the book struggling with his emotions and identity. Towards the end of the book, he does go to Jamie for help in rescuing a young prostitute who he was trying to help, and Jamie does so without hesitation. I think William is beginning to see that Jamie is an honorable man. He asks about his mother and what their relationship was when he was conceived. But then, William tells Jamie he's going away and he doesn't know where. I guess that's the one loose end left at the end of this book, but you just know he'll be back in future books. :-) Also, there are a couple of bad guys during the war, Richardson being the main one, who look as if they will play a part in political stories to come for the family. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, as the author titles one of her sections... Roger, Bree, Jemmy and Mandy had been living pretty happily in 1980 in Lallybroch in Scotland when nine year old Jemmy was kidnapped by Rob Campbell, a coworker of Bree's who read one of Roger's private time-traveling letters to his kids AND a letter from Jamie to Roger and Bree indicating where some old Jacobite gold was hidden...with only Jamie and Jem knowing the whereabouts. So, Rob kidnaps Jemmy and lets Roger and Bree think he's taken Jemmy back through the stones to the past. In reality he has stayed in 1980, but Roger doesn't know this and heads back through the stones! Because he's thinking of Jem as he goes, he actually ends up 30 years earlier than he wants to be because his own father, who Jem is named after, was a missing WWI pilot who had gone through the stones and never returned. Because Jem isn't actually in the past, the stones take Roger to the Jeremiah who IS! So, Roger meets his father and he meets a young Jenny at Lallybroch, and Jamie's father Brian. He also meets a young Dougal McKenzie and Geilis! Meanwhile, Bree is left in 1980 fighting off Rob who has now tried to rape her. Jemmy has smartly figured his way out of the hydraulic tunnel where Rob hid him, but Bree, Jem and Mandy are in constant danger now in Scotland. Bree heads to America to meet with her mother's old friend, Joe Abernathy, the only other person who knows they time travel. Bree knows that Roger will stay in the past looking for Jem forever, not realizing he never went...so, because of that, and because they are in constant danger, she makes preparations and decides to take her kids and travel back to Roger. After they have a lovely family reunion, they then decide to travel in time to where Jamie and Claire are. At the end of the book, while Jamie and Claire are standing at the site of what will be their new home on the ridge, they see four people coming up the trail and after a few minutes realize that it's Bree, Roger, Jem and Mandy! They fly down the path towards them, and that's the end of the story for now. So....sigh...now I wait like the rest of the people who have already read all the Outlander books!

Finished: An Echo In the Bone (Gabaldon) Outlander book #7! Only one more book to go until I've read them all and then have to wait (I hope not like the Game of Thrones wait) for the book being currently written. :-) In this continuing saga of Claire and Jamie, the couple moves from Fraser's Ridge and right into the heart of the Revolutionary War. Well, not the heart, as in Boston...but they certainly feel the affects of war as Jamie fights for the rebels in North Carolina and Claire continues to put her medical skills to use. Roger and Brianna have taken their children back through the stones to 1980 to get the heart surgery for little Amanda. They buy the now ancient Lallybroch, and in a prearranged twist, keep in touch with Jamie and Claire's adventures through a series of letters that Jamie and Claire have entrusted to the Royal Bank of Scotland, to be given to Roger and Brianna two hundred years later! There's a bit of adventure in 1980 as William Buccleigh McKenzie, Roger's great, great, great, etc. grandfather is propelled through the stones and shows up on their doorstep wanting to go back. And, there's a questionable man who Brianna works with, Rob Campbell, who kidnaps Jem in the attempt to get Roger and Claire to tell him the location of the stolen gold that belonged to Jocasta, Jamie's aunt. Thinking that Rob has taken Jem through the stones, Roger and Buc go back themselves. That's exactly what Rob wanted Roger to think. In actuality, he stayed in 1980 and it leaves him free to intimidate Brianna. Back in the 1770's, Ian has fallen in love with Quaker, Rachel Hunter, and she with him. Will their love be allowed, or will Arch Bug get to Rachel to exact his revenge on Ian?? Jamie makes good his promise to Jenny, finally, as he, Claire and Ian take a ship to Scotland. Jamie wants to pick up his old printing press and take it back to the Americas to continue fighting the war with words and not weapons. While there, they take Ian back to Lallybroch where they discover, much to their shock and heartbreak that big Ian is dying from consumption. It's so sad as they are barely there in time to each spend some quality time with Ian before he dies. Jamie and Ian have been like brothers since childhood, and I think this is the first time in seven books that I had tears in my eyes. :-( While in Scotland, Claire gets an urgent message from Marsali back in Philadelphia that her youngest, Henri-Christian, is in dire need of her help as a surgeon. And, big Ian tells his son, young Ian to head back to America with Claire before he dies to tell Rachel he loves her. So, Claire and young Ian head back to America before Jamie. After Ian dies, Jenny decides to leave Lallybroch and go back to America with Jamie. They book passage on one ship, and Jamie writes Claire of their imminent departure. However, when they get there to take the ship, it has left the day before! Furious, Jamie finagles passage for himself and Jenny on another ship. Tragically, the original ship sinks with no survivors, so Claire is devastated to be notified that Jamie has died at sea! What's more...she's about to be arrested for passing rebel materials, so Lord John Grey, who is also mourning Jamie, tells Claire that her only form of protection is to marry him immediately. They marry, and actually have sex once in their extreme grief and loneliness. Well, sure enough, about a month later, Jamie finally makes it to Philadelphia and Claire falls into his arms, in disbelief that he is alive. He is also being chased by the British militia that is still in control of the town, and while fleeing Lord John's home runs smack dab into his son, William, who is his spitting image. William is horrified to see with his own eyes that he's actually not the Duke of Ellesmere, but in fact, the son of a Scottish ex-prisoner. We end the book with William storming out, John telling Jamie that he has had carnal knowledge of his wife, with Rachel and Ian admitting their love for one another, with Rollo happily looking on, and with wee Jem stuck in the dark tunnel where Rob has stashed him.

Finished: A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole) Finally read this Pulitzer Prize winner that has been called "an epic comedy" and "one of the funniest books ever written", and while I did laugh out loud a few times, I was not blown away by the book....and in particular found the main character, Ignatious J. Reilly anything BUT funny. Maybe I'm just not deep enough? I don't get it! While the entire book was full of characters that could literally be called a confederacy of dunces, being set in New Orleans and being chock full of idiotic characters, I found Ignatious, the 30 year old educated, but jobless, obese, unpleasant, paranoid, argumentative man who still lived with his mother, who he continuously verbally abused, to be more on the sadly mentally ill side than the light-hearted and/or bumbling humorous side. Anyway...the writing and dialogue of the characters was nicely done. I could just hear the New Orleans, Louisiana accents in the various characters. I think my favorite character was the very abused Officer Mancuso, the policeman who was just always trying to do his job, yet always being ridiculed by his Sargent, and was constantly demoted into demeaning situations until he finally saved the day and became a hero! Anyway...glad I finally read the book, but I think I may be lacking a funny bone or something?

Finished: Atonement (McEwan) Sadness, wretched, unfair, sadness abounds! Can I really put a thirteen year old girl on my Least Favorite Literary Characters list? Yes, yes I can. I remember seeing this movie a few years ago, and being very disturbed by it...but not so utterly moved. This is definitely a case of the book being better. The book delves so deeply into the extremely fantastical and narcissistic mind of thirteen year old Briony Tallis, that we know her every thought as she selfishly, and usually heartlessly, makes every event that she witnesses between two people an inflated story in her mind, with herself usually as some kind of victim or hero. The Tallis family is one of great wealth in 1935 England, and they live on a huge estate. The father is never home, and the mother is often in bed suffering from migraines. Briony's older sister, Cecilia, is ten years older than she is, and her brother, Leon, two years older than Cecilia. Robbie, who is Cecilia's age, is the son of the house maid. After being abandoned by his father at a young age, he has grown up on the estate with his mom and been generously educated by the Tallis father. He's been close to Cecilia and Leon since early childhood, but as our story opens, it's quite clear that the now twenty-three year olds, Cecilia and Robbie, though putting on a good front of bickering, are actually quite in love with each other. They just haven't quite realized it themselves yet. On the eve before Robbie is to leave the estate and go on to medical school (again to be generously paid for by Cecilia's father), Briony mistakenly identifies Robbie as the person she saw raping her visiting cousin, Lola and all their lives change for the much, much worse. :-( Briony never actually SEES Robbie attacking Lola, but just sees a male form get up from her in the dark and walk off. She just WANTS it so badly to be Robbie because she has created this story in her mind that Robbie is a sexual maniac and she must save her own sister from him! This wild tale in her head comes from two sources...a note and a library scene. Robbie types a note to Cecilia declaring his feelings for her, planning to give it to her that night at the family dinner. He gets nervous and frustrated re-reading the note, though, and types at the end something about wanting her cunt, 24 hours a day...or something like that. Of course, he rips that out of the machine never planning for it to see the light of day. Instead, he hand writes his true feelings in the real note and plans to give that to her. In a rush to get to dinner, though, he accidentally put the wrong note in the envelope!!!!!!!!!!! And then, he sees Briony on the way to dinner and thinks it would be great if Cecilia saw his declaration before he gets there, so he asks Briony to take her the note! Aggghhh! Of course, the little brat reads the note! And, even though she doesn't know what the word means, she know that it's a vulgar sexual reference and she becomes determined right there that Robbie is a maniac and she must protect Cecilia from him, who will heap thanks and praise on her later. Robbie realizes too late that he put the wrong note in the envelope and almost doesn't go to the house....but it's a good thing he does, because Cecilia pulls him into the library and they declare their love for each other and start kissing, and going further, standing up against the library books, until they are actually making love! And who should hear unusual noises from the library?? Of course, Briony. So, Briony walks in on them and immediately thinks that Robbie is accosting her sister. She doesn't scream for help or anything, though. She just stands there and watches. When Cecilia runs out, she has no idea what Briony's thoughts are. Later in the evening when cousin Lola's twin brothers decide to run away from their visit, and everyone goes out to look for them on the pitch black, vast grounds. That is when Briony comes across Lola being raped and even though she doesn't see his face, she just KNOWS that it's Robbie. :-( When she rushes to comfort Lola, rather than letting Lola say who it was, Briony declares that she saw him and she knows it was Robbie. Of course, Lola knows better...she knows it was actually Leon's friend who came home with him from London. :-( We all know it...but not Briony. She wants so badly for Robbie to be guilty that she identifies him to the police and doesn't change her story. Lola never corrects her because she fancies herself in love with Leon's rapist friend. :::shudder::: Robbie, who was about to go to medical school, is instead tried, convicted and imprisoned. :-( At least Cecilia doesn't believe a word of Briony's story, though everyone else in the family turns on Robbie...even the Tallis father who has supported him and believed in him all those years. Fast forward five years and Robbie has been released from prison as long as he goes straight into the military to fight in the now raging war against Germany. Cecilia has completely cut her awful family off from her life and become a nurse in London. She has never stopped believing in Robbie and written back and forth to him the whole time he was in prison. They have declared their love for each other, and their intention to be together after the war...but they only get one brief afternoon together before he's shipped off to training camp and then the war. They manage to share just one kiss, but he carries that kiss with him, and all her letters through the war. The next section of the book is all about Robbie marching in retreat from the Germans with two war companions, making his way back to the coast of France where so many of the English servicemen are now waiting for ships to come and take them home. The scenes and bombings and hysteria he goes through are horrific! And, he does the entire march to the shore with a piece of shrapnel manifesting itself in his side. At the same time, we see that Briony is now eighteen and a nurse in London. She is baptized very quickly in the art of wartime nursing as the first casualties role in. She has written to her sister and hopes to meet with her. She wants to apologize and tell her she was wrong...after all these years. She never explains how she figured out she was wrong, or if she just knew all along. Briony also receives a letter from her father informing her that Lola and Marshall (Leon's rapist friend) are getting married in London that next week. Briony takes the day off from the hospital and attends the wedding, intending to stand up and say Marshall was the real rapist when the priest asks if there is anyone with an objection, but she's too cowardly to do it. She walks to Cecilia's apartment after that and is happily shocked to see Robbie there as well. They are both furious with her. She apologizes for what she did years ago and swears to write a formal letter to both their family and to the authorities clearing Robbie's name. They don't have any loving sisterly moments, but Cecilia and Robbie walk her back to her train station and say goodbye. Briony signs off at the end of that chapter with her initials, and says that the aforementioned writing was the truth of the story....her atonement, for her actions that derailed the lives of Robbie and Cecilia. The story then moves to when Briony is seventy-seven years old and she's an acclaimed authoress. She is going into a museum in London when she espies the very wealthy Lola and Marshall, still married, but themselves quite old now. She avoids running into them, but as we hear her thoughts again, she explains to the reader that while she did write the truth of the rape matter in her story, she has yet to be able to publish it because of litigation factors. As long as the rich, powerful and litigation-happy Lola and Marshall are alive, she can never accuse Marshall of the horrific rape and clear Robbie's name. No publisher will touch it. What's more....she was a coward all those years ago at the wedding...and a coward right afterwards. She never went to her sister's apartment to face her. Robbie had never been there. He'd died of septicemia from his shrapnel wound while waiting for the ship on the shore in France. :-( And, Cecilia had been killed two months later in a bombing in London. :-( They had never seen each other again after their one afternoon kiss when Robbie left for training. :-( Briony made up the part about Robbie being back to see Cecilia, figuring readers would rather have somewhat of a happy ending, rather than the sad truth. Sigh...so, so very sad. All because a selfish, stupid, little girl, who was certainly old enough to know better in my opinion, wouldn't see beyond herself and tell the truth! This was a very well written book, and has obviously evoked emotion in me...but I don't think I can put it on a favorite list, because it's so tragic. :-(

Finished: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Proust). I read the second book in Proust's seven volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, slowly over the last two weeks, and while I admit the writing is stunning at times...the in depth description of every minute detail and feeling are not quite my cup of tea, and I stand by what I wrote about the first book, Swann's Way, which I read three years ago. It was this:

Hmm, not my favorite book. I kind of felt myself wondering if I'd ever get the lost time back it was taking me to read this book. It's not that I found the writing bad. Proust has an amazing ability to describe something in such detail that you can honestly see it, feel it, smell it. It's just that he describes every single little thing in such detail that each detail develops its own explanatory detail, and then that detail gets another tangent, and so on. When it takes six pages to describe one pane of glass in a church window, you know you're in for a very long read.

I also found the narrator to be so self-absorbed and bordering on obsessive in his longings for his mother to come and say goodnight to him, and then, on his desire to see the little girl he'd "fallen in love with" as a child when they played. It seemed to be so narcissistic, but then on the other hand, those parts of the book were complete details of his innermost thoughts. So, perhaps he wasn't being any more self-absorbed than the rest of us are. He just happened to write it all down.

So...in this second book, the narrator, who is never named, which drives me a bit crazy, has moved into adolescence. His age is never given, but I'm assuming he's between 13 to 15 years old. He is still just as self-absorbed, but I think I have come to understand this as just the author putting every single thought of the boy's on the page. I suppose if all our thoughts were spilled out on the page, we might sound a bit self-absorbed as well. The narrator is still very dramatic, with the smallest things blowing up in his mind to be great joys or tragedies. He spends the first half of the book actually meeting and spending time with the first love of his life, the little girl from the first book, Gilberte. Gilberte is the daughter of two other characters from the first book...the rich and socially regarded Charles Swann, who unfortunately married down when he married his mistress Odette, who had already given birth to their daughter when they married. So, Gilberte and the narrator are roughly the same age, and one day when meeting at the park, while he's trying to grab a letter from her and he's rather tackling her to get it, he has an orgasm against her! After this, he is truly in love, and lucky for him, Charles and Odette adore him so he is invited over to their house all the time. Especially since most of the ladies in the upper social echelons ignore Ms. Swann, they feel like the narrator, being from what seems to be a pretty well off family himself, will be a good influence on Gilberte. Everything goes fine throughout the year until one day it becomes clear that Gilberte becomes bored of having the narrator over and says to him "well, I did love you once". Sigh. So, the narrator goes home, promising himself that he will ignore Gilberte, but for some reason expecting her to send him a letter of apology or come crawling over to him, which, of course, she never does. We are treated to the highs and lows of his every thought as he goes through his first adolescent heartbreak. The second half of the book occurs two years later when the narrator goes with his grandmother to the seaside town of Balbec for the summer. Though he has a near panic attack about leaving his mother, which makes me think of him as much younger...it would seem that he's maybe 16 or 17 during this time. It takes him awhile to get used to his surroundings, and we read every tangent of every metaphor you can imagine as he describes his feelings. Proust is such a good writer, though, don't get me wrong. I will even include a couple of favorite passages...it's just that if the actual action in this 533 page book could be pulled out and made into a book, it would probably be about 83 pages long. I kid not. So...while in Balbec, the narrator becomes great friends with the nephew of one of his grandmother's good friends, Robert de Saint-Loup. However, as much as Robert enjoys the narrator's company as well, the narrator feels as if he's got to be always at his best intellectually when conversing with Robert, while he'd much rather spend time with the gaggle of young girls he has espied walking every day on the boardwalk by the sea. He falls in love with each of them individually and as a whole group...but mostly he falls in love with  Albertine. She is not up to his social standing, but he doesn't care, as they spend the last several weeks of the summer together. When he tries to kiss her, though, she is shocked and rebuffs him, but remains his friend. He ends the summer packed up to leave the near deserted summer town, reflecting on the swelling, in and out movements of the ocean that have fascinated him all summer. I have a feeling that being only the second book, this will not be the end of Albertine...or of friend, Robert de Saint-Loup...or even of one of the other girls, Andree. We shall see! I actually will probably read the third book, since I already bought it at a used bookstore. :-) I think I'll give it some time before I do though. ok, so here are a couple of examples of Proust's writing that I did enjoy.

This was after the narrator quit visiting Gilberte and was trying to make himself get over her. It really is beautiful writing.

Memories of love are, in fact, no exception to the general laws of remembering, which are themselves subject to the more general laws of habit. Habit weakens all things; but the things that are best at reminding us of a person are those which, because they were insignificant, we have forgotten, and which have therefore lost none of their power. Which is why the greater part of our memory exists outside us, in a dampish breeze, in the musty air of a bedroom or the smell of autumn's first fires, things through which we can retrieve any part of us that the reasoning mind, having no use for it, disdained, the last vestige of the past, the best of it, the part which, after all our tears seem to have dried, can make us weep again. 

And this one...when the narrator begins to see his mother as a separate being maybe? I loved this one too. sigh.

I was beginning to realize for the first time that it was possible for my mother to live without me, to live for reasons unrelated to me, to lead a life of her own. She was going to live for herself, with my father, who she may have thought deserved a simpler and more enjoyable life than my ill health and nervous disposition allowed him. This separation from her saddened me even more, as I told myself that she very likely saw it as a welcome pause in the succession of disappointments I had brought upon her, which she had never spoken of, but which must have made her see the prospect of spending the holidays with me as irksome; very likely she even saw it as a first experimental step toward the future life to which she would have to resign herself, as she and my father advanced in years, in which I would see less of her, in which--and this I had never glimpsed in my worst nightmares--she would become something of a stranger to me, a lady to be seen going home alone to a house where I did not live, and where she would ask the concierge whether there was not a letter from me. 

Finished: A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Gabaldon) Outlander Book #6....the continuing saga of Claire & Jamie and their family as they forge their way in America with the Revolutionary War imminent! Will Jamie stay true to the crown and fight for the British who are responsible for the wiping out of the Scottish Highlander culture at the battle of Culloden? Or, will he realize that freedom for his family is what he should fight for? Of course, none of the decisions are easy as misadventures continue to plague the Fraser family. We've got more rape, more revenge, or is that avenge? killing, a murder, Claire's arrest for said murder, incest, huge political unrest, Brianna's kidnapping, Jocasta and Duncan's complicated romantic relationships with Ulysses and Phaedra, the heartbreaking tale of the loss of Ian's baby and wife, the death of despicable pirate Steven Bonnett, the shocking discover that Arch Bug is the person who stole the gold bars from Jocasta, the birth of Brianna and Roger's second child, Amanda...and, the heart defect in baby Amanda that causes Brianna, Roger, Jemmy and Amanda to have to travel back through the stones to current times so Amanda can have heart surgery. It was heartbreaking for Jamie and Claire to say goodbye to their family, but they knew it had to be done. After they are safely returned, the burning down of the house on Fraser Ridge which Brianna had seen in the newspaper article, which had been her impetus for going back in time to warn her parents, finally happens...only 11 later than the article claimed. So, at the end of the book we are left with Jamie and Claire safe from the fire, but having lost everything. Jamie has decided he will go back to Scotland for his printing press, so I guess we'll have a little more Scottish adventure (finally!) in the next book. And...apparently Roger and Brianna have bought Lallybroch!! It won't take me long to start reading the next book. :-)

Finished: Station Eleven (St. John Mandel) A super good book about a modern day group of Canadians who are only a handful of the survivors left after a flu pandemic wipes out 99.9% of the world population. With no families, no electricity, no gasoline, no Internet, no phones, no medicine, etc., people are forced to survive in what rapidly becomes a hostile environment in most places. The story begins with the death by heart attack of 51 year old famous actor Arthur Leander as he performs the title role of King Lear on stage in Toronto. After his quick death, it suddenly becomes apparent that people are dying all over the word within 48 hours of contracting the deadly Georgian Flu. Several people related to Arthur survive, and we see their stories all come together. Kirsten, an eight year old actress in the company, is the only one in her family to survive and twenty years later she is part of a traveling acting and symphony troupe. She carries with her few memories of her life before "Year 1"...but she remembers Arthur, as she watched him die on stage that night...and one of her few possessions is the set of Dr. Eleven comic books he gives her that were written and illustrated by his first ex-wife, Miranda. Jeevan, the young man who hops up from the first row of the audience and tries to perform CPR on Arthur, also survives after getting a phone call from his best friend, who is an ER physician, telling him to leave town because people are dying all around him. Instead, Jeevan gathers all the food and water he can and locks himself in the high rise apartment of his paraplegic brother, Frank. After nearly two months, figuring it's safe to venture out, Frank makes Jeevan promise to go and see what civilization is out there, and then Frank takes his own life. Arthur's best friend since college, Clark, miraculously gets on an airplane in New York headed for Toronto on which no one has been infected by the virus. Midway through the flight, which Clark has taken to get to Arthur's planned funeral, the flight is diverted to Severn City in Canada where that group of people ends up making a new home and community out of the uninfected airport for the next twenty years. Also on that flight...Arthur's second ex-wife, Elizabeth, and his eight year old son, Tyler. Tyler and his mother rely on just the bible and Tyler's copies of the same Dr. Eleven comic books for guiding their lives. They believe they have been spared by God because they are good. They leave the airport community after two years, and by the twentieth year, Tyler has become this religious cult leader known as the Prophet, who uses violence to get his way and takes young pre-teen girls as his brides. :-( Eventually, Kirsten and the Prophet cross paths and have a confrontation that ends in the death of the Prophet, thank goodness...but Kirsten can't believe it when she finds a page from the Dr. Eleven comic books series in his possession. Kirsten and her troupe ends up spending five weeks at the Severn City airport community where she meets Clark and they realize their connections to each other via Arthur. Most importantly, Clark, now 71, takes Kirsten up to the air traffic control tower and shows her something amazing through a telescope. There is a small city in the north that appears to have street lights on! Someone has figured out electricity. This gives them all hope and Kirsten and the traveling troupe head there next to explore. Kirsten leaves one of her Dr. Eleven comic books at the airport with Clark where he has established a museum of modern items that are now obsolete...iphones, credit cards, stiletto heels, car engines, rare newspapers, etc. I had hoped that Jeevan would also end up at Severn City, but he does have a happy ending. After walking a hundred miles when he started off on his journey, he met with a different group of people and he is now married with two children...and he's considered to be the closest thing to a doctor for miles around. He had decided after trying to save Arthur all those years ago to become a paramedic. And Arthur's first wife, Miranda, does not survive the pandemic, but each time we see her story in flashback we are treated to how the story of Dr. Eleven, who lives on Station Eleven with his dog Luli evolves. Anyway....I was surprised at how drawn in I was by this book! I spent all day reading it. A really scary, eerie idea...but lots of food for thought!

Finished: A Thousand Acres (Smiley) Pulitzer Prize winner about a rigid, unbearable Iowa farmer in the early 1970's who decides to divide his farm up between his three daughters ala King Lear. When the youngest daughter balks at the idea, she is immediately cut out of the discussion and the farm is divided up between the two remaining daughters and their husbands. In a fascinating story that I couldn't put down, their lives go downhill immediately. The overbearing father treats them all like they've stolen the farm from him, and lets the surrounding community think so as well. He acts so crazy that he even runs out into a dangerous storm in the night and then has a nasty confrontation with his daughters. He and his equally manipulative neighbor and best friend, who has two sons, are constantly trying to one up each other and succeed in basically ruining their grown children's lives. Both mothers have long since been dead, leaving the farm kids to have been raised in the tough environment with only their fathers. This book is still swirling around inside of me, so I'm not going to try and lay the plot line all out. I just can't believe how things deteriorate and how everyone turns against the daughters and their husbands when it was the father's crazy (drunken) idea in the first place to "gift" them with the farm. Of course, the youngest daughter, who had the initial reservations, ends up helping her father with a lawsuit to try and win the farm back, alienating herself from the sisters who practically raised her, but they don't succeed. And, the oldest son of the neighbor comes back home after being gone for fourteen years only to have both of the father's daughters fall for him with various degrees of heartbreak, happiness and marriage degradation. And, the huge topper is that we find out the father sexually abused the two oldest daughters from the time they were teenagers until the time they left the house to be married. Oh, and the daughters are Ginny, Rose and Caroline....much like Lear's own Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. And, the father is Larry. Hmmm.....I can't say that the story mirrors King Lear, but the tragedy of the story certainly does. :-( A book with heart wrenching, exceptional writing, with many deep, resounding, familiar thoughts! I've really loved all the books I've read by Jane Smiley.

Finished: In Paradise (Matthiessen) Very intense book about a group of people from various countries and religions who go on a five day retreat to Auschwitz in 1996. Catholics, Muslims, Jewish, Protestants, Polish, Americans, British, French, Germans...and the American professor and poet, Clements Olin all converge upon Auschwitz to meet with each other, this group of people who will walk the grounds of Auschwitz and Birkenau. They meet for devotionals and silent prayer groups. They walk the paths that the Jewish prisoners walked. They witness the horrific crematoriums, the bunk houses, the railroad platforms...all with their own reasons for being there. The Jewish people in attendance resent the presence of the two Catholic nuns and two priests. They feel strongly that the Catholic church did nothing to prevent the devastation of the Jews being sent to the prison camps, and in some cases even supplied lists of Jewish citizens to the Nazis. There are bitter words between many...Germans feeling guilty about their ancestors, Poles feeling resentful, Catholics feeling remorse, etc. The Jewish man who was actually a survivor of the camp, like many survivors before him, just comes "home" because he can and he must be there to never forget. Each person there has their own story that comes out in time about what has compelled them to come. Clements Olin has a story all his own. His father, Alexei, was the son of a Polish baron whose parents forced him to leave the military and accompany them to America right before the entitled and educated members of Polish society began to be imprisoned. Alexei felt extremely guilty leaving his country and more importantly leaving behind a young, pregnant school teacher who he'd fallen in love with, Emi. Emi had insisted that he go because she didn't want to leave her own family. In the years during and after the war in America, Alexei mourned for Emi, but never truly went and tried to find her after the war. Having given birth to a son, Clements, and wanting him to be protected, Emi had allowed her baby to be wrenched from her arms and taken to an embassy, and then given to Alexei's family. So...why if they found and kept the baby could they not bring Emi along too? I suppose she refused to go. After being raised in a British private school at a young age, Clements was finally brought to live with his family in America. They were clearly snobs, by his own accounting. As he grew up, all he had of his mother was a single picture of her hanging out a window waving in the Polish town where he was born. Armed with this picture and unsure of his own motives, Clements finally admits to himself that he's there at Auschwitz to try and find out about his mother and see if, as he fears, she was actually Jewish and sent to the camp. He does find this out with the help of some of the very old town folks. So...Clements, who has been brought up as a Christian, finds out that he is actually half Jewish. It all seems to make sense to him then...the reason that his family was always so closed mouthed about his mother....they must have known! They knew that he had Jewish blood and rather than embarrass the family by admitting the taint, they never even investigated to see what had become of his mother. Even his own father, who had professed to love his mother, never tried. Of course, his father had committed suicide at a fairly young age, so perhaps the guilt got to him. Anyway...Clements stands up before the group on the last evening they are there and admits what he's found...that he's part Jewish. He is met with various reactions...but most of all, he's met with his own reaction, which is that of accepting his heritage rather than hiding like his family would have had him do. Another important aspect of the story is that Clements becomes incredibly drawn to Sister Catherine, a novice nun who is struggling, but determined to stay in her faith. She is drawn to Clements as well, but in the end, neither does anything to act on their feelings and they go their separate ways. The entire book was just one powerful, but shattering moment after another. The immensity of standing inside Auschwitz affected everyone almost indescribable by words. This is something I also long to do, and I can't tell the reason why either...just a need to show my respect maybe? And my deep regret. The author tackles such issues as no human being innocent of the atrocity of the death camps...of the horrific murder of an entire group of people. I don't know...it might have gone a bit deep for me...but in all, the book was a good one! I'm always left a bit depressed after reading the books about the Holocaust nightmare, though, which is why I space them out...because I must read them.