Hi all. I hope you are well. I had my first bike ride here of the season on Saturday and took this photo. It was great to be outside and about though my new replaced knee wasn’t fully ready yet for my road bike with clip in pedals, so I used a mountain bike with regular pedals and raised the seat in order to be able to bend the knee in a circular motion. Apparently my recovery has been slow (now five months post-surgery) due to old scar tissue in the knee (Grrrrr), but I’m still working with a physio. It’s been quite frustrating, the first knee was so much easier. I don’t have time to waste with spring coming. I have hopes to get back to gardening, golf, and tennis pretty soon now. I sound like a geezer, lol. I’m part metal, part plastic, and part wishfully bionic lol.
The weather has been fluctuating wildly, we hit 60F degrees for two days this week and now it’s snowing again this morning. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, lol. But it’s nice to see spring and the azaleas at the Masters golf tournament we’ve been watching from Augusta, Ga. Today will be a nail biter on who will win. Rory McIlroy lost a 6-stroke lead yesterday at the end of Round 3. It was crazy. We will tune in again today.
Meanwhile in shows, we’ve been dipping into The Lincoln Lawyer lately. We’re only at the end of Season 1 … and currently they’re in production of Season 5. Yikes, we will last that long? Bosch was a great show based like this one on Michael Connelly’s crime books, but we’re still feeling our way a bit with this series. Any fans out there of this show?
And now in book news, let’s see what I finished in March. I got to two memoirs (Joyride and Fly, Wild Swans) and three novels (pictured below). I liked them all pretty well except for Tinkers, which lost me a few times. It’s hard to pick a favorite as they all had their moments. I liked the narration in Train Dreams and the memoirs — one serious and impactful (Fly, Wild Swans) and one lighter and a bit humorous (Joyride) were especially good. I’ve finished five nonfiction so far this year and I think I’ll surpass the 10 measly nonfiction books I read all of last year sometime. We can only hope.
- Joyride by Susan Orlean (memoir, audiobook) – 2025
- Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild (debut novel, audiobook) – 2025
- Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (novel) – (novella, audiobook) 2011
- Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang (memoir, hardback) – 2025
- Tinkers by Paul Harding (novel, paperback & audio) – 2009
And now here’s a review of what I finished this past week.
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan / Random House / 453 pages / 2025
4+ stars. This is a long yarn of a story, which I was happy to read at the same time with Tina at the blog Turn the Page. It was a good one to read and discuss together. If you like multigenerational family (period) dramas, then you’ll need to get to this one. It covers 40 years in the lives of two American families — from near the end of WWII through the Vietnam War — who live in a small town in Ohio and become entwined through circumstances. It’s better to go into this novel blind without knowing too much about it if you can … as wrongful turns and secrets play a big part of it. I won’t divulge those here but just give a general plot outlook.
At the beginning Cal Jenkins is hung up that he can’t enlist in the war since one of his legs is longer than the other. He’s married to a local girl Becky and works at his father-in-law’s hardware store. Then one day with the radio news of Germany’s surrender, he’s kissed impulsively by a stranger in the store named Margaret Anderson. She’s had a rough childhood as an orphan but is now married to Felix, a good looking man who’s an executive at the aluminum plant. Cal and Becky have a young infant son Skip, and two years later when Felix comes home from war in the Pacific, he and Margaret have Tom. The sons become friends and later they face the impending draft of the Vietnam War.
The novel with couples Cal & Becky, and Felix & Margaret goes into their backstories and perspectives of their lives and times. Becky is a bit unique in that she can sometimes communicate with the dead. She starts inviting clients to their house where she holds seances to try to reach clients’ loved ones from beyond the grave. Cal is none too happy — nor is a firm believer in this, but he lets Becky conduct her business. Later you’ll see how it ties in with the rest of the book.
On the plus side, the novel was an immersive read as I got into the characters, each of whom is both sympathetic and also a bit maddening. They are a bit complex in that regard, which made it a better story. I also liked the historical and cultural aspects mentioned along the way and how the themes of love and forgiveness tie together near the end. There’s not a ton of action (mostly Felix’s war experiences), but it’s mainly a character study of how they all relate and mix. I only had a couple nitpicks about how Margaret’s character goes and whether some parts later on seemed fully realistic, mostly regarding attitudes towards Felix. Still this novel kept me readily turning the pages and I’ll be thinking about it for some time in retrospect. It’s a long yarn that has an impact.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this one and what did you think? Or what are you reading now? Cheers.
