The Cue Card

Hi. How is everyone doing? March is going by quickly. It’s officially spring now, Yay! Over the weekend we went to a large restored wetland area called Frank Lake, which is a protected habitat in southwestern Alberta to hundreds of species of birds (mostly waterfowl) about a half hour from our house. Most of the lake is covered over with snow right now and the area is flat for miles out on the prairie. 

I should have taken a picture (next time!), but there was not much to see at this point except a large flat area covered with snow. Most of the birds will arrive and nest in the next couple of months. So we will be back to see the trumpeter swans among other birds and the wide variety of ducks. A path runs adjacent to the lake for a mile or so out to a viewing blind, where I saw this waterfowl chart. Before April 1, you’re allowed to walk your dog on the path so our two Labs enjoyed the fresh air with us. I mention all this since I know a few of you are more serious birders and might appreciate Frank Lake. 

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of a couple novels I finished lately. 

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls / Scribner / 368 pages / March 28, 2023

I was expecting a lot after loving the author’s 2005 memoir The Glass Castle and I liked the main character Sally Kincaid quite a bit — along with the the plot’s historical bootlegging aspects, though the storyline got a bit over-the-top for me in places. 

Synopsis: Sally grows up in a powerful and well-to-do family at the turn of the century with her father, the Duke, who’s running the Emporium store and the town in rural Claiborne County, Virginia. Her mother has died and her stepmother doesn’t like her and thinks she’s too adventurous and dangerous for their young son Eddie. So young Sally is cast out early on to live with an aunt in the mountains for nine years. When she finally returns, Sally goes through a tumultuous period with various family deaths and those power-hungry in charge running the town into the ground. 

Then her pious half-sister Mary and brother-in-law try to rid the town of its whiskey-making in adherence to Prohibition, but that only makes matters worse. Violence breaks out and people and the town hit hard times. Finally through happenstance, Sally becomes in charge of the family empire and starts to lead the town back through bootlegging. She becomes “the Queen of the Rumrunners” with a posse by her side, but she must battle the rival Bond Brothers who are at odds with her family over long-ago lost land. 

My Thoughts: I liked how in the Acknowledgments author Jeannette Walls mentions that the novel was inspired by a female bootlegger in Virginia who piloted liquor caravans down from the mountains. It’s a fascinating, fractious era, which the novel bears out and evokes in good measure. And Sally Kincaid is a strong, independent likable character in the novel — who tries to right wrongs within her family and the town and find romantic love with the good-looking Lieutenant Rawley, but all her family relations almost derail her. Her father’s marriages include four wives and secret liaisons and kids. And it seems there’s enough cheating, inbreeding, and secrets to go around in the family to last a lifetime. It’s a bit of a soap opera that would make J.R. Ewing of the show Dallas proud. This plot distills whiskey and a whole lot more. 

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Simon & Schuster Canada for giving me an advance copy to read and review. 

Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow / Dial Press / 272 pages / 2022

I was taken with the storytelling of this novel set in Memphis about multiple generations of a Black family. The perseverance of the women in this family after each suffers trauma and tragedy is quite moving and alluring. There’s grandma Hazel’s story (in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s) and her husband Myron’s building of their home in Memphis; and later their daughters August, who lives in their home in the 1990s with her son Derek, and Miriam, who flees her violent husband and comes to live with August and Derek with her two young daughters Joan and Mya. 

But there’s something disturbing that once happened between August’s son Derek and Miriam’s daughter Joan that is revealed early on. Much more about each of their lives becomes revealed as the narrative goes back and forth in time over decades among Hazel, Miriam, August, and young Joan. I found Joan’s narrative to be particularly enticing as she begins to find her way out of what happened through her portrait paintings, which show promise of taking her to a notable art school.

Sometimes it gets a bit confusing listening to the audiobook switching often between the different time periods and narrators, though they are clearly labeled at the start of each chapter. And while the plot lines might have a hole or two, the storytelling I found as enticing as the butter pecan ice cream they enjoy eating. The story entails some violence in the city of Memphis over the years, but it also sings the city’s Southern beauty and praises. This is a notable debut novel and I will look for whatever Tara Stringfellow puts out next. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think? 

Hi. I hope everyone had a great week. We had a very cold one here, but we’re starting to come out of it now after getting about a foot of new snow. It made things look all pretty and white and should be good for the ski trails. I heard that even Southern California where my parents are received a few snowflakes — how rare is that?! But can you believe we will start March this week? Wow spring is not too far off now. Have we turned a corner on winter? I think pretty soon … just knowing March is about to start is good news. 

You might like to see the Live Web Cam of the eagles nest in Big Bear in the mountains of SoCal. Jackie, the bald eagle is sitting on the nest with two eggs about to hatch, and Shadow, her spouse is nearby. I hope they will be all right. The big storm there has watchers worried. Apparently 15,000 viewers are tuning in to see when the eggs will hatch, while Jackie is doing her best to incubate them during the snowstorm and winds. She’s a tough bird so I’m hopeful and pulling for her. Her eaglets could appear this week, fingers crossed for all.

In book news, lately I’ve been reading about the controversy over a decision in the U.K. to edit hundreds of words in Roald Dahl’s children’s books in order to update them for today’s world and make the stories and characters more inclusive. Have you heard about this? Well, apparently it’s caused such a firestorm that now both versions in the U.K. will be available — the edited one and the original version, so you can take your pick.

I think in general most people are troubled by the idea of censoring previous literary works, even if the books seem offensive or out of touch with the times. Perhaps people can just bring their own context to them, or decide to read them less. It seems if you start editing and trying to fix books from decades ago, where do you stop cleansing them? What do you think about this recent controversy?

And now I will leave you with what I finished lately. 

The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger / Riverhead / 448 pages / 2022

I must be on a climate-change disaster binge this year after earlier reading The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton and now listening to this one on audio. I don’t think I’m doing it purposely or am I? Both novels take aim at Florida falling apart, and man, does it ever. Sorry to all who love and live in the Sunshine State. For you especially, these books might be hard to take. And Houston, too, is rocked in this one. 

The Displacements is a lengthy novel about a hurricane disaster — a Category 6 (!) that lays waste to Miami and Houston — and its aftermath. It chronicles a mass displacement of swaths of the population — the “Hurricane Luna Migration,” which heads inland and into camps. The novel has multiple storylines of the people impacted that includes: a doctor’s wife (an artist) in Miami and her three kids and dog who flee and get bused to an Oklahoma mega-shelter; the FEMA official who runs the shelter there; and an insurance agent/drug dealer who tries to suck the evacuees dry. 

Oh yeah this is a doozy of a story … and it goes from bad to worse for most of it. In places it’s pretty dramatic, and I was particularly focused on the main story of the well-off family who evade the hurricane only to lose everything while on the run and in the long weeks after in the shelter. The mother Daphne seems not totally astute for losing and not having access to their funds, while her stepson, Gavin, 19, gets involved with dealing drugs, and her younger daughter Mia naively implicates a friend picked up by ICE. 

Surely being in a displacement camp as a Luna refugee without cash is rough. The novel does well painting the picture of the chaos in the disaster’s aftermath and those made destitute by it — as well as the economic and racial divides in the U.S. along the way, but the story also felt to me over-the-top and bloated — and even a bit hard to believe especially the part about Daphne’s missing doctor husband. 

There’s a lot in this, and maybe too much stuffed in. It’s ambitious in its portrayal and the characters undergo some tough changes. The easiest part to believe is the huge disaster that causes the massive disruption and the large fleeing migration, which unfortunately seems all too real of what more swaths of the population could face in our future. The novel complements well with the other Florida disaster novel in 2022 The Light Pirate (about a girl staying put during such a hurricane), but in terms of how it’s put together and the story, I liked The Light Pirate a bit better. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read many climate-change disaster novels and if so, what did you think? 

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I hope you are enjoying this day wherever you are. Perhaps you received a card, or chocolates, or flowers, or planned a night out with your partner. That would be fun. Or maybe you’re staying home and enjoying a nice meal and show. Speaking of which, we are just starting to watch Season 3 of the drama series Your Honor as well as the post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us, which was filmed near here in Alberta. I haven’t seen any Zombie-like creatures yet after we moved in, but you never can tell when they might suddenly appear. I was looking for a few on the lawn when I took this photo of the clouds at sunset. Nothing much else is new, but we are settling in and getting some unpacking done. 

Meanwhile in book news, I see that Washington Post critic Ron Charles wrote a fun article last week asking readers about what annoys them most when they come across it in a book. Some said historical and factual inaccuracies, others said copyediting and grammatical errors, or when authors choose not to use quotation marks in dialogue, or to use foreign words without defining them. That usually ticks readers off. 

Others mentioned not liking confusing timelines, dream sequences in plots, gratuitous violence, and explicit sex scenes. Readers also don’t like to see cliches, or old sexist tropes in books. And one that I especially agreed with: is books that include long passages in italics. Ugh. Reading pages of novels with italics can be sort of torturous. What do you think — is there something that annoys you the most when you’re reading along and see it in a book? Any pet peeves?

And now I will leave you with a few reviews of the books that I finished lately.

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton / Grand Central / 336 pages / 2022 

I was a bit skeptical of this novel going into it, but man author Lily Brooks-Dalton delivers a page-turning tale about a family living in a near-future Florida ravaged by climate change. Hurricanes and rising sea levels have decimated the southern parts of the state and residents are starting to leave in droves. 

The story follows Wanda, a young girl, and her family who try to stick it out. Wanda learns the way of survival from a lady on her street named Phyllis who gives her the tools to persevere. I can’t say much more without giving too much away, but the writing of Florida and the elements are very well done, and there’s even a bit of an unknown element about how water affects Wanda that leaves you wanting more. It feels quite realistic and post-apocalyptic at the same time. It likely was my favorite read of January. And now sometime perhaps I’ll go back and read the author’s 2016 debut novel called Good Morning, Midnight, which inspired the 2020 film The Midnight Sky with George Clooney that was pretty good.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder / Doubleday / 256 pages / 2021

This novel follows the story of a new mother who finds herself on the brink of her wits. She’s given up her job as an art gallery director and put her ambitions and advanced degrees aside (much to her dismay) to be a stay-at-home mom to her infant son while her engineer-y husband is off traveling for work during the week and she is left to care for their son alone. 

By the time her son is two, the harried mom with little sleep and without a shower in a week begins to lose it and finds herself transforming into something feral. Worried about her sanity, she takes home a book from the library called A Field Guide to Magical Women that she thinks speaks to her situation, and she meets a group of other moms who might be more than what they seem and want her to invest in some kind of herbal marketing scheme. 

I loved this smart, darkly satirical tale and found it funny, weird, and a feminist manifesto of sorts. I laughed through much of it and sympathized with the mother on the brink who offers much to think about on society, art, and what women go through and sacrifice … in marriage, motherhood, and roles in the working world. This is smart and well done and I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads! It seems in recent times there’s been a slew of “motherhood madness” kinds of stories that have raised pertinent issues and questions … and of those this novel is gleefully a favorite.

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations With a Body of Memory
by Sarah Polley / Penguin / 272 pages / 2022

Canadian film director Sarah Polley delivers a pretty gripping book of essays about her life story growing up as a child actor, then evolving into a screenwriter and director. Much of it deals with her personal life with her parents, her husband and kids, and what she experienced over the years in her life on and off the screen. I had no idea she’s had so many serious health issues, which I felt terrible about – that she’s been all through that. 

I first came upon Polley’s work from her directorial debut of the 2006 film Away From Her, which sort of rocked my world. It’s a sad film about a woman with Alzheimer’s that hits the heart. I also hope to see her latest film Women Talking soon. 

I listened to the audio version of Polley’s book, which she narrates and I would recommend. She talks among other things about her stage role in Alice Through the Looking Glass in 1994 and how she cut short her run of the role while going through severe stage fright and scoliosis; and how she did not come forward during the sexual abuse trial of Canadian radio broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi who she said assaulted her when she was 16; her fused back operation and her high risk pregnancy; her terrified time as a child on the film set of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; her visit to Prince Edward Island years after being an actress in the TV series Road to Avonlea (1990-6); and lastly the severe concussion she suffered from an accident that took 3.5 years of her life away and the recovery that eventually saved her. 

What I liked is how she reflects back on her life candidly trying to come to grips with things that had happened to her and what she experienced. She really uncovers it in a forthright kind of way that is quite refreshing and engaging. And she seems to do it with much integrity and courage, unsparing of herself, or any possible embarrassment. So after hearing her tell of her life, I’m even more a fan for her projects to come.

Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore / Morrow / 384 pages / 2022

This was an entertaining, women’s fiction kind of drama that I listened to as an audiobook as I was packing and unpacking after the move. It held my attention as it went along more than I thought it would and had some laughs amid the drama too. 

The story alternates mostly between Louisa’s life as a mother and college professor who takes her three kids to stay for the summer to her parents’ estate in Owl’s Head, Maine – and Kristie, who arrives in Owl’s Head from Pennsylvania, is about broke and grieving after her mother’s death.

The two women whose paths eventually cross are contrasted nicely, Louisa is pretty well off – though her life is not without troubles as her father is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and Kristie in need of cash has creditors after her. Moreover, Louisa is trying to work on a historical book she’s been procrastinating over, while Kristie is trying to hold onto a waitressing job she picks up along with a boyfriend there. But what’s their connection? You eventually find out as it goes along. 

It’s a story that branches entertainingly into quite a family saga: Louisa’s kids’ summer lives add flavor along with Louisa’s tension with her workaholic husband back in NY – and Kristie’s boyfriend who is so nice she’s not sure she deserves him. 

It might end a bit predictably, but the author does well breathing life into these characters that you care to stick around to see how it will play out all the same. It would make for a good summer beach read or listen, though for me it was a nice wintry escape. The setting of a summery Maine was pretty blissful.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books and if so, what did you think?

Hi. We made it to our new house. We are liking it already even though we have so many boxes to unpack and things to fix. It’s a great relief to have the move part over. The house is spread out mostly on one level (except for the basement) and that is a welcomed change from the flights of stairs we used to climb in the city house. We are also liking the farmlands and wide open spaces around here. So things appear good and we will take our time to get set up.

But first we are headed to my niece’s wedding in Colorado this weekend. Woohoo. We are very proud and excited for her and her fiance — both of whom are great people and so well-accomplished. Hopefully our flight will go as snow is expected on Friday. 

In book news I see that Prince Harry’s memoir Spare sold 3.2 million copies in its first week, making it likely that it will rank among the bestselling memoirs of all time. It’s not actually something I plan to read, but it’s interesting to note that novelist J.R. Moehringer, who also helped write Andre Agassi’s acclaimed memoir Open, worked on the book with the Prince. I didn’t realize that. 

The Kirkus review calls Harry’s book a “royal tell-all with some substance.” And says: “the prose is competent, and the author’s tales are consistently engaging—and far less smarmy than the self-aggrandizing tone set in the Netflix series. Readers may question Prince Harry’s motives, but his emotional struggles, though occasionally rendered in an overwrought fashion, feel palpable and heartfelt.” Harry says his beef is mainly with the press who cover the palace and not with the monarchy per se. Hmm, still it seems to me a sad public rift with his brother, father, and siser-in-law that seems to have caused some irreparable harm. Do you plan to read it?

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

Still Life by Sarah Winman / Putnam / 464 pages / 2021 

This novel is quite the epic saga about a close group of friends who are like family to one another. They all know each other from a pub in London. At the heart of it is: Ulysses, a young soldier who has an impactful chance encounter with Evelyn, a 64-year-old art historian, at the end of WWII in Italy. After the war, Ulysses goes back to London and to his pub friends: Peg (his ex-wife), her daughter Alys, piano player Pete, old man Cressy, and pub owner Col and his parrot. 

A couple years later, in the 1950s, Ulysses inherits a large house in Florence, Italy, from a man whose life he saved during the war, and moves there with old man Cressy, step-daughter Alys, and the parrot. Over the decades, the friends from the pub come and go, and Ulysses, a globe maker, endears himself to life in Florence, raises daughter Alys, and goes thru the historic flood of the Arno in 1966, eventually bumping back into Evelyn, who had much to tell him about art and Florence so long ago. 

This lengthy novel took me quite awhile to complete. It’s easily told with some nice writing but not a lot of plotting as it meanders among this lively group of friends as it goes along. At times I sort of wanted it to cut to the chase about their lives and what would happen, but then it also adds much flavor and themes to the mix. Indeed so much is in the novel. There’s themes of art and beauty; unconventional families; various forms of love: platonic, gay, straight; men who take on child-caring roles and women who don’t. Even the author E.M. Forster makes an appearance in it and its homage to his novel A Room With a View is evident.

Certainly the novel seems a love letter to Florence, Italy, and this close group of friends who move there. I read the novel for book club, whose members were a little mixed about it and thought like me it could’ve been edited down but still liked its endearing qualities and the characters such as Ulysses, a generous kind-hearted soul, and Evelyn, a wise, straight to the truth person who appreciated the transcending power of art.

My Antonia by Willa Cather / Classic / 166 pages / 1918 

I listened to the audiobook narrated superbly by Patrick Lawlor as I was packing up for the move and it took my mind away to the prairies of Nebraska and to the immigrants who came there as pioneers at the end of the 19th century.

I had remembered the novel a bit differently from my childhood where I mythologized it as being solely about the young immigrant girl Antonia, who back then seemed larger than life. Really the story is narrated by Jim Burden as he recounts his move at age 10 to the Nebraska prairie, his life thereafter growing up with his grandparents, his later college pursuits, and his friendship with Antonia over the decades. 

And just as Jim becomes enamored throughout his story with the Bohemian girl Antonia (age 14 when he is 10), I, too, was taken with her and their lives playing and working on the prairie. She is a little mysterious and I wanted to know her better. She comes with her immigrant family who are poor to live at a sod house that is nearby Jim’s grandparent’s place. They are neighbors and start to know each other when Jim begins teaching her to read English, but they become more friends when Jim kills a big rattle snake when they are off playing, which really impresses Antonia. From then on, they seem fast friends as their lives grow and change, becoming townies for awhile in nearby Black Hawk. 

But when Jim goes off to college in Lincoln, he sort of loses close touch with Antonia and the story becomes more about him and Lena, another local prairie girl they knew, who starts a dressmaking business. They go to the theater together and spend time at her shop, until he later goes off to Harvard. Still through the grapevine Jim finds out about Antonia and what marriage misfortunes have befallen her. He keeps in touch and 20 years later after becoming an attorney, Jim visits Antonia on the Nebraska farm she has with her Bohemian husband and their 10 children. Whoa.

It’s an endearing friendship story and Antonia is certainly a shining light to Jim. She has a spark about her and never lets her foreignness, misfortunes, or poverty hold her back. I sort of had hoped Jim and her would get together, but that never materializes. Still by the end, her life is full and happy with seemingly just the right partner and kids, while Jim‘s is a little wishful.

My Antonia remains my favorite Willa Cather novel, but I have only read O Pioneers! in addition to this. I’d like to read more of her novels.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these novels and what did you think? 

Greetings. Below are my reading stats and favorite books of last year. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really plan out my reading as I’m going along … I’m mostly a mood reader, picking up whatever seems good at the time. But it’s interesting to look back at the end of the year to study one’s own reading trail, and from my stats I can see that I overwhelmingly read fiction by female authors. Most of it I’d say is literary or contemporary fiction. I try to diversify mostly by race and country, but I still need to do more of that, especially in reading more authors from my adopted country of Canada.

One of the other things I notice from below is that for the first time ever my audiobook listens outnumbered the books I read, which seems a bit unusual. But I am a bit of a slow, meticulous reader, while I enjoy audios on walks with my dogs and doing chores like yard work. So I guess I was walking a lot last year (see the sunrise from my window), or doing laundry, lol.

I have included 10 favorite novels pictured below with links to my reviews. The Yoko Ogawa novel The Housekeeper and the Professor from 2009 was probably my sentimental favorite. I read it for my book club and thought it was a small, quiet gem of a story about a friendship between a math professor with memory issues and his housekeeper and son. Then I have five novels from 2022 on my list and I found it hard to pick which I liked best. But I think Lessons in Chemistry and Lucy by the Sea are at the top, followed closely by Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. The others pictured are also quite excellent. Three on the list are Irish authors: Claire Keegan, Lisa Harding, and Donal Ryan. And lately Irish authors and Asian-born authors are knocking it out the park for me. I will look for more in 2023.

I’ve also included a picture of my top 5 nonfiction reads from last year. Granted, I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but the ones I do, I really like. The Daughters of Yalta is my top pick followed closely by A Spy Among Friends and The River of the Gods. I love compelling history reads and all three of these blew me away and took me far, far away to various incredible times and dynamic people. Also Ann Patchett’s essays These Precious Days and Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart are memorable books that indelibly put me in the author’s shoes and circumstances. I’d recommend these.

And now without further ado here are my numbers and books of 2022!

• 65 books completed
• 28 print or ebooks 
• 37 audiobooks 
• 51 female, 14 male
• 55 fiction, 10 nonfiction
• 17 for Publishers Weekly 
• 48 for The Cue Card
• 47 white authors, 18 non-white authors
• 35 American authors
• 8 British authors
• 6 Irish authors
• 2 Canadian authors
• 2 Korean-American authors
• 2 Japanese authors
• 2 Chinese born/raised authors
• 1 Middle Eastern author
• 1 African author
• 1 Danish author
• 1 French author
• 1 Mexican author
• 1 India born/raised author
• 1 Scottish author
• 1 Australian author  

5 Top Nonfiction

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz (2020) 

Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre (2014) 

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard (2022) 

These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett (2021) 

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner (2021) 

Top 10 Fiction

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (2009 English translation) 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022) 

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (2022) 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021) 

Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding (2021) 

The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (2023) 

Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng (2021) 

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (2006) 

The Daughter of Dr. Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2022)

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (2022)

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (2016) – #11 pick, an honorable mention 

That’s all for now. What about you — did you read any of these and what did you think?