Book Club: What are you reading?

[Lazarus]

Was it the WPAthat created so many jobs and programs?

[QUOTE=agate;98280]Intriguing title--"The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek."


This was a real job created through the WPA....book gathering and delivery in rural areas...by single rider on horseback (or donkey!).....this book is set in Kentucky

[agate]

Connecting books with people sounds like a great idea!

Linda, I just noticed your avatar photo and figured out what the words are on it: "Make Orwell fiction again."

[Lazarus]

Connecting books with people sounds like a great idea!

Linda, I just noticed your avatar photo and figured out what the words are on it: "Make Orwell fiction again."

Yup! That’s what it says. (Here’s hoping)

I copied a decent description of the book I am reading....:

“ The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.

Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.

Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere - even back home”

[stillstANNding]

That reminded me of Kentucky’s Frontier Nursing Service:

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ANN

[agate]

And recently there's been another way of hooking people up with books--the Little Free Libraries. I haven't ever used one of them, and I don't know how useful they would be for people with MS mobility limitations, but they're an interesting idea, I think:

Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

You can decide to set one of these up on your property but you do have to pay to build it, and there's a fee for setting it up. Then people who know about your Little Free Library (or passersby, I guess) can help themselves to books that are in the little box or donate books.

[Sunshine 2]

I am reading The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yolo Ogawa , to take a break from MIchael Connelly detective series.

It is a very original and charming book, 177 page in paperback. It sticks with you. She takes care of a genius math professor as his housekeeper. He had an accident and can recall everything he has learned except for the past 80 minutes.

He sees the world through numbers ina most fascinating way and his housekeeper’s and her son’s world are altered/blossomed in unexpected way. You might like this book too.

I read it years ago, and am re reading it as I was daydreaming about Prime Numbers and wanted to go back and read it.

[agate]

I'm reading stories in Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce. The author was a producer for NPR but now writes fiction.

The stories are unusual: A woman having to take care of a cloned now-extinct woolly mammoth, for instance. The author makes this highly improbable situation seem realistic by providing plenty of detail.

[agate]

Just starting to listen to the audio version of Chasing Hope: A Patient's Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future by Richard M. Cohen, who has MS. Parts of it are read by the author, and other parts are read by his wife, Meredith Vieira.

[Virginia]

I am reading "The Music Shop" which is a book that Linda recommended. I like it. You have to get interested in the characters and want to know what will happen to them.

[Virginia]

After reading "The Music Shop" I decided that I should read "The Last Book Shop in London" by Madeline Martin. I had never heard of her but this turned out to be a really good book. It was set in London during WWII when the blitz was taking place. The British people were so amazing during that time, they endured and endured. Of course this was Historical Fiction and the protagonist was fictional. Still, from all I have read the blitz was really, really bad with constant bombing and incendiaries.

I will take a look at the author's other books since I really liked this one.

[agate]

That does sound interesting, Virginia. Did you ever watch the PBS - TV drama "Danger UXB"? It wasn't about the blitz but about the unexploded bombs that were buried all over and had to be dug up and deactivated--very dangerous work, and those bombs were just one of the many hardships people in the UK had to put up with during the war. We here in the US had it really easy by comparison.

[Lazarus]

“The Man Who lived Underground” by Richard Wright. His daughter discovered this unpublished work and guided its publication. Wright wrote “Native Son”.
it is novella that is very difficult to read showing police behavior/brutality....It is awful but important and written 100 years ago or yesterday...sadly it is hard to tell the difference.

[agate]

I didn't know about this Richard Wright book, Linda--thank you for calling attention to it. It's now on my list of books to read. I read "Native Son" and "Black Boy" years ago.

[Lazarus]

I think it may have been just published. It is really good with an uncanny importance to today’s problems of police brutality and black people.

[Virginia]

Linda, will add to my list. Thanks!

[Lazarus]

Oh my gosh...just finished it yesterday. Fascinating in so many ways....and the afterward by his grandson— or was it nephew—the afterward is also incredible. I listened on audible and will now read it. One of the top 10 books I ever experienced.

[agate]

I finished Chasing Hope by Richard Cohen. I learned about what the stem cell treatment is like because he had it--or one of the stem cell treatments. I believe there are several types of treatments.

He didn't spend much time discussing the results. In fact he more or less glosses over them but it sounded as if he had only very modest improvement after the treatment.

He read part of the audio version of the book himself but most of it was read by his son.