Smithsonian’s American History in 101 Objects
The new issue of Smithsonian magazine has a report entitled, 101 Objects That Made America. The Smithsonian has also published a book by Richard Kurin, The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects. How intriguing! How impossible. How can a nation that spans a continent and beyond, that reaches into four centuries, and that has embraced […]
Haunting Book: In the Woods, by Tana French
I like well-written murder mysteries and police procedurals, and In the Woods, by Irish author Tana French qualifies. A writer friend of mine told me about Tana French. I have now read her first three books, and her fourth is on my shelf waiting. In the Woods was the first in her series about the […]
The Haunted Doll House
I’ve written before about the times I built Barbie houses with my father-in-law. The second house we constructed was my daughter’s Barbie Magic Sounds House, which she received the Christmas when she was four. When the holiday celebrations at my in-laws’ that year were over, we brought the house home and placed it in the corner […]
Haunting Book: Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed, is the only non-fiction book I’m reviewing in my haunting books this year. I almost didn’t review this book, because I was disgusted with the author throughout most of the time I was reading her memoir. But I decided that because her […]
Division of Labor: Pumpkin Carver
I don’t know how I became the pumpkin carver in our family. My husband and son are the ones with the Boy Scout totin’ chips. And I’m pretty slow at slicing vegetables. But my role as pumpkin carver, once started, became inalienable. My husband and I moved into our first house in October 1980. I […]
Haunting Book: Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
This week’s haunting book is a novel about a privileged Englishwoman, Ursula Todd, born in 1910. She is born over and over throughout the novel, living a series of lives, each life slightly different from the one before. Life after life poor Ursula lives, some lives happy, others not. This book has been on many […]
Barlow Road to Foster Farm: Civilization At Last
I’ve mentioned the grueling Barlow Road around the south slope of Mt. Hood before. Barlow Road was the last leg of the Oregon Trail for the emigrants who decided against floating down the Columbia River. The descent down Laurel Hill on Barlow Road past the summit, a 60 degree slope in places, was one of […]
Haunting Book: Defending Jacob, by William Landry
This week’s haunting book is the story of a family in turmoil. The protagonist is Andy Barber, a prosecuting attorney whose teenage son Jacob is arrested for murdering a classmate. Did Jacob kill the other boy or not? The reader is left wondering throughout the book. Andy’s instant reaction is to defend his son, and […]
October Is Uniform Season
Now that I no longer have children in school—not even college!—I don’t mark the passing of the seasons as much as I used to. I look out the window at my magnolia tree, knowing it will soon lose its leaves, but that doesn’t mark the coming of autumn for me nearly as much as Back […]
Haunting Book: Still Alice, by Lisa Genova
My posts last October about the “haunting books” I had read are among some of my most viewed posts, so I have decided to review more haunting books this year. (See here for the last haunting book of 2012, a book similar to today’s choice.) My first haunting book for October 2013 is the novel Still […]