BOOKS READ IN FEBRUARY

Here I am for my Saturday post. Also Happy Leap Day! Today's post is about the books I read in February. I had a great month with 11 books read.

I have not just been goofing off and reading though. I am about to wrap up a semi-final draft of a chapter for my book. The book is autobiography mixed with a survey of the literature I have chosen to read from the years I have lived, the Big Fat Reading Project I am often talking about. The chapter I have all but finished covers 1961 when I finished junior high (as it was called then) and started high school. The working title for my book is Reading For My Life and the chapter title is Teenage Wasteland. 

I appreciate your comments about missing my longer reviews, so in March I will try to serve up at least one, maybe two of those, featuring books I especially enjoyed reading in February. 

Stats: 11 books read. 10 fiction. 5 by women. 3 historical novels. 1 children's picture book. 1 nonfiction. 2 thrillers. 1 mystery. 1 translated. 2 for My Big Fat Reading Project (epic fail because I had planned to read 4 for that.)

Authors new to me: Bel Kaufman and William Gibson

Countries I visited: USA, France, Great Britain, Korea, Norway, Japan.

Favorites: The Water Dancer and Interior Chinatown

Least favorite (only because it was hard to read for me): The Hills Reply

I hope your February reading went well and would love to know what your favorite reads were.

UPDATE ON MY CRAZY LIFE

This past Sunday, which was my birthday, my husband began to have alarming symptoms. I took him to the Emergency room at the hospital. Because he is a private sort of guy, I am not at liberty to say what it was, but it was fairly serious. He was in the hospital from Sunday to yesterday. He is now home and seems to be fine but we are both shaken and I have been absent from my normal life.

So I may be absent from the blog for a few more days. Just wanted to let you, my regular followers know why I have not been posting or visiting your blogs this week. 

I'll be back as soon as I can.

ON VACATION

I am off to Michigan to visit family. I will be reading but not posting. See you next week!

KEEP THE WISDOM BLOGIVERSARY!

Today I was eating lunch and into my head popped a thought: I wonder how long I have kept my blog going? It seemed like I started it one summer. Well, I was close. I started this blog on July 1, 2005. So I missed the actual day by 1 month and 9 days. Welcome to my 12th Blogiversary!!

Some people would tell you that I am persistent. Others would tell you that I am really good at getting out of things I don't want to do. In this case, it appears that persistence has won out. When I was looking for images I was struck by how many there were for a 1 year blogiversay, quite a few for 2 years and then it just goes general. Apparently there is a high drop out rate. The image I picked has 27 candles. I know, optimistic aren't I.

Another thing I noticed was links to articles about what people learned from blogging. I will not bore you with one of those. I am also not doing a give-away because I give all my no longer wanted books to Little Libraries and at reading group book exchanges during our holiday parties. Instead I will give you my innocent, somewhat funny and for me hugely nostalgic first post:

Maiden Voyage to Blogdom  Friday, July 1, 2005

Whew! I made it. I have arrived in the universe of blogs. A little bleary eyed, a little shy. Will I be cool enough to be a blogger? Made it through blogging for dummies thanks to blogger.com. Everything is new and subject to change, but I have a mini profile and a blog name. Still have to learn how to get anyone to come and read the thing and how to do links and all that stuff.

Anyway, welcome to my blog. It will be mostly about books that I am reading, have read or want to read. Today I am reading The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. So far it is wonderful. It is obviously written either by or in the voice of a fairly young man. That is fine because I like young men. It takes place in Barcelona, Spain, which is where my lovely artist niece just spent a semester. Her name is Elizabeth and she designed the cover for my latest CD, but I digress.

I am also in the middle of The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, a sad and somewhat disturbing book. I will finish it but first I have to finish the above book for a reading group meeting on Tuesday night.

OK, this is just a short post to get the blog rolling. More to come soon. 

****************

1544 posts later, I thank you all for reading, following, or just lurking. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves. I hope you will keep coming. I know that blogs aren't cool anymore but I just don't feel like starting a podcast. As long as we don't blow up the world or run out of electricity due to climate change or some other more horrendous disaster, I might as well keep going.

My purpose is to celebrate reading. Yes, let's celebrate that!! If you still drink, raise a glass to Keep The Wisdom, to book bloggers and to reading books. If you don't, put something else in the glass and raise that. All of us readers are the greatest, smartest people in the world!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Today is my birthday. In the interests of combating ageism, I will reveal that I am 69 years old. Sounds pretty old to me but I don't feel that old, yet. When I was a kid, I always said I wanted to live to be 100. Not sure about that now. But in case my wish comes true, I do my best to eat healthy food and work out. It seems to be paying off.

What I wanted in my 30s was to be wise by the time I was old. I have been through some trying times personally in the past five years but it must have been life giving me lessons because I do feel a bit wiser now.

So I have received flowers, a pastry, a homemade omelette, and a bottle of fancy vodka from my husband. Tonight I will celebrate at one of my reading groups, in which we have 4 Leos! A pride of Leos I would say.

It is always reading, especially good novels, that gets me through. Since I have all the time I want to read now, I do! They are the most satisfying hours of my days. But also, through my reading groups and this blog and Goodreads, I have made so many great reading friends. I feel lucky and blessed.

Thank you for reading my blog, whether you comment or not. But special thanks to you if you do!

I plan to have my favorite food sometime today, as seen in the picture above.

BOOKS READ IN JUNE

I had a good reading month because all but one of the books I read were topnotch. My total is down because two of the books were fairly long; one just had to be savored and I couldn't rush it, the other was one of those books I never wanted to read but had agreed to for a reading group. Even in that one, I learned stuff I didn't know before.

Stats: 8 books read, 7 fiction, 1 biography, 5 by women, 3 by men, 1 translated.

Favorites: The Queen of the Night and The Enchanted

Least favorite: Mary Todd Lincoln, A Biography

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How was your reading month? Any books you recommend? Or not?

GONE FOR A WEEK

I am off to Houston to visit my grandchildren (and their parents, of course.) I'll be back next week with more reviews and answers to your comments.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I will be off the blog for the rest of this week. We are taking a road trip to visit with family. I plan to eat and drink and eat and drink and so on. The next generation is doing all the work. There will be lots of talking and laughing and playing of music. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers and followers. Keep The Wisdom is ten years old this year! It is hard to fathom that I have been at this for a decade. If you get bored, you can read my blog on your device while you digest. This is post #1294 and most of them are about books.

If you go back far enough you will even find some early rough drafts of chapters for my memoir, another parallel project begun a decade ago. It has turned into a version of the Myth of Sisyphus as I read the books described in My Big Fat Reading Project because I keep finding more books to put on the lists as well as more memories and thoughts to incorporate into the memoir. Who knows if I will ever finish it, but the journey so far has been amazing.

 

My prayers go out to all the refugees, the orphans, the homeless, the poor, and the hungry. No single one of us can feed the world or stop the wars. But I do have faith in the power of literature to shine the lights of knowledge and wisdom even into the darkest of places.

BOOKS I READ IN JULY

In July I my husband and I took a trip to Michigan for a family wedding and a reunion with his cousin on the shore of Lake Huron. I never made it to the ocean beach (surprisingly not that many residents of LA go to the beach very often and I am one of those.) But I made it to one of the Great Lakes!

I read one more book than I did in June but I am still being a slacker compared to earlier years. As long as I am being obsessive about stats, I am up one from this time last year!

Stats: 8 books read, 7 by women, 2 memoirs, 1 autobiography, 1 nonfiction.

Favorites: The Chronology of Water is the most powerful memoir I've ever read. Blackberry Winter is the autobiography of Margaret Mead, one of my sheros. The Little Brother.

Least favorite: The Weight of Heaven.

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My reviews on Goodreads can be followed here.

My tweets here.

CHANGES AT KEEP THE WISDOM

Dear Readers and Followers of this blog,

If you are a reader or follower of this blog, you have noticed I haven't been posting for a while. 

Some reasons why:

1. I want to spend more time reading, working on my writing projects, and honestly just goofing off on other things.

2. It is nice to count the hits but what I started blogging for was conversation. For whatever reason, not many people comment. 

3. Most of the comments I was getting were actually spam and had to be deleted.

Summary: I got bored and discouraged. 

So the new plan is to post the Reading Group News and a monthly list of what I have been reading.

I also post on Twitter for each book I read. Twitter posts are short. That suits me fine.

I also have a presence on Goodreads where I have been posting micro-reviews.

So you can still keep up with me if you wish. Just hit the Twitter button or if you are on Twitter become a follower, send me a message and I will follow you.

Thanks for the luls!

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2014

It was another tough year in my reading life. I only read 92 books in 2014. I averaged a bit less than 2 books a week, only 80 pages average a day. I read 7 books of over 500 pages and possibly more challenging books than in previous years. But the bottom line is that I missed several weeks of reading in May when I was too ill and when my cataract surgery was going on I slowed way down on reading. Then I went on the Christmas road trip and was having much too much fun with real live people and real live scenery to spend any time reading. 

It is all good. I improved my health after that wake up call in May, I have much better eyesight after the surgeries, and my personal sorrows are down to only one. Life is hard, messy, glorious, and always interesting. 

This list is in alphabetical order by title not by favorite, but are the most loved and rewarding books I read in the past year. Not all were published in 2014. I read about 2/3 in real books and the rest on various e-readers. I have posted reviews of all but two books on the list and will post those shortly.

 

JUDY KRUEGER’S TOP FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2014

All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Bird Skinner, Alice Greenway

Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin

The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt

Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi

The Chronicle of Secret Riven, Ronlyn Domingue

The Golden Arrow, Anna Redmond

The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker

Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin

The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart

Long Division, Kiese Laymon

Lucky Us, Amy Bloom

The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse

The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman

Mood Indigo, Boris Vian

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert

Southland, Nina Revoyr

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

The Tuner of Silences, Mia Couto

THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK

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The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse, Free Press, 2010, 199 pp

Brief news flash: Both of my cataract surgeries are now complete. I can see everything without glasses! Well, except for small print close up in poorly lit places, for which I use those reading glasses you can buy at pharmacies. I am so happy!

Now onto my review. Except for a trip on the week of Christmas, I shall be posting regularly again. Thank you for your patience.

My hand-crafted, boutique, and very special Tiny Book Group is on a project to read books set in Los Angeles. All three of us are from elsewhere, having come to LA in middle age. Echo Park is a Los Angeles neighborhood that began as a Mexican ghetto and has lately succumbed to gentrification. Brando Skyhorse grew up in Echo Park in the 1980s.

His truly wonderful novel is a successful example of a novel written as a series of collected stories featuring characters who appear again and again. By the end you know how they are connected through family and events.

"We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours." There is so much history in that opening sentence. It took my breath away. But history is the last thing on the minds of Skyhorse's characters. Their minds are crowded with fears of deportation, struggles to learn English, make a living, and assimilate.

Every living American today, except for Native Americans, is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. I wonder how many immigrant novels have been written here. Brando Skyhorse (descended from Mexicans but raised to think that his Native American step-father was his biological father) took this often told story and made it pulse with sights, smells, tastes, loves, deaths, and the infinite variety of human longings.

The Tiny Book Group met in Echo Park to discuss the book. We ate lunch at Xoia Vietnamese Eats.

We got pastries at Masa of Echo Park Bakery & Cafe.

We strolled to Echo Park Lake to eat our treats,

then to Stories Books to choose our next read.

All the while we talked about the book and wondered, "Where have all the Mexicans gone?"

Part of the answer can be found in this video, but most of the answers have been encapsulated in The Madonnas of Echo Park.

One more thing: reading and learning about the incident that inspired the book's title was a little piece of literary magic.

(The Madonnas of Echo Park is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

 

TWO EYES ARE BETTER THAN ONE

UPDATE

Two weeks after cataract surgery on the right eye and I have almost 20/20 vision for distance. My eyes don't look like the above image which I copied from Google. My eyes look more like Margaret Atwood's or Jane Smiley's or Hilary Clinton's. These are all eyes that have seen a lot, as have mine, eyes that have read millions of words. 

I've been stumbling around without my glasses because they don't work for me anymore. My left eye also has a cataract and is extremely near-sighted. Cooking for Thanksgiving was a challenge but I managed not to cut off any fingers by wearing my glasses with the right lens covered in duct tape. It has been quite an adventure. I can drive in the daytime and see better than I have in years. At night I need mild sunglasses to cut down on the glare from headlights, street lights, etc. Last night in the rain was truly scary but luckily I was only a few blocks from home.

But I can read! And I have been reading. As you can see I managed to post one review here but it was so stressful looking from my handwritten review to the computer screen, even with reading glasses, that I haven't done another.

Monday I got the good news that my second surgery will be this coming Monday! By next Tuesday morning I should be able to see distance in the right eye, middle (computer) distance in the left. Might need reading glasses for close distance like reading books or iBooks. I should be able to see better than I have for decades. No more progressive lenses, no more glasses for everyday tasks. Thanks to modern medicine, my wonderful ophthalmologist/surgeon and her team of technicians, eye drops, and my adoring husband who drives me to surgery and check ups. Thanks to Medicare. 

But OMG my eyes were nicely hidden behind glasses and I could not really see what they looked like. Life is quite a joke sometimes. Yesterday I spent money on new eye cream and face cream. I gave myself a mud pack facial. Face it, Judy. You are not young anymore.

Still I can read, I can drive, I can go to Texas and see my grandchildren for Christmas. I can come home in the New Year and hopefully read more books than ever. Maybe I can even post a couple more reviews before the year is over.

Thanks for your patience!

PLEASE STAY TUNED

I had cataract surgery on my right eye on Monday. Now I have 20/20 vision in that eye but my old near-sighted left eye still has a cataract which will not be fixed until late December. That boils down to a sort of weird monovision for distance and a somewhat useless left eye. This is not conducive to reading or computer work except in short stints. 

Please bear with me. I will be back. I have a pile of excellent books already ready to review. I will get to them as soon as I am able. 

Meanwhile I am catching up on literary podcasts including the awesome Other People, where Brad Listi interviews cutting edge current authors, often published by small and independent presses. Check it out!

Thanks for your patience.

I AM ALIVE

Dear Friends and Followers,

Two weeks ago today I was admitted to Verdugo Hills Hospital, diagnosed with pneumonia and a lung inflammation. I came home the following Wednesday and have been convalescing, regaining strength, and waiting for the fog that is my current brain to lift.

I am reading, of course, though my concentration has been temporarily compromised. As soon as I am able, I will be posting reviews again. I am also working on an essay about my experience.

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to visit Keep The Wisdom.

HOLIDAY BREAK FOR ME AND WISHES FOR YOU!

A SHORT LIST OF CHRISTMAS NOVELS

As of tomorrow, I am taking the rest of December off from blogging. I am just going to read. Yes, a reading vacation. Can' think of a better kind.

Thank you to all of you from around the world who visit and read my blog. I do not make any income from this blog unless you count the free books I get from publishers who want me to review them. I look at it as my service to literature and writers and readers. The only thing I could ask for in return is more comments, especially if you have read the books I review and would like to share your reading experience. If you have trouble posting a comment please let me know. My email address can be found in the profile section.

I will be back on or about New Year's Day with my top favorites list, the reading group update and more reviews. Meanwhile here are some suggestions of books that approach Christmas from many different viewpoints. They are all books I have read and enjoyed.

Wishing you a happy and non-stressful Holiday Week with lots of good reading!!

See my review

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There are three holiday stories in this collection: two about Christmas and one about Thanksgiving. It is all autobiographical and gives us insight into Capote and the childhood that strongly influenced him. The writing is exquisite.

"In 'The Sister of the Angels,' Elizabeth Goudge takes us back to the City of Bells, and tells an enchanting story about Henrietta, a young girl in love with every nook and cranny of her grandfather's cathedral. This is a perfect story for the holiday season, and, because of its peace and charm, a book to cherish all the year round." (Publisher's blurb)
Henrietta is an orphan adopted by a minister and his wife, a charming but realistic child. The novel has the theme of someone returning from an earlier life to finish what was left unfinished. 

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Owen Meany is one of the most amazing characters I have run across in a book. When I read books like this, I feel so ordinary. Actually, I know I am not, but I don't even know people with this much depth. It makes me feel like trying to be normal is a ridiculous pursuit.

The main point of the novel is that the human spirit has nothing to do with environment. Some fulfill their destiny no matter what the circumstances. The section with the Christmas pageant is moving beyond belief.

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See my review