My January Reading

Two years ago, I had consciously read poetry, but last year got away from me. So this year, I'm once again making time in life for beauty. I find that I'm most enchanted with the British Romantic poets, though Frost is a favorite, too. My earliest memories of studying poetry come from memorizing heartfelt words and reciting them in school. Diction and emotion that brought the words to life were emphasized by our teachers. I regret the loss of memorization, recitation, and study of poetry in schools these days.

So, why learn Spanish?
Because of the beauty of the words of poets,
and if I don’t know Spanish
I can’t read them.
—Ursula Le Guin

Various poems by Ursula Le Guin
Category: Poetry
Comments: Ursula Le Guin's death was a shock to me. A light has blinked out in the world and we will forever be the poorer for it. She was a fantastic writer, no doubt, but she was also one of the great thinkers of our modern times, in my opinion. More than her fiction, it was her activism through letters and articles that really spoke to me. I read some of her poetry that is published here this month.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin
Category: Short Story
Comments: My daughter recommended I read this since she studied it in school this year and loved it. I loved it as well. It's a short story from A Wind's Twelve Quarters collection and is available on AMZ as a standalone. I simply cannot do the work justice with my paltry words, so all I can say is: go, read it.

Tempest by Beverley Jenkins
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: What a remarkable story! The best yet of her Old West series, and I'm really sad that the series has come to an end. This is a mail-order-bride western story of a wealthy, adventurous, free-spirited woman with heart full of caring and a dedicated doctor with a willingness to treat anyone and everyone even if they pay him in vegetables. Their romantic and sexual chemistry is marvelous as is the tenderness and caring between them and their desire to always look forward and resolve their differences calmly and quickly. My review is here..

Wallflower Most Wanted by Manda Collins
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Collins writes lovely books with humor, tenderness, and suspense. The premise of her Studies in Scandal series is fun: an eccentric lady plucks four young women living in trying circumstances, but with a gift for unusual pursuits, and makes them benefactors of her estate with the proviso that they have to stay together for a year with all expenses covered in order to gain their inheritance. The women become fast friends as they pursue their passions, fall in love, and solve mysteries. Wallflower Most Wanted is the third in the series with a Grantchester-like vicar and a very talented and creative painter. My review is here.

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Every book that I have read by Alyssa Cole has been wonderful. She writes such different books, not just different time periods, just different types of books. I'm blown away by her talent and eagerly looking forward to catching up with the books I have missed. This is a fairytale romance about an African prince of a make-believe kingdom and his lost betrothed, now a very independent American woman. How he beguiles her as an ordinary man, then loses her when she finds out about his true status, then wins her back again could've been a clichéd story but is elevated by Cole into a magical story. Not to be missed. My review is here.

Tulips For Augusta by Betty Neels
Hell or High Water by Anne Mather
Bond of Hatred by Lynne Graham
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: Betty Neels, Anne Mather...these are the names of my early 20s, when I ventured into contemporary romance after binging on Heyer and Garwood and Coulter. Lynne Graham came later. Of these three, Betty Neels holds a special place in my heart for her sweet stories of a courtly time that never grows old. My brief reviews are here.

Missing Nimâmâ by Melanie Florence, illustrated by François Thisdale
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: This is a fictional story based on true fact. There are many Canadian women of First Nations who will never return home, and this has devastating effects on their families and their children who are left behind. These indigenous women are missing or have been murdered with no justice for their families and no repercussions to the perpetrators.

Missing Nimâmâ is a Cree story. Kateri is a young girl living with her nokhôm (grandmother) whose nimâmâ (mother) is lost. Despite the love and care, her grandmother shows her kamâmakos (little butterfly), Kateri talks about her mother and dreams about her all the time. Half of each page is in Kateri's point of view, and the other half is in her ghostly mother's POV, where we see her thinking about and looking over Kateri and her own mother living their lives. And she is grateful they have each other and that they share a love and an unbreakable bond, even if she cannot be there with them.

"Taken. Taken from my home. Taken from my family. Taken from my daughter. I fought so hard to get back to you, Kateri. I wish I could tell you that. And when I couldn't fight anymore, I closed my eyes. And saw your beautiful face."

I cried as I read this book, cried for its beauty and its tragedy.

If you would like to find out about this growing problem of the lost aboriginal women of Canada, visit the No More Stolen Sisters site at Amnesty International.

Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos by Monica Brown, illustrated by John Parra
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon AKA Frida Kahlo was born in the early 1900s and lived in Coyoacán, the land of Aztecs, near Mexico City. She was born to a mestiza mother and a German-Hungarian father. Frida's life was fraught by illness (polio) as a child and an accident as a teenager, both of which involved being bedridden for months with only her imagination for company. During her second incapacitation, her mother encouraged her to paint, and her life was transformed by her magical creativity. She painted herself and her beloved pets, her constant companions in the journey life fraught with continuous health problems. Parra's artwork is evocative of Kahlo's style and adds greatly to the beauty of this book. Brown has made this complex biography simple by telling the story of how Kahlo connected with each of her pets with their imaginative names and personified characteristics.

The Blue Hour by Isabelle Simler
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Everything in this book is in shades of blue. I was fascinated by the widely variant brilliance of Simler's palate. The theme of the story is that the period of time between sundown and nightfall, when the sky turns a gorgeous blue, commonly known as L'Heure Bleu, life starts to settle down for the night. Every pair of pages has a description and a finely drawn depiction of blue flora and fauna: jay, poison dart frog, songbird, vulturine guineafowl, damselfly, racer snake, and many others.