Wolf Willow - Wallace Stegner

This was a wonderful read.  Someone I was working with had recommended the author and had been given the book by his mother.  I read it to see if there was any meaning implied in the gift.
Possibly, the message was to be as the pioneers coming to the desolate prairies of central Canada; stoic, keeping on, bouncing back from crushing hardships. 

Stegner's writing is lyrical, savored for it's imagery.  It's the story of his growing up in the small town of Eastend, Saskatchewan, Canada just as the last of the frontier was conquered and the natives vanquished.  It's a lesson in Canadian history.

Surnames in "Whitemud" aka, Huffman, Sickerton, Fetter, Orullian, Stenhouse, Young, Harold Jones, William Christenson, Nels Sieby
term - metis - mulatto in U.S. someone who is half-French, half native of Canada

Grain Growers Association - people who remained after bad winter.

Published: 1955  Read: May 2019  Genre: Memoir

The Nun - Denis Diderot

Where do I find this books?  Maybe I should start including pictures of the covers because in most cases that's contributes to my decision to pick them up from the used bookstores.

This is a very old book about a joke that was played on a soft-hearted gentleman.  His friends pretended to be a young woman forced into a convent who pleads with the gentleman to help her break her vows and leave the convent.  She tells her story of being a child of her mother's lover passed off as a daughter of her husband, but shunted to the cloistered life to prevent her from making claims on her family's estate.

It still has relevance for today because it illuminates the way women were treated as property to be bought or disposed of as desired.  It shows the strength of character required to stand up for oneself and stay true to your convictions.  A different read.

Published: 1972 (originally written 1760)  Read: September 2016  Genre: Fiction, Classics

Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee

I liked this book.  I know, the literature critics didn't and I have to agree with them, it is not well written, or more accurately, it doesn't feel like it was edited closely.  That said, it is another viewpoint on the Finch family, from all accounts, the original approach taken by Lee.  It reads like a young woman rejecting her upbringing, her eyes opened by living in New York, and realizing the very human flaws in her adored father.  I felt the book might have been "closer to the bone" for the author than To Kill A Mockingbird.

It took a while to get into the story and the initial relationship of Jean Louise and her family and boyfriend seemed to bog down.  I liked this quote about family relationships, she doesn't get along with her Aunt:

"...they had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes' conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality."

It's over half way through the book before the crisis of the story is revealed.  The story proceeds much quicker from that point as Jean Louise moves on to become  her own person.  She comes to see her father as a human being rather than a hero.  Her Uncle explains to her how her father and her are different:

"...you've a bigot.  ...'One obstinately or intolerably devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion'.  What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions?  He doesn't give.  He stays rigid.  Doesn't even try to listen, just lashes out. You turned and ran. ...You said, in effect, 'I don't like the way these people do, so I have no time for them.'  You'd better take time for 'em, honey, otherwise you'll never grow."

As the back jacket states "Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience.".

Worth reading no matter how high the pedestal we've put Harper Lee on.

Published: 2015  Read: September 2015  Genre: Fiction

A Grief Observed - C. S. Lewis

This memoir of an experience of grief has been on my TBR list for a long time.  I think I'd postponed looking for it because I thought it would be long and heavy reading.  To my surprise, its less than 100 pages.  It 's essentially Lewis' journals written after the death of his wife of less than 5 years from cancer.  They had married when he was well into his forties,  She was divorced, with two boys.  She brought them to England to be near Lewis who she had corresponded with from America and become a close friend and admirer.

C.S. Lewis was a well-known Christian apologetic, someone who defends Christian beliefs with reason and logic.

My edition had an introduction by Madeleine L'Engle, author of "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Two Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage", and a fellow Christian writer of Lewis's. She was critical of the book which put me off initially - if you read it, skip her introduction until after.

The book is a journey through grief and loss and coming to terms with a crisis of faith.  His "observations" are universal.

"This is important.  One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness).  One only meets each hour or moment that comes."

A good part of the book is about him questioning his faith in God and questioning his own doubt.

"Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language.  What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, 'good'?

"From a rational point of view what new factor has H.'s [his wife's] death introduced into the problem of the universe?  What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe?  ...If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.  The faith which 'took these things into acocunt' was not faith but imagination".

In the end, he recognizes he has been on a journey and his faith has been with him all along.

"My jottings show something of the process[toward getting through grief] but not so much as I 'd hoped.  ..like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight...when you first notice them they have already been going on for some time."

One quirky note, one of his friends actually gave him a copy of the book to read (it had been published under a pseudonym).


Published: 1961  Read: August 2015  Genre: Memoir