In the early- to mid-1990s, I lived in Massachusetts, outside of Lawrence, along New Hampshire’s tiny coastal strip, and worked for a Girl Scout council on the North Shore, which included Lawrence, Lowell and Lynn, Salem, Marblehead and Gloucester. I also did an internship a bit to the west, around Worcester. What I remember the […]
Georgia’s on my mind. We spent so much time in California, with 13 books read (!), that I knew I had to head somewhere completely different–and soon! So I decided to head to the Deep South. But what to do when I’ve already read most of the books that top everyone’s list for Georgia? Gone […]
Like a River Glorious by Rae Carson (2016) is the second in the Gold Seer series, which began with Walk On Earth a Stranger. The first book sees the heroine and her childhood friend travel from Georgia along the Oregon Trail to California gold country in 1849, and although it was quite good and historically […]
Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr. was an excellent book for my reading challenge. Take a look at some of the passages below, and you’ll see a small portion of how Lockridge describes Raintree County in west central Indiana. This first one is a description of a book within a book–an illustrated atlas of Raintree […]
First Dawn by Judith Miller is about the post-Civil War all-black pioneer settlement of Nicodemus, Kansas. It tells the story of a group of ill-prepared settlers who travel across the prairie from Topeka to Nicodemus, expecting to find a small, but somewhat established town, with at least a few amenities, only to arrive at a […]
Kansas. I grew up on the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Not just The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the original from 1900), but all 14 books written by Baum, with Ozma, Rinkitink, Tik-Tok, Glinda, and all the rest. Glinda of Oz, Baum’s 14th installment, was published posthumously in 1920. Even as a child I […]
I would describe Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr. (1947) as a more accessible Ulysses by James Joyce. It is huge, and sprawling, and poignant, and funny. It is historical, and philosophical, pithy and gritty. It is also written in a style that reminds me a bit of Joyce’s stream of consciousness, but is less […]