Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, by Jennifer Chiaverini

 

I loved the civil war history told from the viewpoint of a black woman who was in the White House at the time. Keckley knew the Lincoln's personally and was a true friend to Pres. Lincoln's wife. She also was a leader in the black community and did a lot to help those who were emancipated and came to Washington expecting to find a new life, but only found Hooverville-type places to live.
Mary Todd Lincoln did not have the personality of a peach, and the author doesn't soften her. Be prepared to read her.

My favorite character in this book was Keckley's son. He looks white enough to enlist in the army and dies fighting for the cause of freedom. His life and the effects of his death brought a depth to the novel that really elevated the storyline. Remembering Keckley's loss through the rest of her interactions in the story will give any reader reason to ponder.

 

Truly an incredible, and true! story.


The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman





This is an incredible story of war and peace, love and loss, guilt, sacrifice, and redemption. The plot is intricate but (after the first couple chapters) fluid. The characters grow and change, and yet stay true to themselves.

I particularly loved the influence that the war plays in the book. All the characters are affected by it even though it is over, and it really touched me to see the effects played out in so many lives in such a variety of ways. War is awful. It changes everything except God - and it's changes are pervasive and long-lasting. This theme is close to home for me because I have a younger brother who served in the US armed forces. I was very impressed by the treatment of the after-effects of the war.

There is one case of a newlywed wife arousing her husband.

The cast of characters widens effortlessly throughout the novel, leaving the reader with many characters who are well developed (and loved!) and knowing how their stories intertwine - but at a loss convey the relationships to someone else concisely; they are too complex, but the reader hadn't realized they'd become that way.

Tom the lightkeeper has a mundane task - raising an ensign any time a "man o'war" passes the island.

"He knows keepers who swear under their breath at the obligation, but Tom takes comfort from the orderliness of it. It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization."

Anne of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery

Another two years in the life of Anne, an orphan child who was taken in and loved. Now she takes on two orphans herself: larger-than-life models of circumspectness and mischievousness. This very day I refrained from engaging in bad manners because of Anne’s reaction to the mischievous twin indulging in that particular behavior. (How I wanted to lick that bowl . . . )

“It does people good to have to do things they don’t like . . . in moderation.”

Mrs. Allan’s face was not the face of the girl-bride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before … what her face lacked in girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength.

“… our own lives … are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fullness.”

The Unfinsished Work of Elizabeth D, by Nichole Bernier

I am so disappointed in the book selections from this former book club. I am reading one more of their picks after this, and if it has sex in it too, I’m bowing out.

This book would be a beautiful and deep discussion of what it means to be a friend, sister, mother, and wife if it weren't for the unnecessary (in my view) junk.

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Mongtomery

Beautiful, squeaky clean, and full of delight. A plot that wraps your heart around it - set in safe moral ground, with clean humor, and manners taught - is my kind of world.

"Oh Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure in them," exclaimed Anne. "You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.' But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."


"Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't really care whether... anybody gets ahed of me in class or not. But when I'm up in school, it's all different and I care as much as ever. There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."

... we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

This is a very powerful book and has the potential to engender amazing discussion at a book group. Book I is a woman's complaint against the gods. When I finished it, I felt like it was a nice story. When I started Book II however, I began to See . . . not only what was written in the second book, but also what was written in the first.

There are so many beautiful themes: what it means to be oneself, how we sacrifice for others, how we cause others to sacrifice for us, what it means to wear a figurative or physical veil, the importance of beauty, loyalty, determination, and humility.

"Are the gods just?"
"Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were? But come and see."

"In that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature."

"... Divine Nature can change the past. Nothing is yet in its true form."

Highly recommended.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

Not recommended. Spoiler alert:

I enjoyed the book until they slept together at the end - that was supremely disappointing, especially because the author casts it as perfectly acceptable because the people they "should" have been sleeping with didn't happen to be there, and they can just move on and never talk about it.

Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher



What a great, adult novel! There are references to people going to bed together, but no descriptions that I can remember (it's been awhile since I read the book, sorry. If there are, someone let me know : ) Someone has an affair but just recompense ensues.

The main theme of family relationships is wonderfully explored through Penelope Keeling and her three very different grown children. My favorite quote comes from the most reasonable (though still flawed) child:

"But the next few months would not be easy. As long as Mumma was alive, she knew that some small part of herself had remained a child, cherished and adored. Perhaps you never completely grew up until your mother died."

Very engaging: history, art, gardening, travel, love - enjoy it!

Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card

 

The concept of these "children" of Ender's mind is fascinating, and their battle to become is meaningful. Ender's history, from Ender's Game on, makes the existence of these children meaningful, makes their battles meaningful, and makes what they become - to be the most beautiful gift that Ender left for the human species on the hundred worlds.

"The whitest of them, the thinnest, the most elegant of the people of this place called themselves Pacifican and spoke at times as if the ancient music of the place rang in their ears, as if the ancient stories spoke of their own past. Adopted into the family, that's what they were, and the true Samoans, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Tongans, Maoris, and Fijians smiled and let them feel welcome even though these watch-wearing, reservations-making, hurrying people knew nothing of the true life in the shadow of the volcano, in the lee of the coral barrier, under the sky sparkled with parrots, inside the music of the waves against the reef."

I suppose I like that quote because I yearn for the life of those who are slow enough and in tune enough to know everything of the true life in the shadow of a volcano. I might live inside 'the music of the waves against the reef' for a minute, but I'll never live there for an hour, let alone years. God has called me to both a higher and a lower path:

"Ender would have wanted neither more nor less for him. Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear."

I may become someone, through God, who has their name written in a book. But if that happens it will be because I am happy, because I have succeeded in writing my name in the lives of others, and hold their hearts most dear. It will just have to be more hearts than Card was referring to.

Spoiler alert: One of the characters in the book thinks about her lofty long term goals, her short term goals, and then the fact that she's hungry and needs to use the bathroom.

"I guess that means I'm human, thought Wang-mu. Not a god. Maybe just a beast after all. Part raman (good and reasonable). Part varelse (selfishly destructive). But more raman than varelse, at least on her good days. Peter, too, just like her. Both of them part of the same flawed species, determined to join together to make a couple of more members of that species. Peter and I together will call forth some aiua to come in from Outside and take control of a tiny body that our bodies have made, and we'll see that child be varelse on some days and raman on others. On some days we'll be good parents and some days we'll be wretched failures. Some days we'll be desperately sad and some days we'll be so happy we can hardly contain it. I can live with that."

Me too.

Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

Card includes more swearing in this novel than in the first two, which I think is an unfortunate and misguided reflection of the age of the audience he's targeting. The moral, pholosophical, and ethical dilemmas Card discusses (sentient life, martyrdom, personal dichotomy, the human soul, genetic makeup vs. destiny, family, etc, etc) are passionately written and thought-provoking to follow.

---

A man's wife lay dying. There is a beautiful and long philosophical discussion, of which this is my favorite part: "If I had any part of you in me," said [he], "I would not have needed to marry you to become a complete person... The husband longs for his whole self, which was made of the husband and wife together. Thus he never believes any of hiss own thoughts, because there is always a question in his mind to which his wife's thoughts were the only possible answer."

---

...it was much easier for the godspoken to follow the Path, because to them the price for straying from it was so terrible. The common people were free; they could leave the Path and not feel the pain of it for years. The godspoken couldn't leave the Path for an hour.

I am taking this quote out of context and applying it to myself: If God has spoken to us, is it then easier to follow His path? Do we know the price of straying from it? Those who have not heard His voice are free after a fashion, but their freedom is so limited. The Light of Christ in every man helps him feel the pain of leaving God's path, even if one chooses to ignore it until they are no longer sensitive enough to feel it. Those who are coming to know God - then stray from Him - either come back or do not. So the challenge faced in this book is that the godspoken are forced to come back, forced within moments. They are not free.

---

"I'm sorry," he said.
"You're welcome," she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said.

---

[She] had long ago observed that in a society that expected charity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves--either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing back.
...
[They] would now make the great effort to pretend that they were simply two people doing their jobs--that all was normal between them. Inner strength and outward respect. These are the people who hold a community together, who lead. Unlike the sheep and the wolves, they perform a better role than the script given them by their inner fears and desires. They act out the script of decency, of self-sacrifice, of public honor--of civilization. And in the pretense, it become reality. There really is civilization in human history, [she] thought, but only because of people like these. The shepherds.

---

"I saw what Andrew did in our family. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn't seem to matter to him how much it cost him. And in the end, while he could never make the Ribeira family normal, he gave us peace and pride and identity. Stability. He married Mother and was kind to her. He loved us all. He was always there when we wanted him, and seemed unhurt by it when we didn't. He was firm with us about expecting civilized behavior, but never indulged his whims at our expense. And I thought: This is so much more important than science. Or politics, either. Or any particular profession or accomplishment or thing you can make. I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands."
"So you're a career father," said Valentine.
"Who works at a brick factory to feed and clothe the family. Not a brickmaker who also has kids. [My wife] also feels the same way. ... She followed her own road to the same place. We do what we must to earn our place in the community, but we live for the hours at home. For each other, for the children. It will never get written up in the history books. ... It's a boring life, to read about," said Olhado. "Not to live, thought."

This is a beautiful family perspective, though I also believe that it is worth proactively strengthening the community for future generations. He learned a powerful lesson from another man's kindness.