Some 2025 Christmas Loot

Huh. I thought I showed you my Christmas gifts almost every year. But I didn't do it for 2024, and not everything for 2023. I'm not sure I can remember without the blog post. Oh wait, I think Om helped me get a different camera last year.

Anyway, This year was a year for the feet from Steve. I found another pair of the boots I like (on eBay because the company doesn't make them any more). Steve said, "You want USED boots, Mom?"

Yup, I wear the smallest size they ever made. This is my third pair. The first ones wore out. The second ones had defective plastic, and some of the buckles broke. I've been holding the boots on with velcro straps. Not ideal but it worked. So when I found a pair in the right size that were in good shape, I sure did want them. These should last the rest of my outdoor recreation life.

And here's why these are so perfect for me. My heels are VERY narrow. Most boots just slipe and slide or pull completely off my feet. These have a velcro strap across the heel that you can tighten down. No more slipping!

Steve said that wasn't enough. So I asked him and Omer to split the cost of new hiking shoes. The ones I have aren't totally shot, but if I can do the Sheltowee Trace this coming year I'll need a reliable pair of shoes. I think these are perfect.

But Steve bought those all on his own! So Om got me a couple of books. One hasn't arrived yet. That one is Ground Cherries of the Prairie, by my friend Stan Hagemeyer. I've heard him read portions of that at writer's group for several years, so I know that will be good. The other one, pictured above, is a true crime book, The Axeman about a serial killer in New Orleans from 1910- 1916. I've almost finished it, and it's great.

I don't have pictures of what we got from Josh. He always brings a big fruit basket, which is very thoughtful. He also brought mixed nuts and the large red candle that is on the dining room table in the pictures from Christmas day.

Neither of Omer's gifts from me has arrived yet, although I have notices that both have shipped.

I got back a bit of my motivation today and edited and worked in the kitchen. Then Om and I finished watching Truth and Treason, an excellent movie of a true story from Nazi Germany.

I walked on the treadmill some more, but even with that I doubt I'll make 500 miles for the year. I find the treadmill much harder walking than outside. If you are local you know we had a only a little snow, but a serious wind was blowing it around all day. It was a good day to stay inside with a blanket and book.

See Some Christmas 2023 gifts

Adventurous Women 6 - Justine Kerfoot

 This post is partly a repeat of a previous one, but I said it all very well back then. I just didn't tell you about the book. The book is Woman of the Boundary Waters, and her name is Justine Kerfoot. She had died before I learned about her, but I did know her son and daughter-in-law.

Justine was born in 1906. She completed college with a degree in zoology with minors in philosophy and chemistry. She played sports. She had planned to become a doctor. In the late 1920s, her mother bought the Gundlint Lodge resort on the Gunflint Trail in the Minnesota Arrowhead from the family who had begun it, and Mae (her mother) and Justine began running the lodge. Justine was captivated with the backwoods life. I think this picture might be the lodge even before 1930.


Justine learned how to do everything- carpentry, canoeing, being an electrician, guiding, plumbing, trapping, fishing, you name it. She wrote a newspaper column and several books. She was friends with the Chippewa and anyone else who needed a friend. Although she was a small woman, people soon learned to respect her knowledge and strength.

Her son Bruce, and his wife Sue, ran Gunflint Lodge until just a few years ago when it was sold out of the family.

Justine portaged her own canoe until she was 90. She was responsible for a lot of the planning and deveopment of the Gunflint Trail area, serving on local boards. And more. Quite a lady, don't you think? I would love to have met her, but I have met Bruce and Sue, and I have read a biography of her life. The closest I could get to her was to have my picture taken with her portrait in 2009. This picture no longer hangs in the lodge. It probably belonged to the family, and was not sold with the building.

Today was mixed bag. I did an hour of screen time for clients. I prepared for and did three errands and got an oil change. When I got home I ate something and was literally shaking on my feet. Fell in bed like a rock and have basically been there since.

I have to take whatever successes I can get.

See Justine's Meatloaf

Adventurous Woman 2 - Alice Ramsey

The next adventurous woman on my list is Alice Huyler Ramsey. You may never have heard of her, but I love her story. She was the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States. The car was a Maxwell, and the year was 1909. She was 22 years old.

Alice had plenty of experience driving and had even won some competitions prior to her trip, despite the fact that women were not encouraged to get behind the wheel of a motorcar. She was accompanied by two sisters-in-law, and a 19-year-old friend named Hermine. None of the others knew how to drive.

This particular book reprints Alice's original work, Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron, but adds additional material by Gregory M. Franzwa. The extra material adds some background and clarity, but the original work is the gem.

Only 152 miles of the 3800-mile trek were paved. The infant AAA provided maps, but more often the ladies followed telephone poles in hopes that they would lead to some sort of town. Getting fuel was an ongoing problem.

Marie and I alternately roared with laughter and gasped at their predicaments as we read this book for one of our selections on a hike.

Alice was the first woman voted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. She continued to enjoy driving her entire life.

In other news: I did some editing, wrote my column for LDN, and Om and I watched Addams Family Values. I've loved Addams Family since childhood- the cartoons, then the TV series, and the first movie. I was a little skeptical since sequels are sometimes lacking. But this was hilarious. If you have any sacred cows, don't watch it, because it has all the glorious upside-down values of the Addams Family. Wednesday and Uncle Fester are the stars, but baby Pubert definitely comes to the rescue.

See Libby Riddles

Adventurous Women 1 - Libby Riddles

 I have a few series of posts going that I add to from time to time, because, honestly, some days just don't have anything very exciting to write about.

There is a feature on Amazon called Listmania. You can still find it if you dig deep although it used to be given better exposure. The list I created was called "Adventurous Women." I love adventure books, and particularly stories that feature the girls who are out to push their physical limits and find that thrill of sport.

I'm going to add this feature to my blog possibilities, and review one book on that list from time to time.

First (for no particular reason), I'll tell you about the book Race Across Alaska, by and about Libby Riddles. She was the first woman to win the Iditerod sled race, in 1985, at age 28. The book was written in 1988.

The narrative jumps right into the race, with a day-by-day account of the action. You don't need to know anything about racing sled dogs, because you'll learn it all as you go. It's an exotic enough sport for most of us to hold the attention. Small maps accompany each entry. Background is woven into the narrative.

There are also sidebars explaining some of the background information needed to understand terminology or sledding philosophy.

Riddles' fame has been somewhat eclipsed by Susan Butcher, who went on to win the Iditarod four times. But Libby Riddles was the first woman to have what it takes to win. And the name of Mary Shields has been completely forgotten. She was the first woman to complete the race. Her time wasn't good, but in 1974, most people didn't even think women could do something like that.

I actually liked this book so much I read it onto tapes for my mother when she was still alive. Maybe that's why I'm sharing it first. It was one of the first books I read about an adventurous woman (although I had read a bio of Amelia Ehrhart before that for sure, and probably others)

In other news: all the usual- I edited, I worked on projects. I wrote chapter 39 in Vacation from DMS, 604 words.

See Books

$0,000 Pyramid Game

 Remember the game show, $X,000 Pyramid? (It started at $10K, but went up to $100K before it died.) I liked it. Contestants had to name things that fit in a category and their partner had to guess the category. For example, the one player might say, "lasso, boots, spurs, horse." If the partner said "Things a cowboy would use," then they won that round and went on.

So here are your clues. You get $0,000 for winning.

First is: How to Hike the North Country Trail: not quite a Guide. These will be available starting at the Celebration, Aug 21. Cost $25.

Second Clue: NCT 8-state sampler patches. These will be available starting at the Celebration, Aug 21. You must have hiked some piece of trail in each of the eight NCT states. Honor system. Suggested minimum- one mile, but not a firm requirement. Cost $2 each.

Third Clue: Marie stained the wall beside her deck the same color as the deck and sent me a picture. Looks great!

Fourth Clue: my trip.

OK, that's all the clues I have. Sorry.

The category? Things that are finished! OK, I'm lying. The book still has some typos and technically will never be finished due to updates, but I wanted to be sure I had books for the Celebration, so there will an immediate update in about a month.

I mostly rested, but Cathy and I went for a short walk on the NCT because I needed to get a location of a particular place that needs work.

Miles hiked so far in 2024: 354.2. NCT miles hiked 109.3.

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. Timber Creek north 1.5 miles and back

See Sneak Peek

Mini Typhoon

  Turned out we probably could have hiked our planned distance twice before it actually started storming, but there were severe weather warnings renewed all day long, so we never went.

Finally about 3 pm. we actually got a storm. To be fair, it was pretty impressive.

Big winds, and it brought down two tree limbs. It put a divot in Joyce's driveway, but missed Marie's car except for a brushing of leaves.

We taught Joyce how to play Quiddler, and we have another aficionado! She's a good player, too.

I did a fair amount of work. Got IngramSpark to accept my text file, and after way too many tries and some help from a friend, I got the cover accepted too. Here's the final full cover.

A utility pole came down at the end of the street, so there's been no power here for about 4 hours. I have to shut down the computer now. We should be good to hike tomorrow.

See Tonawanda

Sneak Peek - How to Hike the North Country Trail

 This project is all Matt Rowbotham's fault! I'm only half kidding. He approached me at the Celebration in October of 2022 and suggested this would be a worthy and easy project. He was half right.

The first part of the book is about 30K words of text that explain why the NCT is different from other long trails, both in experiences and management. This is more or less done. I've sent it to some fact checkers and have to go back through and incorporate their feedback.

The second half is going to be a listing of all the known legal places to stay overnight along the trail. This is the daunting task. It has taken a while to get a format that is understandable, and works with all the odd configurations we have to deal with. Huge thanks to Marianne Duvendack and Cathy Laman for helping me get that whipped into shape.

Here is a sampler pdf with the opening to the campsite half, including the legends. Then it skips to a list from western Wisconsin.

Link to a Sample pdf of How to Hike the North Country Trail

I did my editing quota and then worked like a fiend on this book. I have to keep my nose to the grindstone or I'll never get it done in time. But I'm also supposed to be doing other things... I have campsites listed for about 1200 miles (that's about a quarter of the trail), and not all of those are formatted correctly yet.

Also, my car has new brakes. Driving is an expensive hobby.

See More Mapping Fun

Where My Linguistic Interest Began

 I'm reading another book about linguistics. This one is even older than the book referenced in the link at the end. I'll tell you what I'm reading in a minute.

However, I think I can safely say that this is the book where my interest began. Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (1902). This is the edition that I had as a child. Do you know them? They are funny make-believe tales like "How the Elephant Got His Trunk." (the crocodile kept pulling on his nose). Or "The Cat Who Walked by Himself." (how cats are always independent and don't want to be friends like other animals). This was one of my favorite books as a small child, which is interesting, because I was an extremely literal and serious child, but these stories are funny, and I did understand that.

One of the stories is "How the Alphabet was Made." It's a fanciful tale of a girl named Taffy who starts to create drawings of sounds that her father makes. The thing that makes it silly is that they are making shapes that would make sounds that we use in English. But it starts with "ah," and Taffy watches her father make the ah sound and decides that his open mouth looks like a carp, so she draws a carp mouth pointing downward because they are bottom feeders. Her father suggests that she put a line across it for the carp's feeler so people would know it was a carp and not a trout or a perch. They ended up with this...

Which turned into this... A

OK, even as a preschooler I somehow knew that this was silly because nobody who lived that long ago was speaking English and using the Roman alphabet (my mother taught me the Greek and sign language alphabets right along with English). And yet, that is approximately how the early picture languages evolved into phonetic languages.

So yesterday, through reading another fiction book, I found another linguistics book, The Story of Language, by Mario Pei, written in 1949.

I probably should find something on the topic that is more recent, but it's still a lot of fun.

He talks some about the pictographic writing morphing into ideographic symbols with meanings beyond nouns. For example, in Chinese the symbols for sun and tree were combined to mean "east"- the sun rising through the trees.

Or how the Egyptian symbol for the sun, and the sun god Re, easily transformed to the phonetic character for the re sound.

He says the Phoenicians (which I knew), and the Hebrews (I did not know this) were the first to transform symbols to exclusively phonetic values. Here is the Phoenician alphabet... if you know the Greek capital letters, you will see the obvious similarity.

And the Hebrew (read it right to left). Aleph began as a picture of an ox, beth was a picture of a house- the Hebrew word for a house is beth. (Beth-el= house of God)

He also says that we only hear about 50% of sounds produced by a speaker which is why context is so important. And for a more contemporary example, part of why we had so much trouble understanding each other when we all wore masks during Covid.

I edited, I wrote about 1000 words, I did some other stuff.

See A Bunny Trail to Treasure

Best Books Read in the Second Half of 2023

 I was hoping to make it to 200 books for the year, but not quite. After I began to get my energy back, I was spending more time doing other things. Still, I made it to 171. 92 reads were what I call purposeful- they weren't simply an escape. These might be fiction, but I read them for a specific reason- maybe to analyze the plot. 79 were just for escape, for the sheer enjoyment of the story. Heavily into mystery and thriller, but that's usually true of me.

And, I'm sharing this great pic from the hike again. Peace and Victory to you in 2024 from the universe.


Here are the ten books I have selected as the best reads of the second half of 2023, in alphabetical order.

Title	Author	Genre
Brief Review
The China Governess	Margery Allingham	mystery
Several of the Albert Campion books are making this list. Allingham is a classic mystery writer, considered one of the Grand Dames of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. I've really enjoyed her books since the plots are always unique, not formulaic at all.     One of Allingham's standard sources of tension is the difference between the way the world was perceived by an older generation and the way young people want to live. In the stories set near or duing World War II, the older generation wants the class system and the Victorian formality to contine with ramifications of every action rippling down through decades, while the unsettled world of the young made them want to live life in the moment because the whole country might be blown up the next day.     In this story, the young adults are the babies born to that generation who seized the present. In fact, the bones of this plot are based on the fact that many babies born in the early days of the bombings in Britain had no papers, or the wrong papers. Some of them were lucky to be alive and to have been cared for by any decent family. And yet, that stodgy British protection of family decency still lingers and haunts.     Basically, a young man who wants to marry his underage love is shocked that her father will not give permission until he can prove who he is genetically, not just the adopted son of the prestigious family who has raised him. However, that family has more skeletons in the closet than just the young man's credentials.
Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass	Gary Paulson	country life
Paulson weaves the seasons of the year on a farm in the first half of the twentieth century into pure prose poetry. If you remember farm life, or even if you wish you did, this is a great read.
Death of a Peer	Ngaio Marsh	mystery
Marsh just excelled in filling a house with a large collection of wildly varying characters, and she's done it again. A girl who was friends in New Zealand with a family whose head was the younger son of a British peer tells the story. The family is always short on money and keeps asking the older son to bail them out.     The family moves back to England, and the girl comes to visit. When the elder son comes to their large apartment to tell them he will not lend or give them any more money, he is murdered in the elevator.     Hanky panky everywhere, and a set of twins who have been playing twin pranks since they were toddlers confuse the issues even more.
False Witness	Dorothy Uhnak	mystery
Uhnak was a popular writer from about 1960-1980. Her books are primarily police procedurals, based on her own experience as a policewoman. I've now read several others by her, and some of them are dated, but this one is flat-out riveting. There are two main suspects for a violent attack on a woman who lives, and gives a good description of the assailant, but the liklihood of guilt bounces between the two men, over and over.
I Am the Cheese	Robert Cormia	psycological novel
This may be the best book of these six months, but I can't really compare fiction to history or whatever. However, I was looking for novels that use the trope of the protagonist having amnesia. This is supposedly a young adult book, but it's pretty dark. A young boy is determined to ride his bike to a distant city to find his father.
The Innocent Man	John Grisham	true crime
You know I love true crime, and Grisham takes one of his detours from fiction to tell the story of a man in Oklahoma who was charged and convicted of a murder in 1982. There is literally NO actual evidence against him, but because of the brutality of the crime, he is sent to death row where he spent 17 years until DNA testing became a valid form of evidence.
13 1/2	Nevada Barr	thriller
This was the first Nevada Barr book I've read that wasn't part of the Anna Pigeon National Parks series. I guess she has moved on to writing much grittier thrillers. This is certainly in that category. A young woman who has pulled herself up from a childhood of poverty and mistreatment distrusts men.     In a parallel story, two brothers survive the emotional trauma of one killing their parents and the other caring for him after he is released from prison.     Then their lives intersect.
Tiger in the Smoke	Margery Allingham	mystery
I've been working on reading all of Allingham's mysteries featuring Albert Campion. This is usually considered her best work, and for once I agree with this assessment.     Meg, a young cousin of Albert, a WWII war widow, is engaged to marry a man who is very much in love with her, and she with him. Then, suddenly, she begins receiving notes that report sightings of first husband. His body had not been found, but he had been listed as missing in action. She is dismayed. Her fiance does not know quite how to react, but discovers that he is intensly jealous.     Then grainy photographs are sent with the notes. They look very much like her husband. The police decide to trap this man and discover if he is an impersonator. But this is all in the very beginning of the book. What is going on?     Adding to the mystery is a two-day London fog that covers everything with a gray and yellow pall. The descriptions are perfect. A band of disabled veterans who live on the streets and care for each other provide a grotesque but realistic element of suspense.
Traitor's Purse	Margery Allingham	mystery
Set in war time, this book involves espionage and national crimes. Other than that, I don't want to say too much because even telling the very beginning gives away some of the suspense.     It is a very unusual trope for a mystery. In fact, I had not encountered a book quite like this before. I tried to look it up, and may have found a few other titles with a similar technique employed.     One thing I can say is that if you are a lover of books with passages in caves under mountains, you will like this book.
Two Little Girls in Blue	Mary Higgins Clark	psychological thriller
Clark is usually "right on" with her creepy trillers, and this is no exception. The main characters are young twin girls, one of whom is kidnapped and presumed dead. But the remaining twin continues to "talk" to her sister.

I spent most of the day packing for my trip. Tomorrow, I hit the road!

See Best Books of the First Half of 2023

Scottville Senior Center Program

Today began the first of the in-person programs following my second hike of the NCT. I actually am using part of the previous program with updated maps and slides, but that way it incorporates both of my trail experiences. It was a fun group with some trail people there, and some "new" people, and a couple of friends I haven't seen for a long time.

Bill Kerans is on the right- he is the director of the Senior Center. Trail friend, Ada, is on the left, but she also is the Activities Director for the Center. Behind us is one of the many lovely quilts displayed.

They couldn't stop thanking me for coming, but seriously, I love giving programs about the North Country Trail. If anyone would like me to come to your area, my fee is reasonable, and sometimes travel expenses can be combined with some other trip. My next program is in Interlaken, NY, on September 9. Contact me if you are interested.

I just have to include this. Someone has arranged the kids' bookshelf by book color! This is exactly how Marie thinks it ought to be done, so I had to chuckle.

I didn't get a lot else done, but I did start getting ready for the workshop I'm leading at the NCTA Celebration in the Adirondacks.

See Background Fun

Best Books Read in the First Half of 2023

  In a serious knee-jerk reaction from not being able to read as much as usual in 2022, by the end of June of this year, I'd already read 105 books. So as not to make choosing the best a complete impossibility, I'm choosing the best from the first half of the year now, and then I'll do another "best" post when the year is complete.

Here are the ten I have selected as the best reads of the first half of 2023, in alphabetical order.

Title	Author	Genre
Brief Review
Adnan's Story	Rabia Chaudry	true crime
This is a really scary account of how a young man was profiled for being Muslim and sent to prison for about two decades for the murder of his ex-girlfriend with no actual evidence at all. He was finally exonerated, although the crime has never been solved. He was a teenager when he was convicted. I would never say that all law-enforcement behaves this badly, but this was a bit of a wake-up call about how when decisions are made based on assumptions, things go from bad to worse.
In the Kingdom of Ice	Hampton Sides	history/adventure
I had never heard of the U.S.S. Jeannette before reading this book. Now, I don't think I'll ever forget it. The Jeannette sailed for the North Pole in 1879, hoping to prove the then-popular scientific theory that there was a ring of ice around the "Polar Sea," which was warmer and open. It is hard for me to get my mind around the fact that only three years before my grandmother was born serious scientists believed this. This book has a lot of bad reviews on Amazon, but what those readers don't like was part of what I really liked about the book. There is tons of extraneous material about the times, the quirky man who sponsored the expedition, the captain's wife, and more. I appreciated gaining a better understanding of how the adventure fit into the culture of the era. You know I have a hard time picking a "favorite" anything, but this may be the most memorable book from these six months.
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts	Neil White	true crime
Although listed in the true crime book lists, this book defies being categorized. A man is sentenced to federal prison for a white-collar crime, basically kiting checks, big checks. As it turns out, the government is trying to consolidate some of their facilities, and some white-collar criminals are sent to the last operating leper colony in the U.S. for the term of their sentence. White learns a whole lot about the nature of people, the artificial categories we create for them, and the value of being a person of integrity who cares about his fellow humans.
Island of the Blue Dolphins	Scott O'Dell	children's
I've already extensively reviewed this book because it was the Newbery medal winner in 1961. This is basically a fictionalized story of a real woman who was the last of her people to survive alone on an island in the Pacific. She lived there for 18 years before being brought to California in 1853. Her story in her words was never recorded because she died very soon after being "rescued," of dysentery, caught from the white people. You can see my much longer review at Island of the Blue Dolphins
The League of Frightened Men	Rex Stout	Mystery
One of the things I've done this year is to reread (maybe the 5th time) all of the Nero Wolfe books. There is hardly a bad one in the lot, but I do think I have a couple of favorites. Two of them are making this list. There is something so clever and creepy about this story that it captivates me every time. The "league" is a group of grown men who were all in the same fraternity in college. One of the hazing rituals (this story was written in 1935) was for a young man to cling to the side of the building and tiptoe along a ledge to get to the next window- we've all seen this done on TV. But in the story, the young man, Paul, falls and is crippled for life. The rest of the boys form their league to care for and help this man. Then one of them dies, and each one in the league receives an enigmatic poem suggesting that Paul was responsible for the death and that he scorns their pity. Then two more die and two more poems are received. The league employs Nero Wolfe to investigate.
The Lighthouse Road	Peter Geye	regional fiction
There are three books (this is the first) in this series which trace a family from its roots in Norway, to a logging camp in northern Minnesota, to modern times. The Lighthouse Road is only lightly diguised from being the Gunflint Trail, and the village of Gunflint is obviously Grand Marais, Minnesota. The books hop around from generation to generation in the chapters, but once you get used to that, it's ok. In fact, that technique helps build one of the author's points-- that we are shaped in many ways by our heritage whether we understand it or not. I'm not Norwegian, but I do accept that I am certainly a product of the ways my parents and grandparents were raised. I found that it resonated with me.
Too Many Cooks	Rex Stout	mystery
Here's another Nero Wolfe story, another of the early ones, from 1938. Wolfe has traveled to a chef's competition (one of the very few reasons he ever leaves his house), and of course someone is poisoned. Wolfe must convince the black staff persons to tell what they know about what happened. His speech to them is eloquent and very timely for being written almost 90 years ago. They have clammed up, not because one of them is actually guilty, but simply because the crime was "white man's business" and they disclaimed any responsibility for helping to solve it. Interestingly enough, the young man who finally "talks" comes to Wolfe many years later in A Right to Die, where the man's now-grown son does not share his father's appreciation for trust of the Caucasian Wolfe.
The Treasure of Our Tongue	Lincoln Barnett	linguistics
I also reviewed this book at length at Bunny Trail to a Treasure. Written in 1964, the opening is outdated, but after that it is just treat after treat about how so many words in the English Language came to be and are related.
Wicked Takes the Witness Stand	Mardi Link	true crime
This is another Michigan true crime book by the author of Isadore's Secret and When Evil Came to Good Hart. I know Mardi, so that makes it extra fun, if you can call true crime, fun. Anyway, this is an account of a 1986 murder in Gaylord. The crime is still unsolved, although it seems likely it was an accidental death from a drug overdose. The key witness is a mentally unstable woman who is coached and pampered by the prosecution to weave a story that put six people in prison for years until they were finally vindicated. Another scary story of good intentions to catch a murderer gone wrong.
World of the Celts	Simon James	history
This is a straight-up history book which attempts to trace who the Celts actually were and where they came from. It has LOTS of color pictures of artifacts. I had read it before, quite a few years ago, but there is so much valuable material, I decided to read it again.

In other news: I finished pulling the autumn olive in the main part of the yard, and got the first mowing done on that section. It was too hot and humid to do much outside. Not that it's exactly cool in the house, but the fans help. Made some progress on many projects, all too slowly, but that's no reason to give up! The stack of books is what I've read in the last two weeks.

See Best Books Read in 2022

Newbery Medal Winner 40 - Island of the Blue Dolphins

I'm sort of backing back into this potential series of blog posts. You might recall that I thought I'd start reading my way through the Newbery Medal winners (outstanding children's book). But the first one was so horrible, I quickly got stalled. Now, I'm jumping ahead to the 40th winner because I was asked about it.



This weekend, someone asked me if I'd read The Island of the Blue Dolphins because her pre-teen son loved it and read it over and over. She thought this was fantastic, since the protagonist is a girl, but that did not bother him. No, I hadn't read it. Well, at least I'd heard of it, but that was all. A writer of good (hopefully) children's books needs to be a reader of good children's books.

In my defense, I'll mention that the book was written in 1961. I was in 8th grade. And I'm sure my school library didn't get it until a few years after that. By then, I was not reading children's books.

I found it free online at Internet Archive., then search for Island of the Blue Dolphins. You will need a free account.

This book has been listed by some sources as one of the most popular novels of the 20th Century. (Seriously? How did I completely miss this?). Anyway, it's a great story.

Current criticisms include that it's a Caucasian writer attempting to tell the story of a Native American and that many parts of the cultural narrative are not accurate. Well, OK. But it's a fictional story, based on the merest kernal of truth. Perhaps the author, Scott O'Dell, could have done more research. But millions of people must be glad he wrote it. It's a classic coming-of-age tale. There is also apparently a genre called Robinsonade, after the Robinson Crusoe story (people suddenly separated from civilization), into which this book fits.

The kernal of truth is that there was a real woman who was rescued from the island of San Nicolas (off the California coast) in 1853. She had lived there alone for 18 years and had tamed a wild dog to be her companion. She had been left behind when the remnant of her people were taken to California in 1835 by ship. Variations on the story have it that she jumped overboard and swam back to the island when she learned that her child/younger brother was not on the ship. After she was rescued, there was no one left who understood her language, and she died just 7 weeks later of dysentery. The real woman was probably in her 20s when she was stranded.

O'Dell takes this skeleton and gives us Karana, a girl of 12, who jumps overboard and swims back to the island because her younger brother is not on the ship. The brother is soon killed by the wild dogs and Karana is left alone to survive.

Supposedly, some of the native skills and customs are totally imagined by O'Dell, but the struggle to come to terms with her plight and to find enough self-reliance to survive is a theme that resonates with young people of any culture. The book is told from Karana's point of view, and does not attempt to explore the depths of emotions she must have felt. Karana mostly sticks to the "facts." and lets the reader add the details. She does occasionally mention being lonesome, or says how much joy she found in the company of the dog she manages to tame.

Personally, I liked this straightforward narrative. It rang true to me that a person who has been raised where every meal, tool, item of clothing, etc is only to be had by finding or making it yourself would have a matter-of-fact attitude toward dealing with the world. The greatest struggle Karana mentions is to overcome the tribal tabu against females making weapons, yet she had to defend herself from the dogs, and she needed to catch food beyond the abalones she could collect from the rocks. I don't know if this cultural norm was real or made-up, but I can believe that would have been an extremely difficult psychological situation.

The story was made into a movie in 1964. I watched the trailer on YouTube, but it was awful. Maybe it wasn't awful in 1964, but compared with the book, it was jarringly fake. Some movies age well. This one does not.

In other news: The vendor event wrapped up. I haven't done the final paperwork, but I did well. That is good.

See Newbery 1 - The Story of Mankind See Newbery Medal Through the Years

Still on a Reading Binge

Somewhere in past posts from earlier this year, I mentioned that one of the things I missed most while being on the road hiking was being able to read as many books as I wanted to.

I made a serious effort to "solve" that problem in the three months I spent at home, mostly resting. In fact, I read 77 books before I headed back to the trail. That's not quite one a day, but not bad. I just can't stop.

And, I'm now up to 90 books read in 2023, and I've discovered two good, new-to-me mystery series. Both are British.

One is the Charles Lenox mysteries by Charles Finch. These are set in Victorian England, and the first in the series is The Beautiful Blue Death.

Today, I traveled down a bunny trail of a bunny trail and discovered another. The first bunny trail was that Rex Stout wrote several books that aren't Nero Wolfe books. He had a series of three mysteries with a detective named Tecumseh Fox. I already knew this, and I own two of them (I'll have to get the third). Interestingly enough, one of the plots is a near duplicate, with even the same character names, as a Nero Wolfe short story. The Fox book, Bad for Business was an expanded version of the short story, "The Bitter End," which was eventually printed in a posthumus volume of Nero Wolf stories called Death Times Three.

So I read all three Techumseh Fox books, and I read the third one, The Broken Vase, for the first time. Now we come to the next bunny trail. One of the murder "weapons" in this book is nitrobenzene, so I looked it up. It's a chemical that is used in small amounts in the manufacture of candy, acetaminophine, and in larger amounts to make aniline dye. But in pure form, a few drops on your skin can kill. So when I looked that up, there was a list of other mysteries that used nitrobenzene to kill.

One of these is from another British author, Anthony Berkeley. The book is The Poisoned Chocolates Case. I'm reading that one now, and it turns out there are four in this series starring Roger Sheringham. These were written in the 1920s-1930s and are from that golden age of mysteries. This book in particular is supposed to be a true classic of the age. But I had never heard of it.

I'm going to copy a paragraph from it. This is unequivocally good writing.

Facts were very dear to Sir Charles. More, they were meat and drink to him. His income of roughly thirty thousand pounds a year was derived entirely from the masterful way in which he was able to handle facts. There was no one at the bar who could so convincingly distort an honest but awkward fact into carrying an entirely different interpretation from that which any ordinary person (counsel for the prosecution, for instance) would have put upon it. He could take that fact, look it boldly in the face, twist it round, read a message from the back of its neck, turn it inside out and detect auguries in its entrails, dance triumphantly on its corpse, pulverise it completely, re-mould it if necessary into an utterly different shape, and finally, if the fact still had the temerity to retain any vestige of its primary aspect, bellow at it in the most terrifying manner. If that failed he was quite prepared to weep at it in open court.

You can be sure that this bunny trail will lead to reading the other books in that series. Reading well-written books in your own genre is a great way to help improve your own writing.

And, since we are on the topic of books, I copied a wonderful quote from Archie Goodwin (Nero Wolfe's legs and eyes, if you don't remember).

If you don’t walk much you wouldn’t know, but the angle you get on people and things when you’re walking is absolutely different from the one you get when you’re in a car or in anything else that does the moving for you. - Archie Goodwin.

Most of these books can be read for free at archive.org

In other news: I got busy on quite a few of my ongoing projects today, but am in a bit of a panic in that I can not find something that is quite important. It's not where I thought I left it when I headed back to the trail. I've looked in the obvious places. Tomorrow I'll expand the search.

See Tidbits from Nero Wolfe

Dinosaurs Didn't Read

  Dinosaurs didn't read and look what happened to them.

In fact, the dinosaur was so uneducated, it threatened several authors. I think it chose our tallest author because it couldn't even see us small people.

But then it came and got my books. I don't know if it wanted to eat them or try to read them.

And that's the end of the tale.

Selling books for 8 hours is a long day. Two in a row. Only 6 hours tomorrow. Several of us went out to dinner afterwards and that was a good time. I'm in the black on the event. Tomorrow is all profit. Yippie!

See PFS- Spiral Cactus

Best Books Read in 2021

  This post is going to do double duty. I didn't buy much in 2022 that didn't have to do with the hiking, but I did finally find a comforter for my bed that I like that's in my budget. I got this for $15 on a clearance. I know it's not an amazing purchase, but it makes me very happy. And it's not totally worn out, which my old one was.

Because I was getting ready for my North Country Trail hike in 2021, I did not read as much as usual. I was extra busy. In fact, I've come to realize that one reason I'm so tired is because I've been pushing myself super hard for two years, not just the 13 months of the hike.


But that's not the point of this post. The thing is... because I was hiking in January 2022, I never posted the best books of 2021. Going back and trying to reconstruct that list from the pile of books that needed to be put away wasn't totally satisfactory. But, as nearly as I can figure, I only read 46 books in 2021. Apparently, I needed more escape than usual, so there are fewer serious books in this list.
Anyway, here are the nine I have selected as the best reads of 2021, in alphabetical order.

Title	Author	Genre
Brief Review
Angels and Demons	Dan Brown	thriller
This book is a sort of prequel to The DaVinci Code. There are a ton of problems with these books theologically, but there is no question that Brown is an outstanding writer. This is basically a scavenger hunt through Rome to find an ancient series of clues in order to save the Vatican from destruction. Think of the movie National Treasure set in Rome and even better.
Before We Were Yours	Lisa Wingate	historical fiction
This has been a pretty popular book, so probably a lot of you have read it, but it's deserving of its acclaim. This story is loosely based on a real woman who ran a large orphanage in the south in the 1930s. But it turned out that she was stealing children from poor families in order to sell them. This is the fictional story of one family torn apart in this way.
Carnival for the Dead	David Hewson	mystery
Interestingly, this doesn't get very good ratings on Amazon. It is most often described as tedious. Well, I liked it a lot. A forensic pathologist goes to Venice to find her aunt who has gone missing. There are lots of twists and turns.
Deception Point	Dan Brown	thriller
This is a very formulaic thriller, but Brown is a great writer. I probably should boycott his books because of his personal theology, but I got it from a free pile, so he got no money from me... A secret under the Arctic ice leads to international intrigue. Probably unbelievable, but sometimes stories are just for the thrill of the ride.
Gone	Johnathan Kellerman	thriller
This Alex Delaware thriller has more twists and turns than Lombard Street. Almost no one is who they appear to be, but can Alex sort it out?
High Profile	Robert B Parker	mystery
This is a Jesse Stone mystery- made so popular through the TV series starring Tom Selleck. I think this is one of the best in the series with two bodies, no one who seems to care, and Stone still trying to work through his own problems. I just checked other reviews and people either loved it or hated it, so... if you like Jesse, you may or may not like it!
Prayers for Rain	Dennis Lehane	thriller
This psychological thriller may leave you unable to sleep. Violent and disturbing. But I like it.
Seabiscuit	Laura Hillenbrand	history
The story of one of the most amazing race horses in history. Although the movie was good, the book is much better. I do like books about great horses, but I think this would be a good read for anyone.
Shadows on the Koyukuk	Sidney Huntington	memoir
This is the memoir of a man whose earliest memory is sitting beside his dead Athapaskan mother. He chronicles his life from days of early Alaskan native life through the modern age, when he became a great spokesman and promoter of education. Some of the reading of this one got a bit tedious for me, but the true story is so amazing I kept reading.
When Stars Rain Down	Angela Jackson-Brown	other fiction
Jackson-Brown was one of the facilitators of the Writer's Workshop I "attended" via Zoom during the COVID years. This is a fictional story of growing up black in the South in the era when people of color were allowed to have positions of trust in the homes of white people, but only as servants. The son of the owner and daughter of the housekeeper grew up together and treat each other as equals, but the world is not yet ready for that. In fact, portions of their world are still decidedly ugly.

In other news: I'm just barely starting to feel guilty for not working more. I guess that means I'm recouperating. I did some writing (probably finished my new 10-minute play), put some stuff away and did some paperwork. And I made yogurt.

See Best Books Read in 2020