Links I love

 I know that this is a busy time for everyone.  I hope that everyone remembers to take a few moments for themselves.  

1. As an adult, I can now really appreciate this question about Home Alone.
2. Presidents at prominent colleges are resigning.
3. Wikipedia's top 25 most popular pages of 2023.
4. Nonfiction gift guide -  I love these as much as I love year end best of lists.
5. The most common flu symptoms that doctors are seeing right now.
6. 11 holiday items that are not good for pets.
7. JRR Tolkien posed as Father Christmas for 23 years.
8. 10 best horror movies for people who hate horror movies.
9. How to avoid family fights during the holidays.
10. Quiz on what myst ery novel job you'd have.
11. Highest rated celebrity memoirs.
12. The investors bringing women's soccer back to Boston.
13. Cool women in Scottish history.
14. The new cabins at Wilderness Lodge. We're going in February but are staying here.

Enjoy your week!

REVIEW: Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdoch

 

I read this book because it was suggested by one of my favorite Podcasts: Women and Crime. I'm a Patreon member, and they do a book club, and this was the recent pick for it.  It is right up my alley - I read and enjoyed Killers of the Flower Moon so this was right up my alley. In this book, a young white oil worker named Kristopher Clarke ("KC") goes missing from a reservation that is experiencing an oil boom. Lissa Yellow Bird, a Native woman with no connection to KC decides she's going to find out what happened to him. This book chronicles her search.

Murdoch, I don't think, had intended to write this book. She is a journalist who was traveling to the oil fields in North Dakota to chronicle the oil boom on the reservations there and just happened to stumble upon this. During the course of her impeccable, on site, research, she became friends with Lissa, her family and children and Lissa's friends.  Lissa was a natural person to investigate - she is a member of the tribes that live on the reservation and she has a dogged mentality that led to her getting obsessed with this case and trying to follow it through to the end. Lissa herself is as complicated as the case was - she's an addict and that addiction impacted her parenting.  Having said that, she was a very protective mother and she tried to do the best that she could under the circumstances. She often felt alone and alienated on the reservation, which contributed to the choices she made. 

What I loved about this book was how it combined the search for answers related to a crime with the impact of the boom on the people that lived with it.  Murdoch weaves these two stories together in a masterful way. Her research is very deep. We learned about the skyrocketing violence and crime that resulted from the boom due to Murdoch's research and about the pain that the people living with the oil experience. I also loved learning about some of the ancestry of the tribe that  Lissa is a apart of.  She often talks about the land, her connection to it and how that connection has been severed. 

Definitely a must read.  

Links I Love

 

Last weekend, I slacked - we spent a much needed recharge weekend in Boston, where we stayed at the Copley Square Hotel. I'm convinced that it is haunted.  During our visit, we went to the BPL (see picture below) and the JFK Presidential Library. I had never been there before and, considering that this year is the 60th anniversary of JFK's assassination, we thought we'd go. We also had dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse and in the North End.  

1. 1. Booker Prize winner is announced.
2. Mushroom coffee is a thing but is it REALLY a thing?
3. What NOT to say to bookstore employees.
4. Haunted Mansion fans have some issues with the current iteration.
5. Five tips for giving better books.
6. Kennedy Center honors awarded.
7. New Yorker best books of 2023.
8. GTA 6 trailer is out.

REVIEW: The Idiot by Elie Batuman

 

I have heard that people like this novel, but having completed it, I'm not sure that I do.  It seems to be a long, pointless novel that jumps from one scene to another in a very jerking manner.  In this novel, we meet Selin, a freshman at Harvard. The year is 1995 - so the internet, email and the like are completely new. Selin begins corresponding via email with Ivan, a senior Mathematics major that is Hungarian and trying to decide where to go to graduate school. When Ivan goes home for the summer, Selin follows - as Ivan is the VERY bland love interest of the novel. 

The characters are flat and lifeless - I could care less about all of them, including Selin and especially Ivan.  I didn't have any connection with them. At all. Communication between the characters is very, very tense and anxious - meaning that it seems like all the characters have social anxiety of some degree as opposed to building the tension to lead up to a certain moment where it all comes together.  In this novel, it never really comes together in that way. What I did appreciate is that the novel attempted to explore what teenagers seem to do - test opinions and actions to see what they and who they really are. THe novel did that very, very well through Selin, who in those moments was earnest and introspective.  Through Selin, Batuman tries to offer us an exploration of the complexity of language and technology - sometimes it does that and sometimes it falls flat on its face. The most important lesson that I learned from reading this novel was that I prefer plot driven novels with well developed characters.

Hard pass. 

Links I love

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  I hope that everyone is having a good weekend!

• Why are there so many loose Turkeys in Massachusetts?
• Mrs. Carter has passed away at 96.
• Dr. Who updates a villain. AND turns 60.
• NPR's book post and their best books.
• The 25 best sequels according to the internets.
• Hero's Feast does a DnD theme.
• New Spaceship Earth show - not inside but on the outside of the golf ball.
• THe Booker Prize Shortlist

Links I love

 

It's wintertime weather wise here so I've updated the picture! Last weekend, my fiancée and I relayed the Manchester City Half. I'm starting to train for a spring half - probably this one but maybe this one. 

1. The new moon this month.
2. The case for libraries.
3. SCOTUS adopts first ever code of ethics.
4. The Belvedere Hotel and who lived there.
5. 2023 National Book Award nominees announced.
6. Pink gives away banned books at a concert.
7. The Crown is back for its last season.

Links I love

 

This week has been busy, even though it was a short week. I'm halfway through my next reviewable book so look for a review this weekend. I want to change one thing about my routine in the upcoming week - in my mornings, doing yoga for twenty in the morning or meditation/journaling. I think it will help me a lot.  

1. A meteor shower could send fireballs through the sky.
2. Books like Killers of the Flower Moon.
3. If you're in Philly, stop at this shop that sells Rocky memorabilia.
4. The Holderness Family has a reader holiday gift guide.THey have ones for stocking stuffers, her and him too.
5. A list of indigenous memoirs.
6. Teens need sleep - and here's an article about school and teen sleep schedules.
7. NH's border crisis.
8. There has been the first study between being alone and whether that makes you feel lonely.
9. Trailer for Inside Out 2 is released.
10. love behind bars.
11. New works by Louisa May Alcott have been discovered.
12. five mindfulness practices.