Summer Moon

by Jill Marie Landis

A love story...de-stresser reading.

Kate Wittington answers an ad from a widow rancher seeking a wife. When she gets there, all ready married by proxy, he doesn't know anything about it.

He is a Texas Ranger trying to rid the world of Comanche.....since they killed his first wife and stole his son. Now on the last raid, he finds his son who is a stranger to him, and who definitely does not want to leave the Comanche.

This book has a lot of sad facts about the way the white people viewed and treated the Native Americans.

School of Fear

by Gitty Daneshavari

This is a cute kids' book. It's written in a very quirky way and tells how four kids with huge fears get sent off to Fear School to be cured.

Jake read it first and thought it was funny, so I read it too.

Quotes I liked:

"It is a rather lamentable fact that few can call upon courage with the expediency they can call up fear."

"....were the teachers-slash-wranglers on this particular outing, and by the looks on their faces, they were not enjoying it."

"The young boy fainted face down in the aisle.....Mr. Masterson ran to him, checked his pulse, and lifted him onto Mrs. Masterson's lap. 'Mummy, can we keep him? Madeleine asked with the wide eyes of a burgeoning crush. ' 'Darling, little boys make terrible pets, Mrs. Masterson offered with a wink.' 'That's not true at all, Mummy. They're hypoallergenic, much easier than dogs, Madeleine said cheekily, and they almost never have fleas."

"Hello, I am Mrs. Wellington, your teacher and all around center of the universe at School of Fear."

"As unfailingly stylish as she was mad.."

"Remember, bad breath is a sign that bacteria is still present, and trust me, bacteria is no present."

Irish Girls about Town...Get Ready to Paint the Town Green!

Maeve Binchy and fifteen more Irish women authors!

I never really thought about American vs. Irish writing styles being so different until I read this book. Some of the stories were great, while others, not so much. My favorites were about women who were "dumped" and hurt by long term boyfriends but then got to reject the same boyfriends in the end!

Irish phrases I like:

bloody well
my flat
watching the telly
we're stint
my best mate
he's such a wanker
a sixpenny look that quelled him
the nutter

How to Make an American Quilt

by Whitney Otto

I decided to read this book after watching the movie (again), and for once, I actually liked the movie better. It flowed better, and they picked really good characters for the parts. However, I learned far more about women and history from the book.



This story is really a book about the limits placed on women in the past, and how the women really, secretly, felt about this. I have always known that the abolitionists used quilts to communicate with slaves and each other on the underground railroad. What I didn't know, and what this book taught me, is that the women who weren't free to vote or voice their own opinions did so anyway through the stories in their quilts. One of the first 'Women's' magazines (made by men) even tried to stop this by publishing articles that said men preferred women who made quilts that followed regular patterns rather than those that told stories.

Quotes I like:

"I have lost track of the sort of girl that I am. I used to be a young scholar; I am now an engaged woman. Now that you can't be both-even I understand that-yet I cannot fathom who I think I am at this time."

"The Revolutionary War could be defined as a bloody betrayal. One can almost hear the voice of Mother England crying, "But you are mine. An extension of me. You promised to be faithful, to send back your riches and keep me in a style to which I have become accustomed." America's answer, something like, "I need my space. It isn't that I am not fond of you. We can still maintain a friendly trading relationship."

"There is the Civil War, which is a conflict of the blood tie. No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows its own weakness, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still love with the force of hatred. Feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death; immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied."

"There are only two ways to deal with tragedy and injustice: show it plainly or hide all traces; and the sisters are in disagreement on this matter."

"She prefers stitching landscapes and monuments. People can hurt you, betray you. People are dangerous if you are not careful."

"I've only been here. In this small town. She resisted the impulse to add, but I've always felt so out of place here, as if this were the location most foreign to my life. The strangest place I could have chosen."...."Still, we promised ourselves that we would return and live abroad, perhaps Europe or Africa, but we never did. We were so out of sync with the local customs, so we thought, if we are going to be outsiders, then why not just settle down at home, in this small town we've always lived in."

"He once asked Glady Joe if she wanted to live somewhere else, almost certain her answer would be something like 'I can't wait to get out of this place,' only she surprised him by saying, 'Actually, I like living someplace where I don't feel quite comfortable or welcome because it goads me into traveling or reading. I guess you could say that this small town brings out the urge to 'quest' in me. I'm not sure I'd have that if I lived elsewhere. Any other place I may love,' she said. 'I might become happy and complacent and altogether content and then where would I be?"



"It broke her young heart- not all at once, in one great crack! but rather, with tiny little fissures and hairline fractures. It chipped away at the perimeter as well, leaving her with a heart that did not have a smooth, voluptuous silhouette but one that was beveled and sharp."



"The sun was formed from broken stars. Our earth, its plants, and even us, are the product of the same clouds of gas and dust. You could say that we are born from stardust."



"This was not a time when women could swim freely, unfettered by waiting domesticity; this was not their time." (Thank God, that it is our time today!)



"This is the true challenge, she thinks-to work within a narrow confine. To accept what you cannot have; that from which you cannot deviate."



"A quilt, (like a marriage) though stitched together, will always be separate, individual parts."



"A little effort now will save you a great deal of effort later. You know that marriage and friendship require effort."



"only someone very young can move without hesitation-because the older you are, whether you intend it or not, you get attached. You lay down roots, feel an uncomfortable kinship with the soil beneath your feet. Certain things become meaningful and irreplaceable and no matter how much you like to travel or adore your destinations, you will always return to that thing that only exists for you here at home. And that, is the only difference I can see between youth and age. Really. When you get down to it. I mean nothing else changes, not the capacity to love or experience sexual jealousy or desire; or ambition in business or to be athletic or create art or parent a child- all that remains intact, despite our outer selves. It is the difference between digging in or moving on."

"...and because you are an anomaly, frightening even to yourself, when you discover that you can only relate to men and not to women because they demand too much conversation and confidences from you and you've reached the point in your life (oh, too long ago to remember) where you are too angry for 'polite' conversation; you don;t want to nurture or have your hand held in sympathy; why you even surprise yourself with wanting to rip the world from its axis. You want to stop it from rotating one more frustrating day. And you suppose all this makes you not quite a woman and certainly not a man, but a complete outsider. And there you are. Really persona non grata around these parts so you have to run so far away to another country because you are a stranger in your own land."

"In her heart, she mistakenly thought that this was meant to be her burden, the experience to strengthen her, make her so powerful nothing could touch her."

"He loved his family, but was anxious to be done with this small town, a place he saw as intolerant of eccentricity or personal differences. He saw it as an essentially petty, cruel, nosy, community, quick to ostracize and judge."

The Robber Bride

By Margaret Atwood

One of the worst books I've ever read. I didn't really like any of it. Of course, being the person I am, I still read all 466 pages in the hopes that it would get better. It didn't.

Basically, three women are close friends because they have all been the victims of Zenia, a woman who exploits them before she takes their men and all the rest of the things (people) that mean the most to them. They are all relieved at word of her death, they go to her funeral, and help bury her ashes. Then, as they are having lunch together, in she walks.

No ghostly stuff or anything, she just faked her death.

A few quotes I (kinda) liked:

"War is what happens when language fails."

"She likes her job well enough as jobs go, but it's a job, and every job has shackles attached to it. Square brackets. So she tries to plan a small respite for each day, a small joy, something extra."

"She feels something tugging at her, some intuition...a sinking feeling. Not something violent, like an explosion or fire. Something else. She often has these feelings, but half of them aren't dependable." Shanita says it's because she is picking up a lot of stations, cosmic static."

"She looks at her watch: her kids are running late, but not very late. They take after her: she has always had a flexible sense of time."

"Nature abhors a vacuum, thinks Tony. How inconvenient. Otherwise, we vacuums might lead our lives in relative security."

"She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is- incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control."

"I was never religious, he says. Like I always said- who owns God? If there was no religions there won't be all this trouble. No more wars."