Bronwyn
This was cute. It's just like the episode.
Read for the first time in the year:
Late March 2021
Galen read: March 8-20, 2023
“I liked that Lauren said squ@rk and ark when Gleb gave her the yellow paint.” This kid loves these books. I'm so glad he's reading to us. ❤️
How many stars? “Four because of the last chapter because Mrs Allen called Cocoa a beast.”
Galen finished reading this to us on June 5, 2023
“Even though I know there are only five stars, I give it five thousand stars because I love the Bad Food guys. I like how they saved Belching Walrus Elementary from Mus Musculus.”
Galen finished June 1, 2023
“I give it five stars because it was so impressive that Cocoa and Nilla turned the water wheel in the last chapter.”
A weak four stars, but three seemed harsh. I did like this, but it just felt very fluffy. Jane seemed a little... stunted? Like always with the poetry quotes. I know it was to show her having regrets about post-Oxford life, but it just didn't work for me. I liked Prudence a lot though. She felt much more realistic. The transitions felt weird too, maybe just dated? Like, “Jane wondered what Prudence was doing. Prudence was doing X.” I'll still definitely read more Pym as I have a bunch on kindle and they are light and easy, which is needed sometimes, but I'm not sure if she'll ever be a favorite.
Finished: July 25, 2023. I helped Galen finish as he was lagging...
“I didn't like that Cocoa ate chocolate at the beginning in chapter two. I don't know what else.”
Review to come once I've thought about it more. Rounding up to four stars at the moment, though we'll see. Hmm.
Alright. This was fine. I'll keep it at four stars because I would recommend it. I feel like this book just suffers because I'm reading it sixty years after it was published. Some old books suffer because newer books or movies have done the same/similar premise and so feel... less inventive as a result. This isn't a bad book at all. Some of the writing is gorgeous. It just fell a bit flat because I felt a bit like I knew it already.
This was very good. Jenkins' writing and descriptions are just lovely. Everyone felt very real. I didn't really like any of the main trio though. I had sympathy for Imogen, but she's so passive (and I get it. She's a woman of a certain time and place, just... hard to watch). Evelyn is pretty horrible all around. Blanche is another sort of woman and takes advantage of that. I'm glad I read this, and I'll definitely read more Jenkins, but I need a break from books about infidelity/broken marriages. (It won't happen - it's a common theme - but I can dream.)
This was a really good mystery. I kept thinking I'd figured it out and then, nope! It was great. Elma was such a good detective too. I didn't love some of the misdirection, especially when it wasn't relevant, but that's a mystery for you. I could see reading more of this series.
(This was also particularly good for me in that I'd been to Akranes in 2007. I remembered a couple of the places talked about and have a book I could pull out to look at other things. I liked that a lot.)
Since watching Shiny Happy People, I've gone down a bit of a fundie rabbit hole. I've been binging the Leaving Eden podcast and it's been fascinating. So when I read an interview with Jon Ward, I knew I'd want to read this book.
It's really interesting. It's as much about his deconversion as about the failures of Evangelicalism; they're so entwined in many ways. Ward's being brought up to take over in his church, and then working in journalism for decades, makes him the perfect person to talk about how this (gestures around) all happened. Really interesting stuff.
This is another I heard of from Monster, She Wrote. Another that's not really my thing, but that I thought I'd try. I'm glad I did. While these stories (When Darkness Loves Us and Beauty Is...) were really bizarre and the title story is pretty messed up, the writing is gorgeous and evocative. Engstrom really knows how to tell a story.
This was pretty good. Less about the books than I would've liked. And I'm not sure what “reading dangerously” means. But as a fan of Backlisted, it was fun to read Andy's book (I could hear his voice as I read). It's very rambling and a bit self-indulgent, but overall, fun.
Read- 11-6-2021
This was really cute and funny and is probably the longest book Galen has read so far! (I'll have to go back and add the others.)
Also. Elephant's name is Gerald?!
Not nearly as tight a story as Miss Buncle's Book, but still really charming. Jerry and the Marvell children are nice new characters, as well as Wandlebury being a nice new village. On to book three.
This was cute. Some of the rhymes weren't great, but overall a fun little Detroit ABC book.
Read for the first time in a year:
September 7, 2021
Like a lot of people I was fascinated by the HBO miniseries, Chernobyl. This is one of the books that the creator used in his research. The first account is one of the first people we see in the show. It's just heartbreaking. So many stories are just heartbreaking, but so many have a lot of hope too. It's so interesting. People are resilient after all.
I think this was good - it read quickly and I definitely wanted to know what happened, both with the nuclear attacks and the murder mystery. The setting and isolation was really well done. It was a bit... anticlimactic though and the ending was a bit of a letdown. But overall, an interesting concept and fairly well done.
Overall this was a sweet little book. I really liked the setting and the descriptions of the homes and places. The characters were interesting but a little light. Not much really happens, but you can see how everyone will have been changed after the end. Charming book.
This was really lovely. The illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith are gorgeous. I don't know that I'd actually read the whole poem before (though I've read it so I'm not sure why they'd have been incomplete), but lines were new to me. This is a classic for a reason.
This took me a long time to read because I originally tried to read it straight through and burned out. That said, this is a really interesting book of books from the Golden Age of mystery. My tbr list has grown so much. Edwards, of course, knows very much of what he speaks and this is incredibly comprehensive. Highly recommended, just dip in and out more than I initially did.
This is such a cute little book, showing the importance of getting outside and doing different things.
Read December 23, 2021
I've been lacking in tracking what Galen's been reading since it's so far all been books we own and have read a lot. We had a program at the library the past two weeks and he's checked out a few books. This is one of them. It was really too easy for him, but it's fun and he enjoyed it.
Galen Read: August 10, 2022
I wasn't sure if I liked this until I got to the very end. I liked the early parts, the sideshow, but the middle dragged for me. The last page, the last paragraph really, made me appreciate it more. Which isn't fair, the story is great and disturbing, but that last bit just pulled it all together. (I feel misled by the introduction and how Dr Ritter is described. I expected more.)
This book was received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.
We Kept Our Towns Going tells the stories of the Gossard corset and bra factories in Ishpeming and Gwinn, Michigan. Moving chronologically, Wong follows the factories through their years of operation and beyond. The importance of these factories in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and beyond is shown through oral histories of individuals who worked or lived near the Gossard factories. This is a history of labor in an area not usually focused on, and Wong tells the story well.
Wong takes us through all the details of production in the Gossard shops. She describes the layout of the building; what went on on each floor; how the machines worked and how the women helped keep them working; how the materials were brought in and finished garments went out. Wong also uses the women's recollections to show how the different work structures operated, from how piecework worked and how it was paid out, to the office workers and truckers.
The communities in Michigan's UP were mainly centered around mining. Wong shows how this helped create the perfect environment for the Gossard factories to succeed in. Miners were often laid off for periods at a time, and the wives and daughters of the miners wanted or needed to help their families. The Gossard was perfect for these women.
Throughout each chapter we hear from former employees, children of former employees, other members of the communities, etc. to help us better understand the importance of the factories to their communities. Wong highlights the economic benefits to families and the towns from the first opening in the 1920s until the final closure in 1976.
The longest chapter in the book highlights the lead up to unionization of the Gossard plants and the strike that took place in 1949. I fully admit I didn't quite follow all of the strike negotiations. Whether that is due to the text lacking or my own gap in understanding unions though, I'm not sure.
The last chapters show the changing world of the 1960s and 1970s and the slow decline in the Gossard's work in the UP. Fashions changed and the garments produced were no longer in fashion. While the company tried to move with the times, ultimately the last Gossard factory in the UP closed in the late 1970s. Wong then takes us through what happened to the factory building, the workers, and the towns.
The story of the Gossard factories is bookended by the story of a quilt, made from Gossard fabric and made to highlight the women and the factories that supported the towns for over half a century. The quilt can be seen online at: https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=12-8-6495
Overall this is a fascinating story of a little told place and job. The oral histories are what makes the book stand out. The women, and some men, so clearly loved their jobs and what those jobs did for their communities. These stories should be more well known, and with Wong's book, they can be, if only a little bit more.