April Roundup

Note: I can not comment on WP blogs at this time. Even though I visit and try to comment, it won't work. There is a long winded reason for that and I need to wait for my old WP blog to delete.  Apparently it takes a month, long story.  Just a PSA here so you'll know.  Sorry to Vicki, Erin, Shelleyrae 😞 and anyone else I didn't mention with WP.

Reading, planting and eating....

Loaded the back of Rav up with Asiatic lillies, portulacas, Arizona Sun Blankets and a lone tomato plant.  I am always hopeful of growing tomatoes.  The deer are always hopeful I will try.

One of my go-to favorite meals is a black bean enchilada topped with loads of lettuce, tomato, sour cream and green onions.  Easy vegetarian meal.  Maduros were a nice side...kinda Tex-Mex-Cuban fusion :-0

April reading was quite varied in location and genres. I  had a DNF with Tana French's latest book The Hunter.  Surprising as I am a big fan of hers but I think it was the Dublin Murder Squad books which had me hooked. The Cal Hooper series isn't doing it for me.

Nope 🖓

📚📚   Books read  📚📚

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring

I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story by Rick Bragg

The Empty House by Rosamunde Pilcher

Absolution by Alice McDermott - buddy read with JoAnn

April book travel took me to Maine, West Virginia, Iraq, Vietnam, Cornwall and Scotland.

 That's it for the April round up.   Looking forward to good reading this month.  Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

📚📚📚📚📚📚

Absolution

Immerse yourself in Vietnam in 1963. There is a marked contrast between the sheltered American compounds and their lives of ease against starving Vietnamese children, the misery of leprosy and napalm victims.  This reads like a memoir and I was hooked instantly.

 

The characters are brought to life quite vividly in McDermott's narrative about American women in Saigon.  The husbands are there in Vietnam, engineers who go to work and leave their wives in a beautiful home, surrounded by servants, luxuries and throwing garden parties.  The naive wives who turn their heads away from suffering and want.

And then you meet Charlene.  A character I didn't like in the beginning but had a very different opinion of by the end. Charlene is one of the wives who followed their husbands to Vietnam but make no mistake, she isn't like the others.

The conversations between Charlene and Tricia were interesting.  Tricia was pliable and willing to go along with Charlene's plans, joined her cabal, her political maneuvering to ultimately do good for the Vietnamese, the lepers, for anyone who needed something.

While Tricia wanted to blend in with the other wives, wanted to be a good wife and help her husband's corporate career, she was introduced to real life by Charlene. 

The book starts with Tricia is telling her story to Charlene's daughter Rainey, some fifty years after they were in Vietnam.  They had gotten in touch again through the sorting of old letters kept over the decades.  But as the narrative went on it seemed like 1963 as the present.

I liked this part, I can relate:

"Long ago went thought the winnowing of things - clothes and books and papers, excess kitchen gadgets, knickknacks, so many souvenirs: the Saigon souvenirs, and the Paris souvenirs, London, Ireland, San Francisco -...."   it was a collection given to Tricia by family and some she'd collected herself. One by one being disposed of. 

Again, I felt like I was reading letters from a memoir.

This is my second book to read along with JoAnn at Gulfside Musing and it was a blast to compare notes as we read along.  Great book for a book club discussion.

Linking up with Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon