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 🖓

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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.

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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

The March book wrap up

Lovely Spring flowers around our place....

Blink your eye and it's April.  As Gilmour sang  in Time,  "then one day you'll find, ten years have got behind you..."

That's the truth.  Time goes so fast.  Since bringing this site back to life I updated on my February books here. This post is is a roundup of my March books.  Then I'll be on track with some sort of schedule that suits me.

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In March I finished the second book in the Cormac Reilly series by Dervla McTiernan.  I liked the first book, The Ruin, better than this second one - The Scholar. There are a few more to go before I am fully caught up.  If you like police procedurals this would be a good one for you, set in Galway Ireland.

Also read in March:  The Women by Kristin Hannah and Three by Valérie Perrin.

Three:  In 1986 three young children meet in school and become inseparable. They are all ten years of age and come from different home lives. Etienne, Nina and Adrian. They hold hands all the time, they support each other, assist with school work and personal issues. You can't imagine these three ever having a falling out.

The story is told in flashbacks and in great detail. By the time they are ready to graduate school and move on to university in Paris, the relationships are as strong as ever, even if there are a few secrets between the three. Then a fallout. A big one.

In 2017 a car is pulled from the water with a body inside. There is much speculation about a young lady missing for years - could she be in that car? As you go back and forth between time periods, reading about the very descriptive aspects of their lives, I found myself very supportive of some characters and almost despising another. It's a slow read but the last several chapters have revelations I never thought about. Loyalty, betrayal, love and forgiveness are the themes.

You don't know who the narrator is in this book until the end.  Then things fell into place.

This is the second book I have read by Perrin, translated by Hildegard Serle, and I will say I enjoyed Fresh Water for Flowers a bit more. She is an incredible author and I have already preordered her newest - Forgotten on Sunday.

March book travel took me to Vietnam, France, Ireland and California.  That's it for the March 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 Reader Buzz for Sunday Salon.

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The Women by Kristen Hannah

This was a wonderfully written novel and I am glad I picked this up from the library, even if it was by accident as I meant to cancel the hold.  Having tried two other novels by Hannah which were DNF (Firefly Girls and The Great Alone) I'd decided she wasn't an author I would like to read.  This one hit it out of the park.

It covers so much about the Vietnam war from the outlook of nurse Frances "Frankie" McGraff.  She grew up in California in an affluent family and hadn't encountered hardships in her life.  She was working towards her nursing degree and excelled in her studies, wanted to make a difference. Frankie was naive as she was entrenched in a privileged  society where realties of working class life were never experienced.  All her parents  wanted was for her to get married, have children and be part of the country club group.  Then, when gazing at that wall of heroes in her father's office, her brother's friend asked why there weren't any photos of women there and told her women could be heroes too.

Frankie's brother Finley was about to be deployed to Vietnam and would, one day, earn his place on that "wall of heros," praised for his upcoming military service to Vietnam. Two different standards upheld for sons and daughters.....those will infuriate you when you read how Frankie was treated after her service as a MASH nurse.

I got ahead of myself but that was the beginning.  Frankie was hired as a nurse at a local hospital and despite her excellent skills all they had her do was get water for the patients, empty bedpans and basically be a candy striper.  She ended up joining the Army was sent to Vietnam for a hefty dose of culture and reality shock.

The book is graphic, devastating, tells of the horrific injuries that soldiers - basically teenagers - suffered when they were brought into the MASH unit.  Frankie grew up fast as she experienced what combat nursing entailed, the realities of war and the realization our government didn't share the truth about the war with the public.  They said there weren't any women in Vietman.  They said there were zero casualties for days when Frankie and the other medical personnel saw scores of body bags ready to ship home, held the hands of those who were dying with no expectation of survival.

Returning home, nurses were experiencing PTSD along with the soldiers but they were denied help at the V.A. and support groups because....women weren't in Vietnam. The nurses and the soldiers were treated abominably when they returned home - spit on, called nazis and child killers.  People who had zero idea about the bloody TET offensive, POWs or the hours selfless doctors and nurses worked to save as many boys as they could.

This book is not chick lit - you will read about depression, drug addiction, war and injuries and death sustained.....I am glad I read this one.  It's amazing and near the end, I most certainly had tears in my eyes.