Reading 06-14-19

As some of you are, so am I!  A reader, through and through.  I usually have at least one book going, but as I have aged I have been forced to read one at a time as my brain can't jump from one book to the other and back again.  Sad.  Lately I seem hooked on biographies and specifically about women authors of children's books.  

The one I finished today is "Prairie Fire: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder" by Caroline Fraser.  It is a very scholarly book of 626 pages, including extensive footnotes, many acknowledgements, and a long index.   I was disheartened to read some of it, especially the relationship between Laura and her adult daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, also a writer, but one with not much conscience and inclined to glorify herself and put down her mother.  She really was a rather despicable person.  Since it is more than 500 pages, not counting the footnotes and index, I feel like I have been reading it forever.  But I read all of the series as a child and again when I was in my 30s, so it was interesting to read about Laura's actual life and the background of the publishing.  

Prior to that I read two books about Margaret Wise Brown the author of one of the best selling children's books of all time, "Goodnight Moon" and also the lovely "Runaway Bunny". She wrote over a hundred books before her untimely death at age 42.  The first biography I read was "The Great Green Room" by Amy Gary.  But I felt that it wasn't complete enough, so I followed up with "Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon".  It is more extensive with fifty or so pages of notes, footnotes, index, etc.  Both books have pictures of Margaret, her friends and houses.  She was not perfect, but someone it is easy to admire.  For our July meeting my Book Group members are to read a "classic".  So, I am reading "Goodnight Moon", what could possibly be more classic?

Now I have moved on to a Dana Stabenow "procedural" (I guess that is what it might be called).  I have devoured all of her Kate Shugack mysteries and am eagerly waiting for the next in that series.  But this one is a stand alone titled "Blindfold Game".  Of course, it still is sited in the North Pacific (seems like between Alaska and Russia) and she is such a talented story teller, I'm sure I will have to set the timer, lest I read all night...  or all day.  

I have also recently enjoyed "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens (reminded me of "Girl of the Limberlost" which I read decades ago.  And the two newest Anne Hellerman continuation of her late father's tales: "Cave of Bones" and "Song of the Lion" which take place in the Navajo and Hopi lands of New Mexico and Arizona.  And an old John Lescroart thriller "VIG" which I picked up at the used bookstore, Bookman in Anaheim. 

Yes, I will read just about anything, except Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  

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