Happy 2025!
Friends who know us well, sent us a lovely gift box with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, customized with Merry Christmas, a holly stencil, and our names. The bottle is now a souvenir, but we’ll enjoy many more toasts with the C & A glasses they included.
Why Settle for One Night of Champagne?
We have a lot to celebrate at the end of December. Chris’s birthday, then New Year’s Eve, then New Year’s Day. Two of those three meals are traditional. Chris makes linguini with clams on NY eve, and I make the Southern meal of Hoppin’ John (black-eyed peas over rice) and Southern greens the following day. I made a New Orleans style recipe of shrimp with okra, tomatoes, onion, and celery with a dash of brown sugar and hot sauce for his birthday.
But our BIG celebration was reading. I still haven’t finished my 2024 books, since we keep adding new ones and reading each other’s books as we go. “Boring!” says Rimsky, our two-year-old cat. He decided to spice things up.
WHAM!
That’s the sound of adventurous Rimsky knocking the entire table, pottery lamp, vase, and two heavy bookends on the floor. Yikes!
Thank goodness we installed thick, plush carpeting right before Rimsky joined our home! I didn’t have the strength to set the table back on its legs, so had to wake Chris (1:00 a.m.). Fortunately, the lamp, vase, and bookends were undamaged. Rimsky immediately slipped under the Christmas tree and pretended he’d been asleep the whole time. His dad was not fooled one bit!
Who? Me?
Then Came the Blizzard! Brrrrrrrrrr!
(Jan. 5) Look closely at the house across the street and you’ll see this was not a black and white photo. I spent five days shut in the house reading. We couldn’t get out of our steep driveway for a few days, but I’m thankful we didn’t lose our power. Previous snowstorms have left us in the cold and dark for a full-week at a time.
Some of Alarie’s Recommended Reading List from 2024
The Madstone — Elizabeth Crook
First I want to repeat part of my praise for Crook’s first Texas frontier novel, The Which Way Tree: “Crook, like many a good Southern writer, mixes violence, danger, crazy characters, and catastrophe. She also softens the gore and misery with the hilarity, warmth, and charm of a child narrator.”
Of course, I hoped this book would be as good, but I’ve seen many a good novelist never again reach the level of his/her first book, sometimes never even attempting it. What I didn’t expect was for The Madstone to pick up two years after the first book left off. Our former child narrator, Benjamin Shreve, was 17 at the end of that book and is now 19, a wise and kind-hearted young man. But a three-year-old boy, called “Tot,” fills in the innocence and sweetness we’d otherwise miss from the earlier novel. I think I slightly preferred this book. I hope Crook keeps writing fiction this engaging. The pages fly by.
The Diamond Eye – Kate Quinn
I think this may be my favorite of all Quinn’s WWII novels, primarily because I knew little about Germany’s attack on Russia. The protagonist was a Ukrainian, but Ukraine was under Russia at the time. She called herself a Russian, perhaps to save herself from political hassles. Mila Pavlichenka was a brilliant college student when the Nazis invaded her homeland. She already had sharp-shooter credentials from rifle target practice in school, and decided she needed to volunteer for the war effort. Other countries at that time did not allow women into combat other than a few pilots or nurses. As you’d expect, a woman had to be better than the men to be allowed to serve, much less to gain an officer’s rank.
Quinn is always terrific at throwing you right into another place, time, and culture and giving so much detail that you feel like you’re right there. Beyond the talent and practice it takes to be a sharp shooter, there are far more tricks to learn: where to locate your human target, how to stay well camouflaged, to be impossibly still for hours on end no matter what the weather, and being sharp enough at math to instantly calculate wind speed, angle of your shot, etc. in order to take out your enemy before you became the target. She soon gained the nickname “Lady Death.”
I won’t spoil the rest of the plot that takes so many turns you really need to stay right at Mila’s heels. The photos and Author’s Note at the end are almost as engrossing as the fast-paced novel itself.
How about something a wee bit lighter?
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan
Quirky, original, entertaining, magical realism full of mystery – there’s not much I can tell you without spoiling your reading pleasure. You’ll find yourself peeking around the next corner, trying to make sense of nonsense and get to ancient secrets. You’ll want to rush, but that’s the worst thing you can do or you’ll miss important clues. Mr. Penumbra oozes old-fashioned charm, and his new employee Clay, the protagonist, is having a hard time breaking into a decent job, one that will keep a roof over his head and spare him from complete boredom. Surely a bookstore that is lucky to sell even a single book every night can’t make an exciting career…or can it?
I’ll end with one more book as a thank you to George Bilgere, who recently published one of my poems on his blog. You can check that out at https://georgebilgere.com/so/23PGulgS_?languageTag=en&cid=2c50e72e-73da-4bea-bef5-a117c25b80a2
Cheap Motels of My Youth
(Rattle Chapbook Prize) – George Bilgere
This is my seventh book by George Bilgere, what more can I possibly say? (My friends already know he’s my favorite poet, and it’s not an insult to them since I have a long list of poets I regard as 5-star.) If the hotel stays of his youth had been 5 star, I dare say he wouldn’t be half as good a poet. He carries his wounds proudly and can juggle nostalgia, worry, tenderness, and laugh-out-loud moments in a single poem. I began my Bilgere readings before he had two little boys, who have made his writing more tender and him more worried about age.
I never quote much from a chapbook, but the first poem, “Nine,” is the perfect set up for all that follows. He is hanging out by the pop machine at a gas station and thinks,
“….Actually I feel sorry
for grown-ups, with their neckties,
their dark jackets, and serious talk….
How am I supposed to know
that an old, white-haired guy,
a grown-up, is watching me
from his desk in the future…”
I’ll send more books suggestions soon.
Rimsky Wishes You Long Naps on Warm Laps
