November 2025 Books

11/2: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tam (library audiobook read by Gwendoline Yeo, 1989) - I pretty much detested this book. Fun CBBC discussion, though. Sorry, CBBC readers! 2/5 stars

11/5: False Witness by Karin Slaughter (library audiobook read by Kathleen Early, 2021) - A fast-paced and interesting thriller, but maybe too dark for the likes of me. 4/5 stars

11/9: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter (library, 2020) - Interesting book, but I didn't love it. 3.5/5 stars

11/9: Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (library audiobook read by Louis Gossett, Jr., 1853) - A firsthand account of slavery is super interesting, but I sort of wanted more? 3.5/5 stars

11/13: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (library, 2025) - I'm sort of between Sarah and Stephany on this one. I found the subplot sort of boring, but the romance was sweet. Do romance novels need to be 400 pages long? Hm. Good banter, fun heroine. Lots of hats. Too much time talking about how hard it is to be rich and famous. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO RATE THIS. 3.5/5 stars

11/16: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (library audiobook read by January Lavoy) - If you liked the loneliness and despair of I Who Have Never Known Men and also want wilderness survival, this historical fiction about a servant girl who ran away from the Jamestown will be perfect for you. 3.5/5 stars

11/22: August Lane by Regina Black (library, 2025) - Second chance romance. Themes of addiction and rich people complaining about how hard it is to be them. Not my jam. 3/5 stars

11/22: Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? by Tina Cassidy (library audiobook narrated by Amanda Carlin, 2019) - Alice Paul was a true marvel. This book made me more hopeful about the current circumstances of politics than anything has in years. 5/5 stars

11/29: News of the World by Paulette Jiles (library, 2016) - I learned so much about this Civil War veteran returning a little girl to her family after she'd been kidnapped by indigenous people. 4/5 stars

Total: 9 books
Average star rating: 3.55/5 stars

Did not finish:

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (library, 2025) - I'm on page 40 and all I've read so far is about how hard it is to be a rich Nigerian, particularly during the COVID pandemic. I've read that people love this book, but I'm out. DNF at 10%. 

The City We Became (Great Cities #1) by N.K. Jemisin (library, 2020) - Look, my feelings about New York City are that it smells really bad, it's loud, and there are too many people. I couldn't get into this book that is all about how wonderful it is. DNF on page 76 (17.4%).

*****************

What's the last book you didn't finish?  

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

I read News of the World by Paulette Jiles in a last minute effort to get the book that features an unlikely friendship prompt of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. Little did I know that this book would be such a perfect fit for me.

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a drifter. In the aftermath of his time in the military in the War of 1812 and the Civil War, he wanders from town to town reading the news. Captain, a former printer who is now widowed, knows that his life could be more, but he keeps on going. It was crazy to think of all things that this man had seen in his life. 

In Wichita Falls, Captain is offered a fifty-dollar gold piece to deliver a ten-year-old girl, Johanna, to her relatives in San Antonio. The catch is that four years earlier this little girl had been kidnapped by the Kiowa after killing her parents and sister. The Kiowa had raised her and she doesn't remember her family, her language, or even how to hold a fork. She is constantly trying to run away, but Captain is patient and they slowly make their way south. 

I was unaware of the phenomenon of child captives in the frontier. Children who were captured by Native Americans assimilated into the culture and didn't adjust well when they were returned to their biological families. From the author's note:

They always wished to return to their adoptive families, even when they had been with their Indian families for less than a year. This was true for both the Anglo, German-Anglo, and Mexican children taken. (page 211)

Johanna and Captain made such a delightful pair. I was so pleased with them and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. I am not really a western reader, but between this and the gloriousness of Lonesome Dove, maybe I should read more westerns. Also, SO MANY HATS. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works. (page 176)

Things I looked up:

polar exploration ship Hansa (page 2) - embarked from Bremen, Germany on June 15, 1869, with the east coast of Greenland as their destination. Two ships made the journey: Captain Karl Koldewey’s Germania, a screw steamer of 140 tons, and the Hansa, commanded by Captain P.F.A. Hegemann. Only one ship returned. The Hansa was crushed in polar ice after being separated from the Germania, but her crew disembarked and survived for six months, drifting more than 1,000 miles on an ice floe. Eventually, they reached the Moravian mission station of Friedriksthal, to the west of Cape Farewell, in early June 1870. 

Cynthia Parker (page 124) - a woman who had been kidnapped around age nine by a Comanche band during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, where several of her relatives were killed. She was taken with several of her family members, including her younger brother John Richard Parker. Parker was taken into the tribe, eventually having three children with a chief. Twenty-four years later she was relocated and taken captive by Texas Rangers, aged approximately 33, and unwillingly forced to separate from her sons and conform to European-American society.

Temple Friend (page 124) - Lee Temple Friend was kidnapped during what became know as the Legion Valley Massacre in Llano, Texas when he was just eight years old. He was returned to his parents in El Dorado, Kansas when he was twelve, but he did not readapt well and he died in their care a few years later.

galluses (page 132) - During the nineteenth century, suspenders were sometimes called galluses.

Lola Montez (page 138) - an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a Spanish dancer, courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria 

Isn't it crazy how people can be an household name and then within 150 years, no one has ever heard of them?!

Hat mentions (why hats?):
held their hats (page 2, 90)
lifted his hat (page 4)
took off his hat (page 6, 100, 165, 182, 185, 204)
It was black, like his frock coat and vest and his trousers and his hat and his blunt boots. (page 10)
traveling hat (page 15, 134)
good black hat (page 15, 74)
hat can (page 15)
shadow of their hats (page 29)
old field hat (page 32, 51, 157)
tossed their heads and their hats (page 33)
He put his hat over his face (page 39)
settled his hat more firmly (page 42)
blew off people's hats (page 48)
grasping his hat brim (page 50)
walked by with his hat (page 53)
silk hat (page 61)
lifted his hat (page 70, 134 x 2, 139)
pancake hat(s) (page 90, 156)
put on his hat (page 91)
put on his own hat (page 92)
touch(ed) his hat (page 93, 161x2, 162)
removed his hat (page 93)
crown of a hat (page 107)
under his hat (page 107)
jerked off his hat (page 117)
shabby hats (page 126)
wavy brim of his old hat (page 127)
hat with a very tall crown (page 130)
straw hats (page 132)
hat brim (page 148)
broad-brimmed hats (page 159)
sat his hat lower (page 162)
none of their hats seemed to fit (page 165)
replaced his hat (page 166)
lifted their hats (page 200)
his hat shading his face (page 203)
his hat between her two hands (page 206)
Heah is you hat. (page 206)

****************

Do you regularly read westerns? Do you have a favorite? 

Five for Friday, Edition #32

In the spirit of San's list of five things for NaBloPoMo, I'm going to simply write five things I am planning on doing today on my day off. 

1) Put up Christmas decorations - the tree, the outside lights, and everything. It's supposed to be windy and cold, so we might nix the outside stuff if it's too bad and do that later if we have to.

2) Order my holiday cards - I already have THREE (THREE!) holiday cards, including ones from Elisabeth and J. I bought stamps already, so now it's just figuring out what photos to use from 2025 and order a card.

3) Buy some gifts. Not all of them, but I need to get started. Here's who I think I might be buying for this year. Honestly, just typing this out made me feel better. The list is reasonable.

• My husband
• The 2-3 niblings we get in the draw
• Bestest Friend
• TJC
• My peer mentor 
• The lady who coordinates yoga at the student union - She's retiring and her last day is January 2. *sigh* Guess who's taking over coordinating yoga?
• The mail carrier 
• I'll grab a tag or two off an angel tree

4) Take Hannah on an adventure. Last weekend we went to the dog park for the first time in 2025. There are reasons I stopped taking her, but she had a blast and maybe I should be better about taking her to places she can run around off-leash more often.

Dog park last Sunday. I love her furrowed brow. What does she have to be worried about?

5) When I came back from my cleaning my mother's stuff, I had two totes with me. One of those totes is mostly photographs. The other tote is stuff - paper products, knickknacks, craft supplies, etc. I did a first pass on Wednesday and organized it, but I'd like to get the rest of that tote put away/dealt with. The tote with the photographs is a longer project, but it does remind me that maybe I should put a photograph album or two on my holiday list.

Bonus

6) Write a holiday wish list. Right now, I'm thinking I want a fancy new hair dryer and maybe a flat iron. Maybe. 

Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? by Tina Cassidy

Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote by Tina Cassidy is a non-fiction book in which the subtitle is the entire description of the book. 

I've read Tina Cassidy before. Remember when I read Birth and it became my personality for a long time? Well, I'm publishing this on Thanksgiving Day because I am so grateful for Alice Paul and all she did for women in this country. I don't think there's been a conversation I've had in the last week that didn't start with "In the Alice Paul book..."

Where to start? Alice Paul was a Quaker. She was in England and heard Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst speak and became radicalized into the suffragette cause in England. During some protests and marches in England Paul was beaten by police and was arrested. She learned tactics of civil disobedience from the Pankhursts, including demanding to be treated as a political prisoner upon arrest, going on hunger strikes, and refusing to put on prisoner's clothing. Paul was force fed in a prison during this time and it led to lifelong health issues.

When Paul returned back to the United States, she became an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) who were pursuing a state by state strategy of obtaining the vote for women. She and Lucy Burns wanted a national amendment and the NAWSA folks did not like this. Paul eventually had to splinter off into her own group. 

Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson was born on a plantation and came of age during the Civil War and Reconstruction. He was racist and sexist. He earned a doctorate in political science (fun fact: Wilson is the only political scientist who went on to become president). He taught for a bit, particularly at Princeton where he denied Paul admission based on her sex. Then he was governor of New Jersey before he was elected as the 28th President of these United States.

When I was in middle or high school, I wrote a paper on Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's second wife. Wilson's first wife died while he was in the White House and he met Edith and married her before his first term was up. Men really move on quickly when their wives die, don't they? Anyway, I wrote this paper on her because she basically ran the White House when Wilson had a stroke and I thought their love story was swoony romantic when I was a tween/teen, but listening to this audiobook made me think her internalized misogyny and her adoration of Woodrow was the opposite of swoony romantic. 

This book walks you through Wilson and Paul butting heads. Wilson comes off like a jackass and Paul comes off like a bit of a cold fish, but eventually the 20th Amendment was passed and women could vote in the 1920 election. Suck it, NAWSA. Your strategy didn't work.

Look, this book made me feel so much better about our own world. There are leaders out there. And they can lead to real change in the world. Maybe I wouldn't want to have had dinner with Alice Paul, but I am definitely happy that she was around when she was. 5/5 stars

Things I looked up:

Wilson had the first press conference while president 

1913 Suffrage Procession sounds amazing 

The modern State of the Union began with Wilson - he delivered his before a joint session of Congress - before this, it had been a written report

The planting of cherry trees in Washington DC originated in 1912 as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan.

Hat mentions (why hats?):

waving their hats, sticks, and handkerchiefs provocatively (Chapter 1)

wearing glasses and a hat  (Chapter 1)

plucked his hat from his head and pelted him with it (Chapter 1)

broad straw hats (Chapter 1)

"You know, no lady goes out without having a hat and a coat and gloves and so on." (Chapter 2) 

beaver tricorn hat (Chapter 2)

hat tipping hand gestures (Chapter 5)

silk top hat (Chapter 5)

dandy hat (Chapter 5)

Paul wore her hat and coat indoors (Chapter 5)

use their hat pins in self-defense (Chapter 6) - I listened to the audio, so I don't know if this was written as hatpins or hat pins

held hats across their hearts (Chapter 6)

high hats from the military, Congress, and several churches (Chapter 6)

pulled on a hat (Chapter 7)

fancy hats decorated with black, white, and iridescent feathers (Chapter 9)

coats, hats, and gloves (Chapter 13)

removed his hat (Chapter 13)

tipped his hat (Chapter 13 x 2)

dropped his hat (Chapter 14)

straw hats (Chapter 15)

broad brimmed hats (Chapter 16)

tipping his hat (Chapter 17)

took off his hat (Chapter 17)

put on their hats and left (Chapter 19)

removed his top hat in their honor (Chapter 20)

tip of his hat (Chapter 20)

yellow rose in her hat (Chapter 21)

****************

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. What is something you are thankful for today?

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

I read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup in an attempt to fill one of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge's prompt. To be more precise, I listened to the audiobook read by Louis Gossett, Jr. and it seemed to make a lot of sense to read it in the gloom of November. 

Northup was born free in New York. He was married with three children when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the southern United States. This memoir is the tale of his imprisonment for the next twelve years of his life. The story has been corroborated by documents Northrup cites, testimony from people who saw Northup on plantations he claimed to be enslaved at, and seems to be as true as possible.

It was certainly eye opening to read this book, but I have to admit to being a tiny bit disappointed. I feel like this kind of whitewashed the reality of slavery a bit with a lot of violence happening off page. I also feel like Northup is keeping the readers at a distance, but there were times I really wanted to know what he was thinking. When he left the plantation and other slaves who he had lived and worked with for years, how did he feel, knowing they'd continue on with their own plights? How did he feel when he saw his wife and children again? 

(I am hesitant to type this paragraph, but I'm going to be honest. I was talking about this book with my husband and I mumbled "he didn't make slavery seem that bad." I can see how these types of slave narratives were used by pro-slavery people who would make claims that slaves liked being slaves. Northrup never stopped fighting for his freedom and there were descriptions of abuse and belittlement, so I don't think someone reading this book would think he liked being a slave - far from it - but, to be honest, the whole experience didn't sound that bad. Clearly I'm the problem here.)

I'm glad I listened to this, but I did sort of want more from a slave narrative. Maybe that's just putting my own modern sensibilities on a book from the distant past and that's not fair. I don't know. It's certainly worth reading. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was but a short time I closed my eyes that night. Thought was busy in my brain. Could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home⁠—that I had been driven through the streets like a dumb beast⁠—that I had been chained and beaten without mercy⁠—that I was even then herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? Were the events of the last few weeks realities indeed?⁠—or was I passing only through the dismal phases of a long, protracted dream? It was no illusion. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. (Chapter 5)

Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear⁠—dogs, alligators or men! Chapter 10)

In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Tibeats’ boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. (Chapter 11)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He wore a black frock coat and black hat, and said he resided either at Rochester or at Syracuse. The latter was a young man of fair complexion and light eyes, and, I should judge, had not passed the age of twenty-five. He was tall and slender, dressed in a snuff-colored coat, with glossy hat, and vest of elegant pattern. (Chapter 2)

It consisted in throwing balls, dancing on the rope, frying pancakes in a hat, causing invisible pigs to squeal, and other like feats of ventriloquism and legerdemain. (Chapter 2)

without coat or hat (Chapter 2) x2

They were all cleanly dressed⁠—the men with hats, the women with handkerchiefs tied about their heads. (Chapter 4)

The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes...(Chapter 6)

Taking off my hat...(Chapter 8)

I was without coat or hat, standing bareheaded, exposed to its burning blaze.  (Chapter 9)

I took off my hat...(Chapter 11)

he would forget where he left his hat, or his hoe, or his basket (Chapter 13)

uncle Abram had found his hat (Chapter 13)

new shoes and coats and hats (Chapter 14)

a rimless or a crownless hat (Chapter 15)

hat in hand (Chapter 18)

twitching off his hat (Chapter 21)

taking off my hat (Chapter 21)

********************

Have you read this book or any other slave narrative? 

August Lane by Regina Black

 August Lane by Regina Black is a second chance romance. When they were teens, August and Luke wrote a song together. When Luke hit it big with that song, he didn't give her any credit. Meanwhile, August stays at home to care for her grandmother while Luke and August's famous country star mother Jojo become famous. But since Jojo and Luke are black country musicians from the same hometown, eventually all three of them come back.  (Regina Black was an episode of Sarah's Bookshelves recently. Now that I've read the book, I might listen.)

I was sold on this because I heard it was part oral history. That's sort of true, in that there are occasional interviews of Jojo with a podcaster, but it's not the majority of the book. The book hits on things that are very much not my jam, including addiction, people talking about how hard it is to be rich and famous, and things that could be sorted out with a conversation. 

I do think some of the parts that are sort of Wikipedia entries spoken about black musicians in country music (it's not just Charley Pride and Darius Rucker!) were interesting, but maybe I would rather have read those parts in a non-fiction book. However, the author has something to say and I appreciate it when romance novels deal with an issue head-on instead of sugarcoating them. If you like your romances with a little bit of substance and lecture, this might work for you. 

Turns out that I don't have a lot to say about this book, now that I'm typing this. 3/5 stars

Line of note:

...her expression had shifted from mild irritation at Luke to a sour snarl when she spotted August, to a bland smile that was supposed to hide her anger but only made her look like a demonic American Girl doll. (page 94)

Here's what happened in my brain. Demonic American Girl doll? Wouldn't the whole Child's Play franchise have been funnier if instead of Chucky it was an American Girl? Which American Girl doll is the most wholesome? The easy way is to say Addy because she's the only black doll, but that seems like leaning into the black people are evil stereotype. What about Molly with her cute little wire rim glasses? Soon I'm laughing my head off and the line wasn't even that funny. 

Person I looked up:

Linda Martell - Martell is a country music singer (she's 84!). Martell was the first black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry and she was featured on two tracks on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album. She was blacklisted after she started performing better than white label mates and eventually left the industry. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

His cattleman hat, however, was pristine, blinding white against his ebony skin. (page 20)
He snatched the hat from his head...(page 21)
wide-brimmed hat (page 46)
wore cowboy hats and used to yodel in beauty pageants (page 96)
teal cowboy hat that matched her boots (page 100)
silly hats and lots of airplay (page 107)
There was a streak of bird shit on Jojo's hat. (page 107)
a photograph of a Black man in a bowler hat holding a harmonica (page 146)
"Bring a hat." (page 181)
tipped his hat (page 209)
He tugged his hat down over his ears. (page 288)

******************

Did you know who Linda Martell is? Do you know black country artists outside of Charley Pride and Darius Rucker?

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier is translated from the French by Adrianna Hunter. Jenny wrote a very compelling review of the book, so I ordered it from the library immediately.

In this book, it's March 2021 and a plane encounters some turbulence. It lands and everyone's fine and then in June the exact plane lands again with the same passengers on it. We meet some of those passengers and how this event changes their lives. 

In general, I really liked this book. I liked that it raised interesting questions and I really liked the way it looked at how governments would react in this sort of emergent situation. But my biggest complaint about the book seems to be a common one: the first passenger we meet is the most interesting one and we don't hear from him very often throughout the book, even though he's what really got me into the book!

It's also sort of interesting because the book takes place in 2021, but the pandemic doesn't get a mention. That seemed weird to me. Oh, well. 

3.5/5 stars - I bet it would be an excellent book club read. There's lots to talk about!

Line of note:

He had hundreds of ginko trees planted all along the banks so that he can gaze at them and meditate. He's always been fascinated by these primitive trees. Their ancestors existed millions of years before even the dinosaurs appeared, and will outlive the human race. A plant version of memento mori. (page 241)

Things I looked up:

Annemasse (page 9) - a city in France on the Swiss border

Fields medal (page 106) - a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years

Gromov's non-prological theories (page 108) - non-squeezing theorem, also called Gromov's non-squeezing theorem, is one of the most important theorems in symplectic geometry. It was first proven in 1985 by Mikhail Gromov. The theorem states that one cannot embed a ball into a cylinder via a symplectic map unless the radius of the ball is less than or equal to the radius of the cylinder.

What's sympletic geometry, you ask? I don't know because the Wikipedia definition dares to use the term symplectic manifolds in its definition. I refused to do further research.

Markov chain (page 116) -  a process describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event

Kendall notations (page 116) - the standard system used to describe and classify a queueing node

Lebensraum (page 133) - the territory that a state or nation believes is needed for its natural development, especially associated with Nazi Germany

radome (page 146) - a plastic housing sheltering the antenna assembly of a radar set especially on an airplane

modafinil (page 162) - a prescription wakefulness-promoting agent used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by certain sleep disorders

Grothendieck's topoi (page 163) - categories that behave like sheaves on topological spaces

What does that mean? Search me. 

Abel prize (page 165) - a prize that recognizes pioneering scientific achievements in mathematics - it's  administered by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research and given out yearly

Romain Gary (page 324) - a French novelist, diplomat, film director, and World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt (a prize in French literature) twice (once under a pseudonym)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He'll wear gloves, a hood, a hat, and glasses...(page 8)

There was a hi-hat on page 347, but it's not in the spirit of the thing. 

******************

Would you read a book about issues with flying? A science fiction book told in a contemporary world and time?