Books – Page 11 – Yarn, Books & Roses

The Bee Books

July has just been the best month ever this year. While other regions of the nation (and the northern half of the world…) are sweltering in extreme heat, fighting wildfires, experiencing drought, or dealing with life threatening weather, Colorado has had almost perfect summer weather. The monsoon came early this year and it has been unusually cool (for July) and wet. Beautiful sunny mornings have been giving way to afternoon showers in the late afternoons. Perfectly hot and clear blue days come almost every week but they don’t linger on and on; after a few days the heat breaks and cool rainy evenings return.

Bee — The garden has been buzzing with bees every morning.

I have been in the garden almost every day with the cats and the bees, and in the afternoons I have been indulging in books about bees. How fun is that? Here are the titles:

A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees by Dave Goulson
The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell
The Bees by Laline Paull
The Hive by Bee Wilson
Kiss of the Bees by J. A. Jance
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I really didn’t know what to expect. The only thing in common with these books was the connection to bees. Two books were non-fiction, one was hard to get through, and a couple of them turned out to be absolutely great. Here’s the breakdown.

The Death of Bees

(Fiction) I began this book one evening reading in bed and the next thing I knew it was 3am. From the opening lines (Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved.) I was trapped. I should be clear. This is not a sweet story and it is not for the faint of heart. The humor is dark and the situations of characters in the book can bring you to tears. The two sisters in the story, Marnie and Nelly, are alone and desperate. Marnie has been the family caretaker since she was very young, and has had no adult supervision or guidance. She is definitely lacking a moral compass. Her little sister is curiously detached from the world and clings to childish understandings. I’m pretty sure she’s somewhere on the autism spectrum. Anyway, against all odds, the two survive. The girls change over time as they cope and grow into their own; Marnie becomes more like the teenager that she is, and Nelly emerges from her childish denial to become the partner that her sister needs. Eventually we work out what actually happened the night the girls’ parents died; help and stability for the girls arrives from unlikely sources and at the end of the day there is a happy ending.

The Secret Life of Bees

(Fiction) Another coming of age book. This one is set in the South during the time of the civil rights movement, and there is once again a dead parent. Lily, a 14 year-old on the run in search of her dead mother’s story, arrives in Tiburon, South Carolina, where she and her black stand-in mother take refuge at the home of a honey operation run by three sisters. I read this book right through too. There was a lot to learn about bees, life, legacies and mothers in the story; a good book and a fast read.

Kiss of the Bees

(Suspense) Well, I hit the wall with this one. The first half of the book keeps rehashing events from a previous novel while advancing the story line and interjecting Indian folklore. Help. Shoot me now! Eventually the book took off and the story began racing along, but since the bad guy in the book is an evil psychopath serial killer I just wanted it all to end. Whew! Eventually I got there, all is well, goodness prevails. I won’t be reading other books in this series.

The Hive

(Non-fiction) This is the history of the honeybee and us. The very opinionated (and sometimes offensive) author relates how bees are linked to our work ethic, politics, and so many other things. Bees were the first source of sweetness for ancient men, and the wax was useful and important in a world lit only by fire. The text is organized in general topics (like Sex, Life and Death, and The Beekeeper) full of details and facts about bees in kind of a stream of consciousness style. Just when I would start to slip away into sleep I would come to a short chapter of recipes for cakes and lotion. The book was interesting, but you have to love bees to do this one.

The Bees

(Fiction) You are a little bee in a hive. You are obviously different from the other bees. You are controlled by other bees and forced to conform and work for the success of the collected hive all of your life. If at any time you slip up you will be put to death. Welcome to the life of Flora 717. Life, death, nectar and love for the queen. I liked the book, but I wouldn’t call it a great read. 🙂

Well, that’s it. I am so over bees for the time being. I think that the rest of the month will be mysteries. I’m almost done making the new seat for the swinging lawn chair and those would be great books to read out in the garden. 🙂

Gardening for Cats and Bees

I just finished reading my first “Bee” book, A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson. This book was a quick friendly read about bumblebee biology, ecology, and the efforts to build habitat in the United Kingdom that will support and grow wild bumblebee populations. One of the techniques that the researchers in the book utilized to detect bumblebees was to have observers sit in their garden (or some other location) for 20 minutes to tally the number of bees they saw.

I’ve been a little sad over the absence of a strawberry crop this year, and I thought that it was due to a lack of bees. As I read the book, however, I realized that many of the bees that I have seen in the past were actually bumblebees. I plant a lot of flowers that should be attracting bees, too. Late yesterday afternoon I headed out to the garden for 20 minutes with my camera to see what was actually going on out there.

Bee — Well look at that! There is steady bee traffic to some of the plants in the garden. All those hairs on the abdomen of the bee is the tip off that this is a bumblebee. Aren’t those red bands on the bee cute?

A little search of the internet led me to believe that this is a Bobmus huntii bee. The bees were really targeting purple flowers yesterday afternoon. I saw them on the lavender, this catmint plant, and on the pincushion flowers. I don’t know why my strawberry plants were a flop this year, but maybe is was due to a very wet and cold spring that made it hard for bees to get to them. I learned that bumblebees struggle in those conditions as they need to maintain enough heat to work their flight muscles. Who knew?!

As I was sitting out with the bees and the flowers I realized that while I have a lot of plantings that attract wildlife, I have actually made my yard and garden into a habitat for cats. Check out what I’ve done for them.

Cat in catmint plant. — As you can imagine, the catmint is a big favorite with the cats. The plant is really hardy, doesn’t need a lot of water and tolerates cats building nests inside of them. Yellow Boy sleeps inside this nest with the bumblebees buzzing over his head.

Uncut grass under the tree. — I leave a little circle of grass and plants around the base of one of my trees as the cats like to sleep in the tall grass. Easy solution to cats needing shade in the summer sun. One year a visiting cousin cut all the grass thinking that she was doing me a big favor. Sigh…

Cat in grass. — The grass nest is a big hit with MacKenzie.

Cat water dish. — I bought a nice saucer for large pots at the nursery and now it is a source of water for summer kitties. I hose it out and put in fresh water each morning.

Lavender and invisible fence wire. — This lavender draws a lot of bees. Behind the plant attached to the fence you can see a wire. The wire is part of the invisible fence system that I put up to train the cats to not jump out of the yard. They trained really quickly and I haven’t activated the fence for the last 3 years. The bricks at the bottom of the fence are plugging small gaps.

Squirrels use the yard constantly and provide the cats with some quality exercise as they chase them, but I no longer put out food for squirrels. They have been raiding a neighbor’s trash and burying stuff in my planters, so they get little else from me. I used to have a bird feeder and nesting boxes in the yard, and I really liked the birdsong and the activity was hours of entertainment for the cats (who really never managed to catch anything, but they loved to try!). I discovered that the birds also attracted other cats (AKA enemy cats!!) so I had to stop putting out food. Even an invisible fence will not keep a cat in the yard who chasing out an invader!

Now my cats think they are dogs. They make me get up in the morning to let them out, mill around the door carrying on as soon as I come home, and are happy to go in and out all day through a cat door. They come running in from the yard when I shake the kitty treat bag, and stay in all night (asleep!) like good boys. I can do cat-free crafting activities during the day (like warping my loom) while they happily doze outside dreaming of bugs and garter snakes. By making the yard an appealing habitat for my kitties they stay put and are safe outside.

Crazy cat-gardening lady, huh! Some of my friends think it is strange to let my animals tunnel thought plantings, but they are just a part of my overall scheme. After reading Dave Goulson’s book I also realized that this isn’t just a backyard; it is also important habitat for wildlife in the city. I will be putting in more plants with an eye to supporting bumblebees (who evidently are critical to the pollination of strawberries and tomato plants!). Later this summer my butterfly plants should get going and there will be hummingbirds and butterflies for kitty entertainment. Everyone wins!

I wonder what other people are planting for cats?

Hello July: Culebra Shawlette and Bee Books

It’s July! The garden is blooming, it’s a wonderful time to hit the great outdoors, and the warm afternoons are prime knitting and reading windows of opportunity. I have been spending the this week working on a fun shawlette from Bijou Basin called Culebra.

Tibetan Dream Yarn. — I loved this yarn when I first found it at the Interweave Yarn Fest. It’s 85% Yak and 15% Nylon.

Lace Close-up — Here’s a close-up of the lace design on the shawl. Fun, huh. The yarn is Tibetan Dream yarn by Bijou Basin. Here’s my project notes on Ravelry.

I finally finished the lace portion of the shawl this afternoon and now the rest will be garter stitch short rows from the middle of the shawl out which will create a shallow crescent shape. The shawl is knitted from the lace edge up towards the top. Lots of stitches to cast on, but then the knitting was easy. Now that I am out of the lace I am definitely in the knitting home stretch on this one.

My garden is blooming and looking much better than it did a couple of weeks ago, but it is absolutely lacking in humming. I haven’t seen very many bees hanging around even though I have lots of flowers that they like. Look at what is happening in my strawberry patch:

Strawberry plants — See all those luscious baby strawberries? Right. Neither do I. These plants have bloomed like crazy, but no berries. Dang it!

I miss the bees this year. I used to show a NOVA video to my biology classes about bees that they really liked a lot called Tales from the Hive. Bees are just amazing; a few years ago I entered a drawing for a bee hive for my classroom and was just crushed when I didn’t win. (Sounds strange, but this is a thing. The hive would have been set up in my room’s greenhouse and the bees would have traveled outside through a Plexiglas tube.) Years ago I had a bumblebee nest in the garden and they were the cutest things… Ok, there was one little incident with the cat, but other then that it was all peaceful. 🙂

Bee Books! I am behind in my reading resolution for the year. It’s the first of July, and I am now on book #44. I should be done with book #50, so I need to pick up the pace a little. As it turns out I have a stash of books (almost as big as the yarn stash) that includes a number of titles that involve bees. Hey. That’s the ticket. I’ll read bee books. Here’s the list.

A Sting in the Tale — This is the book that I’m reading right now. It’s about bumblebees. the kind of bee that used to live in an underground nest in my garden. I hadn’t really thought about them as being different from honey bees, but they are.

The other books in my little stack are:

The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell
The Bees by Laline Paull
The Hive by Bee Wilson
Kiss of the Bees by J. A. Jance
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

This is actually an eclectic mix of genres in this little collection of bee books. Some are informative non-fiction books, one is a mystery, a couple look to be great little novels. Perfect reading for the high days of summer.

Cats, Hats, and a Book called “Cats in Hats”

Fasten your seat belts: here comes cute! I struggle to understand how this happened, but I guess one thing just led to another and before I knew it I had spent a week wallowing in, stitching and knitting the cutest little projects ever. It was a great break from my usual production knitting and the perfect counterbalance to a week of rain, hail and tornado warnings. So, with no further ado, here is the week of saccharine on my needles.

Cute kids hats. — The last time I went to my favorite yarn store there was a display of these darling kids hats. How could I resist? Hats for all the grandkids and grandcousins!! The kits are from DMC and only cost me 9 dollars each and knitted up in a flash. ! I have one more giraffe hat to still make for a grandnephew…

While I was knitting hat cuteness I also worked on the parts for a knitted cat for my cousin during odd moments. I knit the cat pretty tightly so the little hats were nice breaks from the finger crushing tension of the cat. 🙂 Finally last Thursday I finished knitting all the cat pieces, steamed them flat and considered sewing them together. Gee, there were an awful lot of loose ends connected to the pieces… Obviously I needed a thread catcher!!

Opened thread catcher — Here is the thread catcher in its opened state: a nice little fabric cup waiting to catch cut ends of yarn.

Collapsed thread catcher — When you are done sewing (and catching threads) the cup collapses into this showy twisted disk that is only a centimeter tall. Pretty slick! Did you notice the cute cat fabric?

This only took me an hour to make once I had assembled all of the materials. The best part? This cost me nothing as I already had everything that I needed on hand. I first saw this on Sharon’s blog called Creativity and Family and was struck by how useful it was. (OK, thread catcher envy definitely occurred and I was helpless in its grip. I mean, look at how cute it is!!) This excellent video really made it easy to make my own.

Well, once I had the thread catcher made I had no excuse to put off stitching together the cat. I worked on him all weekend during odd moments, and by this morning he was done. Ta-daa!

This is the third cat that I have made from this pattern which is Four Knitted Cats by Kath Dalmeny. I’m thinking that this is the last one as it is really hard on my hands to do the hand-stitching. Good thing he is soooo (do I need to say it?) CUTE!

Yesterday I stopped by the bookstore to check out the new knitting books, and what do I find but this gem.

Cats in Hats book — MacKenzie just can’t wait for me to get started on this. Doesn’t he look like he’s thinking, “Wow! I just can’t wait to get one of these on my noggin!!” <Not! He’s actually hoping that I torture Yellow Boy with these babies!>

I was helpless in the face of the book by Sara Thomas. I mean, isn’t this the poster child for the word of the week? Yep. It is dripping in cuteness. There is a kitty hat with reindeer antlers. A hat with a Mohawk. A hat shaped like a pumpkin and a Santa Claws (see what I did there?) hat.

I did put this book on the bookshelf to incubate for awhile. It is time for me to bid cuteness goodbye and to move on to some more serious knitting. This afternoon I kitted up the yarn, needles and directions for a couple of shawls that I am just chomping to get going on, and of course there are the June socks. Productions knitting, here I come.

Still, it was fun to take a detour into cuteness for the week. Hope you all find a way to channel some cuteness for yourself this week. 🙂

FO: The April 2015 Socks are Done!

What a weekend I had! I spent all day Saturday hanging out at the Interweave Yarn Fest in Loveland, Colorado (only a 90 minute drive for me, so of course I went!) with some of my best knitting/spinning buddies. Wow! What a great time that was, but I have so much to talk about I think it needs to be its own post. Exhausted, I arrived at my younger son’s apartment for dinner and ended up spending the night there (OK, I fell asleep clutching some of the unbelievable yarn that I scored…). Yesterday we hung out, made lasagna, and I watched him play the video game of the month (it is still Destiny!). Last night I came home to my house and the cats, crawled dizzy and still exhausted into bed (with my bag of goodies from Yarn Fest) and remembered that I do have a chronic condition as the cats feel asleep on top of my aching legs. Whatever, it was totally a great weekend. 🙂

This morning I discovered that the Pulitzer Prizes winners had been announced. Wow! All the Light We Cannot See won the prize for fiction. I loved this book! I was consumed by the story and thought about it for days after finishing it. I finally wrote a post about it. I am so happy that it won!!

I was a happy knitter as I settled in to finish the April 2015 socks. Some mistakes were made (OK, I forgot to change to smaller needles when I made the second sock’s toe. This is a mistake that I can live with. If it wears out too soon I’ll cut the toe off and knit a new one with the correct needles. Fearless knitting goes a long way!), but I’m happy with how they look. Here they are.

Sock pattern and yarns. — Here’s the yarn that I used and the pattern. This is the Spot Check Sock pattern from the book ***Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn*** by Carol J. Sulcoski. Here is the project page on Ravelry for the socks if you want more details.

Tomorrow I am going to starting winding all of my new yarn and it will be time to cast on for the next project. Woohoo! Knitting paradise here I come!

WOOL by Hugh Howey: That’s no spaceship… it’s a silo!

I’m always on the hunt for a good science fiction novel. Like many other readers of the genre, I’ve run into my share of books set on multi-generational space ships traveling to distant stars. Some of these books are great, and some not so great. The problem, I think, is in creating a believable world within the boundaries of the ship while spinning the tale for the reader. Some authors get lost in the technical details of creating an independent, self-sustaining world and social culture within the ship and forget that they meant to tell us a story. Others remember the story but it is set in such a flimsy framework that it just doesn’t work. Every once in a while, however, I come across a book that strikes the right balance and is just great.

Hello, Wool by Hugh Howey! This book isn’t set in a spaceship traveling to a distant star, but in a silo with 144 levels set deep into the earth. The silo is closed off and completely self-contained, and the few thousand residents have lived within it for hundreds of years. Everything on the surface of the planet is now dead, and the only chance for the survival of our species is to stay within the closed ecosystem of the silo until the earth recovers. Instead of traveling to a distant location, the residents of the silo are time travelers to a distant future and the journey began a long, long time ago.

Here’s the deal: nothing is what it seems. It isn’t clear how the earth was destroyed, and the residents have no notion of any other world other than the one that they live in; their history was lost when computer servers were wiped during a past rebellion. There is a rigid social structure within the silo, and reproduction is carefully controlled by lottery while dead citizens are “recycled” in the gardens that grow food and produce oxygen. The lowest levels of the silo contain the critical power plant, the mines and the oil production facilities. The top levels contain the workers of the more “white collar” occupations. Gluing it all together are the major administrators: the mayor, the sheriff, and the head of the IT department. It is essential that the status quo is maintained. Dissension and rebellion are ruthlessly repressed, and it is absolutely forbidden to express a desire to go outside; to do so is a death sentence.

Mr. Howey has created a fantastic immersive world within the silo; it is believable and hangs together extremely well. (It is so real that fans have been sending him schematics of the silo…) The story is also great; it begins with the death of the sheriff and a subsequent power struggle. As events unfold it quickly becomes apparent that the world in the silo isn’t what it should be; lies are being told, there are mysteries within mysteries, and the hunt for the truth is very dangerous. There are deaths, rebellions, a heavily guarded IT department, and so many secrets. Our girl, the newly recruited sheriff Juliette Nichols, is determined to get to the bottom of things. The trouble is, the truth may be even more dangerous than the lies.

I loved this book! I was dragged in by the suspense and driven to understand what was going on. The characters are complex and well constructed; their stories were so real to me. I bought the next two books in the Silo series, Shift and Dust, and just kept reading. These books bring new characters into the story, and as the pages went by I started to understand how everything hung together. The resolution of the story and the integration of all the independent characters was a little weak at the end, but altogether the three books were great and I am on the hunt for another book by this author. Gosh, I hope they make a movie of this!

If you are a science fiction fan that doesn’t necessarily need a space ship, this book series is for you.

The Art of Serendipitous Phenomenology

When I used to work in a medical research lab one of my co-workers described what we did as mastering the art of serendipitous phenomenology. I think that he meant that we (hoped to be) alert, observant, curious and reflective about events around us. Big discoveries can occur from chance observations if one pays attention; one of the famous ones is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. Another of my coworkers discovered an important immune system inhibitor (which led to a patent and eventually a drug. How cool is that?) Of course, there aren’t any big scientific discoveries in my life right now, but I have had a run of fun occurrences lately. It’s been making me think about serendipity, and that perhaps one of the secrets of finding joy in every day living is in mastering the art of serendipitous phenomenology.

So, here is my run of fun;

Starbuck's Card — I went into a strange Starbucks Sunday on an impulse while picking up Chinese takeout. I needed a new Starbuck’s card as I had just lost mine. Look at what I found!! The hard-to-read text on the left says, “Year of the Sheep”.

Book. — I was in a slump this weekend because I had just finished a good book. I forced myself to start reading the next book on my list, and it’s a science fiction with the title of WOOL!! It’s a really good book, too. How much fun is that?

I was already contemplating serendipity when I arrived at my favorite local yarn store yesterday. I had a hazy notion that I wanted to get a cashmere blend yarn that would look nice with grey to make another Hitchhiker (by Martina Behm). Going through the sock yarns with a friend a skein suddenly fell out of its cubby and landed on the floor at my feet. “Well, there’s your yarn”, said my friend. There it was indeed! This yarn is 20% cashmere. The color is perfect for me and my new grey sweater. After going through all the yarn we could not find one that was a better fit.

Hey, who am I to argue with the universe? This yarn is clearly destined to become a Hitchhiker. The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Obviously I needed to buy this yarn.

See what I did there? Even though this yarn was expensive I was able to absolutely justify buying it with my smoking post-Christmas credit card.

And that is the Art of Serendipitous Phenomenology, my friends.

2015 Books #7 & #8: Christmas Books

Last week wasn’t very good for me health-wise. I have systemic sclerosis (scleroderma) and out of the blue I suddenly developed breathing issues, noticed that I had edema in my arms and legs, and struggled with the cold weather more than normal. Seriously, my skin hurt and my fingers kept turning blue!! That’s how I ended up spending most of the week bundled up reading and knitting. (OK, there was a trip to the doctor and a visit to radiology, but who wants to go into that!) Luckily for me my sister and cousin sent me Barnes & Noble gift cards this Christmas, and I had some really good books waiting for me on my Nook. What could have been a sad little week turned into some awesome knitting and an immersive journey to Kentucky and the Arctic through the medium of two fantastic books. Here they are.

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

I’m always haunting Goodreads for a good book, and this one came up on my radar a couple of weeks ago. As soon as it was released I bought it for the Nook. What a good decision that was! I began the book Saturday of last week and read steadily over the next couple of days. Wow! What a great story! What the heck was I going to say about this book? I was too stunned to even decide what I thought.

You see, this is a book of layers. It is about so many different things, and yet the threads of the story are so well intertwined you hardly notice it as the many themes and story lines are happening at once. So, in as few sentences as I can, here is what the book is about.

Following the death of his little brother in a horrific accident, 14 year-old Kevin and his mom go to live with his grandfather in the Appalachian coal mining community of Medgar, Kentucky. Kevin bonds with a local boy named Buzzy who is wise in the ways of the woods, and Kevin’s grandfather employs him as an assistant in his large animal vet practice. Just when it seems that the book will be a standard coming-of-age novel other themes emerge in rapid succession. This book is about environmental issues, the relationships between sons and fathers, economic greed, poverty, struggles for power, and the destructive force of homophobia. It is a murder mystery and a heroic wilderness survival story. It is a story about friendship, values, healing, and redemption. I was captured by the story, entranced by the beautiful narrative, and stunned by the turns in the plot. Wow! It was a fantastic read!

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides
I was still spinning from the experience of The Secret Wisdom of the Earth when I decided to read a non-fiction book. Once again, I had checked this book out at Goodreads before I bought it, and several of the readers mentioned in their reviews that it was engrossing and read like an adventure novel. Take a chance, I told myself: buy it!

Yep. Another good decision. This book is the story of the voyage of exploration undertaken by the USS Jeanette in 1879. Her mission was to break through the ice belt in the north, reach the open polar waters and finally make it to the North Pole. Yep. In those days it was a commonly held belief that the North Pole was located in a warm open sea filled with teaming life. It was entirely possible, many argued, that there was a lost tribe of humans there. The Arctic was the great unknown, and there was huge public and national interest in the exploration of this region. It was the equivalent of the race to be the first on the moon. The USS Jeanette was the United States’ moonshot, and the cost of the expedition was funded by the most powerful newspaper of the time, the New York Herald.

The book is the story of the people involved in this grand adventure and a factual account of the events before, during, and after the USS Jeanette’s Arctic journey. It is based on many sources including current accounts in the news, personal journals, and the ship’s logs. It is rich, fascinating, and reads like a novel. It is a window into another time, and yet the motivations and emotions of those people echo our own times. It is a love story, an adventure story, a tale of survival in the face of horrific conditions, and even better, it is a story of science. (Hello, old biology teacher here…) The officers and crew of the USS Jeanette went to heroic lengths to collect and preserve maps and data that changed the world’s understanding of the Arctic. After the voyage of the USS Jeanette, it was never again assumed that the North Pole was located in an open sea, and all other efforts to reach it involved trips over sea ice. Just as the trips to the moon changed our view of the Earth, so did the voyage of the USS Jeanette.

A week has gone by since my first sad days of unhappy symptoms, and I am better. (Except my ankle, which has decided to hurt. What’s up with that?!) I dyed some wool, started a new knitting project, and am on the hunt for another book to read. I think it’s time for some science fiction.

2015 Book #5: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

Gosh, I was really looking forward to this book. I just love Jodi Picoult’s books. They are always engaging and thought-provoking stories that are sure to capture me for days. As soon as Leaving Time was released I traveled to the NOOK store to check it out and buy it. I always read the customer reviews before clicking that “purchase” button, however. Oh, oh. Not everyone liked this book. Some major spoilers were dropped by some of the reviewers, (may they have tons of snow to shovel, uncomfortable nights and frozen days. Also frozen pipes. Really, I hope that raging stomach flu breaks out in their households along with the pipes, not that I mind that they REVEALED major elements of the plot before I could read this book…) and some people were disappointed that there was so much information about elephants in the book. Well, darn! Now I have a problem. Should I buy a book whose unexpected twists and turns have been partially revealed ahead of time? Do I really want to know more about elephants? Elephants! Of course I want to know more about elephants! How can I resist reading a book that twists the plot around elephants?

Yep, that was the deciding factor. There are elephants in the book. You see, every year I showed a National Geographic video to my biology classes called Journey to the Forgotten River. This video documents the events that occurred during years of drought in Botswana, Africa when herds of animals travel from their normal habitat to the Linyanti. The great migration included herds of elephants who made the journey to this place where none of them had even been before. The memory of a safe haven at Linyanti is an ancestral one; it is inherited. What is going on in their brains, I would wonder every year? What is the biochemical basis of memory? How cool it would be to research that.

Then there was this 60 Minutes segment I saw on elephant speech called The Secret Language of Elephants. I seem to remember a researcher in the segment describing standing in front of the elephants in a zoo exhibit and feeling a low vibration; she had detected elephant speech in a register too low for us to hear. Modern elephant research now includes listening projects to collect examples of language along with other observation of their behavior; an elephant language dictionary is currently being developed. We all know that elephants have tremendous memories; evidently they also have language and culture. I’m a geek, through and through. There was no way I could walk away from a Jodi Picoult novel that included elephants even if I knew critical details of the story ahead of time. Hello, she had me at elephant!

It was a good decision.

The story in Leaving Time centers around Jenna Metcalf, a self-sufficient and determined 13 year-old hunting for her missing mother. Her mother, Dr. Alice Metcalf, was an elephant researcher who disappeared 10 years earlier under mysterious circumstances that included a dead body and (what a shock) an elephant. Driven by the need to know what happened on that fateful day, Jenna saves up her babysitting money and takes action to get to the bottom of things and find her mother. She hires a down-and-out PI and enlists the aid of a psychic. Together they investigate the cold case, hunt for answers, solve the mystery, and obtain closure. There, that is all you get about this plot because I refuse to spoil this for anyone! I will say that the themes of this book are engaging and meaningful. The book is about the bond between mothers and daughters, grief, memory, and the pervasive connections between people, between elephants, and even between people and elephants. Yep, you do learn a lot about elephants, but they are essential to the story. I was not surprised by all of the plot twists in the book, because of the evil, thoughtless spoilers, but the story held me fast, the need to solve the mystery was compelling and I cried at the end.

If that’s not a good book, what else do you need?

Book 1: The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penney

I did it! I went to Goodreads and joined the 2015 Reading Challenge with the goal of reading 100 books this year. That was the New Year’s resolution, and I am sticking to it! Luckily the weather is cooperating. It is cold and snowing again, and the cats and I are piled in bed reading between snow-shoveling breaks. If this keeps up I will have the 100 books done in no time!

Cat in snow. — Hunting for a warm and dry patch in the yard. Sorry, guy. There just isn’t one. Too bad kitties can’t shovel snow.

No, I will not be reviewing all of those books on this blog. (Did I just hear a sigh of relief from my sister in San Diego?? ) Seriously, that might cut into my knitting time! Besides, I really have no intrinsic desire to become a book reviewer; too much like doing book reports late Sunday night like I did in school. Every once in a while, however, there is a book that I feel compelled to write about. It consumes me while I am reading it, it forces me onto the internet to track down information, and leads me into reflection on the personalities and motivations of the story’s characters. I’m almost forced to write about it to get it out of my system. Having said that, let me present to you the first book of 2015. Ta-daa! The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny.

I’ve been reading her Chief Inspector Gamache novels steadily since I read the first one in early December, Still Life. What a series! I’ve grown to love the people of Tree Pines even though they seem to have too many murders in their tiny, artistic village with its great food and crazy duck-loving poet. The complex relationships between the Chief Inspector and his staff, the hint of a conspiracy of immense magnitude, the ongoing themes and mystery plots keep me reading each new book as I care about the people in them so much.

The Beautiful Mystery is a book of many layers. In the most simple terms the story centers around the murder of a monk in a remote monastery in the wilderness of Quebec called Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. As Gamache and his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir investigate this crime they discover that the monks, who have taken a vow of silence and devoted their lives to the singing of unique Gregorian Chants, are deeply divided and engaged in civil war. When Gamache’s superior arrives at the monastery it becomes clear that another civil war is waging within the Surete du Quebec. If that wasn’t enough, further events make clear that the monastery’s secret location and devotion to music is part of an ancient division within the Catholic Church. Good grief! How many layers deep does this go?

It should have been a confusing book, but the many different themes and plots are skillfully woven together and the book is written beautifully. The murder is solved, some of the conflicts are resolved, and others move forward to be continued in further books. I am becoming concerned as this is the 8th book in the series, and I do hope that I will get to the bottom of this immense conspiracy within the Surete soon. Wait, forget I just said that. I think that the suspense was getting to me there. The truth is, this book was simply wonderful. It is a book about faith, love, betrayal and great divisions. It addresses addiction; to music, to drugs, to power, and what people will do to protect and secure their addictions. Easily, and too often, these addictions can lead to murder.

“The Beautiful Mystery” in Gregorian chant is the starting note for the chant; the baseline that can be used to compare all other notes to. This book is about beginnings, but it is also about endings; the beginning of the conspiracy in the Surete has now been reveled, the sides in the civil war are drawn, the battles have begun and resolution is coming. At the end of the book it becomes clear that Gamache is much more than meets the eye; he has been engaged in a campaign of complex and long duration to clean up the rot in the Surete. He feels he has “been at sea a long time, but he can finally see the shore”.

Please, please make it soon. I’m running out of books.

I’m starting How the Light Gets In, the next book in the series tonight!