I Remember November

 Since this post is a little late, it's going to have that hurried feel. Once I recall my reading adventures in November, then it'll be time to recount December's reads, then do a look back at 2024. I set my goal at 63, and I'm just barely going to make it to that number. I know exactly why, and I'll fix it in 2025.

Nonfiction November was fun, and here are the four books I read:

World of Glass: The Art of Dale Chihuly - Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Nonfiction. One of the most enjoyable parts of my trip to Seattle in 2019 was a visit to Chihuly's museum. This book, from the juvenile shelf, traces Dale Chihuly's life and career as a glassblower. Stunning photographs and great interviews with Chihuly and his co-creators. In the picture above, my son is standing against the leg of what I think of as a big red bug.

A King's Ransom - Sharon Kay Penman. Novel.  Audiobook. The final book in Penman's Plantagenet series. This covers Richard the Lionheart's final years, from his departure from The Holy Land, to his capture and imprisonment in Germany, and his last years in France, trying to protect his vast territory from the French king, I'm reading this series all out of order. Next up is book #3, The Devil's Brood, and then I'll wrap things up with #4, Lionheart. While Penman's storytelling is riveting and unmatched, just as entertaining are the afterwards to her books, in which she scrupulously explains what she found in research and what she was compelled to invent. She writes with such rigor, like an accountant looking for a penny, or like the lawyer she once was, preparing a brief. 2024 brought me a lot of reading riches, and at the top of the list is Sharon Kay Penman.

A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 - Jeanine Basinger. Nonfiction,  In this 1993 volume of movie history, Basinger looks at "Women's Pictures", which are films featuring a strong female character who can be good, selfless and noble or bad, selfish, and nasty. Basinger critically appraises how the films are put together and how the script always seem to have a message or moral for the female audience. For example, a successful career woman can't seem to have it all, meaning love and marriage. No, she must give up everything for love, or she's a failure. Things like that. When Basinger finds an exception to the rule, she gleefully pounces on it. I got a lot of ideas for classic movies to watch this winter.

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum - Temple Grandin. Nonfiction, Audiobook. When Temple Grandin as a very young child was diagnosed as autistic in the late 1940s, knowledge about the condition was in its infancy, and fated to go through some serious missteps, like the belief that autism is psychological, and that it was the "fault" of cold, uncaring parents, particularly mothers. In the decades since, researchers have come to realize that it's more about the brain. As technology has also advanced, Grandin, a scientist, has gamely and cheerfully taken part in several brain scans, measuring them against so-called "normal" brains. In a huge paradigm shift for the field, she cites a researcher in Quebec who challenged other researchers to not frame differences as deficits, but instead assets. Grandin ends the book by challenging parents to study their autistic child from early on to determine where their strengths lie, and prepare them for a career that fits these strengths, instead of letting them drift along defined solely by the label of autistic. Grandin is an admirable blend of idealistic and common sense. She's my new favorite author, and I'm already halfway through her book Animals Make Us Human.

In book group land:  For December, our topic is Willa Cather. I'm going to re-read Paul's Case, one of her short stories, watch the 1980 PBS version starring Eric Roberts as Paul, and read One of Ours.