The Goodbye Season

I just listened to The Goodbye Season by Marian Hale, and recommend it. I wish I had read it, simply because I kept getting distracted while I was listening so didn't pay quite enough attention.

It's about a girl who loses her family to the Spanish flu, and she goes around trying to find work. One of her main hopes in life is to not end up like her mother, trapped in a marriage instead of living her dream, so that desire shapes her decisions.

Songmaster, by Orson Scott Card

Thanks for the tip, Tawn. I probably wouldn't have read one of Card's books without encouragement, since they are sci-fi, but I really enjoyed Songmaster. There were some strange parts, but mostly it was a great book. It reminded me of Lois Lowry's The Giver trilogy (which I also recommend).

I listened to this book, which I recommend--one thing I don't like when reading a book is having character names that I'm not sure how to pronounce. The whole book I feel kind of disconnected from the characters because I'm not sure what their name is. It was only as I listened to the last half hour on my computer that I discovered one character's name is spelled "Rruk"---but since I'd been listening to it, I had no problem pronouncing it.

I have to admit it is fascinating to get someones take on what an alternate reality would be like. Songmaster is set thousands of years in the future, and it mentions the once-huge city of Seattle and how it's become just a small town.

I just realized that part of the reason I resist science fiction is because the mere thought of it brings to mind the few times growing up when I saw Star Trek episodes on TV and how much I didn't like it. I'm scarred for life...

The Lobster Chronicles

I recently listened to The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island, by Linda Greenlaw. I was intrigued by the title since my life lately has been spent in very small, isolated communities. (Okay, Juneau is not so small, but it is very isolated since you have to get here by either boat or plane.)

This book is almost more a series of essays than a novel, yet it still flows well as a whole. Greenlaw describes lobstering and some of the perks and shortcomings of living in an isolated place. It kept my interest, but wasn't riveting by any means (great as far as I'm concerned--interesting enough to make me pick it back up, not so fascinating that it keeps me up at night until I'm finished).

I'm pretty sure that Greenlaw did the reading herself for the audio book, which I'm not a fan of in general. So the audio wasn't great, but I would be interested in looking for her other books in the paper form.

A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece

I just finished this book, edited by Jane Jacobs. Hannah Breece taught in remote villages in the early 1900s in Alaska (okay, all of AK was remote then, and most of it still is now). She compiled her memoir from letters she wrote, so she left out a lot of details that would have been fascinating in a book but would have worried her family and friends at the time.



As a memoir, it's not very well put together, lacking a strong narrative flow, but the tidbits of information she shares are really interesting. She is quite determined to civilize the natives and keep alcohol out of Alaska, and some of her 'proper' ideas on things make for amusing reading when considered 100 years after the fact.



It's a good read with an enlightening look at early Alaska, and Breece's editor, her great-niece, did a great job of filling in as many blanks as she could.