Report on my reading week

Pope Joan ~ by Donna Woolfolk Cross, 2009, historical fiction, 425 pages

Donna Woolfolk Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.  For a thousand years her existence has been denied.  She is the legend that will not die — Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter.  Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept. 

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn.  When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak — and his identity — and enters the monastery of Fulda.  As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer.  Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeIshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics.  Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom — wielding a power greater than any woman before or since.  But such power always comes at a price.

Note:  After seeing the movie "Conclave" yesterday, Mary told me there's a book about Pope Joan, so I went home, found it at our library, and put it on reserve (even though I don't usually read such long books these days).  Thanks, Mary.

1.  I wrote about Monday being World Chocolate Day, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I went bananas, HERE.
3. On Wednesday, I was reading about why the world exists and came across a word I had never seen, HERE.
4. My Thursday Thoughts were about blueberry muffins, HERE.
5. My Friday book beginning, HERE, was from a book I had just put on hold.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Beginning ~ with an appointment

Beginning

"I made an appointment to see him."  She said it as if she were seeing the dentist or a therapist or the pushy refrigerator salesman who had promised her and Walter a life-time guarantee of cold milk and crisp vegetables and unspoiled cheese if only they would buy this brand-new model.

The Stationery Shop ~ by Marjan Kamali, 2019, fiction (Tehran), 320 pages

This novel explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.  Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.

Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer — handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry — and she loses her heart at once.  Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts — a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future.  In the chaos, Bahman never shows.  For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless.  With a sorrowful heart, she moves on — to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England — until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century:  Why did you leave?  Where did you go?  How is it that you were able to forget me?

COMMENT:  A friend had this with her yesterday when she sat down near me at a meeting, and now I want to read it myself.  So I placed a request for it from my library.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Let's eat blueberry muffins tomorrow

July 11th is National Blueberry Muffin Day in the United States.  Hmm, I should also sing that "Muffin Man" song that I wrote about back in February, HERE.

What's a bosky campus?

bosk·y /ˈbäskē / adjective literary = wooded; covered by trees or bushes.  Example:  "I made my way across the bosky campus of the University of Pittsburgh."

My 2002 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition) has this definition:

1. having abundant trees or shrubs.
2. of or relating to a woods.

Background:  I was reading page 69 of Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt and came across the words in the campus example I used in the title.  I very rarely come across a word that I've never seen or heard before.  After all, I've been reading since the mid-1940's.  So I was surprised and wondered, "What's a bosky campus?"  The illustration above shows an example of "having abundant trees or shrubs."

(I'm also fascinated by the coincidence that the illustration says "bosky" was the word of the day on July 9, 2017.  It's also my word for July 9, 2025, exactly eight years later.)

Professor Pigeon has even more to say about the word.  Look at all those synonyms:  shady, shadowy, shaded, leafy, brushy, dim, sheltered, screened, verdant, dark.

Two bananas for TWOsday

Two bananas appeared in the box beside my door yesterday.  I had to ask a couple of friends before I found out who put them there.  It was my neighbor from down the hall in the old building who admitted to putting them there.  

The other day, a different neighbor gave me a banana that came with her lunch; saying that she cannot eat bananas.  Don't I have nice neighbors?  (I seem to be going bananas over bananas today, but they make good snacks while reading.)

World Chocolate Day

World Chocolate Day is celebrated on July 7, which some suggest is the anniversary of the introduction of chocolate to Europe in 1550.

I have some Coyote Tracks ice cream in my freezer.  It just happens to be my favorite ice cream these days.  It's vanilla ice cream with thick fudge swirl and mini peanut butter cups in it.  But I think I'll also go down to our Café for lunch and have one of their muffins as well.  Something chocolate.  (Added:  Today, the Café had chocolate muffins with chocolate chips added.  It's delicious!)

I loved the book

I'm looking forward to our afternoon movie today, which will be "The Secret Life of Bees."  This is what I said about the book in September 2009, HERE:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2002) is #10 alphabetically in my continuing series on "fifteen books that will always stick with me."

What is it about this book that I like so much?  Maybe it's the image of Rosaleen, a black woman in the South in 1964, spitting snuff on the shoes of a racist white man who is harrassing her.  Maybe it's the strong character of August Boatwright (one of the "calendar sisters" of May, June, and August), who epitomizes a queen bee in this story about bee-keeping sisters who take in a 14-year-old white girl running away from her abusive daddy — I think making her kneel on grits is abuse, don't you?  Maybe it's the Black Madonna in Tiburon, South Carolina, that Lily runs to after she breaks Rosaleen out of custody.  Maybe it's that this first novel was written after the author realized conventional goodness just wasn't enough.

1. On Tuesday, I wrote about two friends, HERE.  Well, I also mentioned a book and a couple of magazines from the library that I was reading.
2. On Wednesday, I wrote about a boy who loved words, HERE.
3. On Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I didn't post anything.  This has NOT been my best blogging week.  Maybe I attended too many Fourth of July events we had at the Crown Center.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.