Cowboys Are My Weakness

Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Berkeley, CA : Washington Square Press 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

When he says "Skins of blankets?" it will take you a moment to realize that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two -- was it hours or days or weeks?


Description:

I admit I first picked up Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness, simply based on the title. But after only the first few sentences and paragraphs, I was deeply hooked by the relationship descriptions conveyed in her deft, personal writing style.

These are stories of love, each narrated by a woman who isn't afraid to take chances with questionable men and enter into challenging situations. Her writing is so packed with penetrating evaluations of her environment and the people she encounters, honest hesitations over choices to be made, questionable decisions settled on, and then unblinking acceptance of consequences that I felt author Houston was telling deeply-felt episodes from her own life to me, her confidential friend. 

Houston's stories include:

• Hunting with a boyfriend for six weeks as he leads paying customers to locate, shoot, and bring back trophy big horn sheep ... and she hates hunting, never having ever even shot a gun much less killed any animal. Not to mention the miles slogging on her belly to sneak up on unsuspecting sheep; 

• Deciding to winter camp in -30 degree weather to ward off the blues, despite never having camped in sub-zero weather, having poor equipment, and only two freezing dogs as companions;

• Rafting down an impossible river that the local park ranger said was too high to run, leaving at night and unable to see the killer rapids throughout their adventure, aware that only the day before on the same river a similar boat had capsized, killing one experienced rafter;

• Watching her best friend deal with repeated cancer diagnosis; hosting a mother who doesn't like her boyfriend's tattoos or lifestyle; tending a horse with a lame tendon (after hitting a gopher hole while she was riding and being thrown over his head and concussed); and working her way through cowboy after cowboy, each with great affection for her, wonderful physical attractiveness and attentiveness, but each carrying a warning sign of some aspect (previous girlfriend he can't leave, possible pregnancy decisions, and just plain old reluctance to stick around and change his lifestyle) that always threaten her deep feelings for each man.

It's her writing that is supurb: thoughtful, concise, emotional, and always honest to her inner most feelings. Whether describing her connections to her dogs, horses, men, or women friends, her stream-of-consciousness narration is always clear and open, revealing her deepest and sometimes not so deep feelings on every page.

There are multiple relationship decisions facing her protagonist in every story, such as:

• She said the wild ones were the only ones worth having and that I had to let me do whatever it took to keep him wild. She said I wouldn't love him if he ever gave in, and the harder I looked at my life, the more I saw a series of men--wild in their own way--who ...I tamed and made them dull as fence posts and left each one for someone wilder than the last;

• I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing;

• There was something about the prairie--it wasn't where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn't even stop living under that big sky. When I was a little girl....I used to be scared of the flatness because I didn't know what was holding all the air in.

• After the first week in Alaska I began to realize that the object of sheep hunting was to intentionally deprive yourself of all the comforts of normal life.

• [On waking up after surviving a -30 night of winter camping] The morning sunshine was like a present from the gods. What really happened, of course, is that I remembered about joy.

I absolutely loved every story, character, setting, and writing style in each of these short stories. It's one of the few books that I could pick up immediately and re-read, certainly one title that will go into my Forever Library collection. 

I sincerely hope you pick it up and enjoy the trials and joys of relationships, whether with men, women, or animals, as I have and will continue to do in the future.

A relationship, you've decided, is not something you need like a drug, but a journey, a circumstance, a choice you might make on a particular day.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces.

Wonderfully powerful, personal, and highly descriptive essays of rural life on a sheep ranch and other very small town locales in Wyoming.

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

My First Hundred Years

Murray, Margaret. My First Hundred Years. London: William Kimber 1963. Print.

First Sentences:

I always think that an autobiography should begin with some account of the forebears and immediate family of the writer so that one can understand some of the early influences which have affected the writer and have helped to make him what he is. My ancestral tree is a very short one going back to only one set of great-great-grandparents, about two hundred. I have quite undistinguished lineage...

Description:

I sought out Margaret Murray's autobiography My First Hundred Years after reading The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilivie, and discovered Murray was a contributor of more than 5,000 entries to the original Oxford English Dictionary. The words and definitions she sent to the editors (after the call went out to the general public for assistance in finding new items), focused on India where she was born and spent much of her life, as well as her field of Egyptology and also witchcraft. Better still, I found OED contributor Murray had written her autobiography at age 100, something I felt would be extremely interesting to peruse.

And she did not disappoint. Her memory is remarkable for a centenarian (or for anyone for that matter), and her writing style exquisite: free-flowing, descriptive, chatty, and full of interesting details of life as a woman archeologist in that very new field.

Born and raised in Calcutta, India, to wealthy parents, Murray was educated in London where she became interested in archeology, a class she only had taken on a whim. The professor, Sir William Petrie, a pioneer of the new field of Egyptology, took Murray under his wing. She edited and illustrated his writings, eventually accompanying Petrie to Egypt as a site nurse. There she absorbed his methods and discoveries at various sites and soon grew to be a qualified archeologist in her own right. She became a teacher of Egyptian linguists and translator of hieroglyphics at the University of London.

What I loved about her recollections was her attention to details and personal feelings. She related memories of the visit to India of the Prince of Wales, where attending Maharajahs competed to out-dazzle each other in their dress. For example, the Maharajah of Patiala wore a coat with "fronts, color, cuffs, and hem embroidered with gold thread and peals, [and] round his neck he wore at least four graduated rows of diamonds, the longest reaching nearly to his waist."

Her early home life included eating with small silver cutlery (larger ones were never adopted by her father) and, at the end of the meal, having the visiting servants of the invited diners carefully frisked for any valuable spoons they might have pocketed. Her mother encouraged a broad education without focus on a single subject, a technique that so limited Murray's brilliant sister Mary she never could focus on one skill and thus was unable to rise to her potential in piano, mathematics, or language. Murray also recalled tales of the horrific Indian Mutiny as related by her grandmother.

As an Egyptologist, Murray translated inscriptions found in tombs, uncovered a major temple to Osiris constructed by the Pharaoh Seti I, and was the first woman to unwrap an Egyptian mummy. 

Murray later became an ardent supporter of women rights and suffrage, including pushing for acceptance of women in academia and archeology. She expanded her on-going interest in folklore to include witchcraft, a topic on which she wrote many books as well as the entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica on that topic.

Hers was an amazing life, one that is now available to lucky readers to delve into the world of nineteenth century India and twentieth century (and centuries-earlier) Egypt. I was totally fascinated to "listen" to her recall story after story, detail after detail, of the worlds she knew and was eager to share. A lively, lovely story of an important woman's world and achievements. 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Ogilivie, Sarah. The Dictionary People.    

Carefully details the lives of those people from the general public who contributed words, definitions, and sources for terms to be included in the original Oxford Dictionary. (previously reviewed here)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 465 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Beautiful Ugly

Feeney, Alice. Beautiful Ugly. New York: Flatiron. 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

If all we need is love, why do we always want more? I dial her number. Again. Finally she answers.

Description:

I think Alice Feeney is one of my favorite "soft" thriller writers. Author of the twisty, gripping books Sometimes I Lie and Rock, Paper, Scissors among others, she takes ordinary people, often couples, and explores their personalities, relationships, dreams, and foibles that lead them into very tense, maybe threatening situations. No ax murders here, just edge-of-your-seat, something-funny-is-going-on-here, don't-know-what's-behind-that-door-that-I'm-about-to-foolishly-open kind of situation found on every page.  

 

Feeney's newest thriller, Beautiful Ugly is another fantastic read, full of sudden surprises, quirky characters, unexpected plot twists, and slightly unnerving settings. It opens with an author, Grady Green, talking on the phone with his wife while she is driving home to see him. She suddenly says she sees a body in the road and tells Grady that she us going to stop to help. Grady warns her not to get out of the car, to stay safe, but she gets out anyways. That is the last she is heard from by Grady or anyone else.

One year later, Grady is struggling. He desperately misses his best friend, his wife. He cannot afford mortgage payments on their house, so has moved into a cheap hotel while trying to write the second novel he is contracted to produce (and, of course, has already spent the advance).

Fortunately, Grady's publishing agent has inherited a small "writing cabin" from a former writer/client on a remote island in Scotland. She feels Grady needs a quiet environment to produce his required novel, and the cabin might be just what he needs. She will sponsor him with her own money for a few months in hopes he can free himself from his block and produce a new book.

But once settled into the luxurious cabin Grady makes a discovery that might change his fortune, despite the far-ranging risks involved. While considering which path to follow, he begins to notice strange things about the island and its people. With no phone coverage, no internet, and no way of communicating with the non-island world, Grady soon feels an unease that makes him question his sanity.

All this happens in the first few pages, so I am not giving away the plot twists that unfold from this point. Alice Feeney is the master of characters glimpsing things out of the corner of their eyes, reading questions into seemingly ordinary situations, and misinterpreting everyday conversations. 

All this leads to a very tense, unputdownable story. It only reveals its secrets in the final pages, and even then there are several completely unpredictable revelations.

I really enjoyed letting this plot, characters, and environment engulf me completely. Pick it up if you like to follow a lead character who experiences confidence, questions, suspicion, anger, and uncertainty in his life among an unusual village full of quirky townspeople (whom he cannot quite figure out if they are crazy or he). 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman wakes from a coma without any memory of how she got there or anything about her past few months. She cannot talk or move, so people visiting her do not know she can hear them. Slowly from their conversations and foggy memories, she begins to piece together the incidents that led to her hospitalization and current situation...and not everything she learns is positive. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Cross My Heart

Collins, Megan. Cross My Heart. New York: Atria 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Hi,

I've decided there's no way to begin this message that isn't either [1] creepy or [2] awkward, so I'm just going to dive right into the Creepy/Awkward Pool and hope I don't drown.

One year ago today, your wife saved my life. And it breaks my heart that, in order for me to live, she first had to die. 

Description:

OK, I'm only going to tell you the premise of Megan Collins' Cross My Heart and what happens on the opening few pages. That's all you're going to get because this is a genuine thriller with more red herrings and twisty-turns than Perseus and the Minotaur together couldn't put together. Any more details from me would only spoil your own adventure into this riveting story, one that I highly recommend.

Here's some nutshell details to get your interest peaked. Rosie Lachlan, the writer of the opening text message above, had received a heart transplant over a year ago. Somehow, she learned the identity of the anonymous donor: the wife of a local celebrity author who happens to live in Rosie's own suburban town.

With her opening letter to Morgan Thorne, the author, and the clever, bantering return message from him, Rosie dreams this man definitely could be the answer to the depression she endures after her fiancé broke up with her before her heart transplant.

I didn't think of surviving as something I'd do -- actively, with intention. I thought of it as something that may or may not happen to me, a think like the weather, completely beyond my control.

This all is in just the first few pages.

What author Collins so skillfully presents then is how this relationship between the heart recipient and the donor's widowed husband plays out. Despite warnings from her best friend, Nina, the email exchanges continue. Rosie obsesses over Morgan in her mind, walks her parents' dog past his house to possibly catch a glimpse of him, and even sees him while in a local coffee shop, debating in her mind a scenario where she could "accidently" bump into him to actually meet and talk with him. She researches everything about him from his writings to interviews to podcasts in order to learn everything about him.

But Rosie dismisses the few rumors about Morgan's relationship with his wife and how her accidental death might not have been what it seemed. Other characters enter Rosie's life, each one contributing a bit more information (good and questionable) about the man, but she keeps her dreams about a potential relationship with him secret.

Or does she? Is she really just dreaming about him or is she actually meeting him on the sly, away from her co-workers', friend's and parent's knowledge? And is Morgan the perfect man she learns about or someone else?

The risk seemed worth the reward.

You may think you can guess where this story is going, a kind of Play Misty for Me stalker tale that ends badly for the relationship. But I am here to tell you that Collins has a lot of surprises to spring on you throughout Cross My Heart at the most unexpected moments. Enough quirky plotlines that made me want to read this book straight through, trying to figure out what the next page would reveal.

That's it. Enough said on my part. I really loved this book and highly recommend it for its seemingly straightforward, if obsessive plot that halfway through turns everything on its head and doesn't let up until the very last page. 

Go get it and be entertained/duped/delighted in the most unexpected ways. Highest recommendation.

You have his wife's heart.....You can't have her life, too.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman awakens from a coma with no memory of how she got there. She can hear everything that is going on around her, but cannot move or otherwise respond. Visitors talk to each other about her situation and slowly she begins to piece together her history and remember ... but what she remembers may not really be what happened, nor the people around her who they say they are. Riveting. (Previously reviewed here)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Girl With No Shadow

Harris, Joanne. The Girl With No Shadow. New York: HarperCollins 2007. Print.

First Sentences:

 

It is a relatively little-known fact that, over the course of a single year, about twenty million letters are delivered to the dead. People forget to stop the mail -- those grieving widows and prospective heirs -- and so magazine subscriptions remain uncancelled; distant friends unnotified; library fines unpaid....You can learn a lot from abandoned mail: names, bank details, passwords, e-mail addresses, security codes...A gift, as I said, just waiting for collection. 

Description:

Having enjoyed the film Chocolat with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, I stumbled onto the novel Chocolat by Joanne Harris on which the movie was based. I was surprised to discover that there are three additional books about Vianne Rocher, chocolatier (chocolate maker) extraordinaire. While I am not usually attracted to books of fantasy and magic, I took the plunge into The Girl With No Shadow, the second in the series, just because I was curious to read what new adventures awaited the heroine and her daughter, Anouk, several years after the ending of Chocolat.

In Girl With No Shadow, Vianne, eleven-year-old Anouk, and four-year-old daughter Rosette, have set up a new chocolaterie in another tiny French village. We soon learn that they have fled from their previous city after the boatman Roux's boat was burned up. They have changed their names to Madam Yanne Chargonneau and Annie. The small, but growing chocolate shop they take over originally sold only pre-packaged chocolates, but when the owner died, Yanne/Vianne begain making her own delicacies, much to the delight of the townspeople.

Cooling [chocolate] acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudre. It smells of my grandmother, if I'd had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass. 

Into their lives drifts the exotic woman, Zozie, who joins the shop as a helper and companion to Annie and her tiny sister Rosette while Yanne is cooking. But Zozie seems to have a hidden background and certainly some unusual talents with magical symbols and words which seem to attract customers and encourage them to eat. The chocolaterie becomes more popular and thus these outsiders become part of the tiny community.

Narrated in turn by the four individual characters, Zozie, Yanne, Annie, and even the mute Rosette, the plot slowly unfolds as somewhat ominous, like glimpsing a darting light out of the corner or your eye. Who exactly is Zozie and what is her purpose for befriending Yanne and Annie? Who are Yanne/Vianne and Anouk/Annie and why did they continue to roam the world and only temporarily settle down before moving on? Why is Rosette silent and underdeveloped for a toddler? And what about the villagers, especially the wealthy Monsieur Thierry, who owns the building with their apartment and chocolaterie, and who has a huge, slightly overpowering crush on Yanne? 

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents,of strangers, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes just another satellite orbiting some less significant sun.

It's a dreamy, captivating, and slightly ominous book that certainly engrossed me from start to finish. It gives up its secrets behind the characters ever so slowly, sometimes confusing readers as to who exactly is narrating a particular chapter. While the writing style and pace may lull you. the plot and characters keep you alert right up to the frantically-paced end.

Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped: it's part of what makes us who we are.

I really loved it and hope you will too.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Harris, Joanne. Chocolat.   

First of four books about Vianne Rocher, the mysterious chocolatier, along with her daughter Anouk who blow into a small French town one windy day and create a wondrous chocolate shop. Vianne has the skill to predict what each townsperson's favorite chocolate delicacy is, choices which seem to cause changes in their lives. But her presence and personality somehow pose threats to others in the village. Wonderfully written with fascinating characters.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).