What defines a Real American?
A multigenerational story told by 3 points of view. Looking at parent- child relationships, ethnic backgrounds vs citizenship, with a slight sci- fi twist.

#LitsyBookClub

@DieAReader lol 😂 another attempt
#Waterloo
#READLESMIS

I can‘t find a great map though @DieAReader
#READLESMIS

#Waterloo

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Waterloo_map.png

@DieAReader pg 286 gives a description of the areas as an ‘A‘ I drew a too small picture of that in my book, then tried to screenshot the google map. Not the greatest but it helped… 🤭😀🤣🤪😝
#READLESMIS

#Waterloo

6/18/1815 4:00 PM
The Germans (Hanoverians & Dutch) fighting for the English were outnumbered & out-munitioned by Napoleon‘s French army and could not defend La Haie-Sainte
42 survived, 3000 died.
#Waterloo
#READLESMIS

The Story She Left Behind releases Tuesday! Meanwhile, I‘m reading The Lost Words & Barbara Newhall Follett Letters. BNF inspired Patti Callahan Henry‘s latest novel.
BNF had her 1st book published at the age of 12 yo. At 26 yo, after a spat with her husband, she left the house & has never been found.
As a child, she created a complex imaginary world & complete language to go with it!

The Southern Gate. Restored in 2015 for 200th Anniversary of The Battle of Waterloo

#READLESMIS

#Waterloo

Hougoumont prior to The Battle of Waterloo

#READLESMIS

Bandette reading with me while I read Les Misérables. She brings me comfort while reading about poor Fantine. ❣️????❤️ ?? ❣️
#READLESMIS

It was wonderful re- visiting a favorite childhood author. I have saved a couple of her books- oh my, could they be 50 years old?!. ( Stormy still has the cover paper!)
Sadly, I can‘t find my Misty of Chincoteague.
Thanks @TheBookHippie for a walk down memory lane. Now to start March‘s book! #ChildrensClassicRead2025

This was a great interview with Leigh Bardugo at the 2018 National Book Festival in Washington DC.
I went with fellow Litten Erin @Bookworm83 , & met Chrissy @Chrissyreadit & her daughter, and Jen Moyers @Jmoyers = @UnabridgedPod
#NatBookFest #AuthorAMonth

Here‘s the link

https://youtu.be/-Iu9VLldn6U?si=yYYs7VrZX8Trnhaf

Operation Cowboy
@Daisey reminded me of this book about rescuing the Lipizzans. Here is a Disney movie about it as well. - Based on another book, My Dancing White Horses by Colonial Podhajsky
Miracle of the White Stallions 1963 🤍🤍🤍

https://youtu.be/N_XDeZvyDIs?si=cgoFLXOiuRvBtlck

#ChildrensClassicRead2025

Operation Cowboy - WWII

Here‘s an interesting WWII story about how the USA & Germany worked together to save the Lipizzans, as well as other horses from the Russians! 🤍🤍🤍

https://www.historynet.com/patton-saves-austrias-white-horses/

#ChildrensClassicRead2025

Oh my! After the courtroom scene, how am I to wait for tomorrow to continue reading?!
What a compelling book this is turning out to be!!
#READLESMIS #BuddyRead

Here‘s a great short video showing the Airs Above the Ground maneuvers of the great lippizans #ChildrensClassicRead2025

https://youtu.be/r8ktmC5pTvU?si=N4DZS4w26ErTzlj1

I‘m a little behind on my February reading for #ChildrensClassicRead2025 I love going down memory lane rereading a favorite book of mine and remembering when I got to watch The Great Lipizzan‘s perform. Here‘s an example of an Levade & a Caprriole- two Airs Above the Ground movements.
This book is a great way to learn about the horses and a fine example of self- actualization and working hard for your dreams.

Bandette is happy I‘m back home so we can catch up on Les Misérables!!
I hope to catch up this weekend and then go through all the previous posts!!
#ReadLesMis
#DogsOfLitsy

An appropriate read for this 2degF snowy Kansas day!! ❄️🩵 ❄️
All the schools are closed, but unfortunately, I still have to go to work. I suspect a quiet day, so I‘ll bring my book just in case!! So far, this is a wonderfully written book with a lovely midwife and a mystery. 🩵 ❄️🩵

I‘d like to be in bed right now… 🩶🤍🩶

Just started listening to The History of Love for @LitsyBookClub & I know I‘m going to love it.
The first few lines are great.
Funny thing is, the narrator, George Guidall, narrated Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower series. So I keep thinking about Stephen King. And SK would write like this also!!
#LitsyBookClub

My 2 day old granddaughter, Hazel Anne is helping me through the vomiting 🤮
Here is a blurb about Plath‘s real benefactress, Olivia Higgins Prouty, referred to in the novel as Philomena Guinea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Higgins_Prouty

#hastagbrigade

Oh, my heart goes out to Fantine!
Running behind- nursing my sister in KC after cataract surgery, now in Dodge City helping my daughter with her 5th child 🩷 Little Hazel Anne. Will keep reading as I can! I‘ll eventually catch up!

Here are the 2 sets of books mentioned in my earlier post

Isn‘t it interesting? How within six months of each other two books get published about librarian spies in Lisbon?

It reminds me of when two books were written about the horseback librarians of Kentucky: The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek & the Giver of Stars 📕 🐴

These covers also have a similar color scheme

Isn‘t it interesting? How within six months of each other two books get published about librarian spies in Lisbon?

It reminds me of when two books were written about the horseback librarians of Kentucky: The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek & the Giver of Stars 📕 🐴

These covers also have a similar color scheme

Enjoying this newly published book about librarian spies in Lisbon during WWII. Portugal 🇵🇹 was a neutral country & was an important site of espionage, as well as a place refugees sought sanctuary. It has a strong sense of place, reminding me of the wonderful trip we had there in September.

This is a well done debut ( fiction) novel. I can‘t wait to see what else she writes.
I went to the University of Kansas, so those references were fun! 💙❤️
The author played basketball at the University of Colorado and then played professional basketball for an Irish team. She then did sports journalism before writing this book.
Here‘s a Friends & Fiction interview with her

https://www.youtube.com/live/o_zqEYVP8cw?si=3mxlxBVuBHAKMtKD

#Chatterday

I‘m enjoying my visit with my sister. I‘m staying with her this weekend after her cataract surgery. I‘m a little nervous about leaving tomorrow and having her drive herself. Next week I come back for surgery her other eye!
Luckily my son lives in the same town, so I got to see him also.
I‘m reading Eight Hundred Grapes 🍇 🍷 and enjoying it.
#ChatterDay2025 @AllDebooks

I‘m a little behind, with work, grandkids, and driving to KC to nurse my sister before and after cataract surgery ( yesterday). This 5 page chapter with NINE pages of notes took me 2 days!
As Hugo writes, “Yet these details wrongly called trivial do serve a purpose. The features of the years are what the face of the century is composed of. “
Next: Two Foursomes
#READLESMIS

Eight Hundred Grapes 🍇 was the 1st book of this author that I wanted to read- but it turned out to be the 3rd book of hers that I‘m reading. She may be becoming a favorite author of mine!
Did you know it takes 800 grapes to make one bottle of wine? 🍇 🍷 🍇
#ReadYourKindle

Finished this novella, a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses. It was a fun take on the Grimms fairytale. I feel the writing was probably not the best, but I had fun reading it as part of #ChildrensClassicRead2025
She also has written retellings of sleeping beauty and beauty and the beast.

Part One: Fantime, Book 2: The Fall, Chapter VIII: The Deep & the Dark

is this chapter a metaphor of
drowning in the sea 🟰 Jean Valjean‘s despair?

#READLESMIS #Sharreadathon #LitsyLove

I‘m finishing up my last 12 Dancing Princesses book for the month of January for #ChildrensClassicRead2025
This is a fun novella retelling.
She‘s also written a Sleeping Beauty retelling and in August, a Beauty and the Beast retailing will be published.

Read this for free if you sign up for her newsletter:

https://www.rlperez.com/crowns-of-the-fae

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFGi9k_yr9u/?igsh=bXVlczc1YjBpMzNx

How timely! #AuthorAMonth

A lovely analogy for intergeneratinal resilience juxtaposed to intergenerational trauma.

#LiteraryCrew #buddyread

DL Sayers was the leader of the clever advertising campaign for Colman‘s Mustard!
Secret Sign of the Mustard Club: place the mustard pot 6 inches from your neighbor‘s plate 💛🧡💛
#AuthorAMonth

https://system1group.com/blog/mystery-mustard-and-marketing-the-birth-of-the-flu...

Here‘s an add for the book at the end.
Yay! I‘m finally done with this book. I didn‘t realize I was so close to the end, the notes in the back of the book start at about the 50% mark! I‘m glad I read it & sad I didn‘t enjoy it, since the author is a famous female author. The historical notes at the end of the book an interesting, so I‘m reading them. #AuthorAMonth

@bookishbitch Pt 2 - What Oscar Wilde said.

( Pt 1 see previous post re: Fox Hunting 🦊 🐴 🐶 😢)
Last bit: It was banned in Scotland in 2002 and the rest of United Kingdom in 2005
#AuthorAMonth

Scrolling through my photos and I saw this Enigma machine that I saw at Hôtel des Invalides in Paris.
It made me think of Kate Quinn‘s The Rose Code!

Pg 205 (Part 1)

Fox Hunting 🦊 Yuck! 😡
It was banned in Scotland in 2002 and the rest of United Kingdom in 2005
Incredible it took that long to band it sounds so cruel. #AuthorAMonth

Starting this #buddyread
Hester Prynne is one of my favorite heroines. ♥️🟥🔴
This book is starting off great. I already love Isobel- both of them.
How men treated women and accused them of witchcraft is just appalling.
Halloween 2017 my husband and I went to Salem Massachusetts. It was a fascinating day.

#LiteraryCrew @Librarybelle

Don‘t count your chickens before they are hatched

Chapter 12 Monsignor Bienvenu‘s Isolation
Pages 49–50
Perrette, the milk maid, and her pot of milk

https://aestheticrealism.net/poems/the-milkmaid-and-the-pot-of-milk-by-jean-de-l...

#READLESMIS

Chapter 8 pg 30.
If I keep going down rabbit holes Googling about Voltaire & Needham and Diderot, I may never catch up! 😀😆😂🤣🤪

And, I‘m too busy reading to take down my Christmas 🎄 decorations!

#READLESMIS
@TheBookHippie

I‘m reading this for my IRL Bookclub, #FriendsWithBooks.
It‘s a lovely work of literary fiction. I‘m enjoying it so much more than I thought I would. There are many different ways a heart needs healing.

It‘s so much fun reading the different versions! Each one is slightly different. All the illustrations have been beautiful. Soon I‘ll start the Crown of Twelve: A Twelve Dancing Princesses Novella which is the 1st of the Crowns of the Fae Trilogy ( or novella + duology)
Thanks @TheBookHippie
#ChildrensClassicRead2025

The end of Chapter 6 has lovely quotes of Bishop Bienvenue. We could have a charming book of just Bishop Bienvenue- isms!

Clarification:

Part One: Fantine
Book 1: A Good Man
Chapter 6: Under Whose Protection He Placed His House

Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition translated by Christine Donougher

#READLESMIS
@TheBookHippie

I‘m reading the version of the book with annotations and this morning came across an annotation about this once famous and now forgotten author. It made me think of all the lost books in the past, and which books will be lost and that so few will be saved in the future! I hope I have read some of the memorable ones!
#AuthorAMonth

My book finally came in the mail! Starting this #chunkster for #READLESMIS I‘ve always wanted to read this, and there‘s no better way than with a #buddyread with fellow Littens! Hopefully I will catch up soon!
I‘m loving Monsignor Bienvenue. He is giving, kind, and insightful.

#chunksterchallenge2025 #ColossialChunkster
@aimiable
#AllergicToChunksters
 @julieclair

#ReadLesMis
@TheBookHippie

Great series of short stories of differing groups that feel marginalized.
Thanks! #LiteraryCrew @Librarybelle

This is how I feel when I do someone else‘s dishes- not the bossy part, but it seems easier than doing my own!!
#AuthorAMonth

#ReadYourKindle
I‘m going to try a new challenge this year thanks to @dabbe and @CBee
Thanks for letting me join @CBee
I‘ll start with When Crickets Cry