A Life of Reading Words
DATE: 1/6/26
Challenge Titles Finished (Totals To Date):
Titles Finished: Totals for 2025:
All titles left to go for Challenge: 3,540
Next count: 1/1/27
Stark, Freya. Valleys of the Assassins, and Other Persian Travels. Century Publishing Company, 1936.
Reason read: Stark was born in the month of January. Read in her honor.
There is no doubt that Freya wanted to live a life full of adventure that was challenging, rewarding, and more than a little dangerous. While she carried letters of introduction to give her access to key people, Freya relied heavily on her own wits to maintain her safety while in Persia. She recognized villains when she saw them. She played upon her novelty, knowing no European woman had ever been in various regions before. She would further confound the natives by putting the fragments of a skull in a jar as a keepsake or best them at their customs of all possible polite greetings and the responses one could go through. Freya demonstrated her sense of humor even when she was in sticky situations. Her attempt to find hidden treasure in a cave was both heroic and hilarious.
When people asked Freya why she wanted to travel the way that she did she blamed “the trouble” on an aunt after this relative sent Freya a copy of Arabian Nights for her 9th birthday. Freya was instantly bitten by the adventure bug. Most children would snuggle down in their beds and dream of spitting camels and endless sand, but Stark’s dreams took her to ride real camels across real deserts. Confessional: Freya never mentions camels. Her mode of transportation was a mule.
Part One takes the reader through Luristan, as it was a country where one is less frequently murdered, but the threat is not completely out of the question. As Freya maps the area for British Intelligence her actions put her in constant danger of being thought of as a spy. At the same time, Freya becomes a healer of sorts; being called upon to parse out quinine and castor oil; administer care for for snake bites, broken limbs and mysterious ailments.
Throughout Valleys of the Assassins are wonderful full page photographs. My favorite is of Keram Khan with his majestic horse and magnificent coat.
Lines I loved, “…looking at me with the calm innocence of a Persian telling lies” (p 38), “This would have proved a perfectly sound and successful theory if a buried treasure had not come to complicate my plans” (p 62) and “The study of history necessarily leads one into lonely places” (p 136).
Who knew Stark had such a sense of humor, “The great and almost only comfort to being a women is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one in and no one is surprised” (p 67). She says this while trying to argue the truth about a lunar eclipse.
Here’s one more, “So kind is fortune if you trust her” (p 195).
Author fact: Stark wrote a plethora of books about her various adventures. I am reading a total of five for the Challenge. I have finished all but one.
Book trivia: the reprint of Valleys of the Assassins coincided with Freya’s 90th birthday and the cover is of a Garabagh carpet in detail.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lady Travelers” (p 142). Pearl says this is the one to read if you are only going to read one Freya Stark book.
Peace, Jeff. The Wrong Kind of Son: Salty Driftwood Publishing, 2025.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing, I get to read heartwarming books. This is one such book.
Jeff Peace wanted nothing more than to purge the past to “[name] what it felt like.” It took real courage for him to lay it all out in the pages of Wrong Kind of Son. What started as a letter to his father turned into a book about surviving abuse. [Confessional: I also wrote a letter that turned into a publication. I only wanted my parents to understand where I was coming from without having the necessary confrontation.] Wrong Kind of Son opens with Peace wanting to connect with his father during the holidays. I say wanting because there is a sense of family obligation that cannot be ignored no matter how one tries. Father and son live thirty minutes from each other but hadn’t seen each other in a year. The connection goes badly as it always does. That is the pattern. Throughout Wrong Kind of Son Peace illustrates the anatomy of neglect without being overly dramatic or playing the martyr. There is a difference between stating simple fact and hurling blame. Peace sticks to the former. By the end of Wrong Kind of Son Peace finds the strength to break the patterns of abuse. Through other avenues of love he is able to forge a new path. His courage is astounding.
As an aside, this is my third early review book about a narcissistic parent. By reading the stories of backhanded compliments, off-color jokes, and empty promises my own story has become clearer.
Author fact: Peace is a thoughtful author. He has a disclaimer about the abuse depicted in Wrong Kind of Son, urging his readers to take care.
Book trivia: there were so many brilliant lines I wanted to quote. Intelligence without empathy is a good one. Hope being a habit is another.
Music: Nickelback
Card, Orson Scott. Children of the Mind. Tor Books, 2002.
Reason read: started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.
Children of the Mind is the second half of Xenocide which explains why the residents of planet Luistania are still looking for a way to escape the decimation of their planet. This is also the final book in the Ender quartet. The survival of the children of the mind hinges on Computer Jane’s ability to move the humans, buggers, and pequeninos to a more hospital planet for colonization without overtaxing her bandwidth. Every jump takes her down a notch. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Ender’s older brother, travels to meet with the Starways Congress to convince them to stop their campaign to destroy Lusitania. Only Peter isn’t Peter. He is another entity of Ender. In fact, Ender has three bodies: his own, Peter’s and Young Valentine’s. Children of the Mind, like the other books in the series gets a little didactic and preachy.
I have to wonder how many people freaked out when they got to the demise of Ender as we know him.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 224).
Kavenna, Joanna. The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule. Viking, 2006.
Reason read: I read somewhere that the Shetland Viking Fire Festival takes place every January.
Kavenna blames her obsession with Thule on Pytheas, stating he began the story when he claimed he had been to the mythical land of Thule by way of Marseilles. But what or where exactly is Thule? Is it a place of barren rocks, howling winds, and flinty skies? Is it a Nazi organization, a secret society borne out of prejudices and hate? Is it an ancient calling to barbaric Vikings and long-forgotten mythologies? Kavenna travels the globe looking for answers. She meets with the former president of Estonia, Lennart Meri, searching for the true Thule. She travels to a former Thule settlement in Greenland and talks with scientists about global warming and the threat to the region’s polar bears.
Throughout Kavenna’s journey her descriptions of the landscape and people are stunning. Her words crackle with the cold and demonstrate the warmth of the people.
Eye opening moment: I guess I never thought about it before. Nazis believed Iceland was the cradle of Germanic culture. That makes sense with the blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin of its residents.
Favorite description of Iceland, “A land like a disaster film, a natural gore-flick- the country scattered with the innards of the earth” (p 68).
Here is another line I liked, “the past and the future lurked at the edges of the day time dusk” (p 288).
Author fact: even as a small child Kavenna was urging her parents to travel with her.
Book trivia: there are no photographs or illustrations of any king in The Ice Museum. Not even the author has representation.
Music: “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).
Cherryh, C.J. Downbelow Station or the Company Wars. Daw Books, 1981.
Reason read: January is another science fiction month.
Confessional: I felt like Cherryh was speaking directly to me when she said she wanted to write a book for readers who love to detect connections between books. Cherryh called Downbelow Station a “novel of interstellar conflict and ambition” as part of the Alliance-Union Universe series. Above all else, it is a human story, a love story even. Cherryh wanted to create a wider universe that would be consistent in a series set in the future a few centuries from now. Her story is populated with tribes of spacefarers and groundlings. We begin Downbelow Station with Book One Earth and Outward between the years 2005 and 2352 but most of the action is nestled comfortably between the years of 2352 and 2353 on a space station orbiting the Downbelow in the Tau Ceti star system. During this time space is not explored by NASA or the like. Private corporations rule the galaxies with their exorbitant wealth. Sound familiar? Old River is angry and the mill is not to be lost. The surviving companies need to plot an attack against the Union or else become refugees and, if that happens, where would they go?
Downbelow Station is packed with action, but as I mentioned earlier, hidden amongst the sci-fi is a human story and maybe a little romance. I appreciated the friendship Damon and Elene extend to Josh Talley, the prisoner who had his memories erased. He becomes the unlikely hero in the story. More human emotion is displayed when Elene Quen goes missing.
Author fact: C.J. Cherryh is Carolyn Janice Cherryh. I loved, loved, loved C.J. Cherryh’s advice at the end of her introduction – go out to where city lights don’t block your view and look up. Interesting fact about Downbelow Station – the stars are in real locations. Another fact – Cherryh worked with multiple cardboard clocks to make the multiple timelines agree.
Book trivia: Downbelow Station won a Hugo award and the story was so popular it was made into a board game.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Space Operas” (p 210).
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.
Reason read: every January people make resolutions all about bettering themselves. It’s all about them. In honor of those “it’s all about me” resolutions I am reading a book about being selfish and the explanation for why.
Richard Dawkins wants you to ignore the word selfish in his book’s title and concentrate more on the word gene. He confessed that “misunderstandings of Darwinism” are what originally “provoked” him to write The Selfish Gene. [Point of view: At the time of publication he was a professor at Oxford University and considered The Selfish Gene a “new” way of looking at ourselves. Keep in mind Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene fifty years ago.] Like a chef laying out a beautifully set table before his meal, Dawkins takes care to define the words selfish and altruistic. He wants to make sure you are grounded in the facts he is about to present before you. He is careful to explain how words get lost in translation. For example, take the Septuagint – Hebrew for young woman into Greek for virgin and what transpires is the virgin giving birth to a holy son.
Dawkins repeatedly uses the word “simplified” to assure his readers that he has dumbed down his scientific subject matter as much as he could without turning The Selfish Gene into a See Jane Run book for toddlers. He uses humor and folksy language to further put his reader at ease. Fear not! This is a good book.
Quote to quote, “For instance a ion wants to eat an antelope’s body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body” (p 89).
Author fact: Dawkins published seven books after The Selfish Gene. I am reading one more, The Blind Watchmaker. At the time of publication, Dawkins was working on the computer simulation of cricket song to determine the basis of female attraction.
Book trivia: as an aside, Dawkins tells a story about the underground “parasol” ants of South America. They live in colonies of over two million and live deep underground.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Genuine Genes” (p 96).
Shute, Nevil. The Chequer Board. William Morrow & Company, 1947.
Reason read: Shute celebrates a birthday in January.
John Turner has been having attacks of giddiness and fainting spells. As a veteran of World War II he lives with inoperable shrapnel in his head. The story opens with him learning he has maybe a year to live because of this horrific wound. There is nothing the doctors can do. This abbreviated time on earth has prompted John to want to reconnect with three men he met in military hospital: Philip Morgan, a soldier prisoned in Burma during the war; Pfc Dave Lesurier, a soldier accused of attempted rape of a naive English girl; and Corporal Duggie Brent, a soldier who had killed a man during a bar fight. What had happened to these troubled men? Turner wants to find them and improve their lives if he can.
A side story is John’s relationship with his wife. His marriage to Mollie has strained for normalcy. From the very beginning the reader learns that Mollie did not visit Turner in the hospital; not even once despite the fact he was there for a week. She claims he hasn’t needed he. Neither has done anything kind for the other. A death sentence changes both of them. As a way of understanding Mollie urges John to find his former friends from the hospital.
Shute has a funny way of describing things. [She was] “about to produce an infant” (p 29) instead of saying she was pregnant once a year.
Quote to quote, “He like to drive for an hour to some country pub or roadhouse and drink beer in an atmosphere of smoke and laughter and good company” (p 31). That sounds like an amazing time. Can I come, too? Here is another, “Rather than fall into their hands, it was preferable to fall into the hands of death” (p 100).
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Nevil Shute: Too Good To Miss” (p 198). Pearl warns her readers that there would be racist language in The Chequer Board. I expected the derogatory name calling but not the all out blatant racism. Even in the twenty-first century, there is a lot of that going around. With the death of Rob Reiner there is a resurgence of people watching “All in the Family.” The character of Archie Bunker is not exactly all that politically correct. Those were the prejudices of the time and somehow acceptable.
Stout, Rex. Three Doors to Death: a Nero Wolfe Threesome. Viking Press, 1949.
Reason read: I first started the series fifteen books ago in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.
Man Alive (published in December 1947) – A man once thought to be dead of suicide is found dead again.
Omit Flowers (published in November 1948) – as a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe takes on the wrongful accusation of murder. Virgil Pompa, a restaurant chain manager has been fingered for the crime.
Door to Death (published in June 1949) – my favorite of the bunch. Nero’s caretaker of over 10,000 orchids, Theodore Horstmann, has taken leave indefinitely to care for his ailing mother. This abandonment is absolutely unacceptable to Wolfe. The travesty forces him to leave his beloved brownstone to recruit a replacement who has, of course, been charged with murder.
As an aside, for as many times as Archie says Nero never leaves his brownstone, I wonder if someone has actually counted up all the times he has and why.
Author fact: Stout passed away at the age of eighty-eight.
Book trivia: to track Stout’s publications one has to be pretty savvy. Three Doors to Death is comprised of three novellas which were published as stand alone stories. The three stories were republished in a collection called Five of a Kind.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).
Wozniak, Bruno. The Reinvention Playbook: Self Published, 2025.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program from LibraryThing every once in awhile I get to read interesting books.
In a nutshell, The Reinvention Playbook is about navigating the loss of a job and all that that end entails. It is about rebuilding a new identity outside of what the job made you. Is it possible to find meaningful employment and emotional connection after ending a self-defining career? Wozniak urges his readers to try, try, try. It is all about moving forward, one baby step at a time. At times I found the advice to be a little repetitious with emotional signatures: disorientation, low energy, aligned with the adverse of curiosity and confidence.
I appreciated his phrase “identity earthquake” for when a job ends, it truly is a restructuring of everything you knew about yourself. Think about it. You spend a solid eight hours a day as one entity. That is a good chunk of time. Routines are established; a rhythm solidified. You need to reconcile the inside voice with the outside noise. Do not let the fear of urgency create chaos before you have had a chance to heal. You have to let go of who you were before you lost the job and take note of what remains after the work is gone. The diagnostics are sometimes hard to decipher if you do not know how to read the emotional cues or cannot resist the urge to stay busy. Wozniak’s book enables you to navigate those efforts to rebuild.
Author fact: I instantly connected with Wozniak’s example of running. Without the analytics to “prove” the effort, is it worth it? Can you go for a run without tracking pace, distance, heart rate, route?
Book trivia: The Reinvention Playbook is best read after losing employment as a tool for grounding yourself in reality, but what happens if you read the book with one eye on the approaching cliff you just know you are going to fall from? Would you read the book differently if you were secure in your employment or foresaw no immediate danger?
Long, David. The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux. Scribner, 2000.
Reason read: Sisters Week is in January.
The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux has been described as the “effect of not knowing on a tragedy’s survivor.” I lost a friend two years ago (it’ll be three at the end of June) and I have absolutely no clue what happened. Was it suicide? Possibly. He mentioned ideation more than enough times. Was it an accidental overdose? Possibly. He admitted he was addicted to pain killers. Was it the damage from the near-fatal stroke he had? Possibly. He was still struggling with his health. But. I will never know.
Hartford, Connecticut (1973). Miles Fanning and Caroline (Carly) Lamoreaux are typical teenagers, skipping out on choir practice for the sake of young love. Only Carly does not meet Miles at the prescribed spot nor is she ever heard from again. Fast forward twenty-four years later Fanning is the founder of SunBreak Records and still does not know what happened to his old girlfriend all those years ago. He has since married and moved to Seattle, Washington. In all honesty he hasn’t thought about Carly all that much. Life has carried him in a different direction…until suddenly Carly’s sister, Julia, sweeps into his life, dragging the memory and mystery of Carly behind her. Julia’s line of questioning is off-putting and abrasive; the way your teeth feel when you bite down on eggshells in an otherwise fluffy omelet or finding sand in your ice cream. Julia interrogates Fanning like his soul has committed a serious crime. She is a strange woman to whom Fanning cannot help but be drawn. What I found so interesting about The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux was the lack of detail about the investigation into the disappearance of Carly Lamoreaux. Miles Fanning is an obvious suspect but once he is cleared, the reader does not get a sense of urgency to find Carly. It led me to think more about the title. The focus is on the father, Simon. Does he hold the key to the mystery? In the end I found myself saying, yes, he does.
Author fact: Long also wrote The Falling Boy which is on my Challenge list.
Book trivia: this should be a movie.
Real music: Count Basie, Te Deum, Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus, Keith Jarrett’s Koln concert, Soundgarden, Chopin, and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedies.
Fake music: Billy Caughan’s “Hard Knock Turn,” and Nella Randolph,
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Sibs” (p 199).
Card, Orson Scott. Xenocide. Macmillan Audio, 2004.
Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction month.
As Orson Scott Card moves away from the childlike narrative of Ender’s Game the series becomes more deeply philosophical. In each subsequent Ender novel, Card questions the argument surrounding free will. Xenocide expands on these ideas as it examines cultural differences, religious ideology and the ethics of destroying a race because of its potential danger. Card takes his readers to the planet Lusitania where humans (including Andrew Wiggin and his family), the Pequeninos (Piggies), and the Hive Queen are all under threat by the Starways Congress. The Congress is hellbent on blowing up the planet because they fear the Descolada virus which is essential to the Pequeninos but deadly to humans. Card keeps Ender and his family mostly in the background as he explores these heavier concepts. I found it to be heavy mucking.
Book Audio trivia: there is a whole cast of narrators for Xenocide: Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir, Amanda Karr, John Rubinstein, and Stefan Rudnicki.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).
Dawkins, Louise. Natives and Strangers. Houghton Mifflin, 1985.
Reason read: Kenya gained independence in December. Read in recognition of that event.
Natives and Strangers examines the human heart through the lens of culture and status in an African landscape. Natives and strangers, whites and blacks, rich and entitled. British colonists and native Africans. Young Marietta Hamilton hasn’t been brought up to be colorblind, but despite her English heritage her friendships are without barriers. Her best friend is the daughter of her mother’s servant. Natives and Strangers tracks Marietta’s coming of age as she navigates her identity through childhood, college, marriage and motherhood. This was a struggle for me to read because I didn’t really care for the characters.
Detractors – Dawkins gets a little didactic by addressing religious differences like Christianity versus Paganism.
Another negative: I have read reviews complaining about how unnaturally the characters speak. Dawkins tells the story of Natives and Strangers mostly through the classic vehicle of monologue and dialogue. For example, Virginia needs to explain to Marietta why she is sending her daughter away to a boarding school. The monologue is mostly historical context and more for the benefit of the reader than for Marietta. Because all characters do this (even the children) Dawkins loses believability and authenticity. All of her characters appear long-winded and unwieldy in their manner of speech and their conversations.
Author fact: Louisa Dawkins is a pen name.
Book trivia: I was warned that the dialogue between characters in Natives and Strangers is not natural.
Music: the Rolling Stones.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Africa: a Reader’s Itinerary” (p 2).
Roth, Joseph. Radetzky March. Translated by Joachim Neuroschel. Overlook Press, 1995.
Reason read: Hanukkah is in December.
The premise of Radetzky March is deceptively simple. At the start it follows the three generations of the Trotta family at the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Grandfather, Captain Trotta, saved the life of Emperor Franz Joseph and was forever known as the Hero of Solferino. All in all, the characters of Radetzky March are incredibly dismissive. One character has a relationship where after twenty years he still cannot remember if his friend has sons or daughters. He only knows Herr Nechwas has now adult children. Herr von Trotta und Sipolje can never remember the personal details of another human’s life. A father decides his son’s profession by simply saying “I’ve decided that you’re going to be a lawyer” (p 15). Never mind what the son wants. You have to feel sorry for Carl as he is always under the thumb of his father; insecure around other men of military standing. Radetzky March follows Carl’s life as he makes his way under the shadow of a hero grandfather and a unsympathetic father. He can never live up to their grandeur and his life descends into a world of debt, adultery, alcoholism, and a lost sense of self. Joseph Roth has written a beautiful tragedy.
Confessional: something always gets lost in translation when I read a book originally not written in English. For example, how do sofa cushions slide slyly and cautiously toward someone? I could see cushions losing the battle against gravity and slowly toppling over when someone sits down next to them. And this – Trotta dropped a blade and it made a jingly whimper when it landed. The jingle, I understand. the whimper? Not so much.
Author fact: Roth wrote a sequel to Radetzky March called Emperor’s Tomb but I am not reading it for the Challenge. Instead, I am reading What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920 -1933.
Book trivia: my copy of Radetzky March has an introduction by Nadine Gordimer.
Music: Straus’s Radetzky March, Tannhauser Overture, Wandering Tinker, “The Internationale,” and “God Save.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Berlin” (p 36).
Simko, Lukas. Something Else: Words that Remember, Stories that Awaken. Independent Publicist, 2025.
Reason read: as part of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read books that sometimes move me. This is one of those books.
The fastest review I could write about Something Else is to say it is a memoir about an individual wanting to find true love. Lukas Simko’s story begins when he is a thirty-two year old graduate looking for work. He meets a girl who over time showed all the classic signs of an abuser. She was controlling and manipulative and I found myself wishing he would have seen the signs earlier. Right away I felt Simko is someone who has the potential to fall hard and fast for a romantic relationship. He believes in taking chances and embracing adventure wherever it may take him.
Then there was Macy. She was clear she did not an emotional relationship, but Lukas started to like her more and more “without permission.” Interesting choice of words. This time around Simko noticed the signs of a relationship dying as Macy started to distance herself from him.
Next came Jaya. Lukas felt an instant connection with her for they had a great deal in common and almost seemed to be soul mates. She even took him in as a roommate without really knowing him. Once again Lukas became involved with a woman who did not want to be tied down with anything emotional. To say Jaya was complicated is an understatement. She often sent mixed signals and seemed to be confused about what she really wanted from Simko. One minute she was communicating as if she cared deeply; the next she felt it necessary to block Simko on social media (twice).
In the end, Simko emerged a stronger person. He was able to see the beauty in each failed relationship. As an aside, I think of it as the particle theory. You get what you need from each relationship whether that relationship withstands the test of time or not.
Confessional: I did not understand Ireland’s employment situation. Lukas requested three weeks off under the guise of taking care of a grandmother. Instead, he was rewarded with 3 1/2 months off, but the kicker was he had to go on leave when they told him to. I thought he was working in a remote IT position.
A more personal confessional: Simko went four months without talking to Jaya. Try five years! That’s how long I went without speaking to someone who meant the world to me.
As an aside, I learned a new word, “craic.”
Music: “Misty Mountains” by Leyna Robinson-Stone.
Kumin, Maxine. The Long Marriage. W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.
Reason read: I read somewhere that January 26th is Marriage Day.
In The Long Marriage Maxine Kumin is keen to describe what she sees in the viewfinder of life. She stares down uncomfortable topics like suicide and crime with unflinching clarity. From the community of Grays Point to gardening to the struggle of rehabilitation after an accident. She even reflects on her own injuries from being thrown from a horse: punctured lung, eleven broken ribs, and a bruised liver…just to name a few. Her poems are life jumping off the page and, dare I say, into your heart.
Poems I enjoyed the most:
Author fact: Maxine Kumin was friends with Anne Sexton.
Book trivia: there is a beautiful picture of the author and her husband and their dogs. Kumin’s dedication to Victor, “on the dark lake” is beautiful, too.
Natalie connections: In Miss Merchant’s song, “Sister Tilly” she talks about the kind of woman who reads Rilke poems. Kumin has a poem about Rilke.
Natalie was the first person to introduce me to the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Kumin quotes him in The Long Marriage.
Confessional: Peter Gabriel celebrated the album So by doing an anniversary tour. I could not think of the poet to whom he dedicated “—.” All I could remember was the line, “Anne with her father is out in the boat.” Kumin mentions Anne Sexton by name. Mystery solved…although I could have just looked at the liner notes.
Music: Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, Erroll Garner, and Glenn Miller.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Prose by Poets” (p 194).
~*LunaSea*~ 