The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Published March 2006 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: bought for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
In the fall of 1941, the German army approached the outskirts of Leningrad, signaling the beginning of what would become a long and torturous siege. During the ensuing months, the city's inhabitants would brave starvation and the bitter cold, all while fending off the constant German onslaught.

Marina, then a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, along with other staff members, was instructed to take down the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, yet leave the frames hanging empty on the walls - a symbol of the artworks' eventual return. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe's bombs began to fall, she burned to memory, brushstroke by brushstroke, these exquisite artworks: the nude figures of women, the angels, the serene Madonnas that had so shortly before gazed down upon her. She used them to furnish a "memory palace," a personal Hermitage in her mind to which she retreated to escape terror, hunger, and encroaching death. A refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more.

Moving back and forth in time between the Soviet Union and contemporary America, The Madonnas of Leningrad is a portrait of war and remembrance, of the power of love, memory, and art to offer beauty, grace, and hope in the face of overwhelming despair.


My Thoughts:
Sixty years after that devastating 900 day siege, the memory Marina relied on in order to survive has betrayed her. As her family prepares for the wedding of her granddaughter, Marina is struggling to remember who is even getting married as Alzheimer's begins to tighten its grip on her mind.

Dean, in her debut novel,  moves back and forth in time as Marina, again and again, slips into her past. Marina's battle to stay in the present is beautifully written, although the story does get bogged down when Dean moves into Marina's daughter's problems. Likewise, Dean paints a vivid picture of life in a world devoid of hope as the people of Leningrad fight to survive but the story again gets bogged down in overly vivid details of the paintings Marina is committing to memory.

The Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad

It's always a plus for me when a book pushes me to look for more information on a subject and this one had me not only researching the siege of Leningrad but also the paintings that Dean highlighted.

Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen
Published April 2016 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: the publisher through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary:
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.”


My Thoughts: 
I'm half tempted just to say to you here "just, please, read this book" and leave it at that. Seriously. Unless you don't like lovely coming-of-age stories, complex stories about families, strong characters and vivid settings.

Miller's Valley impressed from the first pages.

"I felt kind of sorry for the woman. It was her job to make it sound as though one place to live was just as good as another, just as good as the place you'd brought your babies home to from the hospital fifty years before, just as good as the place where your parents had died and, in a few cases that you could tell made the government people really uncomfortable, were buried. They could make moving to a new house with a nice dry basement sound like a good deal, but there was no way they could put a pretty face on digging up a coffin that went into the ground before the First World War."

The government is making a move to buy up the property in Miller's Valley with plans to flood the valley. It's a battle that will be the backdrop of Mimi's life for more than 15 years, years she spends  struggling to adjust to changes in her family and to find her place in the world.

"...more than anything I missed the Mimi I used to be. Getting older wasn't working out so well of me. My brother's words had made me think a lot about what I wanted, where I wanted to end up, and the truth was I had no idea in the world. I figured it should be clear, like that big strip of yellow tape they held across the end of the course for the sack race at the volunteer fire department picnic: this, here, this is how you win."

There was nothing I didn't love about this book. I highly recommend it for book clubs; I know mine will be reading it this year. With themes of family, love, friendship, what makes a home, loss, and life choices there is a lot to discuss. It all circles back to family, in the end, and home. Mimi learns, just as Dorothy did so long ago, there's no place like home.

This is my fifth book by Quindlen, maybe my favorite (although Every Last One may still hold that place for the way I was able to connect with it); it is definitely a book that will be among my favorite books of 2016.

Life: It Goes On - April 3

I've been "off" all week. I blame having to move to a new home at work. Everything in my new spot is backwards from my last place - I feel like I'm in a cubicle for a left-handed person. Initially I set things up as a mirror image of what I'd had but muscle memory found me tossing staples and crumpled papers to the floor on my right when the trash can was now on my left. So, now my trash can is floating under the center section of my desk which looks odd but works. The trick in the next week or so is just to figure out what works in the new reality. Which is kind of the trick in life, isn't it?

This Week I'm:

Listening To: The Girl Who Played With Fire - a little over a third of the way through it and enjoying it, although I'm so over all of the street names. Also, catching up with podcasts a bit while I'm working out. Got some very helpful hints about what to do when you can't remember someone's name from the Happier podcast which is a problem I struggle with a lot.

McGovern

Watching: A couple of episodes of "Longmire" on Netflix, some basketball, a couple of interesting documentary shows which for the life of me I cannot remember the names of now, and I may have stayed up until 1:30 a.m. Friday night watching the movie "Ragtime," based on the E. L. Doctorow book by the same name. Doctorow may not have loved the movie, but I do. So many big names in it - James Cagney, Mandy Patinkin, Mary Steenburgen, a very young Elizabeth McGovern and a very young Samuel L. Jackson (who I had never recognized in it before). The movie got me interested in reading more about some of the real people Doctorow included in the book, including Evelyn Nesbit (played by McGovern) in American Eve, which I reviewed here. 

Reading: I've gone back and forth this week between Miller's Valley (when I can wrest the iPad from the Big Guy's death grip) and Tampa when I can't. I'm still not sure what to make of Tampa but I loved Miller's Valley. Today I'll start Tracy Chevalier's latest, At The Edge of The Orchard. I've had mixed success with Chevalier but I'll give this one a shot and then decide whether or not to read the other two of her books I have on my shelves.

Making: Does throwing a Costco pizza in the oven count as making my family supper? No? BG actually did most of the cooking this week, including a couple of salads and nachos. I did make a killer baked potato soup yesterday, brown sugar and apple slow cooker oatmeal for breakfast today and I'll be making spicy smoked sausage alfredo bake in a little bit. 

Planning: To unplug for a week soon, maybe even this coming week. I have reviews posted already, my reader is caught up and I'm in need of finding a better balance. 

Thinking About:  Proposing to Costco that they need to have someone in their stores hand selling books. When I looked at the books they had on the table the other day, I so badly wanted to put so many of them in the hands of those browsing the piles. They have ladies pushing cheese spreads, pizza, and nuts; why not have someone singing the praises of City of Women and City of Thieves?

Enjoying: A new cut and color, time with friends, knowing my dad's through his cataract surgeries with flying colors and better vision than he's had in over sixty years. 

Smiling About: Pulling into the parking lot and finding The Brave Little Toaster parked next to me. 

Looking forward to: The Easter decorations are down but I haven't played with spring decorating yet so that's on the agenda this week. Hoping some more things start blooming soon. 

Question of the week: What made you smile this week?

Bloggiesta Wrap Up - Finally!

Oh heck, I was doing so well at Bloggiesta this spring, working hard every night, knocking out a lot of the stuff on my list and then...life. I did end up getting a lot done, I just forget to finish things out. So here's what got done:

1, Comments: I need to catch up on the comments left this month. 
2, Mail: I've been doing better on this lately, but there's always cleaning up to be done.
3. Bloglovin': This should be at the top of the list - I've got about 100 posts I haven't read as of today and want to make sure I take time to read and comment on all of them.
4. Mini-challenges: I've been doing this almost seven years now so it's harder to find mini-challenges that work for me, but it's always worth checking out. 
5. Clean Up Sidebar: There's not a lot to do, but I do want to do some cleaning up and rearranging. 
6. Catch Up My Calendar: I'm trying to free read as much as possible but I do have some books on Netgalley that I need to make sure I read before they archive, book club reads and at least one scheduled review. Gotta make sure nothing is falling through the cracks. 
7. Prep Some Posts: I'm remarkably scheduled ahead a couple of weeks for reviews but I'd like to get the rest of those weeks filled in to give me more reading time in April.
8. Visit New-To-Me Blogs: I can't keep up with the blogs I follow already but I'd hate to think there's a great blog I don't even know about yet! 
9. Clean Up Labels: The never ending task. Ugh. UPDATE: everything's gone I wanted to get rid of. Next Bloggiesta I'm going to work on adding labels to the posts without labels and adding some new labels to old posts.
10. Books Read List: This is one of those tasks I've started and never quite finished.
11. Clean Up Old Posts: If I'm really crazy and knock out everything else, I'd love to go back and make sure older posts are all formatted the way I like them to be now. UPDATE: I did a fair amount of this while I was cleaning up labels. I'm calling that good enough for now.

Well, yeah, I didn't exactly get some of the main things done I wanted to get done. I didn't touch my mailbox and I only got about half way done with my Bloglovin' feed (which has doubled again since last week, of course!). I didn't get any mini-challenges done during the actual Bloggiesta dates but I have done a couple of them this week so I'm counting them!

Challenge #1: Litsy - the Instagram for booklovers. Because we weren't already posting pics of books on Instagram. I had already downloaded the app on my phone but hadn't got my account set up yet. I've done that now, started following some people, gotten the lay of the land. Now just to start posting. Hosted by Jenni Elyse.

Challenge #2: LibraryThing: What's On Your Bookshelf? - an alternative to Goodreads. I've been a member for several years but haven't really used it. Since I'm looking to do away with my Goodreads account, I'm going to give this a try. I don't find it as user friendly and it doesn't have some of the features I do like from Goodreads but it will work for now to catalog things. Hosted by Laurie at Bay State Reader's Advisory.