Finished 12-30-11, rating 3/5, classic fiction, 266 pages, pub. 1918

“I came to ask you something, Tony.  Grandmother wants to know if you can’t go to the term of school that begins next week over at the sod schoolhouse.  She says there’s a good teacher, and you’d learn a lot.”

Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were stiff.  “I ain’t got time to learn.  I can work like mans now.  My mother can’t say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him.  I can work as much as him.  School is all right for little boys.  I help make this land one good farm.”

Chapter 17

Let me start by saying that we listened to the first half of this in the car on our holiday travels, but I could not make Jason listen to more.  He hated it.  He told me there was a good chance of him falling asleep while driving if we listened to more.  I had to agree that the audio wasn’t good.  The Bohemian accents were laughable to me and really ruined Antonia.  And it was fairly boring on the Nebraska farm.

Once home, I picked up the book and finished.  I am happy to report that it got better for me.  Jim, the narrator, who had crushed on Antonia since he was a boy on the farm moved to town with his grandparents and Antonia soon followed him, working at the house next door.  Their friendship had its ups and downs, but remained the dominant relationship in Jim’s life even decades later.

This is a great study of early Nebraska and the people who settled there, many foreigners who didn’t understand the land, the language, or the people. Foreigners like Antonia and her family.   Life working the land was hard and it could make people mean, but not Jim’s grandparents.  Jim went there to live with them after his mom and dad died back in Virginia and was blessed with a relatively easy life compared to some.

I thought this was alternately boring and interesting.  Just when something interesting would capture my interest it would be followed by pages of details that didn’t move the story along for me.  I think it’s a good study of one Nebraska farm girl’s life, but it may have been more compelling told from her point of view so that she was not just seen on the fringes of Jim’s life.

I would rate the first half/audio a 2 and the second half/paper a 3.5.  I read this for the states challenge and I do feel like I’ve been there.

This was from my personal library.

Finished 12-26-11, rating 2.75/5, romance, 186 pages, pub. 1977

Patty is a trick rider in the rodeo. She travels with her grandfather who helps her handle and train the six white horses Patty uses for her show.  The owner of the rodeo , Morgan Kincaid is overbearing and opinionated and clashes constantly with Patty.  The animosity is hiding a powerful attraction and Patty is the last to realize that not all fighting is bad. 

I rolled my eyes through the first half of the book, but once they arrived in Oklahoma and I learned a little more about the rodeo circuit and the history of Oklahoma I actually enjoyed the story.  Did you know that Oklahoma City is the only state capital with an oil well underneath?  Makes sense, but I didn’t know it.  So, it was melodramatic, but the small historical details made it tolerable.

Okay, this is the last of these small romances that I’ll be reading and complaining about, but I needed a romance and one from Oklahoma, and this one fit the bill.

I had this book in my personal library.

Finished audio 12-21-11, rating 3/5, romantic suspense, pub. 2009

Listened to the playaway narrated by Nick Podehl.  17 hours unabridged.

Lil and Cooper were best friends.  He spent his summers in South Dakota with grandparents and Lil was a local girl and the two of them managed to keep their friendship going through their early twenties.  At that point hormones and pride got in the way and they became distant.  A dozen years later Cooper has returned to South Dakota for good and Lil is there running her rescue habitat in the Black Hills.  It doesn’t take long for the two to reconnect, especially after a serial killer seems to have his eyes set on Lil.

I read Nora Roberts on occasion, in the almost 4 years I’ve had this blog this is the fourth Roberts’ book I’ve reviewed.  I usually like her stories but didn’t really care for this one.  There was no chemistry and the killer provided no mystery.  Lil was an okay character, but Chase wasn’t very charismatic.  They were kind of a boring couple.  It also could have been the 17 hours of listening that bored me.  I did like Lil’s rescue habitat.  I visited one we have in Ohio (post here) and think they are necessary places and labors of love, so that part of the story was interesting.