Random Cat October 2021

I have had a possible topic in mind for our October challenge for several months. After hearing former U. S. Marshal’s Director Stacia Hylton recount her experience as one of the two initial Incident Response Commanders at the World Trade Center I decided to go with it.

While Ms. Hylton praised all those working at the site she returned several times to the kindness of the people of NY City and how much their support meant through horrific days and nights. A local woman in the audience volunteered on the bucket line for 3 weeks and agreed the greetings, the food, the words of thanks helped sustain the volunteers through long physically and emotionally demanding hours.

So here’s our topic. For this challenge read a book that includes a character who gives. A volunteer, a neighbor, a person in a helping profession. It doesn’t matter what help they give or who they give it to. A small gift is as important as a big one. It can be giving to a family member, a neighbor, a stranger, the world. Below are a few examples:

Fiction

Beneath a Scarlet Sky BY Mark Sullivan
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
The Search by Nora Roberts
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

There are lots of cozy mysteries related to animal rescue and others like The Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs often include volunteering at community events.

Nonfiction

Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac
Epic Stories from Yosemite Search and Rescue by Charles Farabee
Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harlan
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

I think I will read A Leg To Stand On by Oliver Sacks, a memoir in which a doctor reflects on his experience of becoming the patient.

Starred...now to pick a book...

I think I'm going to read The Day the World Came to Town by Jim Defede about the planes that were force to land in Gander, Newfoundland after 9/11.

Oh, with the mention of animal rescue and volunteering, I'd like to recommend a "recent" Early Reviewers book I read:

Shelter: Lost & Found by R.A. Conroy

I'll have to figure out what I'll be reading...

I'm going to read Notes From the Firehouse by D.E. McCourt. I have several others on my TBR that will work so I'll read another one if I have time.

This is turning out to be a tough category for me because I have nothing with a relevant tag and any that I can think of, I've already read.

Only one comes to mind, the series The Cat Who by Lilian Jackson Braun whose main character inherited money and established a philanthropic organization dedicated to improving life in Moose County. If nothing else materializes, one of this series will be my choice.

What a great idea!
I think I will read God Remained Outside, written by General de Gaulle's niece, who was captured while working for the French Resistance and sent to Ravensbruck.
As soon as I read this prompt, I was thinking of WWII and those who worked to hide Jewish people or resist the Nazis in some way and often gave their lives.

>8 JayneCM: Popping in to suggest a book about a Dutch family hiding Jewish refugees: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.

>9 pamelad: That is a great one!
I would also recommend Life In A Jar: The Irena Sendler Project, an amazing story about a Polish social worker who saved thousands of Jewish children but whose story was virtually unknown until some high school students stumbled upon a reference to her. Really interesting, both her story and the story of how she was 'discovered'.

>7 VivienneR: I think Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries series featuring Sarah Brandt might qualify. Sarah is a midwife and sometimes works with or helps the lower classes.

>7 VivienneR: I've read several books in The Cat Who series, and enjoyed them.

>9 pamelad: oh, that's a good one!

I am going to read Over the Gate which features a teacher as the main character. Also the setting of a small English village where everyone spends time as a volunteer at one task or another qualifies this book.

>13 DeltaQueen50: I love the Miss Read books you refer to here. That is a good choice.

A big thank you to all your suggestions. You helped me on my search for the last hour (in my collection and at the library) but I find the difficulty is that it's hard to identify what is required without knowing the contents of the book. At last I remembered David Rosenfelt's mysteries that involve dog rescue, and Bark of Night looks promising.

Also found: The house of rooster happiness by David Casarett about a nurse ethicist in Thailand and A padre in France by George Birmingham about a padre (obviously) in WWI.

>15 VivienneR: I enjoyed Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness

>16 NinieB: That's good to hear. It's on the reading list now.

I'm going to read 60 Postcards by Rachael Chadwick. After losing her mother suddenly to cancer in 2012, the author decided to celebrate her mum's upcoming 60th birthday by going to Paris and leaving notes on postcards around the city with memories of her mum. As well as the memories she also included contact details and asked the people who found them to respond - this is the story of what happened when they did.

I think I'll try Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith. My local library is run by volunteers, so I think that's a fit.

I think I'm going to have to buy myself a copy of Kathryn Mannix's new book, Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations, which just came out :)

Also just requested What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, by Danielle Ofri, from the library.

I have completed my read of Over the Gate by Miss Read.

One of the things I enjoy about Random CAT is seeing suggestions as well as what everyone reads. I can count on my Wishlist growing every month!

I hope you enjoy your selection, I begin mine thonight!

I read Read All About It! by Laura Bush. This is a story about a teacher who reads to here students and some how the characters from the books visit the classroom. When the beloved pig goes missing, the children go off on a hunt to find it--in the library of course! I am sure I bought this book when I was involved with Children's Library Services in library school. The illustrations are hilarious! Full of little details that add to the story.

I read Bidding for the Bachelor by Jackie Lau, which starts with the protagonist participating in a bachelor auction to raise funds for a nonprofit.

I finished 60 Postcards by Rachael Chadwick, about the author's project to leave 60 postcards around Paris in memory of her mum who died a few months before her 60th birthday. I gave it 3*.

Leaving Lucy Pear / Anna Solomon
3 stars

In 1917, Bea leaves her newborn baby under a pear tree where she knows a family will find the baby. She assumes they will take her in and raise her, and they do. Ten years later, Lucy’s “adopted” mother Emma starts working for Bea, as a nurse to Bea’s uncle.

This was pretty slow. And vague at times as to what exactly was going on. I don’t think I particularly liked any of the characters – oh, I suppose I kind of liked Uncle Ira. I really didn’t care much about the characters, either, maybe because I didn’t like them very much? Initially, I thought I was enjoying the book, but I’m leaning more toward it being ok.

I have finished Murder in Grub Street which features blind Sir John Fielding as the magistrate of Bow Street Court who also founded quite a few philanthropic associations, for helping young offenders and what they called "fallen women" in his day.

I just read How to Walk Away by Katherine Center, in which one of the main characters is a physical therapist. I really enjoyed it and stayed up far too late to finish it!

I read two books for this challenge. One fiction, The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot, about a young girl, dying of cancer in a hospital, and the group of people, and a project, that fill her last days with meaning. The other book was non-fiction; Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped. Both were excellent.

I ended up rereading Plainsong by Kent Haruf which contains a few examples of kindness - a school teacher who helps a young pregnant girl and two old bachelors who take the young girl in and take care of her.

November thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/336000

Caroline helps

Lilac Girls / Martha Hall Kelly
3.75 stars

This follows three women during the time of WWII. Kasia was a young girl/woman in Poland who ended up in Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women where experiments were done on some of those women. Herta was a woman doctor who initially had trouble finding work, but took a job at Ravensbruck, initially not realizing what she was getting into. Caroline was a wealthy woman in the US involved somehow with orphaned children in France, and later with helping women who had survived Ravensbruck.

It took a while for me to get “into” the book. I was listening to the audio, so that may have contributed, but I did like both Kasia’s and Herta’s stories. All the stories skipped forward in time fairly quickly, and I would have liked for it not to skip so much time so fast, as I felt like things got missed.

I could have done without Caroline’s story altogether, and definitely without Paul (her married-to-someone-else French lover). He was creepy (though this may, in part, have been due to the woman’s voice narrating a man’s voice with a French accent – I’ve thought this before with a woman narrating a man’s voice with a French accent). In any case, I did not like Paul at all and found he and Caroline extremely boring. All her pining (and later his) just made me roll my eyes. Ugh! The only time Caroline’s POV was interesting to me was later in the book when she was more involved with Kasia’s story.

I also had never heard the term “rabbits” before when referring to women who had been experimented on. I looked it up part-way into the book (if it was addressed in the book, I missed it), and there is a reason that it referred only to these particular women and experiments. It is also addressed in the author’s note at the end.

Author’s note at the end: Herta and Caroline were real people (though Paul was made up). Kasia and her sister were also fictional but based on real sisters who had been imprisoned at Ravensbruck and who had been experimented on.

I read Judge Thee Not by Edith Maxwell, a Quaker Midwife Mystery. In addition to being the main midwife in Amesbury, MA, in the late 1880s, Rose Carroll is involved in helping a chief police detective in solving murders. In this novel she is aided by a very intelligent blind woman who has excellent hearing skills and works as an interpreter. Among the topics described in this book are prejudices against the blind and against lesbians. The murdered woman is wealthy and a philanthropist but poor at interpersonal relations, and disliked by many in the community. The mystery is more complex than many in the series.

I read Bark of Night by David Rosenfelt.
This legal mystery and courtroom drama features Andy Carpenter a lawyer who also rescues dogs. In this episode, Andy is consulted by Tara's vet after a healthy French bulldog has been brought in to be euthanized. Turns out Truman has a microchip showing the client who brought him in is not the owner. This becomes a much bigger issue when the real owner is found to have been murdered. Andy is hooked again. As well as a dependable plot, I love Rosenfelt's humour.

There is one particular woman on the outside who helped many of the people leaving (or forced out of) the FLDS I feel fits this.

When Men Become Gods / Stephen Singular
4 stars

This is a history of of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) – that is, the polygamous Mormons. It does give an entire history, but focuses on more recent events since Warren Jeffs took over as Prophet. Many women have left the FLDS in the past couple of decades due to all kinds of abuse; as well, many boys have been kicked out. The book was published in 2008, so it ends after Jeffs’ trial for accessory to rape (? something along those lines), with the main witness being Elissa Wall (who wrote “Stolen Innocence” about her life as part of the FLDS). She was the first person to bring charges against Jeffs.

I have read a lot about the FLDS already, so I’ve heard a lot of this. This one, though, gave me more insight into the behind-the-scenes investigating of Jeffs and investigating the issues with abuse (and money) within the community. As usual, when I end one of these books, I need to look up what is happening with Jeffs at the moment – he is still in jail, but he still has followers.

It's been suggested that RandomCAT could become RandomKIT in 2022. What do you think? Collecting opinions here.

>36 pamelad: CAT or KIT doesn't matter to me. I will participate either way.

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption / Jim Gorant
5 stars

This is (primarily) a look at the rescue and rehabilitation of Michael Vick’s fighting dogs.

It starts off heartbreaking as we get the background of the dogs as they were kept in Vick’s yard. And there is some discussion of the trial, etc, but moreso it follows the investigation into what happened and all the behind-the-scenes stuff as they gathered evidence against Vick and the other men who bred and fought these dogs.

But the bulk of the story follows (some of) the dogs after they are rescued. These dogs, unlike other fighting dogs before them, were not immediately euthanized, There were rescues that came to help with foster homes and sanctuaries to see if they could be rehabilitated and the vast majority of them were. Many found forever homes and some (as of the publishing of the book in 2010) were living in sanctuaries where volunteers continued to work with them. It was hard to read about one of the shelters that took some of them in right away – it’s a rough shelter with not much in the way of amenities.

There are sad parts thrown in as if it’s from one dog’s point of view, as well. Some of the work with the scared dogs reminded me of my volunteering with shy/scared cats, to be honest. The end of the book did a “where are they now?” for both the dogs and the people involved. Of course, “now” was around the time of publication over a decade ago. I realized that none of the dogs are probably living now.

I read a memoir, Notes from the Firehouse by D.E. McCourt. At the age of 29 McCourt joined the fire department in Melrose, Ma. He came from a family of firefighters, both his dad and his brother were firefighters too. Written after McCourt's retirement, we get seventeen stories told in a conversational style by a man who was dedicated, introspective and kind. McCourt doesn't rely on drama or action to entertain his readers, he just tells us what he experienced both in the firehouse and out. When I finished the last story, my first thought was that I wish I had known him.

>38 LibraryCin: that was a book that I might read again, it was that good. I do recall that only one one the dogs couldn't be rehabilitated.

>40 fuzzi: There was one right away that they decided wouldn't be rehabilitated. There were two early on who died in a shelter (they don't know why or how), and one by way of illness. There was one more... but I can't recall exactly what happened there.

I read No Time Like the Future this month. It was a memoir, but so much of the focus of the author was on those around who have helped him as his health challenges became more and more disruptive. It was an uplifting story and a tribute to those in his sphere.
I am also reading Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health by Leana Wen Again, this is a memoir focused on her life long passion for public health. I won't finish it for a couple days, but I'll count it here.

Just a general comment: In almost every book I read there are some characters that would definitely be considered helpers. What a wonderful world (fictional or real) where so many are willing to step in when needed.

For this challenge, I read The Cat Who Talked Turkey by Lillian Jackson Braun. Qwill is not only a philanthropist, but he is always giving of his time, helping neighbors.

Here is the link to the 2022 CAT poll. Please choose your favourite CATs, maximum 4.

https://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=617f6ec1e4b04db784c19635

Voting closes 4pm, Saturday, November 6th, Melbourne, Australia. That's 10 pm Friday in San Francisco.

2022 Planning Thread for RandomKit:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/336399

Thanks to all who participated! I hope everyone has a few more great reads in store before the year is over.