This has a long blurb on Amazon so I suggest you take a look at it.
There are so many issues that we currently face but were surely worse back in 1933. Especially dealt with is how the disabled can live if worked with or can suffer through bullying.
As I’ve mentioned before I love the Maisie Dobbs series. Each book hold a wealth of information in history and psychology as well as a great mystery or two to solve in the process.
Again, I have to praise the writing of Jacqueline Winspear and the talented narration Orlagh Cassidy make these books the best entertainment and bedtime reading.
I feel blessed to have found the series on Libby. If you get the chance, give the series a try! Thank you, Kay for suggesting these.
Don’t get me wrong. This book was good. But I HATE cliffhangers. I forgave book one. But this one was way worse. The world is a mess right now. I don’t need the angst. I am quitting on this series. If you are rich enough to get all the series, enjoy. Luckily, enough of the answers are given in the blurbs, so you don’t have to continue buying to find out if it works out. But NO book is worth this nervous energy,
Still, I raised the star rating to two stars because the writing was well done. And the narrator, Elise Arsenault, did a marvelous job of acting out the characters.
Trigger warnings are all over, from rape and abuse at the top of the list. But I don’t feel the character who is supposed to help is helpful in the long run. So, read at your own risk.
Reaching to the bottom of my currently-reading shelf I found this at 79.
Look straight up, I will warn you. The main character is blind and experiences a rape. So you will have to decide for yourself if this is something you can handle. The author covers the situation with all her senses, as she does with the rest of the book. Though I didn’t like the rape, the next bits of the story are quite interesting.
Elise Arsenault narrated the Audible version I listened to. Her voice is a great addition to the story.
Now I have to say what I didn’t like. Say it with me? Cliffhanger! The worst! Good thing it happened at night with me awake enough to want to read more. I often don’t buy the next if that’s how the authors do it. Somehow, I moved on and am reading book two. But I feel violated when an author does that!
Still, I do like the main character and how she chooses to live her life. And I do want to read more.
Oh, my goodness! This book was fun from the very beginning. My eyes have difficulties tracking to read; even since cataract surgery fixed a lot of my issues, tracking remains nearly impossible. I have been an avid reader since I was little. Reading was slow going, but I got through the ten books allotted by the library every three weeks. The heft of the books was unwieldy, but I didn’t ask for help.
So, I began reading this book on my old phone using the Kindle app. It took me quite a while to get through even half the book. Finally, I caught up with the Libby audiobooks I had checked out, and Piglet became my bedtime book. Now, I could use text-to-speech and speed up the reading quite a bit. And give my eyes a rest.
Another reason I got into this book is my own dog, Kali, passed last spring after being nearly blind and having doggy dementia and bad hearing. It was so hard at the end of her life, but we had such a hard time from the beginning trying to learn from each other that the bond for her was strong in the end. I miss her so much and feel the need to help another dog as soon as I can. Meanwhile, Piglet helped me. Now I feel even stronger about getting another dog. I know there is one out there that needs me as much as I need him or her.
I think this book has a couple of other inspirational stories within. Melissa Shapiro is a veterinarian who tells her story of how she and her husband got together. Then, she shares her children’s aspirations with music. She tells of their college experiences.
By the way, one of her daughters and her husband have honest and raving reviews on the Piglet GoodReads page. I was delighted to read these as I felt I knew them from the book.
This book is full of the good feels a person needs these days. I look forward to looking all over the internet to find videos and follow the dogs, Melissa, and her family, and all the good they are doing for disabled people and animals.
When I feel I am floundering, I need to remember the floundering Ms. Shapiro and her husband went through with that one-pound blind, deaf puppy screaming his needs to them. Floundering is how one finds one’s balance. That is what February gives me. Meanwhile, today my turtles got a little more colorful.
Many reviews about this book are high, some are low ratings. It’s her life. I don’t think it is up to me to judge it. Her life is far different than mine. Yet, I found a deep dive into another life, another memoir gave me insight into writing my own.
Until I saw Selma Blair on the View, I think it was, I had only heard the name and couldn’t put a face with the name. Not too uncommon for me with anyone. Her movies weren’t my type of movie. But I have known friends and loved ones that had MS. It is such a horrifying disease. I was curious to see how this person handled it.
If you like autobiographies, memoirs, this is for you. If you don’t, you might move forward to another read. Ms. Blair gets personal and honest about many aspects of her life. I found the writing well done. And her voice is actively involved; honest tears are felt when she reads the parts most vulnerable.
Since her life always included pain and depression, it is spelled out quite often. If that is triggering for you, this might not be the read for you. It does help to see how someone else worked through her own darkness. I think it was worth the read.
My friend wrote a lovely review of this book. I went to Amazon and saw the Kindle version was only $.99, so I picked it up. Today I found myself in need of a distraction. We were on a bus on the way to the ophthalmologist. Though the drive isn’t as bad for me as it used to be, this bus was killing me. This bus enhanced every bump in the road. So I went looking for a distraction. Since I didn’t have Kindle downloaded on my phone, I found my music on Spotify to get me by. I downloaded the Kindle at the next wifi spot so I would have something to read on the way home.
I found listening difficult with the bus noise, so I hoped reading would work for my newly decataracted eyes. Guess what? I read a whole book without text-to-speech or Audible! Okay, it isn’t very long. I finished it on the way home (less than two hours).
So I got to go to the land of dragons. I assume it was Japan. The main character was being married off for family prestige in the way it used to be, and let’s hope not coming back around. But will Fangying’s disabilities hold her back? Will her new husband beat her?
The story is gracefully told. I found it just what I needed for the painful drive. And I am so happy to have read, with my eyes, a whole book! Fantastic magic and dragons, too!
I have been doing chair-yoga for a while. It is one of the things I do to help become healthier in spite of the pain. One of the YouTube tutorials I follow features the authors of this book. Cara, Sarah, and Bronwen. As they are introduced I tried to decide who was who. Here is the link to the lesson:
Now what I had thought was the one in the middle and the one on the right of the screen looked like sisters. Then I thought they might be twins. Thereby I named them Cara and Sarah. The one on the left didn’t look related so I figured she was Bronwen. I went online to see if I could find these teachers’ pictures. Nothing that helped my curiosity. But then I discovered their book. With fibromyalgia and arthritis competing for my full attention, I thought maybe I could find something that would help me become healthier and have less pain. I found the Kindle version was cheaper so bought it. I would suggest if you have the money get the paper book as it is a workbook with pages to fill out as you move along.
The workbook idea is a good one to help you realize your points of pain increases and decreases. It helps you see how your mind can steer you to better health. And even more important how you can help others to see what you are going through and how they can help you. People caught in chronic pain cycles find themselves bullied in every direction.
As it happened I was in the middle of a flare and reading this by text-to-speech helped me reflect on my pain and my methods of relief. I don’t take many drugs for it as I found they made me sicker. The occasional Advil and CBD for sleep. The rest of the time I use distraction therapy. Keep my mind working on interesting projects.
I will be picking up this book again in the near future to do the exercises and journal what I learn as I go. Thank you for the tutorials and this book to all of you involved in it.
I finished this ages ago. Mid-summer, I think. I still remember liking it. Though I have no sisters, I felt I could relate to both of the sisters’ points of view. As the oldest of three siblings, I had to be the responsible one taking care of the younger brothers, who were often caused their share of problems. On the other hand, I felt like the other sister in that music notes, words on paper, even how I hear words seem to be colored or animated or textured in some way that I know isn’t how normal people see/hear things. I’ve never been diagnosed as it never was a problem. It just added layers to my understanding of the world. So I quickly identified with both sisters.
It was fun that the more disabled of the sisters starts the adventure for both of them. It is unnerving for the reader to think that the one considered blind leads the way to hop the train.
For me, as I ‘read’ using text-to-speech, it was hard to know whose view I was seeing. I soon learned to take the time and read the chapter titles as that helped. After I got to know each of the characters, I didn’t need the reference so much. The characters were well developed.
The way the trip brings to mind the siblings history gave meat to what could have been just a joy-ride.
I don’t want to give any spoilers so I will just say, this is a fun book that I think many should read and enjoy.
Though this book is about felting, it is more about wet-felting. And though there is a bit of needle felting and some ideas for what to do with defective or broken needles, it wasn’t enough for me and my need to learn about needle felting.
Another cool thing about this book is that it is for parents or teachers/counselors of children with disabilities. I can see how the wet felting could be fun and how it could be a great bonding experience for everyone. And the squishing wonderful feeling of wet felting has to be a lot of fun. Maybe as good as making slime, but you get to keep the item you make, not just clean it up.
But for me, it is getting cold and I just don’t have the room that is warm enough to do wet felting. Maybe next summer I will revisit this book and this part of the craft of felting.
I want to thank NetGalley for letting me read this book. It did keep my interest.
That said, when you read like I do, using text-to-speech almost exclusively, books like this leave me feeling lost. I feel I may have missed the important sentences as to who-done-it and why. There were a lot of characters and they all sound the same, the writing style of the narrative is the same in the dialogue. That may not mean too much when visually engaged with the story, but I often didn’t know which characters thoughts/memories I was in.
This was an ARC or early read copy so by the time others will read it these other problems may be fixed: Between sections, there is a line ___. Often that stops the TTS. And often the name of the person who is starring in the next section is totally left out with TTS. I assume these are formatting issues that will be solved and others who get to read this with their eyes will be able to stay with the story and find it all pulls together.
Using the thoughts of one who seems autistic or in other ways a little different than the norm, was a nice tool. I found the character Cameron to be very interesting. Others I found harder to understand. Maybe that says more about me than the characters being portrayed?
At any rate, I think others may find this book to be very good. I loved to see your comments. I may have to come back to this book and read again to see if I can find where I turned left when the writer turned right. ???
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Where ancient wisdom meets modern technology. Stories that illuminate the wonders of science, culture, and life — crafted with human creativity and a touch of AI magic.
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