Early Days of the Year

Hi all. We are so saddened and sorry to see all the tragedy unfolding this past week in L.A. County, which is horrific and mind-blowing. Truly epic and awful. My brother evacuated from Pasadena on Tuesday night and thankfully he and his place are okay but so many others just a couple miles away are not. The wind that hit on Tuesday night was scary – hurricane-force winds and there was no way to control or do anything but run for your lives if you were in the line of fire. So much devastation has been left and I fear the number of dead will rise. I don’t know how it all started if it was from power lines, or a spark, or arson, but tragically it all got out of hand very quickly.

We have been staying in Orange County about an hour south of what’s going on in L.A. and were alarmed by the high winds. You can see the smoke from the L.A. fires in this sunset picture (above) I took last night. Let’s just hope the winds will stop so the firefighters can get this under control. It’s been a daunting event and I’m thinking of all those affected. I hope that Jinjer at the blog The Intrepid Angeleno is all right and others who blog from Southern California are too. It’s like a war zone around the L.A. area. For some much-needed levity, I will add this photo of the dogs, which my husband took around Christmas, to keep hope alive.

Now today we are headed back home on our long road trip north — sort of with a heavy heart — but thankful for the holiday times we’ve had here and seeing my dad and brother, who are both okay. I hope you all are well and I will leave you with a couple reviews of books that I finished at the end of 2024.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice / ECW / 224 pages / 2018

3.6 stars. When power and communication go out in an indigenous community in northern Ontario, the band’s council tries to figure out what is happening and how to provide heat and food during the long harsh winter for as long as they can. The story follows Evan Whitesky and his family who does his best to help others in the community, which finds out there’s been a collapse in the cities down south.

Then a white straggler arrives from the south who they don’t know whether to trust and supplies start to run low. You have to wait till the end to see how the reckoning plays out. But the perspective of such a power communication outage on an indigenous community — that seems a bit better adapted to band together and survive off the land — makes the story a bit more interesting, and you root for Evan and his wife Nicole and their small hamlet to get by.

I sort of promised myself post-election that I wouldn’t read apocalyptic societal collapse kinds of novels, but I had been curious about this Canadian novel beforehand and it pulled me in. It’s a bit of a quietly told story full of a cold, snowed in landscape, which looms large in it. The ending is a bit open and not fully drawn, so it was a ripe for a sequel, which came out this past October. I will get to it.

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham / 688 pages / 1915

4+ stars. I read the first 50 percent of this novel as an ebook in October and set it down then picked it up again and read the last 50 percent in December. This classic is a coming-of-age kind of tale about British protagonist Philip Carey and his early life history that seemed a bit like David Copperfield in how he faces many ups and downs from adolescence to adulthood and different places, people, and adversities. Philip is certainly tested along the way.

He’s an orphan (after his parent die early) with a clubfoot who’s raised by his loveless uncle, the Vicar, and aunt. He is very self-conscious about his clubfoot and walking with a limp and it seems to affect much of his life. Philip sets off to find his calling in life which takes many stops and starts along the way, from trying for the priesthood, then as an accountant, then as an artist in Paris, then back to England and training to be a doctor and then running out of money and working in a shop and becoming a clothes designer for a while.

And there’s also pale-faced Mildred, you won’t forget her. The saga of Philip meeting Mildred, a waitress at a cafe, and falling for her goes on endlessly. Mildred takes advantage of poor Philip and his cash a number of times but still he’s obsessed with his love for her. (But she not so much.) Oh the sorry choices he makes. He can’t seem to shake his life of her, but eventually things happen to propel him. It seems Philip has to hit rock bottom to eventually be able to rise again.

It’s a long tale that felt like quicksand at some points and I was swimming around in it for a long while. Still I needed to see it through — and to know what becomes of Philip and his journey to solvency and hopeful redemption. Along the way, Philip’s thoughts about the human condition from religion to work, art, and love make it a worthwhile exploration, which you go through with him. Though a bit exhausted by the novel, I was elated to have finished, and the ending seems a bit happy in outlook.

At the end Philip is only 30 years old — what a long journey to that point. You sort of wonder if a sequel was ever considered, but I guess not. Apparently the tale is autobiographical to the author Somerset Maugham’s life — who was raised by his uncle and aunt and trained later as a doctor. He had a stammer instead of a clubfoot that surely affected his life.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think? Stay well everyone!