Missive #623 Published 27 December 2025

The review that I have copied was written soon after the book was published in French. It has subsequently been published in 21 other languages but not in English. The author of the review "protests too much" in my opinion and I think that is one of the reasons it has not been translated into English. The Google translation that I read was poor but I think Todd made good points.

Missive #620 Published 24 December 2025

This is the forth book in the series with one more to read. This one is far and away more a chick book than the previous three. Very little military action or suspense and more bodice ripping. I'll read the last book in the series and then move on to the author's Wild Country series and hope that she moves toward more suspense.

Missive #619 Published 22 December 2025

This is a very interesting book. It might be a bit over the top with some of the medical and scientific terminology but is readable. Much like with the COVID jab you need not follow the science regarding saturated fats just follow the money.

Missive #616 Published 17 December 2025

Keillor leads here from his strength—humor based on a true grip on the real—in this epic of Lake Wobegon, the imaginary small Minnesota town celebrated in Keillor's weekly monologues on "Prairie Home Companion," his show on Public Radio. Keillor's fans will grab it, but word should get out to people who never heard of him: like Mark Twain, Keillor is a highly sophisticated teller of tales (his stories have appeared in The New Yorker) who gets to the essence of everyday America. There are some belly laughs in "Wobegon," many chuckles—and always the pleasure of recognition. The book casually mixes autobiographical stretches with stories about the inhabitants of the town that can't be found on the Minnesota map, along with its history and mores.

Missive #615 Published 15 December 2025

Author Gene Logsdon—whom Wendell Berry once called “the most experienced and best observer of agriculture we have”—has a notion: That it is a little easier for gardeners and farmers to accept death than the rest of the populace. Why? Because every day, farmers and gardeners help plants and animals begin life and help plants and animals end life. They are intimately attuned to the food chain. They understand how all living things are seated around a dining table, eating while being eaten. They realize that all of nature is in flux.
Gene Everlasting contains Logsdon’s reflections, by turns both humorous and heart-wrenching, on nature, death, and eternity, all from a contrary farmer’s perspective. He recounts joys and tragedies from his childhood in the 1930s and ‘40s spent on an Ohio farm, through adulthood and child-raising, all the way up to his recent bout with cancer, always with an eye toward the lessons that farming has taught him about life and its mysteries.