Kate’s 2¢: “Miss Julia Delivers the Goods” by Ann B. Ross

“Miss Julia Delivers the Goods” by Ann B. Ross

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   This book was published in 2009 and, as I read it, I thought it wouldn’t be published today in 2021. I suspect it would be criticized by the Black Lives Matter movement. I see Lilian as a main-stay for Julia, kind of the voice of reason, rather than a stereotyping of a person of color.

   During the beginning of the story, I thought Julia’s stream of consciousness was annoying. Toward the end of the book, I came to realize the humor in her ramblings. I liked the book, but would classify it as a ‘chicklette’.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann B. Ross is the author of a series of New York Times bestsellers[1] set in her home state of North Carolina[2] that generally share a group of returning characters.[1] Comic by genre, the series features a central character, “Miss Julia,” whose name appears at the beginning of each title and from whose point of view the novels are written. She believes the universal truths are “that family and faith and doing what is right and proper make up the core of a healthy and happy life.”[2] However, “being well acquainted with the consequences of womanly submission,” by book two of the series, Miss Julia also believes that “a woman ought to take up for herself, if you ask me.”

   Ross completed an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1984,[3] while her children were also at university.[4] She earned a PhD in Old English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991.[5] In 2010 UNC-Asheville honored her as a “Distinguished Alumna” “for her notable career as a novelist.”[3] She has also been a teaching staff member there.

when Miss Julia just “came into her head.”[6] “For the first time in my life, I was no one’s daughter, niece, wife or mother. I was just Ann, and my identity came from my classroom performance alone. … It was absolutely liberating.”[2] A full-time writing career followed on from the success of her first Miss Julia book.”[7]

She is “the mother of two daughters and one son, and the grandmother of four grandsons (including twin boys) and two granddaughters, both of whom are her namesakes.”[4] One of her sons’ experiences working as a police officer in Atlanta inspired her to write a fictionalized version that she offered to a New York agent, but when the agency expressed interest she submitted her first Miss Julia novel instead.[8]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Miss Julia delivers the goods: a novel DB68898

Ross, Ann B. Reading time: 11 hours, 39 minutes.

Read by Mitzi Friedlander. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.

Humor

Human Relations

After breaking up with J.D. Pickens, Hazel Marie, the former mistress of Miss Julia’s late husband, discovers that she is expecting. While Miss Julia scrambles to reconcile Hazel Marie and J.D., someone breaks into the office of Miss Julia’s husband, lawyer Sam Murdoch, and steals his files. 2009.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Thin places: a natural history of healing and home” by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

“Thin places: a natural history of healing and home” by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

–Sacred places remain unmoved and and unchanged in their core

–Places where I feel hope like the beating of moth wings on my skin.

–I had no coping skills. I wouldn’t let people around me step in close to help. They wouldn’t understand how it would all fit together.

–In thin places, people say they feel being taken out of themselves; or nearer to God.

–We made our past and it has made us.

   I like listening to Gabriella Cavallero whenever she reads for NLS.

From the web:

ní Dochartaigh (born 1983) is a Northern Irish writer known for her nature writings.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh is the author of Thin Places. She has written for the Guardian, the Irish Times, the BBC, Winter Papers, and others. She is from the North West of Ireland but now lives in the middle, in an old railway cottage with her partner and dog.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Thin places: a natural history of healing and home DB108589

Dochartaigh, Kerri ní. Reading time: 8 hours, 39 minutes.

Read by Gabriella Cavallero.

Biography

“Both a celebration of the natural world and a memoir of one family’s experience during the Troubles, Thin Places is a gorgeous braid of “two strands, one wondrous and elemental, the other violent and unsettling, sustained by vividly descriptive prose” (The Guardian). Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sa

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