I can’t recall getting the highest Excellence rating — but always got Gold, the second highest.
Worst was the … PARTICIPATION ribbon. 😀
Unsurprisingly, it was finally cancelled due to being “discouraging to those who needed the most encouragement“. And sometimes resulted in “destructive eating and exercise practices” by the least fit.
I’m always leery of awards programs for kids. At many Gymnastics Clubs I tried to discontinue the annual “awards” night.
These memories came back after listening to Canada’s greatest comedian talking about how traumatized he was by the annual humiliation. Rick Mercer couldn’t do the flex arm hang.
As an adult Rick become surprisingly fit, trying many different sports for his TV shows.
I’ve read them all — and now have to wait at least a year for the next to arrive.
My favourite character is Henry Meloux, the Ojibwe healer who is well over 100-years-old.
Each book, we fear might be his last.
Fox Creek follows Henry non-stop for the first half of the book — so is excellent.
The second half tries to wind-up the mystery. And is less good.
Too convoluted. Too many characters.
Krueger:
“It’s really Henry’s book, although he is not the one speaking,” Krueger said in a recent interview.
… The last contemporary novel in 2019 left Henry in a precarious situation. Both he and Stephen had envisioned his death. I had to think about what I would do with that.”
Krueger said this book needed to focus on Henry, but he had never told a story from Henry’s perspective. To do that, Krueger uses other characters to unfold the mystery and describe their connections to Henry. …
As a person of wealth and power, Rowling’s inevitably punching down when she engages with critics.
Rowling does a lot of charity work. Is a good person. And should simply stay quiet online — like MacKenzie Scott.
As a big fan of Rowling’s books, this one wastes too much time describing the good and bad of online fandom. Not enough on the painful but entertaining relationship between lovely Robin Ellacott and gruff, unlovable Cormoran Strike.
My best guess is that her mind was not on Robin & Cormoran while writing — but on personal grievance.
And after all this — I still don’t understand her position on those few individuals (0.1% to 0.6% of the population) born with gender identity or gender expression that does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth.
Personally, I don’t care if you are trans, from Transylvania, or choose to medically transition to another sex.
Everyone should have equal opportunity.
OF COURSE when it comes to what sport to play there should be rules. And each sport should set those to be as fair as possible to all participants.
I’m no particular tennis fan, but this book did keep me going.
“The Bitch Is Back,” one of Carrie’s anthems.
It’s simplistically written. Something like a Young Adult novel.
But the pace makes for good storytelling. I do recommend it.
Carrie Soto is the best tennis player in the world, and she knows it. Her father, Javier, is a former tennis champion himself, and he’s dedicated his life to coaching her. By the time she retires in 1989, she holds the record for winning 20 Grand Slam singles titles.
But then, in 1994, Nicki Chan comes along. Nicki is on the verge of breaking Carrie’s record, and Carrie decides she can’t let that happen: She’s coming out of retirement, with her father coaching her, to defend her record…and her reputation.
Kirkus Review
Themes of how women in sport are treated — compared with men.
It tracks the adventures of 12-year-old Odysseus “Odie” O’Bannion, his older brother Albert, and two of their friends after they flee the brutality of the (fictional) Lincoln residential Indian School, and travel by canoe down the (fictional) Gilead, Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in hopes of reuniting with their aunt in St. Louis.
At random I downloaded Nora Roberts’ 2020 novel Hideaway.
Wow.
A sprawling multi-generational family drama. Fast paced from the very start
It really reminded me of the entertaining story telling of Jeffrey Archer.
Good vs evil. Compelling and interesting characters.
If this is a romance novel, I’m good with them. The romance makes up perhaps 5%.
In this book, 9-year-old Caitlyn Sullivan is kidnapped from the family home in Big Sur, California. Coming from a long line of Hollywood royalty, they want MONEY.
Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors. Dillon Cooper was shocked to find the bloodied, exhausted girl huddled in his house―
But the one poem that stuck for all these decades is “If—“ by English writer and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), written circa 1895 …
… written in the form of paternal advice to the poet’s son, John.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rick McCharles 