39. What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

listened on Libby

368 pgs.

2025
Adult CRF
Finished 8/19/25
Goodreads rating: 4.14
My rating: 4
Setting: late 1990s Montana

My comments: Jane/Esme, raised by her dad in the middle of the Montana woods, gives us her life story from her point of view, telling how she lived and grew up with her dad until she discovered what was really going on.  Is technology going to "get us" in the end?

Goodreads synopsis: 

A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation in this exhilarating novel of family, identity, and the power we have to shape our own destinies—from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear

The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence existence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Thoreau-like utopia.

As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother's San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling Internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.

27. Return to Sender by Craig Johnson

#21 Walt Longmire

listened on Libby - read by George Guidall

335 pgs.

2025
Adult mystery
Finished 6/19/25
Goodreads rating: 4.32
My rating: 4
Setting: contemporary Montana "red desert"

My comments: So many obstacles to overcome, but good ole Walt stays calm and figures out how to outsmart the bad guys over and over again.

Goodreads synopsis:  When Blair McGowan, the mail person with the longest postal route in the country of over three hundred mile a day, goes missing the question becomes—where do you look for her? The Postal Inspector for the State of Wyoming elicits Sheriff Longmire to mount an investigation into her disappearance and Walt does everything but mail it in; posing as a letter-carrier himself, the good sheriff follows her trail and finds himself enveloped in the intrigue of an otherworldly cult.

Packed to the brim with twists and turns, the 21st novel in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series pushes Walt to his absolute limits, forcing him to wrestle with the impossible What good are your morals, if you’re marked for the dead letter office?

15. The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Lusbuskes

listened on Audible (purchased)

464 pgs. (13:20)

2025
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 3/31/25
Goodreads rating: 4.17
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Early 20th century Montana

My comments: Three points of view:  1930s Millie, 1920s Alice, 1910s Colette, all coming together in the end.  The story is set in Montana in various small towns and cities.  It is Alice's vision to have a library in a boxcar that travels from lumber camps to mining sites throughout Montana.  Conditions are super hard for the working men, and "the company" is the royal ruler of all.  Colette's father is a miner and a union man. Alices's father is an extremely rich mayor and supporter of "the company."  Millie is an orphan from Texas who now works in Washington DC and comes to observe the group of people that are writing a travel summary for the government.  Once I began to easily tell the three women's voices apart the story became quite fascinating.

Goodreads synopsis:  Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana.

When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes. 

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to what happened to Colette Durand.

Inspired by the fascinating, true history of Missoula’s Boxcar Library, the novel blends the story of the strong, courageous women who survived and thrived in the rough and rowdy West with that of the power of standing together to fight for workers’ lives. And through it all shines the capacity of books to provide connection and light to those who need it most.

Movie - Power of the Dog

R (2:08)

Released 11/17, Streaming began on 12/1

Viewed probably early January at home, streamed for a short time on Netflix

IMBd: 7/10

RT Critic: 95   Audience:  82

Critic's Consensus:  Brought to life by a stellar ensemble led by Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers

Cag:  5 It was a great, even wonderful movie, but I didn't love it (see comments below)

Directed by Jane Campion

Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst

My comments:  Talk about a powerful movie!  Slow.  And dark, very dark.  There's no joy at all in this, but it's definitely a thinker!  At first I didn't think I liked it much, and my end feeling is similar.  But it's a GREAT movie.  So hard to rate when you don't really like what happens but it's put together in a spectacular package.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil's romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter -- all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form -- he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil's cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

This hits the nail on the head:  In The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s first feature since 2009’s Bright Star, two very different brothers come to blows about the best way to run their family’s ranch — and their lives — in 1920s Montana. Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) is greatly displeased when, during a cattle drive, his brother George (Jesse Plemons) becomes smitten with a widowed inn owner named Rose (Kirsten Dunst). She’s the mother of a sweet, gangly, effeminate young man, Peter (the extraordinary Kodi Smit-McPhee), and when she and George marry, Phil makes it his mission to bully and unsettle his new family members: Rose, because he thinks she’s after George’s money, and Peter because of his lisp and gentle ways.

This is a gorgeous, smoldering film with an all-star ensemble cast, anchored by Cumberbatch playing against type as the towering and quietly terrifying Phil. A haunting score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood leads the audience through the awesome tableaus of the American West (New Zealand, technically) and drip-feeds us with a mounting sense of isolation and dread. It’s a slow build, and for most of the time, I had no idea where this was all heading — which only made its shocking but well-earned ending all the more gratifying. —Shannon Keating

12. The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne

The Naturalist #1 (Biologist Prof. Theo Cray)
read on my iPhone/Kindle/Book/Audible
2017, Thomas & Mercer
382 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 1/24/18
Goodreads rating:  4.11 - 12,741 ratings
My rating:   3
Setting: Contemporary Montana

First line/s:  "The woods were wrong."

My comments: Professor Theo Cray is a brilliant scientist.  He's also an incredible bumblefuck.  He really cracks me up.  He does all sorts of illegal digging up and dancing around, but comes out smelling like a rose.  He uses his scientific expertise, ultra-computer savvy, and plain old hutzpa to find a serial killer that no one even realizes exists.  And no matter how many times he is hurt or wounded, he just keeps getting up and going like an energizer bunny.  This was a fun, though unbelievable, book to read.  There's going to be a second one coming out, and I'm sure I'll get a boot out of it, too.

Goodreads synopsis: Professor Theo Cray is trained to see patterns where others see chaos. So when mutilated bodies found deep in the Montana woods leave the cops searching blindly for clues, Theo sees something they missed. Something unnatural. Something only he can stop.
          As a computational biologist, Theo is more familiar with digital code and microbes than the dark arts of forensic sleuthing. But a field trip to Montana suddenly lands him in the middle of an investigation into the bloody killing of one of his former students. As more details, and bodies, come to light, the local cops determine that the killer is either a grizzly gone rogue… or Theo himself. Racing to stay one step ahead of the police, Theo must use his scientific acumen to uncover the killer. Will he be able to become as cunning as the predator he hunts—before he becomes its prey?

73. Die Trying by Lee Child

#2 Jack Reacher
listened to in the car - end of trip to PA and up to Maine, all in December, 2016
originally published in 1998
552 pgs. in Mass Market paperback
12 unabridged cds
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 12/26/16
Goodreads rating: - 4.0 - 67,368
My rating: 3
Setting: Chicago, then the wilds of northwestern Montana

First line/s: "Nathan Rubin died because he got brave."

My comments: I'm reading this series out of order, which works fine for me.  This is the second book in the series, and what I'm finding is that I like the more recent books better than the beginning titles.  This one was TOO detailed, too much information and explanation about guns, bullets, velocity, too much of the nitty gritty.  (If it were about cutting fabric for a quilt I'd probably feel differently).  It also seemed to go on forever and ever and ever...but no matter how impatient I get, these are great for listening to on a 8 hour plus drive!

Goodreads synopsis:  In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline. . . and a burning match. The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent. Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill.