Lacking my reading motivation?

 

I really can't believe that I only read three books last month. What happened here? I don't know! Anyway...

1) Unsaid by Neil Abrahamson was a book club choice. The novel was published in 2012. I'm not an animal person, so I wasn't as taken with it as some of our members, but it did have some interesting moments. This debut novel was about a man whose wife had died leaving him with all her many animals. The woman, Helena, had been a veterinarian and had been involved in research with a chimpanzee named Cindy. Cindy had been trained to communicate using sign language. Soon following Helena's death, funding was pulled for the research and Cindy was to be returned to regular animal research which likely would lead to her death. As Helena looks on from death, she was haunted by all the animals who she had helped died. As her husband David, a lawyer, learned more and more about Helena's life, he became determined to help Cindy not be sent away for animal research. The courtroom scenes brought out more and more about Helena's life and some rather explosive news.

2) Dead Cold by Louise Penny is the 2nd of the Three Pines series (for some reason it is also called A Fatal Grace). At first, I had a bit of trouble getting into the book, but as I settled somewhat, it was quite entertaining. In this book, an unpopular woman was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake while watching a curling match and no one there saw how it happened. There emerged several suspects, but Chief Inspector Gamache had his work cut out for him to solve this one! It was a fun read.

3) Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward was the last book that I read in November. This is a rather difficult book to describe. It is about Annis, a young black slave, who was taken from the Carolinas and marched to New Orleans. Throughout the story, Annis calls to her mother and grandmother, recalling and seeking their wisdom and strength to get her through her ordeal. The book is somewhat mystical, but certainly moving.

October Reads

 

I can't believe how far behind I am on my postings.  Here it is almost December, and I haven't posted what I read in October! I am going to make this a very short post.

I really liked all four of these books.  Susan Meissner is becoming a favorite author for me. Surviving Savannah was quite an interesting historical fiction read. Secrets of the Lighthouse was good, also.   My favorite read in October was In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn. It is written well and tells the story of the aftermath of a terrible winter accident. I was quite taken with it and have talked to several others who loved it as well!

The Invisible Hour

 

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman. Oh, how I love Alice Hoffman's books! She

can write and create magic so effortlessly (or it seems to me). She took the book,

The Scarlett Letter, and turned it into a magical book of her own!

One day Mia Jacob’s mother, Ivy, took her young daughter Mia and ran away to join The Community, a local cult out in the country. There Ivy soon married the cult leader and became totally under his control. The Community had many, many rules, including that books were not allowed. The Community ran a farmer’s market in the local town and when Mia was old enough to work at it, her mother took her to the local Library, where the public restrooms were. Ivy was overcome with all the stacks of books, and soon her mother allowed her to go in there on farmer market days. The librarian began to help Ivy find books that she would enjoy. 

Mia fell in love with the book, The Scarlett Letter. One day she stole it from the library and hid it in a secret panel in the barn where she could have access to it whenever she wanted. Ivy felt that the two-hundred-year-old book captured what she and her mother’s lives had become. She had never read any book that resounded so much with her. And she fell in love with the words and the author.

It's hard to write more about the book, because I don't want to give anything away. However, the local librarian and her partner eventually helped Mia get away from the cult and have her own life. She also met Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Now that should peak your interest!)

Reading in September

September was a good reading month for me! Probably because I was in a wheelchair the whole month. But that's another story, Here's what I read:

1) The River That We Remember by William Kent Krueger. This book is not part of the Cork O'Connor series. Still, it is a mystery in Minnesota, reminiscent of the series, involving the local sheriff, some Native Americans, and a murder. A wealthy landowner was found dead in the river that ran through the town and with his murder and the investigation, many long-buried secrets arose. It was a good read.

2) A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne. Another good book by the author. He is so talented. Interestingly, this novel was about a want-to-be writer, Maurice Swift, who sought out people's life stories and secrets and then published them without their knowledge. He wasn't an especially good writer but his first book was a story that he got from an older man who was a well-known author and whom Maurice befriended for his own benefit. The story was about the older man's time during WWII. What the book revealed ruined the older author's career.

Maurice continued his writing over the years but never achieved the accolades he was looking for.  However, in the end, his ruthlessness and immoral activities were his downfall. The book ended perfectly!

3) The Exiles by Jane Harper.  This is another mystery set in Australia with Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk (the 3rd of a series). A young mother had disappeared a year earlier at the town's festival, leaving her baby alone in the stroller. She just disappeared into the crowd and had never been heard from or seen since. This story involved old friends and long-ago secrets.

4) When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.  I was a bit disappointed with this book. Although It was an interesting story, it just seemed to go on too long. It is a true story of Dr. Paul Kalanithi who, when he was thirty-six, was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer. the book is about the struggle to handle all that the diagnosis meant for his life and his upcoming loss of life. He studied many questions about his future and that of his family. And what it meant to be a doctor and then a patient. He died before finishing the book.

5) A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner. this is the first book of the author's that I have read. I kept reading good things about her books, so I bought this one at the used book store. I loved it! I will be buying more of her work.

This is rather a difficult book for me to explain. It takes place in two different timelines, one being in September 1911, and the other in September 2011. The story involves a scarf that found it's way to both time periods. And changed lives forever. It's a good read!

6) Blood in the Ozarks by Clint Lacey. This was a book that I purchased for genealogy as I continue my years and years researching my Adamson and related people who served in the CSA during the Civil War. It's an interesting history of the War that was fought in the Ozarks.

7) Still Life by Louise Penny. This  and the first of the book is our October read for bookgroup. It also is a mystery and the first of the Chief Inspector Gamash series.  Gamash was called in to investigate a murder of a beloved town member in Three Pines, a small village south of Montreal. There are numerous characters in the book, one as quirky as another. Her murder is first thought to be a hunting accident, but as the Inspector and his team investigate, clues begin adding up.to something more sinister. It was quite a fun read!

My Books

 I read five books in August but did not read any non-fiction in August. Two of the books I had seen recommended online and I was glad that I read them! I had never heard of them before.

1) The Lake House by Kate Morton. This is an older book by the author, written in 2015. It's an entertaining mystery!

The story takes place in Cornwall. Detective Sadie Sparrow was "on leave" from her job, following a rather unprofessional friendship that she had formed with a family. She went to her grandfather's cottage to spend some time and reconsider/reflect on her recent activities. One day, she went for a long walk and came upon an abandoned country home. The detective in her began researching to learn more about the estate. She learned that the Edevane family had lived there and that seventy years ago, in 1933, a baby boy had disappeared from the home. The family that had lived there left the home after the baby's disappearance and never returned. The case of the missing baby was never solved.

Soon Sadie was able to contact and connect with author Alice Edevane, who was sixteen years old when her baby brother disappeared.  Alice was an eighty-three-year-old bestselling author of detective books, who didn't seem too interested in helping Sadie....there were too many secrets involved.

This was quite a good, easy-to-read mystery! I liked it!

2) Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon. So, it turned out that I had read this a few years ago! But I read it again, and enjoyed it more this time!

This novel is set in 1853 and tells the story of the May family traveling the Oregon Trail. Daughter Naomi May had been widowed when she was only twenty years old. She and her parents and siblings left with other families from St. Joseph, Missouri to move out West. Before leaving St. Joseph, Naomi met John Lowry. It turned out that John, a half Pawnee was the guide for the wagon train. Naomi and John had an instant connection which they both tried to fight before giving in.

The journey was difficult, and fraught with uncertainty as the families encountered the hardships and deaths that occurred. Just as John and Naomi were preparing to marry while on their journey, an unspeakable tragedy happened and Naomi was separated from all she loved, including John.

This novel is a good story. It kept my interest all the way through.

3) The All of It by Jeannette Haien. This is a novel that I read about online. It was written in 2011, a small book that I read in one day. This was Ms. Haien's first novel. It seemed to be a small simple book, but there really is so much more to it.

The story takes place in a small Irish village. Kevin Dennehy was dying and the parish priest was at his bedside when Kevin declared that he and his wife were living a lie and he needed to confess it. But Kevin then died before he could tell Father Declan.  So Kevin's wife, Enda shared the story of their fifty years together as husband and wife, finally telling "The all of it."

Father Declan is left trying to sort out the morality of it all. I really loved this book, and is one I would recommend to my book group. 

4) The Touch by Colleen McCullough. I had never heard of this book by the author of The Thornbirds until I saw it written about online.  This novel was written in 2004 and takes place in Australia.

Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond was living with her family in Scotland when her forty-year-old cousin, Alexander Kinross, living in Australia, wrote to his uncle, asking for one of his daughters to be his wife. Alexander had left Scotland when he was a young man in some trouble. From his letter, the Drummond family realized that Alexander was quite wealthy and Elizabeth's father promised her to Alexander and sent her off to Sydney.

When Elizabeth finally arrived she found that she did not care for Alexander...she was rather scared of him. However, she was all alone there and so went through with the marriage. It remained a loveless marriage. Eventually, Elizabeth learned of and met Alexander's long-time mistress, Ruby, and, strangely enough, Elizabeth and Ruby became close friends. Ruby had a son, Lee, who Alexander had always been very fond of and he helped Ruby with financing Lee's formal education in London.

There is a lot to the story and it is similar to The Thornbirds in many ways with the different characters and family saga. I was glad that I read it!

5) The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman. Will review it in my next post!

July Reads

 

July has come and gone, and it's almost the end of August! I enjoyed most of my reading in July. Please notice that two of the books were non-fiction! That's a plus for me! And I'll start with those:

1) After This: When Life is Over Where Do We Go? by Claire Bidwell: Ms. Bidwell is a therapist who counsels clients dealing with grief issues. Of course, like everyone, clients wonder what happens after a loved one dies.  Will we see them again? Can we communicate with them? In her search for answers, Ms. Bidwell personally examined all the different ways that some believe will give them answers. She underwent past-life regressions, talked to psychics, and to spiritual leaders. I found the book somewhat interesting, but was tired of it by the end!

2) Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius: This was such an interesting book! It was published 10 years ago and is the true story of the author. In 1988, the author was twelve years old, living in South Africa, when he developed a sore throat and from that point, became increasingly unwell, so that after eighteen months he could not speak and had lost control of his body.  He was given two years to live.  He was initially placed in a special-ed setting at school and was later moved to a care setting for his daily routine. He remained living at home with his parents. When Martin was around nineteen, one of his caregivers noticed that he seemed to react to certain things. She believed that Martin was "still in there". 

By the time Martin was twenty-five, he was sent for testing at the University of Pretoria and they confirmed that he was aware and could respond in his own way. At that point, his parents got a computer with software that would allow him to communicate. His life took off after that.

Side note: Martin had been misdiagnosed in the beginning. He has since been diagnosed with Locked-In Syndrome.

3) Take My Hand by Dolen Perez-Valdez: another interesting book, this is a novel based on true events. In 1973 Montgomery, Alabama a young nursing graduate (Civil) began working in the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. She was optimistically certain that she could make a difference in the Black community where she had grown up. She is stunned to learn that she was to provide birth control to sisters who were eleven and thirteen. The sisters lived in poverty with their grandmother and father out in the country. The younger sister had not even started her period yet. However, the welfare system determined that they should be on birth control. Civil became attached to the family and tried her best to help them better their lives.  But soon a horrible event occurred and Civil's career as a nurse ended.

The novel begins and ends with Civil looking back at the case and doing an "apology tour" as she begins her retirement. A very good and important book!

4) Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese: This was a disappointing book for me. I had been looking forward to reading it for a long time, and after I read half of it, I quit. It was a DNF (did not finish) for me. I just did not find myself interested in the story of Hester and Nataniel Hawthorne. And that is about all I can tell you!

5) However, I saved the best for last. I read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: Now it is at the top of my 2023 favorites of the year! This novel takes place in Kerala, South India from 1900 to 1977. It tells the story of one family over three generations. The family does not know why, but at least one person in each generation drowns. It begins with a young girl (twelve years old) being sent far away on a boat following the death of her father to marry a forty-year-old widow.  Her new husband will not go near water because of the family's history of drownings. And that is how the story begins. The young girl became the matriarch of the family over the years.

This is one of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read. Truly just stunning.

What I read in June

 

I read the two Pulitzer Prize winning books in June, so that was something! Also, I read three non-fiction books! And a book for my book group and then one more fiction. I'm pretty proud of myself!

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver was by far my favorite book that I read last month. It's loosely considered a modern take on David Copperhead. It would be kind of hard to believe that any readers do not know the premise of the book. Many have reported finding the book too depressing, I didn't. I was taken right away by both the characters and the writing.

Demon (real name Damian) was born into a quite dysfunctional, poverty-ridden single mother, and, luckily, had kind neighbors who watched over him as best they could. However, when his drug-addicted mother was found dead, Demon was placed into the foster care system and endured several years of one kind of abuse after another. Yet, he always (at least for the most part) rose above it. 

It is really a wonderful book and, in my opinion, deserved the Pulitzer Prize.

Trust by Hernan Diaz is the other book that won the Pulitzer Prize. It is written in a very unique fashion. The novel is divided into four "novels" written by different authors. However, by the end of the novel, everything has tied together. The first "novel" is "Bonds" about Benjamin and Helen Rask, a wealthy couple living in New York City in the 1920s.

the other "novels" are "My Life" by Andrew Bevel, "A Memoir, Remembered" by Ida Partenza, and "Futures" by Mildred Bevel.

The whole book is truly fascinating, and one that I will read again!

Foster by Claire Keegan was read for my book group. It's a very quick read-1 to 2 hours. The story took place in Ireland where a young girl was dropped off by her father to live with her mother's relatives, not knowing if she would return home or not. As soon as they arrive at the Kinsella's, the girl began to experience things she had never known. The couple were affectionate with her and slowly, she began to warm up to them. They bought her new clothes and did not expect her to work on the farm. The young girl would sometimes feel torn between her feelings for the two different families. The ending is not clear and offered up a good discussion for the book group as we shared how we felt the ending was.

Beautiful Eucharist and No Regrets were both books from Dynamic Catholic that I found great meaning in.

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly is the third book of a trilogy. The other two books were Lilac Girls and  Lost Roses. Sunflower Sisters is about three women caught up in the Civil War.  Georgeanna Woolsey was a nurse for the Union (when most nurses were male). she and her sister traveled to Gettysburg and worked with the doctors. There they met Jemma, an enslaved girl who had run from an abusive plantation. Anne-May was the mistress of that plantation who treated her slaves cruelly. All three lives end up intertwining at the end of the novel.

As the author's other books were, this novel is based on the Woolsey family history, and their story is incredibly told. I look forward to more of the author's writing. 

Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett is the last book that I read.  I had just finished it when I was out the next morning in the parking lot at Schnucks after a nice morning walk when a tendon in my foot ruptured. Needless to say, I haven't been able to be out walking or anything really physical since then. However, I did like the premise of the book and the ten habits that were spelled out. And after my foot recovers, I will get back into it!

May Reading

 

May's reading was good. I would rank three as my favorites for the month and the other three were good.

The Secret Book of Flora Lee by Patti Callahan Henry was my favorite, not just for the month, but also one of my favorites for the year.  It is a lovely story about two sisters and a book of stories that the older sister had written for the younger sister.  The younger sister tragically disappeared, seemingly in a flooded creek. Years later the older sister was working in a bookstore and a book with similar stories showed up. This novel is a very touching and well-written story.

Another favorite book read was Maureen by Rachel Joyce. Oddly enough, I was just perusing the bookstore and saw it.  I had no idea that there was another Harold Fry story out! This one is about Harold's wife Maureen, who still grieves for her son years later. She does not take a walking pilgrimage like Harold did, but she does get into the car and travels to see Queenie Hennesy's garden, hoping to "find" her son's spirit there. She, and the reader, was surprised at what she did find there.  It's a touching story to finish out the trilogy.

I also really like One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid. In her twenties, Emma Blair married her high school sweetheart and they traveled the world together. On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse left on a helicopter that went missing over the Pacific and was never found. Years later, Emma has finally let herself find love again with Sam and became engaged to him. And suddenly, Jesse was found alive. After years of being gone.  And he returned, expecting that he and Emma would return to their marriage and their old life. Thus is the conundrum. Can you love two men at the same time? What should Emma do? It was a good story.

I read two books by Pam Jenoff this past month and liked one, but the other left me wanting. I liked Code Name Sapphire. The story took place in 1942 when Hannah Martel's ship was turned away when she was trying to escape Germany and was headed to the United States. Hannah did not know of anyone who could go to until she recalled that her cousin, Lily, whom Hannah had spent summers with was living in Brussels. She contacted Lily and Lily took her into her home. Soon Hannah found a group working in the underground, called the Sapphire Line, who were taking people in danger to safety. One day Hannah used Lily's identification card and soon Lily, her husband, and her son were arrested and all were placed in Auschwitz. Hannah is torn between loyalties. This was a good book, based on true events. Ms. Jenoff does an excellent job at finding and researching her stories. The second book that I read by her was The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach. I had a hard time engaging with this story. It began in 1941 when Addie was sent to America by her parents to escape what was happening in Europe. She went to her aunt and uncle and at their beach house, she met the four Connally boys. As America got pulled into the war, the Connally boys were pulled in also. The rest of the book is about Addie running from herself, first to Washington DC, then to London, and finally back to America, I just never really got into the story.

And lastly, I read Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult. It was a book club read. I was surprised at how little I liked it because I usually love her books. The story was just okay for me. The dad was someone who would go off to live with wolves for long periods of time. He was obsessed with wolves. He basically considered the wolves his family, rather than his wife and two children. The wife and the son were who I found quite interesting. Both the son and daughter were keeping secrets that were long overdue to be shared.

Reading in April

 

April brought some good reading with it.  I can't say that any of these five books will make my top 10 list of the year, but they were all worthwhile reads.

1) The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune: I have to admit that I had a hard time getting into this book. But others had highly recommended it, so I stuck with it and was very glad that I had. It is a magical type story about forty-year-old Linus Baker, a Case Worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. Linus was suddenly assigned to investigate the Marsyas Island Orphanage to determine if it should remain open or not. Six children are living there along with a headmaster and a few other staff. The children are considered dangerous and Linus felt quite over his head with this assignment. However, as time went on, he began to see and understand both the children and staff and long-held secrets came to light.  It is quite a charming story!

2) Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio: This was recommended to me by one of my swimming classmates! it was quite good. A "blackberry winter" snowstorm hit Seattle on May 1st in 2010. Reporter Claire Aldridge was assigned to cover the story of this storm and the storm that hit Seattle on the same day in 1933. Trying to find some kind of angle for a story, Clairer discovered that a working woman had left her child one evening on the night of the story in 1933, and the child disappeared. She began digging into the story hoping to find some resolution for the ending and began uncovering clues for the unsolved abduction.  It was a good read! 

3) Three Sisters by Heather Morris: this is the third book in a series by the author. She also wrote The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey. This book is about three Slovakian sisters who had promised their father that they would always take care of each other. After a time all three of the sisters ended up together in Auschwitz and then were sent on a death march in the freezing winter. The story follows their survival and goes on to follow their lives into old age. The book is based on the true story of the Meller sisters. A fascinating story of love and resilience.

4) The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin: This is a very interesting fictional story of Mary. In this story, Mary never believed that her son Jesus was the Son of God and that there had been no point in His death.  She lived alone in her old age, refusing to work with the collaborators of the Gospels, living with guilt and regret from her actions the day that Jesus died. I didn't find the story offensive at all, but just an interesting, different take on a story that we really don't know much about.

5) My Name Is Eva by Suzanne Goldring: This story was a different take on WWII stories. It was about an old woman in a nursing facility who feigned memory loss and dementia in order to not be held accountable for things she had done during the war. Her husband had been killed and she decided to find the man responsible for his mission and make him pay. She worked in Germany with prisoners returning after the war helping them with relocations, etc.  And bided her time. It wasn't the best-written book I've read, but the story itself was good.

March Reading-a little late!

 

I was trying so hard to post this in a timely manner, but then time got away from me once more. I guess that I just have to say that eventually, I will get to my blogging! I had a clear favorite book that I read in March!

1) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers: This book was in written in about 1940 when the author was twenty-three years old. It was the first book she had written.

It is a very sad, quite disturbing picture of a small town in the South in the 1930s. A deaf and mute man, John Singer is the main character of the book and the story is about the characters who come in and out of his life. All seem to put their trust in him and divulge their secrets and wants to him. 

I read this a long time ago and re-read it for my book group. It is a book that elicited a lot of discussions as each character was dissected. A good book, but not one I want to read again.

2) Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson: One of my daughters loaned this to me to read after her book group had read it. It is a good story that has dual timelines.

When Eleanor Bennett died, she left her two children a Black Cake to share together. Her two children, Benny and Byron, had been estranged from each other for some time. When their mother died she also left a voice recording for them telling a story from her past involving secrets that their mother had never told them about her life. As they began to unravel their mother's life, they learn many things, including a possible long-lost sibling. As the two children learn more, there were more questions and more mysteries to solve.

As a long-time genealogist, this was a very fun and interesting book to read!

3) Bewilderment by Richard Powers: I had a hard time getting interested in this book until it seemed to all come together for me at the end.

This was a story about Theo and Robin, a father and son trying to navigate life together after their wife and mother died. Robin was a rather strange boy who spent his time drawing/painting pictures of endangered animals. His father, Theo was an astrobiologist, who worked hard at raising this sweet boy, who one day was expelled from school after smashing another boy in the face. Doctors want to put Robin on psychoactive drugs to help with his behaviors, but Theo didn't want to. Then Theo learned of an experimental treatment that might help Robin with his control issues. 

It gets a little stranger after that, but Theo and Robin eventually find their places with each other. The saving grace of this book for me was the absolute love that Theo had for his child.

4) The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict: I have to say first of all, that the story is very well written and documented, but I ended up really strongly disliking Albert Einstein. The way he treated his wife and children was just horrible. So I had very mixed reactions to this book.

The book told the story of Mileva Maric. In 1896, she was the only woman studying physics at the university where Albert Einstein was studying. He wooed her away from her lifelong ambitions as a scientist to marry him, then went on to treat her like a little housewife, despite the fact that she was probably as brilliant, if not more so, than he was. He promised they would be equals and then went on without her, going so far as to use some of her research and writings and presenting them as his own. When she became pregnant with their first child they were not yet married. Mileva went to stay with her parents to have the baby and after the baby was born,  Albert convinced her to leave the baby with her parents (who lived in another country) and return to Switzerland without the baby so that his career would not be affected by the fact that he had a child.

And things just seemed worse from there.

Learning about Mileva's life was interesting, but a bit disturbing. This was a book that I read for my book group and we had quite a bit of discussion over it!

5) Lastly, I read Horse by Geraldine Brooks: This is a wonderful book that tells a story in a way that I had never read. This is another book that has dual timelines and is based on real events.

The story began with a young art historian,j Theo, finding a discarded old painting of a horse in his neighbor's pile of trash. And then with Jess, a scientist studying a horse's bones.

But first, the story goes back to 1850 when a young slave named Jarrett was the groom of a new foal. Jarret and the horse became inseparable as he groomed him to become a racehorse. The horse was called Darley in the early years and went on to be a record-setting winner. A young artist followed the horse's victories and painted him several times. After about three years, Darley was sold, and he was then called Lexington. And Jarrett was allowed to go with the horse.

In 1855, Jarrett and Lexington were sent to Kentucky for a couple of reasons. One to keep Jarrett out of danger with the talk of war coming, and the other was Lexington's health. 

Meanwhile, the book goes back and forth between Theo and Jess who had teamed up for the discovery of Lexington.

It is a fascinating book in terms of learning the story of both Lexington and Jarrett, racing and slavery/racism, and love. It will be undoubtedly in my top 5 books for 2023!

What I read in February

As promised, I am catching up on my blogging! I read four and a half books last month.  I had a DNF (did not finish) on one of them. The other four were good, however!

1) Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout: This was my number one favorite book for 2022. I re-read it for my book group! It was even better the second time and wonderful to have a great group of people to discuss it with! For my post on it go to my post in October 2022.

2) The Truth About Magic by Atticus. I have long loved Atticus' poetry and was lucky enough to come across two of his books at a used bookstore that I had never read. If you haven't read his work, I urge you to try it!

3) The Weaver's Legacy by Olive Collins. This book is the second of a trilogy by the author. I had read The Tide Between Us which was the first book and liked it enough to get the second book. The first book was about the O'Neill family coming to America for a new start out West.  They traveled with other Irish families to start an Irish community in the West. This book continues the O'Neill family story. This book is from 1865 and 1937.

Goldie O'Neill was nine years old in 1865 when her family traveled West with others to form an Irish community. They had to deal with the Indians as they traveled and as they lived. One day, the Indians came while Goldie, her brother, and her baby sister were out playing in the woods. Her sister was taken by the Indians and never returned to the family.  Goldie carried her guilt with her for all of her years.  She had made friends with a Lakota Indian boy who vowed he would help her find her sister.

Years later Goldie adopted her brother's daughter, Lucy, after her parents died and she had been placed in an orphanage. Lucy grew up in the community that had been built up by the Irish, but then married and moved to New York City, coming to visit Goldie often. She returned there after Goldie died and as she was there, her "dead" father turned up. As Lucy learned more about the family's past, she decided that she wanted to learn more. 

It is a good story and I hope that the author continues with the trilogy.

4) Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger: This was the best one of the best Cork O'Connor mysteries yet! I found it quite different from the others that I have read (I still am only about halfway through them). In this one, Cork is asked by his ninety-year-old something friend, Henry Miloux (an Ojibwe medicine man) to find his son who he had never met but came to him in a vision. Cork, Henry, and a friend travel up to Canada and there Cork began to unravel Henry's past and locate his reclusive son. Then an attempt was made on Henry's life and that leads to another mystery. 

I liked this story so much because it mostly was focused on Henry and his past, which hadn't been revealed in earlier books.  

5) The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth: This is the book that I did not finish.  I had read over half of it and I just never felt connected or cared about any of the characters. I felt that I gave it a good try, so I didn't feel bad about it. And, also, it was from the library, so at least I hadn't paid for it!

January books I read

 Yes, I know that it is now March...I am still determining where the time has gone since we moved back to Illinois.  We love every moment of all of our family time! I apologize to my followers for being so behind on my blogging!  I hope to catch up on all of it this weekend!

January was filled with good reading! I really liked all of the books that I read! Let's get to it!

1) I re-read The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris because my book group I used to belong to before we had moved to Alabama was reading it for January and I had been dying to have someone to discuss this book with.  So I drove the 2 1/2 hours to go to book group! This is such a good book.  There are several stories taking place in this book, with two main stories. This novel takes place in Georgia a little after the Civil War had ended. George and Isabelle Walker had recently learned of the death of their only child, killed fighting in the War. Two freed Black men, Landry and Prentiss who were brothers, left the plantation where they had been enslaved, and landed on the property next door, hiding in the woods.  They were discovered by George Walker who owned the land and they were offered a job to help him develop a peanut farm on his land.

The parallel story running through this novel is the story of two Confederate soldiers who had been involved with each other before they had headed off to war and were reunited after the end of the war. They would meet in the woods for their rendevous and were discovered one day which resulted in a murder that shook their small town. The aftermath of the murder changed everyone and everything. 

A hauntingly beautiful story.

2) The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin. I had wanted to read this book for a long time and finally picked it up. It is based on a true story that took place in January 1888 in the Dakota Territory. Two sisters were teachers at the time, one in her hometown and the other had moved to teach north. The day was an unusually warm day and the schoolchildren went off to school without their usual heavy coats. As school ended for the day, a blizzard blew in with no warning and resulted in a total whiteout.  One teacher realized that her children could not see well enough to try to make it home and kept them at school, while the other sister sent her pupils off into the blizzard. 

The book is based on oral stories/histories of the survivors. It is quite a story and very interesting to read. 

3) Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen. I found this book a little hard to get into, but I could tell that there was more to the story than I learned from the first part of it. I was glad I stuck with it. It was worth the read.

Zoey had finished high school and traveled across the country to take ownership of her dead mother's apartment in a small town in South Carolina.  The apartment was one of five and each apartment had its own secrets. One tenant was found dead the morning after Zoey moved in. She quickly began to meet her neighbors and learns their stories as she shares hers. It is a lovely book and quite touching.

4) All the Broken Places by John Boyne. I am a big fan of this author and I loved this book!

This novel takes place during two different time periods. Gretel Fernsby was a ninety-one-year-old widow living in London in the same apartment she had lived in for years. When a family with a young boy moved into the apartment building, Gretel was faced with the biggest secret she had. She had always kept her painful past a secret, especially the part about her father being a Nazi commandant at one of the extermination camps. And she especially never shared her guilt of being complicit.

As the Allies were coming, twelve-year-old Gretel escaped Nazi Germany with her mother. They had gone on to live in France for a number of years. Eventually, Gretel went to London, married, and lived a quiet life. When the young family moved in, Gretel reluctantly began a friendship with the young son Henry.  When she witnessed Henry being abused/neglected, she was faced with saving him or facing her past in a very public way.

It is a stunning novel and I didn't realize that it was a sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which I had never read.  So my next read was:

5) The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. I can't believe that I had never read this book. At first, I was a bit taken back by it, feeling that it was so simply written, but soon I realized that it was told from the little boy's perspective.

If there is anyone out there in the reading world left who hasn't read this book, it is about a small boy in Germany who had to move when his father got a new job as a commandant at a camp. He, his sister, and his mother were housed in a small modest home that was quite a downgrade for them. There was no one around to make friends with. There was only a camp that was barricaded with barbed wire. One day the little boy went out for a walk and came across another little boy who was behind the barbed wire.  They struck up a friendship, which had to be secret.  And I can't tell anymore of the story. Only to say that I was so deeply struck by the ending, it still hurts. 

What I read in December (2022)

 

Yep, folks, I only read 3 books in December. However, in my defense, one book was 670 pages! And it was December, a rather busy month for me! It is so fun to be back with family and have a home to decorate for the holidays!

1) Mad Honey by Jennifer Boylan and Jodi Piccoult: this was a long book with over 430 pages. It was a good read. It is about new beginnings, young love, a mother's love, and, in the end, a good murder mystery that surprised me.

Years ago, following a bitter divorce, Olivia had moved back to her hometown with her young son, Asher. Asher grew up there with his best friend, Maya. In Asher's senior year, a new girl moved to town named Lily. Maya befriended her and Asher fell hard for Lily.  The three of them became rather inseparable. But Lily had moved to the town for good reason. She had a secret that she was running away from. She and Asher became a couple, and one day, Olivia got the news that Lily was dead and Asher had been arrested for the murder. She was certain that her son could not have done it, but she also was afraid that perhaps he had violent tendencies like his father.  The book goes through the trial and the aftermath.

2) Next I read The Winners by Fredrik Backman: this book is the third book of a trilogy. The first book was Beartown, which I loved.  The second book was Us Against Them, which I didn't care that much for. So I was anxious to see how The Winners would be.  It certainly did not disappoint!

In The Winners, two years had passed since all that had happened in Beartown. Much had changed in the two years. When the owner of the much-loved tavern died, Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich returned home for the funeral.  Maya was attending college out of town, and Benji had gone to try to make sense of all that had happened two years ago.  And while home, tensions between the rivaling towns of Beartown and Hed began to resurface and bad things began happening.

"Because of course that's all she is, all everyone she grew up with in Beartown is; hopelessly simple but horribly complicated.  Ordinary, unusual people.  Unusually ordinary people.  We try to just live our lives, live with each other, live with ourselves.  Accepting joy when we find it, bearing grief when it finds us, and being amazed at our children's happiness without falling apart when we think that we can never really protect them." 

"This hurts too much to touch wtih words." 

Such beautiful writing.  I absolutely loved this book!

3) Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng:  This was an interesting story that I felt touched very close to issues happening (or could happen) right now.

Ten years earlier, the country had declared laws to preserve "American culture" and the authorities were allowed to relocate children of any dissidents, mainly if there were Asian. Twelve-year-old Bird lived with his father, growing up learning not to draw attention to himself. He and his father lost their home and were living in an old dormitory on the campus where his linguist father now worked stacking books in the university library. Bird's mother had been gone for three years and he did not know what had happened. His mother was a Chinese-American poet, but Bird did not know that nor know her work.

One day, Bird received a note in the mail that was just a cryptic drawing. He realized that it contained some clues about his mother and he took off to New York City on his own to find her.

This book is really well-written and touching.  I liked it a lot!

2022 Countdown of Favorite Books

I read 60 books in 2022. Not as many as I would have liked, but life got in the way! 3 were non-fiction, again, not as many as I would have liked. There are 19 books that I rated as either very good or excellent that I read in 2022:

Northernmost-Peter Geye

Tell the Bees that I Am Gone-Diane Gabaldon

Lost Boy Found-Kirsten Alexander

The Secret Scripture-Sebastian Barry

The Sweetness of Water-Nathan Harris

Florence Adler Swims Forever-Rachel Beanland

The Yellow Wife-Sadeqa Johnson               

Grace-t. Greenwood

The Personal Librarian

Remarkably Bright Creatures-Shelby Van Pelt

Once There Were Wolves-Charlotte McConaghy

The Lost Girls of Willowbrook-Ellen Marie Wiseman

The Hour of the Witch-Chris Bohjalian

The Tide Between Us-Olive Collins

Lucy By The Sea-Elizabeth Strout

A Thousand Moons-Sebastian Barry

The Winners-Fredrik Backman

These were all good books! I would recommend any of them!

However, moving on to my top 12 of the list:

Northernmost-Peter Geye

Tell the Bees that I Am Gone-Diane Gabaldon

Lost Boy Found-Kirsten Alexander

The Secret Scripture-Sebastian Barry

The Sweetness of Water-Nathan Harris

Remarkably Bright Creatures-Shelby Van Pelt

The Hour of the Witch-Chris Bohjalian

Lucy By The Sea-Elizabeth Strout

A Thousand Moons-Sebastian Barry

The Haven-Emma Donoghue

And now it starts getting hard. Narrowing the list down to my top 5 meant taking off The Winners, which I really loved! But here's what's left:

Northernmost-Peter Geye

The Secret Scripture-Sebastian Barry

The Sweetness of Water-Nathan Harris

Remarkably Bright Creatures-Shelby Van Pelt

Lucy By The Sea-Elizabeth Strout

Now it's easy though! Even though I loved each of the above books, one stands out for me as my very favorite:

Lucy By The Sea-Elizabeth Strout

I hope to read more in 2023 and hope that I have as many good reads as 2022! Happy reading in the New Year!