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!

My November Reads

 November is over already and Christmas is three weeks away! Where, oh where, does the time go? Here are the books that I read in November!

1) Haven by Emma Donoghue: I like Ms. Donoghue's writing. I saw this at the library and swooped it up.  It was on the "It's Your Lucky Day" shelf, where you can check out the book but only have a week to read it! This was a reasonably short book, so I got it read in time! It was an interesting concept for a story!

This story took place in seventh-century Ireland. There was a priest named Artt who was considered the wisest and holiest of all.  He had a dream about an island and wanted to take two of the brothers (monks) in the community and go to the island to create another community of brothers. He chose the two that he wanted to go with him and they left with the very barest of supplies because Artt felt that God would take care of all their needs.  They sailed away and searched for the island that Artt dreamt of. Eventually, they came across an uninhabited island that Artt approved and they settled there. They sought to do and make everything with what was there on the island and Artt would not let them go out to sea to obtain supplies as theirs dwindled away. 

The ending was superb. It's a book worth reading!

2) A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry: Yes, I am still reading Sebastian Barry. What can I say? I love his writing! This book begins where his book Days Without End ended!

The story takes place in Tennessee in the post-Civil War time. Winona Cole, a young orphaned child of the Lakota Indians was taken in and raised by John Cole and Thomas McNulty. 

"Where John Cole abided, there was to be found Thomas with his simple heart.  Their love was the first commandment of my world-Thou shalt hope to love like them. We have all to meet many souls and hearts along the way-we are obliged to-we must pray we can encounter one or two Thomases and John Coles on that journey.  Then we can say life was worth the living and love was worth the gamble."

Winona was a smart young woman living where Indians were not welcome, nor were smart women. She was viciously attacked one evening and that lead to her search for her attacker. She believed it to be Jas, a boy/man who had been interested in her.  When Jas was found killed, Wenona was arrested and sentenced to hang.

This is a spiritual book in some ways. I loved it!

3) Such a Pretty Face by t. greenwood: I have read many of this author's books and really liked them.  This one was a disappointment for me. 

The story has two timelines: present-day and 1970's New York City.  Young Ryan's mother, Fiona, dreamed of becoming a movie star. Her dreams were just that...dreams. But one day, young Ryan was discovered and treated as a grown woman rather than the young girl she was (around ten years old). Of course, Fiona was her biggest promoter. Forty years later, Ryan got a text from her oldest friend telling her that a pre-teen picture of her had been found in the possession of a well-known wealthy investor who had just been found to be a pedophile and a sex trafficker.  To make it worse, the photo had an inscription written to him by Ryan's mother.

After this discovery, Ryan began examining her childhood and her relationship with her mother and what it all meant in the present time.

Some of the story was interesting, but it just dragged on for me.

4) The Cloisters by Katy Hays: Oh, this was a good one! I look forward to more from this author!

Recent college graduate, Ann Stilwell, arrived in New York City from Washington (the state) to work for the summer at the Metropolitan  Museum of Art. Instead, she was assigned to work at the Cloisters (at the Museum) where the Museum's medieval art was kept and displayed along with an elaborate garden.  There was a small, but seemingly close staff working there.

Ann soon finds that the researchers there are working on a theory that medieval tarot cards hold the key to telling the future. This leads to much mystery and power-seeking among the staff.

This book was well written and a great mystery! Read it!

5) Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy by Blaine T. Bittinger: Ok, so I am able to tell you the name of the book, but that's about as much as I understood.  Not that the book isn't well-written, it's that I have absolutely no understanding of anything vaguely scientific. I try, but it just doesn't happen.  That being said, there were some (few) parts in the book that I highlighted because I did understand, so that was helpful!

For those who do understand science, etc. I think that this book would be extremely helpful.  And I am hopeful that as I continue to study DNA I will be able to use the book more!

What I read in October

 

Well, again, 4 books were read this month.  Maybe I need winter to set in so I just sit and read! October was full of unpacking from our move back to Illinois and we are just starting to wind down from all of it! The good news? I loved every one of the books that I read!

1) Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton: I was slow to warm up to this book, but by the middle of it, I was hooked! Marisol Ferrera was heartbroken when, in 2017, her beloved grandmother (Elisa) passed away. Marisol had grown up listening to her grandmother's stories of life in Cuba when her grandmother was a girl. Elisa's father was a sugar baron in Cuba and the family was quite wealthy. However, by 1958, Cuba was facing great political unrest, and Elisa had met and fallen in love with one of the revolutionaries. Her family had to flee Cuba and went to Miami where Elisa married and raised her son, Marisol's father.  Before Elisa died she asked Marisol to scatter her ashes in her beloved Cuba. Because Marisol was a journalist she was allowed into Cuba and stayed with her grandmother's best friend who still lived there. While in Cuba, Marisol began uncovering some family secrets and had a secret of her own when she became attracted to a man who was a political activist. It was a really good story!

2) Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: I couldn't have loved this book more.  It is the last one so far in the Lucy/William series and if you haven't read them, do so ( read them in order, however).

In Lucy By the Sea, Lucy and William (Lucy's ex-husband) went to Maine to ride out the pandemic soon after it began to hit New York. There they spent the next few months, just the two of them isolated. As time went on, Lucy and William experienced a deep connection as they navigated the pain of not being able to be with their daughters during this time, who were also going through painful times. As time went on, Lucy and William found their love again for each other.

This is such a beautiful book, especially if you have gone through Lucy's journey in the earlier books. Ms. Strout's writing continues to amaze me.

"If I had known what it would be like the next time that I saw them-Well, I did not know then.

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us." 

3) Time and Again by Jack Finney: My daughter recommended this book to me when we were in New York this past fall.  We were looking at the Dakota and that is where this story takes place! That made this book especially interesting to me! This book came out fifty years ago and Stephen King has called it "THE great time-travel story".

Si Morley was bored with his life. When he was recruited by a secret government entity, he decided to take the opportunity. The entity was studying/working on time travel.  Si went from the 20th century back to 1882 numerous times and enjoyed seeing New York City as it was developing.  Meeting a young woman there, whom he fell in love with complicated Si's life and he ultimately had to decide if he wanted to remain in 1882 or return to his modern life. 

There is also a mystery involved in the story, which added good interest.  It was a good read! 

4) The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford: This is such an interesting book. It is a novel and is about inherited trauma, which I keep trying to explain to my family about (it was often something that I explored with clients when I was working).

Dorothy Foy had struggled with depression and dissociative episodes for years, but when her five-year-old daughter began remembering past memories from her ancestors, Dorothy decided that she had to seek help.  She was fearful that her daughter might develop the same mental health issues that she had been struggling with and she didn't want that for her daughter.

Dorothy connected with a therapist who was doing some experimental treatments around inherited trauma.  She was able to take Dorothy back to view her ancestor's lives and began to understand how their trauma was affecting her life. 

This story also has a mystery running through it that adds to the pleasure of the story. Another good read!