Book List, 2021

| indicates a children’s book. 
x indicates an unfinished book.

January

This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing.  Jacqueline Winspear 
Excellent!  I loved it.  Winspear grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s in England.  I love the detail about picking hops, oast houses, her parents’ time living in a gypsy caravan, and the other memories she shared of her own childhood and youth.  She tells some of the stories of her parents’ lives, too.  Her parents taught her to work and that work would take care of many emotions – anger, sadness, unhappiness.  She had surgery on her eyes when she was young.  Her face was black and blue after the surgery.  When her father saw her, he held her close and told her, “This time next year we’ll be laughing (p.157-8).”  I love the subtle admission that now is rough combined with the strong suggestions that things will get better in the future.

“We are, all of us, products of our family mythology.  Stories are not only passed down, but nestled in every cell.”    p. 5  ¶2

“Time is a place and every place has a time, for each one of us.”    p.11  ¶2

“Martin Parsons, founder of the Research Centre for Evacuee and Ward Child Studies at the University of Reading, England, suggests that it takes three generations for an experience of war to work its way through the family system.”    p.30  ¶1

“...It has only been since I began to write this memoir that I have reconsidered the power of storytelling on so many levels.  Of course, we know a story can change even a nation—the stories told by politicians, especially tyrants, dictators and despots, have sent young men and women to perish on battlefields for millennia.  Countries and peoples have been brought to their knees by stories, and equally they have been given the strength to rise up, to endure and to show strength beyond measure.  But as much as stories bring warmth to our days, help us find our voices or work things out, stories—even the ones considered entertaining—can also damage, create doubt, cause an aching distress or a wounding humiliation.  Words have the potential to cause such pain, it’s a wonder the dictionary doesn’t come with a government health warning.”    p, 138-139


|WinterFrost.   Michelle Houts  
I loved this little chapter book for upper elementary or middle school readers.  On Christmas, 12-year-old Bettina is entrusted with the care of her nearly-year-old sister, Pia, when her father must leave for a visit to his uncle and her mother is called away to care for her grandmother.  The Petersens, near neighbors, are available for help.  Bettina is confident she can handle Pia for a few days.  Unfortunately, the family forgot to put out a bowl of rice pudding for their barn nisse, Klakke, on Christmas morning.  He’s not a retaliatory nisse but he is a little mischievous and switches up the food for the animals in the barn.  After straightening everything in the barn, Bettina and Pia return to the house.  Bettina puts Pia down for a nap, bundled up in the carriage, which she pushes outside (which seems to be the norm in Denmark).  Oh, the challenges and adventures that ensue!  Just a fun, quick read.


South of the Buttonwood Tree.  Heather Webber  
Excellent.  A little magic, a mystery, love of family, learning about not judging....  Blue Bishop has been judged by people of Buttonwood her whole life because of the actions and behavior of her parents, but she persists in doing good things for the people of the town.  She’s a children’s book author and illustrator who wants to adopt a child.  One morning, a child appears south of the buttonwood tree with a button that says “Give her to Blue Bishop.”  The buttonwood tree has been dispensing wisdom for many years.  Thus begins the story.


xThe Room on Rue Amelie.  Kristin Harmel 
I like Kristin Harmel’s novels but I can’t do another book set during WWII right now.  If I’d loved the characters I would probably have continued.


xStories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas.  Ace Collins    selections read
Maybe I would love this book in December, or maybe I would want to use this book as a reference.  Includes the stories of 31 Christmas songs, some carols, some traditional songs, some more modern.


Hamnet:  A Novel of the Plague.  Maggie O’Farrell   
  Exquisite!  Such vivid imagery, such detail about small things, and oh so lyrical.  If only for the beautiful language it would be worth reading.  But the story focuses on William Shakespeare (though never named as such); Anne, called Agnes in the book, who becomes his wife; and their three children, Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith.  We seem to learn more of Agnes and her feelings, thoughts, actions, than of the other characters.  The story is told in two different time-lines –William first meeting Agnes and their youth; and Agnes and the children as they grow.  There are other characters, of course, family members, but I think Agnes is truly the main character.  The reader knows her thoughts, sees her actions, and I related more to her than any of the other characters. 
  There is an awful sadness, a sorrow, a grief in the story, and especially for Agnes and Judith, when Hamnet dies.  Agnes’s grief is palpable and anyone who has lost a loved-one and feels devastated will identify with Agnes through her grieving process.
  William is mostly absent after their marriage; he moves to London, presumably to help his father’s glove business grow, but soon begins writing and producing plays.
  There is one open door scene (though not in a bedroom) which was easy to skip over.
  I loved this book!

“She listens to the string of sounds that comes from his [toddler brother Edmond’s] mouth breathily, as he stirs [the leaves in a wooden bowl he’s playing with]: ‘eff’ is in there, for ‘leaf,’ and ‘ize,’ for ‘Eliza,’ and ‘oop,’ for ‘soup.’  The words exist, if you know how to listen.”    p. 96,  ¶8 end

In a dream Agnes sees her dead mother wearing “...a red shawl knotted over a blue smock....”    p. 128  ¶1


February

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.  V. E. Schwab   
What young Adeline/Addie, living in the late 1600s in a small village in France, most wants is freedom.  When her family decides she should marry, she runs away and makes an agreement with a god (that answers after dark).  She gets freedom but it prevents her from being remembered by anyone, from leaving a mark anywhere.  (For example, when Addie rents a room for a week, the landlady evicts her the first night because she doesn’t remember Addie.)  And then, she meets a young man.  The story takes place across the span of 300 years.  There is some language (with a small-part character) and some sex (easily skipped).

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”    p. 35 ¶ 9

“...It is a lonely thing to be forgotten.  To remember when no one else does.”    p. 77  ¶3-4

“Palimpsest.  She doesn’t know the word just yet, but fifty years from now, in a Paris salon, she will hear if for the first time, the idea of the past blotted out, written over by the present....”    p. 78  ¶10-11

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad.   You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real.  After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?  If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?      p. 103  ¶5, 7

“Small places make for small lives.  And some people are fine with that.  They like knowing where to put their feet.  But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way.  You cannot leave a mark.”     p. 179  ¶10

”’There’s this family photo,’ he says, ‘not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven.  That day was awful.   Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off.  And in the photo, we all look so . . . happy.  I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real.  There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid.  So photos are like fictions.  I love that about them.  Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.’”    p. 239  ¶7

    
The Uncommon Reader:  A Novella.  Alan Bennett 
A satire on the importance of reading.  When the Queen (unnamed but alluded to as Queen Elizabeth) takes up reading, most other things go by the wayside.  It makes those she works with unhappy.

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”    p. 34  ¶8


xAnxious People.  Fredrik Backman  
Good, but so depressing.  I stopped on p. 59, last paragraph.


March

A Piece of the World.  Christina Baker Kline   
A fictionalized version of Andrew Wyeth’s interactions with Christina Olson, subject of Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World.”  Christina was a strong, determined woman who didn’t let her physical handicaps prevent her from doing what was necessary to keep her home.

  “Over the years, certain stories in the history of a family take hold.  They’re passed from generation to generation, gaining substance and meaning along the way.  You have to learn to sift through them, separating fact from conjecture, the likely from the implausible.
  “Here is what I know:  Sometimes the least believable stories are the true ones.”    p. 15

“The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.”      p. 276  ¶ last


The Lake House.  Kate Morton 
  This is another book that takes place in different time periods with different characters, the exception being Alice.  It was a slow start for me when it began with Alice, age 16, written like a 16-year-old.  It improved from there and by the time I met a few of the other characters, including Alice at age 86, I loved it. 
  The story is tells of a midsummer party in 1933 at the isolated Lake House, when Alice’s 18-month-old brother, Theo, was taken.  In 2003, Sadie Sparrow, an investigator, on leave, visits her grandfather, Bertie, in Cornwall.  While running she happens upon the Lake House, learns its story from her grandfather and his friend, and, being an investigator, begins to search for Theo.  There are plenty of twists and turns, many people who could have abducted Theo, but Sadie eventually learns the truth with the help of Alice and her sister.

Narrator speaking of Alice’s thoughts as an adult:  “Why as it that so much of the paraphernalia left over from the war made it seem as if it had been polite or quaint or mannerly, when in fact it had been fierce and deadly?  People had been different back then, more stoical.  There was far less talk of one’s emotions.  People were taught from childhood not to cry when they were hurt, to be good losers, not to acknowledge fears.  Even Nanny Rose, who was sweetness personified, would have frowned to see tears when she poured iodine onto scrapes and scratches.  Children were expected to face their fate when it came for them.  Very useful skills, as it turned out, during wartime; indeed, as they were in life.”    p. 228 ¶2


xMiss Benson’s Beetle.  Rachel Joyce 
Maybe I didn’t read far enough for it to get good enough to continue.  If I pick it up again, begin Chapter 6.


The Gown:  A Novel of the Royal Wedding.  Jennifer Robson   
Much less about the royal wedding than about two of the seamstresses who embroidered the dress and the shop where they worked.  The story takes place beginning in 1947.  Ann has no living relatives except her widowed sister-in-law, Milly, with whom she lives until Milly moves to Canada.  Miriam has moved to London from France and is seeking employment in an embroidery house.  The Ann and Miriam work together, with other young ladies.  I thought it was good.


xCoal River.  Ellen Marie Wiseman 
This takes place in 1919 and involves conflict – coal mines vs. coal miners, possibly more.  I just wasn’t up to it right now.


At Home on Ladybug Farm.  Donna Ball
Three retired women, Lindsey, Bridget, and Cici, purchased an old mansion which they are trying to restore.  One is a teacher-turn-painter and foster mom; one is a realtor who should have been a baker; and the other’s strength is carpentry/building.  Lori, one of their daughters, lives with them, and Noah, the 15-year-old foster son.  It’s a story of family, challenges, and growing to independence.  There’s some humor similar to that in Eat Cake.  There are a few chapters that flash back to earlier times.  I enjoyed it.

  “‘Always observe the amenities,’ her Grandma Addie had told her.  ‘No matter how low life knocks you, you can hold your head up high if you observe the amenities.’
  “... Now, as a mature young bride and mother-to-be, she understood exactly what the amenities were, and how important it was to observe them. The amenities were gestures of civility performed in this big, often very uncivilized world, small acts of kindness to let others know that their lives were noticed, and their presence valued.”    p. 179 ¶ 1

  “‘Motherhood isn’t something that just happens to you,’ Cici said.  ‘It’s a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is . . . and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.’”    p. 255  ¶4


April

Penguin the Magpie:  The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family.  Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Grieve
  This was a dual story:  the author’s wife fell off a second floor balcony, cracked her skull in two places, and broke her spine, thereby becoming paralyzed from the arms down.  Soon after that, their sons found a baby magpie and the family chose to nurse it back to health. 
  Many, many wonderful photos accompanied by words to explain.  At the end is an essay by the author and one by his wife, who writes directly to others who have dealt with a spinal cord injury. 

  “You don’t have to be superhuman to survive the bad times and you can’t always be at your best.  But even when things look their worst, you can still feel positive about the future.  Being optimistic is simply a choice made possible by being creative and proactive.  The means to achieving the breakthrough you need may be a lot closer than you think.    p. 146

  “A happy ending begins with having faith in your own story, and looking for ways to create joy for yourself and others.  Time and time again Penguin showed us what a difference it can make just by giving our family and friends a reason to smile when they see us.”    p. 149

  “Most importantly, Penguin taught us that helping others feel better is the easiest and best way to help yourself feel better.    p. 162


xWelcome Home:  A Cozy Minimalist Guide to Decorating and Hosting All Year Round.  Myquillyn Smith 
  Her idea is to go with the seasons for decorating and avoid the “junk” (my term) at the craft and decorating shops.  Focus on people, not decorating.
  One thing I did take to heart:  Who wants to see the stems of a bouquet of flowers?   Find opaque vases!


xBeach Read.  Emily Henry      unfinished
  Language.  It looked promising if not for the blasphemy.


Growing Up.  Russell Baker  
This was an entertainingly written book (a Pulitzer Prize winner!) about the author’s childhood to young adulthood.  (He was born in 1925.)  He didn’t have an easy childhood but the book wasn’t a pity party, either.

“Sitting at her bed side [his mother with Alzheimers], forever out of touch with her, I wondered about my own children, and their children, and children in general, and about the disconnections between children and parents that prevent them from knowing each other.  Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity there is no parent left to tell them.  If a parent does lift the curtain a bit, it is often only to stun the young with some exemplary tale of how much harder life was in the old days.”    p, 6  ¶2

“Uncle Charlie gave me my first real education in politics.  From Uncle Charlie I first heard the word “socialism,” a doctrine so evil, he gave me to understand, that it could destroy our country.  America, he told me, had been built with initiative and hard work.  Socialism, he told me, discouraged hard work and destroyed initiative.  And socialism was what Franklin Roosevelt was practicing.  Didn’t I ever look at the newspaper...?  Didn’t I realize that millions of people were being given money by the government for doing no work at all?”     p. 109  ¶2

“The changeover from knickers to long pants was the ritual recognition that a boy had reached adolescence, or ‘the awkward age,’ as everybody called it.  The ‘teenager,’ like the atomic bomb, was still uninvented, and there were few concessions to adolescence, but the change to long pants was a ritual of recognition.  There was no ceremony about it.  You were taken downtown one day and your escort—my mother in my case—casually said to the suit salesman, ‘Let’s see what you’ve got in long pants.’” The story continues but is unique to the author and probably unlike my father’s experience.  Dad was born in 1913.    p. 159  ¶7


Midnight at the Blackbird Café.  Heather Webber  
I loved it.  A little magic, a lot of love and family and friends, heartbreak and healing.  It’s a complicated story line with lots of characters.  Anna Kate Callow’s grandmother, Zee, died and left The Blackbird Café to Anna Kate in her will, but only after Anna Kate had stayed in Wicklow for several months would the café be hers.  There’s magic in the pies (people who eat them hear messages of love from those who have died) but at first, Anna Kate doesn’t know what creates the magic.  Her grandmother managed to provide all the guidance she needs.  There are blackbirds who sing at night but only if the pies contain a specific ingredient.  Characters include Jena and Bow who help in the kitchen; Summer and her father Aubin; Gideon, Zee’s attorney who lives next door; Natalie and her parents, Doc and Seelie, and plenty of others.  A second read wouldn’t go amiss.


xThe Consequences of Fear.  Jacqueline Winspear     
    I love Winspear’s books but I can’t face another WWII book right now.  I’m sure it will be good later.


xA Year on Ladybug Farm.  Donna Ball  
    Why, oh why is it necessary to take the Lord’s name in vain?  The sequel to this that I read earlier did not seem to have that problem.  And I was looking forward to this book.  Darn.


xThe Midnight Library.  Michael Haig  
    Disjointed.


The Promise Girls.  Marie Bostwick  
  The book opens with the Promise girls (Joanie, abt. 16; Meg, about 14; and Avery, abt. 5) and their mom, Minerva, on the set of a TV talk show.  Minerva explains that she chose three sperm donors of outstanding quality with characteristics she wanted her daughters to have and had in vitro fertilization.  She has groomed her daughters as prodigies, driven them to success, and presented them as exceptional.  Joanie is the pianist; Meg, the artist; and Avery, the writer/story teller.  Joanie is tired of it all and purposefully flubs the piece on live TV.  Minerva explodes and the daughters are removed from her care.  The story picks up 20 years later with Joanie sewing re-enactment costumes for a living, Meg working as a bookkeeper and secretary for her husband’s business, and Avery working in a coffee shop and sidelining as a mermaid.  They have little contact with Minerva, but lots to learn about their situation, their past, and their parents.
  The author says this is one book with which she is completely happy.  Me, too.

May

I reserved these next nine books to take to read to my grandchildren on a trip to visit them but most of the books didn’t come in in time.  I’ll have to reserve them (some of them!) another time if we go or if they come.  I did end up taking Wendel’s Workshop, and Little Blue Truck.

|Martha Doesn’t Share!  Samantha Berger, Bruce Whatley, illus.  
|Martha Doesn’t Say Sorry!  Samantha Berger, Bruce Whatley, illus. 
These are two adorable books about a little otter who doesn’t want to share or say she’s sorry.  By the end of the books she learns that doing both will lead to a happier home.


|Wendel’s Workshop.  Chris Riddell 
    Wendel is a little mouse who creates robots and leaves a mess behind.  The first robot cleans up but doesn’t work so well.  He creates another who destroys everything as he cleans up.  Wendel goes back to work to create one more robot.  Cute.


|The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin  
Julia Finley Mosca, Daniel Rieley, illus.
This book is in verse and I think it’s really well done.  It points out that being different is not being worse.  At the end there is a 2-page spread with fun facts and tidbits from the author’s chat with Temple; another 2-page spread with a time line; and a more detailed biography for adults.


|My Love Is For You.  Susan Musgrave and Marilyn Faucher  
    Meh.  A board book that seems to me to be for slightly older children than board book age.


|Once I Was a Pollywog.  Douglas Florian, Barbara Bakos, illus.  
    Oh, cute.  A board book with piglet/hog, cub/bear, leveret/hare, gosling/goose, etc.


|Little Blue Truck.  Alice Schertle, Jill McElmurry, illus. 
    Adorable!  I loved this little board book, told in rhyme.  Little Blue Truck travels from one place to the other, meeting animals along the way (toad croaks, sheep baaa, cow moos, pig oinks, Blue says Beep, plus plenty of other animals, too.)  A big-shot dump truck comes along ignoring everyone and ends up stuck in the mud.  Blue tries to help it out and gets stuck, too.  All the animals come to help Blue and they get out.   The dump truck admits, “Now I see a lot depends on a helping hand from a few good friends.”


|Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  Bill Martin Jr, Eric Carle  
    I think this is a classic that I missed sharing with the girls when they were little.  Too cute.  Bear sees a red bird, red bird sees a yellow duck, yellow duck ses a blue horse, etc.


|Alphabet Kingdom.  Starla Michelle Halfmann   
    Meh.  Bright, exuberant, impressionistic paintings that make it hard to determine which animal it is.


News of the World.  Paulette Jiles 
    Capt. Kidd travels through towns in Texas taking his newspapers with him, reading interesting bits to audiences at the cost of 10 cents/person.  He is persuaded to  take responsibility for returning a 10-year-old ex-Kiowa captive girl to her German aunt and uncle in Texas.  It was an interesting and tender story, fraught with adventures in the “wild west.”  I enjoyed her imagery–it was beautiful.  A good read.
    
“Young people could get away with rough clothing but unless the elderly dressed with care they looked like homeless vagabonds and at every reading he must present the appearance of authority and wisdom.”    p. 15  ¶3

The Captain and Johanna come to a destroyed cabin and go inside.  The Captain vividly imagines what life might have been like.  “....  How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart as the horses called out to you, how you knew each by the sound of its voice in the long cool evening after a day of hard work.  Your heart melted sweetly, it slowed, lost its edges.  Horses, horses.  All gone in the burning.”    p. 170  ¶1 (part)


The Kitchen Front.  Jennifer Ryan 
The setting is a small town in England in 1942, and food rationing is a major concern for the women of the time.  There are four main characters, all women, who participate in a cooking contest to become a co-host for a BBC radio program about cooking with rations.  Audrey is a war widow with 3 sons; Lady Gwendoline is her sister, and they are at odds with each other; Zelda is a chef who wasn’t able to find work in London after the restaurant where she worked was bombed; and Nell is a cook’s helper for Mrs. Quince at Lady Gwendoline’s manor.  Different backgrounds, different personalities, different challenges.  I thought the writing of the first few chapters was a little simplistic but either that changed or I did.  I really enjoyed this book, especially because of it’s focus on women and their roles in a historical setting.  A ration recipe is included at the end of some chapters.

    “The reliability of the seasons—the formidable character that shaped months, years, lives—it gave Audrey a comfort that surged through her.”    p. 300  ¶6 (end)

    “‘I found that contentment—happiness even—comes in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes you shouldn’t wait for things to be perfect.  You just need to enjoy the small things, every little moment that makes you smile....  I also discovered that it’s all right to admit that you can’t do everything, to accept help from friends.’”    p. 313  ¶8

    “‘Audrey says this is her favorite time of year,’ Zelda said, kicking a few leaves.  ‘It’s the end of the farming year, marking the start of the rest and recuperation over winter, the magic of renewal.  She loves to talk about the seasons, your sister.’”    p. 327  ¶10

    “Gwendoline looked at her, hands on hips.  ‘One thing I’ve learned through this is that family is incredibly precious.  Other things may change us, but we start and end life with our family, whether it’s the one we’re born with or one of our own making.  It means that you love and are loved, whoever you are.’  Her eyes glazed over.  ‘And you known you’re not on your own.’”    p. 330  ¶3


The Second Sister.  Marie Bostwick 
Lucy works as a political campaigner, devoting most of her time to her work and little time to herself.  Alice, her sister is almost two years older than her and has a brain injury that makes her seem younger than her 38 years.  Alice wants Lucy to return to their small town in Wisconsin but Lucy wants nothing to do with returning to the town with bad memories.  Then Alice dies and the terms of her will include Lucy spending 8 weeks in their hometown before she can inherit their childhood home.  I enjoyed this book a lot.

Chapter 9, beginning on p. 57, offers great insight to our experience of having a loved-one die.  It’s too long to include as a quote.

  Alice’s friend Rinda recounts being new in town, looking for inexpensive fabric for the back of a quilt at a quilt shop, and having Alice follow her around “talking a blue streak.”  Rinda was being careful about money, pulled out a bolt of yellow-green fabric that she thought might be okay for backing.  “So Alice sees this stuff and says, ‘That’s the ugliest fabric I ever saw in my life.  Why would you buy that?’  I told her it might be ugly, but it was only two dollars a yard.’
  “Rinda’s eyes crinkled at the corners.  ‘And then Alice puts her hand on my arm and looks at me all serious and says, ‘Rinda, it is possible to pay too little for fabric.’”    p. 193-194

  “‘All these people who piece their tops but hire somebody else to do the finishing. . .  Hmph.  They’re not quilters.  They’re toppers!’ she declared, curling her lip in a way that made it sound almost like a dirty word.”
    P. 254  ¶5

The Downstairs Girl.  Stacey Lee  
I loved this book.  The language and writing were beautiful and the story was interesting and insightful.  It is filled with surprising similes.  Written in first person, the story takes place in 1890 in Atlanta where 17-year-old Chinese girl Jo Kuan lives with Old Gin, an older man who took her in when she was a baby.  They secretly live in the basement of the home and print shop of one of the local newspapers.  At the beginning of the story Jo works in a hat shop decorating women’s hats but is fired because she makes the customers “uncomfortable.”  She returns to work for the wealthy Paynes as a lady’s maid to their haughty daughter, Caroline, who is about the same age as Jo.  The story leads us through mysteries (to learn who Jo’s parents are), romance, surprising challenges, and adventure, all with the thread of discrimination running through it—against blacks, Chinese, and women—and their attempts to overcome it.  It was just so well and engagingly written.  One thing I will say is that Jo seems older and more mature than any 17-year-old I’ve ever known.  And though published as a teen/young adult book, I think some of the content would be more appropriate for a slightly older audience.

Robby says, ‘”Sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together,’ he says gently....  “My point is, a blessing loves a good disguise.’”    p. 281,  ¶2, 4

“What is the job of a parent but to teach a child that she has worth so that one day she can transform herself into whatever she wants.”    p. 365 top


The Lost Spells.  Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris 
Oh my goodness, what a beauty of a book!  It is filled with watercolor paintings of animals, birds, nature which are accompanied by poems, some a single page, others several pages long.  And what great poems they are!  Poems for fox, moth, daisy, jackdaw, jay, gorse, swifts, goldfinch, oak, snow hare, barn owl, heartwood, curlew, egret, grey seal, gannet, thrift, woodpecker, beech, swallow, and silver birch.  I almost think I learned more about the character and attributes of these animals and plants from the poems than from looking them up online.  I loved, loved, loved jackdaw, thrift, and woodpecker.  All were great, though.


June

On the Wings of Morning.  Marie Bostwick  
Good.  It’s a slightly complicated story to tell in a few brief sentences....  Morgan is a boy when we meet him in 1933, a boy who loves airplanes and wants to fly.  Time goes by and he’s becomes a pilot, then joins the service to fly for the Army during WWII.  Georgia is about the same age when we meet her, a girl who takes care of herself because her mother is off chasing men.  Georgia also loves airplanes and wants to fly.  She also becomes a pilot and becomes a WASP, but only after she marries and becomes a widow.  Morgan and Georgia eventually meet but it’s not smooth sailing immediately....


The Last Garden in England.  Julia Kelly  
I read this book by default–the other books I ordered from the library hadn’t come in.  I’m glad I read it.  The story was told by/about three different people in different time periods:  Emma, the restorer of the garden owned by Sydney (granddaughter of Diana Symonds) and Andrew, in 2021; Venetia, the creator of the garden, in 1907; and Beth, the “land girl,” in 1944.  Also in Beth’s time are Mrs. Diana Symonds, the owner of the property where the garden was created, and Stella, Diana’s cook.  There are more characters which add to the story and carry it along.  Highbury House is the home where the gardens are being restored–quite a number of them, and Emma is trying to restore them to their original as closely as possible. 

  “‘Well, your nephew is not alone.  He has you,’ said Mrs. Symonds.
  “‘I don’t know if I’m enough,’ she [Stella] confessed.
  “‘None of us is.  I believe that Father Devlin would say that that’s why we meet so many people in our lives,’ said Mrs. Symonds”    p. 206  ¶6-8


The Lost and Found Bookshop.  Susan Wiggs  
I liked this book except for the end, which I thought was awful.  Natalie Harper’s boyfriend and mother both die in a plane crash when her boyfriend was flying them both to the celebration of Natalie’s promotion at work.  Her mother was the owner of a bookstore which, Natalie learns, was in great debt.  The shop is in the building owned by her grandfather, Andrew, (and several generations of his family before him) who is in the early stages of dementia.  Natalie quits her job and takes over the bookstore and the care of her grandfather.  Her mother had already hired Peach Gallagher to make repairs on the building.  Peach is divorced but Natalie doesn’t know it when she is attracted to him.  A lot happens in the book, most of it great except for a few bouts of language and the end, where she asks him if he’d like to spend the night.  They’ve kissed once (!!), interacted on business transactions many times, and were at one social event together.  I was so disappointed.  No matter that the rest of the book was wonderful, I would not recommend this book.

  “When she [Natalie] was very small, her mother used to tell her that books were alive in a special way.  Between the covers, characters were living their lives, enacting their dramas, falling in and out of love, finding trouble, working out their problems.  Even sitting closed on a shelf, a book had a life of its own.  When someone opened the book, that was when the magic happened.”    p. 42  ¶6

  “You’re never alone when you’re reading a book.”      P. 55  ¶4 last sentence

  After the funeral of her mother, “Everyone went back to their own lives, their work and their worries, their families and friends.  When they walked into their homes or offices or boarded a plane or train, they returned to the same world they had left.
  “For Natalie, this was not the case.  For her, nothing would ever be the same.  She now knew that the aftermath of acute and sudden grief was different, a horrible realm she’d never explored....  When she stepped into the shop that evening, she felt an emptiness so vast that she almost couldn’t breathe.  Everything had drained out of her.
  “‘It’s exhausting, isn’t it?’ asked Grandy.  ‘A sadness like this.  It’s physically exhausting.’”    p. 57  ¶2-4


|And I Mean It, Stanley.  Crosby Bonsall  
A cute, learn-to-read story about a little girl who, from her side of the fence, tries to persuade Stanley to come over by telling him what she’s building and how wonderful it is and, with a touch of reverse psychology, telling him to stay away because she doesn’t want to talk to or play with him and she just doesn’t care.  Of course she does!  Very cute.


Remember:  The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting.  Lisa Genova 
Excellent!  I love this book.  Genova, a neuro-scientist, seems to have written this book for the layman, the person concerned about forgetting/not remembering and wondering if it’s normal and natural or a sign of Alzheimer’s.  My only complaint is that there are no notes to support her statements.

These are just some notes, and then some specific quotations.

You must pay attention to create a memory.  If you were there and something happened but your attention was elsewhere, no memory was created to remember.  In the moment most things are lost unless something memorable happens.  (“...We learn to ignore what is familiar and of no consequence.  We can’t remember what we ignore.  Remembering requires that we give the thing to be remembered our attention.”  p. 80  ¶2)

The hippocampus is where new and long term memories are stored.
The prefrontal cortex is where present moment is remembered.

Working memory - whatever is held in your consciousness right now in the present moment.  It’s short-lived, holding space in the prefrontal cortex for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and language.
    
Declarative memories = things I know.  Sometimes must work to recall them.

3 kinds of long-term memory
    - semantic memory - for information
    - episodic memory - for what happened
    - muscle memory - for how to do things (ride a bike, play a piece on the piano, etc.)
Muscle memory (brain not muscle)–a sequence of events bound together by the basal ganglia -- is the ability to perform a previously learned skill

Semantic memory - what you know not attached to any person, what or where, or any specific experience; information; the history of you remembered by you (beginning on p. 78)
Episodic memory - attached to what and where:  personal and always about the past

Memory - consolidating and retrieving what you’ve learned.  Quiz yourself about what you learn (semantic memories)..

“Regular use of these tools—repetition, spaced learning, self-testing, meaning, and visual and spatial imagery—will no doubt strengthen your semantic memory.”    p. 75  ¶1

“Why do we retain so few memories for what happened when we were young?  The development of language in our brains corresponds with our ability to consolidate, store, and retrieve episodic memories.  We need the anatomical structures and circuitry of language to tell the story of what happened, to organize the details of our experiences into a coherent narrative that can then be revisited and shared later.  So as adults, we only have access to memories of what happened when we owned the language skills to describe them.”    p. 86-87

“Your episodic memories are chock-full of distortions, additions, omissions, elaborations, confabulations, and other errors.  Basically, your memories for what happened are wrong...."  (p. 99  ¶1)

  “For every step in memory processing—encoding, consolidation, storage, and retrieval—your memory for what happened is vulnerable to editing and inaccuracies.  To begin with, we can only introduce into the memory creation process what we notice and pay attention to in the first place.  Since we can’t notice everything in every moment that unfolds before us, we only encode and later remember certain slices of what happened.  These slices will contain only the details that were seduced by our biases and captured our interest.  So my memory for what happened last Christmas morning will be different from what my son remembers, and neither his memory or mine will contain the full picture—the whole truth, so to speak.  From the get-go our episodic memories are incomplete....
  “Nascent memories are highly susceptible to influence and creative editing, especially during the period—hours, days, and longer—when these memories are being consolidated, before they’re committed to long-term memory.
  “In the process of consolidating an episodic memory, your brain is like a sticky-fingered, madcap chef.  While it stirs together the ingredients of what you noticed for any particular memory, the recipe can change, often dramatically, with additions and subtractions supplied by imagination, opinion, or assumptions.  The recipe can also be warped by a dream, something you read or heard, a movie, a photograph, an association, your emotional state, someone else’s memory, or even mere suggestion.
  “And every time we retrieve a stored memory for what happened, it’s highly likely that we change the memory....” [Much more detail in the book.]    p. 99-101

  “Prospective memory is your memory for what you need to do later.  This kind of memory is a bit like mental time travel.  You’re creating an intention for your future you.  This is your brain’s to-do list, a memory to be recalled at a future time and place.  And it is fraught with forgetting.  In fact, prospective memory is so poorly supported by our neural circuitry and so steeped in failure, it can almost be thought of as a kind of forgetting rather than a kind of memory.”    p. 132  1
  To help remember, create a cue – time-based, event-based
  “This kind of memory is highly susceptible to failure.”    p. 133  ¶2

  “When it comes to saving your memories, repetition is a mighty warrior in the battle against time.
  “But maybe you want to forget something....  Stop repeating the story of what happened.  Stop going over the details with your friends and in your thoughts.  Don’t overlearn the experience.  If you can find the discipline to leave those memories along, they will eventually fade....  The emotional elements of that memory can gradually decay if left alone.  It is through the erosion of memory that time heals all wounds.”    p. 151  ¶1-2

  “We tend to vilify forgetting.  We cast it as the bad guy in the epic battle against everyone’s favorite hero, Remembering.  But forgetting isn’t always a regrettable sign of aging, pathological symptom of dementia, a shameful failure, a maladaptive problem to solve, or even accidental.  Remembering today the details of what happened yesterday isn’t always beneficial.  Sometimes, we want to forget what we know.
  “We also tend to think of forgetting as our default setting.  Unless you actively do something remember some piece of information, your brain will automatically forget it.  Easily....  We forget without trying... because we didn’t pay enough attention... because we didn’t create strong enough relevant cues....  Forgetting can also be artful—active, deliberate, motivated, targeted, and desirable.”    p. 156  ¶1-2

About active ways of forgetting (motivated forgetting)    beginning p. 159, p. 163
  “So while we all want to an amazing memory, we can’t put all the onus and credit on remembering.  An optimally function memory system involves a finely orchestrated balancing act between data storage and data disposal: remembering and forgetting.  When performing optimally, memory doesn’t remember everything.  It retains what is meaningful and useful, and it discards what isn’t.  It keeps the signal and purges the noise.  Our ability to forget is likely to be just as vital as is our ability to remember.”    p. 163  ¶last

Normal aging - beginning p. 165

“Using the strategies and insights you’ve read about in this book—paying attention, decreasing distractors, rehearsing, self-testing, creating meaning, using visual and spatial imagery, keep a diary—will improve memory at any age.  They may have a less powerful effect on your memory performance at seventy than they would if you were thirty, but these methods still work.”    p. 172-173

 “Memory creation requires attention.  Paying attention is the number one thing you can do to improve your memory at any age, and a lack of attention will impair it.  Every time.....  What else boosts or blocks memory formation and retrieval?  Often, our ability remember depends on context.”    p. 189  ¶1

“You’ll be better able to recall ... information if you’re in the same state as you were [hungry, hot, tired, stressed, thirsty, etc.] when you learned it.”    p. 194  ¶2

About sleep and memory, beginning p. 207
  Sleep is not doing nothing, it’s a biologically busy state that’s vital to health. 
  "Sleeping also hits the save button on ... newly encoded memories.  It saves memories in two steps:  First, the unique pattern of neural activity that occurred in your brain when you were experiencing, learning, and even rehearsing something while awake is reactivated during sleep.  This neural replay is thought to facilitate the linking of these connections, cementing them into a single memory.  In fact, the amount of replay that occurs during the consolidation process while you snooze correlates with the amount of memory you’ll be able to recall after you wake up.”    p. 209  ¶1
  Lack of sleep interferes with consolidation of memories.
  Naps can help.
  “A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep is critical for reducing your risk of Alzheimer’s disease....  Most neuroscientists believe that Alzheimer’s is caused by an accumulation of amyloid plaques.  Normally, amyloid is cleared away and metabolized by glial cells, the janitors of your brain.  As a group, these cells form your brain’s sewage and sanitation department.  During deep sleep, your glial cells flush away any metabolic debris that has accumulated in your synapses while you were in the business of being awake.  Deep sleep is like a power cleanse for your brain.  And one of the most important things that is cleared away during your nightly slumber is amyloid.
  With not enough deep sleep “the glial cells won’t have enough time to finish cleaning your brain, and you will wake up in the morning with amyloid left over in your synapses from yesterday.  An amyloid hangover.”    p. 213
  More, more, more in this chapter.  Read it again.  In fact, read the whole book again!

   
July

xLove, Lies and Spies.  Cindy Ansley 
This was a teen read, recommended by I can’t remember who.  It was good but definitely teen.  It takes place in England in the 1800s.  I didn’t finish it.  If I return, begin at about p. 32.


The Ride of Her Life:  The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America.   
Elizabeth Letts
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  As the book opens, 62-year-old Annie Wilkins goes to the hospital with a bout of pneumonia.  While there, recovering, her Uncle Waldo is sent to a care home and dies there.  When Annie returns home the doctor tells her to live restfully.  She has a farm to take care of, now without the help of her uncle and she doesn’t have enough money to pay taxes on the farm to keep it.  She decides to buy a horse and ride to California to fulfill the dream her mother had of visiting the state.  She buys Tarzan, a Morgan horse, packs up her possessions–at least what she believes she’ll need on the trip–and with her little dog, Depeche Toi, they set off from Minot, Maine, in November, 1954.  The book recounts her travels, negotiating highways with her horse, her interactions with those she meets along the way including those who give her shelter and help, and incorporates a bit of history of some of the places she stayed.  Through the book we get an idea of what it was like living in the mid-1950s.  One of the themes Letts brings up several times is the change in outlook from the view of a safe America to one of uncertainty about strangers vs. potential acquaintances/neighbors/friends that was happening at that time in America.  (See quotes p. 55 and p. 9.)

Also, books and movie mentioned:  The Last of the Saddle Tramps by Annie Wilkins; November Grass by Judy Van Der Veer; and the movie, “Saddle Tramp.”

“The unexpected could always be a shock, but sometimes it was the expected, the predictable, the resigned acceptance of whatever bad thing was coming your way that could end up dragging you down.”    p. 34  ¶1

“The feeling of deep connection was becoming less common in this postwar period, which, for many Americans, was a time of increasing xenophobia.  In 1952, Congress has passed the McCarran-Walter Act, reinforcing racially based quotas introduced in the 1920s, in part due to anti-Semitic bigotry and fears of communism.  Senator Joseph McCarthy had whipped up the fear of Communist infiltrators with his inflammatory rhetoric.  ‘Man the watchtowers of the nation,’ he scolded.  ‘Be vigilant day and night.’  Being vigilant was generally the opposite of being neighborly.  In a world of connection, bonds of friendship and kinship made very stranger a potential acquaintance.  The world of vigilance suggested the opposite:  every stranger might bring danger.”    p. 55  ¶1

Annie’s favorite poem, attributed to Walter Wintle:
        If you think you are beaten, you are;
        If you think you dare not, you don’t.
        If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
        It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
    
        If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
        For out in the world we find
        Success begins with a fellow’ will—
        And it’s all in the state of mind.    p. 91

“And isn’t this just how life is anyway?  You could plan, but you couldn’t control much, except your own wo feet and which way you chose to point them....  On they trudged, hoping that around some bend they would see a welcoming light.
  “And isn’t that what hope is?  Not a wish, not a specific thing that you pray will be delivered to you, but merely an expectation that whatever dark, sleety side of the road you might find yourself on will not last forever.”    p. 117-118

“The coming of television and mass media to America had an unexpected effect:  it was bringing stories of crime from all over America right to people’s doorsteps.”    p. 119  ¶3

“In the words of Henry Ward Beecher, ‘The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.’”    p. 146  ¶5

“Because that’s the thing about the future.  You can’t get there by imagining.  You can only get there one step at a time, and the hardest part is taking that first step.”    p. 213  ¶2

Annie crossed the mighty mountains and wondered if they were no bigger than molehills.  “Sometimes life is just like that, Annie thought.  You can be so worried about the challenge in front of you that you fail to realize that you’ve been chipping away at it all along.”    p. 222  ¶2


xThe One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot.  Marianne Cronin    unfinished @ p. 219
Interminable.  Lenni is a 17-year-old girl who has a terminal illness and is confined to the hospital.  She’s able to be up and about and seems mentally together.  (I didn’t enjoy her personality.)  Margot is an 83-year-old who is also in the hospitable, probably with a terminal illness.  They meet in the art room, become friends, and Lenni suggests that they make 100 paintings for the combined years of their lives.  Lenni shares her few memories, and Margot her many, including the fact that she fell in love with another woman.  I tried for more than half the book but it just didn’t hold my attention enough to finish.


The Paris Library.  Janet Skeslien Charles   
  I loved this book.  I read it by default when I didn’t have another book to read after I didn’t want to finish The One Hundred Years....  This is fiction but based on truth about the American Library in Paris and the people who worked there during WWII.  Odile, the main character, was fictional but her story fit around real events and people.  As the book opens, it’s 1939 and Odile is 20 years old.  She is excited to have been hired to work at the ALP because she loves books, though her father, especially, thinks she should not be working.  Coworkers include Bitsi who is about Odile’s age, the Directress, Boris, and Margaret who is about Odile’s age and is an English volunteer (married with a young daughter), plus several others.  Odile’s family includes her parents and her twin brother Rémy.  
  The other main character is Lily, Odile’s teen neighbor in Montana, in the 1980s.  Odile has lived in Montana since the war but has mostly been excluded–she married a soldier the town thought would marry another girl and Odile keeps to herself.  Lily is curious about her and decides to do a report on France and interviews Odile.  They become friends.
  There is so much to love about this book, and so much to be judgeful about, too, and yet it’s always good to look at one’s self before judging others.  People are not perfect.  They make mistakes.  Emotions get in the way of good judgment.  Just a really good book.

“People are awkward.  Don’t hold it against them.  You never know what’s in their hearts.”    p. 34 end


xThe Restoration of Celia Fairchild.  Marie Bostwick    unfinished (twice)
I couldn’t get into it the first time, forgot, reserved it again, and still can’t get into it.


Seven Perfect Things.  Catherine Ryan Hyde
Really good.  The narrative of this book is presented from the point of view of three characters: Abby, age 13, and her mother, Mary, who both live in an unhappy home because of Stan (father and husband) who is extremely controlling and abusive in other ways; and Elliot, a recent widower.  Abby sees a man throw a burlap bag into the river.  When she sees movement in the bag she jumps into the river and retrieves it before it sinks to the bottom.  She finds seven puppies inside.  She takes them to the pound, only to learn that there is no room and they would have to be put down.  She remembers an abandoned cabin not far from her home–a cabin that had been broken into--and takes them there to care for them.  A few days later the owner of the cabin, Elliott, goes there to mourn, only to find that his cabin and shed have been broken into, items were stolen, and there are seven puppies in the shed.  Abby and Elliot meet and develop a friendship.  Abby imagines what it might have been like to have had Elliot as a father.  When Mary and Elliot meet, Abby is even more helpful, but there is her father....   I really liked Elliot’s even temperament, his perceptiveness, his calm demeanor, and his willingness to help.  I also liked Abby’s maturity.  There is some confrontation and abuse in this book but no language.


August

xWoe Is I:  A Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.  Patricia T. O’Conner 
So, I didn’t read this book cover to cover but I read through many of the chapters and browsed/perused the rest.  I thought it was really good.


The Lights of Sugarberry Cove.  Heather Webber 
  To begin with I did not like the physical book–small font, tight spacing on the pages–and the synopsis on the flap of the cover gave me the impression of contention in a family.  So I laid it aside.  Then, when I finished the previous book and didn’t have another in line to read, I went back to this one.  I’m glad I did.  I loved it!
  The characters are 26-y-old Sadie Way Scott, her sister Leala, 4 years older and married with a 2-year-old son; their mother Susannah.  Sadie hasn’t been back to Sugarberry Cove since she was 18 and drowned in the lake, then was revived.  Their mother, Susannah, owns a B & B, the dream of her deceased husband and father of the girls.  Both girls return home when their mother suffers a heart attack, prompting a reunion and some healing.  Excellent.


Every Secret Thing.  Susanna Kearsley 
Ohhh, good.  It was a mystery bordering on a thriller.  Kate is a journalist, in London to cover a national trial.  As she sits outside awaiting the verdict, an older gentleman approaches her and begins a conversation.  Kate is dismissive when he tells her he knows of a murder deserving justice, one committed many years ago; and then he asks about her grandmother and tells Kate she has the same eyes, then gives her his card.  Andrew Deacon is his name.  He walks away and is hit by a car and killed.  Kate asks her grandmother about him and the story begins.  Whew!

“‘I always think they’re rather sad things, photographs, when someone dies.  One is left with the pictures, but none of the stories.’”    p. 55 ¶5


xFaithful.  Alice Hoffman    unfinished @ p. 11
Ohh, this was too sad.  I couldn’t keep going.


xThe Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.  Jennifer Ryan 
My daughter listened to The Kitchen Front, by the same author, and liked it.  She thought this might be good so borrowed the audio version to listen to on a road trip.  We weren’t too impressed but I’d already reserved the paper version.  When it came I realized that it was chopped up into journal entries, letters, diaries, etc.  No interest.


What is it with Susan Wiggs’s books?  Sometimes they are wholesome and sometimes the language is awful.
 
xBetween You & Me.  Susan Wiggs    unfinished @ Chapter 2
I thought Chapter 1 was great, about an Amish man who is raising his niece and nephew.  But the first words in Chapter 2....  I closed the book.


XFamily Tree.  Susan Wiggs    unfinshed @ end of chapter 1
I only got to the end of the first chapter in this one.  Ouch!

“All arguments, at their core, [are] about power.  Who had it.  Who wanted it.  Who would surrender.  Who would prevail.”
    copied from Goodreads  (I returned the book before I recorded the quote directly from the book.)


The Dictionary of Lost Words.  Pip Williams
Wow!  What a great book.  I loved it.  This is definitely a book for women.  We meet Esme Nicoll in 1886 when she is about 4, then move to the story when she’s 5.  Her mother is dead, her father works at a table in the Scriptorium where he is a lexicographer, helping to define words for the upcoming publication of a new version of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Esme sits under the table playing.  The words are written on 4" x 6" cards of paper, called slips, which include the words, the definitions, and sentences in which the words are used.  Esme has fallen in love with words, just as her father did.  As she grows older she realizes that most of the words in the dictionary, and their definitions, are decided by men, and that there are words by, for, about, and used by women that are not included.  She begins her own collection of slips. 

“‘Fear ‘ates the ordinary,’ she [Mabel] said.  ‘When yer feared, you need to think ordinary thoughts, do ordinary things.  You ‘ear me?  The fear’ll back off, for a time at least.’”    p. 159 ¶4

  This (below) reminds me of Lisa Genova’s book, Remember, in which she states that our memories aren’t accurate and are vulnerable to editing.
  After Esme’s father’s death, Ditte recalls to her some of the things her father did, such as going to a bridge to talk to Esme’s deceased mother about nearly everything. 
  “It was a gift, this story.  As I listened to Ditte, my memories of life with Da were subtly touched up, like a painter might add a daub of colour to give the impression of morning light.  Lily [her mother], always so absent, suddenly wasn’t.”    p. 271 ¶1-9 (quote in ¶9)

“It struck me that we are never fully at ease when we are aware of another’s gaze.  Perhaps we are never fully ourselves.  In the desire to please or impress, to persuade or dominate, our movements become conscious, our features set.”    p. 282 ¶4

From the author in the Author’s Notes section.  She discusses the absence of women in the creation of the dictionary.
  “I decided that the absence of women did matter.  A lack of representation might mean that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was biased in favour of the experiences and sensibilities of men.  Older, white, Victorian-era men at that.
  “This novel is my attempt to understand how the way we define language might define us.”    p. 362 ¶1-2


xHappiness for Beginners.  Katherine Center    unfinished @ ~p. 54
Maybe in the end it would have been a good book but it seemed, somehow, juvenile.

“I guess sometimes you just get an idea of a person in your mind, and that’s what you see when you look at him, no matter what.”    p. 4 ¶4


|The Little Ghost Who was a Quilt.  Riel Nason.  Byron Eggenschwiler, illus.
A cute little story about a young ghost who is weighed down and slow because he is a quilt.  He faces a challenge with bravery and overcomes it.


The Shadowy Horses.  Susanna Kearsley 
I enjoyed this book (except for the occasional language).  Archaeologist Verity Grey accepts a position with Peter Quinnell in the Scottish borderlands based on the recommendation of her ex-boyfriend, Adrian, who works for Quinnell.  David Fortune also works for Quinnell, and Quinnell’s 18-year-old granddaughter, Fabia, is a photographer for the dig.  They are searching for remains of the Ninth Roman Legion on property Quinnell owns.  Robbie, a 10-year-old whose mother works for Quinnell has visions and sees a sentry from that time period who makes himself known in various ways.  At the beginning of the story Verity does not believe in ghosts but things change by the end of the book.  This is a bit of a fantasy (with the sound of non-existent horses and the sentry ghost) and also a bit of a romance.   I liked the characters and their personalities and enjoyed the interactions which were sometimes pretty funny.

The boy Robbie of this book becomes the man Rob in The Firebird where we read more of his gift of vision, in combination with the main character’s ability to know information about an object and its owner by touching and holding it.

“‘Time gives us all the gift of perspective.’”    p. 206 ¶5

“‘You can never go back....  Life moves on, and ye cannae go back.  You’ve only got one chance to get it right.’”
        p. 354 ¶ last


A Desperate Fortune.  Susanna Kearsley 
  This was a little long and at one point I thought about stopping.  It takes place in two time periods, not my favorite kind of book but very common these days. 
  The current time are characters Sara (who has Asperger’s), her cousin Jacquie (who plays only a small part), Luc and Denise (divorced but friends), their son Noah, Claudine (photographer), and Alistair (author).  Sara has been hired by Alistair to translate a journal, owned by Claudine, that was written by Mary Dundas in the 1700s during the time the Jacobites were in exile.
  In the time of the journal, the main character is Mary Dundas who has agreed to play a role in helping to transport a man from France to Paris, except she’s primarily kept in the dark about what’s going on.  The other primary characters in that time (who have aliases as the story progresses) are Mrs. Roy (Mary’s maid/chaperone), Mr. Thomson (the man they’re protecting), and Mr. MacPherson, the protector of all of them.
  One of the things I took from the story is how our thoughts about people change as we get to know them.

“‘God always gives us people for a reason, lass.  He takes them from us, too, but when He puts them in our path and gives them back to us again, we would be great fools not to realize that He means us to belong to them.’”    p. 431 ¶2


September

The Paris Apartment.  Kelly Bowen   
Lia inherits her grandmother’s Paris apartment.  When she arrives she realizes that it hasn’t been lived in for decades.  Then she notices the paintings, the beautiful dresses, and sees the Nazi magazines.  She immediately suspects that her grandmother was a Nazi sympathizer.  She arranges for Gabriel Seymour, an appraiser and restorer of old paintings, to view the paintings.  She chooses him particularly because his surname and the name on one of the small paintings is the same. 
  This is a book set in two time periods with several characters.  Chapters move from one character and time to another.  We learn that Lia’s grandmother, Estelle Allard, was not a sympathizer but one who helped people escape.  And that Gabriel’s aunt, Sophie, worked with Estelle for a while.
  This drew me in despite the dual time line and the story being told from different characters’ perspectives.  (I should add that there was some language in difficult circumstances.)


xBefore and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.   Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate     unfinished @ p.62
I thought this would be interesting but it seemed like lots of supposition and imagination on the part of the children who became orphans. 


xEveryone Brave is Forgiven.  Chris Cleave  
I just can’t do more WWII right now.  And there was some language, and I didn’t really like the characters much, or the idea that she chases one man then falls for the other.  I thought the language of this was interesting, unexpected, and sometimes beautiful.
  Thoughts after his best friend and roommate joins the army:   “So it finishes as quickly as this.  All the things we make exceptional are merely borrowed from the mundane and must without warning be surrendered to it.”    p. 34 ¶4


I really can not do more WWII now.
xThe Forest of Vanishing Stars.  Kristin Harmel  
xThe Invisible Bridge.  Julie Orringer  


xThe Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me.  Paul Joseph Fronczak     unfinished @ p.62
When he’s 10, Paul’s scouting around in his parents’ crawlspace and finds newspaper clippings about a lost baby–his parents’ lost baby.  He begins to wonder about who he really is and tells the story.  I’m sure I should have liked this book but it read too much like a poor me story.


xOlive Kitteridge.  Elizabeth Strout    unfinished at p. 75
This is the second time I’ve tried this book and had to lay it aside.  Seeing that it had won the Pulitzer Prize, I tried it the second time, thinking it must have some redeeming value.  But no, Olive is not a person I want to spend time with or read about.


The Nature of Fragile Things.  Susan Meissner  
Oh so good!  Sophie Whalen is a mail order bride to a man named Martin Hocking, a man who seems to have no interest in her other than that she can take care of his 5-year-old daughter, Kat, and give him the appearance of being married.  There are so many deceits related to Martin, but they gradually begin to unfold.   This takes place in San Francisco before and after the 1906 earthquake.


Pumpkin, The Raccoon Who Thought She Was a Dog.  Laura Young 
Mostly photos of a little raccoon living with two dogs and their owners somewhere in the Bahamas.  She is cute!


The Last Year of the War.  Susan Meissner  
This reads like a memoir.  Elise Sontag Dove (in older age, with the beginning of Alzheimer’s—I was surprised she remembered so much!) writes of her memories of being interned in a camp in the western U.S. because her German parents had not yet naturalized.  She develops a friendship with Mariko, also an American citizen, but her parents were from Japan.  From there Elise’s family moves to Germany because they are exchanged for Americans who are in Germany.  It was news to me that Germans were interned during WWII.  The book gave lots of insight in the situation for those at the camp and the situation during and near the end of WWII in Germany.  It dragged just a little.

“‘You don’t have to say everything you’re thinking, Elise.’”    p. 14 ¶5

“...[Mariko] believed there were two kinds of mirrors.  There was the kind you looked into to see what you looked like, and then there was the kind you looked into and saw what other people thought you looked like.”     p. 28 ¶ last

“Sometimes what you want is given to you in a way that is so very different from how you had pictured getting it.”    p. 54-55

“...The past is nothing you can make friends or enemies of.  It just is what it is.  Or was.  It is this day you are living right now, this very day, that is yours to make of it what you will.  So make it beautiful, if you can.      p. 177 ¶6

“Life is too brief to waste a minute of it chasing after things that don’t matter.”    p. 379 ¶3 end


October

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive.  Lucy Adlington  
  Excellent!  In some ways hard to read but so worth it.  The author introduces the reader to a number of young, female seamstresses as they grow into adulthood in Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and France and find themselves prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where they were eventually selected to become seamstresses in a salon for the wives of Nazi leaders.  (I can’t imagine having to do a work I love for people who treat me like vermin.)  Without being too graphic the author presents the situation of the captives and takes us into the concentration camp, showing the reader several areas of the camp including Kanada, warehouses of looted goods from the Jews who were captured.  It was interesting to learn how friendships formed and how some prisoners supported each other.  Almost a behind-the-scenes look at some aspects of Auschwitz.
  The book is based on research and interviews with 98-year-old Bracha Berkovic Kohút, and daughters, granddaughters, and other family members of those who were in Auschwitz.
  Early in the book the author discussed how fashion can create unity (and to some extent, pride) in a group of people, something I had never thought about.  Think Boy Scout uniforms to military uniforms and even national folk costumes.  Fashion can also create divisiveness.

I came away with two lessons/reminders:
First, we are all human beings.  We should not let the color of skin, the nationality, the religion of an other individual become a reason to reject, taunt, bully, or in any way harm another person, either physically or emotionally.
Second, resistance can be manifest in a variety of ways. 

More about the book at https://www.timesofisrael.com/sewing-for-survival-the-last-of-auschwitzs-forgotten-dressmakers-dies/


I'll be seeing you : a memoir.  Elizabeth Berg  
  Berg’s parents are in their 80s, her father has early Alzheimer’s, and they need to move to a home without stairs.  In addition, her parents aren’t exactly getting along.  Dad follows Mom everywhere and Mom is getting frustrated with no alone time and him asking the same questions over and over and over.
  I thought this was a heart-felt look at the challenges older people face, and the challenges their children face—both physically and emotionally, told with honesty, insight, and eventually compassion.
  Definitely worth reading.


Hannah Coulter.  Wendell Berry  
I read this by default and am glad I did.  Hannah is an 80-year-old widow (born in 1920) who tells the story of her life.  She has plenty of insights and the story is beautifully written with a down-to-earth, yet sometimes lyrical, voice.  Probably worth reading again in a few years.

Hannah describes her grandmother’s clothing and says, “ The girls of her day, I think, must have been like well-wrapped gifts, to be opened by their husbands on their wedding night, a complete surprise.  ‘”Well!  What’s this?”’”    p. 10 ¶2

“Grandmam was a respectable woman....  She could make herself look respectable.  But mostly, when she was at home, and at work, she wore clothes that many a woman, even then, would have thrown away.  Her ‘everyday’ black dresses were faded by the sun and lye soap, and they would be patched and tattery and worn out of shape....  She never gave up on her clothes until they were entirely worn out, and then she ripped them up, saving the buttons, and wore them out as rags.”    p. 10-11

“What is the thread that holds it all [a life] together?  Grief, I thought for a while.  And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through....  But grief is not a force and has no power to hold.  You can only bear it.  Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out a times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.    p. 51 ¶5

“I have this love for Mattie [her son].  It was formed in me as he himself was formed.  It has his shape, you might say.  He fits it.  He fits into it as he fits into his clothes.  He will always fit into it.  When he gets out of th car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just as it did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.    p. 123-124

Speaking of her son Mattie’s children, her grandchildren, who she rarely sees, “And what ever in their lives will they think of the old woman they will barely remember who yearned toward them and longed to teach them to know her a little and who wanted to give them more hugs and kisses than she ever was able to?”    p. 125 ¶1

Speaking of veterans of war “who was in it, who survived it and came home from it, and did not talk about it.  There were several . . . who went and fought and came home and lived to be old men here, whose memories contained in silence the farthest distances of the world, terrible sights, terrible sufferings.  Some of them were heroes.  And they said not a word.  They stood among us like monuments without inscriptions.  They said nothing or said little because we have barely a language for what they knew, and they could not bear the pain of talking of their knowledge in even so poor a language as we have.”    p. 167-168


xThe Story of Arthur Truluv.  Elizabeth Berg    unfinished at p. 93
I should have stopped earlier due to language, sex....  And I didn’t care enough about the characters, either.

[Mr. Lyons, the English teacher] “taught her one of her favorite words:  hiraeth, a Welsh word that means a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that maybe never was; it means nostalgia and yearning and grief for lost places.”    P. 14 ¶1


The Rose Code.  Kate Quinn  
This takes place in two time periods, 1940-1944 and 1947.  I’m not a fan of dual time-period books but this worked better than most because the characters were the same throughout the book. Three young women (Olsa, Mab, and Beth) are assigned by the British government to become code breakers at Bletchley Park in the early 1940s.  Some of the characters are based on historical figures; some of the events are true, some are invented.  One of the young women is accused of being a traitor and sent to an insane asylum.  But she’s not the real traitor.  There were bits of language now and then which I was able to mostly overlook.  There were also some open door bedroom scenes which I skipped over.  I thought it was excellently written and I liked the characters.  (Now that I’m finished reading I miss them.)


November

xThe Children’s Blizzard.  Melanie Benjamin 
I didn’t connect with the characters but beyond that, I didn’t appreciate the language of some of the characters.   Unfinished at page 90.  (A number of years ago I read another book with the same title by a different author which was non-fiction and excellent.)


The Keeper of Lost Things.  Ruth Hogan 
  Nearly middle-aged, recently-divorced Laura gets hired for the job of assistant to author Anthony Peardew.  Anthony keeps the things he finds on walks and elsewhere, with the hope of reuniting them with their owners.  His fiancee died before they were married and he lost something she gave him.  When he dies, he leaves everything to Laura, including the job of finding the original owners of the lost things.  Sunshine, a young woman with Down Syndrome, befriends Laura, as does Freddy, the yard guy. 
  There’s a parallel story with Bomber, a publisher, and Eunice, his assistant.  Their story does tie in with Laura’s but not until late in the book.
  I liked the story.  I did not like the language!

 
The Last Thing He Told Me.  Laura Dave  
This book takes place over about a week, with a few flashbacks and a final flash forward.  It was such engaging reading with a heart-breaking ending.  Hannah and Owen married about a year ago.  Owen has a 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, who has no interest in getting to know or trust Hannah, her new step-mother.  Owen and Bailey have been on their own since the tragic death of her mother when Bailey was very young.  Owen disappears when the owner of the company he works for is arrested for fraud.  He sent a brief message to Hannah which says, “Protect her.”  Hannah understands that she is to protect Bailey but she doesn’t know from what.  This is a quick-paced read which I finished in just a few days.  It’s a story about love, about sacrifice, trust, and an excellent mystery.  There are a few incidences of language.


December

The Lincoln Highway.  Alex Towles  
  This is a book I wish I hadn’t read.  I stopped after the first chapter, then decided to continue.  Bad choice!
  The time in 1954 and the story begins in Nebraska.  Eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson has just returned from a work farm after serving a year for manslaughter.  (He punched another teen who was goading him.  The teen fell on either a tent stake or rock (I can’t remember which) and ended up dying.)  When Emmet was driven home by the warden, hiding in the trunk were two 18-year-old escaped inmates, Duchess and Woolley.  Emmet is the straight arrow of the three.  Duchess is the suave, smooth-talker, and Woolley has, perhaps, some mental problems, but is an honest, sweet young man.  Billy is Emmett’s 8-year-old brother—intelligent, literate, adroit.    
  Emmet’s mother left the family years ago; his father died while Emmett was interned; and the farm his father owned will be taken over by the bank for back taxes.  Sally, who is about Emmett’s age, and her father have been caring for Billy while Emmett’s been gone.  Sally’s father suggests that Emmett and Billy leave town and make a fresh start.  He and Billy intend to travel the Lincoln Highway to California to try to find their mother.  But Duchess has other ideas.
  The book was too long, with too many extra little stories and side trips that were of little consequence to the whole of the story.  It was as if Towles had these great ideas for vignettes and stuck them in.
  The ending was the worst, a betrayal of all the author led us to believe about Emmet.
  For some reason this book brought to mind The Lord of the Flies.
  Quotes (not copied, just reference pages and paragraphs):  p. 91 top & ¶1; p. 104 ¶4 & last; p. 201 ¶ last; p. 495 ¶1-3 & 5.


The Keeper of Happy Endings.  Barbara Davis  
  I loved this book!  Rory, about 23, is trying to get out from under the thumb of her mother, Camille.  Rory's fiancé, Hux, was abducted while serving in the mid-east with Doctors Without Borders.  Rory is desolate at the loss, anxious to learn his whereabouts and whether he’s safe and will be coming home.  He encouraged her to continue to make art and to open a gallery while her mother wanted her to complete an MFA and go to Paris. 
  Soline, about 60, was trained by her mother as a dressmaker with the skill/craft to be able to create charms for happy endings for young brides.  She met and fell in love with young American ambulance-driver Anson during WWII while she volunteered in France at one of the hospitals and they became engaged.  He sent her to live with his “formidable” father and younger sister where she was not welcome.  She was led to believe that Anson was dead and, though pregnant, she was sent away from their house.
  The story is told third person from Rory’s point of view and in first person by Soline as she recounts events in her life and her thoughts about them.
  Excellent!


xWomen in the Kitchen: Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat from 1661 to Today.
Anne Willan    unfinished @p. 215
  The early cooks—Hannah Woolley, Hannah Glasse, Amelia Simmons, Maria Rundell, Lydia Child, Sarah Rutledge, and Fannie Farmer—captured my attention but when she began on the more modern cooks, beginning with Irma Rombauer, Julia Child, etc., my interest waned.  I was surprised that Mrs. Beeton was not included!
  The most interesting thing I learned in this book was that plagiarism of recipes was expected.  In 1773 “plagiarism was common practice and indeed approved—it was an author’s duty to pass on the finest recipes, with no insistence on originality.”  (p. 34 ¶1)   [I've since learned that one cannot copyright a recipe.]
  Here’s another good reason to love Hannah Glasse (beside the fact that she was born in Northumberland, home of my ancestors:  Chocolate as a beverage was prepared in the 16th century, but “Chocolate as a flavoring . . . did not catch on until much later and Hannah Glasse was one of the first English cooks to use it.”   p. 49 under “Chocolate Pudding with Rosemary”  (Which does not sound appealing to me.)  Hannah’s dates are 1708-1770.
  From Lydia Child:  “The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost.  I mean fragments of time as well as materials. . . .  Time is money.”  (p. 98 ¶2)
  Also from Lydia Child:  “Nothing is cheap that we do not want.”  (p. 99 ¶1)


The Last of the Moon Girls.  Barbara Davis
  The Moon women walk a different path, each with her own abilities.  Lizzy’s is scent and being able to read how people feel through how they smell.  Lizzy, 38, walked away from her home and her and her grandmothers’ abilities years ago.  She’s always been different and is determined to live a solitary life without attachments.  She works in a perfume company in NYC when she learns that her grandmother died several months ago through a letter that was sent soon after her death.  Lizzy returns to her home town and realizes that she must take care of selling Moon Girl Farm but also that she must find the killer of two teenage girls who were killed 8 years ago so she can learn her grandmother’s name.  She tries to steer clear of encumbrances and relationships but there is Andrew who wants nothing more than to help her.  It was an engaging story.
  I liked this book but some of the ideas in it weren’t in keeping with my beliefs relating to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  Religion had no part in this book.  However, Lizzy and the other women were concerned about doing good.


|This House Is Home.  Deborah Kerbel; Yong Ling Kang, illus.  
I thought this book was just so-so.  The story wasn't great and neither were the illustrations.


xThe Letter Keeper.  Charles Martin  
I’ve loved most every book I’ve read by Charles Martin, but this seemed like a rehash of a previous book, The Water Keeper, which is about girls being kidnapped for sex slavery.  I just couldn’t do it again.  Both of these books are part of The Murphy Shepherd Novels.  I’ll go back to Martin when he comes up with a new subject.


Never Fall for Your Fiancée.  Virginia Heath 
The whole story is a farce, and a funny one, to boot.  Hugh Standish, Earl of Fareham, believes he’s not suited to marriage because neither his father nor grandfather were loyal to their wives.  His mother has been trying to get him married for years.  He takes things into his own hands and invents a fiancé, names her Minerva, then creates and embellishes stories about her to send to his mother in Boston.  Things get tense when he learns that his mother and step-father are coming to England to meet Minerva.  Hugh just happens to see a lady in distress, trying to collect payment from a man who refuses to pay.  He helps her, then learns that her name is Minerva, and the story continues.  It’s very funny.  The only parts I didn’t like were the intimate scenes.

nm