| indicates a children’s book
x indicates an unfinished book
January
The Moonlight Child. Karen McQuestion
For some reason I thought this would have a little magic in it. It did not! It had an over-bearing, hateful, evil women/wife/mother, Suzette, who had taken a tiny girl, Mia, and was keeping her in their home to do work. Her husband and son both tried to persuade her to turn the child in (after 3 years) but she would have none of it. Mia is an adorable child but the circumstances are horrendous. Other characters are Susan, retired neighbor, who sees the little girl through the window one night; Amy, Susan’s attorney daughter; and Niki, an-18-year-old ex-foster child who Amy mentored and asked her mom to give her a place to stay. Susan sees the little girl through the window washing dishes at 11:00 at night and thus begins the search to find the truth. One could say that poetic justice prevails in the end.
The Christmas Dress. Courtney Cole
Meg, a dress designer who worked for a fashion magazine in NYC, returned to the Chicago home where her father recently died to take over the running of the condominiums there. She’s also recently broken up with her boyfriend and feels good about it. She’s at a loss for where to begin running the condos. All of the tenants are senior citizens who have lived there for many years and the condo is need of many repairs. Where to begin? This is not her strength. She starts off on the wrong foot with Sylvie, self-styled assistant to her father, because she took a few weeks to get her affairs in NYC in order. But the other tenants welcome her. From Sylvie she learns that they have a handyman on call, Logan, who is willing to work and get paid when they’re able to pay. One problem after another happens in the building but none are so overwhelming that Meg can’t handle them with the help of Logan and the occupants of the condos. I really enjoyed this quick, light read.
One More for Christmas. Sarah Morgan
Gayle Mitchell has managed to become a success, despite all challenges. She’s contained, self-directed, in control. Yet when an interview closes with the question, “No regrets?” she hesitates just slightly before saying “No.” For photographs after the interview, they ask to photograph her with an ugly award she’s just received which is on the top shelf of a huge bookcase. She climbs onto a chair to retrieve it, pulling the award and a shelf down on herself. Lying on the floor she’s barely able to speak and asks them to call her eldest daughter. She hears others answering questions. No, she has no next of kin. Oh, yes, says the reporter, I did a deep dive and found two estranged daughters. Her employees are shocked.
Gayle and her daughters, Samantha and Ella, had a falling out five years ago and haven’t spoken since. Gayle does not know that Ella is married and has a nearly-5-year-old daughter, nor that she doesn’t teach anymore. They are shocked to learn that their mother is in the hospital but go to see her. Gayle is having second thoughts about all the decisions she’s made in her life, especially when it comes to raising her daughters, and asks if they can spend Christmas together. Whoops. But it turns out that that’s what they do – a Christmas in Scotland where Samantha is evaluating a new lodge for her Christmas travel business. The family has a lot to work through.
I liked the fact that the focus of this book was on change. Each of the main characters had something she needed or wanted to change in her life and was willing to make the effort to make those changes. (Unlike in The Moonlight Child where one of the main female characters saw no reason to change.)
“Other people’s expectations [are] like reins, holding you back.” p. 15 ¶2
“You do what you think is best at the time, based on the information you have available, and it’s only later when you look back that you wonder if you made the wrong choices.... What we have to remember is that looking back doesn’t give you the same picture you were looking at when you made those decisions. All we can do is our best, based on the information and circumstances of the time....” p. 232 ¶5
x Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
Oliver Burkeman
Maybe it’s because I’m older, or maybe because I don’t have small children, or perhaps because I don’t have a job outside the home... but this book made me nervous. It seems like there must be many people (who read this book?) who feel like they don’t have time for anything, as though time and work and other extremities control their choices. I couldn’t continue.
“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.” p. 5 top
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes. Claire Wilcox
This was a memoir in small bits from Wilcox’s life, some beautifully written. The memories were, to me, often nebulous and barely formed, other times her topic was clear. Wilcox is the senior curator of fashion of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some memories involved clothes, many more did not. It was good enough but not fabulous.
|The Yule Tomte and the Little Rabbits: A Christmas Story for Advent. Ulf Stark and Eva Eriksson
Oh, cute. Grump the tomte is happy to live alone in a dog kennel he’s made comfortable. Even though no one lives in the house anymore, he still checks on it and makes sure things are in order. And then he finds a bee whose buzzing disturbs his quiet, and his hat and mittens blow away. Unbeknownst to Grump, there is a family of rabbits who lives not too far away. When they learn that the tomte will come for Christmas they make all kinds of preparations. This story reminded me of Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Christmas display of the little animals in and around their burrows.
x The Paris Dressmaker. Kristy Cambron
Maybe it’s my Covid brain, or maybe it’s the book. This takes place in two time periods (1939 and 1943) with different characters. It seemed confusing to me. Maybe another time?
Things Organized Neatly. Austin Radcliffe
What fun! How to describe this book? Photographs of often similar items arranged in interesting patterns, or by shape or color, or by size. Sometimes symmetry, sometimes into specific shapes. I think these are sometimes called flat lays.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Katherine May
I thought the author would write about wintering in general, with information useful to many of us. Instead, this seemed like a series of essays describing her personal challenges. It was okay but not great.
“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, side-lined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.... Yet it’s also inevitable....” p. 10 ¶3-top of next page
The Consequences of Fear. Jacqueline Winspear
I put off reading this earlier because I didn’t want to read more WWII books at the time. This takes place in war-time but is not a book about the war, per se. I’m glad I came back to it. As always, the Maisie Dobbs novels are excellent. In this one, Freddie Hackett, a young boy who runs to take messages from one place to the other, sees a man stabbed and skilled as he’s running to deliver a message. He was able to see the killer’s face. He tells the police but they are overwhelmed and think he’s imagined the whole thing. Finally, in an attempt to find anyone to help, he goes to Maisie (having delivered a message or two there before). Maisie takes on the case pro bono, against the judgment of the government people she works with/for, MacFarlane and Caldwell. Of course she solves it, giving us a look into how her mind works and the environment in England in late 1941. Excellent.
Gabriella Hunter: “Human beings and animals have a tendency to find their way home, even when it’s thousands of miles away and they have never set foot in the place before.”
x indicates an unfinished book
January
The Moonlight Child. Karen McQuestion
For some reason I thought this would have a little magic in it. It did not! It had an over-bearing, hateful, evil women/wife/mother, Suzette, who had taken a tiny girl, Mia, and was keeping her in their home to do work. Her husband and son both tried to persuade her to turn the child in (after 3 years) but she would have none of it. Mia is an adorable child but the circumstances are horrendous. Other characters are Susan, retired neighbor, who sees the little girl through the window one night; Amy, Susan’s attorney daughter; and Niki, an-18-year-old ex-foster child who Amy mentored and asked her mom to give her a place to stay. Susan sees the little girl through the window washing dishes at 11:00 at night and thus begins the search to find the truth. One could say that poetic justice prevails in the end.
The Christmas Dress. Courtney Cole
Meg, a dress designer who worked for a fashion magazine in NYC, returned to the Chicago home where her father recently died to take over the running of the condominiums there. She’s also recently broken up with her boyfriend and feels good about it. She’s at a loss for where to begin running the condos. All of the tenants are senior citizens who have lived there for many years and the condo is need of many repairs. Where to begin? This is not her strength. She starts off on the wrong foot with Sylvie, self-styled assistant to her father, because she took a few weeks to get her affairs in NYC in order. But the other tenants welcome her. From Sylvie she learns that they have a handyman on call, Logan, who is willing to work and get paid when they’re able to pay. One problem after another happens in the building but none are so overwhelming that Meg can’t handle them with the help of Logan and the occupants of the condos. I really enjoyed this quick, light read.
One More for Christmas. Sarah Morgan
Gayle Mitchell has managed to become a success, despite all challenges. She’s contained, self-directed, in control. Yet when an interview closes with the question, “No regrets?” she hesitates just slightly before saying “No.” For photographs after the interview, they ask to photograph her with an ugly award she’s just received which is on the top shelf of a huge bookcase. She climbs onto a chair to retrieve it, pulling the award and a shelf down on herself. Lying on the floor she’s barely able to speak and asks them to call her eldest daughter. She hears others answering questions. No, she has no next of kin. Oh, yes, says the reporter, I did a deep dive and found two estranged daughters. Her employees are shocked.
Gayle and her daughters, Samantha and Ella, had a falling out five years ago and haven’t spoken since. Gayle does not know that Ella is married and has a nearly-5-year-old daughter, nor that she doesn’t teach anymore. They are shocked to learn that their mother is in the hospital but go to see her. Gayle is having second thoughts about all the decisions she’s made in her life, especially when it comes to raising her daughters, and asks if they can spend Christmas together. Whoops. But it turns out that that’s what they do – a Christmas in Scotland where Samantha is evaluating a new lodge for her Christmas travel business. The family has a lot to work through.
I liked the fact that the focus of this book was on change. Each of the main characters had something she needed or wanted to change in her life and was willing to make the effort to make those changes. (Unlike in The Moonlight Child where one of the main female characters saw no reason to change.)
“Other people’s expectations [are] like reins, holding you back.” p. 15 ¶2
“You do what you think is best at the time, based on the information you have available, and it’s only later when you look back that you wonder if you made the wrong choices.... What we have to remember is that looking back doesn’t give you the same picture you were looking at when you made those decisions. All we can do is our best, based on the information and circumstances of the time....” p. 232 ¶5
x Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
Oliver Burkeman
Maybe it’s because I’m older, or maybe because I don’t have small children, or perhaps because I don’t have a job outside the home... but this book made me nervous. It seems like there must be many people (who read this book?) who feel like they don’t have time for anything, as though time and work and other extremities control their choices. I couldn’t continue.
“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.” p. 5 top
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes. Claire Wilcox
This was a memoir in small bits from Wilcox’s life, some beautifully written. The memories were, to me, often nebulous and barely formed, other times her topic was clear. Wilcox is the senior curator of fashion of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some memories involved clothes, many more did not. It was good enough but not fabulous.
|The Yule Tomte and the Little Rabbits: A Christmas Story for Advent. Ulf Stark and Eva Eriksson
Oh, cute. Grump the tomte is happy to live alone in a dog kennel he’s made comfortable. Even though no one lives in the house anymore, he still checks on it and makes sure things are in order. And then he finds a bee whose buzzing disturbs his quiet, and his hat and mittens blow away. Unbeknownst to Grump, there is a family of rabbits who lives not too far away. When they learn that the tomte will come for Christmas they make all kinds of preparations. This story reminded me of Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Christmas display of the little animals in and around their burrows.
x The Paris Dressmaker. Kristy Cambron
Maybe it’s my Covid brain, or maybe it’s the book. This takes place in two time periods (1939 and 1943) with different characters. It seemed confusing to me. Maybe another time?
Things Organized Neatly. Austin Radcliffe
What fun! How to describe this book? Photographs of often similar items arranged in interesting patterns, or by shape or color, or by size. Sometimes symmetry, sometimes into specific shapes. I think these are sometimes called flat lays.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Katherine May
I thought the author would write about wintering in general, with information useful to many of us. Instead, this seemed like a series of essays describing her personal challenges. It was okay but not great.
“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, side-lined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.... Yet it’s also inevitable....” p. 10 ¶3-top of next page
The Consequences of Fear. Jacqueline Winspear
I put off reading this earlier because I didn’t want to read more WWII books at the time. This takes place in war-time but is not a book about the war, per se. I’m glad I came back to it. As always, the Maisie Dobbs novels are excellent. In this one, Freddie Hackett, a young boy who runs to take messages from one place to the other, sees a man stabbed and skilled as he’s running to deliver a message. He was able to see the killer’s face. He tells the police but they are overwhelmed and think he’s imagined the whole thing. Finally, in an attempt to find anyone to help, he goes to Maisie (having delivered a message or two there before). Maisie takes on the case pro bono, against the judgment of the government people she works with/for, MacFarlane and Caldwell. Of course she solves it, giving us a look into how her mind works and the environment in England in late 1941. Excellent.
Gabriella Hunter: “Human beings and animals have a tendency to find their way home, even when it’s thousands of miles away and they have never set foot in the place before.”
p. 54 ¶3
Again, Gabriella Hunter, on relationships: “‘...I think kindness is the most important thing.... I believe love must be cradled gently, as if you have something very precious in your hands that you do not want to break.... Never let fears get in the way of happiness, because fear can lead to such irrational reasoning, and we can make dreadful mistakes, saying things we can’t take back.’”
p. 56 ¶ last-p. 57 top
Maurice (Maisie's now-deceased mentor) often said, “Coincidence is a messenger sent by truth.” p. 101 top
“For a good agent, fear seemed to linger on a balance beam. If it was kept plumb in the center of the beam, fear would protect them; it would enhance their senses and alert them to danger. Fear could be an agent’s greatest asset. But if fear increased and tipped the balance too far in one direction, then it could paralyze an agent, lead to ill-considered decisions, panic, and errors that might risk the lives of others and result in their own death. And if fear were diminished to a point of overconfidence, then they and an entire resistance line were as good as finished. Fear had to be handled with care, managed so it became a tool, not a weight.” p. 103 top
xThe Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way we Live. Danielle Dreilinger
Interesting but not interesting enough right now. Maybe later.
February
The Keeper of the Bees. Gene Stratton-Porter
Old-fashioned (written in about 1923-1924) but wonderful: good morals and values never get old. Worth rereading. The story opens with the narrator telling us about James Lewis MacFarlane (Jamie), WWI veteran, who had been in a hospital for returned and ill soldiers for more than a year without any healing. He learned that the doctors intended to send him to a hospital for people with tuberculosis even though he didn’t have TB. Despite the pain and lack of strength and energy, he leaves the hospital and begins walking, aiming for the Pacific ocean. He receives bits of help along the way and eventually arrives at the home of a man who keeps bees, and who, while Jamie is still on the road near his home, asks for help. Being a righteous and honorable man, a man willing and interested in serving others, Jamie helps him though he is barely able to take care of his own needs.
It’s uncommon to read about a man who is not only righteous and honorable but who also thinks about and considers what is the righteous and honorable choice. One of the themes is, of course, righteousness. Another is the roles of men and women. This book has some wonderful characters including Jamie; The Bee Keeper (the older man Jamie helps); the Little Scout (who is an adorable child); Mrs. Cameron, the neighbor; and several others.
“Jamie sat on the side of the bed and meditated upon how strange it was that human beings should complain of pain, of poverty, of disappointment, of defeat of every kind, and yet the instant death... became imminent, humanity armed against it and fought to the last ditch....” p. 273 ¶1
There were lots of interesting and beautiful passages — too many and too long to copy. Just a good, good book.
The Butterfly and the Violin. Kristy Cambron
Two time periods and locations (WWII Auschwitz, NYC in the present), two sets of people (Adele and Vladimir, plus Adele’s parents at the beginning; Sera & her assistant Penny and William Holland in CA). This was Christian-based fiction (so needful in Auschwitz, so needful always). Sera is a NYC gallery owner in search of an original painting of a woman with a shorn head. She’s been searching for a while when her assistant spots a similar painting in a photograph of a business man in CA. They meet and become partners (and eventually more) in the search for the original painting. Adele was a violinist in Austria who went to Auschwitz and played in the orchestra there. It was a good story but there were gaps in the telling when the reader had to imagine the connection or just wait and hope there would be a connection in the next few chapters. I liked the characters but I probably won’t read the next book, A Sparrow in Terezin.
There are times when there is truth in fiction.
Adele, in Auschwitz, has lost hope. She is dirty, her clothes are dirty, the room where they stay, the bedding they use, everything is filthy, and she has been sick. The prisoners are mistreated, tired--exhausted, and yet they continue to live. Adele plays violin in the orchestra and is mentored/mothered by Omara who sees Adele’s despair. She takes her to a small area in their building where Adele sees a painting of herself.
“Adele approached it with caution, as if it were a mirage that would quickly vanish were she to even breathe. How could this vision of beauty exist in such an evil place? The painting was too stunning to have been rendered by an amateur. It was the face she’d seen in the mirror years before she came to Auschwitz—the ghostly image of a young woman who’d not been battered by the horrific truths of the real world. It was a woman who was young and strong and wide-eyed, confidently holding a violin.
"Adele touched shaking fingertips over the image of herself, heart thumping, legs nearly unable to hold her upright. The only thing that didn’t fit was that the girl in the image had been shorn of her hair. Adele ran her hand over the tuft of dirty hair at her nape, then touched cautions fingers to her cheeks. What did she look like now? Did she have pale skin and woefully sunken eyes like the rest of the girls? It had been so long since she’d looked in a mirror. So long since she’d seen that girl. Would Vladimir recognize his butterfly now? She was so . . . wounded.
“Adele crumpled to kneel on the floor. Omara came up behind her and wrapped supportive arms around her shoulders. Adele looked past the painting of herself, noticing for the first time that there were other paintings—small drawings of the trauma-stricken faces of prisoners working under the dark shadow of armed guards, of stone-faced children in striped uniforms, all with a cold, lifeless sky behind them. Some appeared to be painted on makeshift wooden canvases, others painted on the walls of the closet-sized room. There were words, beautiful, poetic words, too, etched in the wooden stairway and scratched even in the ground at her feet.
“‘What . . .” She sobbed on the words, looking back to the masterfully rendered painting of herself. ‘What is this place?’
“‘My dear child. This painting is how I see you. It’s how we all see you. Do you understand? There is still beauty left in the world . . .’ p. 251-252
xThe Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. John Koenig
I browsed through the rest of the book but did not read every entry or essay. (I’m not in the habit of reading dictionaries!) So many of the entries I read were about self and the realization of absence of good and were, indeed, sorrowful. It made for somewhat depressing reading but there were several entries that struck a note for me.
“looseleft
adj. feeling of a sense of loss upon finishing a good book, sensing the weight of the back cover locking away the lives of characters you’ve gotten to know so well. From looseleaf, a removable sheet of paper + left, departed.” p. 8
“nementia
“n. the post-distraction effort to recall the reason you’re feeling particularly anxious or angry or excited, trying to retrace your sequence of thoughts like a kid gathering the string of a downed kite. Ancient Greek [Greek letters omitted here], to give what is due + Latin dementia, without mind. Pronounced “ne-men-shuh.” p. 48
“solysium [was he thinking of Covid times?]
“n. the unhinged delirium of being alone for an extended period of time—feeling the hours stretch into days until a weird little culture begins to form inside your head, with its own superstitions and alternate histories and a half-mumbled dialect all your own—whose freewheeling absurdity feels oddly liberating but makes it that much harder to reacclimate to the strictures and ambiguities of normal social life.”
“harke
“n. a painful memory that you look back upon with unexpected fondness, even though you remember having dreaded it at the time; a touching experience that has since been overridden by the pride of having endured it, the camaraderie of those you shared it with, or the satisfaction of having a good story to tell.
“From hark back, a command spoken to hunting dogs to retrace their course so they can pick up a lost scent. Pronounced ‘hahrk.’” p. 203
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Charlie Mackesy
An illustrated book about friendship and trusting one’s self. The animals become friends and support one another. The words are written in (perhaps) fountain pen, and so are the illustrations. This reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Winnie the Pooh, and The Little Prince, all combined into one (though I haven’t read JLS for many, many years).
I know it’s personal preference, but the absence of the Oxford comma in the title bugs me, especially in this book about friendship and support. So instead of four creatures, it’s one, another, and then the fox and the horse almost become a unit themselves. That’s just me.
|The Children of Green Knowe. L. M. Boston
Toseland (Tolly) is sent to live with his great-grandmother, Mrs. Oldknow who he calls Granny, in a castle-like building which has been passed down for generations. Tolly is described as a “little boy” and it’s hard to tell exactly how old he is, but probably at least 8, perhaps 9 or 10. On the wall Tolly notices a painting of a family from several generations ago, learns that they are his ancestors, and that he shares a name with one of the boys, who went by the nickname of Toby. (The other two children are Alexander and Linnet.) This is a light fantasy so eventually the children from the photo begin to become alive to Tolly. This is filed in the Young Adult shelf, probably for vocabulary, but I think the story is for a younger set.
This is the best description of an echo I’ve ever read/heard. At church for the first time, Alexander suddenly has the desire to sing. And then, “He stopped to listen. It was as if the notes went up like rocket stars, hovered a second and burst into sparklets. The shivered echo multiplied itself by thousands. One would have thought every stone in the building stirred and murmured.” p. 124 ¶1
x A New Kind of Country: An exploration into our essential aloneness and the wonderful country of the inner self. Dorothy Gilman
Maybe not the right time to read it?
x Oh William! Elizabeth Strout
I think it was the voice of the person telling the story – almost childish, maybe?
One Summer in Paris. Sarah Morgan
There are two main characters, Grace and Audrey. Grace has planned a month-long trip to Paris for her and her husband’s 25th anniversary. When out to dinner on the night of their anniversary, David, her husband, tells her that he wants a divorce. He has been a great husband and a good man. Grace is stunned. Audrey has been saving money to go to Paris after graduation because she wants to get away from her alcoholic mother. When there, she gets a job at a used bookstore which includes an apartment above the shop. Their first day in Paris, their paths cross when Grace’s purse is stolen as she walks the pavement. A young woman barrels past her, overtakes the crook, knocks him to the ground, and retrieves Grace’s purse. They become friends and the story continues from there. Other characters include Sophia, Grace’s daughter; Mimi, Grace’s grandmother; Etienne and Elodie who also tend the bookshop; Toni, a bookshop patron; and Phillippe, a young man Grace met when in Paris when she was 18. There was a little language and some open door sex which was easily skipped. I liked it a lot.
“You had to approach life with optimism and hope, otherwise where was the pleasure? Where was the fun? Better to hope for the best and deal with the worst, than expect the worst and miss the best.” p. 285 ¶11
March
The Sewing Machine: Two families. Three secrets. Millions of stitches. Natalie Fergie
Several different characters (and groups of characters) and several different time periods. Jean (and Donald Cameron, her fiancee) work at the Singer sewing machine factory in 1911. The company made some changes that negatively impacted some employees. When the strike failed, Jean and Donald moved from the city. At age 33 in 1954, Connie is still single and lives with her parents, Kathleen and Bruce Baxter. Kathleen uses a hand-crank Singer to sew for money and to help others. She records the items she’s made in small notebooks and includes a piece of fabric stitched to the page. Kathleen taught Connie to sew and Connie was hired at the hospital to make repairs on clothes. In 2016, 36-year-old Fred has lost his job but inherited his grandparents’ apartment. He finds an old sewing machine and begins to use it.
About partway through this book I began to be concerned that the loose ends wouldn’t get tied together, but by the end of the book, they did.
I saw this recommended several times but it took a few years for the library to get a copy. So glad they did! I enjoyed it.
Jean and Donald arrive at the home of one of his relatives after a long train journey to make their move to a new town. Jean is feeling the effects. “...She went to the bathroom, grabbing the opportunity for two minutes alone for the first time that day. She wondered how many women were right now doing the same thing. Hiding briefly from their world as it pressed in around them and attempting to shut the door against it all.” p. 106 ¶2
The Summer Seekers. Sarah Morgan
The story opens with 80-year-old Kathleen clobbering an intruder with a cast iron skillet. Her daughter, Liza, learns of this and continues to try to persuade her mother to move to a home for seniors or, at the very least, wear an alarm. Independent Kathleen refuses and, instead, decides to go to the U.S. and follow Route 66 from Chicago to California. She advertises for a driver. Martha has barely driven and is, in fact, afraid to drive, but everything else about the job appeals to her. She desperately wants to get away from her life—her family continually belittles her because of her choices. Kathleen hires her.
I liked this book a lot (except for one unnecessary bedroom scene). The interaction between Kathleen and Martha is often funny; the other characters were likeable; the life lessons (without being preachy) were good. Kathleen, Liza, and Martha all learn things about themselves and take steps into fearful territory.
Kathleen on being old: “People said she was wonderful for her age, but most of the time she didn’t feel wonderful. The answers to her beloved crosswords floated just out of range. Names and faces refused to align at the right moment. She struggled to remember what she’d done the day before, although if she took herself back twenty years or more her mind was clear. And then there were the physical changes—her eyesight and hearing were still good, thankfully, but her joints hurt and her bones ached. Bending to feed the cat was a challenge. Climbing the stairs required more effort than she would have liked and was always undertaken with one hand on the rail just in case.” p. 12 ¶2
Kathleen, again: “It had taken decades for her to understand that loneliness wasn’t a lack of people in your life, but a lack of people who knew and understood you.” p. 12 ¶5
Small Things Like These. Claire Keegan
In 1983, Bill Furlong lives with his wife and five daughters in a small Irish town where he sells and delivers coal, and sometimes logs, to the people of the area. There are other shops and vendors in the town as well as a convent, a Catholic school, and a laundry run by the nuns. Not long before Christmas, when he takes a delivery of coal to the convent, he finds the metal hasp of the coal bin frozen closed. When he finally gets the ice off and opens the door, inside he finds a young woman who is very thin and dirty and who appears to have been locked inside for quite some time. She cowers from him, then asks him to find her baby who is 14 days old. He takes her to the back door of the convent only to find her unwelcomed by a young nun in the kitchen and Furlong, himself, facing the Mother Superior. Bill Furlong faces a moral dilemma which takes him a day or two to work out.
In an afterward by the author, she calls laundries like these Magdalen laundries, where girls and women were concealed, incarcerated, and forced to work. Many lost their babies, some lost their lives.
Furlong “found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?” p. 112-113
The Magnolia Palace. Fiona Davis
I enjoyed this book. It was set in two time periods with two groups of main characters, though two characters move forward from the first time period to the later one. The story opens in 1919 with Lillian Carter (aka Angelica) posing for a sculptor. Her mother died recently and she’s struggling to pay the rent. Then her landlord’s wife is found dead and they suspect her. She leaves quickly, begins using her real name, and is hired as a private secretary to Miss Helen Frick. In 1966 Veronica comes to America to pose as a model at the Frick mansion with a group of other models. She has a disagreement with the photographer, goes back in to change, wanders around the house, and ends up being left behind just before a snowstorm hits the city and shuts it down.
It’s interesting to read a historical novel in which some of the characters are historically accurate and some fictional ones are set into the environment. The author’s notes at the end explain a little more detail.
|The Moorchild. Eloise McGraw
Moql lives with the Folk until they learn that she cannot become invisible to humans: her mother was a Folk, her father, human. She is exchanged for a human child, living with the human child’s parents, Anwara and Yanno, while that child lives as a servant/slave in Moql’s environment. Moql becomes Saaski and is taunted and teased by the village’s children, viewed as odd by the adults. She tries to fit in with the other children but is not accepted. She meets Tam on the moor and they become friends. Fantasy, adventure, and a great story with well-developed characters.
April
A Glitter of Gold. Liz Johnson
Anne Norris, probably in her mid-20s, was convicted of a crime and served time in prison in California. She was released early and moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she operates Rum Runner pirate tours. The morning after a hurricane she finds a shiny object in the sand and sees that it’s the hilt of a sword. She heads to the maritime museum where she meets Carter Hale, head of the museum. He’s excited because he has a diary that describes the sword hilt. And it goes on from there.
I wasn’t interested to begin with but it got better. The good thing is that this was an inspirational book which means there was no language, no violence, and no sex. Win, win, win.
x One Italian Summer. Rebecca Serle
Her mother, who recently died, has been and still is the center of her universe despite the fact that she’s married. (How does her husband feel about that?) I didn’t get far: it just didn’t hit the spot.
All the Flowers in Paris. Sarah Jio
Dual characters, dual time line, both in Paris. In the present we meet Caroline just before an accident that causes her to lose her memory; as we read we learn her story of regaining her memory, told in the first person. Then we meet widow Celine who lives with her father and 8-year-old daughter, Cosi (Cosette) in 1943. Her father owns a flower shop and is 1/8 Jewish. Her story is told by a narrator. Difficult times for both women but in different ways. I keep saying I’m done in with WWII books and then another comes along and I read it. I’m glad I read this one. The author is new to me.
x Angels of the Pacific: A Novel of World War II.
Elise Hooper
I didn’t get far but it seemed a little “fluffy.”
x French Braid. Anne Tyler
The Garretts are probably a great family, I just wasn’t interested in reading about them.
x The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives.
Barbara Burman & Ariane Fentaux
The book was due with no renewals and I had to return it.
I think the book is interesting and presents some things about clothing and women that I hadn’t thought about before. There are plenty of photographs, all with information about them. But the book is cumbersome: it is heavy, more like a textbook; the size is at least 1½” wider than a trade paperback; the font is tiny; and the outside margin is really wide on each side.
May
D-Day Girls. The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II. Sarah Rose
I guess I’m not done with books set during WWII. This book has one more different focus. I thought it was excellent.
What brave women (and some men, too) to work for the resistance in France against Hitler and the Germans. Nerves of steel; sharp, quick minds; brave in the face of danger. The book covers the training but mostly focuses on five women (and some of the people they worked with) and their work organizing the Resistance in France. I am just in awe when I think of the dangers they faced, how calm they were no matter the circumstances, and their fortitude. The five women are Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, Odette Sansom, Yvonne Rudellat, and Mary Herbert. (There’s more information online about all of them.) The only lack in the book: no photographs of the women and men mentioned. For me it would have been helpful to see photos of the main characters.
“The war historian Max Hastings says that what gets published about the female agents of SOE [Special Operations Executive, the British agency that trained spies and saboteurs] is ‘romantic twaddle.’ As a journalist, as a storyteller, and as a woman, I believe that twaddle matters. It is the stuff of human experience. What we feel, whom we love, how we mourn—this is the matrix in which we exist and act, even as armies blitz across continents. To twaddle or not to twaddle is a false choice. The framing itself hints at the original sin of women at war. See it as a rhetorical game: It silences women’s stories while privileging everything else in a conflict. Were it not for oral histories, most of women’s history would be lost forever. So the call to empiricism gets trumpeted in bad faith: Misogyny wrapped in pieties.” p. 287, part of Author’s Note
Summer at the Cove. RaeAnne Thayne
The characters are a complicated family group. Mom Rosemary and Dad Ted, divorced 15 or so years ago when their daughters were in their teens. They split up the children: the oldest daughter, Cami, stayed with her father in LA and the twins, Lily and Violet, two years younger than Cami, moved to northern California with their mother. When the story opens, Lily had just recently drowned saving two girls. Both Cami and Violet are headed to their mother’s to spend some time—Cami for a week and Violet for the summer—to help their mother with Lily’s dream of a luxury campground. There’s a problem with the lease for the ground where the tents are located. Other characters include Franklin Rafferty, an older man who’s losing his memory who also owns the property where the tents are; and his son Jon, an archaeologist returned to help his father and to protect his land. There’s a tangle of events, people, and emotions running through the story. Through the whole story, Cami is amazingly compassionate. I thought it was engagingly written and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a really quick read!
With Love from London. Sarah Jio
Librarian Valentina Baker learns that her mother died on the same day she learned that her husband was divorcing her. Valentina’s mom left when Val was 12 years old and they hadn’t had contact for 20 years. Needless to say, Val just doesn’t understand, even at her age. She inherits her mother’s bookstore in London and moves there with the intent to sell it. Other characters include Liza, who rents one of the apartments in the building; Millie who was Val’s mom’s best friend; and several other individuals. The story is told from two perspectives, both in first person: Valentina in 2013; and Eloise, Val’s mom, from about 1968 to 2013. Again, a very quick read. I enjoyed it.
“‘A woman can’t help where she comes from, but she is in full possession of who she becomes.’” p. 35 ¶2
“‘We aren’t defined by where we come from, but rather, who we are . . . inside.’” p. 108 ¶1
“What if we could see our lives in reverse and confirm that those risks, hard decisions, even impulsive leaps of faith, were the key ingredients for a fully maximized life?”
p. 199 ¶3
The Path to Sunshine Cove. RaeAnne Thayne
This was a not-trying-to-fall-in-love story (because Jess, one of the main characters, suffered parental abuse as a child and has succeeded so far, to age 30, in being self-reliant) and a sisters-reuniting story. Jess travels from place to place with her Airstream helping clients de-clutter. She arrives at the home of Eleanor, parks her Airstream, and is confronted by a guy who challenges her about parking on his mother’s property. Her sister lives in the same town and they have some past problems to work through. I really enjoyed this book.
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life . . . And Maybe the World.
Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired)
This is based on a commencement speech have gave in May, 2014, to the graduates of The University Of Texas. All of it is drawn from his experience as a SEAL or the challenges of becoming a SEAL. Excellent. And very short.
x Blackberry Winter. Sarah Jio
An abducted child – not right now.
x The Sea Glass Cottage. RaeAnne Thayne
A woman dealing with seeing a violent attack – not now. Or maybe never.
Goodnight June. Sarah Jio
This seemed a little contrived, far-fetched. June’s aunt, Ruby, owner of a children’s bookshop in Seattle, became friends with Margaret Wise Brown. When June inherits the shop, she finds letters between the two. The story is told in the first person by June and through letters between Ruby and Margaret. Another part of the story is sister troubles for all three women—Ruby, Margaret, and June. This is the second book by Jio in which a young woman inherits a book store that is in trouble financially. This one was okay but not great.
Aunt Ruby: “‘Some of us have to make a lot of mistakes before we become the people we are meant to be. Amy’s making her mistakes. Let’s be patient with her.’” p. 207 ¶1 last sentences
June
|Goodnight Moon. Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Clement Hurd
I borrowed this because Sarah Jio mentioned a mouse hidden on the pages. I just wanted to see.
|Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself.
Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Garth Williams
This was originally published as a Little Golden Books book (and author and illustrator were probably not named). The dog is a terrier or a terrier-type. He lives alone, meets a boy who is also alone, and they go home together. I didn’t like it much.
A Sunlit Weapon. Jacqueline Winspear
I thought this was a really good one. It takes place during World War II but the war is in the background, not a major part of the story. As female pilot, Jo Hardy, is ferrying a Spitfire airplane from one place to another, her plane is shot at. Her fiancé, Nick, was killed a number of months earlier while flying in a nearby locality. Jo decides to investigate and finds a black American soldier bound and gagged in an old barn. She seeks out Maisie to help her discover who the man with the gun was. As Maisie works on the case, she discovers that there are several other crimes involved. Another part of the story involves Anna, her adopted daughter, who is being bullied at school. Maisie, with the help of Billie, gets to the bottom of all of it.
Family for Beginners. Sarah Morgan
Flora’s mother died when she was 8 and she lived with her mother’s sister who wasn’t married and did not want children. She works at the same flower shop where her mother worked. She is not married, feels alone and lonely even though she has friends. As the book opens, she and a coworker see a man (Jack Parker) standing in front of the flower shop for a long time. He finally enters and Flora waits on him, asking how she can help. He’s buying flowers for his 17-year-old daughter, Izzy, but doesn’t know which to buy. Flora asks what he wants to say. She learns that he’s a widow with two daughters, teen-aged Izzy, and Molly, age 7. She suggests flowers and arranges a bouquet. He invites her for coffee and a relationship begins to develop. When he invites her to lunch to meet his daughters, neither daughter is very happy about it and Izzy does her best to make Flora so uncomfortable that she never wants to come back. The daughters, of course, loved their mother Becca. Flora is patient, pleasant, interested in both daughters. The story moves on from there. There were several sex scenes and one bout of language. I really liked the book but the biggest disappointment was the sex before marriage and then to learn that Flora wants a family but isn’t interested in marriage. (I would ask, What is the world coming to? but I think we might already be there.)
Flora’s “mother had always emphasized that life was what you made of it, but Flora couldn’t help thinking that what you made depended on the raw ingredients you were given. Even the best chef couldn’t do much with moldy vegetables.” p. 21 ¶3
Beginning on page 302 there’s a great discussion of friendship and how friends should treat each other (part of which will make more sense if you know the characters). It’s a few pages long so I’m not including all of it here. “Life is too short to fill it with friends who don’t care about you or bring you joy. Moaners, the people who drain you or use you.... Bad friends are like the old clothes in your closet. They’re the stained shirt, the sweater with the hole in it, the dress that no longer fits. They have no place and should be cleared out.... It’s not ruthless to have respect for oneself. And being selective about who you spend your time with is part of self-care.... Friendship has much in common with romantic love—caring about someone, loving them, should make you generous. You should want the best for them. You don’t try to use them for your own ends.” p. 303
x Remarkably Bright Creatures. Shelby Van Pelt
I like fantasy as much as the next person but a talking octopus is a little too fantastical for me! Tova’s son disappeared maybe 20 years ago when he was about 18 (and Tova is now 70). From the inside flap it suggests that this incredibly bright octopus helps find Tova’s son. The book gets good ratings but... a talking octopus?
Nice image: “Millions of yellow bonnetheads [daffodils] blurred together into a sea of sunshine.” p. 21 ¶5
|I Wish You More. Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld
About choosing the more rather than the less: more give than take; more we than me; more will than hill.... Because, at the end of the book, “you are everything I could wish for . . . and more.” The illustrations are simple but explanatory.
|That’s Me Loving You. Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrated by Teagan White
“Wherever you are, wherever you go, always remember, always know . . .” the shimmering star is me winking at you; the clap of thunder is me raving about you; the bright sun is me beaming at you, etc. A book for a child to know that someone loves and is thinking about him or her.
|Dear Girl: A Celebration of Wonderful, Smart, Beautiful You. Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Paris Rosenthal. Illustrated by Holly Hatam
Encouragement for a girl to be who she is, to help her recognize needs and emotions, to choose accepting herself, to make good choices. I love this one!
x Three Words for Goodbye. Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb
Grandmother Violet sends her granddaughters, Clara and Madeline, on a cruise to Europe to deliver several letters for her, in person. From what I can tell, the girls are in their early 20s. Clara is engaged, Maddie wants to be a journalist. The girls are about as opposite as girls can be. And I couldn’t stand their quarreling for another page.
x The Victory Garden. Rhys Bowen
Girl lives at manor next to WWI hospital for recuperating soldiers, meets soldier.... It didn’t hold my interest.
|One Smart Cookie: Bite-Size Lessons for the School Years and Beyond. Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrated by Jane Dyer and Brooke Dyer
Words and definitions for children to learn as children in the book bake cookies. Words include prompt (on time), organized/unorganized, prepared/unprepared, compromise, empathy, kindness, listening, contribute, procrastinate, diligent, persevere, arrogant/humble, ponder, daydream, creative, dishonesty, integrity, curious, and inspire. I thought most children, ages about 6 and older, could understand the definitions.
x Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Amy Krouse Rosenthal
However did I manage to find two encyclopedia/dictionary-style books in the same year?! What I read of this book I enjoyed but I just couldn’t do the style of writing again. I stopped with the entry for Brodsky, Joseph.
x Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays. Minnie Driver
This is another book I enjoyed EXCEPT for the language. There’s not a lot of it but I just got sick of the f-word scattered throughout the narrative. Minnie is obviously an intelligent person. It’s hard to know what causes an intelligent person to use such belittling language.
“I suddenly realized that the circumstances of life are not weight-bearing. They do not create a structure upon which to safely build your life. Circumstances can change in an instant. And that shifting can stop plans from manifesting.” p. 93 ¶2
“You gotta keep the intention clear but stay out of how it manifests.” p. 94 ¶2
July
The Cartographers. Peng Shepherd July
I would call this book realistic fantasy. It was slow to read but interesting and, I thought, well-written. I liked it. Nell’s mother died in a fire when she was young. Seven years before the book starts, Nell and her father had an argument about a box in the basement of the New York Public Library which contained a map that Nell thought was great but her father did not. She and her boyfriend, Alex, were fired because of the incident and it broke up their relationship and she and her father hadn’t spoken since. (All three are cartographers.) Nell is working at a company that reprints maps as decor and Alex is working at a company that’s creating a digital map of the world. When Nell goes to her father’s office after his death, she finds his portfolio in which she sees the map that caused the argument seven years ago. She sneaks the portfolio out of his office without the police seeing her. She sets to work to learn what she can about the map and about her father. If I tell too much it will ruin the story. The book takes place over about a week’s time except for the few chapters where her parents’ friends tell about their relationship and experiences in the 1990s.
“Maps were love letters written to times and places their makers had explored. They did not control the territory—they told its stories.” p. 372 ¶4
x These Silent Woods. Kimi Cunningham Grant
Nope, not for me. Man hiding with his 8-year-old daughter for nearly as many years, teaching her to “move undetected;” having to hunt for food, etc., in current times. The story opens with him finding a raccoon stealing a chicken and killing both because “sometimes a thing inside me flashes, dark and despicable.”
x Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting. Clare Pooley
To begin I thought it was good but then it got into name-calling.... Maybe I’m like an ostrich with my head in the sand but I’d rather be that than read some books.
x Book Lovers. Emily Henry
I really liked the story line of this book but I couldn’t handle the language. Not always, not continual, but enough that I decided to stop reading. It is sad to me that modern writers feel they have to keep up with the downturn of modern, oral language.
x The Diamond Eye. Kate Quinn
I decided I’m not interested in reading about a WWII female sniper, even if the book is based on the life of a real person.
Bloomsbury Girls. Natalie Jenner
In 1950, the opportunities for women were just beginning to come into their own, even after all the work women had done in place of men during WWII. Evie Stone, 20, gets shut out of employment at Cambridge College by another graduate student she’d worked with closely, a male. She finds a job at the male-dominated Bloomsbury Books, cataloging their rare books department. Two other women also work there (along with five men): Grace Perkins, married to a man who was broken by the war and has become abusive, they have two sons; and Vivien Lowry, unmarried after the death of her fiance in WWII, and intent on becoming a published writer. It’s an interesting mix of characters and a great read.
“Grace took strength in that feeling of understanding, which she now knew to be another form of love. Being understood, appreciated, and not judged: these, surely, were the cornerstones of real love. The love that helps us move forth in life, no matter what it throws at us, no matter what we lose. That love, at least, is always there, even if we can’t do anything about it.” p. 303-304
I also learned a new word (that I can’t imagine using): fingerspitzengefühl. Its literal translation is “finger tips feeling.” It means dexterity, sensitivity, tact; intuitive flair or instinct; a great situational awareness, and the ability to respond most appropriately and tactfully. It’s pronounced, more or less, finger-spitzen-gee-full.
x Nora Goes off Script. Annabel Monaghan
The description of Nora’s 100-year-old house on the first page pulled me in and I thought the book was going to be good. But reading the jacket cover it mentions that Leo, a guy who was working there, wants to stay. I wasn’t sure what might happen in that situation so moved ahead to see. And then I saw the language. Nope.
|Every Dog in the Neighborhood. Philip C. Stead. Illustrated by Matthew Cordell
Louis wants to know how many dogs are in the neighborhood. With his grandmother he goes door-to-door to get a count. I was less than impressed by this book and did not like the illustrations at all.
Beach House Summer. Sarah Morgan
Joanna has been divorced from her famous husband, Cliff, (who cheated on her many times) for a year. When he crashes and dies while driving his car, Joanna learns that a young, pregnant woman, also in the car, survived. Joanna is used to photographers hounding her but she’s concerned for the young woman and manages to fairy her away to her beach house in the town where she lived as a child but hasn’t visited in 20 years. I thought it was a good story. There was one open bedroom scene which was easy to skip over and a few small incidences of language.
|If You Come to Earth. Sophie Blackall
This is a picture book explaining earth life to a visitor from outer space, about people, about earth life, towns/cities/villages, families, food, plants, animals.... Such a wide variety. I think this would be a great book for patient toddlers who are interested in looking, especially because mom/dad could point out so many things. The illustrations are beautifully done.
|Hello Lighthouse. Sophie Blackall
This is a simple story about a lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse stands on a rock island in the middle of nowhere. It tells what the lighthouse keepers responsibilities—polishing the lens, keeping a log, etc. His beloved arrives and they have a baby. There is a boat wreck; the keeper gets sick; and then their time is over. The illustrations were so atmospheric—the fog, the winter ice, the bright summer weather. It is amazing how well she captures the weather, makes the water glisten, and the light shine out from the light’s lens. The book itself was a little taller and a little narrower than most picture books. Perfect for the shape of a lighthouse.
|Negative Cat. Sophie Blackall
For days and days, even years, he asks his parents for a cat. They finally relent. When he brings the cat home the cat’s not interested in anything—until.... Cute story.
High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. Amanda Ripley
Excellent! This is a book about when conflict becomes the whole problem, not solving the problem, not understanding others’ points of view—just conflict—when we can’t even hear another person’s point of view. The author delves into the stories of several individuals, using them to explain the various aspects of high conflict. She includes a brief, simple glossary at the beginning of the book and explains more throughout the book. (“High conflict. A conflict that becomes self-perpetuating and all-consuming, in which almost everyone ends up worse off. Typically an us-versus-them conflict.”) At the end the author briefly explains the steps to get out of high conflict.
Appendices include How to Recognize High Conflict in the World; How to Recognize High Conflict in Yourself; and How to Prevent High Conflict.
I think this book could be helpful for those involved in politics and political battles; those in marriages and families where spouses or siblings or even parents/children end up in conflict; and for just about anyone to learn how to avoid high conflict.
“‘There is nothing more important to a person who is undergoing a life crisis than to be understood,’ Gary [Friedman] likes to say. Being understood is more important than money or property. It’s more important even than winning.” p. 35 ¶4
“Because once people feel understood, they can relax their defenses. People can let many things go while holding fast to the things that matter most, once they know what those things are. ‘We are more willing and able to understand others when we feel understood ourselves,’ Gary [Friedman] and his coauthor Jack Himmelstein wrote in their book Challenging Conflict. p. 37 ¶1
“Most of us do not feel heard much of the time. That’s because most people don’t know how to listen. We jump to conclusions. We think we understand when we don’t. We tee up our next point, before the other person has finished talking.” p, 42 ¶5
“Emotions are more contagious than any virus. You can catch them through stories, without any human contact. And of all the emotions people experience in conflict, hatred is one of the hardest to work with. If humiliation is the nuclear bomb of emotions, hatred is the radioactive fallout. That’s because hatred assumes the enemy is immutable. If the enemy will always be evil, there is no reason to ever consider any creative solutions to the conflict. The enemy will never change. In that sense, hatred is different from anger: anger holds out the possibility of a better future. The underlying goal of anger is to correct the other person’s behavior. The logical outcome of hate is to annihilate.” p. 130-131
“Revenge is the way to escape the pain of humiliation. It is rational, at least in the short term. It may lead to more loss eventually, but for a brief period, revenge works. It can rebalance the equation.” p. 135 ¶3
“One of the burdens of high conflict is that it doesn’t allow for delight, for these little moments of joy. Curiosity is a prerequisite for delight. And it’s impossible to feel curious in the Tar Pits.” [From glossary: La Brea Tar Pits. A place in Los Angeles where natural asphalt has bubbled up from below the ground’s surface since the last Ice Age. A metaphor for high conflict.”] p. 204 ¶4
I omitted several dozen quotes I saved in my private book list. Just an excellent book! Not just to get out of high conflict but to recognize it and to prevent it.
x How to Keep a Secret. Sarah Morgan
Language.
x Lessons in Chemistry. Bonnie Garmus
Language. This came highly recommended but I couldn’t read it.
August
Take Me With You. Catherine Ryan Hyde
We meet August, a high school science teacher on break for the summer, while his travel van is being repaired by Wes. August is in AA (and Wes ought to be!). August is on his way to Yellowstone to scatter some of his son Phillip’s ashes. They are somewhere in northern California. Two boys hang around the repair shop, just watching. Then Wes asks August if he will take his sons (Seth, age 12; and Henry, age 5) for the summer because he has to go to jail for three months. Somehow, August agrees and they set off. It turns out that Wes was lying and has 6 months in prison. August is committed to keeping the boys and they’re all disappointed when Wes arranges to get out early with an ankle band. I love the commitment August, Seth, and Henry develop toward each other. And then, at the end, what goes around comes around–in a very good way. I really enjoyed this book.
Imagine the attention 12-year-olds usually give to what's going on, and the boy’s concern for August.
August: “‘You guys go back out by the fire. I bet it’s just right for marshmallows by now.’
“‘Okay, we’ll start one for you, August. I know just how you like ‘em.’
“And that was true. He did.” p. 125 ¶12-14
x Part of Your World. Abby Jimenez
This book was so promising. The first pages were clean. Then there was some language (blasphemy). And then, she goes to his house so he can make her a sandwich and ends up spending the night.
Haven Point. Virginia Hume
Multiple viewpoints, multiple time lines, but I thought the author was very successful in transitioning between them and maintaining the continuity of the story. Maren is about 20 in 1944 when the story begins. She is at Walter Reed Hospital, from Wisconsin, to serve in the nursing corps. She meets Oliver, a man of family wealth from New England. They marry and move to Haven Point soon after. Maren knows little about Oliver’s family and learns that his mother, Pauline, is an alcoholic and his father is a gruff, unkind man. Maren and Oliver have several children and the story follows Anne, born about 1954, as she grows to adulthood and into alcoholism. Anne’s daughter, Skye, who we know from about mid-teens to adulthood (2008), feels like she is the one to keep things together as her mother goes into and comes out of rehab. We meet some individuals from Haven Point but, in general, the place almost seems like a character in the story. It is an insular, closed community that does not easily accept outsiders. I thought this was really good.
|Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. Lindsay Mattick. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall
This is a family history story, told by Colebourn’s great-great-granddaughter. On his way to war, when Canadian veterinarian Harry Colebourn sees a man with a bear cub at the train station, he buys it. He takes the bear, who he names Winnipeg (for the city where Colebourn was from) with him to training but then realizes the bear can’t go with him to the war. He takes him to the London Zoo where it finds a good home. Later, Christopher Robin meets and interacts with the bear. The bear becomes the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh.
I liked the fact that images from actual photographs and journal entries are included in the album section at the back of the book. Blackall’s illustrations were really good, too.
Just After Midnight. Catherine Ryan Hyde
Faith left her abusive husband and is living in her father’s beach house. One morning when she sees a young teen woman sitting on the beach she goes out to check on her. They strike up a friendship and Faith learns that the girl, Sarah, is staying with her grandmother in a cottage a little ways down the beach. At the store, Faith sees a man she thinks is following her, perhaps a PI on behalf of her husband. Then she learns that he lives next door to her. He keeps asking about the girl she’s with but Faith puts him off. Faith and Sarah attend a self defense class together and Sarah’s grandmother, Constance, invites Faith to eat with them. Not long after, Sarah sees the man with Faith, tells her grandmother, who confronts Faith with collaborating with Sarah’s father. Faith had no idea who he was. Sarah is with her grandmother because her mother was killed and she doesn’t want to be with her father. Eventually we learn that Sarah saw her father kill her mother and that her father sold Sarah’s horse, Midnight, just after he killed her mother. The only thing is, Sarah did not tell her grandmother or the police what she knows. Faith puts herself on the line to take Sarah away to protect her, and they follow Midnight to where she is with her new owner. It’s not going well with him even though he’s experienced with dressage. The bond between Sarah and Midnight is so strong....
“People make mistakes all the time. That’s more or less the definition of a person: we’re a bunch of walking, talking mistake holders. When I make a mistake, if I was doing my best, I let myself off the hook.” p. 78 ¶9
“If you’re not striving for excellence, why take on a task at all?” (From Estelle) p. 234 top last sentence
*Note: This is the second Catherine Ryan Hyde book I’ve read this month in which an adult family member turns over a child/children to relatively unknown strangers. In both books (this one and Take Me With You) the adults have been trustworthy but still, the premise of the book is a little off/questionable. But, I liked both.
The Best is Yet to Come. Debbie Macomber
A feel-good, sure-to-come-out-right book. Hope, without living family, moves to Oceanside to teach at the high school. She is also a counselor. Cade is an ex-soldier suffering from guilt (because his two friends-like-family died and he survived) and pain from a leg injured in the war. He’s angry and not interested in much of anything. Hope and Cade meet at the animal shelter where Cade is serving public service hours and where Hope was, more or less, roped into volunteering by her landlord. Also part of the story are several high school students. A sweet story.
x Friendship Point. Alice Elliot Dark
This book is like a long ramble in the woods with a talkative companion who’s reticent to get to the point and to get home. It’s about two 80-year-old friends, one single and the other who becomes a widow. The story went all over the place.
x The Look of Love. Sarah Jio
I thought this would be a fun fantasy, and there was that element to it, but it devolved into spouses falling in love with others’ spouses. It began with Jane having episodes of cloudy vision. She didn’t realize the cause until a lady named Colette invited Jane to her home and told her that she (Jane) has the special gift of seeing love. Colette told her she must find the six kinds of love before her next birthday, one year from that day. I thought Jio was a “safe” author (as far as sex, themes, language, etc.) but I guess not.
The six kinds of love are Eros, Ludus, Storge, Pragma, Mania, and Agape.
x Dreaming of Flight. Catherine Ryan Hyde
I guess I’m tried of reading about kids.... Maybe another time.
x Harry’s Trees. Jon Cohen
September
The Scent of Water. Elizabeth Goudge
The author used to be one of my all-time favorites, and I still like her, but perhaps I’ve outgrown her, or maybe she’s outgrown me. Even so, I think Goudge has a lot of insight into the human spirit. Mary Lindsay, at the age of about 50, has inherited a home from her cousin, also named Mary Lindsay. They met only once when Mary was young and Mary was old.
“I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can’t, and you hate yourself because you don’t, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God’s help you can command your will when you can’t command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn’t appear to agree with us.” p. 140 ¶1
“... When you understand people you’re of use to them whether you can do anything tangible for them or not. Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.” p. 164 ¶1, last sentence
“...Deception is stealing because it takes away the truth.” p. 174 ¶3
“Why you do a thing is more important than what you do. And so stealing because you love is really better than not stealing because you don’t. Not that I am advocating stealing, exactly. This question of good and evil is very complicated. Life has been very difficult for us all since Eve ate the apple.” p. 174 ¶6
“There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original even vibrated through every life year by year.” p. 281 ¶2
Unfinished for language
x This Time Tomorrow. Emma Straub
x Thank You for Listening. Julia Whelan
Missed Connections. Love, Lost & Found. Sophie Blackall
There is a website (maybe on Craig’s List?) where people can leave notes for others, people they didn’t speak to but wished they had, etc. The author humorously illustrated five or six dozen of these messages. Fun.
x Other Birds. Sarah Allen Addison
It didn’t capture my interest.
|Farmhouse. Sophie Blackall
I loved this book!!! Blackall bought property in New York State on which sat an old, falling down farmhouse. She salvaged some things from inside, learned about the people who’d lived there, then told a story in loose rhyme about the family and the house. Love, loved, loved! It’s beautifully illustrated with so much to look at. I hope it wins the Caldecott this year.
Flying Solo. Linda Holmes
Okay but not great. The premise of the book is based on 40-year-old Laurie’s not wanting to be married but wanting to be with Nick, her high school sweetheart. They live on opposite sides of the country. Laurie is visiting home, where Nick still lives, to take care of her great-aunt’s house after the aunt died. She finds a carved decoy duck in her aunt’s possessions and they try to figure out whether or not it was carved by a famous decoy carver. Another part of the story includes Matt, the guy Laurie hired to take care of the parts of her aunt’s possessions they didn’t want to keep. There was occasional language, an open bedroom scene, and the premise was that Laurie didn’t want to get married but wanted a marriage-like relationship. It was really readable but I didn’t love it.
October
|Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life. Maurice Sendak
Pure nonsense. Jennie, the Sealyham terrier, runs away because she thinks there must be more to life. This is not one of my favorite Sendak books.
Eden Hill. Bill Higgs
This was set in Eden Hill, Kentucky, in the 1960s and reminded me of Jan Karon’s At Home in Mitford series—small town, a community of individuals, a minister—but the characters were not so well-developed. In fact, it was hard to tell who the main character was. In the end, it turned out to be the minister. I’m sorry I didn’t stop reading earlier.
x Nantucket News. Pamela Kelley
Very fluffy, I think.
Fresh Water for Flowers. Valerie Perrin
This was a long, somewhat quirky book. It is mostly told first person by Violette, beginning the story when she was in her mid-teens. She did not know her parents and spent most of her childhood in foster homes. She did not learn to read or write as a child. She eventually marries Philippe and they eventually have a daughter, Leonine. Philippe is not interested in working and would rather ride his bike and play video games so Violette carries the burden of earning a living for them. They are hired as crossing guards for a railroad and have to put the barrier up and down before and after a train drives through. Then they move and become cemetery caretakers. The quirky part comes in when the story is told from several different viewpoints and the chronology is not sequential. It jumps two decades, sometimes, from one chapter to the next, and from one character to another from one chapter to another. There is occasional language (in anger). There is also some sex but mostly in a general way, not an intimate way. The book got high ratings on Goodreads. I liked it well enough but did not love it.
“‘Death begins when no one can dream of you any longer.’” p. 22 ¶1
“On the day all these photos were taken, none of the men, children, women who posed innocently in front of the camera could have thought that that moment would represent them for all eternity.” p. 40 ¶2
“It’s important to put photos on tombs. Otherwise, you just become a name. Death takes away faces, too.” p. 40 ¶4
“I often speak of Leonine to others because not speaking of her would be to make her die all over again. Not to speak her name would make the silence win. I live with my memory of her, but I tell no one that she is a memory. I make her live elsewhere.” p. 195 ¶2
The Hotel Nantucket. Elin Hilderbrand
Lizbet is hired to run the newly-renovated and just-opened hotel, including choosing and hiring the staff. Her boss and owner of the hotel, Xavier, charges her with earning the coveted 5-key rating given by a blogger who anonymously visits hotels and rates them. To add to the interest, there is a ghost, Grace, who was killed in a fire in the hotel in 1922. I like the premise of the book and mostly enjoyed reading it but would have enjoyed it more without the casual sex (mostly with closed bedroom scenes).
“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” p. 39 ¶ last
“If you’re not planning on being the best, why do anything at all?” p. 77 ¶1 (part)
November
A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman
I think I may have started this a year or two ago, or maybe I just read the story line, and decided against it because I didn’t want to read about an old, grumpy guy. Then I learned there’s a movie based on the book with Tom Hanks playing the main character, whose name in the movie is Otto. So I borrowed the book and read it.
Yes, Ove is a grumpy old man. The main part of the story takes place over a few weeks’ time, or a few months at the most. But there are flashbacks to Ove’s childhood, youth, wife and marriage, widowhood, and other events in his life that, to some extent, explain Ove. His wife was Sonja who we see only in his memory. The new neighbors are Parvanah from Iran and her husband Patrick and their daughters. Other characters play smaller but important parts. Ove softens over time and becomes beloved by many people (who are willing to overlook his bristly ways). There was some profanity, usually just a word or two, throughout the book, maybe about 15 or 20 times.
“. . . All people are time optimists. We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.” (Similar thought on p. 287 ¶4-5) p. 282 ¶1 (part)
“It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time. p. 309 ¶ last
In the Middle of Hickory Lane. Heather Webber
Light fantasy and I love it. Interesting characters, charming story, a little mystery.... Emme, 25, has been estranged from her family since her birth when her mother ran off with her. Her life has been hard, her mother was a taker, a user. As the book opens, Emme is returning to the town where her family lives at the request of her grandmother, Glory, who searched for years to find her. Emme’s supposed father, Rowan, is Glory’s son. Emme has been hurt and is very careful to guard herself, particularly because she has a secret or two. Other characters include Cora Bee, Emme’s cousin; Chase, a neighbor’s grandson; and Jamie and Alice, father and daughter who are in town for a construction project. Even though it’s fantasy, so much of it rings true.
“You’re smart to leave the past behind you. Otherwise, if you keep looking over your shoulder at it, you might miss what’s right ahead of you.” p. 92 ¶ last
“...You’re more than what’s happened to you.... It’s not so much about what you’ve done in your past that matters as it is what you do in the future.” p. 297 ¶6
Ellie and the Harp Maker. Hazel Prior
I loved Prior’s lyrical, poetic language. It was beautiful but not over the top. Ellie is the Exmoor Housewife who wanders down a lane and finds a barn where Dan is making harps. Dan gives her a harp which she takes home where her husband tells her she can't keep it and must return it. (That was an immediate caution light to me about Ellie’s husband, Clive: jealous? dictatorial? what?) Ellie returns the harp the next day but Dan won’t have it. He can’t undo what he’s done in giving it to her, but he makes a place for her to learn to play it and gives her the name of a harp teacher, one who happens to be his girlfriend, Roe Deer. Things deteriorate between Ellie and Clive, not only because of his jealousy but also because Ellie hid from him her continued association with Dan. Aspects of the book spiral downward while other aspects spiral upward. I was pleased with the ending because I wasn’t sure what would happen. I’m glad I read it. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Dan probably has a mild form of autism.
Dan: “...Although people as a whole are difficult and I would rather most of them did not exist, there are certain people who are very, very important. Even more important than harps. Ellie Jacobs is one of those people.”
p. 288 ¶ last
December
The Christmas Escape. Sarah Morgan
Christy and Alix have been the best of friends since they were children, more than 20 years. But five years ago when Christy married Seb, Alix thought it was the biggest mistake because she didn’t think Seb could live up to what Christy needed, and she told Christy so. Things were fine until Christy saw a message from another woman on her husband’s computer. Alix has resisted relationships that entangle her and involve her emotionally. But then Christy asks Alix to watch her daughter for a few days, with the help of Zac, one of Seb’s friends. This book did a good job of diving into friendships and how self-focused we can be without giving thought to how the other feels. I thought it was really good, though I wasn’t so sure at first. There was one open-bedroom scene.
“‘Dreams [as in hopes for the future] are never a mistake. Dreams are hope. Dreams give us a reason to get up in the morning. Dreams are optimism. They’re what keep us going when things feel impossibly tough. And you can always change the dream.’” p. 294 ¶7
Snowed in for Christmas. Sarah Morgan
Characters include Lucy, successful advertising expert; the Miller family, including Douglas, Glenda, and their adult children Ross, Alice, and Clemmie; and NannaJean. Douglas and his wife own a successful shortbread company; Ross is the hugely successful founder of an active-wear company; Alice is a doctor; and Clemmie is a nanny. The three children get together before going home to decide what they want to and do not want to tell their parents and grandmother, who all want to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so they slightly pressure their children about marriage. I thought parts of this book were hilarious, other parts tender. There were two brief open door bedroom scenes that were easy to skip over. There was no language at all.
“NannaJean sighed. ‘The difference between us is that I’m old enough to know I’m not perfect. You all still want to be perfect and then you waste time beating yourselves up when you’re not. You’re human. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to say the wrong thing. The important thing is to acknowledge when that happens and put it right. Talk about it.’” p. 246 ¶2
Lucy speaking to mom Glenda. “‘Just because someone doesn’t say exactly the right thing, doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. You’re human. I’m sure there are plenty of times when Clemmie gets things wrong, too. But that’s the best thing about family, isn’t it? You can mess up, knowing that you’ll still be loved. Whatever happens, you know deep down that your family is in your corner.’” p. 306 ¶2
x Christmas Angels. Nancy Naigle
Sight unseen, Liz buys in an online auction the lodge her grandparents owned when she was a child with the idea of opening it again for guests. When she arrives at the lodge and goes inside she finds that it’s been gutted, but plucks up her courage to restore it. It all just sounded too overwhelming right now.
x Christmas by the Book. Anne Marie Ryan
A book shop in financial trouble.... It didn’t seem Christmasy.
x The Christmas Bookshop. Jenny Colgan
It started with contention. Not for me at Christmas.
|The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.
Susan Wojciechowski. Illustrated by P. J. Lynch
Wonderful! We watched the movie a bit ago and I’m impressed how closely the movie followed the book. Such a sweet, tender story. (If you read the book, BE SURE to watch the movie. It's really good.)
Christmas at Holiday House. RaeAnne Thayne
A fun, quick read. Lucy asks her best friend, Abby, to watch her grandmother, who has taken a fall, until Lucy gets home in December. Abby is a widow with a 5-year-old son, Christopher, who is between jobs, on her way to moving to Austin. She agrees and goes to Silver Bells, Colorado, where Winnie, Lucy’s grandmother has a huge Victorian home that she plans to open for Christmas visitors. Lucy’s brother, Ethan, also lives there.
“Endless worry about tomorrow only steals joy from today.” p. 94 ¶2
“Do not let your fears stand in the way of your happiness. If you’re willing to let those fears be more important to you than the love you feel for him, then I would have to agree with what you said before. He does deserve someone better.” p. 279 ¶5
|The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
Barbara Robinson. Illustrated by Judith Gwyn Brown
Ya gotta love those Herdmans. This is perennial Christmas favorite. The author reads the audio version which makes it all the better.
Whew! If you've read this far, you're amazing. If you have ideas for improving these annual books lists (shorter blurbs, fewer quotes, etc.) please leave a comment. Thanks!
--n.
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