Book List, 2023

This is a list of books I read in 2023 and includes notes, quotes, and a few non-objective reviews.  It seems I read mostly fiction this year.

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

January
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie.  Rachel Linden  
A little magic, a lot of reality.  Lolly is the one who held the family together after her mother died, when Lolly’s little sister Daphne was about 12, and her father was heartbroken.  They owned a restaurant that demanded a lot of attention.  Daphne finds Lolly’s 7th grade journal with a list of 5 things she wanted to accomplish in her life.  Sadly, she had not accomplished any of them.  Along with Lolly, the other main character in the book is Rory Shaw, a neighbor who moved across the street when Lolly was in her early teens.  They became close friends, then Lolly developed a crush on him, then fell in love with him.  The story centers around Lolly trying to find happiness without Rory.  When Lolly’s Aunt Gert offers her 3 magical lemon drops which give her the opportunity to go to a different time in her life, Lolly barely hesitates.  The trips into another time give her an understanding of alternatives and consequences of the choices she’s made.
    I loved the story.  (I like the writing a little less than Sarah Addison Allen’s and Heather Webber’s.)

    Aunt Gert:  “‘When we make a choice, we necessarily limit all the other choices.  Every path narrows our options, every decision closes many other doors.   Yet we make a choice hoping we’re trading all the other options for the one that will be the best.’”    p. 81-82


x The Old Place.  Bobby Finger 
The story looked promising; the language appeared in chapter 2.


x The Measure.  Nikki Erlick  
Every adult receives a box with a string that tells them how long they will live.  The subject didn’t appeal.  Plus, there was language.


x The Book of Longings.  Sue Monk Kidd
The book is about Ana, the wife of Jesus of Nazareth.  I couldn’t do it.


The Ascension of Larks.  Rachel Linden  
Main characters are Maggie, a photographer; Lena, her best friend and roommate from college; and Marco, also a college friend who Maggie loved but who married Lena.  As the story opens Maggie is just finishing a photography shoot in Nicaragua when she receives word that Marco drowned.  Maggie rushes to their home (really, the only home she’s known since her mother died) to help.  In many ways it was a sad story but it drew me in and I kept reading.  Well worth it, too.


The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle.  Jennifer Ryan  
Excellent book!  The setting is World War II England.  This book focuses on the challenges of clothing during WW II.  Young women who are about to marry had trouble finding white dresses to wear since clothes were rationed.  The characters in this book get together to collect and alter wedding dresses for share with others, almost like a lending library.  The characters include
    >    Grace, engaged to be married to Lawrence, a minister who needs someone to help him run the parish (though there doesn’t seem to be much love involved in the relationship)
    >    Violet, the daughter who’s determined to marry a duke or higher to keep her family status.  At the beginning of the story what matters most to her are gowns, gloves, balls, and alliances with upper-class people.
    >    Cressida, an independent couturier who was living in London until her home and business were bombed out.  She is Violet’s aunt and was more-or-less disowned by her brother Eustace (Violet’s father)
    Other characters include Hugh, Grace’s brother, who has inherited the running of their estate; and several other towns people.
        I thought the strengths of this novel were showing England during the war, the rations on clothing, and the comradery of townsfolk.  Because several of the main characters change their values through the novel, I think it’s a great book to empower young women to carefully choose for themselves instead of allowing themselves to fit into the expected norm of others.
        In the Author’s Note at the back of the book she lists books she used as sources for the novel.  I couldn’t find any of them at CML.

    “...Every path meanders back to the past.  Inside, there’s always a different part of us existing in another time and place....  For now, though, you need to make your own decisions....”    p. 213 top

    “You have to face your fears and make peace with them, or you’ll never stop running from them.”    p. 293 ¶2 


The Sisters of Sea View.  Julie Klassen  
    This takes place at about the same time as Sanditon and is also set in a seaside town.  Characters include sisters Sarah, age about 26; Emily and Viola, twins, age 21; and Georgina is 15; their mom is an invalid as the story opens.  There are also various other neighbors and characters.  The family is in mourning for husband/father and together, they have to make their own way.  They had an estate but upon the father’s death, since there were no sons, the estate went to a male heir.  The family opens a guest house in the seaside town of Sidmouth.  Viola has no interest or intention of interacting with others because she has a cleft palette and though repaired and not hugely visible, she wears a veil.  They decide that her job will be to hire herself out to read to shut-ins.  Sarah and Emily take over most of the running of the house, and Georgina helps. 
    I enjoyed this book though I didn’t love it.  Part of the reason for lack of love is the physical format of the book: a really tight spine on the hardback and tiny print.  It seems this might be the beginning of a series, On Devonshire Shorts, about this family.  Maybe I would read the next one....

February
The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett.  Annie Lyons 
I loved this book!  When the story opens, Eudora is 85, single, with no living relatives, and has chosen assisted death in Switzerland.  She thinks she’s lived long enough and is done.  Stanley, an older widow, finds Eudora after a fall and helps her get an ambulance.  Then, new neighbors move into the house next door, including irrepressible,10-year-old, Rose.   By 3/4 of the way into the book Eudora was still planning assisted death, so it was touch and go for a while since I’m not in favor of any means of killing one’s self.  But the ending was good.  It was an absolutely clean book.  (Sadly, the library did not have any of her other books, several rated above 4.)

“Human beings are only programmed to judge information based on their own experiences.”    p. 157 ¶11

“Everything’s a moment.  Nothing lasts forever.”    p. 211 ¶1

“Life is precious and as long as we have a reason to continue, we should follow that path.”    p. 235 ¶7

“Any man who makes you feel less than you are isn’t worth a jot of your time. . . .  The truth is that sometimes even those you’re closest to can let you down.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”     p. 245 ¶3, 5


Whose Waves These Are.  Amanda Dykes  
     Great book!  Ann Bliss corresponds with her great-uncle Robert, who she called Grandbob, through newspaper notices because there was a rift between her father, William, and Bob long before Ann was born.  She sees a notice from Grandbob’s friend, Bess, telling Ann to come home (to a small, coastal town in Maine).  When she arrives she finds that Grandbob is in the hospital in an induced coma. 
     We learn that Bob’s twin brother, Roy, was drafted.  Bob/Robert wanted to go instead because Roy’s wife was pregnant but Roy refused and died while while rescuing a mother and children in a boat.  After his death, Roy’s wife Jenny moved away, taking baby William with her.  As a young adult, William returned and had a good relationship with Bob until there was an accident, and he left.  The only interaction they had was when Ann’s mother asked Bob to take care of Ann for three months one summer when she was 9 or 10 while both Ann’s parents were deployed.  The story is told in the present (2001) and through stories telling the history of Bob and Roy and Bob and William.  One of the other main characters is Jeremiah Fletcher, postmaster and general aid to those in the community.  The library shelf label notes this as an inspirational book.  I appreciated the absence of language, sex, etc.

 “...God is not bound by time.  He could make as much of a second as He could an eternity.”    p. 341 ¶10


The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip.  Sara Brunsvold  
We meet Mrs. Kip as she’s headed into the care center where she will live her last days, having recently been diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer.  She is disdainful of the hospital bed and the wheelchair, feeling that she has enough energy to keep going on her own.  Aidyn is a news is a rookie news reporter, making mistakes right and left.  Knowing Mrs. Kip’s background, her nurse calls an old friend, Bella Woods, who is Aidyn’s boss at the newspaper.  Woods sends Aidyn to see Mrs. Kip on the pretense of writing her obituary.  But it turns out to be so much more.  This is definitely a Christian novel.  Mrs. Kip has devoted a good part of her life to serving the Lord by gently bringing them to Him, and it is no different with Aidyn.

 “A pained boy with a broken spirit tends to recoil when the hand of grace first finds its wounds.”    p. 46 ¶ last

 “Hard things usually end in the biggest blessings.”    p. 149 ¶2


March
|The First Notes.  The Story of Do, Re, Mi.  Julie Andrews & Emma Walton Hamilton.  Illustrated by Chiara Fedel 
What a sweet book about the Benedictine monk, Guido d’Arezzo, who created music notation in the 1000s.  The story is clearly and interestingly told and the illustrations are rich and beautiful.  At the end are a glossary, to essays, “A Day in the life of a Pomposa Abbey” and “The Guidonian Hand,” plus a historical note on what is known about Guido.


|Special Deliveries.  Alexandra Day & Cooper Edens.  Illustrated by Alexandra Day  
    A fun story book about a family of people and animals who take over the mail delivery. 


All the Lost Places.  Amanda Dykes  
    There are two time lines:  Daniel, a young ex-con in 1904. and Sebastian, a young man who was orphaned as an infant and rescued by a family of siblings in Venice, beginning in 1804.  Daniel is trying to make restitution for all the things he’s stolen before he returns to visit his mom.  Before he accomplishes that, he is hired to go to Venice to draw the buildings there and to find a particular book.  Sadly, at some time in the past, he took a fall and lost his ability to draw what is not in front of his eyes.  (Aphantasia!)   Sebastian has grown up with four adult siblings with whom he lives, by turns, and learns their trade.  Always in his mind is the question, Who am I?  Their stories intersect across the century when Daniel is in Venice seeking the complete story for a book that his mother gave him.
       The siblings are Elena, the gardener; Valentina, the lacemaker; Dante, the printer; and Guiseppe, the gondolier.  Other characters include Vittoria (in Daniel’s time) and Mariana (in Sebastian’s time).
       The library categorized this under “inspiration” but I think it should be under fiction.

“‘Courage keep, and hope beget . . . the story is not finished yet.’”    p. 68 ¶1 last sentence

“But knowing and picturing were two different things.’    p. 100 ¶6 last sentence

“‘Non c’e nessuno a casa,’ a voice from within rumbled.  Nobody was home?  The words landed with such dry wit that I [Daniel] immediately liked their speaker.  It was something I’d be tempted to say myself, if someone knocked on my own railcar door—but which I probably wouldn’t have the gumption to say.  The plight of the polite hermit.”
    p. 122 ¶3

“There is no greater myth than that of perfection.”    p. 202 ¶6 from the bottom

“The gift of a friend. [for Sebastian]
“Someone who was not tied to him by family but put up with him anyway.  And more than put up with him, somehow . . . understood him.”    p. 222 ¶2-3


Feed Sacks.  The Colorful History of Frugal Fabric.  Linzee Kull McCray 
    I think this book contains everything anyone would want to know about feed sacks, from their origin, fabric, companies, uses, cleaning, etc.  It’s filled with photographs–of factories, of people carving the prints, wearing feed sack clothing, of competitions, all kinds of bags, patterns, newspaper clippings, just about everything to do with bags.  Many pages have the news clippings against a background of printed feed sacks.  About the last third of the book is completely feed sacks, most filling the page, some with a stack of several.  The book is a hefty two pounds even though it measures just 6½” x 8".  (I weighted and measured it because if it had been larger, the font could have been larger, but perhaps not many people would have wanted to hold it to read it.)
     My only complaints about the book are the tiny font size and that there is no index.
    Another publication, not readily available, is a publication by the Chase Bag Co. called Bagology.

“Reusing feed sacks was a way to survive, but it also allowed families to thrive.  Making use of what they had was not based on assuming some high moral ground; it was simply a way of life.  Feed sacks also proved to manufacturers that there was value in products whose reusability was enhanced.  These are perspectives worth pondering today.”    p. 357, last paragraph

    
The Hideaway.  Lauren K. Denton 
When Sara’s grandmother, Mags, dies Sara returns to the town she was so glad to leave 20 years ago.  After her parents had both been killed in an auto accident when she was 12, she lived with Mags and some other older people at the Hideaway.  Mags wills Sara the Hideaway and asks her to improve it, then do whatever she wants.  Mags had been born to wealth and married a man who was unfaithful to her.  He left and then Mags left.  She ended up at the Hideaway, a bed and breakfast inn.  The story’s a bit involved but the essence is that Sara didn’t really know her grandmother other than what she saw from the outside.  While having work done on the Hideaway she finds hints of who her grandmother really and what her life had been.  This book was in the Inspiration section of the library.  I think it must have been mislabeled.

“Maybe I was reminiscing about things so long forgotten they didn’t even matter anymore.”    p. 201 ¶2


April
The Great Passion.  James Runcie  
    I loved this book!  Mostly.  The only parts I didn’t love were Catherina’s collecting butterflies, the gruesome, grizzly execution chapter, and the punitive measures used on some children (which, from what I know of the time period, was common).  Stefan is between the ages of 11 and 14.  After his mother dies, his father, an organ maker, sends him away to boarding school where Johann Sebastian Bach is the cantor (music leader).  Stefan is teased and bullied by the other boys because of his red hair and because he’s the new boy.  He runs away and Bach takes him in to live with his family for a while.  Stefan becomes a copyist for Bach as well as his student, and plays the organ and sings also.  I thought this was a great way to show Bach’s passion for music, his work ethic, and his religious beliefs.  I also think musicians would love this book with all the details about music. 
    Read an interview with the author here:   https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/how-i-research

“There are gaps of time into which we sometimes fall, when the pattern of our days is suspended.  It happens when there is a birth or a death, an arrival or a departure, the moments either side of it becoming forms of descent and recovery, when we do not know quite what to do or how long this unexpected bewilderment will last.”    p. 1 ¶1

“We must be grateful for each blessing God gives us rather than nurse every injustice.  Unhappiness is a form of ingratitude.”    p. 5 ¶2 (near end)

“Obedience is the only way to virtue, and virtue the only path to happiness.”    p. 7 ¶6

On mourning:  p. 27  ¶3, 5   (Not included here.)

“I know how quickly and superficially our lives can be summed up, and how lazily and carelessly we describe other people.  It might be a mixture of physical description, profession and character but, in general, there are only three or four attributes that regularly define us....  I have always found it strange how so few facts define a life.”    p. 27 ¶6

“We can always be more than people expect us to be....”    p. 41 top

“Now that I am older, I notice that people my age often look back to times of cruelty and betrayal, remembering grudges, nursing grievances and thinking of the opportunities they missed:   all the disappointments of their unlived life and the thoughts of what might have been.  But perhaps it’s healthier to remember all the kindness.  It gives us a far greater chance of happiness.”    p. 58  ¶ last

“If a house has enough love, there is always space.  It’s only when there’s no love that there’s no room.”
    p. 59 ¶1

Speaking of transposing music from major to minor, or change of key, “and everything is different.  It is like the bounty of God’s grace, always revealing itself in different ways.”    p. 61  ¶5

“....We should keep in mind that if nothing lasts in this world then the very thing that we dread the most cannot last either.  All things must pass.  The moment we feared approaches.  It takes place.  Then it becomes the past:  and only a memory.  So, rather than dreading the moment, perhaps we should look forward to the memory of it instead?  We must learn to think beyond our fears.”    p. 131 ¶5

Nagel, the teacher:  “When I was your age, my father taught me how important it was to find something to celebrate each day.  It didn’t matter how small it was, or how long it lasted, but each simple pleasure needs to be marked.  It can be something as honest and straightforward as the sight of the first hawthorn blossom or the light on the path ahead through summer trees....  It can be the smile of a friend who is pleased to see you or the silence at the end of a piece of music; as long as it is something precious and private to store up and treasure by nightfall.  They are moments of grace.  My father called them ‘amulets of time.’”    p. 133 ¶4

Bach likens music keys to people and their personalities:     p. 135 ¶5-6, p. 135 top
     B flat major:  cheerful, loving, filled with hope and aspiration
     B major:  emotion and impetuosity and passion
     D sharp minor:  all gloom and anxiety, despite the hope of heaven
     B minor:  patience

“How would you learn anything if was easy?”    p. 171 top

"Nothing is hard if you practice....  With time and proper application you can achieve anything.”    p. 209 ¶13

Bach, to a man in mourning:  “If we flee from our troubles, they continue to haunt us with their return.  If we address them directly, then we can start to live again.”    p. 229 ¶12

Catharina after her father’s death:  “There’s an inventory for you.  It’s strange to see a life summed up by possessions alone.”    p. 255 ¶6


These Tangled Vines.  Julianne Maclean  
    Fiona Bell learned at age 18, just before her mother died, that the man Fiona thought was her father is not.  Her mother asked her to keep it a secret because her father didn’t know.  And at age 30, as the story opens, Fiona receives a call from an attorney in London telling her that her father died and she is named in the will.  He asks her to come to Tuscany for the reading of the will.  Fiona knows nothing about her birth father, not even his name.  She makes arrangements to fly, and arrives to a hornet’s nest of complications, at least as regards her half-brother and -sister, their mother, and her father’s current girlfriend. 
    I had mixed reactions to this book.  Fiona’s mother, Lillian, suggests in the early days of their life together, that she and her husband, Freddie, travel to France so he can finish a novel he’s writing.  Lillian immediately finds a job at a winery where the owner, Anton, offers them a guest suite at no charge and the use of a car.  Freddie takes off to Paris, leaving Lillian behind, rarely contacting her during the weeks he’s there.  Freddie seems to be self-focused without regard for Lillian or her feelings.  Lillian and Anton fall in love and have an affair.  Wrong choice, of course!  Lillian makes the decision to divorce Freddie, then he surprises Lillian by being there when she returns from work.  Freddie finds them, then goes after Anton, attacks him, then runs away.  Anton is driving away and, in the twists and turns of the road, hits Freddie, who ends up paralyzed.  Lillian goes with Freddie but Anton helps support them (without Freddie’s knowledge) and Lillian and Anton write one letter a year.  Tangled vines, for sure.  But Fiona is really good-hearted, and there is no language.


May
A Cup of Silver Linings.  Karen Hawkins  
This has a little light fantasy in it.  The main characters are Kristen, 16, whose mother Julie just died; Ellen, Kristen’s grandmother who was estranged from Julie; Ava Dove, maker of specialty teas with sometimes magical abilities; and Sarah Dove, Ava’s younger sister, who has conversations with books.  There are other characters, but these are the main ones.  Kristen is determined to stay in Dove Pond, and her grandmother, an architect, is just as determined that she move to Raleigh.  I guess one of my main complaints about this book was the occasional use of Heavenly Father’s name throughout the book.

“It is well to give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.”    p. 173 near end of page


xAtlas of the Heart.  Brene Brown  
    This was good but I didn’t love it.  First, there was no index; second, there were no footnotes.  She groups emotions, so without an index it’s hard to find the emotion you’re looking for.  I stopped reading on about p. 206 (or 207)–probably at “Happiness.” 
    My notes tell me I was going to copy quotes:
p. 7 ¶4; p. 58 last quote on awe and wonder; p. 88; p. 158 ¶5, 6; p. 191 abt. trust/mistrust, tip on p. 192; p. ¶96 ¶2 about defensiveness


The White Lady.  Jacqueline Winspear  
This spans WWI when Eleanor DeWitt was a young teen, through WWII when she was in her early 30s, into 1947.  I thought it was good.  A mystery, a war story of the resistance, and a story about the mental casualties of war. 


Beneficence.  Meredith Hall  
The writing was beautiful but I did not like the story.  It begins in the late 1940s, telling the story of a farm family, Tup and Doris Senter and their children:  Sonny, about 12-14; Dodie, about 10; and Beston, maybe about 5.  They are a happy, contented family until a tragedy happens.  We learn, bit by bit, that the children were playing with a toy gun in their living room and Sonny is killed.  Tup, Doris, and Dodie all blame themselves for this tragedy, but none mentions that to the others.  Doris goes into a deep depression that lasts many years.  Tup carries on, for a time, doing the best he can.  Dodie takes over her mother’s work of the farm and raising Beston.  All are hurt by this tragedy.  But Tup makes it worse when he takes on a night job and begins to spend the nights with his widowed boss.  He returns in the mornings, works the farm, eats dinner with his family, then leaves to spend nights with the boss.  And then she has a baby, which Tup is not interested in.  He tells himself that she doesn’t expect anything of him and he doesn’t expect anything of her.  I do not have much respect for Tup:  not only did he have an affair, he also cursed at his children on occasion.  Maybe the worst thing is that Tup thinks of himself as an honorable man!  Their relationships are mostly resolved at the end but I really didn’t like this book much.

“Once gained, we can never turn from knowledge and its burdens.    P. 59 ¶4


June
Yours Is the Night.  Amanda Dykes  
This was another default read.  When I reserved it I didn’t realize it was set during WW I, but never got around to returning it.  Other reserves came in but were peppered with either language or sex until this was the only one left.  So I started it.  WW I, yes, but there are only a few war pages.  The rest involves three soldiers (well, one is a chaplain) who set off with a young woman to return her to her home.  Characters include Matthew Petticrew; Henry Mueller/Hank Jones, a reporter; George Piccadilly, the chaplain; and Captain Jasper Truett, all in or with the military; and Mireilles/Mira.  There are other minor characters, too....  The story is essentially the journey from Mira’s home in the Argonne Forest to Paris, plus some battle scenes, and some history before that story begins.  It was good.  It seemed really long, but there was no language or sex.


Beyond That, the Sea.  Laura Spence-Ash 
Beatrix Thompson is 11 when she is sent to America in 1940 because her parents, Millie and Reginald, want to keep her safe from the war.  She lives in Boston with Ethan and Nancy Gregory and their two sons, William and Gerald, two years on either side of her age, and they spend the summers in Maine on an island Nancy inherited from her parents.  She is adopted and fits perfectly with the family.  In many ways I loved this book.  It brought home what it might have been like for a child living away from home during the war—the challenges of adjusting and the after-affects as the child grows older.  The book continues through Beatrix’s 30s and ends with a brief section in 1977.  It was a bit slow in the middle and I did not like the occasional, rare swearing.

“When you look back, it’s so easy to see that path that you’ve traveled.  But looking forward, there are only dreams and fears.”        P. 333 ¶3

After someone’s gone, “Regret, she has found, is the loud thing that’s left.”    p. 333 ¶4

“We love people for all sorts of different reasons and in all sorts of different ways, she says.  Remember that.  And it only gets better, the older you get.  Young love isn’t necessarily the best love.”    p, 335 ¶ last


Well-Read Women:  Portraits of Fiction’s Most Beloved Heroines.  Samantha Hahn   
Hahn as created water-color paintings of women from famous books as she imagines they would have looked, and she’s included a quote for each of them that, to some extent, defines their character.  Beautiful.


xThe Wishing Game.  Meg Shaffer    unfinished ~p. 25 
I liked the premise (a young teacher’s assistant wants to adopt a boy) but I did not like the language.


The Museum of Ordinary People.  Mike Gayle 
I loved it!  As the story opens, Jess Baxter is living with Guy (somebody or other), happily, sort of, in his modern apartment.  Jess’s mom died about a year ago and she’s selling her mom’s house.  She got rid of most everything but for sentimental reasons she saved the set of encyclopedias her mom gave her when she was young.  Guy is getting ready to sell his apartment so he and Jess can buy a home together (using the money from the sale of Jess’s mom’s house).  Guy doesn’t want the encyclopedias in the apartment, so Jess is in the situation of either dumping them or finding somewhere else to put them.  She discovers “The Museum of Ordinary People” and takes them there.  The new owner knows nothing about the museum, but the old owner’s employees do.  And the story goes on from there.  No language, no sex, the only thing was Jess and Guy living together.

“All I’d been hoping to do was draw a line under my grief, to shake the feeling of exhaustion that had been with me all year.  Because that’s the thing about grief no one ever tells you:  it’s greedy....  It eats up every last scrap of energy you have, leaving you spent and empty.”    p. 12 ¶7

“...Intention only ever turns into action when given a bit of a push.”    p. 183 ¶1


July
All the Days of Summer.  Nancy Thayer  
    I didn’t know where this book was going when I began....  There are several main characters:  Heather, in her mid- to late-40s, divorcing her husband; Ross, her son, who just graduated from college; and Kailee, his girlfriend, who also just graduated.  Heather rents a cottage on Nantucket Island, only to learn that Ross and Kailee are moving there to work in her father’s construction business.  Other characters include Kailee’s parents, Bob and Evelyn; Miles, divorced man interested in Heather; and a few others.
    I wasn’t thrilled about the out-of-wedlock intimacy and eventual pregnancy and then especially not reading Kailee suggesting that it wasn’t a baby, just a bunch of cells and they didn’t have to have a baby.  There was also occasional language.  I guess the morals and values of this story were much different than mine.  On the other hand, I liked Heather and Ross.


Foster.  Claire Keegan  
Ireland in maybe the late 1950s or 1960s.  The story is told first person by a little girl–we don’t know her age, or the year.  Her father takes her to stay with a couple she doesn’t know though it seems to me that the wife of the couple may be a sister to the little girl’s mother.  She doesn’t know how long she’ll be there but settles in to the warmth and caring of this gentle, loving couple who help her blossom.  Then she learns that they lost a little boy, but that’s never mentioned by the couple or by her.  It seems that the girl is there for perhaps a summer, then learns that she is to return home.  What a sadness for her!

“‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’”    p. 19 ¶6

“Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.”    p. 25 top

“‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says.  ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do.  Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’”    p. 64 top-p. 65

The wife suggests the man take a lantern for a night walk.  He doesn’t find it necessary but takes it anyway, and needs it. 
     “‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says.  ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’
     “‘What?’
     “‘Eventualities.  A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’”    p. 66 ¶2-4


Love Has No Age Limit:  Welcoming an Adopted Dog into Your Home.  Patricia B. McConnell, Karen B. London  
The only parts of this book that I skipped were the ones that didn’t apply to Persi/Nona, which were most of the behavior problem chapters.


xCassandra in Reverse.  Holly Smale  
I was looking forward to this book about a character with autism, written by an author with autism.  Unfortunately, there was language.


xWeyward.  Emilia Hart  
This book is a little dark – three women, same family line, in 1619, 1942, and the present.  It seems that abuse at one level or another figures in all three lives.  There’s also a little magic, or mystery, or herbal healing, at least in the case of the woman in 1619.  I would have continued reading to learn their whole stories except for the language of the woman in the present.


|I Like Airedale Terriers.  Linda Bozzo  
Written for children, it covers the basics about Airedales, mostly accurately.  Most 2-page spreads have a full-page photo on one side with large-print information on the other.  Definitely an entry-level intro to Airedales.


Dreams of Falling.  Karen White  
It was refreshing to read an absolutely clean book:  no language, no sex, no violence.  And it was a great story, too.  The main characters are good friends, Margaret (who died in 1954), Ceecee, and Bitty, from about 1950 to 2010; Ivy, in a coma.  Larkin is Ivy's daughter, about 27 in 2010, but Ceecee and Bitty "adopted" her.   Other characters are Mabry and Bennett, twins who were Larkin’s childhood friends.  Larkin left her hometown after she graduated from high school due to some event that she remembers as embarrassing/stupid and has returned only for an occasional holiday.  When she learns that her mother had a fall and is in a coma, she returns home.  She has to deal with her past, and also the past of her grandmother, Ceecee, and Bitty.  Secrets unravel during the time she’s there.

“But like Ceecee has tried to tell me a million times, there are no do-overs in life. . . .  Ceecee told me to wait to get married, to be sure.  Not about how much I loved him, but how much I could bear to lose.  She said it’s the sadness that either breaks a person or makes them stronger.”    p. 90 ¶3

“It’s about being okay with not being the best, because there are a million and one things out there to try until I do find the thing that I’m good at and that makes me happy.  We just need people in our lives who let us be brave enough to try.”    p. 384 ¶7

“Throughout our lives we are all falling.  Falling down, falling out, falling away.  Falling in love.  The trick is finding someone to catch us.  And sometimes we surprise ourselves by finding out that person is us.”
    p. last, ¶ last


August
The Secret Book of Flora Lea.  Patti Callahan Henry 
    In 1939, two sisters, Hazel, 14, and Flora, 4, are sent from London to live in Oxford to be safe from the bombings in London.  They are taken in by Bridget, Bridie for short, and her son Harry.  Hazel makes up stories to occupy Flora, stories of an imaginary place called Whisperwood.  Hazel tells her not to tell anyone about the stories because they are just for them.  Things go well until one afternoon when the three are on a picnic.  Flora falls asleep and Hazel runs to a large tree for privacy.  Harry follows her, and when they return Flora is gone.  Twenty years later, Whisperwood becomes a published book.  When the original drawings and manuscript turn up in the rare book shop where Hazel works, she makes one more effort to try to find Flo/r/a.
    I thought the story was great with surprising twists and turns in the search for Flora that kept me reading.  There were a few occasional uses of some language that is common now but that I don’t think would have been common in 1960.  Also, Hazel and her boyfriend, Barnaby, are living together in 1960, something I think was rare at that time. 

    “A choice to make?  Therein was freedom, she thought, the ability to make a choice she never thought she’d have the opportunity to make.  But she had to be careful.  Freedom, for all its claims of wonder, also had its price.”    p. 327 ¶ last


Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly.  Marie Bostwick  
I really liked this book.  Esme’s childhood was not easy, and then she moved in with her grandparents, George and Adele, and things went better.  By the time she was 14 or so, she had her life planned out.  She left when she was 18 so she wouldn’t have to see her mother again.  She works in NYC as an editor, until she loses her job.  She moves back to her grandparents’ home after the death of her grandmother, and helps to renovate their lakeside retreat.  Esme has gumption, determination, and a good head on her shoulders.

“... Over the years I had learned that the best way to tackle any problem is to ignore personalities, check your emotions at the door, and focus on facts.”    p, 65 ¶4

“When it comes to our lives, the absolute truth is less important than the truth we absolutely believe.  For good or for ill, what we believe about ourselves is what shapes our life, our future, our legacy; that is our story.”    P. 155 ¶ next to last

“It suddenly occurred to me that names are like words, possessing no inherent meaning in and of themselves, and easily forgotten.  It’s action alone that makes the lasting mark, and things we do or create that reveal what we believe and care about, that testify to our presence long after we’ve gone.”    p. 251 ¶ last

“Anything worth doing takes longer than you think.  Mistakes are a gift, the way we discover what actually works.  You probably won’t believe it until you’re older but starting over serves its purpose.  As long as you learn, no lesson is ever a waste.”    p, 324 ¶4

“Everything worthwhile takes longer than you think...
“You can work hard, and you should.  Because even the most spectacular failure serves its purpose, setting you up for the success to come.  And as long as you learn, no lesson is [ever] a waste.  But the stuff that really matters tends to come with a built-in timeline that’s usually a secret and almost always different than yours.”
    p. 355 ¶ beginning next to last


Rules for a Knight:  The Last Letter of Sir Thomas Lemuel Hawke.  Ethan Hawke  
The night before Knight Thomas Hawke goes into battle in 1483, he writes a letter to his children to give them rules to live by.  Each rule is brief , has a small pencil drawing on the adjacent page, and is followed by more details, a memory, a story, an experience, etc.  I thought this was beautifully written.  The rules include solitude, humility, gratitude, cooperation, friendship, forgiveness, honesty, courage, grace, patience, justice, generosity, discipline, dedication, speech, faith, equality, love, and death. 

“Humility.  Never announce that you are a knight, simply behave as one. You are better than no one, and no one is better than you.”    p. 17

“Pride.  Never pretend you are not a knight or attempt to diminish yourself because you deem it will make others more comfortable.  We show others the most respect by offering the best of ourselves.”    p. 29

“...he learned the secret of performing under pressure: don’t do it for yourself.  Do it for someone else....  When I get scared I just think of someone I love.”    p. 67 ¶2-3

There are too many gems to copy them all....  Definitely worth a reread.  It’s a small book, perhaps 4" x 6" with 169 pages.


At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities.  Heather Webber 
This was fun, quick read–magical realism.  Ava receives an envelope that contains an advertisement for a job several states away.  She picks up stakes and moves to Driftwood, Alabama, not knowing anyone or even whether she’ll get the job.  She has epilepsy, which is currently in remission, and has been protected and prevented from doing the normal things by her mother.  She’s ready to try her wings, so to speak.  Maggie manages Magpie’s, the coffee shop in Driftwood.  She is in her late 30s, the mother of a college-aged son, and is still single.  She mother was lost at sea when Maggie was about 12.  She still hopes that her mom reappears.  Other characters include Donovan, Estrelle, Dez/Desmond (Maggie’s father), and Sam and his dog Norman.  There are many other characters that play small parts.  It seems like we meet half the small town citizens.


The Bookbinder.  Pip Williams  
    This books take place just after The Dictionary of Lost Words.  The setting is also in Oxford, England, but from 1914-1920, and in this story, Peggy Jones and her twin Maude, work in the bindery.  Their mother died a number of years ago and Peggy takes on the care of Maude, who is differently-abled—competent in many ways but not in others.  We read of them folding folios and of Peggy stitching bindings, but Peg wants more.  After the war started, she sat with injured soldiers, reading to them, writing letters, etc., and begins to see Bastiaan outside of her visits to the hospital.  Then Peggy has the opportunity to apply to Somerville, the women’s side of Oxford, and studies to prepare....
    Themes in this book include the equality for women, suffrage for women, and the care of a special needs person.

“If you shrink yourself to the smallness of your circumstances, you’ll soon disappear.”    p. 219 ¶1


September
The Door-to-Door Bookstore.  Carsten Hen   
        Great book!  Carl Kollhoff’s current job is delivering book orders to clients.  He wraps them in brown paper, then walks to deliver them.  He is a well-read man who knows books and characters in books.  Unbeknownst to them, he has given literary names to the people to whom he delivers books:  Hercules, Darcy, Mrs. Longstocking.  Then one day, 9-year-old Schascha appears and begins walking with him.  He’s not exactly pleased but she grows on him.
        This book is focused on the characters in the book to the exclusion of things like surroundings, activities, views of the city, etc.  There were a few incidences of language later in the book because one person was angry but the rest of the book was clean in all ways.

“Sometimes his mouth just went ahead and said things without consulting his head.”    p. 32 top

“Some families show their love with food—an extra thick layer of butter on your bread, or a second slice of wurst on top.  Others hold each other close and often, sharing warmth to keep the cold of the outside world at bay.  For generations, my family have shown their love through books.”    p. 68 ¶2

“Even when an ordinary book ends at precisely the right point, with precisely the right words, and anything further would only destroy that perfection, it still leaves us wanting more pages.  That is the paradox of reading.    P. 135 ¶5


The Sound of Glass.  Karen White  
Excellent!  Merritt learns that she’s inherited her deceased husband Cal’s grandmother Edith’s home in South Carolina.  She picks up and moves, knowing nothing about Cal’s background and no one in South Carolina.  The attorney helps her and she meets her husband’s brother, Gibbes, about 9 years younger than Cal.  Then her step-mother Loralee and her son (and Merrit’s half brother) 10-year-old Owen arrive.  Merritt just wants to be alone but gives in to letting Loralee and Owen stay with her.  Merritt has a lot of recovering to do after Cal’s abuse and Loralee is just the person to help.  And so is Gibbes.  No language, no sex, no violence.  Loralee keeps a journal with gems of knowledge, some passed on from her mother, others that she’s learned herself.  Despite how good they were, I didn’t note down any of them....


xThe Echo of Old Books.  Barbara Davis  
     I think I would have enjoyed this book but every other chapter is part of a book within the book and is in italics.  Why don’t publishers get it that italics looks smaller than a regular font size and is very hard to read?
    I tried this book again on audio but the male reader for the book within the book, Regretting Belle, had a low, quiet voice that was hard to hear.  I liked Ashlyn but not the character reading Regretting Belle.  Twice unfinished!


The House on Tradd Street.  Karen White     (Tradd Street #1)  
Realtor Melanie Middleton hates old houses even though her job as a realtor in Charleston, S.C., is to sell homes of all ages.  One of Melanie’s gifts is being able to see the spirits of people who have died.   She has an appointment with an elderly gentleman, Nevin Vanderhorst, which she assumes is to arrange the sale of his 150-year-old home.  While viewing the gardens, she sees the spirit of a woman near a swing.  She visits with Nevin, answers his questions, but they never get to any discussion of the sale of the home before she is ushered out.  Several days later she is asked to visit an attorney’s office early one morning where she learns that she has inherited all of Vanderhorst’s property.  She must live in it one year, improve it, and can sell it after that first year.  There are several mysteries to be solved, several spirits who visit the house, and other living characters including her friend Sophie, a client Chad, two other men, author Jack Trenholm and Marc Longo.  I enjoyed it enough to read the next in the series.


October
The Girl on Legare Street.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #2)  
A little fantasy, a lot ghost story.  Melanie Middleton’s mom, Ginette, buys back the house on Legare Street where she grew up and Melanie lived for a number of years when she was a child.  Melanie stays there with her mom (estranged mom) while the floors in her Tradd Street house are being refinished.  The house has a protector spirit and an evil spirit.  And there’s a mystery to be solved which requires Melanie and her mom to join forces. There’s a bit of family history involved in this story, too.   And, of course, there’s Jack who Melanie does her best to avoid despite being attracted to him.

Says journalist Rebecca Edgerton, “‘The information you need is always there if you’re willing to be persistent and look hard enough.’”  How I wish that were true in family history!


|We Are Starlings:  Inside the Mesmerizing Magic of a Murmuration.  Robert Furrow, Donna Jo Napoli.  Illustrated by Marc Martin
I thought this would be fabulous but it was only good, though the illustrations were fabulous.  It was told from the view of a starling, flying with its allies, swerving and veering to get away from a peregrine falcon, then dancing, and finally coming to rest.


November
The Strangers on Montague Street.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #3)  
This continues the story of Melanie Middleton, her parents, and Jack.  Melanie and her mom both see ghosts so it is, I guess, a ghost story.  There’s a bit of a mystery in this book, too, plus Jack’s 12-year-old daughter, Nola/Emmaline, is in this one.  There’s a dollhouse with dolls who get dashed, and Nola’s deceased mom, Bonnie, is part of the story.  Plenty of other characters, too....  Still hoping that Melanie and Jack will get together.  I was a little disappointed that there was some sex in this book but the language was mostly clean.


Chance Encounters.  Temporary Street Art by David Zinn.  David Zinn 
Chalk drawings become sidewalk art.  Zinn often creates his drawings around cracks, manhole covers, draine covers, and other smaller metal pieces in sidewalks, though he also uses grass in cracks, leaves on the sidewalk, etc.  His characters are adorable and his titles/descriptions add another touch of humor.  He discusses his early artistic endeavors in his family as a child, and then goes on to tell the briefest biography of his artistic endeavors.  It’s amazing that he can see two dots which become eyes in one of his chalk drawings, or see a smile in a crack in the sidewalk.

“Pareidolia is our psychological habit of perceiving patterns in the world around us even when our common sense tells us no such pattern exists.” [This was a new word to me, though something I often do.]    p. 11


xTom Lake.  Ann Patchett 
So many people have praised this so highly that I finally reserved it.  As an adult Lara tells her three daughters her experiences in acting, beginning in high school.  I wasn’t much interested in the topic, and then there was language....


Return to Tradd Street.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #4)  
The continuing story of Melanie and Jack, and the Tradd Street house Melanie inherited from the Nevin Vanderhorst in the first book.   Melanie is pregnant and planning to raise the baby alone but doesn’t seem to have a clue about pregnancy and delivery.  She refused Jack’s marriage proposal because she thinks he’s doing it for the sake or responsibility, not the sake of the baby.  The remains of a newborn is found in the foundation of the house (that is being restored), and then she hears the cries of a baby and a female ghost who tells her, “Mine.”  Always a mystery, always a ghost or a few, and always Jack.

Melanie’s mom, Ginette, on marriage:  “If you wait until everything’s perfect, until all your differences have been settled and all the stars have aligned just right, then you miss your chance at happiness.  That’s what real and enduring love is.  It’s being able to see past the disagreements so what’s left is the knowledge that you’ll never be complete without the other person.      P. 208 ¶3


December
The Guests on South Battery.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #5)  
Melanie returns to work as a realtor after maternity leave and is met with a young woman, Jayne Smith, who inherited one of the old homes in the area.  Jayne has no idea why Button Pinckney, Melanie’s mother Ginette’s childhood friend, would choose her to inherit the home.  Jayne wants nothing to do with it.  Like Melanie, she doesn’t like old homes.  In fact, she doesn’t to go inside the house.  Melanie recognizes soon that there are ghosts, one of which does not want her or Jayne or Ginette there.  A ghost story, a mystery, a romance....


|In the Dark.  Kate Hoefler.  Illustrated by Corinna Luyken
This is a picture book with a story told by two different people and two different perspectives.  To differentiate, one voice is in italics, the other in regular letters.  The setting is the woods at night where it’s hard to see exactly what’s happening.  The essence of the story is that what you see may not be the real story— we put our own spin on things sometimes.  What you think may not be accurate.   On the back of the book: “What do you choose to see?”


|The Book of Mistakes.  Corinna Luyken  
    A drawing, with a mistake.  The narrator identifies the mistake, and the next mistake, and the next, along with the additions and changes to the drawing of a girl.  Then points out what wasn’t a mistake.  More mistakes, more non-mistakes, edits to the mistakes to make them fit in, and the drawing evolves of a girl and part of her environment.  The illustrations are mostly black and white (probably pen and ink) with some parts in color. 
    I love the last sentence:  “Do you see now who she could be?”  I love the message that mistakes can sometimes be edited to enlarge, enlighten, inform, and the subtle message that through mistakes we learn and grow.


The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #6)  
Melanie and Jack have toddler twins, Sarah and JJ, but they also have a cistern in the backyard that is being excavated by Melanie’s best friend, Sophie, and her students.  And, of course, there are spirits and  mysteries to be solved.   There’s a woman named Eliza, who appears to have committed suicide by hanging, a Revolutionary War soldier, and two Vanderhorst men.  And, of course, there’s the challenge of trust between self-reliant Melanie and Jack.  There’s also Marc Longo who is intent on having whatever he wants.  Lots of  twists and turns in this one.


|The Baby Tree.  Sophie Blackall   
A cute story about where babies come from.  The little boy’s parents tell him a baby is coming.  He asks the teen he walks to school with and she tells them they grow on trees.  Others offer various ways babies arrive.  Finally he asks his parents and gets the correct answer.  Very appropriate for a young child.


The Attic on Queen Street.  Karen White   (Tradd Street #7)  
This time there’s a frozen Charlotte in a tiny casket, buttons from charm strings, and a heart-shaped pillow.  As the book opens, Jack and Melanie are separated but when Marc Longo’s film crew descends on the house, Jack moves back in (sleeping in the guest room) to keep watch over the house to prevent Marc from snooping for the treasures he believes are still there.  Ghosts include a young girl from Civil War times and Adrienne, the sister of a woman Melanie knew in college, among others not named.  Adrienne’s murder has been unsolved for 20 or more years.  Other living characters include Jack and Melanie’s children Nola, and twins JJ and Sarah; Jayne, Melanie’s sister; Melanie’s and Jack’s parents; Thomas Riley the detective; Rebecca, Melanie’s distance cousin; Suzy Dorf, the reporter; and various others.  I thought it was a satisfying ending for the series.  It was ghost story, mystery, family history, and romance all rolled into one.


nm

Book List, 2022

| 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.”  

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.