The Best of 2020

Just the headline "The Best of 2020" makes me shake my head. What a year it has been--but it's been a year with time for reading (particularly reading via audio book, since reading print seemed to become more challenging whenever our degree of lockdown went up). 

At any rate, it is always fun to look back at what I've read during the course of the year. I note that I don't have much patience for millennials in fiction. I did turn 70 this year, so perhaps that's not surprising--though I have enjoyed a number of books about teenagers, so . . . 

A few days ago, my friend Jan asked our book group members to name their three favorite books of the year. I surprised myself by listing three nonfiction books--as always, I read way more fiction than nonfiction, but there were some really great nonfiction titles this year. 

Fiction

I once again had trouble choosing a favorite--nothing stood out in the way, say, The Underground Railroad or Life After Life did a few years back. But there were some good ones--and my favorite really could have been any of the ones I listed as honorable mentions.  

Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha. This book was both timely and well-done. It is a fictionalized account of an killing that took place in Los Angeles at the time of the Rodney King riots--a Korean American shopkeeper shot and killed an innocent African American teenage girl. The novel looks at the long-range impacts through Shawn, the cousin of the murdered girl, and Grace, the daughter of the shopkeeper-killer. Both want to do the right thing while dealing with complicated family and cultural dynamics. 

Honorable mention: 

• The Gifted School, by Bruce Holsinger
• Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
• Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong

Short Stories

As readers of the blog know, short stories aren't my thing, but I read two collections I really enjoyed this year:

Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, features young women of Mexican American or indigenous heritage. Most of the stories are set in and around Denver, which added to their attraction for me. But even if they had been set elsewhere, I would have found these stories of young women dealing with illness, isolation, injustice, violence, and loss moving, memorable, and instructive. 

Honorable mention:

• Fools, by Joan Silber

Mystery

Yesterday by Felicia Yap, is a mystery with sci-fi/fantasy elements. The mystery is set in a time/place where people have only one or two days of memory, and the "Monos" are discriminated against by the "Duos." Indeed, the police detective tasked with solving the murder of a beautiful woman has hidden the fact that he is a Mono for his entire career, and the murdered woman's unusual memory is key to her fate. I thoroughly enjoyed the imaginative and twisty nature of this mystery though I should probably share that my sister did not care for it!

Honorable mention: 

• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Young Adult

Both of my favorites in this category were novels in verse.  

One, by Sarah Crossan, which came to me via a recommendation from my granddaughter, is the story of conjoined twins, Grace and Tippi, who start attending school for the first time as teens. They make two amazing friends but also suffer ridicule -- and they face a health crisis when Grace's heart begins to fail. The poetic form seems especially appropriate to the exploration of identity in a highly unusual situation. 

Honorable mention:

• Clap When You Land, by Elizabeth Acevedo

Poetry

As usual, I didn't read as much poetry as I think I should have, but I did have a favorite.

An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo, poet laureate of the United States, links the Trail of Tears to the current treatments of migrants on the Southwestern border. Many of the poems, which are interspersed with text passages providing historic perspective, are a form of literary resistance. 

Nonfiction

I can't choose between my two favorites, which are extremely different -- and any of the honorable mentions could just as easily be in the "winners" category.

The Library Book, by Susan Orlean, is ostensibly the story of the devastating fire at the central Los Angeles Library in 1986. And it does explore many aspects of the fire and recovery in fascinating detail, but it's also a history of libraries and their role in the community; a love song to books, libraries, and librarians; and a memoir of the author's relationship to libraries at various points in her life. It might seem the book could fall apart under the weight of so many different stories, but it doesn't. I loved it. 

Memorial Drive, by Natasha Tretheway (a former poet laureate), is wonderful in an entirely different way. Tretheway writes about her childhood as the daughter of a black mother and white father, the dissolution of her parents' marriage, her mother's eventual re-marriage and divorce, and the mother's murder by the second ex-husband. It's a devastating portrait and exploration of trauma and its effects, as well as a way to look at what it means for African American to seek freedom and how writing can heal. And it's beautifull written. 

Honorable Mention:

• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
• Know My Name, by Chanel Miller
• Supreme Inequality, by Adam Cohen
• Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama

Favorite Passages

I always look for themes in the quotes I especially loved during the year. There are definitely themes in 2020. One is love and what that means. Another is harder to describe, but perhaps it is self-examination or reflection. I know this is a lot of quotes, but somehow it feels like we need a lot of inspiration as we leave 2020 behind. 

**

How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us. But we have to ask with an open heart, with no idea what the answer will be. 

We call such a limited number of relationships love in our lives, but there is always love around us--it's as ubiquitous as oxygen. It lives in the houses where we've slept, the kitchens where we've cooked, in the food we've prepared for the people we love and in the walls we've shaped with our hands. 

--Pam Houston, Deep Creek (a wonderful nonfiction book that didn't even make it into the year's best!)

**

"Break My Heart" (excerpts)

The heart is a fist.
It pockets prayer or holds rage. 

It's a timekeeper.
Music maker, or backstreet truth teller.

--Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise

**

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we an care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person, what we felt about that person. 

--Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

**

The unexamined life is not worth living, as the aphorism goes, but perhaps an honorable an dinformed life requires examining others' lives, not just one's own. Perhaps we do not know ourselves unless we know others. 

Comfort is often a code word for the right to be unaware. 

--Rebecca Solnit, Whose Story Is This?

**

In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn't understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. 

--Susan Orlean, The Library Book

**

They say that a person's personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn't true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we'd never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than a mistake we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

. . . we weren't ready to become adults. Somebody should have stopped us.

--Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

**

In the narrative of my life, which is the look backward rather than forward into the unknown and unstoried future, I emerged from the pool as from a baptismal font--changed, reborn--as if I had been shown what would be my calling even then. This is how the past fits into the narrative of our lives, gives meaning and purpose. Even my mother's death is redeemed in the story of my calling, made meaningful rather than merely senseless. It is the story I tell myself to survive.

--Natasha Tretheway, Memorial Drive

**

And these two don't fit the themes but I like them:

He cares about other people . . . Most men don't know the pleasure.

--Kali Fajardo Anstine, Sabrina and Corina

Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.

Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.

--Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

Wrapping up the Year with Transcendent Kingdom, Supreme Inequality, and More

This is the time of year when I start looking at various "Best of " lists and trying to read some of the titles I haven't read (or even heard of). My favorite list, mentioned numerous times before, is the LitHub list that identifies which books appeared in the most end-of-year best of lists (https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2020-list/). I have started working on that list; that will continue for a couple months in 2021, and then I will give up and move on. At any rate, the results so far have been mixed.

Sorry this is such a long post--I read a lot this month and seem to have a lot to say. I am, once again, thinking about ending the blog or changing the format somehow. We will see in January. 

Fiction

Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi (from the LitHub list).  One of the things that I appreciated about this book is how different it is from Gyasi's previous (and very good but utterly depressing) book, Homegoing. Transcendent Kingdom's protagonist is Gifty, the daughter of a family of Ghanaian immigrants. The story is told in two tracks, with Gifty's childhood in Alabama up to her brother's death due to a  heroin overdose providing one track and the other track focusing on her present life as a neuroscience graduate student at Stanford (with her mother suffering from depression and essentially living in Gifty's bedroom). Gifty's research focuses on work with mice that may reveal the secrets of depression and addiction; as she pursues science at the highest levels, she also reflects on her childhood in her mother's evangelical church. It's a fascinating weaving together of a range of themes. I thought it ended rather abruptly but still found it a rewarding read. 

Followers, by Megan Angelo. Followers explores the implications of our current entertainment and social media culture, particularly "influencers" and reality television.  Orla and Floss are a wannabe author and wannabe singer respectively. They launch a successful scheme to become influencers (Orla is the brains of the scheme and Floss the more public face), but their friendship endures some extreme difficulties and their popularity eventually fades. Then a technology apocalypse happens--I'm not sure what exactly the apocalypse was (I probably spaced out on the tech explanation) and, as a result, the government takes over management of the Internet. Thirty years later, a young woman named Marlow lives in a community in which the lives of the inhabitants are completely public (think Ed TV). She decides to break out of the community to find out more about a family secret. Darkly funny but also somewhat hopeful. I enjoyed it.

The Book of Two Ways, by Jody Picoult. This book about a woman who gave up a potential career in Egyptology to care for her dying mother, marry, and become a death doula--and comes to regret it-- differs from other Picoult books because there is no legal conflict! Parts of the books read like mini-lectures on a variety of topics, particularly related to Egyptology (think of Kathy Reichs teaching us about forensic anthropology in the guise of a mystery). Plus, the main character is not likeable, and Picoult packs in too many topics--fat shaming, physics, death, Egyptology. These factors make the book somewhat tedious, and not recommended.

Tokyo Ueno Station, by Yu Miri. This book won the 2020 National Book Award for translated works (translated by Morgan Giles). In it, the ghost of a Korean-Japanese laborer recounts the difficulties of his early life and his observations of life in the park near Tokyo's Ueno Station, where he lived in a homeless village for the last years of his life. The book has been lauded as an exploration of hidden Japanese lives and it is that, but as a novel it didn't engage me. 

Enter the Aardvark, by Jessica Anthony. This book is a somewhat weird satire about a young Congressman who idolizes Ronald Reagan and has huge ambitions. Things start to go wrong when a stuffed aardvark is delivered to his apartment; the source of the aardvark is his gay lover, who seems to have sent it immediately before dying. From that point on, things go haywire rapidly. It's a funny book (especially if you like to make fun of conservative Republicans). 

Friends and Strangers, by J. Courtney Sullivan. This novel, somewhat like Such a Fun Age, revolves around the relationship between a mother and the babysitter she hires to care for her son while she "writes." While Friends and Strangers does not have the racial element of Such a Fun Age, it does explore the ramifications of class differences. Both characters have a lot going on in their lives outside of their relationship. Notably for the mother, Elisabeth, are a wealthy father whose assistance she steadfastly refuse to accept though it could save her in-laws from losing their home and a husband who has moved them from Brooklyn to a small upstate college town so he can pursue his idea for a solar-powered grill (and who wants another child, which she does not). For Sam, the babysitter, there are her obnoxious and older British boyfriend and the people she has worked with in the college cafeteria, whom she wants to help through activism. The book was okay, but I would have liked it more if Elisabeth had been less obnoxious and Sam more level-headed (but it's a good reminder of the dumb decisions made at 20). 

Just Like You, by Nick Hornby. Hornby is one of those authors who sometimes knocks it out of the park and sometimes leaves me feeling, as the saying goes, meh. Just Like You was definitely a meh. It's basically a romance novel about an older divorced mother and a younger black man. For me, it didn't provide any particular insight into race in the UK or single motherhood. I'll be waiting hopefully for the next Hornby work.

Luster, by Raven Leilani (from the LitHub list). It was weird to read this just after the Hornby book because it's about a love affair between a young African American woman and an older (married) white man. The twist in the story is that the woman Edie, whose life is in shambles after she has messed up repeatedly at work (if this weren't the case, it seems unlikely she would be in a relationship with Eric, who appears to have few, if any, redeeming qualities) ends up living with Eric's family, helping his adopted African American daughter Akila adjust to the family. The book is really well-written and includes some sharp commentary on race, class, and gender, but I just couldn't get past my dismay at Edie's self-destructiveness to enjoy it. 

The Sweeney Sisters, by Lian Dolan. When the three Sweeney sisters arrive home for the funeral of their father, a larger-than-life novelist, they learn there is a fourth Sweeney sister, born from an affair their father had with the woman next door. The novel is the story of how they deal with this news, as well as the messiness of their own lives and the sibling conflicts and rivalries that have persisted for years. This isn't a great book but it was the right book for the moment, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrick Backman. Because I enjoyed Anxious People, I decided to try another Fredrick Backman. Britt-Marie was a rather up-tight busy body who appeared in my least favorite Backman (My Grandmother Told Me . . . ) but this is her redemption story, as she is forced to find work in a small town when her husband leaves her. Through her contacts with a bevy of quirky characters, including a youth soccer team for which she accidentally becomes a coach, she opens her heart--although she doesn't entirely give up her obsessive behaviors. Feeling fairly positive toward Backman after this one. 

Mystery

The Blackhouse, by Peter May. My sister-in-law Kathy, who has a love for Scotland, recommended the series that launches with this title, not coincidentally set in the Scottish Hebrides. Our hero, Fin Macleod, has just lost his son to a car accident when he is sent to his home town on the island of Lewis to investigate a case similar to a recent one in Edinburgh. The victim on Lewis was a notorious bully with whom Fin had history in his school days. It's a very dark story, but complex and intriguing enough to justify moving to book 2 in the series. 

Sometimes I Lie, by Alice Feeney.  Amber is paralyzed and in a coma--but she can hear what is happening in her hospital room and she's afraid--of her sister, her husband, and an ex who has turned up as a doctor in the hospital. Alternating between accounts of what she hears in the hospital, a narrative of the events leading up to the accident in which she was injured, and excerpts from a childhood diary, the book weaves a twisty psychological tale in which you're unsure who the good guys are--if there are any. Entertaining.

Nonfiction

Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation, by Andrew Weissmann. Weissman led one of the three investigative teams that working under Robert Mueller. In this book, he recounts how the work was done and the decisions that shaped the final product. The Mueller report is actually quite damning (I have read it), but Weissmann makes clear that it could have been so much stronger. Of course, AG Barr could still have lied about a stronger report, but perhaps some of the agony of the past year could have been avoided. Infuriating but recommended. 

Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's 50-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, by Adam Cohen. While I think I am fairly well informed about the Supreme Court, I learned a lot from this analysis and was forced to think in a longer term way about the Court's role in injustice and inequity in the United States. The first takeaway was that the Court has had a conservative Chief Justice and a conservative majority since the Nixon administration; we may have thought of the Court as being somewhat evenly divided when O'Connor and then Kennedy were the swing votes--and certainly it is more conservative with Roberts now in that position--but it was actually always conservative. (And Richard Nixon and his Justice Dept. manipulated things to achieve the initial conservative majority, just as McConnell and likely Trump [I believe we will eventually learn more about how Kennedy was compelled to retire]). Further, that conservative majority has actively sought cases that allowed them to favor the rich, business, and by association Republicans while harming working class and poor people, people of color, immigrants, and basically anyone who is not a member of the economically elite. One of the most telling parts of the book compares the way in which the Court interpreted the Eighth Amendment when when punishment involved poor people and people of color (e.g., upholding three strikes laws for petty offenses) compared with corporations (e.g., striking down as unreasonable damage awards rendered by juries). But the trend extends to cases in many different areas of the law, including education, campaign finance, voting, workers' rights, and more. And, should someone be foolish enough to believe that only liberal judges are activists, they really need to read the analysis of the excessively broad decision in the infamous Citizens United case (along with the rest of the book). 

Also Read

• Topics of Conversation, by Miranda Popkey. Similar to Rachel Cusk's work in its reliance on recounting stories from people talking to the main character rather than narrative development around the main character. 
• Rebel Chef: In Search of What Matters, by Dominique Crenn. Some parts of this memoir are interesting, but overall it was disappointing because it didn't really inform the reader about how Crenn's food became so unique. 
• Sex and Vanity, by Kevin Kwan. If his other books are anything like this one, I can't understand how Kwan has become so popular. 
• I Found You, by Lisa Jewell. A single mom comes across a man sitting on the beach near her home and invites him to stay with her family. At that point very early in the book, I lost my ability to suspend disbelief, so the rest of this intricately structured mystery just didn't work for me, but I'm sure many people would like it. 
• Killing Season, by Faye Kellerman. Once again, Kellerman goes into some detail describing teenage sex, which I find creepy in a mystery for adults. 
• The Guest List, by Lisa Foley. A marriage is taking place on a remote island and it turns out multiple characters have reason to hate the groom. Hints of Murder on the Orient Express. 
• Recipe for Persuasion, by Sonali Dev. Once again, Dev applies elements of a Jane Austen novel to romance among Indian Americans, with a foodie subtheme.
• The Silent Wife, Karen Slaughter. Typical Will Trent mystery.
• The Night Swim, by Megan Goldin. Another mystery using the true crime podcast as a trope.
  
  

Favorite Passages

The truth is we don't know what we don't know. We don't even know the questions we need to ask in order to find out, but when we learn one tiny little thing, a dim light comes on in a dark hallway, and suddenly a new question appears. We spend decades, centuries, millennia, trying to answer that one question so that another dim light will come on. That's science, but that's also everything else, isn't it? Try. Experiment. Ask a ton of questions.

--Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

. . . passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads.

--Frederik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

Grateful for Good Books . . . Memorial Drive and Anxious People

With the return of "stay home" orders (stated a little less stridently) and lots of mindless tasks that are great for doing while listening to books (putting up Christmas decorations, wrapping gifts, addressing Christmas cards--yes, I'm trying to get ready early), I got through a lot of books in November. A number of them were light enough to float and I may have chosen a few too many featuring millennial protagonists--but there were also some good ones! 

Fiction

Anxious People, by Fredrick Backman. I'm not a huge Backman fan, but I really enjoyed this book--it was the right combination of humor and uplift for the ninth month of a pandemic. A bank robber is foiled when the targeted bank has no cash. In desperation, the robber flees into a nearby apartment where a real estate agent is conducting a showing with a diverse group of quirky people (it is Backman, after all). Meanwhile, a father-son pair of police officers, struggling with the mother/wife's death and their very different approaches to policing, try to figure out how to get the hostages out safely. Running beneath the humor is the story of two suicide attempts--one completed, the other not--that took place on a bridge visible from the apartment where the robber and real-estate "buyers" are holed up. This aspect of the novel gives it some depth that it wouldn't otherwise have. Overall, the epitome of the phrase "a good read." 

Monogamy, by Sue Miller. I like Sue Miller. Sometimes I love her. With Monogamy, I'm stuck at like, but like is good too. Annie wakes up one morning to find her husband Graham dead next to her. Over the following days and weeks, she, their daughter, Graham's first wife Frieda, and his son with Frieda all grapple with their relationships to Graham and to each other. The book causes the reader to consider questions like how, even in  good marriage, one partner can be subsumed by the other or how the best-intentioned parent can inflict pain on their children or how two women who loved the same man can forge a friendship. Like I said, I like this book--and I recommend it. 

The Accidental, by Ali Smith. Ali Smith is a darling of the critics, but I don't find her work compelling in any way.  It includes narratives from four family members--husband/stepfather Michael, mother Eve, children Magnus and Astrid--and an uninvited guest at their vacation house, Amber. Amber's role seems to be to point out the cracks in the family, which are many and which she, in fact, widens. But, with the exception of Magnus's agony about his role in a bullying incident in which the victim committed suicide, I found the family members' stories unmoving and Amber's sections are incomprehensible to me. Not recommended. By the way, I was tempted to read this book after not liking a couple of other Ali Smith's by its being part of the Rooster Super Tournament, meaning a group of authors chose it as the best book of the year when it was published (for more about this, see https://themorningnews.org/tob/); they were wrong. 

The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt. Affirming that the Rooster and I are out of synch, I thought The Sisters Brothers was just dumb. It's about two hit men in the West of the mid-1800s, in search of a man their boss wants dead. They encounter various quirky people (and are pretty quirky themselves) on their "road trip"--I assume it's supposed to be funny. But even if I am wrong, I can't see how this was the best book of any year. 

Father of the Rain, by Lily King. The white protagonist of this novel, Daley, is about to drive to Berkeley to take up a faculty appointment in anthropology at Berkeley. Her African American fiance will join her there shortly. Then she receives news that her alcoholic father is in the midst of a health crisis; she rushes to his side, intended to staying just a few days. But the days drag on, as she reflects on how her father disrupted her childhood and why she even as an adult cannot confront his retrograde attitudes on race and gender. There's some interesting exploration of the father-daughter relationship, but I was so irritated with Daley's decision-making that I couldn't find empathy for her. 

The Institute, by Stephen King. I don't think I've ever read a Stephen King novel before and I'm not going to start binging his oeuvre, but I did find The Institute quite interesting. Children with telekinetic or telepathic powers are kidnapped and taken to "The Institute," where their abilities are tapped for nefarious or admirable purposes depending on your perspective. Half of the book focuses on what happens to the children at The Institute, half on the events that transpire when one young man, Lucas, escapes and attempts to rescue his friends. Definitely worth reading.

What Are You Going Through? by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez here continues her exploration of death, begun in The Friend.  The unnamed narrator is asked by a friend to help her die. They will live together in a vacation rental until the (also unnamed) friend becomes ill enough to decide to commit suicide. They share good times, deep conversations about life and death, and tension; at the same time, the narrator is also interacting with her ex-husband, who lectures about the approaching end of the world due to climate change--death at another level. The book has been very positively reviewed, although I didn't find it find it terribly engaging. Would definitely recommend The Friend over this newer work.

Afterland, by Lauren Beukes. It's another post-pandemic novel! This time, the disease that sweeps around the world causes men, following recovery from the virus, to come down with a deadly form of prostate cancer. As a result, any boys and men who do not succumb are being "protected" in camps where they are subjected to medical experiments. At the same time, traffickers seek to kidnap boys for sperm harvesting. Cole, a native of South Africa, is trying to get her son, disguised as a girl, across country to escape the United States (evidently, the situation in other countries is not as bad). Among their other adventures, they get involved with a female religious cult. There are better post-pandemic books but this one was enjoyable. 

The Party Upstairs, by Lee Conell. Ruby has just been dumped and lost her job; she's also got serious debt. So what does she do? Moves back into her parents' apartment. Her dad Martin is the super in a NYC apart building, so that apartment is in the basement, figuratively miles away from the people who live upstairs, including Ruby's old "friend" Beth, who is planning a party for the evening of the day in which the story unfolds. Ruby and her dad face an array of challenges during the day (her mother is conveniently away at a librarians' conference) that send them both into tailspins and prompt them to reflect on their relationship as well as the class structure the apartment building represents. Recommended.

Oona Out of Order, by Margarita Monitomore. On her 19th birthday, coincidentally--or not, New Year's Day--Oona wakes up to find herself a 51-year-old woman. She learns that she experiences life in random order and that she is a wealthy woman as a result of investments made using knowledge gained through her "time travel." Many years, she receives a letter from herself at the previous age; the letters help her navigate the situation but there are mysteries the letters do not answer. Oona Out of Order is reminiscent of The Time Traveller's Wife; while perhaps not as good as that book, it's still inventive and enjoyable. 

Days of Distraction, by Alexandra Chang. This apparently autobiographical novel follows a young Chinese American woman as she kvetches about her job at a San Francisco tech magazine, leaves to travel cross country with her Anglo boyfriend who is moving to Ithaca for grad school, becomes interested in the history of Chinese American women, and travels to China to visit her father. The structure She's rather an annoying character but the book has an interesting kind of random structure and explores intriguing questions about race, ethnicity, families, and love, so I give it a qualified recommendation. 

Mystery

Eight Perfect Murders, by Peter Swanson. I had never heard of Peter Swanson and was excited to find a new mystery author to check out. Plus Eight Perfect Murders has the big plus of having a literary element--the mysteries in the book are modeled on eight classic murder mysteries. Although there was a bit too much explaining at the end, I enjoyed the book enough to cause me to pick up Swanson's All the Beautiful Lies. This mystery revolves around whether Harry Ackerman's father committed suicide or was murdered. There is again a book connection--Mr. Ackerman owned a rare book shop--and there are some rather weird sexual encounters. Not as good as Eight Perfect Murders, but good enough that I will likely try another Swanson book.

Nonfiction

I often say I don't like memoirs, but I have to admit that a good memoir is rewarding--and Memorial Drive, by poet Natasha Tretheway, is a very good memoir. Tretheway writes about her childhood as the daughter of a black mother and white father, the dissolution of her parents' marriage, her mother's eventual re-marriage and divorce, and the mother's murder by her ex-husband. The book is not simply a straightforward narrative.  One chapter, in which young Tasha reports her stepfather's abuse to a teacher is written in second person, as though the author simply could not bear to write this material in her own voice. She also includes transcripts of telephone conversations between her mother and stepfather, as well as a document written by her mother. It's a devastating portrait and exploration of trauma and its effects, as well as a way to look at what it means for African American women to seek freedom and how writing can heal. It's about more than Natasha Tretheway--it's about life. And, of course, it's beautifully written.

Stray, by novelist Stephanie Danler, seems to be the opposite. It is all about Stephanie Danler--her difficult childhood, her escape from NYC after selling her novel, her struggles to figure out what she wants to do with her life and how she wants to incorporate her problematic family into her life, and her romantic struggles. It could be a meaningful account, but it's all about her, it's not about how her life could inform others' understanding of their lives. It's a great example of what I dislike about memoirs.

Poetry

How to Fly, by Barbara Kingsolver. Poetry is not Kingsolver's best genre--that would be fiction, followed by essays. But she's a competent poet and some of the works in this collection offer rewards. The poems include "How to" poems ("How to Shear a Sheep," "How to Survive This," "How to Be Married"), poems about a pilgrimage to Italy, poems about Southern families and experiences, and poems about the natural world. There are a couple of references that bothered me (one about slavery struck me as particularly wrong). One of my favorites was "Walking Each Other Home," a brief portrait of two friends walking together between their two homes. It ends:

I walk from my house to hers
and then together we speak of things--
or don't, we are often quiet--

all the way back home to mine. Or she
walks here first, collects me for her return.
Either way, this is the road where we live.

Always we walk each other home.
And always we walk some of it alone.

Also Read

• A Star Is Bored, by Byron Lan. Really did not like this book written by a former assistant to Carrie Fischer because it feels like he is using her mental problems for comic purposes. 
• The Searcher, by Tana French. Sorry to say, this stand-alone from the Irish author is just boring. 
• The Lying Room, by Nicci French. Other French books I've read are very dark and psychological. This one about a woman who finds her boss/lover dead is complicated but (IMHO) dumb.
• The Lightness, by Emily Temple. Uses the trope of girls doing bad things at camp/school but puts the girls in a Buddhist retreat where they are trying to achieve levitation. Ugh.
• Forever, Interrupted, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Weird to say an exploration of a new husband's death could be lightweight, but this one is. 
• Blue Ticket, by Sophie Mackintosh. A dystopic novel in which girls receive either a blue ticket (can have children) or blue ticket (will not have children) that determines their fate. But the thinking behind the society's structure and other aspects of that structure are unarticulated. 
• Broken People, by Sam Lansky. Some aspects of the insecure main character's story were interesting, but the stupid central plot device--a wellness retreat where, under the influence of drugs, you sort through your memories and magically emerge more balanced, ruined the book for me.
• All My Mother's Lovers, by Ilana Masad. After her mother's death, a woman finds letters to five men and investigates who these men were to her mother. Interesting but wrecked by a terrible ending. 
• Self Care, by Leigh Stern. This often funny book about three women running a self-care "feminist" website for bougie millennials also suffers from a bad ending. 
• The Authenticity Project, by Clare Pooley. An elderly man leaves a notebook in a coffee shop, urging the next person who finds it to write their authentic story. Sweet but shallow.
• The Wives, by Tarryn Fisher. Thursday claims to be a happily married wife whose husband just happens to have two other wives who live in other cities. When she begins to question her husband's veracity and finds the other two wives, strange things happen and the book takes a twist that ruined it for me. 
• A Minute to Midnight, by David Baldacci. The second in the Atlee Pine series, the book is annoying because no progress is made in solving the mystery that starts the book. 
• Sadie, by Courtney Summers. One sister is dead, one is missing, and a true crime blogger is trying to find the missing girl and find out who killed the other. Already tired of the crime blogger trope.

Favorite Passages

They say that a person's personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn't true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we'd never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than the mistake we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

. . . we weren't ready to become adults. Somebody should have stopped us.

Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

In the narrative of my life, which is the look backward rather than forward into the unknown and unstoried future, I emerged from the pool as from a baptismal font--changed, reborn--as if I had been shown what would be my calling even then. This is how the past fits into the narrative of our lives, gives meaning and purpose. Even my mother's death is redeemed in the story of my calling, made meaningful rather than merely senseless. It is the story I tell myself to survive. 

Natasha Tretheway, Memorial Drive

Stress Reading Is Not High Quality Reading

October has been a high stress month--the upcoming election, the surging coronavirus, raging wildfires, and some family health concerns have combined to put me pretty close to the edge. I'm blaming that stress for the fact that most of my reading this month has been crappy mysteries. Here's hoping a good election result (Vote Blue!) will push me to more challenging reading in November. Meanwhile . . . 

Fiction

The Only Story, by Julian Barnes. Julian Barnes is an amazing writer--I love the way he uses language. I don't, however, always love (or understand) his plots. The protagonists of The Only Story (which apparently is love) are Paul and Susan, who are 19 and 49, respectively, when they meet and fall in love while playing tennis. Eventually, Susan leaves her husband (who we later learn was abusive) and moves with Paul to his university town. Their relationship thrives for a time, but then Susan's drinking and mental illness drive them apart. Paul leaves, but can never entirely escape that first love affair--his only story. The early part of the novel alternate between first and second person--first when Paul is relating events, second when he is reflecting. The latter part of the book is written in third person, indicating that Paul has even further distanced himself from his experience. I didn't find that technique especially effective, I didn't think any of the characters other than Paul himself to be well-developed (and Paul seems to have remained a juvenile), and I doubt that love, and particularly first love, are the only story of significance in a person's story. So, despite some beautiful language and interesting insights, I don't recommend this book. 

All the Little Live Things, by Wallace Stegner. This book is a "sequel" (though written before) to The Spectator Bird, which introduced retired literary agent Joe Allston and his wife Ruth. Still trying to recover from their son's death, they become entangled with two younger people. Jim Peck asks to camp on their land, and under pressure from Ruth, Joe agrees despite his own reservations. Those reservations prove to have been well-founded, as Peck is soon running a commune of sorts (the book is set in the 60s), espousing yoga, sex, and drugs. In contrast, Marian Caitlin, the young wife and mother who moves in next door with her family, is a sunny lover of "all the little live things," whose personality enthralls Joe and Ruth. But Marian has cancer, which recurs when she becomes pregnant. The book has beautiful descriptions of place and some interesting reflections on aging, but the ongoing arguments, especially between Joe and Peck, become tedious. Worth reading but certainly not up to the standard of Stegner's best works. 

Nonfiction

Intimations, by Zadie Smith. You have to hate/admire someone who cranks out a book of essays during a pandemic lockdown. It's a relatively slim book (about 100 pages) and, thankfully, the essays are more accessible than some of her earlier works. Yet, through reflection on her personal experiences, Smith challenges us to think about time, inequality and privilege, compassion, and isolation. Recommended.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, by Stephanie Land. Land's memoir details how hard it is to make any economic progress when you start out without education, skills, or family connections and have to provide food and shelter for a child. The precariousness of her life--an illness or car malfunction can start a major downward spiral--is heartbreaking, and the portrayal of the way in which the owners of maid services and the consumers of their services treat the actual cleaners is infuriating. Our society needs to address these issues. At the same time, Land makes bad decisions (particularly involving men) and has an irrational belief that if she can only get to Missoula, Montana, things can be better. In fact, they do get better when she enrolls at Montana State, but she could have made the same changes in another location. I know I'm being judgey--but places aren't magical. (Also, she liked The Alchemist--ugh!) Despite my whining, I recommend the book. 

Burn the Place, by Iliana Regan. Regan is the chef-owner of the upscale Chicago restaurant Elizabeth (highly recommended by my friend Carolyn) and co-owner of a a bed and breakfast in the UP that is booked solid through 2021 (I checked on their website!).  She grew up on a farm in Indiana, struggled with her identity and sexuality, and started drinking early. After moving to Chicago, where she worked at several of the area's most revered restaurants, she continued to struggle with addiction while beginning to develop a business, most notably through sale of her "best in Chicago" pierogis. I love the parts of the book that are about food and Regan's connection to food (I'm a food memoir junkie). While I sympathize with her struggles and admire her eventual recovery from addiction, at this point I have read too many memoirs with an addiction theme to find that part of the book very interesting (yes, I might be heartless). Still, Regan writes well and there's the food, so I recommend the book.

Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19, edited by Jennifer Haupt. Alone Together is a collection of poems, essays, and interviews about the experience of the pandemic and shutdown. A wide range of well-known (and lesser known) authors are represented; a sampling: Pam Houston, Alberto Luis Urrea, Andre Dubus III, Nikki Giovanni, Kwame Alexander, Jean Kwok, Lidia Yuknavitch. The works examine the role of art and story telling in times of crisis, how we are affected by isolation and illness, and the ways in which connections are sustained. I found the book to be both sad and uplifting and recommend it (sales support the Book Industry Charitable Foundation).

Young Adult

Clap When You Land, by Elizabeth Acevedo. In Clap When You Land, Acevedo has produced another sensitive novel in poetic form. When their father is killed in a plane crash, Camino, who lives in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira, who lives in New York, learn that their beloved Papi had two wives (their mothers), each with a daughter. The book explores how the two come to grips with their new-found relationship while dealing with other challenges that teenagers face. Recommended.

One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are three sisters who live in Brooklyn with their dad and grandmother. When Delphine is 11, the girls are sent to Oakland to stay with their mother for the summer--a mother they haven't seen since she left them seven years earlier. Why their father thought this was a good idea is unclear, since their mother clearly did not want them around. She sends them to a Black Panther-run day camp and when they are not at camp, leaves them to fend for themselves. The day camp is a good experience and the girls eventually gain some insight into their mother (or at least Delphine does), but I was so uncomfortable with the way their mother treated them that I couldn't enjoy the book. 

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas. Thomas has a real gift for getting into the heads of teenage girls. Here that girl is Bri, a talented young rapper who is struggling at school due to racism and her own impulsiveness (her psychology major older brother "diagnoses" her with oppositional defiant disorder). She wants desperately to get her music career started, both for her own sake and to help her financially strapped family. When she gets a break with an angry song, however, she is branded as a thug and is pulled into gang disputes. While the ending is somewhat facile, Thomas does a brilliant job depicting how problems of society and an individual's own bad decisions can combine to put teenagers in situations they should not have to face. Recommended. 

Life as We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. A huge meteor hits the moon, knocking it closer to earth; the resulting tidal waves drown out entire cities, while earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the cooling climate create massive problems for the survivors. Life as We Knew It is the survival story of high school sophomore Miranda and her family, and it's a story that holds your attention. The ending is a bit week, but I still enjoyed the book, perhaps because the children and their mother are so heroic--a nice antidote in our own dystopian time. 

Also Read

• A Stranger in the House, by Shari LaPena. Forgettable, in fact, forgotten.
• Long Bright River, by Liz Moore
• Lost Lake and Shatter the Night, by Emily Littlejohn. Books 3 and 4 in the Gemma Monroe series break from the repetitive pattern of Books 1 and 2 but still aren't great mysteries. 
• The 19th Christmas, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. A little better than the more recent entries in the Women's Murder Club mysteries.
• Outsider, by Linda Castillo. Decent entry in the Kate Burkholder series.
• Separation Anxiety, by Laura Zigman. Forced zaniness featuring a troubled family and a private school followed by a weird sweet ending. 
• The Last Widow, by Karen Slaughter. More Will Trent. 
• The Wife Stalker, by Liv Constantine. Totally unbelievable plot.
• What You Wish For, by Katherine Center. This is the second Center book that sounded great in a review/write-up but disappointed upon reading. I found the use of PTSD resulting from a school shooting as a romantic plot devise deeply offensive. 
• The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware. I was never going to read another Ruth Ware book, but this was available on Overdrive, so . . . Better than her earlier works but not great. 
• Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death and Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet, by M. C. Beaton. I had never read any Beaton, and these two were pleasant enough diversions. Not sure how much farther I will dip into the very large series. 
• You Are Not Alone, by Greer Hendrick & Sarah Pekkanen. Totally unbelievable. 

Favorite Passages

Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. Do we have access to the algorithm of its priorities? Probably not. But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be a self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first. But again, I’m only guessing.

 First love fixes a life forever; this much I have discovered over the years. It may not outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence. It may serve as model, or as counterexample. It may overshadow subsequent loves; on the other hand, it can make them easier, better. Though sometimes, first love cauterizes the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.

 . . . nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed.

Julian Barnes, The Only Story

Living with joy, even if imperfectly, is a kind of salvation.

Jean Kwok, in Alone Together

We are hurt and damaged and yearning for our better selves, esperately dreaming of a kinder world in the days to come.

Luis Alberto Urrea in Alone Together

On that small farm, among the bats, wasps, fireflies, and endless clouds, the stage was set for deep imaginings, escaping in daydreams so I didn't have to think. It was as if life happened inside a little box, and I was the marionette as well as the puppeteer. I felt like I knew more things about life than I should have. Like the universe was all those mason jars stacked in our pantry, and the world was just one of them, full of peaches. 

Iliana Regan, Burn the Place

Why Am I the Last Person to Read This, Part 2: Dreams from My Father

Back in 2002 and 2003, when we were launching the Novel Conversations book group at the Broomfield Library, my late friend Evelyn, who was the "senior" member of our group, suggested we read Dreams from My Father, predicting that the author was going to have a big future (this was before the 2004 DNC speech that really launched Barack Obama's political career).  We didn't choose to read the book, but she was certainly right about the big future. This month, I finally read Dreams from My Father and, like The Library Book last month, was richly rewarded. More about that a bit lower in the blog.

Fiction

In Every Moment We Are Still Alive, by Tom Malmquist, is an autobiographical novel about the death of a poet's partner, who is diagnosed with a fatal leukemia just as she is about to give birth to their daughter Livia. As he is grieving his partner, learning to be a father (and fighting the bureaucracy to be declared her father, a problem because he and his partner weren't married), and deals with his in-laws, he must also deal with his father's illness and impending death. The enormity and confusion of what Tom faces are well-conveyed through the use of present tense and the inclusion of enormous amounts of detail, especially when his wife and daughter are in different parts of the hospital. On the other hand, the fact that present tense is also used to narrate scenes from the couple's back story, with no indication when you are moving from the present to the past, is really confusing. If you are looking to be sad, overwhelmed, and confused, I recommend the book; if those aren't your goals, I'd say give it a pass.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo, shared last year's Mann Booker prize with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. I feel a bit like I cheated by listening to the book rather than reading it because the book has no punctuation, and I just couldn't read it. I'm sure Evaristo had some important intention in not using punctuation which I missed by listening, but I am too old school to deal. Anyway, the book has a large number of characters, all Black British women, whose stories are presented in "clusters" of three to four characters who are connected with each other in some way. (There are also some connections across the clusters.) The premiere of an "afro-gynocentric" play by one of the characters serves as a loose frame for the entire set of stories. About all I took away from Girl, Woman, Other is that the UK has many Black women, who come from different places/cultures around the globe, who have different sexualities, and who make their way in the world differently. I wish there was more to it (or perhaps there is, and I'm just too dense to get it).

The Jane Austen Society, by Natalie Jenner, is one of the better Jane Austen "spin-offs." Set in the period around World War II, the book features diverse residents of the village of Chawton who work with a  movie star and a Sotheby's employee who love Jane Austen to save Miss Austen's home from developers. Some of the villagers seem like unlikely fans of Austen, but their love is sincere and deep, illustrating the power of literature to change and sustain people. I enjoyed this sweet book.

The Nix, by Nathan Hill, is a 600+ page book that is difficult to capture in just a paragraph. The protagonist is Samuel Andresen-Anderson, failed writer, college teacher, and obsessive video game player. Equally important to the story is his mother Faye, who left him as a child and has recently reemerged as the perpetrator in an assault-by-pebbles on a conservative presidential candidate. Samuel's agent approaches him to write a hatchet job on his mother, promising he won't have to give back the advance on the book he has been unable to write if he takes on this job. The narrative jumps between various stages in both Samuel's and Faye's lives while simultaneously following the current moment in Samuel's life. The book examines numerous serious themes--but it's also funny, particularly in some of the subplots. My favorite laugh-out-loud subplot had to do with a student of Samuel's who, in order to avoid being penalized for cheating (and she cheated on everything), put together a series of appeals and accusations that eventually brought the full force of his college's wrath on him. The Nix is big and messy, with an ending that seemed a little too neat--but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Severance, by Ling Ma, is my second post-pandemic dystopic novel I've read in two months. The heroine here is a 20-something, under-employed (she obtains production contracts for Bibles), pregnant Chinese American woman living in New York. When the pandemic hits (this one is a fungus, not a virus, but it too is from China), she is one of a team designated to continue coming to the office while everyone else works at home. Eventually, she is the last person standing, one of the few people who are immune to the fungus. When she finally ventures out of the office, she joins up with a group of survivors led by Bob, a former HR manager who wants the group to head to his favorite childhood place, a mall in suburban Chicago. They travel across the Midwest, "stalking" through abandoned houses and businesses to find supplies and food and killing any of "the fevered" (zombies, I guess) they come across. It's dark. Needless to say, I preferred the more relationship-focused A Beginning at the End, which I reviewed last month, but Severance was still interesting.

Mystery

Inherit the Bones and A Season to Lie, by Emily Littlejohn. I was motivated to start this series after my friend Kerry, who writes the "Bookwoman" column in our local paper, reviewed the Gemma Monroe series Littlejohn has set in a fictional Colorado town. I found the first book, which involved the death of a young man who has returned to the town under a new name, after disappearing (and being presumed dead) a few years before, fairly entertaining. The second book revolves around the death of a famous author who is teaching at the local private school under an assumed name. The false names are not the only similarities between the two stories--taking the lessons learned from reading the first book, I immediately knew who the killer was and the "surprise" at the heart of the killing. I'll probably still read the third book in the series to see if Littlejohn gets out of the rut, but if not, I'm done! 

All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny. My sister and I, both inveterate mystery readers, agreed a couple of years ago that we were sick of Three Pines, the setting for a number of Penny's Armand Gamache. Consequently, I was happy to learn that her newest book is set in Paris. Somehow, without the irritation of Three Pines, I became focused on other irritations. First, Penny is always having someone make a big discovery at the end of a chapter but not telling the reader what it is. Second, I am becoming tired of her fawning descriptions of Gamache. I have noticed some other authors of series seem to fall in love with their characters to the point where they can’t write about them sensibly and that seems to be the case here. Third, there were too many “surprises” at the end—some having to do with the case, but others not (and totally gratuitous). Don’t know if I’ll read any more of her.

Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling). As you have probably read, Rowling has made some rather questionable and bigoted remarks about transgender people. If this were not the case, I would not have thought anything about the fact that a serial killer in this book donned a dress in the commission of some of his crimes; however, given her remarks, this detail seems like a needle to the LGBTQ+ community, a "see--I'm right about the danger of transgenderism." What a stupid (not to mention insensitive and biased) thing to do. Other than that, the book is too long and pretty tedious. 

Nonfiction

The Yellow House, by Sarah P. Broom, is a family history, a memoir, a deep reflection on and social history of place--in this case the neighborhood in East New Orleans where Broom grew up in the yellow house--and a case study of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on one African American family, Broom's own (one reviewer described the family as having its own diaspora following the storm; one imagines many families had similar experiences). If that sounds like a lot, it is--Broom accomplishes much with this book and does it skillfully, offering insights into the history of a city that most of us think of as more of a tourist destination than a place that real people live, confront racism and poverty, and do their best to prevail. Recommended.  

Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. Because of the title, I had always assumed this book was mostly about Obama's father, whom he met only once in his life. I think this put me, as the white mother who did most of the raising of biracial sons, off. However, I was wrong. I'm not sure how the pages parse out, but one-third of the book deals with his early life in Hawaii and Indonesia, one-third with his community organizing work in Chicago, and one-third with a trip to Kenya to meet his African family. Each part of the book is interesting in a different way. For me as a mother, the first part was the most compelling, dealing as it does with how a biracial person--one who is deeply reflective--develops a sense of identity within a white family and within multiracial cultures that do not reflect his own background. You begin to see how he became the thoughtful man he is as he grapples with who he is and who he wants to be. The second part of the book illustrates what it actually means to be a community organizer--holy mackerel, that work had to be incredibly frustrating, as the pace of change is glacially slow. Yet Obama focuses most on what he learned from the community people he worked with, an act of great generosity. The final part of the book, on Obama's trip to Africa, presented a complex, conflicted, and loving family from which he could build some understanding of his father, a gifted yet flawed person. The book is beautifully written and reflects the deep thought I wish every memoir was based on. Highly recommended. 

YA

From the Desk of Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks. Marks has created a wonderful protagonist, Zoe, who wants to be a pastry chef and to free her biological father from prison for a crime she believes he did not commit. Marks crams a lot into the novel--maybe a bit too much; there are subplots involving conflict with a friend, the disconnect between work that needs to be done at the pastry shop where she is interning and what she thinks she should be doing, efforts to invent a prize-winning cupcake recipe, family issues, and the effort to find a mystery witness in her father's case. Some aspects of the main plot seem a bit far-fetched: Would Zoe's grandmother really facilitate contact with her convict father in defiance of her daughter's (Zoe's mother) wishes? Could Zoe really find the witness no one else located? I was also overly annoyed by the fact that the "new" cupcake recipe Zoe invented was actually created by Christina Tosi in 2012 or thereabouts. Come on--be more original!  I'd read another book featuring Zoe, with hope that Marks might be more focused.

Also Read

• Don't Ever Forget, by Matthew Farrell. An Amazon Prime free ebook (I don't think I've ever read one of these and thought it was actually good)
• The Roxy Letters, by Mary Pauline Lowry. Supposed to be funny a la Bridget Jones's Diary but mostly just dumb
• The Perfect Alibi, by Phillip Margolin. Meh.
• Criminal, by Karen Slaughter. I keep reading Slaughter but I don't know exactly why.
• Death of a New American, by Mariah Fredericks. Forgettable, in fact, forgotten.
• To Tell You the Truth, by Gilly Macmillan. Macmillan has written some really good mysteries/thrillers. This one just didn't grab me, although it did provide a pretty good depiction of gaslighting. 

Favorite Passages

What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power—and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.

What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom. How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?  . . . as long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail.

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

Why Am I the Last Person to Read This? The Library Book

 Often, when everyone I know has read and loved a book, I don't care for it all that much when I finally get around to reading it (it's hard to live up to high expectations). Such was not the case with The Library Book by Susan Orleans, which I thoroughly enjoyed. (I am currently reading and loving another book everyone else read years ago--but that's for next month.)  The rest of my August reading was mostly uninspiring.

Fiction

A Beginning at the End, by Mike Chen. This timely book deals with the aftermath of a deadly flu pandemic. Society is trying to relaunch, but the post-pandemic challenges and restrictions make life difficult for people. The book's main characters include Rob, a father who has not told her that her mother died during the pandemic (she thinks her mother remains in treatment); when the daughter acts out in school, social service agencies get involved in Rob's life. Moira is a young woman who was a pop sensation controlled by her father before the pandemic but used the pandemonium when the pandemic started to escape; now, her father is trying to find her (to use her for his own purposes). Moira is planning to get married, but knows things aren't right with her relationship; meanwhile wedding/event planner Krista tries to talk her into getting married, because Krista needs the money. The book is definitely more about relationships and honesty than a post-apocalyptic story--one reviewer criticized it for not being Station Eleven. It's definitely not Station Eleven -- Station Eleven is a marvel -- but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

The Last Cruise, by Kate Christensen. A motley crew of folks head out on the final cruise of a vintage ocean liner. The story focuses on three characters--a former journalist who is now a somewhat unhappy farmer in Maine, a sous-chef, and the only female member of an Israeli string quartet (which also includes her ex-husband and a man she has secretly longed for for many years). I, being a wanna-be foodie, enjoyed the parts about cooking on the ship--especially after things started to go wrong, and they went wrong in pretty much every way you can imagine. If you like to cruise, you might not want to read this book because it could possibly change your vacation plans forever. But I found it entertaining. 

Mysteries

The Janes, by Louisa Luna. This was my second Luna mystery featuring bounty hunter Alice Vega and her sidekick Max Caplan. It deals with a current hot topic--sex trafficking of young women--but involves so many double crosses and red herrings that I became somewhat annoyed. I'm debating whether to give up on Luna. If you don't think I should, I'd be interested in your arguments!

Nonfiction

The Library Book, by Susan Orlean. If you are one of the few people who hasn't read this book, it's ostensibly the story of the devastating fire at the central Los Angeles Library in 1986. And it's that--exploring the dynamics of the fire, its aftermath (including the technology by which books were revitalized), and the investigation into who set the fire. But it's so much more--it's a history of libraries and their role in the community; a love song to books, libraries, and librarians; and a memoir of the author's relationship to libraries at various phases of her life (and I love a good personal library story). It's a truly wonderful book! 

Whose Story Is It? by Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is widely admired as a feminist essayist. I agree with her wholeheartedly on almost all of her points--in this book she focuses on whose story/voice is privileged and whose is not--and yet I just don't find myself terribly engaged by her work. In fact, I fell asleep twice while listening to the audio version of Whose Story Is It?  Yet I resonated to some of her ideas (see Favorite Passages below). Maybe I am too old and tired to concentrate long on deep thinking--so I'll  recommend the book for those with greater focus! 

I Need to Rant

So Elin Hildebrand is a popular "beach read" author. I had seen a recommendation for her book 28 Summers somewhere and decided I should read it instead of diverting myself with another bad mystery. First of all, the book is excessively derivative of the old movie Same Time Next Year, to the point that between chapters on each year there's a pastiche of "what we were talking about in 199_," similar to the visual montages in the movie (to be fair, she acknowledges the debt to the movie). What's so infuriating though is there was no actual reason for the couple in the book not to be together. The first year they were together, they weren't married to anyone else and, though the dude had an off-and-on girlfriend, he knew she was wrong for him. Yet he marries her, despite of being in love with someone else. The female character never marries and then dies relatively young. I mean, how retrograde (if not misogynistic) is that! Plus the ending is corny. Ugh, ugh, ugh. 

Also Read 

The Last Trial, by Scott Turow. (Sorry--I liked Turow's earlier work, but a case about insider trading and regulations governing drug testing just wasn't very interesting to me.)

Girls Like Us, by Cristina Alger

Trust Me, by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Fallen and The Kept Woman, by Karin Slaughter

The Herd and The Lost Night, by Andrea Bartz (I fear this author doesn't really like women very much)

Something She's Not Telling Us, by Darcey Bell 

The Last Book Party, by Karen Dukess

Favorite Passages

The unexamined life is not worth living, as the aphorism goes, but perhaps an honorable and informed life requires examining others' lives, not just one's own. Perhaps we do not know ourselves unless we know others. And if we do, we know that nobody is nobody.

Comfort is often a code word for the right to be unaware.

Rebecca Solnit, Whose Story Is This?

In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn't understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.

Susan Orlean, The Library Book (and there are so many more I could list here)

Dog Days Start Early

It seems like the Dog Days of Summer have started early this year--perhaps because it's been hot or because the pandemic is resurging (if that's a word) or because I dog-sat an actual dog twice in a month (technically, one time was in June, but who's counting?). Or maybe it's because I read some dogs this month. But, as usual, there were some good ones too. 

Fiction

Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli. None of the four major characters in this novel have names--they are a married couple referred to as Mama and Papa, his son (The Boy), and her daughter (The Girl). After meeting and falling in love while working on a project to archive the sounds of New York City, the parents are both contemplating new projects and decide to take a family trip to the Southwest to explore the possibilities. Papa is obsessed with the Apache, while Mama is researching lost child refugees. As they travel cross-country, tensions between the parents increase, and The Boy, at least, is aware of the possible break-up of their family and looking for a solution.The book is much more complex than I am depicting it--it's complicated and sad and well worth reading.

Anatomy of a Miracle, by Jonathan Miles. This is a very unusual book, written to resemble a nonfiction book about a paraplegic veteran who suddenly stands up and walks (the resemblance to a nonfiction treatment seems to fade as the book progresses). The mysterious miracle has a ripple effect, influencing the vet's sister, his doctor, his pastor, the couple that runs the convenience store where the miracle happened, a reality show producer who wants to make a show about the vet. It's weird, and the romantic ending comes out of nowhere, but the book is nonetheless entertaining. 

Recipe for a Perfect Wife, by Karma Brown. I had read some glowing reviews of this book, which depicts the lives of two women who lived in the same house, 70 years apart. While Nellie Murdoch appears to be a perfect 1950s housewife, her husband is abusive, and she is determined not to have his child. The current occupant of the house, Alice Hale, has been pressured by her husband to move to the suburbs after losing her job. He sees it as the ideal opportunity for her to write her novel while they work on getting pregnant.  She finds Nellie's cookbook and a neighbor gives her some letters written by Nellie, and she begins to feel comfortable wearing retro housedresses and cooking such 50s gems as tuna casserole with potato chip. Yet she resists getting pregnant by secretly getting an IUD and doesn't tell her husband that she hasn't written a word of the novel. While the format of the book and the cover suggest a lightness, both stories are on the dark side.  Not really up to the glowing views, but still fairly entertaining.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. I've had this book for years and resisted reading it, at least in part because I have trouble dealing with books or movies about Vietnam. It's been described as "an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later"-- and that description is better than anything I could come up with.  There is circling back to tell stories in different ways, some brutal descriptions, and also lyrical language. There are "meta" aspects to the book, with O'Brien talking about stories told that didn't happen but were true. A masterpiece but not always easy to read. 

Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong. Ruth decides to leave her job in the Bay Area for a year to return to her parents' home and help her mother with her father, who has dementia and has been involuntarily retired from his job as a professor. Ruth, her father's teaching assistant, and a group of his students decide to cheer him by telling him the department has decided to let him teach one seminar. The seminar is fake, but it has the desired effect until he discovers their deception. The book is sweet and funny while giving some insight into the progress of dementia. I loved it! 

Meg and Jo, by Virginia Kantra. Meg and Jo is a somewhat silly retelling of Little Women set in modern-day North Carolina (and New York), with Mr. March cast as a self-satisfied jerk (I might have to reread Little Women just to see how Alcott treated him--or maybe Geraldine Brooks' March).  Yet I enjoyed it and fully expect to read Beth and Amy when it inevitably comes out. 

Mysteries

Two Girls Down, by Louisa Luna. Single mother Jamie leaves her 8- and 10-year-old daughters in the car when she runs into K-Mart for 5 minutes. When she returns, they are gone. With the police seemingly overburdened with the meth and opioid crisis, the family hires bounty hunter Alice Vega, who has a reputation for finding lost children. She's from out-of-town, so hires on local ex-cop Max Caplan to help her try to find the girls. Not a standout, but good enough that I'm currently about to start another book by Luna. 

Nonfiction

First: Sandra Day O'Connor, by Evan Thomas. This biography of Sandra Day O'Connor made me appreciate the tremendous pressure that Sandra Day O'Connor was under as the first female Supreme Court Justice, especially one who was not as well-prepared as many other justices. I also found myself somewhat annoyed by the very social (and, one might say, political) life that she led in Washington, DC, at least in part to make her beloved and very social husband John happy. (Her efforts to keep John at home and maintain her job when he was slipping rapidly into dementia are heartbreaking.) Her clear partisanship make her vote in Bush v. Gore easier to understand, but no less infuriating.  Still, even after reading the book, I found I did not understand her as a person very well at all--she remained an enigma. One irritating thing about the book: The author often wrote about her as thought she were dead--which she still is not. But that doesn't stop me from recommending the book.  

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Although published in 2017, this collection is tragically just as timely (and sadly shows very little has changed since Baldwin's work was published in the 1960s). As with most collections of essays by various authors, some entries resonated more with me than others. Some of my favorites: Wendy Walters' "Lonely in America" describing her attempts to uncover the truth about the discovery of long-buried African Americans in Portsmouth, NH;  Garnette Cadogan's "Black and Blue" about walking in Kingston, Jamaica, New Orleans, and New York; Claudia Rankine's "The Condition of Black Life Is one of Mourning," which connects Mamie Till's decision to allow her son's body to be photographed with the Black Lives Movement. You would likely find others most interesting/challenging/stimulating--definitely worth exploring the collection to find your favorites. 

The Dogs (Oh, look, they're all mysteries!)

A Reasonable Doubt, by Phillip Margolin

I Know Who You Are, by Alice Feeney

The Escape Artist, by Brad Meltzer

Dark Corners of the Night, by Meg Gardiner

The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A Double Life, by Flynn Berry

Someone We Know, by Shari LaPena

The Suspect, by Fiona Barton

These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (despite very positive reviews suggesting this book was a significant commentary on class, I thought it was completely unbelievable)

Favorite Passages:

The way home became home.

Garnette Cadogan in The Fire This Time

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person, what we felt about that person.

Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

Reading and Reopening

Our library started curbside pickup in June, which was great (it also had delivery to seniors but I figured though I am pretty darn old, I am also able to get around and shouldn't use that service). The library is reopening July 1, with restrictions and safety precautions. Book stores have also reopened, although I have not ventured into one as yet. I did get two book store gift cards for my birthday and have to report that the online mail ordering process at Denver's renowned Tattered Cover was much less user-friendly than that at the much smaller Book Bar, which has done a great job throughout the pandemic. They definitely have a new fan in me.

Anyway, as an older person, I have mostly been remaining home in June and have gotten a lot of reading done, some of it good.

Fiction

Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore is an older collection of Moore's short stories (I think it was her first book). I was surprised--but perhaps shouldn't have been given the collection's title--that a majority of the stories are written in the second person, parodying the self-help form. Stories purport to give advice about how to be the other woman, get through your parents' divorce, leave a man who's dying, talk to your mother, or become a writer. The last story in the collection, not in the second-person format, details the mental collapse of a middle-aged woman whose marriage is loveless and whose mother has dementia. As is typical for Moore, the stories can be both grim and funny. Remembering how my first book group responded to another Moore collection 30 years ago, I can imagine that some readers would not find the humor in the stories--but I enjoyed her work.

My Dark Vanessa, by Kate Elizabeth Russell, is one of the disturbing books I have read in some time. As a 15-year-old, the titular character was abused by her 45-year-old English teacher. Yet, as an adult, she struggles to see their "relationship" as abusive, despite the evidence that the teacher repeated the same behavior with multiple other students--indeed, she refuses to believe the story of another woman who comes forward. Russell does an especially good job of depicting the manipulation that the teacher subjected Vanessa to and the long-term effects of being the victim of such manipulations. I questioned whether we needed the rather detailed description of sexual encounters between Vanessa and the teacher. The author has talked about this in multiple interviews, saying "Those scenes are so important and so formative, because even though those are scenes of abuse, that's also her introduction to sex, and you can't untangle the two . . .  it is coercive and even violent, but it's also just sex." To my mind, no, not really. There's also been controversy around the book, with Latina author Wendy Ortiz alleging that the story was plagiarized from her memoir, which she had difficulty getting published. In a preface to the book, Russell had emphasized that this was not her story, that it was fiction. Since the plagiarism accusations came out, Russell has gone public with the fact that she was abused by older men as a teenager. Still sorting out my thoughts on this book so not sure I can say I recommend it. I can say that the audiobook was very skillfully narrated by Mamie Gummer.

Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha, is extremely timely, as it is a fictionalized account of the long-range impacts of the killing of African American teenager LaTasha Harlins by Korean American shopkeeper Soon Ja Du on the two families involved. Two characters center the novel. Shawn is the cousin of the murdered girl; has spent some time in prison but has been out and working hard to build a life and support his extended family. His cousin's death has scarred him, but he is still shocked when the killer, who escaped jail time, is shot--and the evidence suggests it was someone in his family when shot her. The second key character is Grace, the daughter of the shopkeeper-killer, who knew nothing of her family's history until her mother is shot. The two individuals' struggles to do the right thing, the dynamics in both families, the cultural context--all are presented thoughtfully and yet the book also is a "good read." Highly recommended.

Fools, by Joan Silber, is a collection of six interconnected short stories. The title (and first) story is about a group of young radicals in New York in the 1920s. While ideology shapes them, they are still subject to the vicissitudes of everyday life and one of them "folds";  Betsy leaves her husband Norman to run off with the owner of the local speakeasy to run a hotel in Florida. But Vera and Joe remain together and committed to their beliefs. The second and third stories focus on the next generation--Betsy's son, who runs away from the prospect of marriage (and of being caught stealing from his parents' business) to a challenging life in Paris, and Vera and Joe's daughter, who struggles with her parents' beliefs while trying to maintain a more mainstream public face during World War II and ends up in a marriage in which she and her husband live thousands of miles apart but do not divorce.  The protagonists of the final three stories have less tight connections to the original group-- the son of one of Betsy's employees, who learns after a long separation from his Muslim wife that she needs his permission to go on the hadj; a gay man going through a breakup finds solace in a memoir of Greenwich Village written by Norman; and a woman who stole from Betsy's son in Paris becomes the target of New York fundraisers. I found some stories more meaningful than others, but enjoyed the connections, the reflections on belief and life choices, and Silber's writing.

The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich, was inspired by Erdrich's own grandfather, a night watchman who sent numerous letters to officials in Washington about the future of his tribe. The title character of the novel is Thomas Wazhashk is also a night watchman, at a factory that employs many Turtle Mountain clan women doing exacting work for the Defense Department. Thomas is organizing to save the tribe from termination by the federal government. Meanwhile, his niece Patrice, who works at the factory, is trying to find her sister, who went to the Twin Cities and disappeared, while protecting her family and trying to figure out how she can go to college and find more rewarding work. Add to these two plots Erdrich's usual tribal lore and mysticism and you get a thoroughly rewarding read. Not Erdrich's very best, but darn good.

I found The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani, both creepy and dull. You know from the prologue that the perfect nanny kills the two children she has been hired to care for. The rest of the book narrates how she devolved from "perfection" to murder, while the children's parents gradually become so reliant on her they virtually disappear. The book has gotten a lot of kudos, but I simultaneously hated the characters while also not caring what happened to them.


Mysteries

Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and Dead Soon Enough, by Steph Cha. After reading Your House Will Pay, I decided to read Steph Cha's series of mysteries featuring Korean American sleuth Juniper Song. Although they're not perfect, I liked them well enough to read all three--and really enjoyed the way LA is a essentially a character in the books.

Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim. A mystery that deals with serious issues, from the immigrant experience to what it is like to be the mother of a child on the autism spectrum. Every character revealed themselves to be deeply flawed (if not hateful) and yet I still liked the book.

Yesterday, by Felicia Yap, is an imaginative and twisty mystery set in a time/place where people have only one or two days of memory, and the "Duos" regard themselves as superior to the "Monos." The discrimination is so bad that the police detective tasked with solving the murder of a beautiful woman has hidden the fact that he is a Mono throughout his career--and the murdered woman's unusual memory is key to her history and fate. Definitely enjoyed this one.

The Break Down, by B.A. Paris. Most predictable "mystery" ever.

The Child, by Fiona Barton. So-so mystery with a twist at the end based on such a huge coincidence that it seems completely unbelievable (and yet predictable--I had figured it out quite a few pages before it was revealed, and I'm not even that good at  figuring out whodunit).

I'm not sure The Need, by Helen Phillips, is a mystery, but the main character, Molly, and readers are trying to figure out who the intruder who looks just like Molly and wants to care for her children really is. The author does a great job depicting the difficulty of caring for children and working (Molly's husband is out of the country for work). But I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention (that does happen sometimes when I'm listening to a book) because the ending made no sense to me.

A Measure of Darkness, by Jonathan and Jessie Kellerman, was the first of the father-son duo's books that I have read. Okay.

Non-Fiction

How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, is an interesting combination of scholarly analysis, exhortation to us all to be better, and memoir. Kendi defines an antiracism someone who supports ideas and policies affirming that "the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences--that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group." Some of his ideas may be controversial. He asserts, unlike many, that black people can be racists. He also says that self-interest, not hatred, is the root of racism. Agree with all of his ideas or not, Kendi sparks thought.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, is an extremely well-documented analysis of how drug laws, unequal enforcement, and mandatory sentencing laws constitute a new Jim Crow system that has produced loss of freedom for African American men through, not slavery, but mass incarceration. I think it's a little longer than it needs to be, especially when Alexander strayed away from her primary point to frown upon civil rights lawyers and critique affirmative action. Still it's a book anyone who questions whether systemic racism exists should read.

Inheritance, by memoirist Dani Shapiro, is the story of what happened when Shapiro learned that the father who had raised her was not her biological father. Rather, she had been the result of artificial insemination with donor sperm. Since both of her parents were dead by the time she made this discovery, she began researching every aspect of it herself; surprisingly, she found the donor relatively easily and was able to start a relationship with him and his family. Other questions were less easily answered. I found the book interesting, while thinking that Shapiro completely overreacted to the news (as, in my anti-memoir frame of mind, seems like something a memoirist would do). Of course, you don't know how you would react to something so unusual when you haven't experienced it. In addition, the author was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and biological inheritance seems to be very important in Judaism. 

Stories I Only Tell Myself, by Rob Lowe, is the somewhat interesting story of the actor's life. Lowe comes across as a nice guy who is a little paranoid about having been mistreated in the industry.

Favorite Passages

You never forget certain years of being young.

--Joan Silber, Fools

Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.

Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.

--Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

Sabrina and Corina Save Social Distancing Month 3

I made a little progress this month in regaining my ability take in text with my eyes while anxious. I finished a couple of hard copy books, as well as a couple of ebooks, so it was less about audiobooks this month, though they were still the majority of what I read this month. On another of my weird "projects," designed to find some quality mysteries, I started reading some Edgar and Agatha winners--not sure that was really a success. But the month did include some good books, particularly Sabrina and Corina, a collection of short stories by Denver author Kali Fajardo-Anstine. More about that coming up.

Fiction

Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. I don't usually care for short stories, but this collection is excellent. The stories feature young Latina women, mostly living in the Denver area, and dealing with illness, isolation, injustice, violence, and loss of loved ones. Yes, the stories are dark, but they are beautifully written and force the reader to face the realities of these young women's lives. When, in the title story, Corina has to make-up her murdered cousin Sabrina, the scene is one you will not forget. Highly recommended.

Where Reasons End, by Yi-Yun Li. The author imagines a conversation between her mother and her dead teenage son, who died recently by suicide. The book is made doubly poignant by the knowledge that the author wrote the book in the months following her own son's suicide. The book is full of pain and beauty and is definitely worth reading.

Apierogon, by Colum McCann. I admire McCann's work, but Apierogon (a shape with a countably infinite number of sides) is challenging. It is the story of two fathers--one Palestinian, one Israeli--who have lost daughters to the conflict. They become friends and peace activists. Sounds like a simple and inspiring story but McCann puts it together from so many pieces (there are 1001 chapters, echoing the Arabian Nights), juggles time, and includes what seem to be odd tangents about birds (lots about birds), math, Philippe Petit, Francois Mitterand's last meal (bird-related), and other topics that appear to be unrelated but are, I'm sure, metaphoric in ways I don't grasp. I loved the parts of the book that were directly about the two fathers, their families, and their work--a section in the heart of the book actually uses the men's own words to describe their experience--but the rest left me scratching my head.

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. I am probably the only literate person who had never read the book nor seen the movie, but I surprised myself by appreciating the book, especially Burgess's creation of the nadsat argot that the young punks in the book spoke. I was also interested to learn that the American publish omitted the last chapter of the book because he didn't think American readers would appreciate an ending in which Alex leaves the gang behind. If you are now truly the last person on earth to read the book, I'd say go for it.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, by Frerik Backman. Backman's thing seems to be creating quirky characters, in this case seven-year-old Elsa, whose equally quirky grandmother has died and left her to deliver letters to the other oddballs in their building. This narrative is interwoven with fairy tales the grandmother told Elsa. In my estimation, Elsa is not a believable character and the fairy tales add nothing to the book. I have friends who loved this book, but I loathed it. 

The Winter of Our Discontent, by John Steinbeck.  Ethan Allan Hawley's family was once among their town's wealthiest, but his father lost the family fortune and Ethan is now a grocery store clerk. He operates under an ethical code and is faithful to his wife. But when he realizes that these qualities are not appreciated by others or by his wife and children, he hatches a plan to once again become rich. Steinbeck's story is cynical and depressing and beautifully written. My only objection to the book is the portrayal of women. Still, I recommend the book.

All Adults Here, by Emma Straub.  All Adults Here is the story of Astrid Strick, a 68-year-old widow in a relationship with her female hairdresser, along with her three adult children (all with quirks and issues of their own), her wonderful teenage granddaughter, and the granddaughter's trans friend. The book deals with relationships of all kinds--family, friend, licit, illicit--and a variety of contemporary issues, from bullying to infidelity, community development, and how we damage our children. As I was listening I thought to myself, "this is like Anne Tyler without Baltimore." But it's definitely more entertaining than Tyler's recent work, such as her new short novel, Red Head by the Side of the Road, which has Baltimore and still is not very interesting. All Adults Here is recommended; Red Head is not.

Red Lotus, by Chris Bohjalian. Bohjalian's recent books have turned to mystery, and Red Lotus follows that trend. Alexis and Austin are in Vietnam on a bike tour when Austin disappears, and Alexis must face that her boyfriend was not who he seemed. The fact that the book is about a deadly plague is unsettling during the current environment; if you think China created the novel coronavirus, this book will feed your paranoia. If you hate rats, well, let's just say there's a lot about rats in this book. Still, it's an entertaining read.

Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano. Twelve-year-old Edward is the only survivor of a plane crash that killed his parents and brother. The book chronicles his efforts to figure out a way forward interspersed with chapters that give a countdown of some of what was going on on the plane prior to the crash. It's an insightful look at how trauma affects people in ways most of us would not expect. The chapters about the plane sometimes felt unnecessary, but they did provide a change of tone that kept Edward's pain from overwhelming the reader. Recommended.

Whisper Network, by Chandler Baker. This book was a Reese Witherspoon book club choice, and it almost seemed like it was written so Reese could have a #MeToo book in her collection. Okay.

Mysteries

The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths (2020 Edgar Winner). Murder in a high school English faculty, complete with Gothic twists, a complete story within a story, and lots of literary references. Okay.

Down the River Unto the Sea, by Walter Mosley (2019 Edgar Winner). Former cop Joe King Oliver, damaged physically and spiritually from his imprisonment on Riker's Island on a trumped-up rape charge, decides to take his own case when the woman who accused him admits she lied. Okay.

Mardi Gras Murders, by Ellen Byron (2018 Agatha Winner). Southern setting, Southern history, Southern murders . .. not for me.

Long upon the Land, by Margaret Maron (2015 Agatha Winner). The fifth of the Judge Deborah Knott mysteries that have won the Agatha, this title fills in the back story of Deborah's parents, as Deborah and Dwight try to figure out who killed a man whose body was found on Knott family land. Okay.

Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear (2004 Agatha Winner). In the second title in the Maisie Dobbs series, Maisie not only finds a missing heiress, she solves a series of murders, diagnoses her assistant's drug addiction, and gets him into a program. Pretty good.

Murphy's Law, by Rhys Bowen (2001 Agatha Winner). Molly Murphy immigrates to the United States under false pretenses, gets involved in a murder by a Tammany Hall insider, nearly gets killed herself, and meets a handsome Irish policeman. Dumb.

Masked Prey, by John Sandford. Lucas Davenport's latest case involves the children of politicians, the Internet, and right-wing groups. Sadly, Lucas seems to have devolved in a way that makes me not want to read any more of the Prey series.

Ambush, by Barbara Nickless. The third in the Sidney Parnell series set in Denver, Ambush picks up the story of Sidney's time in Iraq and the fate of the young Iraqi boy Malik. It's incredibly violent, includes a soap opera-worthy twist, and just isn't very rewarding.

Don't Make a Sound, by T.R. Ragan. Cub reporter Sawyer Brooks decides to investigate a series of unsolved materials in her small home town, while a group of five women vigilantes seek justice for their attackers. Not good.

When the Light Goes Out, by Mary Kubica. Truly awful.

Nonfiction

Once More We Saw Stars, by Jayson Greene. Greene's toddler daughter was killed by masonry that fell off the building where she and her grandmother were sitting on a bench outside. His book chronicles how he and his wife dealt with the pain of that loss. They definitely tried some unusual (read: woo-woo) methods of handling their grief, but whatever works. As a grandparent, my heart went out to the grandmother, who naturally felt responsible and, in their sorrow, the parents weren't able to help her as much as it seemed she needed. But the family did find a way forward, so overall the story ends on a hopeful note. 

Favorite Passages

He cares about other people. . . Most men don't know the pleasure.

I thought of all the women my family had lost, the horrible things they'd witnessed, the acts they simply endured. Sabrina had become another face in a line of tragedies that stretched back generations. And soon, when the mood hit my grandmother just right, she'd sit at her kitchen table, a Styrofoam cup of lemonade in her warped hand, and she'd tell the story of Sabrina Cordova--how men loved her too much, how little she loved herself, how in the end it killed her. The stories always ended the same, only different girls died, and I didn't want to hear them anymore.

Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo Anstine