Highlights of March and April: Bog Queen, Some Bright Nowhere, and Buckley

 A couple months ago, I decided I should start paying attention to Booktok/Bookstagram since content creators who are part of those "communities" are allegedly having a big influence on what people are reading. So, I did and, I'm sorry, but the content is generally substance-free. Even the comments from the dude who purports to have a PhD and have taught AP literature for 20 years are inane ("It didn't do it for me"); he's also fond of stereotyping people who like particular books (if you like To Kill a Mockingbird, you're an overachieving eldest daughter). There are common tropes (maybe not the right word but the best I can think of) like "Yes/No/Maybe" or "Overhyped/Underhyped" or "Books that Changed My Brain" (all with virtually no useful explanation for why books are liked/not liked/brain-changing) and even standard ways in which the books are displayed visually. Books mentioned lean heavily toward fantasy and romance, although some posters deal with a broader selection of literature--but never in any real depth. So far, I am uninfluenced by any of the folks I've come across. If you like Booktok/Bookstagram, what am I missing? 

On to good books read in March and April (no mysteries!!).

Fiction

Most of Peter Heller's books are muscular tales about people (generally men) in peril. The Orchard is definitely not that; it is a gentle and sad story narrated by 30-ish professor Frith, who in the early stages of pregnancy has retreated to the cabin in the Green Mountains where her mother Hayley raised Frith after her retreat from a beloved but drug-addicted husband and from academia. As Frith reads her mother's work--she was a respected translator of Chinese women poets--she reflects on her childhood. (The poems, which are lovely, were written by Heller, which somehow bothered me a bit.) Frith and Hayley lived on the edge economically, but they loved each other and their home--and they had friends, particularly Rosie, who brought color and adventure to their lives, and the biker Sci-Fi, who brought them food. As she reflects, Frith considers how and where she will raise her child; the father wants to be involved/in a relationship, but she's not sure that's what she wants. The book is about love--of family and friends, of nature/place, of language. It's beautifully written, but, despite things happening, it felt more like a series of moments in time than a novel with a plot. So overall, my response was mixed, but it sparked an interesting discussion about translation with my literary son, and I'm still thinking about it, so maybe that tells me something.

Another book about which I had mixed feelings was How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood, which was a selection of my online book group. The book features three main characters. Violet is a young woman recently released from prison, where she was serving a sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving incident. Her family has rejected her, and she feels alone and frightened. She then runs into Harriet at a bookstore; Harriet is a retired teacher who ran a book group at the prison. They forge a friendship that helps Violet a job at a lab researching parrots. At the bookstore, they run into Frank, the widower of the woman Violet killed. Despite a rocky start, the three become supportive friends. The book is about friendship, forgiveness, books, and defining what matters in your life. While reading the book, I kept thinking it was all a bit facile; when Violet gets involved in a relationship with her married boss, I felt it was an unnecessary plot development that wasn't handled well (and I didn't think Wood convincingly defended it in an author talk with book groups--she argued it was necessary as a way for Violet to recognize her beauty and power--what?). At the same time, I enjoyed the way Wood wove books and the function of story into the narrative. So qualified recommendation. 

Tracing the friendship of a group of women over the course of years is a common trope in fiction, sometimes done well, sometimes offering little to the reader. Happily, The Wilderness, by Angela Flournoy, is the former. The book tells the stories (not chronologically) of four African American women, from their 20s to their 40s. Desiree, doesn't seem to have a direction in life, although she has spent years taking care of her aging grandfather, who raised her and her sister Danielle after their father left and their mother died. In fact, when we meet Desiree, she is taking her grandfather to Europe so he can have a medically assisted suicide, a trip that contributes to estrangement between the sisters when Danielle finds out about it. Nakia is a lesbian, socially conscious chef who eventually becomes quite successful. January is a graphic designer who seems always in the process of leaving her boyfriend/husband while having two children. Monique is a former librarian whom we meet primarily through blog postings that are part of her effort to turn herself into an influencer; consequently, we don't really know her as well as the other women (guessing that is Flournoy's point). The women move back and forth between New York and Los Angeles as their relationships and careers evolve; in the process, they deal not only with the complexities of friendship, family, and romantic relationships but such contemporary issues/events as police brutality and climate change. I became a bit confused in the book's third section, which shifts from third person to first and is less direct about identifying which character is speaking--but the confusion seems appropriate to the events occurring late in the story (no spoilers)! Definitely worth reading.

Bog Queen, by Anna North, is like no other book I've ever read. First, moss is one of the narrators, beginning and ending the book, with a number of short sections interspersed throughout. Of course, North hastens to tell us at the beginning of each of these sections that a colony of moss does not speak or think like humans, but if it did, it would have some wise insights. Second, while the moss sections are narrated in first person plural, the modern human section of the book, which features a forensic anthropologist named Agnes who is trying to discover the cause of death of a 2000-year-old corpse found in the peat bog, is in third person. But wait, there's another point of view, told in first person singular--that person is a young druid, a 15-year-old woman who is trying to bring her small community forward by aligning with the Romans. Somehow, North manages to make these sections sound almost like a fable, though we suspect early on that they are connected to the modern-day mystery in the bog. To further complicate matters, the bog where the body was found is the subject of controversy--environmentalists want to save it, developers want to pave over it, and a woman whose aunt disappeared 50 years ago wants it excavated in hopes of finding her aunt's body. Plus Agnes is dealing with her own insecurities, an overprotective father begging her to return to the United States, and the teenage daughter of one of her colleagues who struggles with insecurity and seems to relate well to Agnes. There's a lot going on--perhaps a bit too much--but I really enjoyed the book for its interesting content and lovely writing. 

Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer is full of pain but also love. The book opens at Claire's last appointment with her oncologist--treatment has failed and she is entering hospice care. Her husband Eliot, from whose perspective the story is told, is shocked when, shortly thereafter, Claire asks him to move out so she can be cared for by two of her friends. He complies, but the decision causes him to question the foundations of their marriage and his subsequent loneliness--he's not even sure how often he's welcome to visit--and hurt feelings cause him to make some decisions he later regrets (eavesdropping on Claire and her friends from the garage of their home) and eventually to rebel. While you may question the actions of the characters, Packer presents the situation with such insight, you empathize with what they are going through. 

Nonfiction

As a young adult, I occasionally watched Firing Line featuring William F. Buckley. While his conservative views did not appeal to me, his urbane surface presentation and prodigious vocabulary combined with his bitchy wit were entertaining. When my dad died in 1975, I took some of his books--including several by Buckley--home with me and did try reading one of Buckley's, but didn't find it either convincing or interesting. Still, I thought of him as a rich but harmless East Coast conservative intellectual. Now, thanks to Sam Tanenhaus's Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America, I realize how wrong I was. He wasn't rich--for most of his life he lived largely off family money, his and his wife's. He wasn't truly Eastern--he had deep Southern roots and a Southern attitude toward race. He wasn't an intellectual--he was intellectually lazy, rarely doing the reading and thinking that would back up his thinking and, indeed, had few original ideas. He had no journalistic ethics--he once drew heavily on a piece by Garry Wills before that piece was published, making it look like Wills had pulled from his work; he accepted a position in the Nixon administration that was a clear conflict of interest; he masterminded a "prank" that involved publishing fake documents in the National Review, claiming they had been omitted from the Pentagon Papers. In point of fact, he was an advocate posing as a journalist. While known as a skilled debater who was friendly to his adversaries on Firing Line, his debating often relied on ad hominem attacks and he was astonished if bested by an opponent's superior reasoning and oratory. He was  racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. The author suggests he mellowed somewhat with age, but even in his advancing years, he refused to hire a Jewish journalist (David Brooks) to edit NR. I could go on, but I will stop now, concluding by saying the book opened my eyes and reminded me that I was fairly gullible when young (hope I'm less so now).

Historian Jill LePore spent several years directing a project to create as complete a data base as possible of all the constitutional amendments ratified, proposed, included in party platforms, and advocated for in other ways (https://amendmentsproject.org/). She drew on this work, in addition to other historical scholarship, to write We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. Looking at amendments--successful and unsuccessful--and the people who supported and opposed them is an interesting take on the history of a document intended to be amended (see Article 5). I was particularly taken by learning of the role Birch Bayh played in achieving some critical amendments. Alarmingly, LePore thinks polarization has made the Constitution virtually unamendable since the 1970s. This has, undoubtedly unintentionally, given the Courts more power in "changing" the meaning of the Constitution. She picks apart the originalists' approach, noting that the justices might do well to pay more attention to the work of historians, who, for example, know that Madison's notes are not the be-all they were once believed to be because he tailored them to support his own views. Are we now hamstrung by an unamendable document written more than 200 years ago when much about today's world could not be imagined? That is a question worth reflecting on.

I think any divorced person (probably some married ones as well) reading Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage would reflect on their own marriage as they read Belle Burden's memoir. I certainly understand how falling in love blinds you to the red flags your prospective husband is waving madly at you. But it is harder for me to understand being so besotted you think your marriage is happy until you learn your husband is having an affair and is leaving you. As Burden relates the story of her marriage, it is clear her husband was not fully engaged (while still being controlling) and was taking advantage of her financially, despite the fact that he was earning a huge salary; I guess it's a good reminder of how blind we can be. Not realizing there were problems made the separation even more painful for her than it might have been. Adding to her pain, her husband James showed little interest in their children following the separation (again, I can relate to this) and many of their friends and acquaintances seemed to blame her. And yet, she still feels a yearning for him when she sees him. It's a painful story, although Burden eventually reaches some level of stability if not actual happiness. For those who are happily married, perhaps the book will help build empathy (and hopefully not scare them) for people who are divorced but still need friends; for those unhappily married or divorced, it may prompt some useful reflection.

I didn't love Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, but it's so strange that I decided to include it. The author's main thesis is that the surge in serial killings in the 1970s and 1980s is linked to the killers' exposure to lead in childhood. She is particularly focused on the Pacific Northwest, but also includes other killers in areas where there is a high level of pollution with lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals, including sites in Kansas, Idaho, Texas, and British Columbia. She traces the childhoods of several serial killers, as well as detailing their crimes; most attention is devoted to Ted Bundy. There's certainly research showing adverse effects of heavy metal exposure but whether this can be causally linked to becoming a serial killer, I'm unsure. Nonetheless, with the rollback of environmental regulations by the Trump Administration, any possible negative effects are concerning. But back to the book--Fraser also includes a running narrative about the many disastrous bridge projects involving Mercer Island, as well as memoir-style writing about her own rather strange childhood (as an eight-year-old, she plotted--in some detail--how she could kill her father, a cruel and controlling Christian Scientist). I found it difficult to put all these pieces together, especially since there some considerable jumping around from killer to killer, location to location. But Murderland is not like any other book I've read lately so it seemed worth including.

Favorite Passages

Safe. To be held. To be protected. To feel Hayley's chin on the top of my head, rubbing as she read the book. To feel her strong arms encircling. To feel the breath in her chest pressing my thin back. I would listen, feel, and try to keep my inhales steady and anticipate the moment our breaths would coincide. A quiet joy in all of it. 

     --Peter Heller, The Orchard

A breeze in the trees; a far-off argument of thrushes. She never would have guessed, before she left her home, how strange and huge the world is, what surprises it contains. 

What is the body like? She is like an armload of driftwood, Agnes could say, rubbed clean and silvery by the sea and sand. She is like a dried flower. she is like a pearl. She is someone at rest in a final state, as final as is possible on this turning Earth, whose cycles are ushering us ever into wondrous new forms. 

     --Anna North, Bog Queen

What was caretaking, anyway? Could you separate caretaking as a whole from the sum of its parts? Helping, soothing, driving, phoning, cooking, listening, tending, waiting, learning, remembering, deciding, forgoing. A lot of forgoing.

     --Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere

Run for the Hills and Joyride Top Early 2026

I started the year with some good nonfiction (see previous post), but it's been mostly downhill since. Indicative of that, some complaints before we get to what I have liked lately: 

Although I did include negative reviews when I started this blog, nowadays I don't usually attack the books I don't like. But I'm making an exception for A Better Life, by Lionel Shriver. Many novels tell immigration stories, but I've never before read a blatantly anti-immigration novel, which is what this one is. Yes, she's making fun of the liberal middle-aged woman who is afraid of cheese (symbolic of her wokeness), has a college graduate son who doesn't work and lives in the basement, and decides to take in an immigrant woman. I can see the humor (even though Shriver would probably make fun of me too), but then hosting the immigrant woman turns into a nightmare of epic proportions--and, in the process, we get to read a lot of diatribes about how immigration is ruining New York. Shriver's a good writer so she does build the suspense effectively--but that can't cover the mean-spirited ugliness. NOT RECOMMENDED.

Another irritation--when a writer firmly based in LA (Michael Connelly) writes a book (The Poet) about a character who lives in Colorado and refers to I-70 as "the 70"--no, no, a thousand times no. Calling highways "the 10" or "the 5" is a Southern California thing. Here it's I-70 or just 70--no Coloradan would say "the 70." Yes, I'm blowing this out of proportion, but come on--didn't he have an editor? And speaking of editors, The Poet is a decent mystery, but it definitely exceeds my idea of how long a mystery should be--where was the editor to tell Connelly to tighten it up? Editors matter. (In case you're wondering, it's 598 pages--unless a mystery is incredibly complex and well-written, the low 300s is where I think it should top out.)

One of the plot points in The Poet is that the perpetrator forces police officers to write "suicide notes" that are quotes from Edgar Allan Poe's poems. Weirdly, while reading a print copy of The Poet, I was listening to Murder by the Book, by Amie Schaumberg, which also has a literary twist--the killer in this case poses the victims as characters in classic literary works. While I liked the literary element, neither book was fabulous overall.

Fiction

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson starts with Mad, a 30-something farmer, working their farm stand when a strange man pulls up in a PT Cruiser. Turns out the man, Rube, is her half brother, a mystery writer who was abandoned by their father years before that same father abandoned Mad and her mother. What's more, Rube has evidence that he has abandoned two subsequent families and is now living in California. He wants Mad to travel west with him to find their half sister and brother and then go on to seek out their dad in California. At first, Mad doesn't want to go, but her mother encourages her to join Rube--and she does. As they pick up basketball-playing sister Pep in Oklahoma and 11-year-old filmmaker Tom in Utah, they learn that with every new family, their dad assumed a new name (Charles, Chuck, Chip, Carl) and a new profession (mystery writer, farmer, basketball coach, filmmaker--yes, the children, despite being abandoned, have adopted their father's various passions). They have adventures or mishaps on their journey and achieve insights into how their own identities were shaped. They do eventually meet their father, who, unsurprisingly, can't really answer the questions they've carried with them since he abandoned them. I'm making this sound really serious--and the themes of abandonment, creating found families, and developing one's own identity are serious--but, like all of Wilson's work, Run for the Hills is quirky and funny too. 

Mysteries

Late in 2025, I realized it had been a while since I had read any Tami Hoag mysteries. So I Googled and found she had a lot of books I hadn't read. So I've been working my way through some of them since. She has several series, and in the past couple months I have read a couple titles in the Kovac/Liska series and a couple in the Broussard/Fourcade series. She relies on some familiar tropes--the rule-breaking cop and the conflict between the pressures of being a cop and one's family/personal life. Nothing earth-shattering, but reliably entertaining.

I didn't think the last couple of Richard Osman's series The Thursday Murder Club were very good, but I still read The Impossible Fortune and enjoyed it. There's a lot going on, and it all seems to start when the best man at Joyce's daughter's wedding finds a bomb under his car. Shortly thereafter, he disappears and his business partner dies in a bomb blast. Turns out they were sitting on crypto that is now worth over a quarter of a billion pounds--but it's in an underground "cold storage" space, and no one has the codes needed to access it. At the same time, Ron's daughter and grandson have fled from her abusive husband, who is planning to kill them. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is grieving her husband's death, Joyce is beginning to assert herself a bit more in the group (despite still being goofy), Ron is worried about his own health, and Ibrahim continues to counsel the criminal Connie. Somehow I thought it all worked. 

Nonfiction

Joyride by Susan Orlean is a memoir--she discusses her marriages, becoming a parent, having cancer, getting through the pandemic and the LA fires--but more importantly to me, it's a portrait of a writing life. The publishing environment has certainly changed radically since Orlean began her career decades ago, but her insights about writing are still on point. In fact, if I were teaching writing, I would use the book--or at least segments of it--as a text. She also includes a number of the pieces she has written in an appendix, which could be analyzed in light of what she says about writing. Highly recommended for people interested in writing.  

Favorite Passages

This wasn't supposed to be how a family worked. Family was just there when you appeared in the world, waiting for you. Each new addition after that, you had time to prepare, to make a place for them in your heart. The only danger was reduction, the numbers thinning out, people leaving. You weren't supposed to suddenly get a new family at eleven o'clock on a Saturday after you'd sold out of eggs. 

Mad figured that most therapy consisted of focusing on how your parents messed you up, and then finding ways to keep that pain contained within your own body so you didn't pass it on to anyone else or yell too much at the people responsible. 

For the first time in her memory, she thought about what it would be like to have a child, to have that child tell you that they wanted to play basketball, then having to attend years and years of games, each time hoping your child doesn't get hurt or ruin themselves. And maybe you felt that same tension just watching them go to school, to the arcade with friends, sitting in their room with their headphones on. Maybe every single moment of loving someone you helped make was connected to this low-level terror that hurt your heart. 

     --Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills

Contemporary teenagers. It's Lord of the Flies in designer labels.

     --Tami Hoag, The 9th Girl

Each of us contains an unimaginably rich world, a full universe of thoughts and knowledge and aspirations and reveries, of stories and memories and perceptions and emotions that the sum of each person is an entire galaxy, unique and whole. If I had to point to one principle that has guided me, inspired me, and taught me how to be in the world as a writer, this would be it.

     --Susan Orlean, Joyride

Bridging 2025-2026 with Nonfiction

 I've read a lot of nonfiction in December-January, way more than I would normally read in a two-month span--and some of it has been really informative or even enlightening. So here's a rundown--and apologies for how long it is (I previously mentioned the first two on FB so skip down if you've already seen my thoughts on those). 

Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland presents the story of the KKK's resurgence in the Midwest (particularly Indiana) during the 1920s. It's a frightening story, all the more so because the language and strategies used echo into 2025. The conviction of the Klan leader for a leader on a violent sexual attack that ended with the death of the woman also feels quite familiar. We can only hope the crimes documented in the Epstein Files will ultimately bring down the MAGA movement the way the death of Madge Oberholtzer brought down the Klan. 

Who Is Government? is much more positive, and I hope it will be widely read, particularly among those who view all civil servants as greedy and/or lazy people who live to make life difficult for Americans. The profiles in this book, written by Michael Lewis, Geraldine Brooks, Dave Eggers, W. Kamau Bell, and others, present detailed looks at the unknown work of dedicated public servants. My favorite is the profile of the manager of the National Cemetery Administration, who has created an incredibly efficient operation while providing deep consideration to the bereaved. Liking this book does not mean I believe there's no way to improve the agencies of the executive branch--of course, there are savings to be had and efficiencies to be developed. But letting people who know nothing of the true work of the agencies savage them was not the way to make reform--and I think it will be hard to believe it was if you learn more about the real work of the people involved. 

Life and Art: Essays, by Richard Russo, is organized into two parts--life and art. The essays in the life section are mostly focused on the impact on Russo's life of the different perspectives of his parents, the mental struggles of his mother and grandmother, and growing up in a struggling Rust Belt town. I felt that these essays got repetitive, although I did enjoy his take on dealing with fools! The essays in the art section were more varied. Three examples:  I admired Russo's nuanced take on cultural appropriation v. creative imagination. I also found his piece on writers' responses when their works get turned into films or television shows informative. as a Paul Newman devotee, I was moved by his sympathetic take on Newman's loneliness and view of himself as merely lucky. One stylistic thing that kind of annoyed me was his tendency to end every essay with a snappy one-liner, which felt like something I did back in the 60s/70s--but maybe that's still a thing. 

The People's Project: Poems, Essays, and Art for Looking Forward was curated by Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith in response to the 2024 election, Project 2025, and all they portended. Sales benefit the ACLU. The first few short pieces didn't move me, but they I got to "Raising the Resistance" by Aubrey Hirsch, a piece in the style of a graphic novel focused on raising good men as an act of resistance. Then Koritha Mitchell introduced the idea of "know-your-place aggression," which seems like a very useful concept. Essays by Kiese Laymon, Abi Maxwell, and Jason Bryan Silverstein gave me a lot to think about; all of these are represented in the Favorite Passages section (I went a little crazy with the quotes). 

I'm not sure why I had The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, by Edwidge Danticat, on my TBR. I think most of us are more interested in death as we age, but I certainly have no intent to write about it. Still, there it was at the library, and Danticat is a marvelous writer, so . . . While she makes some generic comments about writing, Danticat really provides no guidance on writing about death. What she does do is analyze how various notable authors have done so in various contexts--individual death, mass deaths in natural disasters, suicide, death by execution, and  close calls. She also writes extensively about the deaths of people close to her, particularly the death of her mother. I don't think I am taking away a lot of insights about death, but I may read death scenes in other books more carefully in future. 

Sadly, I wasn't too crazy about Burning Questions, a collection of Margaret Atwood's essays written between 2004 and 2021. I think I was mostly put off by the chronological arrangement which made it hard to discern themes--perhaps there weren't intended to be any but I would have appreciated it, even if the categories were as big as Richard Russo's life and art. The essays I enjoyed most were about literature and writing--see, there's a category. 

In Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef, Slutty Cheff focuses too much on the slutty piece of her pen name and not enough on the cheff part. I did enjoy the parts of the book about cooking, food, and the stress of restaurant work in the UK (much like the stress in the US), but the oversharing about her sex life and use of drugs (not as many drugs as in some chef memoirs) was too much for me. 

Favorite Passages

What good is it to be Ivy League educated if you end up Ted Cruz or Ron De Santis?

      --Richard Russo, Life and Art

Opening sentences yank us out of our lives and into other lives. They also carefully set the stage for what's to come. They are our first opportunity to meet a writer, or character, and decide whether or not we want to spend the next few hours or days with them. 

     --Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death

The following are all from The People's Project:

If they want to force us back into our kitchens, we will turn them into war rooms. If they shove us into corners, we will fight where we stand.

     --Aubrey Hirsch

Consider how different conversations would be if major outlets had rigorously examined white men's lack of interest in other people's life chances.

     --Koritha Mitchell

The road forward runs through the past. It must reach beyond the exam room into the economy, the environment, the housing courts and zoning boards, the school districts and labor laws, the city budgets and federal prisons. The cure must be as vast as the violence.

     --Jason Bryan Silverstein (from a piece on health care)

I remember that in Mississippi we know how to fight. We know how to lose. We know how to organize with broken hearts. We know how to win. We know how to breathe with collapsed lungs

     --Kiese Laymon

Sometimes, I walk through the apartment that I still have not learned to call my home and I look at all of Hope's photos, one after another after another. On the hardest days, I even run my hand right over their rough surface, just grasping for the roof I know they can give me--that we can manifest the light that is already there. 

    --Abi Maxwell

Starting the Year with Heart the Lover

 

Warning: This discussion contains spoilers.

I'm not planning to write about every book I read this year, but I was excited to start the year with Heart the Lover, by Lily King. I have read most of her books, and I think she is an amazing writer. Perhaps the best indicator of her skill in Heart the Lover is that the book is both a prequel and sequel to her earlier book Writers and Lovers and also works as a stand-alone. It was on many best of 2025 lists--and yet I did not love it. The structure is fine, the writing at the sentence and paragraph level is lovely (see favorite passages below), but some combination of the plot and characters created problems for me.

The plot: The story starts with a college love triangle (love triangles are definitely a thing with King) among three English majors--Casey (the protagonist from Writers and Lovers), ultra-religious Sam, and less stifled Yash. There is a lot of English major talk, which many reviewers loved but I found a bit much. Indeed, the boys give Casey the nickname Jordan after a character in The Great Gatsby and she is called that throughout their relationship (cute or vaguely icky?). Plus the character Sam is so problematic (although scenes with Sam and his family did provide some comic relief), it was obvious that Yash was really the guy for Casey. Soon enough, the story morphs into a love story between Yash and Casey. That affair ends badly, with Yash seeming to choose Sam over Casey and doing it in a particularly heartless way. All of this held my attention and brought up some memories of what it was like to fall in love in college, but it didn't enthrall me. 

From there, we jump ahead 20+ years. Casey is married to Silas (one of her lovers from the love triangle in the earlier book) and has two young children. Yash stops in for a visit, the first time they have seen each other in decades--and it's awkward. They talk, but very little is surfaced. Another short leap forward in time, and Casey's son Jack has brain tumors and is in such pain that his body seizes as a means of alleviating the pain. Sam contacts Casey to let her know Yash is dying and she leaves her son to go to Yash. As a plot point, this sets up scenes of secret-sharing, recrimination, and reconciliation--everything they didn't talk about in the earlier visit emerges under the pressure of impending death. All of this is surely essential to what King wants to say about love,  connection, and forgiveness. But I could not get past Casey, who up to that point is portrayed as a wonderful mother, leaving her son for any reason really, but particularly for a former lover. She says that Silas convinced her to go, and I can understand why he would want her to resolve some of her old feelings. But did he want her to repeatedly miss flights home? Did Jack want her to go? Oh hell no!! My reaction to Casey's decision rendered me unable to be moved by the closing chapters, which--based on Goodreads comments--left many readers sobbing.

I recognize that caring too much about my own feelings toward a character and being judge-y about bad decisions that serve the author's purposes are not hallmarks of sophisticated reading. Will I change? Maybe I'll try, but I lack full commitment to that goal.

Favorite Passages

He looks scared, like something out there is more menacing than the snow falling faintly, faintly falling on the living and the dead. 

I laugh. I'm incapable of understanding his dilemma. It feels completely made up to me. I've noticed that about people who had stable childhoods. They like to create their own problems. 

You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you're reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.

Year-end Notes on Reading and Blogging

 Who still blogs in the era of Substack? Yeah, that would be me. I started this blog in 2009 (geez!) and have thought about going in a different direction--posting reviews on Goodreads (tried it, didn't like it), Instagram (I do use it as a supplement to the blog), or TikTok (I find the so-called BookTok so shallow, over emotive, and repetitive, I can't bear it). Nowadays, Substack seems to be the thing, but I'm unsure what the advantages would be. So I still end up back here--changing my approach from time to time (from writing about every book in the beginning to writing about my favorites every season) but still persisting. I'm currently thinking about changing my approach again--if you have suggestions, let me know in the Comments. 

Since I changed to posting just my favorites every season and thus only write about the books I really liked, I haven't done a "best of" list. However, I would say that this year, the book I talked about most was Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Along with Elon Musk's savaging of the executive branch despite having no concept of what that branch does (and a few other questionable acts by the ultra-rich), this book made me truly despise the billionaire class, to which I had previously been largely indifferent. 

On a more positive note, in December, I got my TBR into an electronic file--yippee! Previously, it existed in handwritten lists in two different notebooks plus five or six printed out lists of recommendations. I feel organized and virtuous. The downside is that I realize the chances of my reading everything on the 12-page two-column document (which, of course, will be regularly added to) are so small as to be nonexistent (I'm 75!). Ergo, I ought to prioritize, but I'm fairly sure that is not going to happen.

The online book group I belong to asks members if they are setting a goal for how many books they are going to read in the new year. At this point in my life, I don't worry about not reading enough; I'm more worried about reading too many books unthoughtfully. In fact, one of the reasons I keep doing this blog is that I think it forces me to slow down and think about what I'm reading, at least a bit. But every year I resolve to do better--maybe in 2026 I'll even read 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley, which I've started multiple times and never gotten past page 50 or so.  I'm moving it from my "unread and may never be read" bookcase to my nightstand right now. 

BTW: About midway through the year I got on the bandwagon for reading a book set in every state. I managed to complete the challenge, though I did re-read a Louise Erdrich book (The Beet Queen) to get check-off for North Dakota. Not sure what I think about challenges like this--it did lead me to read some things I wouldn't have picked up otherwise, but I'm not convinced I am better for it. If you have thoughts on reading challenges, drop them below. 

Favorite Covers of 2025

Every year I'm awed by some of the beautiful covers created for books. I am not a visually creative person, so seeing the creativity is marvelous. I like to think I don't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes I might! This year there were a lot of covers I really loved among the books that I read (not all published in 2025). Did you have a favorite cover this year? 

To me the best covers are visually arresting while also conveying something about the content of the book--although you may not get the connection right away. These three are, I think, representative of that idea:

Color has a lot to do with why I like particular covers. Sometimes it's bright primary colors, other times it's a more muted palette. Either can be beautiful and inviting. 

Bright examples:

 

Muted examples:

    

Simplicity and/or high contrast can also be really appealing, as evidenced in these covers:

 

 

From all the above  examples, it seems that being blue is also attractive to me!

I've commented before how challenging I think it must be to design covers for a series. This is a Tess Gerritsen series I discovered this year--I like the fact that there's some coherence across the covers with the horizontal lines, while each represents the title's particular setting. 

I have also commented before on the cover photos selected for biographies or memoirs. This year I only saved one such cover, and I think the photo chosen is pretty much perfect. Do you agree?  This is one example where the author's name being larger than the title makes sense--generally, I like the title to be the most prominent text on a cover, but when the author's name sells on its own . . .

Yet a third topic I have commented on before is how interesting it is to compare covers of different editions of the same book. Here are two I noticed this year that are quite different although both are striking (and both include the promo for the Will Trent TV series--not so keen on that). . 

And here's an interesting article about that topic, focusing on YA books, both different contemporaneous editions and re-issues: https://bookriot.com/cover-makeovers-what-ya-book-wore-it-best 

So Much Poetry (and a Few Novels): The Second Half of Fall

 I just recently read Geraldine Brooks's memoir about her husband's death, Memorial Days, and it occurred to me I have read a lot of books about the experience of widowhood, despite the fact that I am long divorced and unlikely to be a widow. So I am contemplating what draws me to these books--perhaps pondering the experience of grief, which I certainly have experienced. I also realized I hadn't read (or at least couldn't remember) any memoirs written by men grieving their wives. When I did some minimal Googling, I found mostly books where men were giving advice to other widowers, rather than deeply exploring the grieving experience (although I haven't read the books so perhaps I am unfairly characterizing them); this doesn't really surprise me given, well, you know. BTW: Brooks does give some tips for other women grieving their husbands at the end of her book, which I thought was a good idea. However, if you're looking for a memoir in this genre, I would recommend Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking or Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World. Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup is a somewhat different book, being comprised of essays and vignettes, but is also very good. The Brooks book is okay but not my favorite. Joyce Carol Oates's A Widow's Story and Kay Redfield Jamison's Nothing Was the Same would both have been better as essays/articles (in fact, Oates did write a very good article prior to publishing the book).

On a different note (but also on gender relations), I read a YA book recently that included adults telling a tween girl that if a boy picks on/harasses you, it's because he likes you. I know adults do, unfortunately, say that, but I don't think such statements should stand without pushback in a book published in the 21st century (it was published in 2015). Even if the statement is true, that kind of treatment is not acceptable and should have negative consequences. Come on, people, do better!

On to more pleasant things.

Fiction

I usually add books I like to my draft posts as soon as I finish them, but I finished What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown a week ago and am, for a variety of reasons, just now getting to writing about it. In part the delay is just due to life, but the farther I got from finishing the book, the more unbelievable some of the plot points seemed (example: a home-schooled teenager with no college education gets hired on sight--no resume, no background check--by a high-tech company during the tech boom of the 1990s). However, I had enjoyed the book while reading it and continued to think it would be a great book club selection--lots to discuss. So here's a super-short description: Jane lives with her father in a remote cabin in Montana. She is home schooled and he produces a 'zine for Luddites and hatches plans for escaping when "the feds come for him." Her father often disappears for days at a time, leaving Jane at home. When he announces he will be going to Seattle, she begs to go with him, and he agrees, drawing her into his plans, which involve a deadly crime. From there, things get really complicated, as Jane tries to figure out who she really is, whether her mother is really dead, and what to do about her father's crimes. The story is framed as her remembering the time after a reporter finds her and asks to interview her about her father's fame 20 years later. It's entertaining and thought-provoking if sometimes far-fetched. Or maybe I'm naive. 

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami could be described as a prison novel, except the imprisoned people have not been convicted or even accused of a crime. Rather, they are being held in a retention center because an algorithm using 200 data points--including dreams--determined they are likely to commit a crime. Following a televised mass shooting during the half-time show at the Super Bowl, the United States passed a crime prevention bill allowing "retention" of people deemed to be potential criminals. Sara Hussein, a historian returning to the US from a conference in the UK, is deemed likely to kill her husband and is retained for the standard 21 days. But very few people actually are released after 21 days, instead having their terms extended repeatedly due to minor infractions. Of course, the retention centers, the algorithm, and the technology that allows dreams to be read are all run by private companies who operate on a profit motive. The narrative describing Sara's experience is interspersed with emails and documents related to these companies, which provide additional context. The Dream Hotel feels all-too-possible; indeed, one can find similarities to actual events in 2025. Worth a read. 

Heartwood, by Amity Gaige, is sometimes classified as a thriller, but I think it's much more than that. The story is told from multiple perspectives, with the three primary voices being those of a Maine ranger, a lost hiker, and an elderly woman who has been living her life primarily online. The book is thrilling in its depiction of the search for the lost hiker. But it's also deeply reflective. The ranger, Bev, is single, aging, and has immersed herself in her work at the cost of her family relationships. The hiker, Valerie, is a nurse trying to find "the missing pieces of her heart" after the trauma of the COVID pandemic. And Lena, the elderly woman, is gradually being drawn back into the world by a man at her assisted living and by the search for Valerie. A tense but ultimately life-affirming read for the end of a tough year. 

Mysteries

No mysteries that really grabbed me in the second part of fall--that makes me sad. 😞

Nonfiction

Although I am not myself fashionable, I am interested in fashion--I subscribed to In Style for years and have seen every season (even the terrible most recent one) of Project Runway. Also, I'm a Democrat. So it's probably no surprise that I enjoyed The Look, by Michelle Obama with her stylist Meredith Koop. This does not mean I have loved all of her looks, past or present--I haven't (in particular, I never cared for the wide belts over cardigans). However, I appreciated learning about how she and her team thought about fashion as one vehicle for conveying a message of inclusion, opportunity, and feminine power, as well as for normalizing a Black First Family. She has taken some criticism for her discussion of feeling the need to wear her hair straight while in the White House, but IMO those critiques are based on ignorance if not outright racism--a certain former Fox host's unhinged rant makes that clear. The book is expensive (it's essentially a coffee table book with a lot of text), so most people will want to get it from the library. BTW: Both Jill Biden and Melania Trump have had stylists as well, and it's interesting to think what factors in addition to personal taste might have influenced their choices. 

Poetry

I just finished two poetry collections, both focusing on how life changes over time, but one from the perspective of a woman in her 40s, the other from a woman nearing 90 when the book was published. How About Now is Kate Baer's fourth collection; she continues to write about the joys and challenges of being a mother and being married, but also looks at how getting older and potentially less healthy affects her and makes friends ever more important. Several poems also address technology's impact on modern life. Her work often has an edge--I love that the poem "Interview with a Male Moderator at a Decorated Literary Event" was written in response to the moderator asking "Do you ever feel that men might feel alienated from your work?" While this is not my favorite among her books, I enjoyed many of the poems. Here are a couple of examples--one about kids growing up and the other about technology.

One Day

One day your baby sits
in a bright red stroller
making wild mammalian sounds,
and the next they're saying
they never liked Dog Man and
no one their age takes bubble baths.
Christmas without a Santa.
Tooth Fairies without a tiny baby tooth.
Now they want this sort of haircut,
to take them to the mall
with other post-pubescent children.
It's not so bad--
but if you're waiting for a hug
or gentle conversation,
I suggest not looking very desperate.
Lie on the floor, get out your book.
Eventually they come. 

Meanwhile

At the concert we show our phones our favorite musician.
On vacation we show them the waves, the children playing
in the sand. We say, look phone! And turn it on ourselves.
Look at my face! I'm so old and ratty, we say to our phones.
Now look at the sunset. A four-car pileup. A dog in khaki
pants. You must remember this, we say to our phones.
Have it when we want it. (We will never want it) A gray
heron sails across the sky. Look! we say, pulling our phones
from our back pockets. You don't want to miss this, phone!
It would be a shame if you missed all this.

The second book was Nearing 90 [And other Comedies of Late Life] by Judith Viorst. I've been enjoying Viorst's "decade" books since she started writing them in her 30s (in 1968, I gave her Love Poems for the Very Married as a wedding shower gift for a college friend who got married shockingly young). Viorst's best poems find the humor in life but she can also be sentimental about the very same topics, like her husband Milton (I am sad that she is experiencing much of her 90s without him, as he died in 2022). She's technically not the greatest poet, but she's such an astute observer of life at any age that her poems still touch me. As someone who has spent some time saying which of my mother's behaviors I will never do, I particularly enjoyed this one. 

Trading Places

You can't read the menu if you don't bring your glasses.
Nor will your hearing aid work with a dead battery.
I once had these conversations with my mother.
Now my kids are having them with me.

You only should come if you want to come--no pressure.
You've got your own life to live. Go live it! Have fun!
That's how my mother used to get me to visit.
I can't believe that's what I just said to my son.

And then there's the lovely little book Washing My Mother's Body: A Ceremony for Grief, which features a single poem by Joy Harjo and is beautifully illustrated by Dana Tiger. The poem begins "I never got to wash my mother's body when she died./I  return to take care of her in memory." Harjo goes on to describe the ritual of washing her mother's body while remembering their lives together and reflecting on her mother's beauty and strength. It sounds somewhat macabre, but it definitely is not. And the illustrations are exquisite. 

Finally, I completed (a few days early) two poem-a-day collections, one generally serious, one generally humorous: 365 Poems for Life, compiled by Allie Esiri, and Days Like These, by Brian Bilston. Most readers, like me, will find many poems that move or amuse and others that miss the mark. I'll include one that appears in both books:

Serenity Prayer

by Brian Bilston

Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
just the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,
a spare-my-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all--
a few hours together,
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.