Tom Lake

My favorite novel so far this year is Ann Patchett's Tom Lake. Lara (nee Laura), her husband Joe, and her three 20-something daughters are all spending the pandemic at the family cherry orchard in Michigan. It's a lot of work, but it also gives them time together--and time for Lara to tell her girls the story of her relationship with the Oscar-winning and recently deceased actor Peter Duke (one of her daughters went through a phase in which she believed Duke was her father). When she was her daughters' age, Lara had been working as an actress, a job she more or less fell into because she was very good at playing Emily in Our Town. But she realizes fairly early on that you cannot play Emily forever and takes her life in a different direction. Her story--she does edit out some pieces--is about becoming and knowing yourself through good and bad decisions, brief and lasting relationships. And it's a story about love and family and everyday life--just as Our Town is. 

I love "Our Town," so its part in the plot enhanced the book for me--I might have liked the book just as well had a different play been cast in the role (so to speak), but it's hard to think of another play that would have been so perfect for the part. The Cherry Orchard is also referenced, but I don't think I've even read it so those allusions did less for me. 

One of the things that I am chewing on after reading Tom Lake is whether children can ever truly know their parents as people, even if the parent makes a point of telling their story--and to what extent all of us would edit our stories for retelling to our children. Of course, the converse is also questionable--can the parent fully see their children as adults? 

It's also worth noting that if you're Ann Patchett, you can apparently get anyone you want to narrate your audiobook. Tom Hanks did her last book, and Meryl Streep does this one--do I even need to say she does it beautifully? 

Favorite passage:

There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you'd never be able to let go? Now you're not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping jobs, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well. 

Favorite Reads of Spring 2023: Recipe for Disaster, a Heart that Works, and More

I have perhaps not been very discerning in my spring reading, but there were some highlights. And here they are.

Fiction

We Are the Light, by Matthew Quick, is written in the form of letters from the protagonist, Lucas, to his analyst Karl. In the letters, he is processing the grief and everything else that follows a mass shooting. Lucas intervened in the shooting (at a local movie theater) and is regarded as a hero by the community, but he feels like a monster who was unable to save his wife. Then the shooter's younger brother sets up a tent in Lucas's backyard and engages Lucas in making a film about the tragedy. The book doesn't shy away from the brutal heartbreak of an event like this, but it still manages to be a hopeful look at the healing power of art and community. 

One Two Three, by Laurie Frankel, is narrated by teenage triplets (ergo the one two three of the title) who live in a town whose health--physical and economic--was destroyed by a chemical company nearly 20 years ago. The girls represent the children of the community--Mab is able-bodied and encouraged to leave town as soon as she graduates, Monday appears to be the autism spectrum (e.g., she eats only yellow foods), and Mirabel is brilliant and severely disabled. The return of the family that owned the chemical company raises numerous issues: Will the town choose safety and justice over economic recover? Can anyone from the family be trusted? What should the girls do? Entertaining and thought-provoking.

I guess if you've read a lot of feminist dystopian literature, Gather the Daughters, by Jenny Melamed, may not seem fresh. Since that's not a genre I've explored in great depth, I found the book interesting (and horrifying). It's set on an island, where the people have escaped from some apocalyptic event on the mainland (AKA "the Wastelands"). But were they escaping? Or was their society simply set up by men who want to dominate women and girls, whose life experiences include being raped by their fathers; running wild in the summers, when adults stay home and children roam freely; and being forced into marriage and childbirth. Because of inbreeding many children are born with problems--and they are immediately killed. Yeah, it sounds grim, but the four girls at the center of the book are smart and brave and well characterized. 

Mysteries

City Under One Roof, by Iris Yamashita, is set in an Alaska town where everyone lives in one high-rise building; the town, reminiscent of the town of Whittier, is only accessible via tunnel (which is closed early in the book due to a blizzard).  Anchorage police detective Cara Kennedy (on leave) arrives in the town after a teenager finds a hand and a foot on the beach; Kennedy thinks the discovery may be linked to the death of her husband and son on a camping trip. The town's residents are an eccentric lot and the plot gets complicated by the introduction of a gang from a nearby Native village, but I enjoyed the characterizations and the unusual setting. 

Nonfiction

I picked up Recipe for Disaster: 40 Superstar Stories of Sustenance and Survival at the library one morning, started reading it when I got home, and didn't stop until I finished. Alison Riley has compiled stories for 40 people, generally folks in various forms of the arts (including the culinary arts), recalling a difficult time in their lives and the food that sustained them. Example contributors: Bowen Yang, Alice Waters, Brian Lehrer, Jacqueline Woodson, Thundercat, Emily King. Some of the stories are funny (Samantha Irby on her breakup recipe); many are touching, bordering on heartbreaking (Simon Doonan on a friend who died of AIDS in the early 80s after trying a macrobiotic diet in hopes that it might help--later research showed it may have made the disease progress faster). While some are individual (young single father Cey Adams searches for somewhere to change his baby's diaper in Penn Station), others deal with larger events--9/11, the AIDS epidemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. And many reference childhood, either positively or negatively. The book is also beautifully illustrated with photographs, some closely tied to stories, others with a more abstract connection, by Grant Cornett. I absolutely loved this book (even though I don't want to try the recipes). 

A Heart that Works, by Rob Delaney, is another book about grief, and it is heart-rending, as it deals with the illness and death of the author's young son. But, surprisingly (at least for those who aren't familiar with Delaney's work, which I was not), it's also profane and, at times, humorous. Delaney says he wrote the book because he wanted to make people understand--and he does a good job of conveying the terrible experience his family went through although I'm not sure anyone who hasn't had the experience can truly understand it. And, unlike many couples who lose a child, Delaney and his wife Leah survived as a couple, which was inspiring. 

Having heard Mary Louise Kelly talking about her new book It. Goes. So. Fast. The Year of No Do-Overs on Kate Bowler's podcast, I thought it was entirely about her year trying not to miss any of her older son's activities during his senior year of high school and dealing with the conflict between home and work during that year and throughout her life as a parent. Although I'm long past my active parenting days, that resonated with me, as I (in a much less high-powered job than Kelly) decided not to travel at all during my two sons' senior years). However, that's only a piece of her reflections on time's passage (and she actually missed one of her son's final soccer games because she went holed up in New England to write the book)--the book is also about aging, reporting (there's detail on her infamous interview with Mike Pompeo), her father's death, anchoring and reporting with significant hearing loss, her younger son's delayed speech, and more (briefly mentioned is the break-up of her marriage). I would actually have liked the book to be closer to my expectations, but I still enjoyed it because journalistic memoirs are inherently interesting to me.

People probably have numerous ideas about Valerie Bertinelli based on her life as a sitcom actress, Food Network personality, former wife of a rock star, and frequent "public dieter," her memoir Enough Already gives readers a much more complex view of who she is--and she's pretty remarkable. I was especially impressed by the way she and Eddie Van Halen kept a positive relationship after their divorce. Her reflections on aspects of her life have also set me to thinking about how I handled facets of my own life. 

Favorite Passages

From Recipe for Disaster:

Are you feeling like a cook now? This is the part where I look around the kitchen, thrilled by the sounds and the smells and low-key in awe that I am the one making those things happen, and break my fucking arm trying to pay myself on the back.

--Samantha Irby

After his [the author's father] funeral . . . food began to arrive. The faces of every elder and ancestor whom I could remember rang the doorbell not to stay, not to speak too much, but to leave a dish knowing it would hold the love they felt for us in every bite. Their faces looked like the ones I remember in Geismarand Denver; they looked like the fces of both of my grandparents. They were faces of my mourning family, smiling at me like my father sitting on the shore, smiing at me without speaking, letting the sunflower seeds fall beneath us. 

--Damani Baker

Still No Word from You, by Peter Orner, is a peculiar book, blending memoiristic pieces with brief essays on literary works. Because I'm a very linear thinker, I often couldn't figure out how pieces related to each other. What exactly does Richard Wright's turn to haiku late in life have to do with the pet turtle of the author's brother? Although I couldn't comprehend Orner's point (if he had one), I could appreciate his writing, which is lovely. Some examples: 

In our  house we did eat together, if also alone, at a rough wooden table so small our knees touched. It wasn't for lack of a bigger table. We had a long one in the dining room nobody ever went into. I've written about the kitchen table before. It isn't true that we write stuff out of us. 

There are days I crave the lake, when I look east and there's nothing at all in that direction but trees and unfamiliar mountains. When I was small I'd go down to Millard's Beach and lie in the shallows and let the current wash over me, and I'd put my ear to the bottom and listen to the way the tiny pebbles seethed as they tumbled back and forth beneath the water. We walk the beach where love has taken us, my mother and me. February sun over Lake Michigan. There's no warmth in it. It's fake as varnish. 

My Favorite Reads of Winter 2023: School for Good Mothers, I Have Some Questions for You, and a Few More

Spring has sprung (kind of), and I'm hoping the reading and the weather will both be on the upswing. Meanwhile, thought I'd just highlight my favorite reads of Winter 2023. I've already posted about Taste by Stanley Tucci and Chris Whipple's Gatekeepers, so I won't say anything more about them except they were both exceptional. Some other books I really enjoyed this winter:

• I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai. Makkai takes two tired tropes--the podcaster protagonist who returns to the boarding school where a tragic death occurred when she was a student--and creates an entertaining who-dun-it that also explores the #MeToo movement and its impacts. The book is addressed to Mr. Bloch, the theater teacher whom Makkai suspects was grooming students--including the dead girl--for sex. The Great Believers is still my favorite Makkai book, but I Have Some Questions for You is definitely worth reading. 
  
  
• Musical Tables, by Billy Collins. In this collection, Collins tries his hand at the very small poem, and he does the form justice. Many of the poems are funny, but others are touching. Two examples to support my point:
  
  Headstones
  
  If the dates show
  the husband died
  shortly after the wife--
  
  first Gladys then Harry,
  Betty followed by Tom--
  
  The cause is often
  gradual starvation
  and not a broken heart.
  
  A Memory
  
  It came back to me
  not in the way
  a thing might be returned to its rightful owner
  
  but like dance music
  traveling in the dark
  from one end
  of a lake to the other. 

• The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan. The School for Good Mothers is set in a United States that at first seems "normal." Frida Liu is a 39-year-old mom on the brink of mental collapse when she leaves her 18-month-old daughter home alone to go to her job at the University of Pennsylvania. Her neighbors report her and she is arrested and then subjected to unrelentless surveillance by Child Protective Services. Her crime and the data CPS collects result in her being sentenced to a one-year stay at a new facility, the School for Good Mothers, where the mothers must care for robot children in order to perfect their parenting skills. There is no escape and no way to succeed. It's a chilling look at what constitutes good parenting and society's (or the government's) role in enforcing norms.

• The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir, by Paul Newman. Some years ago, Newman recorded reflections on his life and a collaborator also taped friends, family members, and colleagues talking about their experiences with Newman. Then he got busy with other projects and the memoir was abandoned; eventually, he died, and no one knew what had happened to the tapes until they were found fairly recently. The book is based on those rediscovered materials and it's fascinating. Newman's insecurities were surprising to me--he was Paul freaking Newman!--and I was moved by his efforts to be a better person. Jeff Daniels was a great choice to read the audiobook (with assists from a variety of others). 

And, now . . . on to spring reading!

The Gatekeepers

I'm going to be taking a break from the blog, but before I do, I wanted to highlight an informative and fascinating book by Chris Whipple: The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, which my sister-in-law Kathy recommended. I learned a lot about how the White House operates and how important the Chief of Staff is to the successful functioning of an administration. The book also prompted me to think about some interesting things, such as the fact that being the smartest person in the room isn't always the clear advantage you'd expect it to be. The author obviously regards Carter, Clinton, and Obama as very smart guys. But Carter wanted to micromanage everything and didn't even have a chief of staff for a couple of years--this caused some serious problems in the White House. Clinton, on the other hand, was tremendously disorganized. And both Carter and Clinton chose as their first chiefs old friends with whom they felt very comfortable, but who may not have had the skills/knowledge necessary to do the job really well or may simply not have wanted to push their friends in the ways they needed to be pushed (Clinton did better with subsequent chiefs Podesta and Panetta). Whether Obama looked at their experience and figured out he should try to avoid their mistakes or he was just smart enough to see what needed to be done is unclear--but he picked Rahm Emanuel with whom he was not close but who knew Washington well and didn't care who he offended as his first chief.  He didn't do quite as well with Daley and McDonough (on whom the author placed the blame for the failure of the health care website). 

I was also interested in how the Chiefs of Staff interacted with the First Ladies--Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton were the most involved in policy issues while Pat Nixon and Laura Bush are not even mentioned and Betty Ford, Barbara Bush, and Michelle Obama--three big personalities--were only mentioned in terms of family issues/concerns. 

Finally, all the chiefs the author interviewed said that James Baker was the best chief of staff ever. Weirdly, Reagan went from him to a really bad one, Donald Regan. Also weirdly, although Bob Haldeman was definitely one of the worst chiefs (he did end up in jail after all), the chiefs all quoted his line about the chief of staff being the "president's son-of-a-bitch." I did hear the author say on Preet Barara's podcast that Mark Meadows was the worst chief of staff ever, so Haldeman has gotten out of the basement! 

Anyway, as all this rambling shows, I thought this was a really good book. If you're at all interested in politics, I think you would enjoy it.

Taste, Mad Honey, and We All Want Impossible Things Redeem January

There's nothing like an excellent food memoir to redeem a month of reading--thank you, Stanley Tucci! A couple of novels also "came through"--though there were also lots of disappointments. More below.

Fiction

Less Is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer, picks up several years after the events of Less. Our hero's former boyfriend whose marriage to a younger man sent Less off on his worldwide journey, has divorced and returned to his relationship with Less. This time, the impetus setting Less off on a trek across the U.S. is the need to make money fast to pay years of back rent he didn't know he owed. The book is occasionally funny and maybe has something to say about love and literature, but mostly it felt unnecessary. Didn't hate it but won't read another sequel should Greer be tempted to churn out Less Is More (or whatever).

The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O'Farrell, is the reimagined story of Lucrezia, the daughter of a nobleman in 16th-century Italy, who is married off to a duke at 14. Inspired by the famous Browning poem "My Last Duchess," O'Farrell opens the book with a scene in which Lucrezia is convinced that her husband is going to kill her (reason not provided); as a result of that set-up and some rather florid writing, the backstory we then proceed through comes across as overwrought. While portraiture and artists are a part of the story, O'Farrell doesn't give us anything approaching the moving demonstration of the power of art that she created in Hamnet. A disappointment.

In Mad Honey, written with Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jodi Picoult returns to the formula that she has gotten away from recently: a hot topic (challenges faced by transgender teens), a teenage protagonist (or two), and a court case. The book has two narrators--Olivia Levy, the mother of Asher, who is accused of killing his girlfriend when he learned she was transgender; and Lily Campanello, Asher's girlfriend. Obviously, the two narrators tell their stories on different timelines, which adds some suspense to a story in which we already know one character is dead. Although occasionally the book feels a little bit like a nonfiction work on transitioning, I enjoyed it. In an author's note, Picoult says that she had wanted to write a book about transgender rights for some time but knew that she would likely not have the insight of a person who is transgender. She also noted that transgender authors can still have difficulty getting their work published, so her writing on this issue might keep a transgender author from being published. Thus, she ended up co-writing the book with Boylan who is a transwoman (a published author so not unknown--but still probably benefitting from the marketing and buzz that accompanies a Picoult book). Picoult wrote the Olivia chapters, Boylan the Lily chapters. I thought it was an interesting approach.  

I generally like Elizabeth Strout, but her Lucy by the Sea is a totally unnecessary "what I did during the pandemic" story that offers no insight into the pandemic, human relationships, or, well, anything. We all lived through the pandemic and know what the isolation was like; unless you have something to offer that will help us understand what we experienced, don't write about it! ,BTW:  Lucy Barton spent the pandemic in Maine with her ex-husband William, who has been conveniently emasculated by a botched prostate surgery and become the saint who puts up with her! Please, Ms. Strout, no more Lucy books!

We All Want Impossible Things, by Catherine Newman, explores the process of dying, friendship, and grief--but it's not entirely sad. Edi, dying of cancer, is discharged from the hospital--but all the hospices near her are full, so she says good-bye to her husband and son and goes to a hospice near her best friend Ash's home (this seems unlikely for multiple reasons). They reminisce, Edi deteriorates, and Ash cares for her and her own family while having sex with Edi's brother and her hospice doctor (and possibly others--I lost track). Yeah, it's a little bit crazy and unlikely but still manages to be life-affirming. 

Mysteries/Thrillers

Too many free listens from Audible this month (free for a reason) -- The Couple on Cedar Close and The Stranger's Wife, by Anna-Lou Weatherly; The Killing Time, by T.J. Brearton; and Immoral, by Brian Freeman. But they're good for falling asleep to and my expectations are generally low.

I had much higher expectations for The Heights, by Louise Candlish, whose books I've enjoyed in the past--this one not so much. Very short summary: it's about a woman who wants to wreak vengeance on the boy who was driving the car when her son was killed. She's unlikable (as is her target) and the other people in her life are not well developed as characters. There's an unnecessarily complicated structure in which the woman is writing her own story, which is then being written about by a journalist. Not recommended.

In The Deepest of Secrets, Kelley Armstrong finally finishes off Rockton in the midst of murders involving the revelation of secrets from the residents' pasts. I found it curious that, as a reader, I knew a lot about the characters that others in their fictional town did not and thus did not find the various revelations shocking. Must work on empathy.  Armstrong will be launching (or perhaps already has) a series based in the new town Casey and Eric are going to start.

Nonfiction

If you saw his film Big Night or his CNN series on the food of Italy, you already know Stanley Tucci  likes food, especially Italian food. This is confirmed in his memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, a book that delighted me. He starts with memories of his mother's spectacular Italian cooking and proceeds through wonderful meals he has eaten and prepared. He shares anecdotes from his professional life (he once ate sausage that tasted like poop . . . with Meryl Streep), as well his family cooking adventures/ misadventures.  And somehow, I am touched to read about the help of his famous friends when he had cancer (Colin Firth and Ryan Reynolds and Oliver Platt held him up in a terrible time). But most of all, Tucci describes food and meals and the company enjoyed around the table so lovingly, that it makes me want to write a memoir. Just kidding--but I did really love this book!

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners, by Margaret A. Burnham, is basically a litany of African Americans killed in racially motivated homicides in the South during the Jim Crow era. Some of the homicides were killed by law enforcement officers, others were essentially sanctioned by the justice system because no one was held responsible. It's a difficult accounting, but a necessary one that gave me a new understanding of why many African Americans have a different view of the law that those of us with the privilege of believing that justice is possible, if not likely. 

Favorite Passages

Losing a beloved family heirloom is a very real personal loss; they're things that cannot ever be replaced or re-created. But perhaps the most precious heirlooms are family recipes. Like a physical heirloom, they remind us from whom and where we came and give others, in a bite, the story of another people from another place and another time. Yet unlike a lost physical heirloom, recipes are a part of our history that can be re-created over and over again. The only way they can be lost is if we choose to lose them. 

    --Stanley Tucci, Taste

Life is messy. I certainly don't expect tidiness from yours or anybody else's. 

    --Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

Early January Disappointments: Demon Copperhead and Horse

 It's sad when you get excited about a favored author's new book and then you really don't enjoy the book. Topping off the the two books that fit that description were two that I honestly did not understand at any meaningful level (and they made it onto multiple "best of 2022" lists). Yeah, that makes you feel stupid. So here they are.

Fiction

As someone who never really cared for Dickens, I guess I should have realized I wasn't going to love Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead as soon as I learned it was David Copperfield reimagined in contemporary Appalachia.  The inspiration is clear--Damon Fields, whose nickname is Demon Copperhead, is being raised by a young, single drug-addicted mother in rural Virginia. When she dies of an overdose, he enters the foster care system at age 11. At his first placement, where the children are unpaid workers for a tobacco farmer, he meets his own Fagin, the charming and immoral older boy known as Fast Forward. Damon has another bad foster placement, which he escapes by running off to find his grandmother, who cannot or will not let him stay. However, Damon is not without skills, both artistic and athletic, and  goes to live with the local football coach. When he is injured in a game and does not have the treatment he needs, he becomes addicted to opioids and enters a downward spiral. There's a somewhat surprising ending on the happy end of the spectrum for a book about a young drug addict, but it does not redeem the story for me. This summary skips over other bad experiences--the book is entirely depressing, perhaps particularly because there were so many instances in which adults could have made a difference in this young man's life. I recognize that Kingsolver is dealing with a very real problem or constellation of problems, but I didn't feel like she took me anywhere that I hadn't already been through news stories and Empire of Pain.

My second disappointment of the month was Horse, by Geraldine Brooks, who has written some fabulous novels (March, The Year of Wonder, People of the Book). I wasn't too enthusiastic about reading the book (two book clubs I'm in chose it as a selection) because I'm not that interested in horses, but I finally jumped in. The book is well constructed, intercutting three (at least three) stories. The first is the story of the enslaved trainer Jarret Lewis who had a special connection with the great race horse Lexington (a real horse in the 1850s); it was interesting to learn about the important role of enslaved people in horse-racing, which was an immensely popular entertainment in the years leading up to the Civil War, although I always cringe when a white author writes their take on African American dialect (and I remained mostly uninterested in the details of horse racing). The second story is that of the artist Thomas Scott, an artist who specialized in horse paintings, which were evidently very popular in the era (although another topic I'm not that interested in--perhaps I am just very close-minded). Scott is also a real person, to whom Brooks gave a male lover, something she admits in the endnotes is not based on historical fact; I found this an annoying attempt to give the story some modernity. But the worst example of that comes in the third story, set in 2019 and involving two young scholars: Jess works at the Smithsonian and is reconstructing Lexington's skeleton that had languished in a storeroom for decades and Theo is an art history graduate student  trying to find out more about a Scott painting of Lexington he found in his neighbor's trash. I was interested in the give and take in the relationship between Jess (a white woman) and Theo (a black man), which highlighted the truth that black people must think about race all the time while white people have the luxury of not thinking about it. SPOILER: However, when Brooks has Theo killed by cops, I about lost it. It was a totally gratuitous plot twist that was inadequately dealt with, leading me to conclude it too was added just to add currency to the story and was disrespectful to the people who have experienced this type of violence. Not everyone will agree with me on this (although my sister does!), but this event took me from being neutral about the book to being rather negative. 

On to the books that made me feel stupid. First was The Furrows by Namwali Serpell.  The book started out as the story of a woman whose brother died when they were children; as she grows up, he dies over and over at different phases of her life. I wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be an exploration of different futures in the metaverse or an indication that she was deranged by grief and guilt. Then abruptly, in the second part of the book, it became a story about a man who was trying to somehow scam her family by pretending to find her brother or be her brother or I don't know what. Honestly, I just have no idea what was happening or what the reader was supposed to take away from the book. I was happy to see that the NYT reviewer wasn't crazy about the book. She didn't feel stupid after reading it (as I did), but she did say "The book is so laden with odd convergences and there are so many brushes with demons that it does leave you feeling tiny and weird." 

The second stupid-making book was The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy. The book focuses on two characters, a brilliant brother and sister who were in love with each other. The sister Alice's sections are conversations between her and a set of imaginary beings that more or less harangue her (mostly a character referred to as The Thalidomide Kid--use your imagination). The sister committed suicide ten years before the parts of the book narrated by the brother, which also are primarily presented in dialogue. The brother is a salvage diver who finds a plane that there appears to be some mystery about--what the mystery is or how it relates to the federal agents that start following Billy is unclear. While not much really happens, Billy's conversations are wide-ranging, covering such topics as physics (Billy and Alice's father was involved in developing the atomic bomb), the Kennedy assassination, the existence of God and the possibility of an afterlife, and much more. Again, I have no idea what the point is or if there even is a point. However, McCarthy writes so beautifully I still might read the novel that he wrote as a pair with this one, which evidently focuses on Alice's treatment for schizophrenia.

Mysteries/Thrillers

I've mentioned numerous times before that I read too many bad mysteries, but I've decided that the serve some sort of mental health-preserving function so I'll undoubtedly keep reading them. None that I've read so far this month were worth saying much about (listed below),, but I  have a rant or two:

• Mystery writers should think twice before inserting a twist that has no real function in the story. To me, the purpose of a good twist is to make the reader rethink how the story is different now that they have this new information. There's one at the end of Blood Will Tell that really is just the author trying to surprise the reader for no reason. I felt the same way when, several books in the series ago, Louise Penny revealed that Jean-Guy's daughter has Down's Syndrome.  Of course, twists that you can tell the author thinks are major but in fact were predictable are also rather pointless (see The Perfect Marriage). 
• Some mystery authors do actually use the language very effectively. But others are just trying too darn hard. Example from The Murder of Sara Barton:  "Her celebrity hangs over the courtroom like the carcass of a dead animal." WHAT?  Just stop it. Mystery readers are generally looking for plot and character not the most beautiful language (for that we go to Cormac McCarthy).
• Some genre writers--especially those doing police procedurals or legal thrillers--need to try a LOT harder when it comes to getting legal matters right. In A Killer's Wife, for example, a prosecutor handles the case of her former boyfriend who allegedly killed using the same MO as that prosecutor's ex-husband. (Yes, you read that right.) No, that would not happen. 

Okay, probably more rants next time, but here are the mysteries read:

• Blood Will Tell, by Heather Chavez
• The Perfect Marriage, by Jeneva Rose
• The Murder of Sara Barton, by Lance McMillian
• A Killer's Wife, by Victor Methos
• Black Echo, by Michael Connolly (first Bosch book; audio book has an interesting interview with the author and Titus Welliver who narrates and portrays Bosch in the series)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda K. Morris (not sure this belongs in this category but that's how it's marketed--mostly it is just so sad)
• Black Heart, by Anna-Lou Weatherly

Nonfiction

My son Kevin reads lots of biographies, so I decided to give one that made a lot of "best of" lists a try: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, by Stacy Schiff. So first, let me say, I found myself drifting off while listening to the book (and I'm a social studies person) so perhaps not 100 percent engaging. But my biggest question was whether this was really a biography of Adams or a history of the run-up to the American Revolution focusing on activities in Massachusetts. I learned some about Adams' contributions but didn't gain a lot of insight into Adams himself. It's also impossible to assess the author's research when you're listening to an audiobook because the footnotes aren't included. I'm not one to read every footnote, but I do find it informative to check what the author cites, where they cite, etc. So it may be awhile before I pick up another biography, but I'll probably go for print next time I do.  

Favorite Passages

Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison. Some part of you which you deeply value lies forever impaled at a crossroads you can no longer find and never forget. 

We would hardly wish to know ourselves again as once we were and yet we mourn the days.

     --Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

My Favorite Reads of 2022

 Like everyone else, I usually call this list the "best of"--but I realized that was a bad choice of title because (1) I read a lot of books not published in 2022 and (2) I clearly have different tastes than critics so I may not know what is best but I do know what I like! So here are my favorites from just shy of 300 books read this year (many of them truly terrible mysteries I never mentioned on the blog).

Favorite Novel 

True Biz, by Sara Novic, is a book I'm not seeing on any "best of" lists, but I thought it was compelling and deeply moving. It's the story of a 15-year-old deaf girl with a faulty cochlear implant, no knowledge of ASL, and parents deeply divided about how to give her a good future. The audiobook has a unique feature: when conversations in the book would have been signed, the author was actually signing in the background. Hearing the movement of her arms and smacks when one hand hit the other was a reminder that these conversations would have been silent. I loved that. 

Honorable Mention: Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng; Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead; Olga Dies Dreaming, by Xochitl Gonzalez; The Anomaly, by Herve Le Tellier (best sci-fi/fantasy of the year by far, but I don't read enough to make it a category); Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen; Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, by Jamie Ford (I know it's a lot, but they were all wonderful)

Favorite Short Story Collection

Festival Days, by JoAnn Beard, is a collection of stories that are not only enjoyable but memorable. The subject matter is sometimes grim but the stories still manage to be redemptive. One story in particular, about a woman who seeks help from Dr. Kevorkian, has come back to me numerous times throughout the year (I read the book in February). 

Honorable Mention: Land of Big Numbers, by Ti-Peng Chen 

Favorite Mystery/Thriller

I read so many bad mysteries that I can't choose between the two I thought were unusual and great this year (does that even make sense?). 

Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, has a classic noir feel. Set in Hawaii and Asia during World War II, the book follows police officer Joe McGrady as he tries to solve the murder of two young people with powerful family connections in the U.S. and Japan.

Wrong Place Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister, is a singular mystery in which the protagonist travels backwards in time to try to figure out what she needs to know to prevent her son from murdering a man. Beautifully constructed with many twists.  

Favorite YA

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is an incredible book about high school freshman Melinda, who has been abandoned by her friends because she called 911 from a summer party where she was assaulted. Through the process of making art and the support of her art teacher, Melinda finds the strength to take action. Melinda's voice is authentic and sad, but there is also humor in the book and the ending is upbeat. Teenage boys and girls should read and talk about this book. 

Honorable Mention: They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera

Favorite Nonfiction

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe, is the book I couldn't stop talking about this year. It details the criminal perfidy of the Sackler family across three generations, demonstrating their complicity in the opioid crisis.  Despite thinking I am a fairly well-informed person, I found this book shocking. The dilemma posed by the revelations of the family's criminality for the many institutions to which they had donated huge sums of money was another issue I knew a bit about but learned much more about from Keefe's discussion.

Honorable Mention:  How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith; and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (these are both wonderful books that I just didn't talk about quite as much as Empire of Pain)

Favorite Memoir/Autobiography

I am making this a separate category this year instead of lumping in with nonfiction because I read a couple that I loved and wanted to highlight: 

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, by Amy Bloom, is the moving and instructive story of her husband's decision to seek aided suicide when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She writes about each step in the difficult process with great insight and grace. 

All In, by Billie Jean King. I always admired Billie Jean and thought I knew quite a lot about her, especially her career, so I was surprised at how much I learned about her work, not just as a tennis player but as an advocate for women, in sports and beyond. For me, the book made her a three-dimensional person, rather than an icon. 

Honorable Mention: Going There, by Katie Couric

Poetry

I Hope This Finds You Well, by Kate Baer. Baer creates erasure poems from nasty responses to her work on social media, fan letters, promotional emails, congressional testimony, virtually any kind of source. And the poems are funny and often pack an emotional punch. Having tried doing erasure poems, I know creating works of this quality is really hard, and she does it so well.

Honorable Mention: What Kind of Woman, by Kate Baer; You Better Be Lightning, by Andrea Gibson

Favorite Passages

I find it informative to look over the quotes I have chosen as favorite passages throughout the year--the process may provide more insight into my state of mind than that of authors, but still. This year I was trying to impose some themes on the quotes I chose as favorite passages--the loss of connection, the power of words or story.  But I think they were more random--perhaps a reflection of the state of my brain after nearly three pandemic years. But here is one worth thinking about:

Who we are and who belongs is the most fundamental question that we have ever asked or can ever ask. We are still struggling to get the answer to this question right. We are still coming up short.

                --John A. Powell in an essay on Dred Scott from the book Four Hundred Souls