This year I read fifty books; almost half were non-fiction and six of them were among the thirteen listed here. Once again, I loved revisiting the wonderful books I read in the past year and recalling the awe they brought me. Listening to the thirty audiobooks while I put together puzzles, worked in the kitchen, or walked was a pleasure.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman. I read this during a particularly cold spell in January and savored the beach week warmth it brought, with the main character’s memories of her grown children as toddlers eating sandy lunches on the beach. My favorite quote is daughter Willa’s view of what her mother and grandmother thought of their roles as mother: “I made your whole body from scratch. The least you can do is to put some lip balm on it.”
Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This fiction book follows six people on the space station from various countries. The author emphasized the change in perspective that occurs in people when they see the planet as a whole. “They [the six people] have talked before about a feeling they often have, a feeling of merging. That they are not quite distinct from one another, nor from the spaceship.” Her descriptions of the beauty of the earth when you begin to know its place in the universe is itself beautiful. One of my top two books of the year.
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler. This low-key book describes three days surrounding the wedding of the daughter of the main character, Gail. By the time I read the detailed and surprisingly interesting account of the wedding, I realized I did like reading about these characters and cared what happened to them. I love a book that sneaks up on you and makes you love it.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. Ron Charles was enthusiastic about this book with little plot and lots of musings. In this story of a non-religious woman’s retreat to a monastery that she didn’t intend to inhabit, we learn of her increasingly intense stories of her past and the horrifying mouse epidemic at the monastery. I found the book to be both comforting and thought-provoking.
Audition by Katie Kitamura. I loved this book that made me say at one point, “Wait, what??” It is an examination of shifting roles and the performance of our roles as we perceive them. Sometimes our roles change dramatically as they do in this book.
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. This was the most surprising book I read this year and it made it to my top two books of the year. The author retreated to the countryside in Britain during the pandemic and raised an abandoned baby hare, trying to keep it a wild animal, not to make it a pet. She found the hare made her more conscious of the value and beauty of other species and of living more simply herself.
Taking Manhattan by Russell Shorto. This book describes the change in leadership of Manhattan in 1664 from Dutch to English, a change that resulted in a merger of aspects of two cultures that made New York City the richly diverse and financially successful city that it continues to be. Shorto does this in a conversational tone and throws in the English civil wars, beheading of Charles I, Cromwell’s rule, the Restoration, and more.
Grace Notes by Bernard McLaverty. I first read this in the pre-blog days (before 2006) and found I still love this story of an Irish woman who is a composer. It was published in 1997 (a year before the Good Friday Agreement ending The Troubles) and the backdrop of those times is evident in his bold effort to bring music to life with words.
The Long and Winding Road by Jim Travisano. It was a real pleasure to read this book about his long bike ride in Europe in 1984 by my old biking companion. After he had a stroke in 2023, he used notes from the trip to write this to reclaim who he had been. This book “became a bridge from who I was to who I am.” Turns out he is a truly gifted writer and is as kind and generous a person as he always has been.
The People on Privilege Hill by Jane Gardem. This quote from Reading Matters is what took me to this book and sums up why I loved it: “It’s a deliciously entertaining book and reading one or two 10-page stories in bed every night proved a soothing balm before lights out. I simply let her gentle, old-fashioned prose wash over me. There’s something deeply comforting about reading the work of an accomplished writer, expert at their craft — it makes you feel everything is right with the world, even when you know it’s not.”
Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. The tale in this non-fictional book would not pass muster as fiction. The likelihood of two people born into slavery escaping by the woman appearing as a man traveling with his enslaved man seems so unlikely to succeed, especially considering she could not read or write. Their tribulations were not over until they traveled to Britain. I don’t know why I didn’t know the story of Ellen and William Craft.
Writers and Lovers by Lily King. I would have bet against a book about writing a book making it to the list of my favorite books. But this one even dared to have happy dispositions of the writer’s struggles. It would be churlish to be grumpy about a book this witty and good-hearted.
Heart of a Stranger by Angela Buchdal. When the author was five years old, her Korean Buddhist mother and her American Jewish father moved from Korea to his family’s longtime home city, Tacoma. She grew up in the Jewish tradition and is now the Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City. At first I found her audiobook to be preachy, but her wise and compassionate voice stays in my head and I’m glad she’s among us.