It’s taken me days to recover from the realization that I missed that this book purported to be written by one of the characters as her M.F.A. thesis. I only learned about that from talking to Jennifer when I had just finished the book. I listened to the beginning of the book again and yes, right at the beginning it says it was written by Robbie for her thesis. One of her motivations was to...
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...
This book is a book about the friendship of four Black women whose long-time connections endured their times of living on opposite coasts and their very different economic situations. I don’t have much hope that I can write about it in a way that does it justice, but I will write to remember moments that moved me. Desiree and her sister Danielle were raised by their grandfather, Desiree...
I learned about this book on a reading blog I have consulted for years, Tony’s Book World. I am sad to say it was Tony’s last entry before he died last summer. Tony worked in the world of computers, lived in Wisconsin, and was a great reader. I was emboldened by his writing to read much more ambitiously than I would have otherwise; I credit him with making me willing to read books that left me...
Initially I found this book to be a bit preachy with its earnest messages, but I was won over by the author’s unique life and her willingness to face the great complexities of life that affect us all. And of course she could write about those complex issues with clarity. She was born in Korea and lived there her first five years. Her father, a multi-generational Tacoma-based Jewish man...
I was drawn to this Australian book by Kim’s review that describes it as caught between a crime story and a romance. Although she made it perfectly clear that it focused on medical matters, I was nevertheless surprised by the intensity of the focus. The story is told by a woman with cystic fibrosis about her doctor and secret lover who was found dead near the hospital where she was at the...
This is my third Mark Kurlansky book and I marvel at his enthusiasm for his subjects and for his love of factual information. And a firehose of information it was; this time he writes about “The Adventures of a Curious Man,” Bob Birdseye, the man associated with frozen food, for whom the Birds Eye brand of frozen vegetables is named. When I wrote about Kurlansky’s book Cod, I...
The subtitle of this non-fiction book is Ireland to India with a Bicycle and just reading it was exhausting. It’s hard to imagine someone could do this, but doing it in 1963 is truly amazing. I must resist the urge to recount all Dervla’s stories, but hope that a few of them will give the feel for how she coped with the challenges and what beauty and joy she found. To begin this epic...
I particularly liked Pip Williams’ first book, The Dictionary of Lost Words, a successful combination of a fictional story with the backdrop of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. It has some historical figures and is set late in the 19th century through the early 20th. This one is a fictional story set during World War I, with a focus on twin sisters, Peggy and Maude, who work...
I could not tear myself away from listening to this book and as a result, made significant progress on a tough jigsaw puzzle I was working on. I had been thinking about this Charlottesville author since his recent book was tapped by Oprah and then learned that Jennifer was reading this one. While I was always conscious of its shortcomings, it did capture me. It is the story of four complicated...