Cracking the top ten…

The process of distilling the top ten reads of the year is a peculiar sort of alchemy. Sometimes it is a complete surprise, a book I started with zero expectations that ended up wowing me. Sometimes it’s the hard but satisfying work of slogging through a classic work of literature or history. And sometimes, an author’s sheer genius at making art from language earns a top spot.

Here are three books that edged their way into this year’s top ten:

Buried in the Sky by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan

Kindle, 321 pages

Published 2012

If you enjoyed Into Thin Air, (and who didn’t?) this one’s for you. Swapping out Everest for K2 but with equal amounts of suspense, drama and tragedy, Buried in the Sky recounts the August, 2008 K2 mountaineering tragedy that claimed eleven lives. The focus here is on the Sherpas whose courage, tenacity and sense of honor are key to every climbing success and starkly heroic amidst a climbing disaster. The official book blurb calls it a “white knuckle adventure” and it is every inch of that. An absorbing read!

Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1) by James Clavell

Kindle, 1152 pages

Published 1975

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Whoa, what a saga, indeed! And to think that after 1100 pages, I only completed Book One! I will confess that i struggled through at least 300 pages before this book began to work its magic on me. In the end, I gave it five stars for being an incredible work of 3D chess.

In the 16th century, Portuguese explorers lifted the shroud from the heretofore closed society of Japan. The impact of trade, the clash between western and eastern religious beliefs and the endlessly intricate dictates of power and morality in Japanese culture are the framework in which the novel’s characters operate.

The book’s protagonist, Blackthorne, an English pilot of a Dutch ship who finds more than he bargained for when arrives in Japan in the year 1600, is loosely based upon 17th century navigator William Adams. A work of exceedingly complex fiction, Shōgun is also a satisfying dip into geopolitical history.

Not an easy read, but a worthwhile one. Based on this stellar reading experience, I promptly downloaded Clavell’s other well-known works, Tai-Pan and King Rat. Maybe I’ll get to them sometime in 2025…

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller

Paperback, 323 pages

Published 2013

Tim Keller, who passed away last year, was the beloved pastor and founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He was the author of several books, the best-known of which is probably The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. I have yet to read that one, but it’s on my list.

This title drew me in as I tried to make sense of that old adage “life is hard and then you die” and yes, Keller makes exquisite sense of it. I should probably caution you, though, that this is not one of those fast read, feel-good, self-help books.

Keller begins with a somewhat academic survey of how various cultures and philosophies throughout history have viewed suffering and then grapples with the “the problem of evil” before nourishing the reader with the promises of ultimate victory over suffering offered by Christian belief.

Quoting a line from The Princess Bride, Keller acknowledges that ““Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” But he also reminds the reader that “Very seldom do we glimpse even a millionth of the ways that God is working for all things together for good for those who love God. But he is, and therefore you can he assured us will not abandon you.”

This is a deep well of a book to draw from over and over again. Truly a treasure.

Reading Recap: Chapter & Verse

I did it!

It took two years and some change, but I listened my way through The Holy Bible, thanks to Dr. Bill Creasy’s Logos Bible Study via Audible.

I’ll be the first to admit that at some points in my life my eyes would glaze over at the phrase “Bible study”, but that was then and this is now. I was spellbound as I devoured the New Testament on my early morning walks through Dr. Creasy’s well-honed lectures. I listened to the gospels bringing the Good News, sharing the life and work of Jesus on this earth, the painful passages of the Passion and the glory of the Resurrection.

Then Paul’s letters of the early Church and persecution thereof; tenets of Christian living from Paul and James; and always, always, always, the promise of Christ’s return, culminating with Jude and then the apostle John’s Book of Revelation, which will (or at least should) scare the pants off all us sinners.

Rembrandt’s painting of the Apostle Paul in prison:

The apostle John, exiled on the island of Patmos:

A third of my reading year was invested in this project, and yes, it is a luxury to have had the time to devote to a multi-year linear study from Genesis to Revelation. I sincerely wish, though, that I had begun decades ago, because as thorough as this study has been, I realize I must start the project all over again – it is not possible to absorb the enormity of it all in one pass. I’m eyeing Pastor David Guzik’s Enduring Word commentary for my next go-around. 

Having entered old age with the world seemingly gone mad, what I thought was the hand basket carting us off to hell turns out to be a sieve, with time leaking away at an ever more alarming rate. So very little time to figure it all out. Endless gratitude to Dr. Bill Creasy for a sweeping yet concise walk through scripture.

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And while this is certainly at the very top of my reading list for the year, next week I’ll delve into the other “10 best”…

Reading Recap: Recommended fiction

I can get a little persnickety about the books I read, always finding the little crack in the teacup instead of appreciating the fact that someone slaved over a hot desk for months or years to write the novel I so callously critique.

Mea culpa. I need to start appreciating all the books a little more since AI is poised to make all that effort (not to mention blogs like this one) obsolete. And here are four works of fiction that truly brightened my reading year. Perhaps they will illuminate yours…

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley

Audiobook narrated by Shelley Thompson

25 hours 38 minutes; 592 pages

Published 2000

If you’re only going to read one book by Jane Smiley it needs to be her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres. But if you want to have some fun, Horse Heaven awaits you. You might say that a close to 600 page tome about horse-racing does not enthrall you, but Smiley, in her slightly whacky way, makes it work. Yes, the people are ridiculous, but the horses are sublime. You will admire their majesty , cheer their spirit to win and perhaps even shed a tear for them here and there as tragedy befalls them. I even listened raptly to a chapter about equine uterine torsion.

Oh, and the prize in the Crackerjack box here is a rather unforgettable Jack Russell Terrier named Eileen. One little niggle: the narrator in the Audible version makes some rather dreadful pronunciation errors, so unless you don’t mind a distinctly uninformed attempt at “La Jolla” and “Lihue”, I recommend a print version.

The Letter of Marque by Patrick O’Brian

Kindle, 284 pages

Published 1992

I know about as much about 19th-century seafaring as I do about horse-racing – which is to say absolutely nothing at all. Yet the deservedly lauded Aubrey/Maturin series – it will ring a bell with you when I remind you that the first novel is Master and Commander – is a an ongoing joy to read. I am parsimonious with these books, only allowing myself one or two a year to make the pleasure last.

By the time I opened this twelfth of twenty-one books, I feel as if Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are dear old friends. They are truly each other’s best friends here, Stephen having generously bought the frigate Surprise in order to give Jack a livelihood as he is in deep trouble (though not of his making) with the Royal Navy. Suffice it to say that all’s well that ends well and I can’t wait to savor book number thirteen.

The Women: A Novel by T. C. Boyle

Kindle, 476 pages

Published 2009

Biographical fiction is not my favorite genre, but T.C. Boyle is a masterful writer (he kept me busy looking up words like diachronic, fumarole and animadversion) and hey, Frank Lloyd Wright’s actual life reads like fiction anyway. The title references the four romantic interests who, by turns, delighted, consternated, worshipped and tormented the early twentieth century titan of architecture. Interestingly, Boyle himself resides in Frank Lloyd Wright’s George C. Stewart house, nestled into a woodsy nook in Montecito, CA. Talk about a muse!

Wright is described by turns as moody, as a genius, a tee-totaler, womanizer, mama’s boy and reluctant payer of bills, but whether Boyle said it or not (I can’t remember) the word narcissist comes to mind as the most apt descriptor of the man. Luckily, you don’t have to like him to heartily enjoy the book, much of which is set at Wright’s beloved Taliesin compound in Wisconsin.

Tom Lake: A Novel by Ann Patchett

Audiobook performed by Meryl Streep

11 hours 22 minutes; 312 pages

Published 2023

This, by my lights, is Ann Patchett’s best work. I know, I know, you all loved Bel Canto. I didn’t. So shoot me. To be honest, I’ve actually always been a little on the fence about Patchett, yet I keep reading her books, so there’s that. This one is a nostalgic backward glance of a happily married woman living on a cherry farm in northern Michigan, whose three grown daughters, waiting out the recent pandemic with their parents, demand the scoop on Mom’s long past entanglement with a famous actor.

I found it fascinating that Patchett, who does not have children, chose a mother/daughter template here. Perhaps that’s why the relationships seem just a little too perfect, too idealized. These are the daughters we imagine we will have, not the back-talking, door-slamming, coming in way past curfew ones we actually end up with. These just-becoming-adult women adore their mom and find her personal history of deep interest. Oh well, it is fiction, after all…

Fortunately, the real story is mom Laura’s, who describes her high school foray into acting as “like being a leaf in a river. I fell in and was carried along.” She was especially carried along by reprising her role as Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which gets top billing throughout the book.

In my reading, Meryl Streep gets top billing in the book. She owns every single page, seamlessly performing – and that is not a conceit but truly the only word for what she does here – and interpreting Patchett’s prose. It is a feat of alchemy, layering the story with a rich dimension of affection and depth. Oh how I hope she will become Patchett’s permanent “voice”.

…and a little of that: nonfiction reads

When one leads a life as trivial and boring as mine, one forgets that others are out there living incredible – and sometimes incredibly outrageous- lives.

Some perform feats of daring; some dare to stare down their inner selves. Some are heroes, some are criminals. All are more interesting than me, and that’s one of the reasons I read. Here are four nonfiction choices that illuminated my year.

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Audiobook narrated by Macleod Andrews

8 hours 4 minutes; 320 pages

Published 2018

This is a true-crime tale of a young man who crosses the ocean and the law to steal prized feathers from Great Britain’s Tring natural history museum. That’s strange enough in and of itself, right? But his purpose – nay, his obsession – is to turn those feathers into salmon fly ties. There’s a subculture for everything and the art of fly-tying is one of the most surprising, and makes for surprisingly compelling reading.

My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home by Michael Brendan Dougherty

Audiobook, narrated by the author

3 hours 45 minutes; 240 pages

Published 2019

Lauded as a “heartbreaking and redemptive” book by Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, My Father Left Me Ireland is a deep dive into personal family history and cultural identity. Dougherty’s American mother and Irish father both loved this son who resulted from their brief fling, but the distance between his East Coast upbringing and his mostly absent father’s life in Ireland made for a somewhat painful and soul-searching childhood. Dougherty ponders this landscape along with Irish political history, his deep affection for his heritage and his conviction that we live in “an age of disinheritance”.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

Kindle, 530 pages

Published 2010

George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull are icons of 19th century American history and Philbrick carefully (sometimes tediously) walks the reader through the events that bring the army officer and the Indian chief into a final, cataclysmic conflict. Philbrick is one of the most readable of writers, but in crafting the most comprehensive study of this subject that the casual reader will ever need to read, the book weighs a bit heavy with military strategy and armchair critiques of the perfidy that is thought to have left Custer abandoned by his officers in the end. The pivotal Battle of Little Bighorn was a Pyrrhic victory for Sitting Bull and his warriors as it ultimately spelled the end of their dominance of the plains and the inexorable decline of their way of life.

Yeager: An Autobiography by Chuck Yeager

Audiobook, narrated by Chris Browning, Pamela Dillman, David Stifel and others

14 hours 23 minutes; 342 pages

Published 1985

This was an exhilarating read! Everyone knows that Chuck Yeager was the guy who broke the sound barrier but there is so much more to his full and fascinating life. From his humble West Virginia origins to his daring escape from occupied France after being shot down in World War II, Yeager’s confidence, courage and love for flying (and for his wife Glennis) set him apart. Perhaps most interesting are the chapters about the Wild West days of being a test pilot at what is now Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. I know nothing about flying, airplanes or the military but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

A little of this: nonfiction reads…

One of the joys of reading for me is the luxury of learning just a little bit about a lot of things. These four books cover some very near and dear subjects: $$$! Italy! Animals! Beverages! Couldn’t live without any of them!

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness by Morgan Housel

Audiobook narrated by Chris Hill

5 hours 48 minutes; 256 pages

Published 2021

Recommendations for this book kept popping up on my fintwit follows, and indeed, this was a catchy read and provides a rounded perspective on money and how we work our lives around trying to have enough of it. The “enough” can be the tricky thing, and Housel delves into that, pointing out that for some people, Bernie Madoff as an example, “no amount of wealth is ever enough”. As far as buying happiness, he reminds the reader that money’s greatest intrinsic value…is its ability to give you control over your time” (pointing out, in an aside, that prior to World War II, most Americans literally worked until they died – that’s food for thought, isn’t it?). The way to be rich, he notes, is “to spend money you have and to not spend money you don’t have.” But the way to be wealthy “is to not spend money that you do have.” Common sense advice – can any of us follow it?

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar

Audiobook narrated by the author

3 hours 24 minutes; 144 pages

Published 2019

The title of this book suggests travel, but it is much more about the author’s internal narrative while indulging his passion for paintings from the Sienese school of art, which flourished in Siena from the 13th to 15th centuries. Matar wrote this book while taking a holiday to rest and reflect after winning the 2017 Pulitzer prize for his book The Return, a memoir of his return to his native Libya to search for answers about his father’s political disappearance. Honestly, I think that book would have been more interesting, as this one struck me as being mostly a fever dream of micro-observations about art history and personal history. If it’s a travelogue about Siena you’re looking for, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

Audiobook narrated by the author

14 hours 17 minutes; 464 pages

Published 2022

If Umvelt and Zugunruhe aren’t words that roll off your tongue, you might want to crack the pages of this book, which begins with a satisfying chapter in which he confers with author Alexandra Horowitz (On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes) about our canine companions (“Let dogs be dogs!) and goes on to consider the inner lives of snakes, bats, dolphins, sweat bees, mantis shrimp, whales, birds and more. A New York Times bestseller and one of The Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of the year, this book thrums with the author’s good-natured and effervescent affection for his subjects. By the way, an umvelt is the world as it is experienced by a particular organism and Zugunruhe is the migration anxiety experienced by birds. Now you know – but good luck pronouncing them!

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

Kindle, 338 pages

Published 2005

I suspect that Michael Pollan’s brilliant The Botany of Desire spawned a plethora of copycat surveys, of which this is one. Where Pollan viewed four plants that changed history – the apple, the potato, the tulip and marijuana – Standage takes on six beverages that did the same: beer, wine, coffee, tea, spirits and Coca-Cola. Beer and wine made their mark on human society between 9,000 B.C. and 4,000 B.C. – comforting to know that even ancient man had his pleasures. Spirits came later – a fun fact I learned is that the modern word whiskey comes (somehow – I am clearly losing something in translation here) from the Gaelic uisege beatha (for aqua vitae). At any rate, the Irish, predictably, seem to have coined the word.

All the tea in China became their national beverage during the Tang dynasty (618-907) and steeped for centuries there and in Japan until it was brought to Europe via Dutch traders in 1610.was embraced by Great Britain in the 1700’s. Coffee originated in the Arab world, apparently popularized in mid-fifteenth century Yemen and by the 11600’s “The coffee-house was the Londoner’s home”.

And of course we’ve all raised a glass of Coca-Cola, which Standage presents as worthy a history maker as the other five fluids. Invented in 1886 by a pharmacist from Georgia, Coke, of course, went on to take the world by storm.

Some of my book club friends panned this one for what they considered shoddy and incomplete research, so while being a light and somewhat interesting read, it apparently is not the most comprehensive study of our favorite beverages. So maybe the glass is half empty here, but still fun to contemplate what’s in it.

The Annual Reading Re-Cap: Prizewinners that missed the mark

Surely, the shortcomings are mine. These four books have variously claimed the most esteemed awards and been acclaimed by no less towering literary grandèes than Oprah and Barack. Yet I just could not award the mandatory five stars that everyone else showered upon them. True, I tend to be stingy with awarding five stars but I honestly could spare a four-star review to only one of these reads. The others are on my three-star shelf, a rather sorry distinction indeed. You should probably go with Oprah’s reviews, not mine.

Let’s look at them from least to best…

Trust: A Novel by Hernan Diaz

Kindle, 415 pages

Published 2022

Oprah lauded this book as “fun as hell to read”and it was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022. I found it sterile, gimmicky and forgettable and most definitely not “luminous” as it was deemed by The New Yorker. So clearly I am the philistine here. Because this book also won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The setting is Gilded Age Wall Street and the subject is finance and all the sins, mortal and venial, it unleashes. And all that money cannot improve the peculiarities of those who wield it – the characters are really just stick figure representations of sadness, greed and moral failure. The book is cleverly and curiously formatted and perhaps you will like the confusion that bestows upon the reader. It’s at least more interesting than the story. Not recommended, at least not by me.

Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan

Audiobook narrated by Steven Crossley

4 hours 41 minutes, 210 pages

Published 1998

We were planning our recent trip to Europe and first visit to Amsterdam so hey, I thought, this title is a slam dunk. Except it turns out it is not at all about Amsterdam, which simply figures as a backdrop at the end. It is about a small group of elite, possibly over-educated and definitely over-indulged Brits for whom life just seems like too much trouble to bother.

The writing is mordant, arch and excellent, the pace never lags. McEwan is gifted and very comfortable with his characters, all of whom are probably drawn from the company he keeps in his orbit of social brilliance. One arc I particularly liked traced a character’s creative process while writing a symphony.

But my God, this plot. Is McEwan just finding a new way to tell us how hopeless and vile the human race really is? Perhaps that gleeful accomplishment is why this book was awarded the 1998 Booker prize. I can’t share examples with you because they would be spoilers so you’ll have to read it yourself and decide whether you agree with the Booker awards or with me – I gave it three stars, and am still sulking about the bait and switch promise of the title.

The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner

Audiobook read by Edward Herrmann

7 hours 52 minutes, 214 pages

Published 1976

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This was a re-read and I embarked upon it wondering whether my ambivalent opinion the first time around would change. I adore Stegner’s Angle of Repose and The Big Rock Candy Mountain. They are immense literary achievements. And one would think this is, also, given that it won the 1977 National Book Award for Fiction.

But alas, I fear that Stegner succeeded too well at making his aging, curmudgeonly protaganist an unlikeable old coot. Joe Alston, a retired literary agent self-exiled to what is not named but likely Palo Alto, is looking grousingly back over his life plagued by the ailments of regret and rheumatoid arthritis.

At one point he asks “If you examine a life…do you really examine the life or do you examine the shadows it casts in other lives?” And he then proceeds to examine those shadows, prominent among which is he and wife Ruth’s acquaintance with the aristocratic Astrid during a 1950’s sojourn in Denmark. If this book were wine, I would declare it “drinkable”, which is not the same as “fine”. Like McEwan, Stegner is a consummate writer and therefore always worth reading, but this opus does not rank up there with his best work.

The Covenant of Water: A Novel by Abraham Verghese

Audiobook, read by the author

31 hours 16 minutes, 736 pages

Published 2023

This is a sprawling epic of a book, akin, perhaps to One Hundred Years of Solitude in the way it shimmers -except that it is set not in Colombia but in Kerala, India. The lives of the characters are extraordinarily ordinary and the book reads almost like a processional as their fates are revealed.

Verghese is a physician and various medical conditions figure prominently in the plot, as do the murky, surging waters of the Malabar Coast. Verghese has a gentler view of humans than Diaz, McEwan and Stegner, perhaps simply because he is less of a humanist. A quote from a minor character, “Faith is to know the pattern is there, even though none is visible”, is perhaps given us as a guide for the unfolding of Verghese’s story, which spans the decades from 1900-1977.

Oprah enthused that it was “unputdownable” and one of the best books she’d read in her entire life. Verghese was awarded the 2023 Writer in the World Prize for the book. Perhaps it is my devotion to Verghese’s first novel Cutting for Stone that prevents me from casting accolades upon this one. Cutting for Stone was absolutely a five star novel; for me this was shy at least one star from that. Still, an amazing achievement to weave all the threads of this sometimes improbable plot to its culmination. As another minor character observes, “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”

The Annual Reading Recap: Women in and of the world

Everyone has a more interesting life than mine, it seems, especially the women who come alive on the pages of the novels and fictionalized biographies on my book shelf. That, of course, is one of the reasons to read – it is truly the most affordable way to travel!

The Book Woman’s Daughter: A Novel by Kim Michele Richardson

Audiobook read by Katie Schorr

10 hours 29 minutes, 352 pages

Published 2022

Since people seemingly couldn’t get enough of the bestselling The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, there had to be a sequel. Cussy Mary’s adopted daughter, Honey, takes center stage in this volume as the subjects of The Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, methemoglobinemia and miscegenation are revisited. The tale is homespun but fiercely feminist as the women who suffer severe injustices in the setting of 1950’s Appalachia are avenged – in one case, quite memorably by a very angry rooster.

The Bohemians: A Novel by Jasmin Darznik

Kindle, 353 pages

Published 2021

This story begins as a fairly straightforward biography of the American photographer Dorothea Lange and her doomed romance with the painter Maynard Dixon but the focus frequently shifts to the subject of racism and sexual violence against Chinese immigrants in early 20th century San Francisco. Worthy subjects, indeed, but fact and fiction are so interwoven throughout the story that the reader might emerge confused as to which was which. “Not for the first time in the annals of San Francisco history, there wasn’t any telling what was true and what wasn’t” is a quote from the book, which rather perfectly sums up my experience of reading it.

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Kindle, 338 pages

Published 2022

Isabel Allende is a very capable novelist and suceeds at making her characters multi-dimensional despite her own rather single-minded cheeerleading for the glories of socialism and Liberation Theology. Allende describes confiscation of property in South America as “democracy”, a concept which seems to be gaining traction on this continent as well. Violeta’s turbulently uprooted childhood mirrors Allende’s and the book is acknowledged to be “semiautobiographical”. Set in her native Chile, the saga opens with the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic and ends with the advent of the COVID pandemic. As an adult, Violeta makes tempestuously poor choices in her love life, (perhaps also autobiographical?) which I found rather wearying. It’s a hot-blooded Latin story that left me cold.

The Botanist’s Daughter by Kayte Nunn

Audiobook, read by Caroline Lee

12 hours 21 minutes, 400 pages

Published 2018

If only this book were written as well as its plot was crafted. It really is a great story, but I lamented the chick lit romance novel telling of it. The setting shifts between contemporary Sydney, Australia and nineteenth century Cornwall, England and Valparaiso, Chile. The plot features botany, romance and a Snidely-whiplash villain with a surprise ending that promises a sequel.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Audiobook, read by Eleanor Bron

8 hours 9 minutes, 170 pages

Published 1922

I was looking for novels set in Italy to stoke the fires of anticipation for our trip there last fall, and came upon this 1922 best-seller that set off a frenzy of travel to the Italian Riviera. No matter that the plot is just a wee bit contrived, we’re talking about Italy here, and a medieval castle dripping in wisteria blooms. Four women, equally disillusioned but previously unknown to one another, become roomates for a month in the fictional San Salvatore, which may be a stand-in for Portofino, Italy. For all her cleverness, von Armin treats her characters gently. There are crimes of social awkwardness and potential marital disaster, but all crises are ultimately averted. After all, they’re on vacation. A fun read.

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post: A Novel by Allison Pataki

Audiobook read by Barrie Kreinik

14 hours 35 minutes, 400 pages

Published 2022

I’ll never look at a box of Grape Nuts quite the same after reading this book. Marjorie Merriweather Post was the daughter of Post Cereal founder C.W. Post and the fortune he amassed from the Grape Nuts and Post Toasties empire enabled Marjorie to live large. She joined the ranks of the rich and famous yet never quite shed the values of her provincial upbringing in Battle Creek, Michigan or the influence of the Christian Science doctrines that her father had credited for healing him from a mysterious malaise. Good thing she had a firm foundation to fall back on, as her marriages – one to financier E. F. Hutton with whom she had daughter Dina Merrill – were nothing short of disastrous. She was unlucky in love but had a knack for real estate, including the building of the palatial Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. I’m not a huge fan of fictional biographies but this one manages stays out of its own way. Another fun read.

The Annual Reading Re-Cap: 3 to Avoid

I clocked in at having read 61 books in 2023, just a nose over my annual reading goal. To make the goal, I literally read morning, noon and night (I am a slow reader) in one form or another – I think this is the first year that I listened to more audiobooks than reading in any other format. Yes, I love real books, but there is literally no more shelf space in this house so I must favor audiobooks and Kindle until the CE builds me the library of my dreams, preferably this one:

Only three books from the year were consigned to the bonfire of disappointments. I read them so you don’t have to:

The Four Winds: A Novel by Kristin Hannah

Kindle

469 pages

Published 2021

When this read was suggested for our couples book club, I couldn’t wait to download it. After all, I’d been enchanted by The Nightingale and I was looking forward to Hannah applying her deft touch with historical fiction to a family forced to migrate from Texas to California during the Dust Bowl years.

Maybe, just maybe it’s not a great idea to one-up Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Hubris has a way of getting people in trouble, and wow, Hannah got herself into big trouble with this book, pivoting cringingly from a heartfelt tale of surviving hard times to a Commie romance novel. When Elsa, the brave single mother trying to protect her children, meets Jack the Communist organizer, he bursts on the scene like a Hollywood leading man of old and the whole thing jumps the shark in a big way.

If Communism happens to be your jam, you’ll love this one. Elsa’s teenage daughter Loreda reads The Communist Manifesto and naively declares “It’s all about class struggle, isn’t it? Serfs against landlords throughout history. Marx and Engels are right. If there was only one class, where everyone worked for the good of all, it would be a better world.” If, however, you happen to know anything about Communism in practice throughout history, this novel is a hard pass.

A Thousand Moons: A Novel by Sebastian Barry

Audiobook

7 hours 45 minutes/256 pages

Published 2020

This was another cruel disappointment. Sebastian Barry is a stunningly brilliant writer (of course he is – he’s Irish!) and I relished the thought of reading a sequel to Days Without End, his poignant story of two soldiers finding an abiding love amidst the wreckage of the Civil War. Everything about that novel rang true; nothing about this one does. Days without End treats the homosexual relationship with dignity and tenderness. In this book, Barry goes on sort of a bender. John Cole and Thomas McNulty have sustained their commitment to one another but as one after another of the other main characters are revealed to be gay it starts to feel just a smidge gratuitous. There is also the currently popular condemnation of the entire Caucasian race: “White men in the main just see slaves and Indians. They don’t see the single souls.“

The book seemed to be developing caricatures rather than characters, which is an enormous fall from grace as Barry’s usual delicacy and tenderness toward his characters seems, regrettably, to be missing. Bottom line: not his best work.

Home is Within: A Memoir of Recovery and Redemption by Nadia Davis

Audiobook

15 hours/356 pages

Published 2021

Our daughter, Angela, has a penchant for reading memoirs of people who have crashed, burned and risen from the ashes. She sometimes invites me to read along with her, which is the only way I would ever have happened upon the Matthew John Bocchi’s remarkable book Sway, in which he journeys from losing his father on 9/11 to a tortured adolescence and eventual drug and alcohol addiction. His turnaround and recovery is incredibly inspiring.

Which is why I said yes, of course, when Angela proposed Ms. Davis’ memoir about addiction. Nadia Davis grew up in southern California as the daughter of a prominent Hispanic attorney in Orange County. She showed every sign of following in her father’s footsteps when, as a young attorney herself, she fought the wrongful conviction of a young Hispanic teen. But childhood trauma, poor life choices (one of them apparently being her marriage to prominent politician Bill Lockyer) and a descent into addiction derailed a promising future.

Like Matthew John Bocchi, Nadia Davis hit bottom – again and again. Where the scripts diverge, however, is that Bocchi finds a moral center that allows him to take complete accountability and find a path to a productive life. Davis – to us – seems stuck in a self-aggrandizing clamor for attention and a focus on victimhood. By the time we finished the book, Ang and I were in agreement: we hope for the best for Ms. Davis’ recovery, but we were not convinced that she is qualified to give advice. Truly, a cautionary tale.

All that said, there is something to be gained even from the least favorite books. Reading about the Dust Bowl years was stirring and reminded me that I need to re-read The Grapes of Wrath. Barry’s novel, set in post-Civil War Tennessee illuminates that particularly interesting moment in history. And while I’m not convinced that Nadia Davis has it all figured out, I sympathize greatly with her and all others who hit the roadblock of addiction in their lives. The human journey is endlessly compelling and books are a window through which to watch it.

Next week – moving on to the middling category of reads…

“Books and doors are the same thing.
You open them, and you go through into a different world.

– Jeannette Winterson

Angels may visit but they do not stay.

He was a little angel wrapped up in a fur coat that was two parts cotton candy and one part whipped cream. He was the sweetest, yummiest, purring-est kitty imaginable.

Our Mischa arrived just in time (thank you again, Tammy and Christi) to brighten the slog through the COVID years. He learned his manners from The Countess, who raised him as her own.

Mischa was shy with strangers but so loving and trusting with us. He was always available to “talk” or to dutifully serve as what the CE called a “nap consultant”. We looked forward to many years with him.

As was his nocturnal habit, he fetched a few guest towels from the powder room and carried them up to us as “gifts” during the night on Sunday.

But Monday morning we awoke to find him crumpled on the floor, unable to stand. We rushed him to the emergency vet, who determined that he was having seizures. She did everything she could but within a few hours summoned us to say goodbye to him.

Why? How? We are still in shock. So many unanswered questions. He was so precious to us. A little angel who departed and took part of our hearts with him.

Questions for the angels
Who believes in angels?
I do
Fools and pilgrims all over the world

– Paul Simon

Resolved: read more!

Next week begins the annual reading recap which, as usual, will be a meander through various authors, formats, genres and centuries. I have my leanings, of course, but I do like a bit of eclectica to brighten my bookshelf. You can see past recap threads beginning here: 2022 , 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012. I gotta say, at roughly fifty titles a year, whew, that’s a fair number of books. According to digital geniuses at LibraryThing, my “book stack” is slowly inching its way above the height of the Great Pyramid toward that of the Washington Monument.

And yet, the TBR (to-be-read) list remains endless. Silly me – at one point I actually worried about running out of books to read. Ha! Not to worry. I will never catch up or keep up, and that’s actually kind of reassuring. It’s like having a cookie jar that never goes empty. Such joy!

One of my Instagram follows is @bridgesbookshop in the UK. I have no idea who they are or where they are, but he/she/they is most definitely in my head a lot of the time, posting things like this about the pleasures of reading:

And so, thrilled at the prospect of twelve new months of reading ahead, I have renewed my GoodReads Book Challenge again for a goal of sixty reads in 2024. The goal, of course, is far less important than the journey. And if you are feeling inspired to begin your own reading journey this year, click the link for an “Ultimate List” of reading challenges for 2024. Or just settle in with a perennial favorite challenge from PopSugar:

Meanwhile, I’ll be cataloguing my 2023 list to share with you and, like bridgesbookshop, dreaming of having a book nook like this one in my next life:

Happy reading!