DECEMBER
I love A.J. Jacobs' books, but his latest, Thanks a Thousand, isn't one of my favorites. It's a TED book, and I don't really know what that means other than it's short and focused. Jacobs loves to devise outlandish projects (like reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica) and writing a book about the experience. In this short book, Jacobs sets out to thank 1,000 people involved in the production of his morning cup of coffee, everyone from the coffee growers to the barista who serves him at the counter. I may have liked this one more if I liked coffee, but overall, I thought it felt rather phoned-in and uninteresting. My rating: 3 stars.
My last poetry read of the year was Joyce Sutphen's First Words. Sutphen is a poet from Minnesota, I believe, and the poems in this collection focused a great deal on farming and home life. I fell in love with several poems about her father, a farmer, because they reminded me so much of my own father. I liked this collection more than most because I could identify with the setting and "characters." Some may find the poems too simple, and they don't use a lot of poetic devises, but I enjoyed them. I plan to read more of Sutphen's poems. My rating: 3.5 stars.
I'd wanted to read The Girl Who Smiled Beads for some time now, and I finally tackled it in December. This is the memoir of a girl growing up in African refugee camps after the crisis in Rwanda in the mid-1990s. She eventually ends up in America, taken in by a family near Chicago, and receives a good education. She writes about not only the daily struggles of being a young girl bouncing from bad to worse in several African countries, but also of the guilt of having more than she needs now, and the crisis of identity that follows her. While I liked the book, was heartbroken over what she and so many went through, I struggled with her outbursts of bitterness. Overall, I felt the book was written too soon. Wamariva wasn't ready to write the story with any kind of hindsight, which I consider the hallmark of a good memoir. My rating: 4 stars.
The second book in the Vanderbeeker series, The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden, came out in September, and I saved it for the end of the year. I think I enjoyed this one more than the first. In it, the Vanderbeeker kids, five mixed-race siblings, in an effort to do something nice for their elderly neighbors, decide to turn an abandoned lot into a community garden. But will the adults foil their plans? I liked this book, and I'd recommend it to kids and parents looking for good family books. My rating: 4 stars.
Wow was Sally Field's memoir In Pieces not at all what I was expecting! I'm so used to seeing Field in charming, giddy, family roles that I was totally blindsided by the tone and content of her much-acclaimed memoir. In it, she talks about being emotionally and sexually abused by her stepfather, her disastrous and negative relationships with men, and her dissatisfaction with most every role she played. She eviscerates Burt Reynolds, and she only mentions her biggest films, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump, and Mrs. Doubtfire, in a single passing sentence. I got a very different feeling for Field after finishing the book, and I won't say it was positive. The book, though, was well-written and engaging. My rating: 3 stars.
I also saved Joanna Gaines' Homebody for the end of the year. I thought it would be a nice book to curl up with over Christmas break. And it was that, but it was also a little...boring. Gaines and I just don't share a decorating style, and I found all of the homes in the book exactly the same. If you love that farmhouse/industrial chic style she all but invented, you'll love this book. But I found myself wishing for COLOR! The only rooms that featured anything but gray, white, black, and beige were the yummy children's rooms--my favorite part of the book. Overall, it was a lovely book, just not my style--literally. My rating: 3 stars.
I finished out my reading year with John Grisham's The Reckoning. This is my first book by Grisham, and it isn't garnering great reviews, from what I can tell. After reading some of the reader reviews on Amazon, I gather that the book is a departure from the kind of books Grisham is known for. Having no previous experience with his work, I can't attest to that, but I can say this is not exactly what I was expecting from a Grisham novel. I really, really enjoyed this book. It's the story of Pete Banning, a World War II POW, who murders his pastor in cold blood and refuses to tell anyone why. His lawyer tries his best to keep him from the electric chair, but it's hard to put up a defense for a guy who seems satisfied taking his reasons to the grave. Much of the book deals with the fallout of his act, and how it affects his family, including his two young adult children. The middle third of the book goes back in time to show Banning's war years as a prisoner of war and the Bataan Death March. This part of the book was much too long and, though well researched, seemed to drag the book down. But overall, I was impressed by Grisham's writing, his characters, and the way the story unfolded. It was not a happy book by any means, but I found it well done. I'm eager to read some of his previous work for comparison. My rating: 4.5 stars.JANUARY
I made a goal to read a romance novel this year, and when Nicholas Sparks' Every Breath came up on a Kindle deal last month, I decided that would be the book to fulfill my goal. I've never read anything by Sparks, and I've only watched one of the movies based on his books, and, frankly, I found it pretty terrible. I'm not the ideal audience for romance books or anything that steps foot on "sentimental" terrain. I knew I might not like reading a romance book, and I knew I probably couldn't tolerate a mass market paperback with a bosomy lady and a shirtless man, but I thought Sparks might be a good entry point. This is the story of Hope and Tru (I know, right?) who meet on a North Carolina beach and fall in love instantly, but his life in Zimbabwe and her desire to settle down and have children lead them in separate ways. I won't tell you more than that. Overall, I found the book pretty average and about what I expected as far as writing, characters, and plot. I can see why some folks like to lose themselves in books like this. They're safe fantasies. (Not everyone is married to a man like mine who sees their wife reading a romance novel and asks in alarm how he can be a better husband.) But this isn't the kind of thing I'd want to spend much time with. There was one rather bland sex scene, and overall it was pretty tame. It was a nice palate cleanser, and a fun, light read, but nothing very special. My rating: 3 stars.
My first audiobook of the year was Nickolas Butler's The Hearts of Men. I'd listened to his Shotgun Lovesongs last year, and I was eager to try another of his books. I've got to tell you, though, this one was rough. Shotgun Lovesongs was a bit grittier than I normally like, and this one tipped the scales even more. It's the story of a couple of generations of men who have a connection to a Boy Scout camp in the Northwoods. I think it's meant to be a study of different types of men and covers every conceivable hot button male-oriented activity from rape to strip clubs to adultery to spousal abuse to war heroes. It would make a great discussion in any college classroom where "toxic masculinity" is discussed, but I am so over this whole discussion. Men are men and women are women and when you try to blur the lines and have one homogenous gender, what does that do to society? But the book stopped before it got to anything as needful to the discussion as that. The book kind of disgusted me, and I'm thinking twice about reading his new book due out this spring. Still, it would make a good book club discussion. My rating: 3 stars. 
I don't think I've ever read a David Sedaris book, though I know I owned his first couple at one point. I find books of humorous essays rather out of my pleasure range, but I'd always wondered what Sedaris is like, so I picked up his latest, Calypso, on audio. This experience alone was enough to quench any curiosity I had about his writing style or how funny he is. I can understand why some folks like him so much, and I laughed a couple of times, but overall, I decided Sedaris probably isn't for me. These essays covered mostly family dynamics and his relationship with his husband, Hugh. His family (he's the brother of Amy Sedaris) is full of high-color folks who don't seem to get along very well. There's a lot of drama and the whole book just felt very tense and heavy. He and Hugh apparently fight like cats and dogs, he passionately dislikes the president and all republicans, and I was glad to exit the book when it was over. It just made me feel bad, and I don't need that in my life. Oh, also, he narrates the audio, and you kind of have to appreciate his voice to enjoy the audio version. My rating: 3 stars.
My first five-star read of the year was Diane Setterfield's Once upon a River. From the moment I read the synopsis of this book, I knew it would be something I liked. It's the story of a little girl who is rescued from the 1880s river Thames. She is pronounced dead upon examination, but she later comes back to life. Three families lay claim on her as their own, and this sets readers up for a plot full of loving families and unscrupulous scoundrels, as well as a photographer's romance with the local nurse, a family who runs a tavern, and a group of men who spin tales for fun. It has a fantastical feel, and it sweeps you up in its current and you don't see dry land for quite some time. I found this book as wonderful as all the reviews have. I think it will likely be on my top books list at the end of the year. Highly recommended to anyone who wants a story that holds your attention and has a little whimsy and a lot of kindness to it. My rating: 5 stars.
It's likely no surprise to you that I like vice president Mike Pence. His decency, and, let's face it, blandness, is an interesting backdrop to the explosive personality of the president. I picked up his daughter Charlotte's book about him wanting to know more about where he comes from and what he believes. I was expecting a rather vanilla, poorly-written book, but I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying the writing. Let it be said, Charlotte Pence doesn't spend any time rehashing the negative things that have been said about her father, her family, or the president. She acknowledges them, but doesn't dwell on them. And yet, the book was fun anyway! It's a little fawning and a little syrupy, but it also feels honest. I think this might actually be how the family members interact with each other. Even if you roll your eyes at the vice president and his staid, conservative ways, it can be said that he raised a good family who holds tight to their beliefs, which was his goal. My rating: 3 stars.
One of the modern classics on my TBR list has been Snow Falling on Cedars. For the longest time I couldn't decide if I wanted to read it or listen to it, but I finally decided to listen, and I'm glad I did. I think the book might have dragged a bit. This 1995 novel is about the post-World War II court trial of a Japanese man in the Puget Sound area after fisherman turns up dead. The two had a long history, the Japanese man nursing a family bitterness after the white man's family sells the property they'd been making payments on out from under them while they were in an internment camp. Was it a vendetta killing or an accident? The courtroom drama is interrupted by flashbacks involving the various folks involved in the case, and it's quite well done. It balances the difficult feelings that arise in a community where race is always an issue. I could have done without the author's insistence on the reader having a sex scene involving every character in the novel. It got to be voyeuristically creepy. It was a bit much, and I'm getting kind of sick of reading books by men describing how a woman experiences sex. Overall, it was a fine read. My rating: 4 stars.
Long before all the "read harder" and "read diversely" pushes of the recent years, I was reading loads and loads of cultural memoirs and loving them. When they became de rigeur, I sort of lost interest. But I'm slowly getting back to reading them, since they feel like home to me. My latest of these memoirs is Khalida Brohi's Pakistani memoir I Should Have Honor, the story of her family's experience with honor killings and Brohi's subsequent activism to fight them. In some Muslim cultures, though it is not condoned in the Quran, a woman who brings dishonor to her family is killed and all memories of her are expunged, in order to restore the family's honor and standing in the society. This is done not only for sexual misconduct but also for acts of disobedience, including falling in love with a man who was not chosen for her by her family. Brohi's cousin was killed by her uncle for this reason, and Brohi has spent her life since the horrific event fighting these honor killings. This fight was always a struggle between her and her father who went against conventional wisdom to have her educated but was always concerned about her bringing dishonor (and possibly death) upon herself for speaking out. I didn't get a good idea of how widespread honor killings still are, but I get the impression it's happening much more than Americans may think. This was a very honest and approachable book, but I feel it is being told in the middle of the story. I would have liked more physical and emotional hindsight. My rating: 4 stars.
I came across Where the Crawdads Sing before Reese Witherspoon did, but at the time I wasn't sure it was for me, so I let it languish on my list of things to look into later. And then the book exploded in popularity, and it was everywhere. So I had to buy a copy and check it out. This is the story of Kya Clark, whom everyone around refers to as the Marsh Girl. Her family leaves one by one until she is left alone, at the age of 10 (if I remember correctly), to navigate life in the marshland of North Carolina without parents, money, or education. She becomes a foremost expert on the marsh, makes money by selling clams, has romances. And then one day she's put on trial for the death of her former lover and local football hero, Chase Andrews. Throughout the book I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. You just know something horrible is going to happen, but you don't know what (though you can kind of guess) and you don't know when. I wasn't sure I liked the book for the first half or so, but then I finally started to feel invested. I'd recommend this one and caution you to stick with it if you're on the fence for awhile. My rating: 4 stars.
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