What I read in February

Well, another month and no weekly posts. I have every intention of getting back to that format, but it just didn't happen this month. I am, however, enjoying reading more than I have for the last few months, so maybe the unintended hiatus has worked for me. I feel like I'm reading more books that deeply satisfy me. It's wonderful.

I finished 13 books in February, and I'll give full reviews to the four that I enjoyed most. I'll review the others with shorter reviews. If I don't do this, I just won't catch up.

I was interested in reading American Dirt when I read about it on Christmas break back in December--long before all the controversy erupted. I have to say I don't really understand the controversy other than that it's identity politics at work, and that almost never makes sense. To weigh in, I don't believe the publishing industry is deliberately trying to squash brown voices by not publishing their books. The publishing industry exists at least as much to make money as it does to produce quality literature (and the cynic in me would say "more so"). It's a business, and if folks are clambering for something, they'll publish it. I also don't think Oprah, the author, nor anyone who reads the book is a racist. For goodness sake, let's spread love and make the positive argument for our fellow human beings. I believe what the author writes in the back of her book, that she spent five years researching and writing this book, and although she did not make the journey to America via the Beast, she is compassionate toward those who do. Also, there is the obvious statement that must be made: if we only published and read books by people who experienced everything in them firsthand, we'd have no Steinbeck, Hemingway, or even Austen. That's a ridiculous criteria. All of that said, I liked the book. It was a gripping depiction of a mother and her young son's journey to America, outrunning a drug lord who has murdered 16 members of their family and wants to murder them too. There was not much brutality, if that was a concern of yours. The author did a pretty good job of hiding her pro-illegal immigration bias, at least giving passing acknowledgement to the fact that what they were about to do was illegal. I found the characters very believable. I finished the book with a more compassionate view of those who have to make this difficult journey and the difficult choice to live a life of subterfuge in a country not their own. It did not change my firmly held beliefs about illegal immigration, however. This one is well worth your time. It was written in a tone I can only call "immediate" which nailed the frantic mood of the mother and son as they make their way to "El Norte." My rating: 4 stars.

While making my way through 1,000 Books to Read before You Die (I'm up to the Ms now), I came upon an entry for Shirley Jackson's Life among the Savages, which will likely be one of my favorites of the year. Jackson is best known for her dark stories, but this is a fictionalized memoir of her life with her husband and four young children (two are born in the course of the book) in a full, rambling house in the 1940s or so. It's very, very funny and full of charm. The children really come to life on the page, and Jackson has a way of writing about seemingly insignificant domesticities in a smart and engaging way. I enjoyed this book so much. I have a feeling 1,000 Books to Read... is just full of these gems--books you've never heard of that are just wonderful. I highly recommend this one. Also, when I went back to re-read the entry for the book in 1,000 Books to Read..., I discovered that Jackson penned a sequel. I ask you, is there anything more satisfying than finding out a book you love has a sequel? My rating: 5 stars.

Messenger of Truth is the fourth in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mystery series. In the series, which begins in post-Great War Britain, Maisie Dobbs runs a private investigation agency and solves murder cases. But Maisie is no ordinary British detective. She is trained in psychology and uses what she learned to get closer to the truth than the blokes at Scotland Yard can with their traditional methods. These books are smart, and they read more like literature with a mystery thrown in than a plain mystery story. I love how they're written and I love how we get to know the main characters (Maisie; her assistant, Billy; and her father, especially) throughout the series but also really get to know and understand the principal characters in the mystery plot as well. These are slowly plotted, and the attention and time paid to details and setup is thorough. And...this was my favorite in the series yet. I loved this book so much. In it, Maisie is asked to determine whether the artist Nick Bassington-Hope's fall to his death from scaffolding he was using to hang his latest, and secret, exhibit was an accident, or whether he was pushed to his death. Nick's work is a brazen, searing look at the brutality of World War I, and it upsets as well as compels people. Secondary plots include a smuggling ring, the heartrending sickness of Billy's young daughter, as well as frank discussion of the haves and the have nots during Great Britain's Depression, contemporaneous with America's. Also, Maisie is living on her own for the first time, and we see her curled up in her chilly apartment, eating tinned soup and reading novels in the evenings. I found this one so satisfying. It was cozy and exciting and had a depth of feeling for large topics that was very meaningful to me. It also feels as though Maisie is at a personal crossroads of sorts, and I can't wait for the next book in the series. My rating: 5 stars.

Three years ago, I read Bret Baier's Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission (my review here), and I was disappointed by it. It didn't grab me, and I found it dry and uninteresting. Because of that, I skipped the second book in the series, Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, though I'm a big fan of President Reagan and this point in history. But something made me try the third in the series, Three Days at the Brink, FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II. In this one, we learn about the three days in November 1943 in which allies Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin secretly met for the first time to discuss a strategy for winning World War II. Called the Tehran Conference, it's where Operation Overlord was discussed, including the storming of the beaches of Normandy. This was a fantastic book. I listened to it on audio, narrated by the author, whose voice I've long enjoyed on television. I knew much of the facts of the book by heart from the numerous other history books I've read about FDR and World War II, and there wasn't a lot here that was new to me, but there is something to be said for the comforting feeling of an old story you know well being retold. FDR and World War II stories are as familiar to me as scripture, and it often felt that way listening to the story unfold. My mind could automatically fill in the next part. It was oddly comforting. Not everyone, I know, will have this personal reaction to the book, but I don't think it will catch many as staid or boring. Baier paints good portraits of the three principal players: FDR's charm and charisma, Churchill's gruffness and warmth, and Salin's distrustful, circumspect demeanor. He examines how Roosevelt often sides with Stalin to garner good faith, alienating Churchill in the process; Stalin's landgrab at the end of the war and the Cold War that followed; and Roosevelt's death. It's all here in a very readable and sometimes colorful retelling. I really liked this one, and if you're looking for a good, concise explanation of this time in history, I can't recommend it enough. My rating: 5 stars.

This month I also read:

During CYBILs judging last fall, I discovered Rachel Poliquin's Moles (my review here) which I just loved. That made me want to read all of Poliquin's Superpower Field Guides, which led me to Beavers. This was just as wonderful as Moles, and I learned a lot about the little chainsaws of the forest. Specifically, I learned that beavers' front teeth are orange. How could I have never learned this wonderful fact? I wondered it they were maybe orange-ish until I was making my way through our local antique shop which is home to lots of taxidermy pieces, and I found myself face-to-face with a stuffed beaver's incisors. Their color? A definite orange. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I love memoirs by people who are masters at what they do. Trailblazers, geniuses, experts, prodigies, I love learning about what makes them tick. I've always thought Elton John was a musical master. He wrote and recorded a slew of wonderful songs, and I'd always respected him. After reading (listening, actually) his memoir, Me, however, I have less respect for the man. Like a lot of artists of his era, there was a lot of drug use going on, and we learn every nasty detail of it. We also learn every nasty detail of his homosexual sex life and his drama queen (he'd call himself that; it's not my term) hysteria. He seems a man who took a long time to grow up, if indeed, he has, but the book was very honest, which I respect. It was also well written as far as celebrity memoirs go. But, if you don't want all the details, it might be best to skip it. If you do decide to tackle it, though, do it on audio. The audio performance, and there's no other word for it, was magnificent. It should win an award. My rating: 3 stars.

 

I'm not sure how Beneath the Tamarind Tree came to my attention, but I admit the cover really caught my eye. This is the story of the 276 girls abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok, Nigeria in 2014. I'm sure you remember the story from that time, and the #BringBackOurGirls movement it ignited, but like me perhaps you wondered whatever became of the girls. This is the rest of the story, or what can be told of it. Some of the girls, I believe, never came home. The author, Isha Sesay, is a CNN reporter who followed this story, and when some of the girls came home, she was there to tell the world their story. But by that point no one was interested anymore. I had trouble with this book. First, it was not at all clear to me why the girls were stolen. We heard reports of them being sold into sex slavery, but that doesn't seem to be the case overall. Also, I'm not clear on the fact that any abuse took place. Of course, stealing a young woman away from her home is criminal, it would seem the darker crimes we all assumed happened (rape, torture, death) perhaps didn't. It seemed the worst that happened were they were moved a lot, pressured to become Muslims, and were malnourished. So what was the point of taking them then? My main issue with the book was the judgmental attitude of the author about the world's response. Assertions were made over and over that if these girls were white the world would care and they'd be rescued. It there were rich..., if they were American.... Yes, had they been American, they would have been rescued, because America has the might and priorities to do so. But to assert that it's America's or Britain's or France's responsibility to rescue Nigerian girls when their own government repeatedly lied about the situation and did almost nothing to find the girls, and then castigate those countries because they didn't, is grossly unfair. So, what you have here is another good story made political by the journalist reporting it. It's a pity, because we were all wondering what became of the girls. My rating: 3 stars.

 

I remember enjoying the movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House staring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The book had an entry in 1,000 Books to Read before You Die so I thought I'd give it a try. (First of all, a shout out to my university library that is slow to weed its collection. Because of that, many of these old gems are readily available--and no wait lists.) This one, however entertaining, didn't do it for me. This is the story of Mr. Blandings and his wife who decide to buy a country home, but end up tearing down the home they buy to build a new one. It details the ups and downs (mostly downs) of every facet of the building process including procuring financing, digging a well, having plans drawn, and choosing paint colors. It's farcical, and yet, very true to life from what we see on HGTV these days. What didn't work for me about this one is the negative tone. I have a good sense of humor, and I like dry humor, but this was just too adverse and discouraging for my taste. Mr. and Mrs. Blandings don't get along well, and they go after each other, and Mr. Blandings picks fights with everyone, though we're meant to think of his as the downtrodden victim. All in all, had Mr. Blandings been a more pitiable character, this would have worked much better. My rating: 3 stars.

 

The Postal Confessions is Max Garland's first book of poetry and one of my favorites to return to. As Max was my college poetry workshop professor, and was the poet laurate of Wisconsin, I'm biased. This book is full of charming, approachable, nostalgic poems with a little humor thrown in. A true treasure. My rating: 4 stars.

 

I did not know when I bought The Guest Book nor when I committed to listening to it months later that I was about to read a story of white privilege. Had I known, I would not had started it per my 2020 reading goal to avoid books about outrage. It's a shame, too, because it is beautifully written and the characters are fleshed. It took a long time to get preachy, but when it did, I felt duped and betrayed. With a subtler hand, it could have been great. A note on the audio: it's pretty terrible, likely the muddiest audiobook I've ever listened to, so you might want to read this in paper. My rating: 3 stars.

 

 

I was looking forward to reading Africa, Amazing Africa ridiculously much. To learn a little bit about each African country sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me for exactly that reason: there wasn't room enough to write more than a little about each country, just one page each, and most of that was artwork. Also, there was something that bothered me that's hard to put into words, so I'll try to illustrate it. When I say Rwanda what do you think of? What about Somalia? What about Sudan? Genocide, pirates, war. But the book talked about things such as how much people in this country like soccer. Fine, I guess, for kids, but it seemed, and I struggle for the word...disingenuous? whitewashed? It made me uncomfortable. I know there would be a general reluctance to discuss genocide in a children's book, but I know plenty that do discuss such topics, and don't we need to? Those do forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I don't know, but I was dissatisfied. My rating: 2 stars. 

 

I just don't know what to say about A Passage to India at all. It's something I'd been meaning to read for a long time, so finally picked up the audio version, which was good. But what did I think of it? I really don't know. What was it about? I don't really know that either. I think it's meant to be a portrait of India in the 1920s, several decades before they gain their independence from England. It's also meant to be, I think, an exploration of the Indian and British cultures and people and where they clash and the misunderstandings that come about. Beyond this, I don't really know what to tell you. I'd like to discuss this one with others who have read it to determine if it really is a meandering story of confused cultures or something deeper. Perhaps, being 100 years old, it's lost a bit of its potency. I really don't know. I think I could come to really like the book, though, if I knew. My rating: 3 stars.  

 

Erick Larson's work is a bit hit or miss with me. I loved The Devil in the White City (my review here), but Dead Wake, which everyone seems to love, left me cold. Thunderstuck has been waiting for me on my bookshelf for a long time, and this month when I was looking for some good nonfiction on audio, I decided to try it. It was quite wonderful, definitely more on a par with The Devil in the White City than Dead Wake, in fact, very similar in tone, writing, and plot. This is the simultaneous stories of Marconi developing his radio telegraph system and the death of opera hopeful Charlotte Bell. It was fast-paced and interesting, but I didn't feel the two stories came together in a perfectly satisfying way. Still, if you liked The Devil..., do give this one a read. My rating: 4 stars.