The Cue Card

Well last week’s U.S. Inauguration went thankfully well with no disruptions, and the singers (Lady Gaga, J.Lo, and Garth Brooks) and the youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman were quite the talk. Gorman, the youngest Inaugural poet at age 22, seemed to belt it out of the park with the reading of her inspired poem “The Hill We Climb.” For those interested, Gorman’s first poetry collection comes out Sept. 21 and to find out more about her you can check out her fun interview with CNN here.

I’m still thinking about it, but I’m also gearing up for my flight Feb. 1 to California to go stay and help my folks. There’s quite a few restrictions now on international travel, but I’m willing to meet all the requirements as I see this as essential travel. I feel good that people on the flight will all have to show a recent negative CV test result in order to board. So there’s much to do to get ready. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with reviews of two books I finished lately. 

At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman/Algonquin/304 pages /2021  

Synopsis: Seligman’s debut novel follows the life of 20-year-old Maddy Donaldo who is homeless, living with her dog Root and a few others in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. One night after she unwittingly comes across a dying homeless boy amid the bushes and his attacker, her world is turned upside down. The police and the dead boy’s parents want to talk with her … and ultimately Maddy must decide about her life on the streets and whether to make a change or chance having a similar fate. 

My Thoughts: This first-person narrated story mixes being a bit of a murder mystery with a sociological look into Maddy’s life among the homeless in San Francisco. Her close-knit group, which meanders from their make-shift camp at Golden Gate Park to the downtown streets and shelters, includes her dog Root, a pit bull mix, and her friends: Hope, Fleet, who has a pet rat named Tiny, and her boy interest Ash. Like the others, Maddy has had a tough childhood with mostly absent parents and has been at Golden Gate Park a couple years when her dog and her come upon the dying teenager and his attacker amid the bushes … and she goes running. Uh-oh.

There’s decent suspense about whether the creepy attacker will come after her, especially once she testifies at a preliminary hearing against him. A bit surprisingly, the dead boy’s parents who attend the hearing befriend Maddy — thinking perhaps she’s the last link to their homeless son even though Maddy did not know him. They want to help her, or get her to reunite with her family, though she doesn’t want their help and would rather spend time with Ash and the others. Still Maddy takes it upon herself to investigate their son’s time in the park and his death and in the process comes to do some soul-searching of her own. You will want to read till the end to see what happens. 

I liked how the author blended the issues of homelessness into the story, so you become aware of them in the context. The story made apparent the backgrounds of the homeless such as Maddy; how their lives are often unpredictable and count on parks and shelters; and how they are often beaten up and harassed while on city streets by police and others. You also get a sense of the complexities of homelessness — how there are no easy fixes and how the homeless at times reject help or are unable to change. Maddy is a flawed protagonist who in that way is exasperating at times but also likably comes to try to find her way.  

“At the Edge of the Haight” is not a perfect novel — it’s a bit simple in its telling and uneven — with tangents that pull from the main plot — and maybe too the dead boy’s parents seem to act to an extant a bit unlikely — but despite this I felt pretty immersed in Maddy’s story and felt the novel explored some thought-provoking and moving angles of being homeless on the streets. The author, a journalist, acknowledges in an end note the homeless people she met for the research of the book, which undoubtably lends to its authentic feel and immersive quality. It made Maddy’s story feel close-up and personal and I was rooting for her from the early pages on.

Thanks to the publisher Algonquin Books for providing me with a copy of this new novel (out Jan. 19) to review.

The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest
by Ed Caesar / Avid Reader / 288 pages / 2020

Synopsis:  The true tale of one man’s attempt to be the first to climb Mount Everest in 1934. 

My Thoughts: I hadn’t heard of the British mountaineer Morris Wilson before this book came out, but I love these kind of true adventure tales and this one was a whopper. 

Wilson was one of those World War I veterans who fought bravely under dire circumstances during the war, eventually becoming injured by machine gun fire and sent home, forever changed by his service. He couldn’t adjust to post-war England so he traveled for several years, notably to New Zealand where he lived married for awhile and then returned home to England after shedding two wives. There he fell in love with a friend’s wife — Enid (his soul mate) — and took up a period of fasting to recuperate from an illness said to be both physical and mental. 

It was while recuperating in 1932 that Wilson read about the failed attempts on Everest and decided to climb it alone. His plan was to fly a small airplane to Tibet, crash-land it on the upper slopes of Everest and walk to the summit.  It was a crazy idea … especially since he was not a climber and at the time he did not yet know how to fly. Yet by April 1933 he was off in a small Gypsy Moth airplane setting his sights on Everest. His journey would be full of twists and surprises and he eventually would have to leave his plane and trek on foot (in a costume so as not to get caught) with three Sherpas from India to Everest in Tibet. His attempts on the mountain would be epic, though the first time he didn’t even know to use ice crampons for the climb.

Author Ed Caesar brings the tale and the era of Morris Wilson vividly to life despite there not being much earlier information about Wilson to go on. Some of the book recounts Caesar’s fruitless efforts to find relatives and primary sources about Wilson, which took years. But what he eventually is able to piece together through Wilson’s letters (many to his love Enid), diary entries, and the historical context is an engaging look at this man who was quite a vivacious character, lost in some ways, and very determined by his Everest obsession. 

Wilson reminds me a bit of the British sailor Donald Crowhurst, who in attempting to sail alone around the world in 1968, didn’t have the skill or the experience but wanted the notoriety of the adventure and was determined to undertake the dangerous journey regardless of the warning signs. Caesar’s book points to Wilson’s trauma during WWI and how he felt the need to redeem his life and make sense of it. Whatever the case, he was quite a brave (albeit misguided) adventurer with his daring flight to India and his long trek and attempts on Everest during the early climbing era of 1934. It’s an amazing and hard to fathom true story as told in the book. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these — or what do you think about them? And what are you reading? 

Hello. It’s been almost 50 degrees here (so far north), which we are sad about since it will kill our snow for skiing. We need a storm, but there’s nothing in the foreseeable forecast. It won’t be a good day when the polar ice caps melt. Just another thing to add to our long list of worries.

Speaking of which, we have 4 days left to the U.S. Inauguration. Let’s hope for a peaceful and kind transition. Is that too much to ask? I remember being at the Concert on the National Mall for President Barack Obama’s first Inauguration in 2009. Oh yeah, I was there. Ha. Me, Springsteen, U2, Mellencamp, Usher and Stevie Wonder among others. I almost froze my feet off standing out there for four+ hours, but it was a very memorable day … and the concert was a rocking.  

With all the insurrection news the past couple weeks, and the worry about my parents and their health in California, my mind has been distracted beyond belief. But I think things are starting to feel a bit more hopeful and to calm some (though alarmingly the pandemic continues to take thousands of lives per day). Knock on wood for what’s ahead.

How has your reading year started off? Mine has been surprisingly not too bad: I’ve read a few books for my freelance (PW) gig, and finished a long audiobook. So I’m aiming for completing 70 books this year. We will see. I’m not too caught up in the numbers — I’m just hoping for good quality reads and a decent mix of light and heavier books, from an array of authors with diverse backgrounds and locations. What about you … any big reading plans? And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. (p.s. The second book below was finished at the end of 2020.)

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora / Random House / 416 pages / 2020

Synopsis: The novel follows the lives of three women amid their isolated  Southern plantation community that spans slavery times (1850s) and also just after the Civil War in the Reconstruction era. The slave May Belle is a respected healing (conjure) woman who passes her gifts along to her daughter Rue, who becomes a midwife and healer during post-slavery times, though she often uses her healing powers to foment secrets and lies to her advantage. There’s also Varina, the white plantation owner’s daughter who is Rue’s friend from childhood but who is pressured to toe the line to the ways of her white slave-owning family. 

The story, which alternates chapters between slavery time and freedom time, is set in motion by the birth of a strange, mysterious baby; the arrival of a charismatic preacher; and a strange sickness that begins killing the children in the area. With the deaths, the trust in Rue’s healing and midwifery begins to ebb and the community begins to suspect she’s into witchcraft, so she’s left to figure out how to win back their trust. 

My Thoughts: Wow, there’s a lot in this historical novel, and it’s quite a long saga, which I listened to as an audiobook for weeks during my morning dog walks. There were times I wasn’t sure it would end, but I kept going with it. I’m so glad I didn’t stop. I felt it was quite a storytelling feat … following these characters through the end of slavery into the Reconstruction-era to see what would become of them. The timeframe plays an important part as blacks (freed for the first time) and whites (who lose the War) must figure out new ways to live and relate to one another due to the changes. 

It’s a story that delves into the fraught relationships of the mother May Belle, and daughter Rue, and with the white mistress Varina … as they navigate events that test the community. Rue, the main protagonist, is a bit of a conundrum (both good and bad), which adds a bit to the complexity of the story.

My favorite part of the novel was the storytelling and the language the author uses that made the 1850s, ’60s, and Reconstruction era come to life. The author obviously did a lot of research from diaries of the time period to get the whole flavor for the people then, their healing techniques, and how they spoke. I felt like I was right there on the plantation with them. Kudos to the author for this inspired debut novel. Some have compared it to Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel “Washington Black,” which I loved, but it being different … that novel didn’t come to mind for me, despite this being also quite notable. 

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook / Harper / 416 pages / 2020

Synopsis:  In a dystopian future wracked by climate change, a woman (Bea) and her husband (Glen) decide to leave the unlivable, polluted City with their young, ill daughter (Agnes) to join a survival study in the Wilderness State. The governing authority is allowing 20 volunteers to live in the last swath of protected land amid nature, where they must learn to adapt as nomadic hunter-gatherers without help from the outside world. The novel plays out as a portrayal of motherhood (with Bea and Agnes) and humankind, and is a lament of our treatment of nature. It was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize. 

My Thoughts:  This debut novel came out the same month (August 2020) as Charlotte McConaghy’s novel “Migrations,” which is also a bit about nature and humankind’s ruin of it — and I thought I would like it as much (I wanted to), but to me the execution of “The New Wilderness” wasn’t as good a story and I wasn’t drawn into it nearly as much as “Migrations.” I guess I was genuinely a bit surprised that “The New Wilderness” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. 

Still parts of it are compelling and visual — the mechanics of the group (called the Community) — and its fight for survival in the Wilderness State and not knowing if its members would make it while hunting and living off the land, and what would happen to them and with their dealings with the Newcomers arriving and the Rangers who control the area. 

The story reveals the complexities in the relationships between Bea, Glen and Agnes, and with the rest of the group, whose wannabe head honcho Carl seems like a testosterone narcissist. Some of the writing of the action and the natural world is good, though some of the plot to me seemed to sort of drift along at times — like it didn’t know where it was going or have a plan to what it actually wanted to do. I was hoping the plot was going to go in a different direction than it eventually did. 

And while I liked the toughness of the mother Bea’s character, who is sort of the de facto leader of the group, some of her actions and the ending don’t do much with or for her. Agnes is one to watch for. I listened to the book on audio, which was a pretty easy but long listen. If I had the print copy …. the longness of it as well as its drifting and conclusion might have made me want to throw it against a wall, ha. It does seem like it’s set up to have a sequel. 

The group dynamics of the story made it seem to me sort of like: “Lord of the Flies” meets “Hunger Games” or something like that … but I wouldn’t elevate it to Margaret Atwood’s “MaddAddam’s” trilogy or such.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books, or how is your reading year starting? Stay well. 

Well I’m finally getting my 2020 year-end stats and list out. It was an unprecedented year with the pandemic and millions of lives lost around the globe and with a White House that worked to overturn a democratic election. It’s been disturbing, shocking, and upsetting to say the least. And now today I’m watching an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with a mob in the Rotunda and the Chambers. This is outrageous. It’s come to this.

Which leads me to wonder how I was able to concentrate enough this year to surpass my reading goal of 60 books, but it’s probably because of all the lockdowns and cancellations — there was not much open or places to go. My part-time tournament officiating job was shutdown … and I eventually picked up a freelance gig in November to review some books, which ended up boosting my reading towards the end of 2020. It helped too that Biden/Harris won the election in early November, which was a great relief. Let’s just hope there’s no more political violence in the U.S. in the weeks ahead.

As for which books were my favorites — there were many good ones that took me away to faraway places and stories. I narrowed down my picks to 11 novels and 7 nonfiction books from a long list of ones I enjoyed and reviewed. While Stella, at left, was more interested in playing with her kangaroo.

I think it was Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s novel “Migrations,” which I finished late in the year … that sort of captured the global times and general feelings for me this year — so I’ll pick that one as my favorite novel of 2020 — and Nina Willmer’s 2016 book “Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall as my favorite nonfiction read … since it taught me quite a bit about life during the Cold War. My big sagas of the year were Min Jin Lee’s novel “Pachinko” and Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers” — both of which I was very pleased to finally get to. Let me know what you think of my lists below and whether you liked some of these as well. 

67 books finished
18 nonfiction, 49 fiction
13 male authors, 54 women authors
35 print or ebooks
32 audiobooks
15 Non-white authors
50 American authors
5 Asian born/raised authors
3 British authors
3 Canadian authors
2 Irish authors
1 Africa born/raised author
1 Polish author
1 German author
1 Australian author

Favorite Fiction

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (2020)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (2020)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (2020)
The Innocents by Michael Crummey (2019)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020)
Writers & Lovers by Lily King (2020)

Favorite Nonfiction

• Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner (2016) 
• She Came to Sleigh: The Life & Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (2019) 
• She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (2019) 
• A Bookshop in Berlin by Francoise Frenkel (1945)
• Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki & James D. Houston (1973) 
• Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road by Kate Harris (2018) 
• The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom (2019) 

Favorite Audiobooks 

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy  (read by Barrie Kreinik)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (read by Marin Ireland)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (read by Greta Jung, Glenn Davis)
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (read by Kimberly Farr)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (read by Allyson Ryan)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (read by Cassandra Campbell)
The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett (read by Shayna Small)
The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (read by Mozhan Marno)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (read by Traci Kato-Kiriyama)

Categories: 

Post-Apocalyptic / Dystopian / or Speculative Novels

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (2020)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020)
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (2020)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (1994)
A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (2020)

Pandemic or Plague Novels

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue (2020)
The End of October by Lawrence Wright (2020)
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (2020)

Memoirs 

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (2019)
Already Toast: Caregiving & Burnout in America by Kate Washington (2021)
Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence by Tanya Selvaratnam (2021)

Classics 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) 

Coming of Age Novels

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett (2019)
Writers & Lovers by Lily King (2020)
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The German House by Annette Hess (2019)

Debut Novels

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (2020)
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (2019)
What’s Left of Me Is Yours by Stephanie Scott (2020)
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (2020)
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar (2018)
The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell (2020)
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel (2009)
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (2019)
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens (2020)
The German House by Annette Hess (2019)
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett (2019)

Crime & Popular Fiction Novels:

These Women by Ivy Pochoda (2020)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (2019)
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (2020)
You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (2020)
The Holdout by Graham Moore (2020)
What’s Left of Me Is Yours by Stephanie Scott (2020)
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (2019)
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (2020)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (2020)
The Holdout by Graham Moore (2020)
The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell (2020)

Literary & Contemporary Fiction:

I Give It to You by Valerie Martin (2020)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (2020)
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (2020)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (2020)
Heft by Liz Moore (2012)
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel (2009)
Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh (2016)
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar (2019)
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (2019)
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (2019)
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (2019)
Monogamy by Sue Miller (2020)
The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (2019)
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker (2020)
The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve (2017)
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (2019)
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman (2020)
A Keeper by Graham Norton (2019)
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier (2019)

Hi. Here’s wishing everyone a very happy holiday week. We are staying put and planning to open gifts from under our tree on Christmas Day. Then we’ll do a couple Zoom calls with relatives in the afternoon. Maybe go for a ski … since we are bracing for a major snowstorm to hit here later tonight and Tuesday, so we’ll be digging out the rest of the week. It’ll be fun to have some snow, we actually need it for the ski slopes. I’ve included a couple photos taken when we were at the cabin in the mountains just a week or so ago. It was a nice winter getaway, and I managed miraculously not to wipe out too badly on the icy cross-country tracks. 

In book news, I was thinking about all the 2020 books I wanted to get to but are still waiting (patiently) on my To Be Read list. Throughout the year it seems books rise and fall in priority continually on my list. I hear a bad thing about one then it falls off, then I hear something else and it goes back on and moves up etc. My list is often in flux. Is yours?

Despite the pandemic, 2020 turned out to be a strong year for high-quality reads; certainly most books were written before Covid but still the industry was able to crank them out. Below are several fiction and nonfiction ones from 2020 (in no particular order) that are at the top of my TBR list, which I’m looking forward to pursuing in 2021. I will get to them, though I also have another 20 novels on the list that come after these, sigh. 

Fiction / TBR

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (Oct. 2020)
The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Dare (Feb. 2020)
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar  (Sept. 2020)
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora (April 2020)
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (July 2020)
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Sept. 2020)
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter (Oct. 2020) 

Nonfiction / TBR

Sigh Gone, A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran (April 2020) 
Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Aug. 2020)
A Promised Land by Barack Obama (Nov. 2020)
A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom by Brittany K. Barnett (Sept. 2020)
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener (Jan. 2020)
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson (Feb. 2020)

Let me know if any of these were a thumbs-up or thumbs-down with you, and I will adjust my list accordingly. And now I’ll leave you with a review of an audiobook I finished lately. 

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary / Flatiron Books / 336 pages / 2019

Granted, a romantic-comedy kind of novel is not something I normally pick up but after all the depressing stuff in the news and with my reading, I thought I needed something fun and light to help me through the holidays, right?  

This British debut is a pretty sweet, feel-good story (which now is a label that sort of makes me want to run a bit in the opposite direction but it has a quaint premise) … about a guy named Leon who rents his place and bed to share with a stranger named Tiffy Moore for when he’s not there but working nights and weekends as a hospice caretaker. They never meet but exchange daily menial Post-It notes at the flat for quite awhile — where we learn that Tiffy has had a bad breakup with ex-boyfriend Justin, and Leon’s relationship with his girlfriend is unstable too. The flatmates eventually accidentally bump into one another in a funny scene at the flat that is a bit awkward to say the least and become acquainted over time. There’s subplots having to do with Tiffy’s work (as a crafts book editor) and with Leon’s brother who’s in prison and looking to have his case appealed. Though Tiffy’s main worries concern her past relationship with Justin, who left her for someone else. 

It’s a story and genre that reminded me a bit of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (if you liked that) especially since both ex-boyfriend Justin and Leon come to interact with Tiffy … in a way somewhat reminiscent of Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy with Bridget, though Justin seems more controlling. Despite that, this seems more feel-good and not as humorous a take as the one with the delightfully clunky bad Bridget Jones, though I liked how Tiffy had quite the lively extrovert personality. She has some spunk to her that makes “The Flatshare” not fall totally flat so to speak. 

The audiobook narration of Tiffy sounded a bit like it was the singer Adele, ha, but she’s probably too busy to be doing book narration on the side. (In fact, it’s British actress Carrie Hope Fletcher as Tiffy and Irish actor Kwaku Fortune as Leon doing a fine job performing the audio narration.) There’s some fun dialogue and perceptive inner thoughts of both Tiffy and Leon who alternate chapters throughout the novel … but ultimately the story went on a bit much and I just felt it was a bit too sweet for me. It gave me sort of a sugar cavity or head rush, and it all tied up just a bit too perfectly. Still with everything going on, it was fine for a light rom-com break. 

And now I can get back to all the grime, grit, death, and drama from the novels I normally pick up. 

What about you — have you read this one or reached for anything lighter during these pandemic days? Till next time: a very Happy Holidays to you!

Hi. I hope everyone is hanging in there. Isn’t it strange that things can get busy this holiday season even though we’re pretty much in a strict lockdown. There’s no get-togethers or much open (even the tennis facilities here have shutdown for a month), but there’s still holiday cards to do, decorating, online shopping, Zoom calls, and baking if you’re into that. I’m still working on our small Christmas tree (at left), which I was able to put into the car and take home this week. It needs some ornaments and love.

The good news too is that the first shipment of the vaccine will roll out in our city next Wednesday to health-care workers; it’s just 3,900 doses but still it’s a start … that hope is on the way. And tomorrow on Saturday we’re headed to a cabin in the mountains for a few days at a remote place that offers many miles of cross-country ski trails where we can cruise with our dog. It’s our Christmas gift — this winter getaway. It’ll probably be around 20F as the high so we’ll have to wear layers and bring our gear.

In book news, there’s many Best Of Lists out already. I won’t have my list of favorites out till closer to New Year’s, but here are some lists below to whet your appetite:

The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2020
The Washinton Post’s 10 Best Books of 2020
The Los Angeles Times’ 10 Best Books of 2020
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of 2020
The Goodreads Choice Award Winners 2020

And now I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of audiobooks I finished lately. (I’ve been busy reading memoirs for my freelance gig; most of which have been self-published books for an in-house contest, but if my reviews of the traditional published ones come out, I’ll let you know.) 

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy / Flatiron Books / 272 pages / 2020

Often I get to my favorite novels of the year in December … go figure, but it happens. And this novel by an Australian author will likely make my year-end list. Kudos to Charlotte McConaghy for blasting me out of my stupor of run-of-the-mill books. It’s a bit of a dark and sad tale but it fits so well into the milieu of 2020 that you can’t imagine it anywhere else. 

“Migrations” features  Franny Stone — quite a flawed but equally alluring protagonist who hopes to follow the Arctic terns on their last migration from Greenland to Antarctica … as climate change is wrecking havoc and many species on the planet are becoming extinct. She manages to talk her way onto a fishing boat and there ingratiates herself with Captain Ennis and the crew to follow the terns south in hopes that the birds will lead them to a big catch of fish. The narrative follows the crew’s adventurous journey and also alternates chapters with Franny‘s past life in Galway, Ireland, about growing up with her mother, and how she comes to meet the love of her life ornithologist professor Niall Lynch. 

Niall is kind and patient with the very lonely Franny and the two make quite a match … but nothing’s ever easy and Franny’s life is filled with dark holes. In time you come to find she’s serving a prison sentence of some sort… but you don’t know why … until — along with the sea journey’s endgame — it becomes clear near the end of the book. 

Ohh the novel is quite a love story between Franny and Niall and also with nature itself … those beloved birds and the end of the animal kingdom, which the ugliness of humans have made extinct. There’s some beautiful writing along the way and you come to feel you’re on the boat and you’re traveling alongside Franny as she and Captain Ennis and the crew endure some dangerous episodes at sea on their expedition south. The alternating chapters of Franny’s days with Niall and her past leading up to getting on the boat are equally fetching … and sad like a dagger to the heart. 

I recommend the audio read by Barrie Kreinik who seems to nail the narration of Franny Stone so well. It’s a book that will leave you with a gut punch and an Antarctic wind that’ll blow straight through you. 

These Women by Ivy Pochoda / Ecco / 352 pages / 2020

I appear to be in the minority about how much to like this murder mystery/crime novel set in south Los Angeles … which has received a lot of very high ratings on Goodreads. It features six women (a mother who lost her daughter, a young dancer, a survivor, a vice cop, an artist, and a witness) whose lives have all been impacted in some way by the acts of a serial killer who 15 years ago killed 13 women (mostly prostitutes) … and who has recently resurfaced to kill again. 

Yikes it is a pretty gritty bleak story, which I listened to as an audiobook, and perhaps the timing of it just wasn’t right for me being near the holidays. It’s not exactly happy stuff but is filled with hard lives on the streets kind of thing, making a buck anyway they can and being murdered by a violent nut.

Some of the writing of the various female characters and the often R-rated language and dialogue seemed authentic and capturing. I was drawn into these women’s worlds (like it or not) and it sort of reminded me of the real-life Grim Sleeper case in Los Angeles … but then it seemed also to diverge from that. The ending, which somehow I hung on for, is creepy and the atmosphere is heightened by the wildfires ravaging the hillsides. Goodness I will have to take a break now … and delve into something a bit lighter and happier. Still I have wanted to try L.A. author Ivy Pochoda for a long while now and so finally I have. She has a feminist take to her crime story that makes it more unique and welcomed. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or authors and if so, what did you think? I’m sending a virtual hug and thanks to my blogging & reading friends whose messages have kept me going this past year and a very Happy Holidays & stay well wishes to you all!

What a week eh? The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is almost upon us but is anyone going anywhere? Some of the airports are actually looking busy, though with so many Covid cases, things are just getting nuts. And the current occupant of the White House looks more and more desperate trying to overturn the U.S. election with his enablers staying silent. What a troubling precedent. Let’s hope it’s put to rest soon.

Meanwhile President Obama’s memoirs came out this past week and I snagged a copy before it sold out at our local indie bookstore. It’s a beautiful book and I look forward to starting it. Apparently “A Promised Land” sold nearly 890,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada in its first 24 hours, while Michelle Obama’s book in 2018 sold 750,000 in its first day — both huge sellers that have helped the book industry stay vibrant, yay!

Also in book news, I see that one of my predictions came true: that Douglas Stuart’s debut novel “Shuggie Bain” won the Booker Prize this past week. I still hope to read the book, which has been in high demand at the library all year. It is said to be quite a bleak story about the working-class life of a young gay man and his alcoholic mother in Glasgow in the 1980s, uh-oh. 

But my other predictions for the National Book Award for fiction and the Giller Prize were off by a mile: Rumaan Alam’s novel “Leave the World Behind” did not win the National Book Award nor did Emily St. John Mandel’s novel “The Glass Hotel” win the Giller.

So instead congrats to Charles Yu for winning the National Book Award for fiction for his satirical novel “Interior Chinatown” about an aspiring actor who confronts stereotypes in his quest to get better roles. Also kudos to Souvankham Thammavongsa for winning Canada’s Giller Prize for her short story collection “How to Pronounce Knife” that “traces the stories of immigrants building new lives far from home, straining against the mores of both societies as they search for a sense of belonging.” Check these out if you haven’t already. They sound good. 

And now, I’ll leave you with a review of Rumaan Alam’s slow-burn thriller “Leave the World Behind,” which I finished as an audiobook this past week, read by the wonderful Marin Ireland. (Please note: I have recently picked up a freelance gig, reading and reviewing for a trade magazine, so it’s uncertain how much time I can find for my personal reading outside of that for this blog, but we will see as time goes on. Things are busy!)

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam / Ecco / 241 pages / 2020 

Yeah I went into this blind—not knowing much—which worked well. It starts out pretty simply and I wasn’t sure what the big deal was … a white family (Amanda, Clay, and their two teenage kids) is renting a secluded place in the Hamptons when the supposed owners—a prosperous older Black couple GH and his wife Ruth—return due to an apparent power outage on the East Coast. 

Soon it appears that something has happened in the U.S. or globally, but nobody really knows what. Is it a disaster or is it an attack? All information has been cut off. Little by little the story beings to pull you in and feel a bit eerie. Flamingoes fly into the pool … and a migration of hundreds of deer show up in the woods nearby. What do the animals know? The families hunker down but then weird things begin to happen like a loud sonic sound outside … and the son Archie becomes sick. Then later more loud sounds. And still the two families don’t really know what is happening and become full of fear. 

I thought the novel’s creep-factor and the interaction and dialogue between the two families are well done. The novel felt not only scary but also subtly satirical in places about these family members lives, making preconceived notions based on skin color and class … and how we’re all too connected to our phones—with a need for constant updated information—and are useless without them. There were times I laughed about how ridiculous the characters are or what they said or were thinking … despite the quiet horror of the situation. It’s weird that there’s a bit of uneasy humor even in times of fear but sometimes there is. 

Kudos to the author for the interesting mix. Much of the writing is well done. Though I’m still wondering about the last chapter and whether it was a bit of a letdown and a cop-out. There are no easy answers to grasp onto here. So you might feel like chucking the novel against the wall when you finish. But yet it seems so timely and believable for this year … it feels like 2020 in many claustrophobic and fearful ways—the year of anything or everything bad. I think reviews were split on Goodreads, but I recommend this one. 

That’s all for now. What about you—have you read any of these books mentioned—and what did you think? 

Happy Remembrance Day. We took this past long weekend away, thinking it would be good after the U.S. election to relax a bit and get out and walk in the woods with the dog and see new sights, which was all well and good.

Little did we know politics as usual would still be going on when we returned and the election results not conceded. How crazy and disheartening. The vote is clear, so let the democratic process stand and the next administration get ready. Meanwhile Covid cases seem to be surging everywhere … so I guess stress still abounds. It’s best to stay safe, vigilant, and escape whenever possible into various books and discussions. Below are reviews of three I finished lately. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson / Penguin / 1962

This was my Halloween read this year and it did not disappoint.

From the beginning you know that: Merricat, age 18, and her older sister Constance Blackwood are living with their feeble Uncle Julian in a large mansion on an estate and the rest of their family is dead. Merricat who narrates the story loathes the villagers who bully her and mock their family, and only leaves their locked gate to shop in town twice a week, but Constance, who cooks and tends to their vegetable garden, hasn’t left the place in six years. 

It’s an unsettling start … and something or all feels amiss. Merricat, who has her superstitions of burying coins, nailing up items, and repeating her safe words, worries change is in the air and that something is coming that will disturb her and her sister’s safe, confined world. And indeed cousin Charles Blackwood arrives out of the blue to stay, but seems only interested in their money. Uh-oh. Merricat is not pleased and wants him gone.

Little by little you come to understand what happened to the rest of the Blackwood family and why the girls keep to themselves — being two close sisters who rely on one another and want to continue living undisturbed in their large house …. which comes to some ruin in due time. Uh-oh. 

Merricat is quite a character, like a feral cat, who hides in the woods on their property, and seems much younger. She loves only her sister Constance, and Jonas, her cat. Her cousin Charles poses a problem for her and she feels he must be dealt with. 

It’s epic Shirley Jackson … unsettling with a building dread of what will come and has happened. There’s a feeling of isolation, of being an outsider, and being persecuted by the villagers … which reminded me of Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery.” It also reminded me slightly of the excellent 2009 HBO film “Grey Gardens” (starring Drew Barrymore & Jessica Lange) — although there it was with a mother and daughter and here it’s with two sisters — but both feature two close relatives living in a ruined state and eschewing things beyond their walls. It’s both creepy and something you can’t turn away from.

Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road by Kate Harris / 2018

This is a book I read for Nonfiction November and which gained considerable praise when it came out in Canada a couple years ago. 

What It’s About: Part memoir, part travelogue, this is about a Canadian girl Kate who dreams about being a scientist and an astronaut on a mission to Mars but instead ends up bicycling the Silk Road from Europe to Asia with her childhood friend Mel. In 2006 between her stints at Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar) and then MIT as a microbiologist, Kate had cycled with Mel part of the Silk Road and got a taste for the adventure. Then later when Kate bails on her MIT lab life, the two head back to finish the Silk Road from 2010 to 2011. 

It’s quite an undertaking that had interested Kate ever since reading about explorer Marco Polo when she was young and his travels along the Silk Road around 1271 to 1295. And as a cyclist myself I was interested in Kate and Mel’s long-distance biking through such rigorous terrain … as they pedaled east across the Caucasus and Central Asia, and then south across Tibet, and west across Nepal then north into India, ending at the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas at the edge of the Tibetan plateau. 

It’s an epic journey across some incredible lands and plateaus, where they encounter various people from different countries who are mostly helpful to them long the way. It’s not all about the biking, quite a bit of the book includes the author’s thoughts on exploration, geography, history, science, borders, ecology, and geo-political landscapes. Much of it I found interesting and well-paced with some beautiful writing at times of the sights and places, though there are some slower parts later that I found a bit denser.  

Still I marveled at Kate and Mel’s travels and was interested in their lives and the countries, people, and cultures they encounter along the way. I learned quite a bit (especially about Kate’s focus on the relations between China and Tibet … as well as what “the stans” are like (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.) of Asia, and it sparked my interest in long distance bike rides. I think Kate (along with Mel) are quite the adventurers, naturalists, badasses, thinkers, and in general do-gooders towards people they meet and the planet. I’ll be interested to see what the author puts out next from her life off the grid in a log cabin in northern British Columbia. 

Monogamy by Sue Miller / Harper Books / 352 pages / 2020 

What It’s About: Annie (a photographer) and Graham (a vivacious bookstore owner) have had a long marriage in Cambridge, Mass., which is the second marriage for both. Annie is friends with Frieda (Graham’s first wife) and their married son Lucas who now works in publishing in NY … and Annie and Graham also have a grown daughter Sarah who lives in San Francisco. All seems fairly happy and close until something happens to Graham … which sends Annie spiraling down … and even more so after she learns something about his life — which makes her wonder if she ever really knew him. Uh-oh. 

This is a slow-burn of a novel — that you know with a title like that is likely not going to be about a marriage that has been always faithful. The novel swirls around with Annie’s grief and thoughts about marriage and monogamy (even in her past) and there’s also chapters from the perspectives of the ex-wife Frieda, and the two adult kids Lucas and Sarah that round out this character-driven novel about long-lasting love. 

The beginning half with Graham I thought was the most interesting, but after that … things eventually begin to wallow a bit with Annie. There are some interesting thoughts on marriage and relationships, but it’s quite an internal journey on getting Annie back on her feet … and her evolution on thinking about Graham and their love. 

There’s not a lot of action, which I was okay with for most of the novel — which I listened to as an audiobook read by the author — though towards the end I sort of started to tire of Annie. Maybe it was just me or the fact that it’s so internal and swirls over the situation that it got a bit tiring. But still I’m glad I listened to it and the author Sue Miller does an excellent job of reading it for the audio. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or authors and if so, what did you think?