2021 Year End Survey & Top Reads List

2021 may not have been the best year thanks to the continuation of the pandemic, but with regard to my reading, I am very pleased. I met my goal on Goodreads, completing 63 books (my goal was 60) and surpassing the past two years' numbers by 8 books. Once again, I participated in three reading challenges (20 Books of Summer, RIP XVI and Nonfiction November), which helped to motivate me to read more of my own books.  

Books Read: 63

Print: 41

Audio: 21

Ebook: 1

ARCs: 5

Rereads: 4

Fiction: 45

Nonfiction: 14

Poetry: 4 (I never know how to categorize this!)

Mystery/Thriller: 17

SciFi/Fantasy: 3

Classics: 1

Teen/YA: 1

Memoir: 6

Travel Memoir: 2

Self-Improvement: 1

History: 1

Books in Translation: 1

Male Authors: 12

Female Authors: 51

New Authors: 27

From My Stacks: 51

Borrowed: 12

Ratings:

5 stars: 6

4.5 stars: 8

4 stars: 19

3.5 stars: 2

3 stars: 14

2 stars: 10

1 star: 4

Top Reads of 2021:

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson (5/5) 

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (5/5)

Circe by Madeline Miller (5/5)

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti (5/5)

Bear Town by Fredrik Backman (5/5)

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny (5/5)

Writers & Lovers by Lily King (4.5/5)

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin (4.5/5)

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand (4.5/5)

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo (4.5/5)

Testimony by Anita Shreve (4.5/5)

Still Me by Jojo Moyes (4.5/5)

House Rules by Jodi Picoult (4.5/5)

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (4.5/5)

Honorable Mentions:

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (4/5)

Falling by T.J. Newman (4/5)

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (4/5)

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz (4/5)

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano (4/5)

On Island Time by Hilary Stewart (4/5)

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (4/5)

The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon (4/5)

Mourn Not Your Dead by Deborah Crombie (4/5)

And Justice There is None by Deborah Crombie (4/5)

Kissed a Sad Goodbye by Deborah Crombie (4/5)

A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie (4/5)

#1 Book of 2021: The Splendid and the Vile

Find my complete 2021 list (including all reviews) here.

Find my previous Year End Surveys and Top Ten Lists here. 

How I kept track of my reading:

 

I'm going to try a spreadsheet for 2022.

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Fiction

2020 Viking

Finished on December 21, 2021

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

Until now, I had never read anything by Matt Haig, but after reading several glowing reviews for The Midnight Library, I decided to give my mom a copy last year for Christmas. Lucky me, I get to borrow her books once she's finished, so it eventually wound up on my TBR shelf where it remained for many months. My daughter, who has just recently started reading for pleasure, mentioned that she had read Haig's novel, so I decided to move it to the top of the stack and try to get it read before the end of the year. What a thought-provoking and delightful novel! I thoroughly enjoyed the story and found myself reflecting on some of my choices in life, trying to imagine where I would be today had I chosen a different path or made a different decision. While I have made a few poor choices over the years (who hasn't?), I wouldn't be who I am, or where I am today, had I taken an alternate path. 

All in all, The Midnight Library is a quick and entertaining read and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. However, it's not one I'll likely read again and I wonder just how memorable it will be a year from now. 

 

Yeah, No. Not Happening.

 

Yeah, No. Not Happening.: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F*ck It All--and How You Can Too by Karen Karbo

Nonfiction

2020 HarperAudio

Narrated by the author

Finished on December 21, 2021

Rating: 1/5 (Poor)

Publisher's Blurb:

The author of the acclaimed, bestselling In Praise of Difficult Women delivers a hilarious feminist manifesto that encourages us to reject “self-improvement” and instead learn to appreciate and flaunt our complex, and flawed, human selves.

Why are we so obsessed with being our so-called best selves? Because our modern culture force feeds women lies designed to heighten their insecurities: “You can do it all—crush it at work, at home, in the bedroom, at PTA and at Pilates—and because you can, you should. We can show you how!”

Karen Karbo has had enough. She’s taking a stand against the cultural and societal pressures, marketing, and media influences that push us to spend endless time, energy and money trying to “fix” ourselves—a race that has no finish line and only further increases our send of self-dissatisfaction and loathing. “Yeah, no, not happening,” is her battle cry.

In this wickedly smart and entertaining book, Karbo explores how “self-improvery” evolved from the provenance of men to women. Recast as “consumers” in the 1920s, women, it turned out, could be seduced into buying anything that might improve not just their lives, but their sense of self-worth. Today, we smirk at Mad Men-era ads targeting 1950s housewives—even while savvy marketers, aided and abetted by social media “influencers,” peddle skin care “systems,” skinny tea, and regimens that promise to deliver endless happiness. We’re not simply seduced into dropping precious disposable income on empty promises; the underlying message is that we can’t possibly know what’s good for us, what we want, or who we should be. Calling BS, Karbo blows the lid off of this age-old trend and asks women to start embracing their awesomely imperfect selves.

There is no one more dangerous than a woman who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. Yeah, No, Not Happening is a call to arms to build a posse of dangerous women who swear off self-improvement and its peddlers. A welcome corrective to our inner-critic, Karbo’s manifesto will help women restore their sanity and reclaim their self-worth.

I have no idea what possessed me to download this audiobook. I'm not a reader of self-improvement books, so I am completely baffled. I decided to listen to it during Nonfiction November, but didn't get around to it until December. It clocks in under seven hours of listening time, so I was able to get through it quickly, but it's not one that I can recommend. Karbo claims to shun self-improvement, but this book is essentially just that. If I had been reading the print edition, I would have quit early on, but it was easy to listen as I walked, ever hopeful for a nugget or two of good advice. My advice to you? If you must, get it from your library rather than spend your money. And, be aware of an overabundance of f-bombs. I should have guessed that from the title.

I received a complimentary copy from Libro.fm. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Delancey

 

Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction - Memoir

2014 Simon & Schuster

Finished on December 17, 2021

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

In this funny, frank, tender memoir and New York Times bestseller, the author of A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.

When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, he was a trained composer with a handful of offbeat interests: espresso machines, wooden boats, violin-building, and ice cream–making. So when Brandon decided to open a pizza restaurant, Molly was supportive—not because she wanted him to do it, but because the idea was so far-fetched that she didn’t think he would. Before she knew it, he’d signed a lease on a space. The restaurant, Delancey, was going to be a reality, and all of Molly’s assumptions about her marriage were about to change.

Together they built Delancey: gutting and renovating the space on a cobbled-together budget, developing a menu, hiring staff, and passing inspections. Delancey became a success, and Molly tried to convince herself that she was happy in their new life until—in the heat and pressure of the restaurant kitchen—she realized that she hadn’t been honest with herself or Brandon.

With evocative photos by Molly and twenty new recipes for the kind of simple, delicious food that chefs eat at home, Delancey is a moving and honest account of two young people learning to give in and let go in order to grow together.

After reading Molly Wizenberg's previous memoir, A Homemade Life (which I loved!), I was eager to continue reading about her life and was thrilled to see that my library had a copy of Delancey, which I promptly checked out. I enjoyed reading about the beginnings of Molly and Brandon's jump into life as restaurant owners, but I wasn't as enthralled as I was when I read A Homemade Life. I marked a few recipes, but not nearly as many as in her first book. Wizenberg's writing is still very engaging (and very honest about their struggles, both financial and emotionally) and she's a good storyteller, but the details of setting up the restaurant became a bit of a slog. Molly was not at all enthusiastic about Brandon's dream to open a restaurant and her negative outlook (which she kept mostly to herself) cast a shadow over the narrative as I continued to read. I'm not sorry that I read Delancey, but it wasn't as strong or as upbeat as A Homemade Life and I don't feel the need to rush out and buy a permanent copy for my shelves. I have her third memoir (The Fixed Stars) on audio and will begin that in 2022.

I Miss You When I Blink

 

I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott

Nonfiction - Essays

2020 Atria (first published in 2019)

Finished on December 11, 2021

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Acclaimed essayist and bookseller Mary Laura Philpott presents a charmingly relatable and wise memoir-in-essays about what happened after she checked off all the boxes on her successful life's to-do list and realized she might need to reinvent the list--and herself.

Mary Laura Philpott thought she'd cracked the code: Always be right, and you'll always be happy.

But once she'd completed her life's to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies--check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She'd done everything "right," but she felt all wrong. What's the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?

In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don't happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you're going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don't have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you're not, and where you belong. Who among us isn't trying to do that?

Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you'll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Philpott has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once--and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.

I can't remember where I first read about this book, but you know me--I love memoirs! The reviews must have been pretty good for me to buy rather than check it out from the library. I imagined it might be similar to something by Kelly Corrigan (Tell Me More) or Norah Ephron (I Feel Bad About My Neck) since the blurb claims it's funny, poignant, and deeply affecting. Well... it is a little bit, but unlike with Corrigan and Ephron's books, I only marked one or two passages.

On Motherhood:

I did not know, in those first days, that once you have children, the passage of time feels different than it did before. Everyone says this, and it's true: Days with young children feel four hundred hours long, but years flash by in seconds. I had no idea I'd become one of those parents who posts pictures along with cliched captions like "And just like that... he's ten!" or "Wasn't she a baby just yesterday?" I know, barf. But it was just yesterday that my baby boy got so excited about a jar of creamed spinach that he knocked it out of my hands and sent it clattering across his high-chair tray and onto the kitchen floor. I did just give birth to my daughter last week. How can they be looking back at me with such grown-up faces right now?

On Small Talk:

People who are good at small talk have a handy knack for greasing the gears of social interaction among strangers, and that's useful. I wish I were better at it, truthfully. But when small talk starts replacing real talk, you start to feel like you're among strangers even when you're among friends. I was in a phase in life that required a certain amount of socializing, floating around in blobs of people waving and smiling courteously. I needed my other interactions to balance those out. To offer some real connection, some meaning.  

I Miss You When I Blink might have been better on audio, but I also wonder if I'm not the target audience. I didn't come away with any profound revelations and most, if not all, of the essays are already forgotten after a mere week. I may have found it more relatable twenty years ago when I was working and in the middle of raising a teenager rather than as a sixty-something-year-old retiree. 

Broken Horses

 

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Nonfiction - Memoir

2021 Penguin Random House Audio

Narrated by Brandi Carlile

Finished on December 10, 2021

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about a life shaped by music in this candid, heartfelt, and intimate story.

Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, 14 times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood.

As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music.

In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes listeners through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art - from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat” in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over 15 years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans.

Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.

Let me begin by saying that until I read Brandi Carlile's memoir, I pretty much knew nothing about her life or rise to fame. I was working at Barnes and Noble when I first heard her album The Story, which we played day after day the month it was released. There are several songs on that record that I came to love, but after that first album, I never paid much attention to her music. I was aware that she had performed with my cousin, Kris Kristofferson, in 2018 for Joni Mitchell's 75th birthday celebration, so I was curious to read her memoir. I listened to the audiobook (which Carlile narrates) and in addition to learning about her upbringing and musical career, I enjoyed hearing numerous songs at the end of each chapter. In addition to those songs, there is also close to two hours of uninterrupted music in the final track. Overall, I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, but it wasn't the hit I had hoped for.

I received a complimentary copy from Libro.fm. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

About the Author:

Brandi Carlile is a six-time Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter, performer, and producer. Since her debut in 2004, she has released six studio albums and was the most nominated female artist at the 2019 Grammy Awards, with six nominations, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year. Founded in 2008 by Carlile, the Looking Out Foundation amplifies the impact of music by empowering those without a voice, with campaigns focused on children living in war zones, prevention and reduction in incarceration and recidivism, racial justice, violence prevention, food insecurity, and more. To date, the foundation has raised over $2 million for grassroots causes. Beloved by fans, peers, and critics alike, Carlile and her band have performed sold-out concerts across the world. Brandi Carlile lives in rural Washington State on a compound with her bandmates and their families, as well as her wife, Catherine, and their two daughters, Evangeline and Elijah.

Notes On Grief

Notes On Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction

2021 Alfred A. Knopf

Finished on December 2, 2021

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publisher's Blurb:

During the brutal summer of 2020, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father, a celebrated professor at the University of Nigeria and an irreplaceable figure in a close-knit family, succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Notes on Grief is Adichie's tribute to him, and a moving meditation on loss. 

Here Adichie offers a candid snapshot of the shock, loneliness, and disillusionment that followed the news of her father's death. Her family, unable to be together except for on video calls, struggles to go through the rites of mourning amid a global crisis of unimaginable scale. As Adichie wrestles with his passing, she recalls with vivid, poignant detail who her father was: a remarkable survivor of the Biafran war, a man of kindness and charm, and a fierce supporter of his youngest daughter. Here is a uniquely personal, profound work of remembrance and hope by one of today's luminaries--a book to bring us together in a time when we need it most. 

Notes On Grief has been on my library list for several months and I finally picked up a copy after being reminded of the book when I read Robin's (A Fondness For Reading) recent blog post. I know that there are people who steer clear of books about death and grief, but I gravitate toward them, hoping to learn and understand from each author's perspective and experience. I've collected dozens of passages about grief from numerous books and find comfort in the shared sentiments on the death of a loved one. The following are two of Adichie's that spoke to me.

Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It's from crying, I'm told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue unbearable bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart--my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here--is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odd with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. 

and

I am filled with disbelieving astonishment that the mailman comes as usual and that people are inviting me to speak somewhere and that regular news alerts appear on my phone screen. How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is permanent scattering?

Notes on Grief is a slim, compact book that can easily be read in one sitting. Perhaps that is why I wasn't as moved as I've been when reading other books on grief. The reader is given a mere glimpse into Adiche's family life and while it is very obvious that she was extremely close to her father, I felt that I was held at arm's length from her very personal story. The above passages resonated with me (particularly the one about the world going on), but I was not moved to tears as I have been while reading other memoirs on this subject. Overall, I'm glad I read this touching book, but I wish it had been longer. Recommend getting a copy from the library.

The Longest Road

 

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo

Nonfiction - Travel

2013 Picador

Finished on December 1, 2021

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

In The Longest Road, one of America's most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.

Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he'd drive from the nation's southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.

So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as "Fred" and "Ethel") from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today's United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.

Had I read the back cover blurb, I would have know that The Longest Road is less about an RV road trip and more about America and what holds it together (or drives it apart). I'm not sorry I read Caputo's memoir, but I would have enjoyed it more had he shared more details about his actual camping experiences along the way from Florida to Alaska. My favorite parts were in the early chapters when Caputo and his wife were learning all the ins-and-outs about pulling a travel trailer and then later toward the end of the book when they reached the Pacific Northwest and headed into Alaska. The middle section was a slog and I was tempted to quit, but I'm glad I didn't since I'm in the middle of planning a road trip to Alaska and found a couple of tidbits of information to add to my notes.

These passages spoke to my inner nomad:

I had only one hard-and-fast rule: avoid interstates. They are predictable and boring, and their uniformity somehow erases changes in landscape; you can drive six hundred miles, from forests into desert, and feel that you haven’t gone anywhere. In a sense, you haven’t. You have no idea about the lives of the people in the towns and cities you’ve bypassed at seventy miles an hour.

and

The total distance—11,741 miles—gave me sticker shock. Round it up to twelve thousand. Almost halfway around the world! It seemed slightly mad, but then it might do me good. To make such an epic road trip, discovering places I’d never been, rediscovering others, never knowing what I’d find beyond the next curve or hill, would be to recapture the enchantment of youth, a sense of promise and possibility. The cicada chirped incessantly in my head. I clicked back to the first map. Looking at it brought on a mixture of eagerness and reluctance. The buzzing grew more shrill. If you don’t go now, geezer, you never will. I listened to my inner cicada, and the uneasiness subsided. If I’d learned anything, it was that the things you do never cause as much regret as the things you don’t.

I've struggled with this review, trying to figure out why I don't care for this author's narrative voice. Nearly every woman he encounters on his journey is described by her hair color & length, as well as her physique. He also mentions the appearance of men, but with less attention than with the women. There's also a hint of arrogance to his vignettes and this particular passage made me dislike Caputo even more:

Leslie stared in silence, first at Ethel, [the Airstream] then at me. Three marriages and a few relationships in between qualify me to make this observation about Homo sapiens femalis, subspecies Americanus: they are congenitally incapable of apologizing for a mistake because they are incapable of admitting they've made one. It's always the guy's fault. Number two son Marc, married for a decade, has likewise noticed this trait and has revised the old riddle about the falling tree not making a sound: "If a man were all alone in a forest with no woman there, would he still be wrong?"

It's been many years since I've read Neil Peart's memoir, Ghost Rider* (click on the link for my review), but it was much more enjoyable than this book by Philip Caputo.

*Peart's memoir is about his travels (on his BMW "adventure-touring" motorcycle) across Canada & the Yukon, over to Alaska, down the West Coast of the U.S. to Mexico and Belize before heading back to Canada. It's one I keep meaning to re-read.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Fiction/Fantasy

2020 Macmillan Audio

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Finished on December 1, 2021

Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman named Adeline meets a dangerous stranger and makes a terrible mistake.

As she realizes the limitations of her Faustian bargain--being able to live forever, without being able to be remembered by anyone she sees--Addie chooses to flee her small village, as everything she once held dear is torn away.

But there are still dreams to be had, and a life to live, and she is determined to find excitement and satisfaction in the wide, beckoning world--even if she will be doomed to be alone forever.

Or not quite alone--as every year, on her birthday, the alluring Luc comes to visit, checking to see if she is ready to give up her soul. Their darkly thrilling game stretches through the ages, seeing Addie witness history and fight to regain herself as she crosses oceans and tries on various lives. 

It will be three hundred years before she stumbles into a hidden bookstore [... spoiler removed] and suddenly everything changes again.

In the vein of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V.E. Schwab's genre-defying tour de force.

After reading several glowing reviews for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I took a gamble and recommended it to my book group before I had a chance to read it myself. I listened to the audio, which is narrated by Julia Whelan (a favorite audio reader), who does an outstanding job with each character's voice. Unfortunately, the book fell short of my expectations. I liked it, but after the initial plot is revealed, the dialogue and situations involving Addie's encounters with Luc were repetitious and it wasn't until Henry makes his appearance that things pick up again. The constant back and forth dialogue between Addie and Luc is tiresome and as one friend mentioned, that relationship felt like something out of Fifty Shades of Grey (a book I have not, nor do I plan to, read). I also grew weary of the constant reminders of the main characters' features; black curls, seven freckles, emerald eyes, etc. I liked Addie and Henry's storyline, which is what kept me interested (and able to listen to all 17 hours of narration), but certain aspects were too predictable and I was sorry I figured things out so early in the narrative. Maybe I've read too many mysteries this year and expected a big twist or two before the grand finale.

I'm a little bit nervous, but also curious, to see what the others in my book group think of this novel. I went into it blind, as is my usual habit, but something about the cover art and the blog reviews I scanned brought to mind The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which I loved. (Click on the link for my review.) Schwab's novel does not compare to Morgenstern's magical story, which is peopled with likeable characters and beautiful prose. Other than Addie, Luc and Henry, Morgenstern's characters are flat and unremarkable. I'm afraid that with the passage of time, I too will come to forget Addie LaRue. 

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table

 

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction 

2009 Simon & Schuster

Finished on November 16, 2021

Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

When Molly Wizenberg's father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

At first, it wasn't clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly's blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn't long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn't over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.

In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won't be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.

Years ago, when I was first got into blogging, I stumbled upon some non-book related blogs filled with beautiful photographs of home interiors and delicious-looking meals that satisfied my desire to live (and appreciate) a more simple life. Shauna Ahern's blog Gluten-Free Girl was one of the first sites that caught my eye and I looked forward to each new post about her life in Seattle with her husband, who at the time was a chef at a local restaurant. It wasn't just stories about their lives, but the enticing recipes that kept me reading. It was on Shauna's blog that I learned about Molly Wizenberg (who was also living in Seattle) and started following her posts on Orangette. At the time, my husband and I were living in Nebraska and we both yearned to move to the Pacific Northwest, so I lived vicariously through these blogs with each mention of Seattle and the surrounding areas, recognizing specific places we'd been to while visiting my dad and stepmom (who were living on Lake Union on their boat during that time). 

As is the way of early blogs of the late 90s and early 2000s, and much to my disappointment, Gluten-Free Girl and Orangette are both now defunct. However, both women have fairly recent published works, which is exciting for this lover of foodie memoirs. Shauna's collection of essays (Enough) was released in 2019 and Molly's third memoir (The Fixed Stars) was published in 2020. 

I've had Wizenberg's first memoir on my shelf for about a dozen years and finally pulled it from that shelf and read it this month for Nonfiction November. I don't know why I waited so long; I loved everything about it! Each chapter reveals a little bit more about Molly's childhood, time spent in France, and life as a young woman living in Seattle. The anecdotes dovetail neatly with specific recipes, many of which I have marked to someday try. 

Wizenberg's writing is conversational, yet polished, and the pages practically turned themselves. It was easy to read a dozen or so stories each night, telling myself, "just one more." Now that I've finished, I can't wait to get a copy of Delancey, which continues with Molly and Brandon's story. (Delancey is also the name of their restaurant in Seattle.)

Like most people who love to cook, I like the tangible things. I like the way the knife claps when it meets the cutting board. I like the haze of sweet air that hovers over a hot cake as it sits, cooling, on the counter. I like the way a strip of orange peel looks on an empty plate. But what I like even more are the intangible things: the familiar voices that fall out of the folds of an old cookbook, or the scenes that replay like a film reel across my kitchen wall. When we fall in love with a certain dish, I think that's what we're often responding to: that something else behind the fork or the spoon, the familiar story that food tells.

These are some of the recipes that I'd like to sample (listed for future reference):

• Burg's Potato Salad
• Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake
• Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger
• Burg's French Toast
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Bittersweet Glaze
• Hoosier Pie
• Fresh Ginger Cake with Caramelized Pears
• Dutch Baby Pancakes with Lemon and Sugar
• Jimmy's Pink Cookies
• Doron's Meatballs with Pine Nuts, Cilantro, and Golden Raisins
• Cider-Glazed Salmon
• French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon
• Butternut Soup with Pear, Cider, and Vanilla Bean
• Caramelized Cauliflower with Salsa Verde
• The Winning Hearts and Mind Cake

A Homemade Life is certain to appeal to readers who loved Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, Ann Hood's Kitchen Yarns, and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.

The Splendid and the Vile

 

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

Nonfiction - History

2020 Crown Publishing

Finished on November 16, 2021

Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City delivers a startlingly fresh portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.

On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons (30,000 of them Londoners) and destroying two million homes. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--that she was willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinksmanship but also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country house, Chequers, and his wartime residence, Ditchley, where Churchill and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, including recently declassified files, intelligence reports, and personal diaries only now available, Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their daughters, Sarah, Diana, and the youngest, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; her illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his dangerously observant private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Federick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when--in the face of unrelenting horror--Churchill's eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

The Splendid and the Vile may be my favorite book of 2021! Until now, I don't believe I have ever read such a compelling book of history. I've been a longtime fan of World War II narratives, but mostly in the form of historical fiction. I requested an ARC of Erik Larson's most recent publication in late 2019 and was happy to receive a copy from the publisher specifically to give to my husband since he's read almost everything written about Winston Churchill. Truthfully, I wasn't even sure if I would read the book since I wasn't exactly enamoured with Larson's previous works. I gave up on The Devil in the White City (although, to be fair, I was in the middle of it in 2005 when tragedy struck our family and I never found the desire to pick it up again), gave Dead Wake (which I listened to on audio) a 2/5 rating, and Isaac's Storm (which I read for last year's Nonfiction November challenge) a 3/5 rating. But my husband assured me that Larson's newest book is very good and that I'd probably like it since it's a subject about which I enjoy reading. So I added it to my stack for this year's Nonfiction November challenge. 

Wanting to read as many books as possible for this challenge, I was tempted to start the month with some shorter memoirs that I'd chosen and leave what I perceived as a weighty tome for later in the month. However, I changed my mind, trying not to be put off by the 500+ pages of text. I shouldn't have worried; I simply could not put it down! I was drawn in from the prologue and found the entire text (including the sources and acknowledgments, which I pored over, gleaning more historical tidbits that weren't included in the text) engaging and informative. The narrow focus of a specific period during the war (Churchill's first year as prime minister, from May 10, 1940 to May 10, 1941) made it all the more compelling and I never felt any detail or description of events unnecessary.

I enjoyed reading not only about Churchill's role as prime minister during the Blitz, but also the individual stories and reflections about key events by members of his family and staff, derived from their personal diaries and letters. Additionally, there are accounts from Mass-Observation diarists, as well as ordinary British citizens, which further increases the intimacy of the narrative. 

The perspective from the ground was equally stunning. One young man, Colin Perry, eighteen, was on his bicycle when the first wave passed overhead. "It as the most amazing, impressive, riveting sight," he wrote later. "Directly above me were literally hundreds of planes, Germans! The sky was full of them." The fighters stuck close, he recalled, "like bees around their queen."

Larson also includes specific details and remarks by Virginia Woolf, Ian Fleming and Graham Greene, adding to this reader's enjoyment.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 as I read the following:

The day was warm and still, the sky blue above a rising haze. Temperatures by afternoon were in the nineties, odd for London. People thronged Hyde Park and lounged on chairs set out beside the Serpentine. Shoppers jammed the stores of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. The giant barrage of balloons overhead cast lumbering shadows on the streets below. After the August air raid when bombs first fell on London proper, the city had retreated back into a dream of invulnerability, punctuated now and then by false alerts whose once-terrifying novelty was muted by the failure of bombers to appear. The late-summer heat imparted an air of languid complacency. In the city's West End, theaters hosted twenty-four productions, among them the play Rebecca, adapted for the stage by Daphne du Maurier from her novel of the same name. Alfred Hitchcock's movie version, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was also playing in London, as were the films The Thin Man and the long-running Gaslight.

It was a fine day to spend in the cool green of the countryside. 

and

The dust burst outward rapidly at first, like smoke from a cannon, then slowed and dissipated, sifting and settling, covering sidewalks, streets, windshields, double-decker buses, phone booths, bodies. Survivors exiting ruins were coated head to toe as if with gray flour. Harold Nicolson, in his diary, described seeing people engulfed in a "thick fog which settled down on everything, plastering their hair and eyebrows with thick dust." 

There is nothing quite like a great book to make one wish to read more about a particular subject. I plan to read Larson's earlier publication, In the Garden of Beasts, but I'm also interested in Roy Jenkin's Churchill, Martin Gilbert's The Finest Hour, John Lukacs's Five Days in London, May 1940, Doris Kearns Goodwins' No Ordinary Time (which I began many years ago, but set aside due to its length), and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (yes, another hefty read, I know!). 

I would also like to re-watch Darkest Hour, The Gathering Storm, Into the Storm, Winton Churchill's: Walking with Destiny, and Churchill's Secret. Any chance that Ken Burns and Erik Larson can get together and create a documentary based on this book? Please?

Living Out Loud

Living Out Loud by Anna Quindlen

Nonfiction - Essays

1989 Ivy Books (first published in 1988)

Finished on November 5, 2021

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

The voice is Anna Quindlen’s. But we know the hopes, dreams, fears, and wonder expressed in all her columns, for most of us share them. With her New York Times-based column, “LIFE IN THE 30s,” Anna Quindlen valued to national attention, and this wonderful collection shows why.

I'm quite a fan of Anna Quindlen's works and have read all but one or two of her books. I've had a copy of this collection of syndicated columns for many, many years and the Nonfiction November challenge was just the nudge I needed to finally dip into it. Each essay is about three pages in length and I wound up reading dozens of the columns back-to-back. It might have been better to read one or two a night, but I was impatient to move on to another book, so I zipped through this one. While it's a fairly quick read, I didn't love the book.

Written for The New York Times in the late 80s, much of Quindlen's essays felt dated and not relevant to my current life. My 60th birthday is just around the corner and the author was in her 30s when she wrote her column. However, I'm not sure my 30-something-year-old daughter would find much that would resonate with her, either.

A couple of entries gave me pause and I found myself thinking that the more things change, the more they remain the same:

My husband and I are educated people, and I can't tell you what a whoop we got out of it when we heard the story--untrue, it developed--that Joe Biden would get back in the race, too. Was that silly or what? "Ted Kennedy's next!" we both shouted. "Nixon," I screamed. "Like the T-shirt says, he's tanned, rested, and ready." (Written after Gary Hart dropped out of the 1988 race for the presidential nomination.)

and

The problem is that we would love absolute certainty on all aspects of this issue. We are a nation raised on True or False tests. We want doctors to give us the answers, which shows how short our memories are. After all, it was the doctors who told us that smoking wouldn't kill you and amphetamines during pregnancy didn't do a bit of harm. We want to know precisely how this disease spreads and why some people who are exposed get it and some don't and whether being exposed means inevitably getting sick. First we hear that the biggest argument against transmission through casual contact is that health-care workers don't get it. Then we hear that health-care workers have gotten it. And we don't know what to believe. All we know for sure is that getting sick means dying, at least so far. (Not about COVID-19, but AIDs)

and

I still read constantly: if my kids ever go into analysis, I'm sure they will say they don't really remember my face because it was always hidden by a book. Obviously this is in part because I like books. But another reason is that I like to be alone. I like to go deep inside myself and not be accompanied there by anyone else. 

When I sat down to write this review, my first thought was that I don't care for Anna Quindlen's books of nonfiction. And yet, as I scrolled through my blog, I discovered that I gave three of those books high ratings. Loud & Clear was, coincidentally, one of my selections for the 2007 Nonfiction November challenge and I gave it a 4/5 rating. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake and Nanaville also received 4/5 ratings and I shared several favorite passages in each of those reviews. The only remaining book of her essays that I have not yet read is Thinking Out Loud, which was published in 1993. I think I'll pass on that one and read Alternate Side (her latest novel) instead.