5.  Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio.  Outrageous, amusing, and surprisingly thoughtful. There is one more in this series and I will read it.  Maybe one more will be enough for me; I don't want to get hooked on another series. The author shows himself as imaginative and funny.  I hope he thinks about a non-Poldi book before long, though.

6.  The Book of Lost Friends, by Lisa Wingate, who also wrote Before We Were Yours. 

     Like Before, this fiction book is good at letting people know about a chapter of history. It is one of those with every other chapter being a different story, and you know they're going to come together in the end. After the Civil War, people who had been separated by slave owners used newspaper ads to look for their folks.  She has internet addresses for a couple of databases at the end. 

    The writing is very accessible and I think a lot of people would get something out of it.

 I probably averaged reading about a book a week last year, but quit posting them. Maybe I'll put them up again, probably should keep them in a journal, but I don't think anyone else reads this.

1. In 2022, I am rereading Peter Walsh's Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight. I'm not trying to follow the diet, but am committed to the six-week declutter plan. I've been through the kitchen and pantry, and am working on my bedroom.  Some days it is hard to make myself spend an hour or so on it, but it is a lift to see some things looking tidier.

2. Jacques Pepin Heart & Soul in the Kitchen. I really like his drawings. I have enjoyed looking through this book. 

3. Julia Kelly, The Last Garden in England.  A friend recommended this to me because I like gardens, and there is a family history thread, which is another interest of mine. It is a well-crafted historical fiction romance novel That would not be a genre I would usually choose, but I found this pleasant to read. 

4. Tom Vanderbilt, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. I think the subtitle should be: I'm brilliant, wealthy, and athletic. I can do anything. It didn't seem to be so much about the rest of us mortals. The things he chose to pursue made me think of the year-long nightmare that high school p.e. was for me. But I won't argue that it is good to learn new things.

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

I thought this book was well worth reading. The title is a pretty good synopsis. It is nonfiction.  The author seems like an interesting person. I've always thought the little subcultures of hobbies are amazingly diverse, but the one he explores here is downright puzzling.  He is not heavy handed in raising questions about justice after the fact. Other countries aren't as eager to lock up half their population as our country is.  I guess I'm never surprised at how little some people respect Life on Earth.

 19. The Branch and the Scaffold by Loren D Estleman

This is about Judge Parker.  I really just sort of skimmed it. 

20.  The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason

I'm going to have to learn to just say no to any more thrillers from this book club.  I kept saying I was just not going to finish it, but then I did.  The villain was too evil for the book to be enjoyable, it was just creepy. What sort of a mind does a writer have to come up with this stuff? Thriller writers might be scarier than most of the people incarcerated. I lost count of how many characters were killed. The history part was decent. 

 15.  The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, by Christine Kenneally

This book is pretty heavy reading.  Not that it is difficult reading, depending on one's background, but it covers deep and often somber topics.  Some people throughout history have been horrible to others, can you face thinking about that?  If you can't, better not read this. I thought this book was good to read, though. Will it do more harm or more good to know as much as we do about our ancestry?  I like my ancestry hobby.  I hope no one uses what I have shared in an evil way.  I think what I have looked up is out there, anyway.  Published in 2014, already one could add quite a bit to some of the discussion points in this book, but it is not out of date quite yet.

16.  The Guest List, by Lucy Foley

It's a thriller murder mystery for the one book club.  It is okay if you like that sort of thing and aren't looking for anything more thought provoking than who done it. It doesn't take long to read. One woman has an interesting name.  That might have been the only thing I looked up.  I can picture the anger of all those who might have done it, that fierce family love thing especially.

17.  The Four-Day Win, by Martha Beck

I like Martha Beck's writings; she is clever and funny.  This is a self-help about weight loss.  She has some really good ideas about the mental challenges of it. The point is to do some activities four days at a time.  

18. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

This is depressing. I would have liked it better if it had been a biography. I'm losing what interest I may have had for historical fiction.

 12.  The Black Ace, by G.B. Joyce

I enjoyed The Code so much I ordered this one, the second in a series. The main character is a better person than he thinks he is.  The game of hockey is almost another villain in the story; he certainly doesn't glorify the sport. It's like football around here, many people don't question all that's wrong with it.  I think there are another couple of books in the series.  The character in the television show does not even share this guy's first name, and isn't nearly as funny or emotionally complex. 

13.  My European Family: The First 54,000 Years, by Karin Bojs

I really enjoyed this book.  The author is a Swedish science writer with a particular interest in genetics and archaeology. She ties in prehistory with her own family genealogy, traveling to various locations of interest and meeting the experts.  She dishes about some of the controversies and characters, and even offers travel tips to people considering visiting some of the sites and museums mentioned.  

It was challenging reading for me because I could not begin to pronounce most of the proper nouns, and because my understanding of European geography is limited to country levels vaguely, and I am mostly clueless about cities. Still, I was glad to have read it.  It makes me want to continue the work on my own family history.  Coincidentally, I turned up today on Family Tree DNA predictions of my own European ancient roots, with migration maps marked, and it made better sense than it would have before I read this book. 

14. Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz

This is the third book by this author I have recently read and enjoyed. I think I read them in the opposite order than they were written.  I have an interest in my own ancestors in that war, and found his perspectives valuable on the history and the way people view it.  I read that he recently passed away, and am sorry to learn that.  

This book was written some time ago, and it sheds some light on the twenty-some years of political friction since then. He traveled around to various Civil War sites and spent time with some colorful characters.  It was a pleasant read.

 

 9.  Genetic Genealogy in Practice, by Blaine T. Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne

This is the second time I checked this book out, and it is a slight exaggeration to say I read it again. More honest is that I skimmed it.  This is a book one could study. In fact, it has questions at the end of each chapter for just that.  It did not have what I was looking for, but I did learn one thing new this time through about how one DNA company chooses which relative matches to show. I'm ready for the next level of genealogy understanding, but what I find is often either a repeat of what I already know or so complex I glaze over.  

10.  Stranger Diaries, by Kelly Griffiths

This is for one of my book clubs.  I enjoyed it, although I wouldn't have picked it for myself from the descriptions.  I like the women characters a lot.  I wasn't feeling tip-top, and used that as an excuse to read it straight through. The first character is a teacher who is writing a book. I don't get the English school jargon, like "sixth form" but I could have looked it up. Anyway, she is divorced and has a daughter, a remarried ex, friends, and a job situation that all seem reasonable. The who done it stuff makes as much sense as any of them do.  I think the author is planning to continue with the detective, but I liked the sort of victim better. Probably I won't track down a second book if it is out.

11.  The Code, by G.B. Joyce

We have been enjoying watching "Private Eyes" on television, on one of the rerun stations.  It is a fluffy mystery series, loosely based on this book.  I checked the book out of the library.  There are two or three others in the series.  It is kind of a guy's book, whatever the male version is of chick lit.  It is sharp and funny, what some other newspaper writer I won't mention shoots for and misses.  The romance that doesn't quite make sense in the television program is not in the book, and quite a few details of the situation don't match.  The male protagonist still comes through as something of the same clever, handsome, smart-alec fellow who is hard on himself. The book version guy is not celibate, as the t.v. guy appears to be. There's a lot more hockey in the book, and some problem drinking.Still, it's another nice piece of escape fiction, and I'll probably look for the next one.