32.  Save Me The Plums, by Ruth Reichl

This book is about the author's years as editor of Gourmet magazine.  It is a quick read, and I enjoyed it. Her descriptions are excellent.

33. The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, by Nathan Wolfe

I found this in my overflow bookshelf.  It was published in 2011, and I don't know when I picked it up.  I thought it was, of course, timely, and it is more positive overall than one might think.  Well worth reading for those with and without any scientific background or particular interest.  

34.      I just finished reading (from the library) Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide, by Tony Horowitz. In the decade before the Civil War, before he became a famous landscape planner, Frederick Law Olmsted was a newspaper correspondent. He traveled through the south and sent articles to the New York Times. At first, he hoped to help the sides better understand each other. Then he became more staunchly opposed to slavery.  Horowitz generally followed the route of the Olmsted brothers 160 years later, in the time just before the 2016 election, and made comparisons between today's national divisions and those of the past. I enjoyed reading this book.  I have another book by the same author in my overflow, unread bookshelf, A Voyage Long and Strange.  Horowitz is married to Geraldine Brooks, who has written some well-received historical fiction.  I have two of her books unread, too.

 29. Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate.  Oh, my!  This book is fiction about adoption atrocities that actually occurred.  As heartbreaking as it is, the author does a good job of making the story not too bleak, while sharing the history. There is a follow-up book she co-wrote with a journalist about the actual victims, and I plan to read that, too.  It is a shocking piece of history that should be more widely known. Corrupt individuals kept child theft and selling going on for years.  The Memphis area was the center of it, but it affected the nation. The pair of books were included in a book review series.  

30.  The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are, by Libby Copeland. Published this year, this book explores many ethical issues coming from our new abilities.  It begins and ends with the story of one particular family and what they learned after getting surprising results. It is a pretty good introduction to today's genetic genealogy. My personal feeling is that more good than bad comes from hobby genealogy.

31. Before and After: The Incredible Real Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society, by Judy Pace Christie and Linda Wingate. Wow again! At the mercy of corruption in our own U S of A government, these children and their families have suffered.  This particular institution is long gone, fortunately. One woman alone could not have done what she did without a lot of people going along.  It is so sad, but one should know.  How many things happen now that ought to be unearthed?

 26.  Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black.  Especially the chapter about the trolleys is worth reading.

27.  The Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penney.  It is another one in a series.  I am not as committed to them as I once was, but it is a nice escape.  The denouement doesn't entirely make sense.  Exactly where did those clients come from?  And what was the deal with that job?  It doesn't really matter, though.

28.  Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, by Dani Shapiro.  She's one of those New Yorky, in-with-the-in-crowd writers.  This is her fifth memoir, it seems like that says something about her. I don't quite trust someone who says unflattering things about her family publicly. There's likely another side.  But I did read it right through.  Some of the ways she describes having an unsettling surprise are on the universal side, and it is an interesting situation. I look forward to the review coming up, which is why I read it.

I like having time to read. None of the above would be highly recommended by me for someone who had less reading time.  

For #28, the reviewer shaped it in to a better book than the way I read it.  This is often the case.  As a former infertility patient, I guess I identified more with the author's mother, whom she badmouthed the entire book.  Probably I'm better off without a sharper than a serpent's tooth offspring.

 

 22.  I read, at least sort of, three books the library had about the Fred Harvey business and "Harvey girls". It was an interesting chapter in American history. I also checked out the 40s musical, but couldn't make myself watch more than ten minutes of it. The book about a related southwest art exhibit didn't shed much light on the history I was looking into, so I didn't spend much time with it, either.

23.  The House Girl, by Tara Conklin.  This was for the historical fiction book club.  The first 3/4 of the book was pretty good, then she went off track, in my opinion. I don't know who is in a position to write a book about the emotions that went along with slavery.   I think it is irresponsible for an author to suggest that suicide is the best or only option for anyone. She seems to suggest that any attempt at reparation for slavery would fail, that the money would end up in the wrong hands in the unlikely event something happened. I don't necessarily agree.  In both threads, several people are asking to be forgiven. And the one thread is another one of those stories by and about New Yorkers. Grand Central Station is the center of the universe, that sort of thing. 

24.  The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, by Rinker Buck. I heard the author discuss it with Rick Steves some time ago, and the book has been on my round-to-it bookshelf. He covers a lot of ground, in more ways than one. He and his brother make a covered wagon trip to Oregon from Missouri, using vestiges of the old trail. He tells about the trip, interspersed with history of the early travelers. It is an emotional journey as well, as he reflects on his father and on his own personality. It is a long book, and I was not sure I was committed to finishing it, but by the end I was sorry to part with him and his brother, the mules and the little dog.

25.  Having And Being Had, by Eula Biss.  This author writes a series of short essays about being uncomfortable with capitalism and her own wealth and privilege. She lives in Chicago, but it is one of those New York author kinds of books. Even though I share her ambivalence, I do not feel anything in common with her. She apparently lives in a bubble with other writers. She doesn't have much to say, but she is in with the in crowd and gets published. I found this book disappointing, given its subject matter.

 19.  First Lady of the Confederacy.  I forget the author.  This was good to read after the fiction.  She presents that Varina pretty much had to go along with her husband.  Maybe she did.  She sure sounded like a politician, saying different things to different people or groups.  She liked the wealth and didn't object to slavery, although apparently she realized the Confederacy with her husband would be a train wreck. It is so very sad. 

20.  Warlight. Maybe I'll look up the authors for these sometime. This one is Michael O, difficult to spell. Anyway, it's the best literature of anything I've read lately.  Set in London just after WWII is supposed to be over, it tells the story of a young man examining his mother's participation in covert activities. It would be a good selection for a literature class.  There is much to it, and beautiful writing.

21.  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This author, whose name I also forget, had written some children's books but this is his first adult one.  It has some clever bits, but lacks polish. I would not recommend it.   The protagonist is a young sociopath, and her family is likewise unloving. Everybody else automatically recognizes she is a genius. Why? They also spill all kinds of information that it seems unlikely they would. 

16.  Varina, by Charles Frazier

       This is historical fiction about the wife of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis.  The author also wrote Cold Mountain.  I found this slow reading, but meaningful literature. She was an interesting character.  She reminds me quite a bit of another woman in today's world who married an older, wealthy man.  She loved the parties and the pretty dresses, but not the man so much. He was unfaithful to her and a previous wife, and an all around jerk. When he became a treasonous leader, she did not like that level of exposure. She tried to separate herself from him as much as possible and focus on motherhood, but was stuck playing the role of his wife.  For Varina, she outlived the "president" and was able to speak her opinions.  Maybe that other woman will be so lucky, plus I predict she will take the option of divorce after he is out, which was not really a choice available to Varina.  This book led me to do a little internet research on the actual woman and the times.  It is interesting stuff.  I already knew the feeling among southerners after the war was anger at the wealthy slave-owners who brought it on.  It was only long after the war that the lost cause spin was pushed.

17.  How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig

    This is another book I would not have read if not for it being a book club selection, and I liked it better than I expected.  The protagonist is something of a cross between a vampire and Forest Gump.

He has a very long life, but has experiences we all have with aging, such as losing loved ones and worrying about how to protect ourselves from emotional hurts. I marked a few lines for discussion.  I also liked his insight about the origins of the English, I am going to look that up again.

18.  A distant relative, actually his wife, wrote a family history, and I read that.  She did a good job. A little of it matches my own line.

  

15. It Takes One to Know One, by Susan Isaacs

I read about two hundred pages of this, skipped about a hundred, and read the last two chapters.  It is for the one book club.  I found it tedious.  I expect the discussion will be better than the book. She has that Joan Rivers sort of sense of "humor" that is critical about what people are wearing and so on.  I'll pass on anything further by this author.
Books that are pushed are too often by and about New Yorkers, in my opinion. I also don't care for product placement, which this is full of.

14.  Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World, by Catherine E. McKinley

This book is way more down my line than the historical fiction one about the indigo plantation owner.  I really enjoyed my time with it.  The author earned a grant to explore indigo in Africa in about 2000, and I think this book was published about ten years later. She tells about her fascination with indigo,  some of its history and what remains of its place today, her travels, and her friendship with a local shop owner.

12.  I guess I forgot to post this when I read it. Actually, I think I wrote something and must not have hit the publish button. Maybe there was another book, too.   The Indigo Girl was for the historical fiction group I am in at least temporarily.  It's hard to excuse the slavery and see this woman as admirable, I felt, and the book was just so so.  It is interesting to read a little additional about the history and the indigo plant. There is a DIY show one of the ladies shared with a bit about indigo and this woman, and the host of the show painted a house indigo.  I loved the house. The woman, not so much.

13.  Louise Penny's Glass Houses: I have read most of these books in order, and this is one of the more recent ones.  I kind of burned out, but then a friend has loaned me the one after this. Penny creates a fantasy place, an escape for the reader.  All the dear friends live close to each other in a beautiful town which has managed to escape modern maps and GPS.  They share lovely meals regularly.  They are all famous, but retain privacy, and they quote poetry regularly. One character behaves so badly nobody would really put up with her, but they find her charming. I really don't get that.  Horrible things happen, as in all these murder mystery chains. The main character has a strong moral sense in a sea of corruption.  He has a perfect marriage. The fabulously talented artist is a thinly disguised caricature of how the author sees herself.  Reading these makes me want to visit Quebec, but I do roll my eyes a bit. The individual stories are forgettable.  She has quite an imagination, and a reader should always check out her author notes to see a bit about what is true and false in the real world. 

11.  The Lost City of Z, by David Grann
       It was interesting to read this book soon after the Fremont book.  The two explorers, Percy Fawcett in this one, have their similarities and differences.  Neither are that heroic, to my way of thinking. I was really wrapped up in reading this, even though I sort of knew some of the things Grann revealed at the end. In this book, the journalist's search for Fawcett is an important part of the story.
      He is also the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, an important eye-opener. We should know our history, but it is not a source of pride towards the "winners" when we know.  I think most people who are very wealthy have done unethical things to get that way, or have inherited from others who did. I am not saying that about either Fremont or Fawcett, they just were arrogant and willing to take huge risks.
      The movie of The Lost City of Z tells the story of Fawcett, not the journalist's story.  I thought it was slow, and it seemed like there were variations from the story told in the book.  Someone named Fawcett had a part, so I presume the family was involved.  The movie account of the end of their travels is all imagination, I think. I would have preferred a documentary.

I finished Circe, by the way.  The author shared some beautiful paintings of her on a blog somewhere, and I loved that.  I guess I learned some of the who's who of mythology.  The other readers in the group really liked this book, and it is popular.  My friend who listened to it felt like the character was speaking to her.  So, I guess I'm glad I read it, although I won't look into more similar books.

10.  On the other hand, for my main book group, I read The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. This author is certainly creative, I'll give him that!  It starts off like an Agatha Christie story, and then veers off into .. I guess sci-fi, thriller.  This is the advantage of belonging to a book group.  I would never have chosen that book for myself, but found it thoroughly entertaining.  It also raised a social issue question worth considering about whether people can change.

11.  Elkhorn Tavern, by Douglas C. Jones.  This was on my bookshelf, and I don't remember when I bought it.  It is set in Northwest Arkansas during the Civil War, a time and place I've been studying with genealogy.  This could have been my dad's relatives, except they all seem to have had bigger families. I think he is dead on right in his picture of the times there.  The character Ora reminds me of my strong mother, who liked pretty things and could also whack the head off a copperhead with a hoe-- and then feel guilty about killing it. Ora is my picture of femininity, not some heavily made up delicate thing. The author was a tad soft on slavery, in my opinion, but the main characters did not participate in it. 

9. This is Steve Inskeep's new book about Jessie and John Fremont. It is pretty good, and they were certainly interesting characters. Although I am developing more of an interest in history, it is still slow reading for me.  Inskeep likes her better than him. He paints a good picture of the pair and what it might have been like during the times. Many people were motivated by greed, big surprise.

10.  Louise Penney's The Nature of the Beast.  this is another Gamache novel.  One should read the author's notes first.  The unbelievable part of it is based on fact.

11.  The Only Woman in the Room,  about Hedy Lamarr.  H.L. has an amazing story.  I preferred the documentary, Bombshell, for the telling of her story.  Like #9 above, it left me asking, "What's wrong with people?!"

12. Currently reading Circe for a possibly forming book group.  I don't love mythology and even less witchcraft, so this is not a good choice for me.

8.  Mosquito... something about how it changed history.  So, I picked a not so great time to read about past terrible epidemics.  This book has lots of interesting things in it.  In my opinion, it would have been better if it were edited down quite a bit.  It is redundant, and the author's comments were overdone.  It seems like it took a very long time to plow through it. But probably I'll keep it.

6.  The Maze at Windemere.  This novel is interestingly constructed. Five stories set in different time periods in the same location are interwoven.  I can't say I liked any of the characters but maybe one.  Still, it is put together in an interesting way. Someone more tolerant of the very wealthy and their hangers-on might enjoy it more.

7.  Transcription. On the other hand, this book was easier for me to enjoy because of the main character.  She is both clever and innocent.  The author has a masterful use of vocabulary.  Despite my lack of interest or knowledge of England in the WWII era, I found this absorbing and thought provoking well past the days of reading it.

5.  The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson

I loved this book.  Set in eastern Kentucky, it combines two interesting items in the history of the region.  If you love the power of books and feel compassion, this is a book to read. It goes a little too Jane Austen at the end for me, I wanted the protagonist to take the teacher's spot. Also, the fat equals bad implication hurts my feelings; it's not unlike some of the other prejudices the book addresses.

I ran across the title when researching my eastern Kentucky ancestors. My direct ancestors left that area eighty years earlier than this story was set, before the coal industry exploited the area so much.  This story describes the setting and gives insight into how people interact, any time or place.

4.  I read a book by a person I am acquainted with.  I don't want to review it here, just want to remind myself. 

2020

I liked keeping track of the books I read in 2018.  Then last year I quit in the spring.  I think I will keep a 2020 list here.

1.  The first book I read this calendar year is Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier. It was on the bookshelf I want to empty and then get rid of. I bought it at the used bookstore a while back when a friend and I said we were going to read some art history based fiction. At first I didn't give it enough credit.  I sometimes avoid historical fiction that makes up stuff about actual people. It is good, though, in my opinion, just don't think it is much about the actual Vermeer or this girl. The coming of age feelings, the relationships between especially the women, and the way people feel about their financial spots are all so delicately treated. It left me thinking. I just watched the movie.  It is visually beautiful. All the acting is good, and Essie Davis (my favorite, Miss Fisher!) brings Catherine's feelings out very well.  I think watching the movie after reading the book is the way to go, though. Otherwise, you would miss some things.  Besides, the ending in the book is better.

2.  Breasts: The Owner's Manual by Dr. Kristi Funk was my second read.  Someone dear to me is dealing with chemo and told me about it, and I checked it out of the library.  It is more entertaining and easy reading than I would have thought. Despite the scary topic, she is positive and even funny. There are dozens of risk factors for BC, some preventable and some not.  I am going to try to take her advice on healthy eating and exercise to heart. The very end of the book has some details I skimmed over; that is more for someone diagnosed.  I would recommend this book to almost anyone, especially women.

3.  While I was at the library, I checked out Peter Walsh's Enough Already! Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You. He is another positive character.  I thought it was worth reading.  I wouldn't sort the categories of my life quite the same as he suggests, but that's fine.