2022 Reading in Review

According to Goodreads I read 180 books this year. 55,848 pages!

I received more finished copies of books, most from Knopf/Doubleday/VintageAnchor, but also from Celadon, Algonquin. and authors.

And more advanced reading copies from publishers, including from Simon & Schuster Book Club Favorites, St. Martins Press, ECW Insiders, Algonquin blog tours, Harper Collins, Bellevue Literary Press, Black Lawrence Press, Caitlin Hamilton Summie Marketing, Blue Cottage Agency, and Maudlin House.

I had more ‘read now’ galley offers’ from publishers for NetGalley and Edelweiss.

Plus, I received a bound manuscript from the author!

I read more poetry, seven books. One Hundred books were by women.

I was able to read fourteen books from my TBR pile.

I read eleven book club selections, many of which I listened to as an audiobook together with my husband. And I listened to another audiobook while working in my sewing room.

I received ten ‘golden pencils’ on NetGalley for reviews that publishers shared. I twice talked with Shawn the Book Maniac on his Youtube channel Book Chat.

I increased followers on my blog, Goodreads, and Instagram. Twitter is another story, with at least seventy of my friends leaving the site. But the ‘Sunday Sentence’ crowd is hanging on, which has been a great way to promote books.

Morgenthau: Power Privilege, and Prestige and the Rise of an American Dynasty by Andrew Meier was 1,072 pages but was also one of my favorite nonfiction reads of the year.

I read so many amazing books! I can recommend any of the books! I wish I could highlight them all, but you can find all the book review here on my blog or on Goodreads.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was a perfect Christmas read, especially after the darker books that I had read earlier in the month. Like the novels Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan.

To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis is an amazing book of poetry and photographs.

Having been a exchange student sister and mother to two generations of Finns from the Arctic Circle, I was fascinated by The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylvainen.

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo was another nonfiction favorite. As was, Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser.

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff was a surprise favorite because of its delicious black humor.

I found Jo Harjo’s poetry very emotional in Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light.

In Empire of Ice and Stone, Buddy Levy offers another riveting tale of adventure and hardship.

I have been fascinated by all things Ancient Egypt since girlhood, and learned so much from Egypt’s Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti Were Gods on Earth by John and Colleen Darnell.

Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of this Book, about the loss of a mother, really resonated with me.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was surprise mail from the publisher; I sped through it and gave it to my gaming son to read. Debut novelist Ethan Chatangier’s Singer Distance is another book I recommended to my sci-fi loving son.

I loved Elizabeth Strout’s latest Lucy Barton installment, Lucy by the Sea. For historical fiction, Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety was a favorite, along with The Lincoln Highway by Armor Towles and Mr. Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe. If you like the Old West, Hardland by Ashley E. Sweeney is a must read.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra was a favorite fiction read.

The Garden of Broken Things The Garden of Broken Things by Francesca Momplaisir is a shattering read. My husband made four trips to Haiti while working in disaster relief and I revisited his hundreds of slides while reading.

Jill Stukenberg’s News of the Air, Frederick Tuten’s The Bar at Twilight, and The Swallows of Lunetto by Joseph Fasano are sone outstanding small press reads.

Brendan Slocum’s The Violin Conspiracy was a hit debut mystery/thriller with insight into the classical music world and the plight of black musicians.

The First Populist: A Life of Andrew Jackson by David S. Brown was a particularly revealing read.

I read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer over many months. enjoying its beautiful writing and important message. The Night Watchman by Louise Edrich was a re-read when two members(including me) recommended it as a book club read.

Chevy in the Hole by Kelsey Ronan takes place in Flint and Detroit, Michigan. It’s a terrific read that really captures the ciites.

Jerome Charyn’s Big Red was a great read that has won critical acclaim here and abroad.

I was riveted to Keith O’Brien’s Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe about Love Canal, just a few miles from my childhood home. The interesting biography Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay by Merilyn Simonds may not be about someone I had head about, but her life was fascinating.

James Runic, of Grantchester fame, writes about Bach in The Great Passion. A music lover’s dream of a novel. Another book I enjoyed was Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge.

Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans by Theresa Kaminski proved I knew little of the woman who played second fiddle to Roy Rogers on my tv.

Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen and Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu, along with A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang and The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee, all gave me great insight into Chinese history.

My first read of the year, She Came from Mariupol by Natascha Wodin became eerily relevant after Putin waged war on the Ukraine.

I have eight ARCs and twenty egalleys for 2023 waiting for me to read! I gave myself two weeks off for ‘free reading’ but on Monday, it’s back to the schedule.

Happy New Year! May 2023 bring good things.

December Books & Gifts

It has been quite a week for many, what with winter storms and three viruses, rising prices and short days and long nights. I hope that your holiday brought some joy in this difficult world.

It was just me, hubby, son and grandpuppy for Christmas Day. My hubby made homemade spaghetti sauce and a crust bread. I made roasted brussels sprouts and an Italian fruit cake. Then we watched old fashioned Christmas cartoons, which was a throwback to what we did when our son was a tot.

My presents had a decidedly political bent! Hubby bought me an Eleanor Roosevelt doll from Mattel’s Inspiring Women Series, a Vera Bradly purse with a Scottie dog on plaid, and a book he heard about on public radio. Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by former Surgeon General Vivik H. Murthy, M.D. I am reading it now.

From my son, we received a selection of Simpson and Vail teas and fiber bags for patio gardening. He gave my husband a new keyboard and a King Arthur Flour gift certificate.

He bought me three books on Ted Kennedy! I had read as a galley Neil Gabler’s Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour 1932-1975. When I didn’t get the galley to the second volume, Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism 1976-2009 I was disappointed. I didn’t want to buy volume two in hard cover since I didn’t have volume one. He solved the problem by buying me both! Then, he notice the new book Ted Kennedy by James A. Farrell and added it to his gift order.

Our son knows that I have read multiple books on the same president. It’s always interesting to read different perspectives. I have been reading presidential biographies since I worked on a Redwork embroidered quilt of the American Presidents over twenty years ago.

So far in December, I have read 15 books. For my Christmas gift to myself, I decided to read only books form myp ersonal TBR shelf–no review books–until the new year!

First up was Small Things Like These by Clair Keegan, a charming and moving story that I will suggest for the book club’s December 2023 read. Then, I picked up Becoming Duchess Goldblatt and read it in a day. The anonymous author’s story of her personal crisis and the fictional character she created who became a social media phenomenon is entertaining, wise, and wonderful. Seeing the Netflix ads for The Pale Blue Eye based on Louis Bayard’s novel, which I had on my Kindle, I next read it. It is very 19th c in style, and influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic horror and his Dupin’s style of crime solving.

Currently, I am reading Lucinda Hawkley’s Dickens’ s Artistic Daughter, Katey.: Her Life, Loves and Impact. The author is Dickens’ great-great-great-granddaughter. I previously read her Dickens and Travel and Charles Dickens and Christmas. WHo knows, I may fit in another book after this one!

What did I give this year? To my husband, two shirts and two books: Flour Power by Tara Jenson and Julie Taboulie’s Lebanese Kitchen. I am looking forward to some good eats!

I gave our son gifts from his wish list: fancy kitchen tools and a set of 15 Alfred Hitchcock movies and the Criterion Godzilla set.

Plus, we had a wonderful visit with Ellie.

Best wishes for a happy new year!

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

A publisher told me I was approved for a book but also said I needed to be on specific social media accounts. Including Twitter. So, I created an account and followed publishers and authors I had read or was reading and other bookish folk. Those authors referred to other Twitter accounts which I then followed. An author shared something by Benjamin Dryer, and I followed him and bought his delightful and informative book Dreyer’s English and read it. Another author mentioned Elizabeth McCracken and I followed her and bought her novel delightful comic Bowlaway and read it (and every book she has published since.) And it was likely from them that I discovered Duchess Goldblatt, for they were early Duchess fans.

No one knew who was writing the Duchess’s posts. They were funny and sharp. They were compassionate and inspiring.

When the Duchess wrote her memoir Becoming Duchess Goldblatt I bought it and it has been on my ebook TBR shelf for a long time. I promised myself I would to ‘free reading’ between now and the end of the year, and then put my nose to the grindstone again tacking the review books waiting for me. I opened Duchess to check her out, and ended up reading the memoir in a day.

Fictional people can now give blood. Of course, we have always given our blood; we have always poured out every bit of ourselves to you.

from Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

The author tells the story of the end of her marriage, suddenly and cruelly, separating her from her family by marriage and from her preschool son, costing her financial security and the new house they had just moved into. Even her friends seemed to offer no comfort. Her job was being phased out. The shock of it all closed her down and she was detached from everything but her pain.

The author needed something to distract her. She opened a social media account for her fictional alter ego, Duchess Goldblatt. Strangers befriended her. It was pretty surprising to her. But she closed the account. Later, the Duchess resurrected on Twitter. People responded to the clever writing, especially writers. The Duchess became well known.

Her made up world is hilarious. Crooked Path, NY is ten minutes north of Manhattan and ten minutes south of the Canadian border, and shares a border with Kansas–and has its own navy! It “was founded by a sect of anti-cartography zealots:” I loved that it had “a day spa specializing in the therapeutic laying on of obese dachshunds.”

They’re razing Crooked Path’s Mobius strip mall today. Delicate job. The place has no exits. We haven’t been sure who’s inside. Or outside.

from Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

The author’s friends didn’t get the Duchess or her purpose. Why be nice to strangers?

Where is the line between the author and the character? The Duchess was friends with people, but the author wasn’t friends with them because they didn’t know the real author. And she preferred to keep that distance. It appeared that people needed the Duchess. The Duchess brought strangers together into a community. The Duchess gave kindness to those who needed it.

One fan was Lyle Lovett, and the author had been his fan forever. He understood what she was doing and the importance of her work. He invited the author to concerts. He was one of the few who knew the real person behind the Duchess.

Throughout the book, tidbits from the Duchess are shared, and I loved and laughed at so many of her thoughts. She is the perfect foil to the trauma of the author’s story of loss and the backstory of her childhood and dysfunctional family.

Grief and loss can be dealt with in many ways, from the vengeful to the self-destruction. The creativity of the author in inventing the Duchess and finding a way to connect to others and form a community is uplifting and inspiring.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt
by Duchess Goldblatt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published July 7, 2020

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media. Fans around the world are drawn to Her Grace’s voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community that’s sprung up around her.

@DuchessGoldblat (81 year-old literary icon, author of An Axe to Grind) brought people together in her name: in bookstores, museums, concerts, and coffee shops, and along the way, brought real friends home—foremost among them, Lyle Lovett.

“The only way to be reliably sure that the hero gets the girl at the end of the story is to be both the hero and the girl yourself.” — Duchess Goldblatt

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Are we willing to do the right thing, regardless of the cost? Especially when we are comfortable, and understand the luxury of that comfort, knowing how easily it could be lost?

It is a questions we should face every day. But most of us hide from the probing of conscience, the knowledge of the suffering in this world.

This week, President Zelensky stood before Congress and made clear the choice we have to support democracy in a foreign land, or praise and admire his countrymen without risk. With every Christmas present purchase we make, we can consider the happiness and pleasure of loved ones or we can consider the environmental impact and the poorly paid or slave labor that manufactured it. Planning our holiday meal, we can choose tradition or we can think about our health and the health of the planet. We daily face decisions, large and small, that impact the world or one person.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose everything, Furlong knew.

from Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

I had heard so much about this slender book. As I considered how to end my day, I decided to read it. It is set in 1985 in a small Irish village. Furlong has a good life. A wife and five girls. A good business supplying the village with coal and fuel that provides a good life without luxuries. He grew up fatherless, but luckily his mother didn’t lose her position and her employer treated them well. Furlong knows that his life could have been otherwise. His mother could have been cast out, he could have been orphaned. He was lucky to find a good wife. He was lucky his girls were well behaved and content. He thinks often of the past. He wonders if all his days forward will be the same, with nothing more to offer.

On Christmas Eve, he delivers a load of coal to the local convent. Their laundry service is exemplary, the linens looking like new. The work is done by girls, and there are rumors about what goes on there. But no one prods too far. When Furlong opens the door to the coal shed, he finds a girl locked in. It is the beginning of Furlong’s deliberation of what to do. To confront the nuns would mean a loss of business, would hurt his family. But how can a man who claims to be a Christian turn away? What is the point of life if we are not brave enough to do the right thing?

Keegan was inspired by the Magdalen laundry that remained in operation until 1996. Knowing that the story is based on history makes it even more powerful.

This beautiful story brings alive a man and a time and a place in an hour’s reading. The impact of the story remains long after. I will add it to my canon of favorite Christmas stories.

Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan
Grove Press
Published November 30, 2021

from the publisher

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.