Catching up on Reading

Reading for me is mostly audiobooks these days, as I can listen to them while Mulder and I go for our morning walk, or while I cook dinner, sometimes when I go grocery shopping. It’s a mixed bag, because sometimes my mind wanders and I find I have gaps. Recently I was listening to a book, and while I thought I had stopped it when I took out my earbuds, it was still going, and when I realized it I had lost a couple of hours. Finding where you were in an audiobook is very different than finding where you were in a physical copy. Also, you don’t have that tactile feeling of how far you are in the book, so it can be a little disorienting when you think you have about 50 – 100 pages to go, and suddenly it ends. I’m not much a fan of reading on an eReader. I’ve tried it a few times, but I guess it’s just not my thing. I do still love having a physical book in my hands, it’s just a much slower read for me than an audiobook. I usually read before bed, and I start nodding off, so don’t get very far. But sometimes I will still find time to read a book in the middle of the day, which is completely delicious. Having said all of that, here are most of the books I have read or listened to in the last 5 or 6 months. The blurbs are from the various publishers, via Amazon.

I received Lessons in Chemistry for Christmas. Ted bought me a physical copy, he saw it at the bookstore, read the blurb, and decided it sounded like a ‘Julie book’. I was finishing up another book at the time, so it took me awhile to get to it. During that time I kept seeing it pop up on other people’s blogs as their favorite book of 2022. So I was excited to dive in, and once I did I couldn’t put it down, and tore through it in a weekend. Highly recommended. Here’s the blurb.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an averagewoman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. 

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.  

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

I used to follow a blog by Amy Sue Nathan, many years ago. I think her blog was Kvetch Blog, but I’m not 100% sure. I know I loved it, and we were bloggy friends. She was an aspiring author and mother of two kids. Now she is an accomplished author, and we are Facebook friends. When I saw that she had a new book coming out, I preordered it, and I recently read it. Like Lessons in Chemistry, it takes place in the early 60s, and the women are expected to follow certain mores and careers are not really an option. Another theme the two books have in common is society not believing women when they are harassed or abused. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, though I would say I liked the second half more than the first half, it started out kind of slow for me. Here is the blurb.

Law school graduate and newlywed Ruth Appelbaum is acclimating to life and marriage in a posh Philadelphia neighborhood. She’ll do almost anything to endear herself to her mother-in-law, who’s already signed up Ruth for etiquette lessons conducted by the impeccably accessorized tutor Lillian Diamond. But Ruth brings something fresh to the small circle of housewives—sharp wit, honesty, and an independent streak that won’t be compromised.

Right away Ruth develops a friendship with the shy Carrie Blum. When Carrie divulges a dark and disturbing secret lurking beneath her seemingly perfect life, Ruth invites Lillian and the Diamond Girls of the etiquette school to finally question the status quo. Together they form an unbreakable bond and stretch well beyond their comfort zones.

For once, they’ll challenge what others expect from them, discover what they expect from themselves, and do whatever it takes to protect one of their own—fine manners be damned.

I’m not sure where I heard of Evening. I purchased the audiobook via Audible, and it sat on my phone for quite awhile. Finally I ran out of other books to read, so I decided to give this one a try. Again, I really liked it a lot. It’s not the longest book, I listened to it mostly on a recent drive to visit my Great Aunt, who lives about 1.5 hours away. Here’s the blurb.

In her thirties, Eve is summoned home by her distraught family to mourn the premature death of her sister, Tam, a return that becomes an unexpected encounter with the past. Eve bears the burden of a secret: Two weeks before Tam died, Eve and Tam argued so vehemently that they did not speak again. Her sister was famous, acclaimed for her career as a TV journalist and her devoted marriage. But Tam, too, had a secret, revealed the day after the funeral, one that inverts the story Eve has told herself since their childhood. In the aftermath, Eve is forced to revise her version of her fractured family, her sister’s accomplishments and vaunted marriage, and her own impeded ambition in work and love. 

Day by day as the family sits shiva, the stories unfold, illuminating the past? to shape the present. Evening explores the dissonant love between sisters, the body in longing, the pride we take in sustaining our illusions, and the redemption that is possible only when they are dispelled.

A while ago, I wrote about a book I had read, Haven. Tierney from Portmanteau Suitcase commented that they had read a book that seemed similar, Matrix. Matrix is the story of a 10th Century woman who is sent off to a nunnery, and the political struggles involved in her successes and failures there. I listened to it via Audible, and this was one that I really loved. Here’s the blurb.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

I am a Geraldine Brooks fan. I read her book, March, about the Father in Little Women before I had a blog, and I loved it. I think the second book I read was Year of Wonders, the story of an English village in the 15th century beset by plague. Again, really engaging. The other book of Brooks’ that I have read and loved was People of the Book, about the Sarajevo Haggadah, a subject that I loved learning about. (The links are to my book reviews, back in 2006 and 2010, and the graphics have disappeared…I should fix them, but the idea of going back through 17 years of blog posts and fixing things that have gone wonky with various WordPress updates is exhausting). Horse is a beautiful story about horse racing, the art world, and slavery. Deftly told and wonderful, I loved this book. Here is the blurb.

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

Speaking of horse racing, Perestroika in Paris is the story of a beautiful racehorse who is presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to wander outside of her stable at a racecourse in Paris. She takes the opportunity, and makes wonderful friends along the way. I loved this book, it was so dang charming. I listened to this book through the library app, Libby. I think I may want to listen to it again. Here’s the blurb.

Paras, short for “Perestroika”, is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and – she’s a curious filly – wanders all the way to the City of Light. She’s dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn’t afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthair pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. 

Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city’s lush green spaces, nourished by Frida’s strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly 100-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather and Christmas near, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? 

Jane Smiley’s beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

A neighbor and friend of ours loaned me this The Winemaker’s Wife, which she loved, after my trip to France last year. It is the story of two couples living on a Champagne estate during World War II. I really enjoyed it, and found myself wanting to learn a bit more about the region, though the book isn’t much about Champagne…it’s more about the French resistance of the German occupation. Here’s the blurb.

At the dawn of the Second World War, Inès is the young wife of Michel, owner of the House of Chauveau, a small champagne winery nestled among rolling vineyards near Reims, France. Marrying into a storied champagne empire was supposed to be a dream come true, but Inès feels increasingly isolated, purposely left out of the business by her husband; his chef de cave, Theo; and Theo’s wife, Sarah.

But these disappointments pale in comparison to the increasing danger from German forces pouring across the border. At first, it’s merely the Nazi weinführer coming to demand the choicest champagne for Hitler’s cronies, but soon, there are rumors of Jewish townspeople being rounded up and sent east to an unspeakable fate. The war is on their doorstep, and no one in Inès’s life is safe – least of all Sarah, whose father is Jewish, or Michel, who has recklessly begun hiding munitions for the Résistance in the champagne caves. Inès realizes she has to do something to help.

Sarah feels as lost as Inès does, but she doesn’t have much else in common with Michel’s young wife. Inès seems to have it made, not least of all because as a Catholic, she’s “safe.” Sarah, on the other hand, is terrified about the fate of her parents – and about her own future as the Germans begin to rid the Champagne region of Jews. When Sarah makes a dangerous decision to follow her heart in a desperate bid to find some meaning in the ruin, it endangers the lives of all those she cares about – and the champagne house they’ve all worked so hard to save.

In the present, Liv Kent has just lost her job – and her marriage. Her wealthy but aloof Grandma Edith, sensing that Liv needs a change of scenery before she hits rock bottom, insists that Liv accompany her on a trip to France. But the older woman has an ulterior motive – and some difficult but important information to share with her granddaughter. As Liv begins to uncover long-buried family secrets, she finds herself slowly coming back to life. When past and present intertwine at last, she may finally find a way forward, along a difficult road that leads straight to the winding caves beneath the House of Chauveau.

Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network, The Winemaker’s Wife is an evocative and gorgeously wrought novel that examines how the choices we make in our darkest hours can profoundly change our lives – and how hope can come from the places we least expect.

I liked that book enough that I decided to listen to another book by the same author, The Book of Lost Names. This is another book of French resistance during World War II. This is the story of Eva, a young Jewish woman living with her parents in Paris when the Nazis come for them. I liked this one a lot too, I may look at more of her work. Here’s the blurb.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than 60 years – a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II – an experience Eva remembers well – and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an 18th-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from – or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but does she have the strength to revisit old memories?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, where she began forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Parisand The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

I bought In Five Years at a local bookstore, because I was intrigued by the blurb on the back cover. I guess I put it aside, though, because a year or two later, I bought it again. Clearly I had forgotten that I had it at home. I took that as a sign that I should probably read it, and so I did. It was a semi-light read, though heartbreaking in some parts. I gave my extra copy to my friend, thinking she might enjoy it, and sent the other copy to one of my sisters as a Christmas gift. I’ll admit that I thought I had it all figured out, and it went a different direction, which I liked. Here’s the blurb.

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend – the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight – but it is one hour she cannot shake. 

In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting. 

After In Five Years, I decided to listen to another book by the same author, One Italian Summer. This one got me in a very different way…Katy and her mom planned a vacation together to Italy, and when her mom dies, Katy ends up going alone as a way to honor her mother and process her grief. While there, she runs into…her mother. But her mother is about her age, young and vibrant. They become friends. It’s an intriguing idea for anyone, to spend time with a younger parent than the one they know, but for anyone who has lost a parent, it is an especially wistful book. I enjoyed this one a lot too. Here’s the blurb.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.

Rebecca Serle’s next great love story is here, and this time it’s between a mother and a daughter. With her signature “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Serle has crafted a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.

Speaking of time travel, Wrong Place Wrong Time is the story of a woman who witnesses her son stab a man on the street one night, and when she wakes up the next morning, it isn’t the next morning at all. It is the morning of the day prior to the stabbing. She keeps going back in time, and realizes that she must solve the mystery of how her son came to be in this situation, and stop it from happening. Along the way, she learns a lot about her husband, her son, and herself. Here’s the blurb.

Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened?

Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed.

You can’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered.

That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake . . .

. . . and it is yesterday.

And then you wake again . . .

. . . and it is the day before yesterday.

Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it . . .