Chris’s Pick
December 2020
American Dirt
Jeanine Cummins
This whole disturbing year has been a non-stop reading event for me, and probably for you. Although I would not wish to repeat any part of the quarantine experience, the upside has been the reading and discovery of dozens of truly excellent books by either new, or comfortingly familiar, authors. But after cataloging all I have read in 2020, I came back to this one to review.
American Dirt begins with the terrifying massacre of an extended Mexican family at a Quinceanera celebration. Lydia’s husband, a journalist, has infuriated the head of a powerful cartel, provoking this deadly retribution. Hearts pounding, we watch as only Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, narrowly escape the gunmen by hiding in a bathroom. As the cartel continues to search the city for them, Lydia at first turns to old friends for help. But realizing that she has now put her friends in grave danger as well, Lydia determines that their escape must be by her wits alone.
We are then taken on a harrowing journey in the flight from Mexico to reach the safety of “American dirt”. Lydia is used to a comfortable middle-class existence and has some means at her disposal. But as they have escaped without papers or passports and must protect their digital identity from the far-reaching cartel, Lydia and Luca join the masses of migrants heading north. They meet young sisters, who are escaping their own personal horrors, and a couple of other misfits who join their small band. They learn how to jump onto, and ride on the top of, La Bestia, the train on which hundreds of migrants die each year. They encounter corrupt police officers and gangs who lie in wait, anticipating the arrival of vulnerable migrants. Finally, they end up in Nogales, where they must cross the desert by foot and at night with a hired coyote to arrive in the United States.
I read this book in January, when it was first released, and it has haunted me since. It was almost impossible to put down. Cummins writes in a straight-forward fashion, keeping the narrative swift and unrelenting. Besides keeping me up at night to read “just one more page”, it was a profoundly moving experience. The book is clearly designed as a moral message to bring an understanding of migrants’ plight and to put faces to the nameless. In the afterward of the book, Jeanine Cummins details the five-year research project that resulted in American Dirt, and her intention “to honor the hundreds of thousands of stories we may never get to hear…”
However, this book has become wildly controversial, receiving a great deal of negative press and condemnation because Jeanine Cummins is neither a migrant nor is she Mexican. Her book tour was canceled; she received threats of violence. Lauren Groff writes in The New York Times, “In contemporary literary circles, there is a serious and legitimate sensitivity to people writing about heritages that are not their own because, at its worst, this practice perpetuates the evils of colonization, stealing the stories of oppressed people for the profit of the dominant.” This is an argument I understand, especially in our current culture where everything is politicized.
However, it is clear that the intended audience for this story is not the migrants, nor even, I think, the Latinx population, but for people like me who have never experienced this desperation or fear, and who are worried about what is happening at our Southern border. If our eyes can be opened a bit, or if it nudges us towards a greater understanding and empathy, then I feel the book has value.
American Dirt is also a story of love, the love a mother has for her child and the extremes she might go to to protect and ensure a better life for him. Mostly though, it is just a terrific story, and terrific stories are always worth reading.
Pete’s Pick
November, 2020
Diary of a Pastor’s Soul
M. Craig Barnes
Publisher: Brazos Press/ 2020
Fiction; Pastoral Theology
Introduction: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a pastor? As in being the pastor of a church? This book gives you a glimpse into the everyday life of a pastor in a way that allows you to see the humanness of the person, the professional challenge of the position, and the amazing way in which God is at work in the life of the pastor as well as his or her parishioners. You don’t have to be a church insider to read this. Just be open to a great adventure of storytelling and getting to see people being themselves.
Author
Dr. Craig Barnes is the current President of Princeton Theological Seminary. Before coming to Princeton, he was a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Dr. Barnes has served churches in Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. He received a PhD in Church History from the University of Chicago. He is the author of seven previous books and countless articles published in a variety of periodicals.
Story
This book is the fictionalized recounting of the last year of a pastor’s ministry before he retires. When the year is over, he will have served that church for 28 of his 43 years of pastoral ministry. The pastor decides to keep a weekly journal of his last year as a pastor. Journaling is not something he has had as a habit, but decides it is important for him to capture some reflections of each of his last weeks in pastoral ministry. We get to read his journal which is organized by months, starting in July and ending the following June. Each month contains two or three pages for each of the four or five weeks in that particular month.
In reading through this journal, we are privy to the pastor telling stories of the significant events or encounters he has had during that week and we get to hear his reflection on how that resonated with him, or challenged him, or irritated him. If you go to church as I do, you probably don’t think of any interactions you have with the pastor as being out of the ordinary or even significant. Yet, following this pastor through his last 52 weeks provides an eye-opening view to what Barnes calls the pastor’s soul. Ordinary moments for most people become memorable, soul-searching moments for a pastor who is open to reflecting uncritically on the context and circumstances in which they take place. We get to see the pastor fussing about a long Property Committee meeting at church one week or an encounter with one of the church ladies who is always at work whenever the church has any social gathering. We get to see the pastor at work when someone dies or a marriage falls apart. We get to listen to him reflect on fractious family conversations with wife or daughter as plans are laid for upcoming special events or having to change them because of an unexpected emergency at the church. Craig Barnes has always been a storyteller in his ministry as a pastor and in his writings in all his previous books. He has a unique ability to see his everyday experiences and encounters as events in the story of what is happening in this place and time on a grand level. It is this compilation of stories that make up what Craig Barnes calls the soul of the pastor. For most people, they are just stories. For Craig Barnes, they are holy moments.
Evaluation
I am personal friends with Craig Barnes, by way of being totally transparent. I was on the pastor search committee that brought him to National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC to be the senior pastor at the young age of 36. During the nine years he served as senior pastor at National Presbyterian, I was his church administrator. I was introduced to Craig’s writing during the search process that brought him to Washington, DC because he had already written two of his books. I read his books Yearning: Living Between How It Is & How It Ought to Be and When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change while we were doing the search and his way of story telling just spoke to me in a way nothing ever had. It was a time of change for me as I was getting ready to retire from the Army and figure out what I was going to do next. In reading this book, Diary of a Pastor’s Soul, I enjoyed being reminded of how Craig liked to work and how he interpreted the things that happened on a day-to-day basis. I hope you will find insight into the inner workings of the life of a pastor in a church setting. Maybe it will inspire you to even go to church.
Karen’s Pick
October, 2020
Hamnet
Maggie O’Farrell
Winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction, Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, takes place in England, in 1580 in the town of Stratford-On-Avon. This poetic novel of historical fiction confronts heart break, the torment of the death of a child, and the challenges and evolution of a marriage.
The title of O’Farrell’s novel is slightly misleading since the story focuses on Agnes (Anne) Hathaway, a free spirit and healer who understands potions better than she does people and a nameless indentured young Latin tutor. Although from different economic and social standing, they fall hopelessly in love and marry. Through the early years of their marriage and birth of their three children we are witness to Agnes’s transformation. She becomes a fiercely protective mother and an influential force in the life of her young husband, whose “gifts” as a writer are just beginning to determine his adult life. He is referred to as “her husband”, or “the father"-the reader soon realizes he becomes a character of note, the world’s most famous playwright and ironically he has very little dialog.
O’Farrell has created Agnes as a woman of great strength, and passion. This book is written from the prospective of Agnes and imagines the emotional and domestic repercussions after the loss of her beloved 11 year old young son, Hamnet , who dies from the bubonic plague.
The scene in which Agnes prepares the body of her son for burial is devastating. Leaving no time for grieving, she knows that Hamnet must be buried quickly, for fear the plague will spread.
O’ Farrell writes of Agnes’s mourning;
There is a part of her that would like to wind up time, to gather it in like yarn.
She would like to spin the wheel backwards, unmake the skein of Hamnet's death.
There will be no going back. No undoing what was laid out for them. The boy
has gone and the husband will leave and she will stay and the pigs will need
to be fed every day and time runs only one way. This moment is the absent
mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. …
It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.
Days after Hamnet’s death, Agnes must find the will and courage to continue being a mother to their two girls, and return to her role as healer and sage in Stratford-on-Avon. Soon after his sons burial, “the father” quickly returns to what is now his renown playhouse in London. However insensitive this action may seem we learn that four years later the playwright channels his overwhelming grief for the loss of his child into his most notable production— titled with a common version of his son's name —Hamlet.
Be prepared-O’Farrell’s ability to draw us in to their story is extremely compelling. The reader cannot avoid the feelings and emotions that define this family. I highly recommend this book.
Sonja’s Pick
September, 2020
The Beautiful Mystery
Louise Penny
I personally thrive on music so when I found this novel was about 24 monks who have become world famous for their singing and recording of ancient chants I became interested. Their effect on listeners is known as "the beautiful mystery."
Someone had murdered the choirmaster and disturbed its supposedly peaceful environment. Entry to the monastery has never been allowed except now for Chief Inspector Gamache and fellow inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir to find the murderer amongst the 24. An emotional twist has been involved concerning Beauvoir and Gamache's daughter who are secretly having an affair. The intrigue concerning why a new album could be made to support reconstruction of the aging monastery adds a realistic touch to this novel of love, spiritual devotion and obedience.
I read later that this is Penny's 8th novel about Chief Inspector Gamache. It was intriguing enough that I will search out others.
Pete’s Pick
August, 2020
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
Macmillan, 2006
Introduction
Author Marilynne Robinson won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with this novel, GILEAD. The book is organized without any chapter subdivisions. It is like a year long journal of the narrator of the story, one Rev. John Ames. He claims it is a series of letters he is writing to his 7-year old son.
Author
As mentioned above, Marilynne Robinson won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She subsequently won the National Humanities Medal in 2012 and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She has written four novels including this one. A graduate of Pembroke College (Brown University), she also has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. From 1991 until 2016, she taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.
Story
The story takes place in a little town called Gilead, Iowa. The narrator of the story is one Rev. John Ames, a 76-year old Congregationalist minister who is writing a series of letters to his 7-year old son. Yes, a 7-year old son. John Ames was born in 1880, so at 76, the story is taking place in 1956. As you read through the story, you’ll discover that John Ames was born and lived his whole life in Gilead, except for the two years he was in seminary. As he was graduating from seminary, he married a girl he grew up with in Gilead. She died during childbirth, and the baby daughter died just a few hours later. For the next 43 years, John Ames lived by himself next door to his boyhood friend Boughton, also a minister. As John writes to his son, he frequently refers to the 43 years of singleness as his dark days. This is not said as a grim characterization, just a description of time for him. The purpose in John’s series of letters to his young son is to leave the son a legacy of his father, a man who is dying as a writes and knows he will not see his son grow to maturity. John met a woman 30 years his younger during worship one Sunday morning when he was 67-years old, and they ended up marrying. She became the mother of this 7-year old boy to whom John is writing. Through these letters, John tells his son all kinds of family history. John is himself a son of a minister and his father’s father was also a minister. His mother’s father was also a minister. Wow! Quite a heritage. As John writes these letters, we learn that his grandfather moved from Maine to Kansas to participate in the Free Soilers movement, an anti-slavery movement that was active before the Civil War. When the Civil War began, Grandfather Ames joined the Union Army as a chaplain and served through the war. As John Ames writes his family story, we learn a lot about those times before and during the Civil War, as well as what life was like at the turn of the 20th century and during the first half of the 1900’s. Throughout the story, John uses his theological training, his experience of growing up in the church, and his own experience of pastoring a small town church in the town where he grew up to explain life to his son. It is a fascinating exploration of how life’s experiences influence us in even the most nuanced ways as we conduct ourselves on a daily basis. This is a wonderful story of relationships, of theology, of small town life, and even of history. It is such a wonderful description of small town life and the inter-relationships that exist among all the people who grew up together and continue to live together. The events at the end of the book provide the basis for yet another novel set in Gilead. Can’t wait to read it.
Evaluation
This was a very different kind of read for me. I tend to historical fiction, events taking place in a real time and place long ago that I already know about or studied in school. When not doing historical fiction, a good John Grisham or Pat Conroy or John Jakes easily keeps me occupied. Being a preacher’s son myself, I found it fascinating to follow John Ames’s constantly referring back to his upbringing, his growing up experiences with both father and grandfather also being preachers. I found his theological explanations incredibly fascinating, although you do not have to know theology to enjoy the storyline of the book. I was enthralled with the history from the settling of Missouri and Kansas leading up to the Civil War. And following Grandfather Ames’ experience during the Civil War brought back memories from other novels I’ve read set during the Civil War, such as those written by Jeff Shaara and his father Michael Shaara. It’s a hard read in some respects because of the way John Ames jumps around in history and settings. However, in the end, it really is an amazing legacy he leaves his son to cherish. I wonder what I would do with such a task.
Barbara’s Pick
July, 2020
Simon the Fiddler
Paulette Jiles
I don’t know about you, but I find myself reading similar books—sometimes the common denominator is World War II, sometimes centuries-ago Europe or Asia, other times post-apocalyptic (not often).
Several years ago I read this author’s last book, News of the World, which took place in the decade after the Civil War. It started slow but finished strong. When I realized Simon the Fiddler was in the same era, I said yes please!
Simon is a boyish-looking but very talented fiddle player who has successfully avoided conscription into the Confederate Army for the duration of the war. His luck runs out in Texas in March 1865 and he becomes part of a musical ensemble. During one of their official gigs, he spies a young woman in the crowd and falls for her, hard.
Eventually he and a few of his mates desert the army and begin playing the larger cities in Texas, Simon banking his pay in order to have a future. His thoughts never leave the young woman, Doris, with whom he has been secretly corresponding through one of his bandmates.
Through twists and turns, boy and girl end up together, but it’s not rainbows and unicorns.
The author’s direct writing style creates a very detailed portrait of the lawlessness in the country and the territories at that time and particularly the role of music in affecting people’s lives. Turns out she is a musician in a band similar to Simon’s. (That’s called “writing what you know”!)
Mary’s Pick
June 2020
HOPE TO DIE
James Patterson
Little Brown and Company, Publisher, 378 pages
James Patterson writes thriller novels. Throughout his books there are consistent characters, namely his family, Nana Mama and Thierry Mulch. Alex Cross is a top Washington, D.C. detective and well known criminal psychologist that takes on complex cases. This book is the sequel to Cross My Heart. In that book his entire family has been kidnapped. Mulch has Cross and his whole family under surveillance and is assembling a database of information about them all. There is a bug planted inside his house that will force Cross to stay in as he’s sending photos of his family being murdered. As it turns out the photos are fake and now he believes they may still be alive. This is the cliffhanger and he promises that he will get them back. I suggest to read this first.
Now to the sequel, Hope to Die: Detective Cross is forced to play the most heart- wrenching game of his career. Mulch (who is a psychopath) is being driven by years of hatred and revenge and has now threatened to kill all of them, ultimately breaking Cross forever!
Cross sustains a head injury and he ultimately becomes a liability in his current role on the case. He is forced to turn his badge and gun over and report to a hospital for treatment. He has been asked to come off the case and allow his fellow workers to pursue the killer. Alex is unable to sit still and finds a way out of the hospital to pursue finding his family. Alex begins to investigate the Thierry Mulch who supposedly died as a young man. While doing this investigation he meets a former detective who’s always believed that Mulch murdered his father and faked his own death. Atticus’ daughter, a big shot TV producer now teams up with Alex to help fake the first murder that Thierry has demanded for ransom.
Cross hasn’t seen any trace of his family. The police say they may have found Bree’s (his wife) body but the corpse is so badly battered, it can’t be recognized. He asks himself 2 questions: Is this his wife? Or is Mulch toying with him? Mulch has been able to manipulate the crime scene evidence as he likes. Cross discovers that evidence from another crime was purposely placed to lead police astray. Does Mulch have help? If yes. then there is a sinister alliance at work against Cross.
Cross isn’t fighting this alone. Because of past work he has the help of someone in the FBI, as well as various other people who are new in his books, as he takes on the pursuit of this case. Time is running short for Bree, Nana Mama and the children; while Alex finds what kind of man he really is. It takes every ounce of his strength to not buckle. Cross is unable to defeat the hatred and darkness building inside of him. As he faces dealing with the loss of his loved ones being gone, he turns to “vengeance.”
The book continues as Cross pursues the hunt to find his family alive. The ending is a nail biter for sure you can’t put the book down which is a hallmark of Patterson’s writing. For fast paced read that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end of both books, pick these up for a good summer read.
Ann’s Pick
May 2020
The Moonshiner’s Daughter
By Donna Everhart
356 pages, Kensington Books: New York, NY 2020
If you are in the mood for Southern literature this is the read for you. The Moonshiner’s Daughter is a coming of age story set in rural North Carolina of the early 1960’s. It is the story of Jessie Sasser, who is in turmoil about her family’s legacy after witnessing her mother’s tragic passing.
This life-changing loss occurred when Jessie was only 4 years old. Fast-forward 12 years and 16-year-old Jessie still bears the emotional scars. Her father, Easton, refuses to discuss her mother and the circumstances surrounding her death are still a mystery. Jessie’s younger brother, Merritt, doesn’t remember their mother at all and idolizes their father. Jessie, however, blames Easton and the family’s moonshining for her mother’s death. To help run the moonshine operations are Uncle Virgil, Aunt Juanita and their son, Oral, each with their own problems and issues. No one will discuss Lydia, Jessie’s mother.
One day while driving out to check on a still, Easton, Jessie and Merritt are driven off the road, most likely by a rival moonshining family. Merritt suffers a horrendous injury which confirms Jessie’s opinion that moonshine is “Good for nothing is what it’s good for.”
Slowly we learn that Jessie had developed an eating disorder. She feels isolated and outcast at Piney Tops H.S. She is struggling for control over her life and refuses to accept support given by her father through his moonshine profits.
There is intrigue, danger and mystery. There is help from Mrs. Brewer, the school nurse, who recognizes Jessie’s problem and discovers there are even deeper issues facing the Sasser family.
Jessie is ashamed to be the moonshiner’s daughter. She yearns to know more about the mother she so desperately misses. Yet federal revenues and rivals are closing in. Can Jessie accept or reject her family’s legacy in order to save it?
This is a vivid, compelling, intricately plotted novel with well-developed characters. If you are looking for a gritty young heroine in a moving and authentic novel, The Moonshiner’s Daughter may just be the book for you.
Chris’s Pick
(March, 2019)
April, 2020
(Note: This is a review I wrote last year, then abandoned for another loved book—hard to keep up sometimes. In needing a review for this month, I reread this one and was struck by the similarities between what we are all going through now, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s. The loss and pain does not change…..)
The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai
Viking Press
Rebecca Makkai’s novel begins in Chicago in 1985. Yale Tishman, the development director for a Chicago art gallery, is working to obtain a collection of remarkable 1920’s Parisian paintings from Nora, a ninety-year-old artist’s model who posed for multiple famous artists of the time.
Yet as Yale’s career begins to flourish, the AIDS epidemic grows around him. In tragic irony, the gay community that has embraced the sexual revolution is devastated by a disease that becomes apocalyptic. Yale’s friends are dying, and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself.
Everyone that spring just wandered. You'd find a friend in a cafe, and even if you'd hardly known them you'd run and kiss them, and you'd exchange news about who was dead. I don't know how you could compare it to anything else.
Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter. While staying with an old friend, a photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter.
Yale and Fiona’s stories intertwine throughout the novel. Makkai thoughtfully explores the importance of memory and legacy, and the pain left with the survivors. The ninety-year old Nora’s story appears to be a footnote in the broader story at first. But her loss and her determination to have someone she loved remembered and recognized resonates throughout the novel.
Nora: But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go? He was gone, so it couldn’t change, it couldn’t turn to indifference. I was stuck with all that love.
It is, in fact, Nora’s “Lost Generation” of the 1920’s (where so many young lives were lost to war and pneumonia), that produced the title of the book. Fitzgerald wrote in My Generation, “We were the great believers. I have never cared for any men as much as for those who felt the first springs of life when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved — and who now walk the long stormy summer.”
Makkai’s multi-generational perspective is a fusion of past and present, public and personal, and reflects on how the world‘s tragedies and disasters affect lives we think we are living.
Fiona: She was struck by the selfish thought that this was not fair to her. That she’d been in the middle of a different story, one that had nothing to do with this. She was a person who was finding her daughter, making things right with her daughter, and there was no room in that story for the idiocy of extreme religion, the violence of men she’d never met. Just as she’d been in the middle of a story about divorce when the towers fell in New York City, throwing everyone’s careful plans to shit. Just as she’d once been in a story about raising her own brother, growing up with her brother in the city on their own, making it in the world, when the virus and the indifference of greedy men had steamrolled through. She thought of Nora, whose art and love were interrupted by assassination and war.... tearing apart everything good that was ever built.”
Although the loss throughout the book is profound, the book keeps you up at night for just “one more chapter”. It is well written, and worth reading. This book was one of New York Times ten best novels of 2018.
Karen’s Pick
March, 2020
Metropolitan Stories
Christine Coulson
Published October 8th 2019
Other Press (NY)
Metropolitan Stories is a magical book about a magical place, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Christine Coulson writes with first hand knowledge of The Met since she began her career at the Met in 1991 as an intern and over the next 25 years worked in the Development Office, the Director’s Office, and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Although the book is classified as a novel, it reads more like a group of loosely connected short stories. For this reader, unlike other reviewers, the design of the oft times unrelated chapters does not lessen the strength of the novel as a whole.
The characters Coulson chooses to write about are museum employees depicted as being quirky, eccentric, emotional and passionate. In “Musing,” we meet The Met’s pretentious director Michel Larousse (think Philippe de Montebello?). Upon his learning that fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is bringing his muse to a meeting, Larousse searches the museum’s collections of art objects in order to find his own personal muse to occupy his office for the visit. Coulson brilliantly anthropomorphizes the long list muse candidates vying for the job. “The Talent,” introduces us to the neurotic curator Nick Morton who obsesses about losing prime gallery space for an upcoming exhibition to a rival. Nick is adamantly states to all that will listen that, “My pictures cannot hang on nine-foot walls”.
Coulson’s writing of the art is represented as objects to be revered, prized, admired, and lovingly cared for by the 2,300 museum employees. In the chapter “Chair as Hero,” an 18th-century fauteuil à la reine in the Met’s Wrightsman Galleries recalls the master craver that lovingly created its coils and tendrils. The chair reveals to the reader the role it had in comforting the distraught young daughter of the Duchess of Parma, who eventually becomes the Queen of Spain. It is apparent that the fauteuil a la reine still longs to offer consolation. The reader is also introduced to “Adam,” a five hundred and six-year-old Renaissance marble statue who dreams about movement. Late one evening Adam gets his wish that produces catastrophic results.
Coulson skillfully does the job of taking us behind the scenes at the museum and making the Met come alive. Her writing allows the reader to go on a journey through the Met galleries, as well as the museums tunnels and secret passages, in which most visitors will never participate. The museum is seen as an ever-evolving place where the respect from the staff who care for its “inhabitants” translates into the awe-inspiring experiences had by millions of visitors. After reading Metropolitan Stories your time spent in to the Metropolitan Museum of Art will never be the same.
Barbara’s Pick
February 2020
The Giver of Stars
Jojo Moyes
Published October 2019
British author Jojo Moyes is probably best known in the United States for the weeper Me Before You, so it might seem odd that her latest book is centered in Depression-era Kentucky. But she’s told a terrific story about a WPA program that Eleanor Roosevelt championed. Women known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky traveled through rough terrain on horseback to deliver reading materials to the poorest, most remote houses in the state.
Moyes’s main character, Alice, is a British woman swept off her feet by visiting Kentuckian Bennett. They quickly marry and return to Kentucky, but in short order she realizes she’s traded an untenable life in Britain for another in the United States. When the opportunity not only to ride but to deliver books is presented to her, she leaps at the chance—and meets her soul sisters in the library.
Moyes, as usual, writes memorable characters and dramatic plot twists. If you are a lover of books, you won’t regret adding this book to your list!
Sonja’s Pick
January 2020
Inconspicuous Consumption
Tatianna Schlossberg
Grand Central Publishing (August 27, 2019)
277 pp
We are all worried about the environment and are inundated daily with proposals and remedies. This is a must read for all of us concerned with OUR world.
The author has searched for all kinds of interesting information that we knew nothing about and packed in a very readable form—with tons of footnotes.
Did you know that our inexpensive cashmere made from Mongolian goats have overgrazed to the point that it is so coarse more goats are needed and the cycle for overgrazing continues depleting the earth.
And she would like government and corporations to make sure everyone acts more responsively but that only happens when citizens push them. It's not our fault that we buy cheap cashmere!
She feels that all of us need to fight for the Green New Deal. It's all very complicated. Did you know that European utilities claim that burning wood is carbon neutral therefore allowing them to purchase our pellets from the forests of the Southeast which is now decimating those (our) forests.
One can only read a few chapters at a time –there is so much information. But that is fine as the book is neatly divided into problems she dwells on. She is a reporter and this is an eye opening report.