Book List: Books Read in 2021

 

BOOKS READ IN 2021

Every January, I try to remember to post a list of the books I read the prior year. Somehow, I completely forgot to post my list of 2021 books. I was really busy at work in early 2022, getting ready for a big trial that started in March. A lot of non-work stuff fell out of my brain. I didn't realize that my 2021 list was missing until I went to post my 2022 list. Oh well. Life happens. 

Here now, a year late, is the lit of the 134 books I read in 2021, in the order I read them. I usually read 100 - 110 books a year and have no idea how I read so many in 2021. You can find an explanation of my rating system below the list. 

• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Red and the Black by Stendhal 🌹🌹🌹

• Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctrow 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Not Now, But Now by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹

• Ship of Fools by Katherine Ann Porter 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed (reviewed here)🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall 🌹🌹

• On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reflex by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir by Erica Jong 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Shugie Bain by Stuart Douglas 🌹🌹🌹

• Whip Hand by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Lighthouse by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Anglophile's Notebook by Sunday Taylor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Midnight Line by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Library Book by Susan Orlean 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Charlotte Moss: A Visual Life: Scrapbooks, Collages, and Inspirations by Charlotte Moss 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Old Filth by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• On The Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World by P. J. O'Rourke 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery Man by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dead Cert by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 60 (Winter 2018) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Last Friends by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Obasan by Joy Kogawa 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wisdom of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Florence King Reader by Florence King 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century by Gaye P. Tapp 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Faithful Place by Tana French 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Consequences by Penelope Lively 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Orchids & Salami: A Gay and Impudent Memoir by Eva Gabor 🌹🌹🌹

• The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Jeeves in the Offing by P. G. Woodhouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Private Patient by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mark Hampton: An American Decorator by Duane Hampton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹

• Skios by Michael Frayn 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by Maarten J. Troost 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them, edited by Roxanne J. Coady 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Conservative Sensibility by George F. Will 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Eat Cake for Breakfast: And 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness by Viola Stanto 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Place in the World by Amy Maroney 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Twice Shy by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More by Erin Niimi Longhurst 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Jolie Blon's Bounce by James Lee Burke 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bruno: Chief of Police by Martin Walker 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater by Alan Richman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind by Debra Ollivier 🌹🌹🌹

• Mysteries of Pittsburg by Michael Chabon 🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 69 (Spring 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Wry Martinis by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Labyrinth by Kate Mosse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend 🌹🌹🌹

• The Darlings by Cristina Alger 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Choir by Joanna Trollope 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Uncommon Clay by Margaret Maron 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Changed Man by Francine Prose 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Split Images by Leonard Elmore 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• May We be Forgiven by A. M. Holmes 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Theban Mysteries by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design by Michael S. Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Incredulity of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Funerals are Fatal (aka After the Funeral) by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 71 (Autumn 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• French Lessons by Ellen Sussman 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Rizzio: A Novella by Denise Mina 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• House Made of Dawn by Scott N. Momaday 🌹🌹🌹

• Peril at End House by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Past Tense by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Walden by Henry David Thoreau 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• March Violets by Philip Kerr 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Plum Sauce: A Wodehouse Companion by Richard Usborne 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• LaBrava by Elmore Leonard 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy by Kathryn Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Scandal of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Maison: French Country Style by Elizabeth Hilliard 🌹🌹🌹

• Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

In 2020, I switched to using roses for my rating system, since this is Rose City Reader. My rating system is idiosyncratic and ever-changing. It is a mix of how a book subjectively appeals to me when I read it, its technical merits, and whether I would recommend it to other people. For example, I might rate a book highly if it's a social comedy set in a British country house because that kind of story checks all my boxes. On the other hand, I will probably rate a book on the low end if it lacks any humor, takes itself too seriously, or intolerantly espouses a point of view I disagree with ("intolerantly" is key in that sentence). 

With those general guidelines in mind:

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Five roses for books I loved, or would recommend to anyone, or I think are worthy of classic "must read" status." Examples would be Lucky Jim (personal favorite), A Gentleman in Moscow (universal recommendation), and Great Expectations (must read).

🌹🌹🌹🌹 Four roses for books I really enjoyed and/or would recommend to people who enjoy that type of book. So I give a lot of four roses because I might really like a book, but it isn't an all-time favorite. And while I'd recommend it to someone who likes that genre -- mystery, historical fiction, food writing, whatever -- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who asked me for a "good book."

🌹🌹🌹 Three roses for books I was lukewarm on or maybe was glad I read but wouldn't recommend. This is where my subjectivity really shows because I will often give a book three roses simply because it isn't a genre I like. I will read sci-fi books, for example, because they are on some Must read list I'm working on, then not enjoy them because I don't like sci-fi. So when I give a sci-fi book three roses, take it with a big grain of salt.  

🌹🌹 Two roses if I didn't like it. I like most of the book I read because I chose to read them and I read what I like. But I occasionally pick a clunker. And I often dislike the book my Book Club picks. 😉

🌹 One rose if I really didn't like it. I don't know if I've ever rated a book this low. The Magus might be my only example and I read it before I started keeping my lists.

I use half roses if a book falls between categories. I can't explain what that half rose might mean, it's just a feeling.

Here is a link to the star rating system I used for years. I include it because the stars I used in years past meant something different than these roses, so if you look at my lists from past years, the ratings won't mean quite the same thing.

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford; The Biography by Laura Thompson -- BOOK REVIEW -- and Mitford Book List

BOOK REVIEW & BOOK LIST

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford; The Biography by Laura Thompson (2019, Pegasus Books)


In Life in a Cold Climate, biographer Laura Thompson returns to the world of the Mitfords she wrote about so brilliantly in The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. This time, her focus is on Nancy Mitford, oldest of the six Mitford sisters, author of the novels Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, as well as other novels, biographies, and works of journalism.

The Mitford sisters, and Nancy in particular, have fascinated onlookers since they first Nancy and Pamela first came on the scene in the 1920s and the sisters as a group captured the public’s imagination in the 1930s. Thompson draws from Nancy’s writing, including correspondence with friends like Evelyn Waugh; conversations with her two (then) surviving sisters, Diana and Deborah, acquaintances, and colleagues; and historic resources to paint a fully realized portrait of one of the most intriguing women of the 20th Century.

Thompson’s writing style befits the story of Nancy Mitford. She has a light, often irreverent touch, and brings charm and wit to her subject. Reading Life in a Cold Climate is like drinks with a friend while she gives you the backstory on a mutual acquaintance you always wanted to know more about.

LIST OF MITFORD BOOKS

I am nursing a case of Mitford Mania and have started a collection of Mitford books. Here is the list of those I’ve collected so far. These are book by and about the Mitford sisters. If you have suggestions for books to add, please pass them on to me!

All in One Basket by Deborah Mitford, Dutchess of Devonshire

In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Mitford and Patrick Leigh Fermor

Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford, Dutchess of Devonshire

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking by Jessica Mitford

The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

A Talent to Annoy: Essays, Articles and Reviews, 1929-68 by Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford: A Memoir by Harold Acton

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

The Mitfords: Letters Between the Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley

Life in a Cold Climate by Laura Thompson

The Six: Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson

The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow - BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow (2021, Quid Mirum Press)

The Dead Bell drew me completely in from the get go. It has all the makings of an excellent murder mystery. Tom Edison is a cop in Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago, called in to solve the murder of a society matron found dead in her back yard in the ritzy lakefront community of Lake Forest. Tom has the necessary accoutrements for hard boiled detective: an ex-wife, an estranged son, his own unresolved trauma, an alcoholic wild man for a sidekick, and an eye for the wrong woman.

With those ingredients, it’s just up to the author to bring them together correctly, and Reid Winslow does a masterful job. The Dead Bell is the best sort of mystery book, the kind that makes you forget you are reading a book and simply takes you along for the ride. Which is not to say that the book is all fast action and dialog. There is a lot of literary heft to it – backstory, descriptions, character development, an introspective protagonist, digression, side stories, and a complicated plot. But Reid Winslow’s writing flows so naturally you absorb all this without stumbling at transitions or having the writing itself get in the way of first-rate storytelling.

All in all, I am so impressed! The Dead Bell is so polished and the plot keeps the reader guessing all the way through. I’ve read plenty of mysteries published by big-name authors and publishers that aren’t nearly as good as this – not even close! Congratulations to Winslow on his accomplished debut and here’s to more books in the Tom Edison series.

NOTES

Less in the nature of "full disclosure" and more because I am excited about it, I'll mention that I've known Reid Winslow for a long time because we are both lawyers in Portland and worked together, briefly, many years ago. Many lawyers have a fantasy to write mystery novels, so I am excited for and proud of my friend for making it happen! 

I read an advanced copy of The Dead Bell and part of my review is blurbed on the back cover. If you order a copy (and I think you should -- it's a terrific read) you will also get a little souvenir of your being a Rose City Reader reader. 😃

 

No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (2021, Head of Zeus)

Dianna Souhami's new history of 1920s Paris, No Modernism Without Lesbians, focusses on four women -- Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein -- who were at the center of the modernist movement. Beach started the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and published James Joyce's Ulysses. Bryher was a novelist, magazine editor, and heiress who used her fortune to help struggling writers. Barney was a writer and influential salon hostess. Stein was a patron of the arts and avant-garde author.

Sometimes group biographies are organized chronologically, or around big themes, discussing each person as relevant to the timeline or issue. Souhami’s book is more straightforward. It offers separate biographies of the four women, from birth to death. This makes sense. Although they all lived in Paris at the same time, were powerful forces in the modernist movement, and crossed paths, they were not a cohort. Now that they are combined between the covers, some of the highlights of the book are the cameos each woman plays in the others’ chapters.

Whether Souhami proves that her brash title is literally true misses the point of her book. Modernism was in the air, changing art and literature, and was happening if lesbians flocked to Paris in droves or not. But there is no denying that Beach, Bryher, Barney, and Stein all played big roles by sponsoring artists and writers and fostering the modernist community in Paris.

No Modernism Without Lesbians is a fascinating, lively history of Paris in the first half of the 20th Century. Recommended for readers interested in women’s history and books about Paris, art, or literature.

NOTES

Other reviews:

"[A] vivid cultural history ... This often gossipy, always smart romp trains a well-deserved spotlight on lesser-appreciated literary and artistic lives." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned." THE TIMES

SPIN: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story by Peter Zheutlin -- BOOK REVIEW

 

SPIN BY PETER ZHEUTLIN: BOOK REVIEW

SPIN: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story by Peter Zheutlin (2021, Pegasus Books)

In June of 1894, a Boston housewife and mother named Annie Cohen Kopchovsky set off from Boston to go around the world by bicycle. Leaving her husband and three small children behind, she rebranded herself Annie Londonderry in honor of her first corporate sponsor, the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Co. of Nashua, New Hampshire, whose $100 fee also earned it a logo placard on her bike.

Annie’s tour was supposedly inspired by a bet about whether a woman could accomplish such a trip. As with much of the account of Annie’s adventure, the story of the bet may fall into the “too good to verify” category. Peter Zheutlin calls his new book SPIN: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story because Londonderry was a born storyteller herself with a casual relationship with the truth. She freely embellished her accounts of her travels and was always ready to entertain an audience or the press. She left an extensive trail of newspaper coverage, which is the main source for Zheutlin’s book. But her own account was creative and he filled in gaps with his imagination, so readers are left to sort fact from fiction.

SPIN takes the form of a letter written by Annie in old age to her granddaughter Mary, which allows for a first-person narrative and more insight into Annie’s point of view. Still, SPIN is more than a quirky story of one woman’s adventure. It is the story of the late 1800s, an exciting time in the women’s movement for social equality and the vote. The book looks at how the bicycle radically transformed the lives of women in the late 19th century. There is a quote by Susan B. Anthony on the book’s cover that emphasizes the point: “Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” Annie Londonderry’s story is a case in point.

NOTES  

Recommended for historical fiction readers, bicyclists, fans of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, and book clubs.

Read my interview with Peter Zheutlin, here. 

The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin by Sian Lye -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin by Sian Lye (2020, Pen & Sword Books)

Hergé is the pen name of the famous Belgian cartoonist who brought Tintin to life. His 24 books chronicling The Adventures of Tintin have sold over 250 million copies and been translated into over 110 languages. But George Prosper Remi himself is a complicated figure. While celebrated as a beloved author – Belgium put him on a stamp in 2004 – his life involved a series of scandals, from marital infidelity to accusations of sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism, including possible collaboration with the Nazis during World War Two.

It is easy to hear about these shortcomings and think maybe Hergé should just be written off, his books no longer read. But is that the best course? The Tintin books bring joy. Isn’t it better to wrestle with Hergé’s flaws and see what we can learn from them, rather than deny readers the pleasure of his books? Wrestling with his flaws is just what journalist Sian Lye does in her new biography, The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin. Lye examines Hergé’s life with all the controversies that surround it. She also looks at the personal relationships and experiences that influenced his attitudes and his works.  

Some of these earliest influences were his Catholic mother, who suffered from mental illness, and his involvement in Boy Scouts. Although his time in Scouting was tainted by sexual hazing among the boys and conduct by his Scoutmaster we would consider abusive today, Hergé loved the Scouts. The camping trips appealed to his sense of adventure and gave him an opportunity to travel and explore. This love of adventure inspired his Tintin stories. However, the cruelty of his Scoutmaster made Hergé hate authority and order, feelings he carried with him the rest of his life.

It was through Boy Scouts that Hergé had his first opportunity to publish his work. He began regularly submitting articles and illustrations to Le Boy-Scout, the official publication of the Belgian Catholic Scouts, when he was 15. This led to a job with a Catholic newspaper and, shortly after, his first Tintin book.

Lye’s analysis of Hergé’s life and work leads her to conclude that he was easily influenced by strong personalities around him. Often these “charismatic characters” as she calls them brought out his best work. But sometimes they led Hergé to make bad life and political decisions that haunted him. However, Hergé was willing to reconsider his past views and work. He took criticism to heart, just as he was swayed by other opinions. He often revised his books before they were reprinted.

It is certainly possible to enjoy the Tintin books without knowing Hergé. But they are more interesting after learning about this complex, sometimes frustrating, man. We can learn from him, even if we learn from his mistakes.

Blue Desert by Celia Jeffries - BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

Blue Desert by Celia Jeffries (2021, Rootstock Publishing)

Sixty years after Alice George lived in the Sahara desert with the nomadic Tuarig tribe, she received a telegram telling her that Abu was dead. "Who is Abu?" her husband asks. "My lover," she replies. This is the set up for Blue Desert, the new novel by Celia Jeffries. The story braids the two narratives of Alice's time spent in the Sahara during the years of World War I and 1970s London, during the week she tells her secrets to her husband for the first time.

The story of Alice’s time spent with the Taurig people is particularly fascinating. The Sahara is land mass larger than the continental United States and is seemingly hostile to human life. But this tribe found a way to live in harmony with that environment. Add to that, women were valued and held power within their society in a way that contrasted markedly with the British society Alice had left behind in the early 1900s.

One of the main themes in Blue Desert is how survival and love can be entwined and take many forms. What helped Alice survive in the desert was acceptance—of her situation and of the people she found herself among. What helped Martin survive the WWI was acceptance of the altered state of the world. Finally, what made their marriage work was total acceptance of each other as they were.

If you like historical fiction with a feminist bent, Blue Desert is the book for you.

NOTES

Read my author interview of Celia Jeffries, here.

Learn more about the book Blue Desert and author Celia Jeffries on her website, here.

Watch the YouTube video of the Cambridge Common Writers launch of Blue Desert, here, where you can listen to Celia read from her novel and answer questions about the story and her writing process.

The Garden in Every Sense and Season: A Year of Insights and Inspiration from My Garden by Tovah Martin - BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

The Garden in Every Sense and Season: A Year of Insights and Inspiration from My Garden by Tovah Martin (2021 Timber Press edition)

In The Garden in Every Sense and Season: A Year of Insights and Inspiration from My Garden, Tovah Martin chronicles four seasons in her garden, carefully describing what each of her five senses experiences each season. As she describes:

This is the story of a nose and how I followed it through the year. This is the saga of a garden and how it spoke to me. In these pages I chronicle a pair of hands as they grope their way through the weeding, hoeing, and digging without too much pain. And this is the tale of someone who has looked at her garden for years, but only now saw it fully for the first time.

I’m a half-hearted gardener at best. Well, that would be a gross overstatement. I like to wander through famous gardens or sit in a pretty garden, mine included. But I’d prefer someone else to make mine pretty for me. My husband, reasonably enough, does not find this arrangement equitable. My hope is that Martin’s lively and chummy descriptions of the rewards of gardening will inspire me to get my hands dirty.

Martin has been creating her seven-acre garden in northeastern Connecticut since 1996, so there is plenty for her to see, smell, hear, touch, and taste. But don’t think this is a book (only) about mooning over the lusciousness of a ripe peach or the nostalgia of a rough fence board under the fingertips. Martin's essays offer practical gardening advice, organized by season and senses. Her “touch” section for Spring, for instance, includes an essay on garden gates with this:

I favor a barrel bolt with an easy-release lever and latch grab that catches seamlessly. Heavy-duty garden gate versions have a latch you can release easily with a gloved hand.

Not sappy poetry, that. But for those who enjoy it, the luscious peach is there too.

The 100 essays in The Garden in Every Sense and Season are like spending a year in a garden with a good friend. You’ll have a few laughs, pick up some sound pointers, get fresh ideas, and maybe appreciate your own garden in a new way.

Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us by Lawrence Weinstein - BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us by Lawrence Weinstein (2020)

Grammar books range in style and I’m a fan of all of them. They can be straightforward handbooks on the rules of grammar like the classic The Elements of Style, or classified as grammar books but focus on punctuation like the funny Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Books about language usage often get lumped in with grammar books. My favorite of these is The King’s English by Kingsley Amis.

But Grammar for a Full Life is not like any grammar book I’ve ever read. It’s a self-help book that seeks to make you a better person as much as a better writer. Lawrence Weinstein explores big issues like agency, belonging, freedom, and mindfulness, all viewed through the lens of grammar.

Weinstein breaks the major topics into several subchapters, each reading like the musings of the college professor he is. His chapter on empathy in the context of correcting other people’s grammar is particularly good. Throughout, he offers many examples to illustrate his points but few hard and fast rules.

He looks at how grammar choices may reflect personality traits and distinct ways of understanding and dealing with life. More important, Weinstein considers how, by intentionally making certain choices about grammar, we can foster our well-being. For example, he writes convincingly that a combination of active and passive voice unleashes creativity in a way that using only active voice does not.

Grammar for a Full Life caught my eye because I like any grammar book. It captured my heart because of its unique charm.

NOTES

Listen to an interview with Larry Weinstein on the Clark and Miller podcast, here.

Read a review of Grammar for a Full Life on Do Yoga for Beginners, here.

Visit grammarforafulllife.com to learn more about this wonderful book and its author.

Windhall by Ava Barry -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW: WINDHALL BY AVA BARRY

Ava Barry’s new novel Winhall brings the Golden Age of Hollywood back to life through a film noir lens. Eleanor Hayes was a rising star in the 1940s. As movie director Theodore Langley’s leading lady, she was the toast of the town. That is, until she was murdered during the filming of their last movie and her body discovered in the garden of Theo’s Hollywood mansion, Windhall. Theo was tried for her murder but let off on a technicality. He fled town, leaving Windhall empty and moldering.

Decades later, Eleanor’s murder is the hobbyhorse of investigative journalist Max Hailey, who thinks Theo was framed. When a young woman’s dead body is found near Windhall, wearing the same type of dress as Eleanor and killed in the same way, Max sees a story idea and an opportunity to investigate Theo’s innocence. Since the reclusive Theo has returned to L.A., the pieces fall into place for Max’s big chance.

The story is mostly set in present day. But Barry cleverly uses a journal of Theo’s to introduce scenes from the 1940s from Theo’s point of view. She used a different font for the diary entries, a font that looks a little like handwriting, which highlights the transition between the present day and historic storylines. The technique works well, especially when Theo describes making movies in Hollywood in the 1940s, as in passages like this:

When we need cowboys for a shoot, we drive over to Gower and Sunset, where all the unemployed cowboys hang out, waiting for work. They drift in from the desert between jobs wrangling cattle, because they know that film people pay a lot more money for a lot less work. The same goes for Indians and churchgoers, cops and priests – if you can’t find an actor to suit your needs, you drive around town looking for the real thing. He’ll turn up, sooner or later.

The technique works less well when, in several of the journal passages, Theo records entire scenes of dialog. This makes for a good novel, but an inauthentic diary. Maybe Theo could have written in an excuse like, “As is my habit with this diary, I’ll record the conversation exactly as I remember it. I may want to use it in a movie one day.” Or something to make the dialog passages less noticeable. But that is a quibble in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable book.

Barry tells the story well, with plenty of twists and turns, Old Hollywood atmosphere, interesting characters, and an exciting finish. Fans of old movies and good mysteries will love Windhall.

NOTES
 

Windhall by Ava Barry came out in March 2021 from Pegasus Books.

The Anglophile's Notebook by Sunday Taylor -- BOOK REVIEW

 

REVIEW: THE ANGLOPHILE'S NOTEBOOK 

by Sunday Tayor (2020, Spuyten Duyvil)

Towards the end of my freshman year of college, I went through a glum patch. It was a combination of homesickness and Tacoma. I made plans to transfer. But instead of choosing a school close to my home in Portland – a logical cure for homesickness – I latched on to the idea that, as an English lit major, I wanted to study English literature in England.

That is how I ended up spending my sophomore year in Oxford, England in a program for international students. I joined the Oxford Union so I could watch the debates and study in the library, went crazy driving a stick shift on the left side of the road, lived in a bedsit with a dotty landlady named Mrs. Mumford, and did, indeed, study English literature in one-on-one tutorials with Oxford dons.

I also spent weeks at a time in London, returning to Oxford on the train only for classes Tuesdays through Thursdays, thanks to a classmate with an aunt and uncle “on safari” for several months. With unimaginable hospitality and trust, they turned over their Hammersmith townhouse to three of us, giving me a chance to explore London’s museums, parks, churches, and Harrod’s. Mostly Harrod’s.

Which is the backstory for why The Anglophile’s Notebook jumped out at me as soon as I saw it. This is the book I would write if I had the talent to write a novel. It’s the story about an English lit lover who impulsively moves to England. I get it! I understand why the protagonist, Claire Easton, would do something a little goofy like head off on an extended work trip to England at the same time her marriage was hitting the rocks. And why, when her marriage falls apart, she decides to stay.

Claire is a 40-year old writer and magazine editor who goes to London on assignment for her travel magazine and with a plan to research a book on her favorite author, Charlotte Brontë. A couple of lucky breaks put her on the trail of a Brontë discovery and a new romance. When Claire’s friend sets her up with a collector of Brontë memorabilia to help him organize his collection, Claire starts traveling between her new boyfriend in London and Phillip’s stately home in Yorkshire, near Hawarth Parsonage, the Brontë family home. Like in the Victorian novels Claire loves, she may find more in Yorkshire than she anticipates.

The story takes place over Claire’s first year in England, during which she goes through a divorce, falls in love, turns her career in an exciting new direction, meets new friends, faces adversity, and starts to put down roots in her new home. This all unfolds against the backdrop of a cozy, literary England of independent bookshops, homey flats, chats in small museums, lunches in Covent Garden cafes, ancient pubs, and charming villages. Don’t come to this book looking for trauma and anguish. The Anglophile’s Notebook is all about the romantic ideal of starting over at 40 and having all the pieces tumble into place.

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed -- BOOK REVIEW

 

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed (2020, Mariner Books) 

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Violet Swan is an artist, a famous artist. At 93, museums and collectors around the world buy her paintings, while all but nothing is known about Violet herself. She lives a secluded life in the tiny Oregon coastal town of Nestucca Beach. She hopes to complete one last painting before telling her family of her diagnosis, but when an earthquake shakes her house and town, her plans are shaken up as well.

So begins Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, Deborah Reed's new, completely absorbing novel. Violet Swan lives in the house she built with her husband Richard. She lives and works upstairs and her son Francisco and his wife Penny live downstairs. Francisco, called Frank by everyone but Violet, manages Violet's business affairs. Frank and Penny have been grinding away at the same low-level argument for decades. The earthquake may finally bring matters to a head between them.

In the meantime, their son Daniel arrives from Los Angeles. He wants to make a documentary of Violet's life while she's still around to tell her own story. She's put him off for years but is finally ready to share her secrets. Daniel also has a surprise of his own to spring on the family.

All this is just the set up for Reed's fabulously rich family drama. As the present-day story plays out, the story of Violet's past unfolds through her memories and then her interviews with Daniel. Violet had a hard life, starting with childhood tragedy in Georgia and including her solo trek to Oregon, sexual assault, manual labor, mental illness, and other trauma. She also found friendship and love along the way and taught herself how to paint, channeling her experiences into her art, where she found happiness and joy.

Reed's writing is lovely but not obtrusive. You can picture each character and scene, but she but lets the story do the heavy lifting. She packs a lot into 302 pages. None of the characters are all good or all bad, including Violet, who is admirable but not entirely lovable. The conflict between Frank and Penny, and some of Daniel's struggles, make sense only as the details of Violet's life become clear.  

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is a wonderful book. It could have been twice as long and I would have enjoyed it twice as much – I didn't want it to end. This was the first book I read in 2021 and it may end up being my favorite book of the year. 

NOTES

Deborah Reed is the author of four other novels: The Days When Birds Come Back (reviewed here), Olivay, Things We Set On Fire, and Carry Yourself Back to Me (reviewed here). She also wrote two thrillers under the pen name Audrey Braun: A Small Fortune and Fortune's Deadly Descent. She owns the Cloud & Leaf Bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon, the real-life version of Nestucca Beach.

Read my earlier interview with Deborah Reed here.