Thankful for the Written Word 2023
/Hello dear friends It’s time for my annual book wrap-up covering titles I’ve read since last Thanksgiving…be they hardcover or audio through Libby, Hoopla or Chirp and new additions to the permanent collection here at the Chalet.
I’m the moderator of a Book Club at church and we meet September through June. I’ve made a note of any Book Club titles on the list with an asterisk *. I hope you find a few new titles to enjoy!
A Christmas Carol: Ebenezer needs to learn the error of his ways and Oh boy does he!
Family of Liars: I didn’t expect this is one of my top reads. You must read We Were Liars before reading this second book about the Sinclair family and their private Massachusetts island. The story is shared by Caroline Lennox Taft Sinclair. Being a Sinclair means acting and never showing weakness. Welcome back to the Sinclair family. They were always liars.
I Remember Nothing: The late Nora Ephron was a hoot! In these pages she takes us from her first job in the mailroom at Newsweek to the six stages of email, from memories of her parents’ whirlwind dinner parties to her own life now full of Senior Moments (or, as she calls them, Google moments), from her greatest career flops to her most treasured joys.
French Exit: Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Prices' aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. French Exit is a one-of-a-kind ‘tragedy of manners,’ a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute
Time and Again: Transported from the mid-twentieth century to New York City in the year 1882, Si Morley walks the fashionable "Ladies' Mile" of Broadway, is enchanted by the jingling sleigh bells in Central Park, and solves a 20th-century mystery by discovering its 19th-century roots. Falling in love with a beautiful young woman, he ultimately finds himself forced to choose between his lives in the present and the past.
From Time to Time: Si Morley, whose logic-defying trip to the New York City of the 1880s in Time and Again embarks on another trip across the borders of time. This time Reuben Prien at the secret, government-sponsored Project wants Si to leave his home in the 1880s and visit New York in 1912. Si's mission: to protect a man who is traveling across the Atlantic with vital documents that could avert World War I. So one fateful day in 1912, Si finds himself aboard the world's most famous ship...the Titanic
Mrs. Harris Goes to New York: Mrs Harris is back! A little boy, whose father was a GI, is being ill-treated. So when she is asked to go to New York with one of her clients to keep house for her, she smuggles the lad with her to try to find his father.
Fly Girl: A Memoir: When Ann Hood was young her family would pile into the car and visit the construction site of what became Washington Dulles International Airport which opened in 1962. Ann decided planes and travel were where she wanted to be. Graduating from college in 1978 Ann began the interview process and landed a coveted spot with TWA. She survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy where she learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen and stay calm no matter what the situation.
I loved listening to Ann read her memoir of the skies… my first plane ride was in 1978 on TWA with my parents heading to California to visit Disneyland. It was a great flight!
Morningstar: Growing up in a mill town in Rhode Island, in a household that didn’t foster the love of literature, Ann Hood nonetheless learned to channel her imagination and curiosity by devouring The Bell Jar, Marjorie Morningstar, The Harrad Experiment, and other works. These titles introduced her to topics that could not be discussed at home: desire, fear, sexuality, and madness. Later, Johnny Got His Gun and The Grapes of Wrath influenced her political thinking as the Vietnam War became news; Dr. Zhivago and Les Miserables stoked her ambition to travel the world. With characteristic insight and charm, Hood showcases the ways in which books gave her life and can transform—even save—our own.
*Trust: The book is told through four separate documents – a novel-within-the-novel, an unfinished manuscript, a memoir, and a diary. Each separate piece offers a different character's perspective on the same period, subjects, relationships, and events, revealing new truths and calling others into question. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts. The 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Spare: For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.
*The Reading List: Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When widower Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list… hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.
Being Martha: Being Martha is a personal-at times a searingly personal-account of Martha's life from the inside, by a friend. It's fascinating-very anecdotal and very emotional. It won't be like anything else you've ever read about her.
The Marriage Portrait: Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo but when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to Alfonso the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept. Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble? In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.
Metropolitan Stories: As you all know the Metropolitan Museum is my second favorite place on earth after the Chalet. This little gem by Christine Coulson is a love letter to the private side of the museum, with a series of vignettes focusing on the Art and People who inhabit the Met. Coulson had a 25 yr career there including time in the Director’s Office. It’s sweet, thought provoking and sometimes fanciful.
*Crying In H Mart: Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. She moved East for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Breakfast At Tiffany’s: It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's... And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.
House of Flowers: Ottilie is entranced by a beautiful young man, and leaves her life and friends to live with him and his old grandmother, who seems to hate her
A Diamond Guitar: Hear the story of the prized possession of a younger prison inmate, a rhinestone-studded guitar.
A Christmas Memory: A poignant tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.
Every Summer After: They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart. Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without. Until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
*The Lost Book of the Grail: Arthur Prescott is happiest when surrounded by the ancient books and manuscripts of the Barchester Cathedral library. He works as a professor at the University of Barchester. He loves nurturing his secret obsession with the Holy Grail and researching his perennially unfinished guidebook to the medieval cathedral. When a beautiful young American named Bethany Davis arrives in Barchester charged with the task of digitizing the library's manuscripts, Arthur's tranquility is broken - but, soon Bethany joins Arthur in a quest to find the lost Book of Ewolda, the ancient manuscript telling the story of the cathedral's founder.
Pineapple Street: I enjoyed this tale of the privileged Stockton family. Darley, the eldest daughter followed her heart, trading her job and inheritance for motherhood; Sasha, a middle-class New England outsider has married only Stockton son Cord and works with his father Chip and defers to his mother Tilda always. Sasha and Cord live in the Pineapple Street family home where any effort by Sasha to clear the house of clutter or make changes is stymied and Georgiana, the baby of the family, who fell in love with someone she can’t have and must decide what kind of person she wants to
Very Cold People: No-one is watching Ruth. She, however, watches everyone and everything, and waits, growing up on the outskirts of an affluent but threadbare New England township, on the outer edge of popularity. As they alternately mock, ignore, undermine and discount their daughter, Ruth’s parents present now as damaged, now as inadequate, now as monstrous. All the while the Future comes towards them all, steadily, inexorably, for some of them fatally.
*Romantic Comedy: Ally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life. When friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking men who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman. Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?
*Foster: A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed and suddenly, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.
Matthew Perry: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: The riveting story of the late actor Matthew Perry. Matthew takes us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more
Times Square: An unexpected scavenger hunt forces a woman to confront her past and present loves in New York City. Featuring a sparkling Manhattan lit late at night, Times Square is the novella which pinpoints what it means to live and love in a city that readily challenges and astonishes, so often in the same breath.
The Kingdom of Prep: A quintessentially American fashion narrative about the rise and fall of J.Crew, and what the company’s fate means for the shifting landscape of the retail industry. Once upon a time, a no-frills J.Crew rollneck sweater held an almost mystical power—or at least it felt that way. The story of J.Crew is the story of the original “lifestyle brand,” whose evolution charts a sea change in the way we dress, the way we shop, and who we aspire to be over the past four decades—all told through iconic clothes and the most riveting characters imaginable.
*Hello Beautiful: William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household. Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America: An acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped her small-town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, and, in the process, illuminates the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism killing poor, rural white women all over America.
All the Beauty in the World: Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Patrick Bringley finds solace in this institution after the death of his brother and what he thinks will be a temporary job becomes his career of a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care.
The Little Italian Hotel: Ginny Splinter, acclaimed radio host and advice expert, prides herself on knowing what’s best for others. So she’s sure her husband, Adrian, will love the special trip to Italy she’s planned for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But when Ginny presents the gift to Adrian, he surprises her with his own very different plan—a divorce. Heartbroken Ginny impulsively invites four heartbroken listeners to join her in Italy and embark on a vacation of healing. When Adrian starts to rethink their divorce, Ginny must decide whether to commit to her marriage or start afresh, alone.
Small Things Like These: 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.
The Maid: Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads others. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for her maid’s job at the Regency Grand Hotel. She delights in returning guest rooms to a state of perfection. Outside of her job her Gran was her whole world but, since Gran passed away the 25yr is navigating the world alone. I loved Molly.
*Homecoming: Adelaide Hills, South Australia Christmas Eve, 1959 - at the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand mansion, a delivery man makes a terrible discovery. Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess has suffered a fall and is in the hospital. Jess will learn about the tragedy that shaped her family. This is definitely vying for the top spot of most beloved Kate Morton works. It’s a long book at 544 pages but, it’s spellbinding and so well written jumping time periods and characters - I couldn’t put it down and read it in 3 days.
The Stories We Tell: We all have a story to tell. Joanna Gaines shares her journey. This book is an invitation to capture the full picture of your own life with renewed clarity. No longer through weary or uncertain eyes, but a lens brimming with hope.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches: As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and the handsome but, gruff Jamie.
Tom Lake: In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years ago at a theater company called Tom Lake. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born.
*Good Neighbors: A sudden tragedy exposes the depths of deception and damage in a Long Island suburb—pitting neighbor against neighbor.
Welcome to Maple Street, its residents bound by their children, work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world. Arlo Wilde a gruff has-been rock star, his wife Gertie a beautiful ex-pageant queen and their kids preteen Julie curses like a sailor and her kid brother Larry is called “Robot Boy” by the kids on the block. Maple Street’s Queen Bee, Rhea Schroeder welcomes Gertie and family into the fold. Then, during one spritzer-fueled summer evening, the new best friends share too much, too soon. When a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and Rhea’s daughter falls inside. The search for her brings a shocking accusation against the Wilder that spins out of control. A riveting portrayal of American suburbia that excavates the perils and betrayals of motherhood, friendships and the dangerous clash between social hierarchy, childhood trauma, and fear.
The Paris Apartment: Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – Ben’s not there. The longer he stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly.
The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge. Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone knows something they’re not telling.
One Woman Show: Author Christine Coulson brings us another delightful missive inspired by her twenty-five year career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her final project was to write wall labels for the museum’s new British Galleries. During that time, she dreamt of using The Met’s strict label format to describe people as intricate works of art. Here she imagines a privileged twentieth-century woman as an artifact—an object.
These Precious Days: Essays: At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Ann Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight.
My total number of books is 43 which is one more than I enjoyed over this same time - last year between Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving.
Top Picks!
I’ve added a few volumes to the permanent collection Via retailers and thrifting.
Over the last year I’ve acquired copies of The Last of the Mohicans, The Call of the Wild and Mrs. Dalloway. There continue to be Book Club titles that will only live here for a while before I pass them onto family, friends or one of the local Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood.
Previous Years:
MY FAVORITE BOOK
Wishing you and yours a blessed Thanksgiving. Til next time be well.
