A Year of Reading

A Year of Reading

2017 is over and this year I read 114 books. Of course, there were others, not listed here, that I read parts of but didn't finish. There were many books that I rated 4/5, and certainly quite a few that rated 1/5 and even a few zeros!

Following is a list of the books that rated 4/5 or 5/5.

The Woefield Poultry Collective
by Susan Juby

Hidden Figures
By Margot Lee Shetterly

Lucky Boy
By Shanthi Sekeran 

In the Shadow of Alabama
By Judy Reene Singer

When Breath Becomes Air
By Paul Kalanithi

Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
By Vicki Myron

Small Great Things
By Jodi Picoult

#114 The Almost Sisters

The Almost Sisters
By Joshilyn Jackson

Chic lit once again. Two step-sisters, rivals in childhood and life. Leia's grandmother gets sick, and she goes south to help her. Turns out, there are literally skeletons in the closet, or in this case, a skeleton in a trunk. Grandmother has a degenerative disease and is lucid only some of the time. Her lifelong friend is her caretaker.

Turns out, gramma, Birchie, killed her own father many years ago, and she put his body in a trunk where it has been for 70 years. Hettie, it turns out, is actually Birchie's half sister as Birchie's father had a long-standing sexual liaison with Hettie's mother, at that time, she was the family's black servant.

Rating: 3.5/5
Recommendation: A decent read. A few surprises along the way.

#113 Their Finest

Their Finest
By Lissa Evans

Well, I read this book in dribs and drabs, but still, there was a lot of discontinuity written into the book as well. The novel is set in WWII London and revolves around three characters. Catrin is a writer and is conscripted to write movie scripts and women's dialogue for war propaganda films. Edith is a dress maker who works at Madame Tussaud's but she ends up working in the costume department for the movie. Allistair is an actor in the sunset of his career. The movie they make brings them together.

Made into a movie.

Rating: 3/5
Recommendation: An OK read. Disjointed. Maybe the movie is better.

#112 Two Old Fools Ole

#112 Two Old Fools Ole

The second in the two old fools series. Another easy read about a British couple living in Spain in their retirement years. More stories about chickens, cats, neighbours, and all the stuff that goes on in a small Spanish village.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: An easy read. Large print.

#111

I forget the name of this book as I took it back to the library before writing about it.

#110 Chickens, Mules, and Two Old Fools

Chickens, Mules, and Two Old Fools
By Victoria Twead

Memoir. This was a funny and entertaining book. A British couple retires to a small village in Spain.
They have various adventures, with chickens, mules, villagers, a sexy local doctor, other British expats, and other crazy characters.

A good book to read as I decompress from yet another awful day at work.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: Yes!

#109 Flesh and Bone and Water

Flesh and Bone and Water

By Luiza Sauma

This novel takes place in Brazil and London. Andre is a young boy who grows up in a privileged family in Brazil, with a doctor father and a brother. His mother died when he was nine years old. They always have servants, and one of the servants is a beautiful young woman who Andre falls in love with, and they have a secret affair, as white people often do with their coloured servants. Of course Luana gets pregnant, and dad helps "get rid of" the baby, or at least that's what Andre thinks happened.

Thirty years later, Andre is a doctor in London, newly separate from his wife, when letters start arriving from Luana. Finally, Andre returns to Brazil to see Luana and the whole truth comes out. Luana is actually his half sister, as his father had an affair with her mother. Their baby was never aborted, and Luana raised him until his death at twenty-six by drowning.

In some ways a predictable story, but in other ways, there were surprises.

It was interesting to read about life in Brazil, how the rich lived, descriptions of Ipanema, Copacabana, and the crumbling colonial ways of life. An easy read.

Rating: 4/5

Recommendation: Yes.

#109 Solitude

Solitude
By Robert Kull

A memoir. Bob goes to a remote island in the Patagonia wilderness of South America. He lives there for a year, chronicling his experience. The book is written as journal entries, with interlude chapters delving more academically into various topics which he explores in his journalling. Is he looking for enlightenment? Sounds like it. Does he abuse his cat? Yes, which at times is disturbing. Poor cat.

I skimmed through a lot of this book as I wasn't really into the philosophy or the discussions about Buddhist practice and teachings.

Rating: 3/4
Recommendation: If you're into the subject matter. Wouldn't recommend it to many.

#108 The Good Mother

The Good Mother
By Sinead Moriarty

More chic lit. Twelve year old Jess lives with her mom and two brothers. Dad has left, and now has a baby with a younger woman. Various family stuff happens, but Jess ends up getting an aggressive from of AML. The family is further traumatized by her death. Luke, the eldest brother gets his girlfriend pregnant at 18. Should they keep the baby? They eventually decide to, and two months after Jess dies, the baby girl is born.

Easy reading. Despite the death of 12 year old Jess to cancer, the crying and tears goes on and on and on and on........OK, we know it's sad, but at the end it was just filler.

Rating: 3/5
Recommendation: If you like chic lit.

#107 Good As Gold

Good As Gold
By Louise Patten

Historical fiction based in part on the sinking of the Titanic.

A banking family, with one family member having survived the sinking of the Titanic. Edie, the great granddaughter is doing her PhD dissertation on the Titanic and looking for a new angle on the sinking. In the meantime, various family members in the bank are laundering money and smuggling gold aboard sailboats. Edie discovers how dirty the family banking has been, and one uncle gets killed by Russian thugs due to using their gold as collateral for a Ponzi investment scheme.

Some true (apparently) details about why the Titanic sank, apparently a long kept family secret. The helmsman turned the helm the wrong way, inadvertently steering the ship into the iceberg instead of away because the command was given at a time when wheel commands were replacing helm commands, which were opposite.

Chic lit. Good for passing time. Is the new evidence actually true? It sounds plausible.

Rating: 3.5/5
Recommendation: Sure, if you like chic lit.

#106 Midnight Blue

Midnight Blue
By

Bad writing. Silly book. Don't read. Just passing time. I kept expecting it to get better, but it never did.

Rating: 1/5
Recommendation: No.

#105 The Gustav Sonata

The Gustav Sonata
By

I finished this book, but barely. Twenty pages from the end I was ready to ditch it. I just couldn't see any point to it. Even though I finished it, I still couldn't see the point of the novel.

Rating: 1/5
Recommendation: Don't bother.

#104 That's My Baby

That's My Baby
 By Francies Itani

An OK novel. Hanora is adopted, and as an elderly woman, she seeks to find out the truth about her birth. The novel travels back and forth between WWI and WWII and the present. Nothing great, not very memorable (I've forgotten already and I just finished it).

Rating: 3/5
Recommendation: Sure.

#103 The Nest

The Nest
By Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

A well written family saga, based around a group of four siblings inheriting a sizeable trust when the youngest turned 40. Alas, the eldest, Leo, is a wastrel and has an accident with a young waitress in his car and she ends up with her foot amputated. The mother uses "the nest" to pay off the girl who lost her foot.

The novel is told in alternating voices, and explores the lives of the siblings, the young amputee, and a few other minor characters. All the siblings have money problems, and they are all counting on money from "the nest" to solve their problems.

Eventually, they all realize that "the nest" is gone and Leo has disappeared. He has a secret stash of money in an offshore bank account and could easily afford to pay back his siblings, but he chooses instead to disappear. An unsavoury fellow, for sure.

The novel seems like a good warning about expecting an inheritance: have no expectations until the $$ is in your pocket because anything could happen before that.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: Strong writing, good pacing, good forward motion. Keeps you reading.

#102 Sourdough

Sourdough
By Robin Sloan

This was a strange novel, but how could I resist and novel about sourdough? The author obviously doesn't know much about the reality of making sourdough, as the main character was almost instantly turning out multiple loves of perfect bread in very short periods of time, which is not the reality how sourdough works.

Anyway, the book got weirder and weirder as it went along. Kind of turned into a futuristic story of what food might look like in the future.

Rating: 2/5
Recommendation: Don't bother.

#101 Crimes of the Father

Crimes of the Father
By Thomas Keneally

By the same author as "Schindler's List", Thomas Keneally is a widely published Australian author, having published numerous books.

The novel follows various priests from a diocese in Australia, and one priest who ends up in Waterloo, Ontario (!) because of his political views in the 1970s and he was forced to leave Australia.

Frank, the radical priest, returns to Australia to visit his elderly mother and hopes to be able to return in good graces and be her caregiver.

Inadvertently, he becomes involved in the case of a well known priest being accused of sexual misconduct by three former children, one of who has just committed suicide. The accused, of course, denies allegations, but in the end, justice wins and he will lose everything. Justice is done.

The world of the Catholic Church and the priesthood is a strange world, and seemed no less so after reading this novel, though I'm sure the representation of both were very well done.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: a good solid read if the subject matter interests you.

#100 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
By Gail Honeyman

Book #100, a momentous occasion, but alas, not a momentous book. A quirky book, but somehow, the character didn't jive with who she was supposed to be.

Eleanor is a socially awkward young woman who works in the accounts payable department of a local P.R. firm in Edinburgh (a rarity to find a book which takes place in Scotland!). She spends all her time outside of work alone, and has become an alcoholic, with Vodka her tipple of choice. Gradually, Eleanor starts to "come out" of her isolated life, with the help of her I.T. friend Raymond. Eleanor starts enjoying one of the first friendships of her life, and they start having lunch and going to concerts.

However, all is not right with Eleanor. She comes across as mildly autistic, but there is the disturbing character of her abusive mother and the scars on her face. Gradually the story comes out, after she tries to comment suicide and Raymond finds her, that Eleanor is a seriously damaged being. Her mother was abusive to Eleanor and her sister, and in a horrifying act of cruelty, sets their house on fire with the two children inside. Gradually, working with a counsellor, Eleanor is able to remember the cruelty of this act, and the death of her little sister in the fire.

The writing was good, the pacing was good, the characters well portrayed. What didn't work for me was, the character of Eleanor comes off very well as a mildly autistic person (which doesn't seem to be part of the plot) BUT in my mind, she does not come off as a person who has suffered severe emotional and physical abuse. I think that would have been a different character.

Rating: 3/4
Recommendation: An interesting read. The novel is portrayed as "quirky" but I think it is actually quite horrifying.

#99 One Brother Shy

One Brother Shy
By Terry Fallis

Alex is a shy man in his 20s, a computer programmer in a face recognition software company in Ottawa. After his mother dies (Yet another book featuring a dying mother who dies!), he discovers that he has a twin brother! He uses the face software to find his brother, who is an entrepreneur living in London.

Alex goes to London and reunites with his brother, Matt. The two men then realize they have to find their father, who neither of them knew. Their search takes them to Moscow, the realm of Russian hockey and the KGB. Through careful sleuthing and lucky sources, they eventually find their father. The story of their separation at birth and why they never knew who their real father was is finally revealed.

A light and entertaining read. Canadian author.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: Sure.

#98 The Paris Key

The Paris Key
By Juliet Blackwell

Another novel featuring Paris, this one is a mystery as well. Genevieve flees the U.S. to go to Paris, after her marriage dissolves. She has inherited a locksmith shop from her uncle Dave, an American who married a Parisian after WWII. Through a series of chance meetings, Genevieve uncovers secrets about her mother, and who her real father is. Along the way, she ends up figuring out how to take over and run the locksmith shop, despite the many hurdles of the French burocracy. Of course, there is romance, after all, it's in Paris.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: Chic lit, but well written, with some interesting facts from WWII and the Algerian War.

#97 Call the Nurse

Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle
By Mary J. MacLeod

This is a memoir, written by a former nurse, now in her 80s!

It might seem like I've read a lot of books in a very short time, and it's true. I've been sick, and the only thing to do is read, read, read. Fortunately I had a good supply of readable books, and only one dud that I probably won't keep reading.

These stories were charming little anecdotes about the adventures of the nurse and her family on an island in the Hebrides. The stories are from the 70s when her idealist family left London to live a simpler life on these remote islands. Light, entertaining, and easy to read.

Rating: 4/5
Recommendation: Sure.