Here it is, New Year's Eve, and I'm only just deciding on my favorite reads of 2018. In fact, yesterday I finished a gorgeous novel that I'm reviewing for Library Journal but, since it doesn't even come out until 2019, I'll save it at the top of my list for next year. It's called "The Dragonfly Sea" by Yvonne Owuor. Be sure to keep an eye out for it in March. The language will have you swooning.
So, the operative word here is "favorite," not necessarily "best." That moniker I left to the journals and newspapers. These are the books that touched me deeply, that made me sigh with satisfaction or delight when I closed the last page. In no particular order they are:
"Asymmetry," by Lisa Halliday is one of the most original books that I read this year. Two books in one, a May/December romance that may or may not be based on Ms. Halliday's long relationship with Philip Roth, and the story of an Iraqi-American detained by authorities at Heathrow airport. Halliday brilliantly ties the two stories together in this amazing debut that examines the imbalance, the asymmetry if you will, in unequal relationships. https://bit.ly/2LFkgVd
"Anatomy of a Miracle," by Jonathan Miles. This incredible novel should be on every reading group's list if they want a powerful book discussion. A wheelchair bound Afghan war veteran suddenly stands up and walks. A miracle? Oh how
believers wish it were so, no matter what the medical evidence says. The church sends an envoy from Rome, the little Mississippi town is turned upside down, a doctor's reputation is on the line, and a TV crew can't wait to make fools of Cameron and his devoted sister and caregiver Tanya. If you read for characterization, you'll love Miles.
https://bit.ly/2QcrVuF
I rarely read short stories so I surprised myself with my reaction to this rare, luminous collection, "Florida, Stories," by Lauren Groff. She captures the Sunshine State at its very darkest, dankest, and most evil, yet each story rings completely true for those of us who've lived here for any length of time. Take your time and savor each story slowly. https://bit.ly/2s03wPv
"The Great Believers," by Rebecca Makkai has topped out many lists this year and there's a reason for that. We toggle back and forth between late '80's Chicago as Yale pursues his career in art acquisition - a fascinating story in itself - and 2015 Paris. Fiona is the bridge. Fiona is a woman suffering from the trauma of losing 
everyone she's known and cared for. Is it possible that she's used up all the love she had to give? Unable to sustain her marriage, now estranged from her adult daughter, Fiona is on a mission to bridge the divide with her child and maybe even find a reservoir of compassion left for herself. Makkai sheds a harsh light on the pain of the AIDS epidemic, a time some readers may not even remember. https://bit.ly/2LIhfU2
"Gun Love," by Jennifer Clement left me feeling broken but amazed at the way an author's words could do this to me. Oh! the talent!
A 1994 Mercury Topaz is home to Pearl, the precocious and
wryly observant fourteen-year-old narrator of this devastating, lyrical novel
set in a dilapidated Florida trailer park where the denizens live on the edge
of quiet desperation while dreaming of a different life, devoid of drugs and
guns and men who can’t be trusted. Clement has written an unforgettable paean
to the resilience of the human spirit.
I'm certain that few of you have ever heard of Joseph Cassera or his first novel "The House of Impossible Beauties." I don't understand why Library Journal 
was one of the few reputable resources to add this gloriously written book to it's top ten list. If you know as little as I did about the transgender culture and dance houses in New York City during the '80's, made famous by the documentary film "Paris is Burning," this amazing debut will open your eyes and implore your empathy for the young Latino men and women searching for identity, family, and acceptance.
And of course, what librarian would not add Susan Orlean's delightful, well researched, "The Library Book," a fascinating, uplifting, and dazzling history of Los Angeles and the great fire that shuttered its flagship library.
Orlean throws herself into the research with the verve she has previously applied to such disparate characters as ghost orchids and Rin Tin Tin. She unearths some delicious details about previous librarians who helmed LA Public. Did you know that women weren't "allowed" to hold library cards in LA until 1880? https://bit.ly/2EWXKWt
Richard Powers' "The Overstory" is still my number one of the year. In
this stunning work of imaginative prowess, Powers illustrates the symbiotic
relationship between trees, insects, animals, and human beings through
Norwegian immigrant Jorgen Hoel who moves to Iowa, pockets filled with chestnut
seeds which he plants on the family
farm, setting in motion this luminous tale of nine seemingly unrelated
characters whose lives intersect over decades in profoundly unsettling ways.
https://bit.ly/2EZ4JxZ
And finally, hey, my champagne is waiting for me in the other room, Leif Enger's "Virgil Wander." This is a novel that will restore your sanity in these troubled times. I promise. The daily
life of a small, declining, Minnesota town is movingly exalted by Enger’s beautifully
written meditation on memory, loneliness, loss, and rebirth as seen through the
eyes of Rune, a flyer of kites, in search of a son he never knew he had, and
Nadine, who’s given up hopes of reunion with her long-missing husband, and
Virgil himself, a man whose spirit opens to a new world of possibilities after
surviving a nearly fatal automobile accident.
Happy New Year everyone. Isn't it wonderful to realize that there are more wonderful books than ever, already written and just waiting for our enjoyment, out there right now? Too many books, too little time. Enjoy!
….how a reluctant Michelle Obama became the most popular first lady to ever grace the halls of the White House. The dilemma for me as a reader is to try to separate my love for the Obamas, my feelings which are personal and political, from an objective look at this best-selling memoir in terms of style and substance.
If you're a reader who hasn't been an Obama aficionado since, let's say, 2005, then you will absolutely love and appreciate this book from beginning to end. If, like me, you've read everything you could put your hands on since 2005, especially David Axelrod's "Believer," http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2016/08/axelrods-believer-confirms-why-i-am-one.html and seen the films like "Barry" and "Southside with You," then you may find that there are parts of this book that you may decide to skim.
I found the strongest section of Michelle's memoir to be the first third, "Becoming Me." Oddly enough this is where the details and memories seem most acute. Every instance of that childhood in a tiny, sweltering upstairs apartment in the home of her great-aunt Robbie, an exacting piano teacher, comes to vivid life. I could see my own family, all three of us kids in one small bedroom, giggling, spatting, and talking through the night, in Michelle and older brother Craig, as they, too, talked and giggled through the partition their dad had built down the middle of the living room to give them each some semblance of privacy. Her love for her parents, her appreciation for her mother Marian, for the work ethic they instilled in her, runs deep and strong.
This section is where Michelle overcomes the prejudice she encounters on the playgrounds and in the schools, where she is reminded again and again that she may not be "Princeton material." This is where the laborious perfectionist learned to perform in public on a grand piano, where she easily followed Craig to Princeton and then on to Harvard Law School. This is where Michelle Obama honed the skills that would make her a person to be reckoned with in her own right, earning a six figure salary at a swanky Chicago law firm, long before a cocky intern, Barack Hussein Obama, swaggered in to her 46th floor office ten minutes late. (a tendency she hated and one he would never get over)
"Becoming Us," the second section of the book, is the love story many of us memorized as the Obamas traveled the campaign trail. Michelle says this is when she made the "big swerve." Timing is everything. Just as she was feeling less fulfilled with corporate law, this young idealist and visionary, Barack Obama, was asking her what she wanted out of life. Where did she see herself down the road? How could she use her talents to help others more and herself less. He had an idea, she didn't like it. Politics!
I found that this part dragged somewhat, perhaps just too much ground to be covered with too few of the titillating, telling details that most of us love to uncover. Michelle Obama is no gossip and rarely throws shade at anyone, though she'd have been forgiven had she done so. Or would she? That is what's at the heart of this book after all. Will the first black anyone always be held to a higher, almost unattainable standard? Yes! And the first black president and first lady? Of course! The joy of it is that they did attain the unattainable, living exemplary, grace-filled lives in this white house that may have been built by Michelle's own enslaved relatives only a few generations back.
The third section, "Becoming More," soars once again as Michelle hits her stride. No longer out of her comfort zone, she excels at campaigning, yearning this time with all her heart to win so that she and her family can continue to expand on their work for the environment, gun control, educational opportunities for all, and opening their white house to all the people, not just the elite Washington insiders. Michelle Obama's very existence has become a beacon of hope, not just for young girls and women of color, but for all of us who have been marginalized or unseen, whose opinions are overlooked or disregarded whether in board meetings, or on county commissions, or at school, or even at home.
The results of Michelle's eight years in Washington are seen in the incomparable cadre of women who have run for, or plan to run for office, as evidenced by this article from today's New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/us/politics/michelle-obama-stacey-abrams-politics.html
So, you may wonder, is this the best book I've read this year? No. That list will begin tomorrow. But, is "Becoming" a must-read? The answer is a resounding yes. Michelle writes as if she's just chatting over tea or a glass of wine. She is very open, personal, and human about her fears, for her girls, her relationship with her husband, about being "good enough" to represent her race and gender in the second most important job in the United States. Anyone who reads her story will have to agree with me. She nailed it!
I've just finished the most delightful book, one that I discovered by accident, and one that has convinced me to add a new town to my "places to visit before I die" list. Wigtown, Scotland, (http://www.wigtown-booktown.co.uk/) is the unlikely village, apparently known throughout the world for having the largest number of bookshops anywhere! Who knew?
I downloaded Shaun Bythell's book, "The Diary of a Bookseller," to my kindle ages ago courtesy of Net Galley. I was several pages in before I even realized that it wasn't a novel but Bythell's actual hilarious, wryly subversive diary of a year in the life of the used book store unassumingly called The Bookshop. https://www.the-bookshop.com/
Shaun and his wife Anna live above the shop where an assortment of lost souls, part time staffers, and visiting dignitaries to the annual book festival simply doff their shoes at the store and settle in for supper, the night, or weeks.
Shaun is extremely well-versed in his profession and reading his diary will open up vistas for those of you who may think what a nice, easy life it would be to run a bookshop. However, he's probably the last person who should be dealing with the public as he suffers no fools gladly and had me laughing out loud in the doctor's office yesterday, appalled at some of the comments he makes to his own customers. What's so wonderful about them is that they are pithy rejoinders to idiotic statement that you know we all wish we had the courage to speak aloud but don't.
Bythell abhors Amazon and rants at length about their policies which bite into any potential profit for independent booksellers, and, sad to say, he has no love lost for librarians either. He hates the way we treat our discards, stamping them all over, removing the verso page, and basically depriving them of any value they might have had before we got our grubby little hands on them.
He introduces us to Nicky, his right hand gal with the indecipherable method of subject heading shelving, who hews to Foodie Friday by bringing in leftover goodies she's found in a "skip," a dumpster behind a local grocery store. Yuk! We go with Shaun and the volunteers and employees as the "skip" out to the local pub or spend the morning fly fishing for salmon. In fact, Shaun is all over the countryside on book buying expeditions, sometimes even unearthing a gem of a book that makes it all worth while.
For any "bookie" this diary is a must read. You'll yearn to head to Wigtown for a stay in a local bed and breakfast and a mosey down the main streets. But when you pop into The Bookshop, just don't tell Shaun that you're a librarian!
When I set down Meg Wolitzer's new novel, "The Female Persuasion," I wasn't sure that the author had accomplished what I thought she had set out to do. Ah hubris! I had brought my own bias to the book, a long held position that women will often undermine other women as evidenced by the 2018 election. I'm still flummoxed that so many women would vote against their own self interests to the extent that they would put an amoral, blustering buffoon in the White House when the most qualified woman in the country was the other option.
So, pen in hand, I was ready to take copious notes when the book talk began yesterday in Naples between distinguished retired professor Dr. Elaine Newton and none other than Meg Wolitzer herself. The first words out of Newton's mouth were "this is not a political novel." What?
The central character, Faith Frank is a renowned feminist scholar, public speaker, author, and editor of "Bloomer," a magazine whose circulation is waning in the post-feminist age. Yes, this novel was written prior to the "me too" movement.
Greer Kadetsy is an acolyte. Shy and bookish, Greer has been raised by her self absorbed parents to be an unseen entity in her own home. Her boyfriend, Cory Pinto, and her best girlfriend, Zee, are the only people who intuit her untapped potential. Until, that is, she stands up and finds her voice during a Q and A at college with visiting lecturer Faith Frank.
This novel, Wolitzer tells her audience, is about intergenerational relationships and power. Power dynamics between lovers, friends, business partners, and in marriages and families. It's also about the ways in which all of us must give and take, sometimes lowering our standards or failing to live up to our ideals, to achieve a greater good.
Readers may follow Greer's rise in Faith's organization with trepidation or with glee depending upon their own life experiences. Greer blossoms under Faith's mentorship, using her talent for writing, for listening, to passionately advocate for the less fortunate. But will success change Greer? She is living the life she and Cory had always planned for but she's still alone in that brownstone in Brooklyn. Will she make amends to Zee for a betrayal early on in her career? Will she remain steadfast to Cory while he struggles with a devastating loss? And what will happen if Faith falls off that pedestal?
Like most of Wolitzer's work this novel is driven by strong characters. There's no doubt that she loves them. Each is complex, at times disagreeable and at others forgivable, even admirable. In other words, they are the fully human beings that Wolitzer is know for creating with insight and kindness. As the discussion wound down, Newton asked Wolitzer to share her thoughts about working with Glenn Close on her Oscar worthy performance in The Wife. How could I have missed that connection? Of course she wrote the book from which the film was made! It all made sense. Close couldn't lose if she had a Meg Wolitzer character to bring forth on the big screen. One look at her face and you just know she's nailed it.
I can't believe that it's been more than twenty years since Frances Mayes http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/ first enticed readers to Italy with her lusty, luscious story of Bramasole, the run down Tuscan farmhouse that stole her heart and ours. As Peter Mayle brought Provence to life in his hilarious "A Year in Provence," so Mayes' name has become synonymous with Cortona since the 1997 publication of "Under the Tuscan Sun." I wonder how many of us readers have strolled the streets and alleyways of this delightful village, savoring the local foods and sunning in the piazza with a gelato in hand?
Mayes' love affair with Italy has never diminished and she still spends half of each year in Tuscany where her latest novel, "Women in Sunlight," is set. You might think that the plot, women of a "certain age" beginning again in a new country, might be overworked. I kind of did. But...they are such lovely women, so bright, brave, and talented that you just can't help but fall for them and the whole romp.
Their story begins in North Carolina where each of them, on their own at the end of lifelong relationships, meet at a tour of Cornwallis Meadows, a life care facility that, as described by Mayes, was eerily reminiscent of one I visited myself a couple of months ago. I had to laugh out loud at the unctuous tour guide gamely trying to sell a lifestyle that includes, pottery, visiting lecturers, yoga, and even your own gardening space, all for the price of your first born child and then some.
Camille, Susan, and Julia go for drinks after the presentation and discover that they are kindred souls. After months of dinners and weekends away to test their compatibility, they take a leap of faith, renting a villa in Italy for a year. And who do you suppose is their neighbor in the fictional village of San Rocco? Seeming to be a younger version of Frances Mayes, Kit is a poet and biographer who, with her partner Colin, become mentors to the three Americans in whom they see women open to all the pleasures and joys inherent in a new language and culture.
Mayes is a gloriously visual writer. One can easily picture a film evolving from this novel. Her knowledge of food, growing and preparing it, as well as her familiarity with local flora and fauna, art and architecture is extensive, enhancing our reading experience without ever feeling pedantic.
Over the course of the year each woman faces personal problems yet keeps these in perspective, not allowing their pasts to interfere with their growth and optimism about their futures. Their willingness to learn and adapt results in their being adopted into the community full stop. It's such a pleasure to spend time with all the denizens of San Rocco. If you don't find it on a map you can bet it looks a lot like Cortona. This is the perfect antidote for readers who may believe that their best years are behind them. Not if Frances Mayes can help it!
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