Best Books 2019

Hello Dear Readers,

Here I am posting again for my Toastmasters challenge. My challenge is to complete a Level 4 elective by writing a “compelling” blog and post 8 times in the month of January.  Here we go!

What were your favorite books to read in 2019? President Barack Obama tweeted a list of his favorite books for 2019. AARP magazine, the December 2019 issue, also has a list of recommended books in an article on page 13 titled, “Our Top Picks of 2019”.

None of the books on these two lists was even on my radar.  I was too busy reading books by one of my favorite writers, Lisa Jewell. I read about 9 books by her in 2019. What all her books had in common was family drama. The Family Upstairs, the most recent publication, was the last book I read for 2019. This story about three dysfunctional families, who ended up living in the same house in London, held my interest to the very end. This was a story about manipulation, obsession, and murder.

On President Obama’s list, the book I’d like to read is American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson because I like thrillers:

 “Structured as a letter addressed to her two young sons, this thriller is centered around Marie Mitchell, a black FBI intelligence officer. American Spy travels in time between Marie’s upbringing in 1960s Queens and her spy work during the Cold War to highlight the trials of a protagonist questioning her identity as a woman, a person of color and an American.” Source: Time Magazine

From the AARP list, the book I’d like to read is Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. This is a family saga told from different perspectives. From the amazon reviews, it is about teenage pregnancy and the impact on the generations. The AARP list also includes The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. I have enjoyed the dystopian world of Margaret Atwood in the past but I didn’t enjoy reading The Handmaid’s Tale. I couldn’t complete reading the book.

What were your favorite books 📚 in 2019?

Public Domain Day

Happy New Year Dear Readers:

Hoping you will have a holy, happy, and healthy 2020. I have a new challenge in 2020. For my Toastmasters Club I need to maintain a “compelling” blog and post at least 8 times this month. My focus will continue to be books and anything related to books. Here we go with the first post.

This morning I found an interesting article on the important subject of “public domain” for all you avid readers of the classics. What is public domain, some of you may be wondering. It is related to copyright. Copyright protection of a literary, artistic, or musical work in the United States lasts 95 years. A number of books, as well as films and music, that were copyrighted in 1924 are now copyright free as of January 1, 2020. This means that these classics can  be legally accessed, remixed, and republished by the general public. Full text of the books will now be available on Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books, not just snippets of the books. 

Some books in the article are listed here:

• Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
• Agatha Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit
• E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
• Eugene O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms

Will you be reading any of these books? 📚  I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie. That’s the one I would love to access. 

Teens’ Choices: Top 10 Favorite Books 2019

This is the 2019 list of best books for young adults. I love that one of my favorites is there: Children of Blood and Bone, the first of a trilogy by Tomi Adeyemi.

Another favorite Writer

I found a new author who I like and that I can recommend. She is Lisa Jewell, a British writer whose books don’t seem to fit into any one genre. One thing they have in common is family drama. I started off my Jewell reading experience with Then She Was Gone, a murder mystery. That was the hook. Since then I have read The Third Wife, The Girls in the Garden, Roommates Wanted, I Found You, and Before I Met You. That’s six books altogether.  Before I Met You started off really slowly but eventually I got into the story and really loved it.

Some Books I Read in 2018

We did not meet often this year and I did not keep track of the books we read together in 2018. A really good book we selected in September was, The Baker’s Secret by Stephen Kiernan. I am sure we read more books. If I can recall them later, I will share.

I read other books on my own that I loved: Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel. This was a book published in the 1960s. It became so popular this year, it was published again in November.

This was a year of political books. I only read two out of curiosity but they turned out to be really good: A Higher Loyalty  by James Comey and Becoming by Michelle Obama.

Becoming was divided into 3 parts and written in a conversational tone. It consisted of stories about finding and maintaining balance. Balancing work and personal values;  balancing marriage, work, and parenting; balancing the pursuit of passion with the pursuit of work success resonated with readers, in my opinion.  That’s one reason it’s a bestseller. The stories were also about finding her voice and maintaining her authentic voice as a spouse of a politician who also happened to have been President.

Here are two more books that I really enjoyed, An American Marrage by Tayari Jones and Children of Blood & Bone, the first of a trilogy by Toni Adeyemi.

Top Library Checkouts for 2017

Link here for the popular library checkouts: New York Public Library 📚 These 2 are going to be on my What Will I Read Next? list:

1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2.  Commonwealth: A Novel by Ann Patchett​

Book Club Selections 2016, January - June

What have you been reading this year? These are the books we have selected and discussed at the bookclub this year. I have enjoyed them all but my favorite so far is Ordinary Grace.

January 15 - The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; writer of The Red Tent, a book club pick many, many years ago that we loved.  This is historical fiction. Jewish girl coming of age story. (336 pages).

February 19 - October List by Jeffrey Deaver; the book starts with the end and is filled with twists and turns. http://www.jefferydeaver.com/novel/the-october-list/  

March  18 - Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kreuger; small town murder 1961 setting. 

April 15 - Gray Mountain by John Grisham.


May 19 - Murder House by James Patterson and David Ellis.


June 16 - Forgotten Room  by Lincoln Child.

What will we read next? Stay tuned.

Book Club Selections for 2015

Personally, I highly recommend the books by Sam Thomas, Alyson Richman, and Anthony Doerr 

February 20
The King’s Deception by Steve Berry

March 20
The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman 

April 17
MidWife's Tale (Midwife's Mysteries #1) by Sam Thomas.  

May 15

The Oath by John Lescroart 

June 19

The Harlot's Tale by Sam Thomas

July 17

Leaving Time by Jodie Picoult

August 28
Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

No meeting in September.

October 16
When the Lion Feeds by Wilbur Smith

November 20
All the World We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Louise Penny's Latest Book and Project Babylon

I am reading the latest Penny book in the Inspector Gamache series, Nature of the Beast. I first became hooked on this series because of the book club. Still Life was Penny's first book.  In this book a 9 year old child, with a vivid imagination, from the village of Three Pines has been murdered.  The Surete du Quebec is in Three Pines to investigate this murder that was set up to appear as if it were an accident.

After reading every one of Penny's books, the characters have become like familiar friends. The usual quirky characters are present such as Ruth, the crazy poet; Myra, the psychologist turned bookseller; Clara, the insecure and talented artist; Gabri and his partner Olivier, owners of the local Bistro/guest house. Some of the characters from the Surete that we met in previous books are present to investigate the murder; Beauvoir and Lacoste.  My guess is that the new, young, arrogant officer Favreau, introduced in this book,may appear in a future book in the series.

Right now I am on page 109 and this murder mystery has now led me into the world of Project Babylon, a supergun created by Gerald Bull, with links to Saddam Hussein and the biblical Whore of Babylon. The "OMG" moment is that this supergun and Canadian-born Gerald Bull and the link to Saddam Hussein are factual. Fascinating.

Penny likes to sprinkle literary references in her books; usually poems. This one has references to songs, poetry, and to biblical verses. "By the waters of Babylon...." words from the Bible come up often. The biblical words put to song by a Jamaican group, the Melodians, is a favorite of mine.

Fans of Louise Penny, you will enjoy this interview with the writer. 

Books: Memories, Time, the Supernatural

It suddenly occurred to  me that the three books I have read recently had the following themes; memories and time plus the supernatural as a subtheme. I read two of the books for the book club, Leaving Time by Jodie Picoult and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. The other book, Slave Time: Midnight was a gift from the writer, Howard Potts. Really, it's just a coincidence that they all had similar themes and I read them one after the other.

Leaving Time was about Jenna recalling childhood memories and what happened to her mother.  Also included in the story was the incredible memory of elephants. And one character just happened to be a psychic. A good portion of Slave Time was about Old Sam's childhood memories of slavery and the stories told to him as a child.  Some of the stories were about his experiences as a young adult and included a meeting with a voodoo Queen of New Orleans, Madame Laveau.

I just finished reading Ocean at the End of the Lane, fantasy fiction for adult readers.  It is the book club selection for August. This was not my favorite book. The main character drove to the Sussex country side where he grew up as a child, after being the speaker at a funeral.  We are not told whose funeral. I thought that was odd.  I thought I missed it and went to the beginning to reread. The main character has no name. Very odd. Anyway, once in the area of his childhood home, he looks for and finds a pond at the end of the lane that he remembers from his childhood. He remembers some strange magical incidents that happened when he was 7 years old.

"Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me." The narrator was a sad, lonely, and imaginative child who loved to read.  He found solutions to his problems in books.  He recalls how he met 11 year old Lettie Hempstock, her Mom and grandmom, and was transported to a whole new "other" world.  He recalls how he became the door that let the monster, Ursula Monkton, into his family's lives.

I am about to start an award winning book by Jamaican writer Marlon James, A Brief history of Seven Killings. If this book turns out to have the themes memories, time, and magic (the supernatural), then I think the universe is telling me something.

Slave Time: Midnight a novel by Howard Potts

Imagine my surprise when author and former colleague, Howard Potts, sent me my own autographed copy of his new book,  Slave Time. This book was inspired by real life slave stories as told to interviewers involved in the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

I just started reading and am on page 55.  Tom Smart is the interviewer in the story, raised in the North, who is sent to Georgia and Alabama to interview former slaves. Tom thought his calling was to interview congressmen, senators, and presidents.  This was the depression period; Tom had to take this job interviewing elderly black people in the Deep South. Some of these former slaves were too old to remember life back then in great detail and some were suspicious of white interviewers from the North digging into their family history. Tom, however, hit the jackpot when he was directed to Old Sam Worthington who had a great memory, was known in the area as a storyteller and was willing to share his stories. Old Sam told his own first hand experiences plus the stories that were told to him as a child. For example, he was told that he was born into slavery on a day in 1833 when there was a Great Leonid Meteor and could relay this tidbit to Tom. He told the story of an African princess and her fellow villagers who were tricked into getting on a slave ship.

It's a fascinating book. It is very descriptive and would be of interest to history aficionados.