Tidy Tidbits: Books & More

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READERS’ FAVORITES

Here are a some of the book recommendations I received from my regular readers.  You will see a few familiar titles here as well as new ones. 

And There Was Light by Jon Meacham (nonfiction about Abraham Lincoln)

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Booth by K. J. Fowler

The Swimmers by J. Otsuka

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Memory Keeper of Kyiv by Erin Litteken (historical novel about Ukraine in the 1930’s)

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (YA novel by an Indigenous author about two teens’ clash of cultures)

For other recommended titles see the public comments on the blog site at https://www.jauntingjean.com/reading-favorite-books-of-2022/

A NOVEL FOR OUR TIME

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Boylan & Picoult (mysteryandsuspense.com)

I’m always leery of novels written by two authors, but I’m a fan of much of Jodi Picoult’s work.  She has a history of tackling contemporary issues, often divisive ones, from abortion to racism to genetics.  Her latest novel is co-written with Jennifer F. Boylan, author of several novels and the memoir, She’s Not There, which I can also highly recommend.  

This is a novel about secrets, what we choose to share with others, and what we keep private.  It’s also a love story, a book about how we define ourselves, and a suspenseful courtroom drama.  Olivia and her son Asher escaped to New Hampshire when Olivia left an abusive marriage.  She takes over her father’s role as a professional beekeeper.  Ava and her teenage daughter Lily move from Seattle and California.  Ava is a forest ranger working in the woods.  Lily becomes a student at the local high school, plays cello in the orchestra, and meets and likes hockey team star Asher.  Without revealing too much, these four lives become intertwined in unexpected ways.  

This is an absorbing, gripping, and sensitively written novel.  As the work of two writers, I found it seamless.  And it’s a book I would gladly place on the shelves of any and every high school library! (~JWFarrington)

WATCHING: NEW SEASONS

Whitstable Pearl, Season 2 (Acorn on Prime)

Pearl & Mike (IMBd)

In Season 2, oyster bar owner and private detective Pearl Nolan becomes more of a private eye, and the cases she helps solve are more tragic than in the first series.  Detective Mike McGuire remains dispirited over the death of his wife, but has a new partner, upbeat Kate.  Pearl appears to have moved on with her own new squeeze, schoolteacher Tom, but there are still intense glances between Pearl and Mike.   Overall, the series is darker than Season 1 and, except for one episode I found somewhat silly, entertaining drama.  

Under the Vines, Season 2 (Acorn on Prime)

Griff, Louis, Daisy, Tippy, & Gus (Libertine Pictures)

Daisy and Louis are still together running their jointly owned New Zealand vineyard in this lighter-hearted series.  As the season opens, Louis’s son and wife are both visiting, creating a crowded house, and upending the fragile developing romance between him and Daisy.  Secondary characters, Griff, Gus, and Tippy, bring gay and Māori perspectives to the series.  It’s funny, but not fluffy, and serious at points without being somber.  New episodes are being released weekly on Mondays. 

Note: Header photo of a school library courtesy of az12.org.

 

Tidy Tidbits: Political & Personal

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WATCHING: POLITICAL HISTORY

Argentina 1985 (Amazon Prime)

Prosecutor Staserra & his deputy

This political film is inspired by real events. It focuses on the groundbreaking 1985 civil trial of nine Argentine military leaders.  These individuals were charged with being responsible for the kidnappings, torture, and disappearance of hundreds of people during the country’s dictatorship period.  The main character is prosecutor Julio Stassera, a man who didn’t want the job and felt pressured into it and is also fearful.  It’s a gripping story of how Julio and his deputy and a team of young lawyers gathered accounts and assembled a group of individuals willing to testify in open court.  Recommended!

EXCAVATION: LIFE IN SCRAPBOOKS

Packrat Tendencies

I took a long trip down memory lane this past week.  I’ve made it my January project to sort, toss, and scan the contents of a closet.  This closet has essentially been untouched since we moved to Florida more than 8 years ago.  It was filled with stacked black plastic bins and one large cardboard carton. The large carton had not been opened since it was packed for a cross country move in 2007.  What I have discovered inside these boxes is a treasure trove of memorabilia going back to the 1960’s and earlier:  loose photos, scrapbooks, and photo albums. The pages in the oldest albums are fragile and crumble easily.

As a teen and through college, I was an inveterate saver and scrapbook keeper.  Every postcard I think I ever received or purchased from 1961 to about 1968, lots of programs for school plays, and concerts (Chad Mitchell Trio, for one), sports nights event lists, church choir festivals, birthday and graduation cards and selected correspondence.  To this day, I’m still a saver, but perhaps a more disciplined one.

Winter Wonders

I was reminded of the Christmas our family of six drove to Michigan with a stop in Ohio to visit cousins.  We had three Christmas celebrations, one with each set of grandparents and another with our cousins. We stayed in a motel one night each way. I saved postcards from the Tally Ho Motel in North Kingsville, Ohio (so cold a room we almost froze!) and from the Tiptop Motel in Canton, Ohio.  In Canton, we were all squeezed into the one available room.  My younger sister and brother shared a twin bed, one at each end.  The radiant heat (advertised on this postcard) was so hot, we departed at dawn’s crack.

Midst the many black and white photos were images of my siblings and me playing outside and running around with the neighbor boys (for a time, very few girls lived our street). Also black and white snow scenes of our driveway and yard after the Blizzard of ’66.  We lived in town and that was the only time I can ever remember getting three days off from school for the weather! 

I also discovered class photos and report cards from kindergarten through 4th grade from my elementary schools in Syracuse and Auburn.  I remember fondly my two favorite teachers, attractive young Miss Rosa (2ndgrade) and seeming-to-me very old, Miss Peterson (3rd grade).  Miss Peterson lives in memory for her teaching, but also for falling forward, fainting,and hitting her head on my desktop.  It was scary, but she was fine.

Scrapbook Maven

My mother had a special talent for creating noteworthy scrapbooks for anniversaries and other special occasions. I smiled and chuckled as I re-discovered these works.  The first one was for my Hancock grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary in 1961.  It was done in the format of a magazine called ”Family Fortune” with an image of John Hancock on the cover. Contents included family photos, cartoons, and humorous anecdotes, plus letters from the grandchildren.  \

In 1972, for my other grandparents’ 50th anniversary, she designed a scrapbook as a yearbook in recognition of my grandfather’s long career at the University of Michigan. My siblings and I and our cousins contributed to both of these volumes. 

In later years, the Chief Penguin and I were the recipients of “International Cooking with Jean & Greg” on our 10th anniversary and then “Father and Son” (Dec. 1986) highlighting life with Tim.  Birthday scrapbooks followed for me (2001) and each of my siblings illustrating our individual life stories along with photos of our grandparents and great grandparents.  

Whether these volumes will be of interest to the next generations or not, they document lives well lived.  And thanks to the Chief Penguin, scanned copies will now live in the cloud. 

Note: Header image of scrapbook spread by JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

Tidy Tidbits: See, Read, Watch

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FOOD FOR THE BRAIN

Barbara Stephenson (UNC-Chapel Hill)

This week we attended in person the first program in the Sarasota Institute of Lifetime Learning (SILL) 2023 Global Issues series.  It was the first time we’d been back live since Covid.  Attendance was sparse compared to earlier years, but the speaker was excellent.  

Former Ambassador Barbara Stephenson is the inaugural vice-provost for global affairs at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  During her 30 years with the foreign service, she served as ambassador to Panama, deputy ambassador in London, and as president of the American Foreign Services Association among other assignments.  

Her talk on the special challenges the U.S. faces in dealing with superpowers China and Russia was informative, well-illustrated, and well delivered.  It was a great beginning for the series.   She exemplified the kind of speaker who merits a return invitation.  

RECENT READING

Spare by Prince Harry

I pre-ordered Prince Harry’s memoir before we watched his Netflix series.  With all the leaks about the book’s content and the somewhat negative, or at least, mixed reviews, I half wondered if it would be worth reading.  For me, it was.

While most of us know Harry was traumatized after his mother’s death and have read and heard a lot about his and Meghan’s departure from the U.K., there is much about his military service and his family life between age 12 and meeting Meghan, that was new. 

After Princess Diana’s death, Harry did not receive the necessary help nor figure out himself how to move forward in a balanced way.  The Windsor royals eschew showing emotion publicly and even privately are reported as not a demonstrative family.  Harry’s memoir is all about feelings and emotions and yes, he overshares.  

Reading it, I felt empathy for the troubled teen and young man he was and admired his efforts to want to do some good in the world.  Notable examples are his work in several African countries (where he felt free) and his establishment of the Invictus Games for wounded service members and veterans. 

As expected, he puts a lot of blame for some of his anxiety and issues on the British press and on a few individuals in the palace’s communications office.  While being in the public eye and putting up with press attention are expected of the royal family, the hurtful and false media articles and constant surveillance, especially targeting Meghan, come across as beyond the usual and unwarranted.  With their escape to California, perhaps Harry and Meghan and their children will be able to enjoy more peaceful settled lives.

A word about the writing in the book.  It is compelling and even elegant at points.  Thanks to the laudable work of collaborator J. R. Moehringer, Harry’s memoir has an arc and a shape that make it very readable.  For one of the better reviews, I recommend Rebecca Mead’s piece in the January 23rd issue of The New Yorker, The Haunting of Prince Harry. (~JWFarrington)

FOOTNOTE ON VIEWING

Characters Joon-ho & Woo Young Woo (soompi.com)

I finished watching all sixteen episodes of Season 1 of Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix and still highly recommend it.  It’s engaging, the legal cases are intriguing, there’s underhanded politics, and occasionally, it’s even funny.  Over the course of the series, Attorney Woo astounds, annoys, and sometimes badgers her colleagues.  She is uneasy and often blunt in social situations causing embarrassment, yet she has a phenomenal memory for case law.  Part of her coming into her own is learning how to accept affection. Her fragile romance with colleague Joon-ho is beautifully played out and even sweet. 

Note: Header photo of Meghan and Harry is from Global News.

Reading: Favorite Books of 2022

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At the beginning of the new year, I like to look back over my list and reflect on the books I enjoyed the most and thought were the best written.  Most of them are recent works. They are novels with a few nonfiction titles tossed in.  Here are my top 10 favorite books of 2022 arranged alphabetically by title.

2022 FAVORITE BOOKS

Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg.  A wonderful evocation of a long friendship between Totenberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden by Li Zhiqing.  An excellent family biography of two accomplished Chinese sisters separated by civil war.

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn.  A gripping historical novel about a WWII female Red Army sniper.

Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark.  A Maine novel of the lasting friendship between two women now in their early 80’s.

Leaving Coy’s Hill by Katherine Sherbrooke.  An engaging historical novel about Lucy Stone, activist for women’s rights and abolition.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout.  Lucy spends the pandemic with her ex-husband in Maine in this meditative novel on love and grief.

Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce.  A mismatched pair of women travel to Caledonia in search of a beetle in this humorous yet poignant novel.

Oh, William by Elizabeth Strout.  A predecessor to the other Strout novel about Lucy’s marriage to and divorce from her husband William.  (Strout is obviously one of my favorite authors!)

The Palace Papers:  Inside the House of Windsor by Tina Brown.  A balanced account of the trials and tribulations of the British royals from Diana to Meghan.  

Something to Hide by Elizabeth George.  The latest mystery in the Lord Lynley/Barbara Havers series dealing sensitively with Nigerian immigrants and infibulation.  

RECENT READING

Banville (Irish Times)

April in Spain by John Banville

When the first two sentences read: “Terry Tice liked killing people. It was as simple as that,” you know you are in for something different. Irish writer, Banville’s recent crime story, April in Spain, is set in San Sebastian in the Basque region and in London. Terry Tice is the first character to appear, but the focus is really on pathologist Quirke and his psychiatrist wife, Esther, who are are on vacation in Spain. When reluctant vacationer Quirke believes his sees a young woman who was murdered, he calls his daughter Phoebe in London to alert her to his April sighting. Phoebe feels compelled to inform several others, and the plot literally thickens as a government minister, civil servants, and a detective become involved.

Banville is great at sketching out both the physical details and the personality traits of his characters. How the various players overlap in a surprise ending is masterful. Initially, I found the book a bit slow going, but got propelled forward once I got farther into it. And I loved the punning on the April of the title! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo of readers is from lifeisthisway.com