Favorite Books read in 2024

This was a year which required the reading of 9 (!) books in the Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith, due to Everything.  And several audiobooks, due to eye surgery. And 13 children’s/young adult lit, due to both.  Two of my reads had the same main title (before the subtitle):  “Undue Burden”, due to the assault on reproductive rights.  Three of my reads this year prominently featured elephants, due to completely nonpolitical happenstance.  

I read 81 books/short stories in 2024.  Here’s what I rated excellent, and very good.

Excellent Fiction

Four of these items are children’s lit.  

Lust, Caution: The Story By Eileen Chang. Translated by Julia Lovell.  68 pages.  1978.  Transl 2007.  Exquisite writing.    As Melissa said in her comment on the December First Lines post, it’s a wonder that the writing can be so stellar in translation.  This is not a happy-go-lucky story. 

Ferris, by Kate DiCamillo.  240 pages. 2024. Children’s lit.

I entered this in my Storygraph, but I completely forgot to list it on the blog in First Lines July 2024 edition.

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol (a short story). 1842.  (Second reading, but the first reading was so long ago.)

The Bedridden Pirates (a short story) by The Common Household Younger Daughter. 7 pages. 2024; unpublished. I will admit I am a biased reader on this one.

The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White, (abridged; Junior Classics for 7-12 year olds).  Audiobook released 2008. Naxos Audiobooks, narrated by Neville Jason. 

The Bullet That Missed By Richard Osman. 2022.  Just another in the series of these murder mysteries, but I found this one more poignant than the previous ones.

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.  Audiobook read by Geoffrey Palmer.   This is on my “excellent” list because of the narrator.  I’ve read it multiple times but this is the first time I’ve listened to an audio recording.

Pink and Say By Patricia Polacco.  1994.  Picture book (children’s lit).

Excellent Nonfiction

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann.  2017.

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. 2007.

(I also re-read World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil with Fumi Nakamura (Illustrator) which I rated Excellent last year. 184 pages. 2020.)

David Grann’s writing just carries the story. I hope to read more by him.  Thatcher Ulrich is more difficult to read, but I appreciate her chosen topics and just find it wild to read an author who is a Mormon feminist.  World of Wonders I highly recommend again.

And some others I found quite enjoyable and/or thought-provoking

Fiction

Fences, the play by August Wilson.  119 pages.  1986.

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett. 312 pages. 2023.

Nervous Conditions By  Tsitsi Dangarembga. 204 pages (my print copy has 298 pages). 1988.

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax #1) By Dorothy Gilman. 208 pages. 1966

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation #1)

By Vaseem Khan.  320 pages. 2015.

Jitney (The Century Cycle #8), the play by August Wilson. 76 pages. First performed 1982.  

The Book Woman’s Daughter (2nd in a series) by Kim Michele Richardson. 338 pages.  2022.

The Revolving Door of Life (44 Scotland Street Series #10). By Alexander McCall Smith. 281 pages. 2015

Nonfiction

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, by Thomas E. Ricks.  416 pages.  2020.

Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes by Adam Hochschild.  320 pages. 2020.

Congratulations, The Best Is Over! By R. Eric Thomas. 240 pages. 2023.

Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott. 192 pages. 2017.

Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, by Shefali Luthra.  291 pages of text. 2024.

Undue Burden: A Black, Woman Physician on Being Christian and Pro-Abortion in the Reproductive Justice Movement, by Deshawn Taylor. 204 pages. 2023.

More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew, by John Blake. 240 pages. 2023.

When in French: Love in a Second Language By Lauren Collins. 256 pages.  2016

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.   464 pages (main text is about 400 pages).  1990.  Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 in the History category.

Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor By Steven Greenhouse.  416 pages. 2019.

Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency.  By Dan Abrams, David Fisher.  320 pages. 2018.

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America By Heather Cox Richardson. 304 pages. 2023.

Some repeat readings

Books I appreciated reading again:

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol (a short story). 49 pages. 1842.  

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

Aimee Nezhukumatathil with Fumi Nakamura (Illustrator). 184 pages. 2020.

Pink and Say By Patricia Polacco. 48 pages. 1994.  Picture book (children’s lit).

Not an easy topic for kids nor for adults.

The Return of the Prodigal Son:  A Story of Homecoming, by Henri J.M. Nouwen. 162 pages. 1992. Reading for church Lenten study group.  The first time I read it was a very long time ago.

The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White, (abridged; Junior Classics for 7-12 year olds).  Audiobook released 2008.  Naxos Audiobooks, narrated by Neville Jason.  4 hours?  6 hours? 

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.  Unabridged.  Audiobook read by Geoffrey Palmer.   3 hours, 27 minutes • Written text first pub 1902 (editions).  Audiobook released in 2005  by Naxos Junior Classics.  As noted above, this is a completely charming narration by Geoffrey Palmer. 

But I did not enjoy re-reading this:

Mary Poppins By P.L. Travers with Sophie Thompson (Narrator)~ 4 hours. 1934. Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks 2013. Print version 208 pages or so.

My top 5 genres, from thestorygraph.com

That says: Historical, mystery, history, middle grade, and contemporary.  

Top authors

I don’t know why it says I read 2 Kate DiCamillo books in 2024.  When I click on it, it only lists one book.

Keep your eyes open, readers.
Looks like wild times ahead.

Book Review: A Midwife's Tale

 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  

464 pages (main text is about 400 pages; the rest is appendix and notes) • first pub 1990.  Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 in the History category.

(For the full First Lines May 2024 edition, follow this link.)

When our children were ages 7, 5, and 1, we all accompanied their Dad (the Common Household Husband) on his business trip to Toronto, Canada.  Daddy went off to his scientific conference all day, while I attempted to drive around an unfamiliar city to take the kids to museums.  We converged as a family in the evening, lining up in our one hotel room like sardines, with no energy left except to watch TV.   The family-appropriate show that we found was a reality-type show (maybe this one?) about a family that lives for a year in a house without any modern conveniences.  The women spent all day just trying to keep the dust at bay.  I can’t remember what the men did.  The family’s existence seemed exhausting and bleak.  

This is the closest I have come to being
a Pioneer Housewife.

The book A Midwife’s Tale, which my sister-in-law, a midwife by training, recommended to me, had echoes of that TV show. 

It's a historical treatise, meaning that the author examines a primary source, the diary of a midwife in (what would become the state of) Maine in the late 1700s-early 1800s.  The historian is able to take the terse diary entries, amplify them with the history of the time, and weave it all to tell the story of a strong, hard working woman.  

The historian author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, was the first to publish the now-famous phrase "well-behaved women seldom make history," writing in a scholarly journal in 1976.  In 2007 she published a book with that title (it’s now on my reading list).  She is a Pulitzer- and Bancroft-Prize-winning historian, a feminist, and a Mormon.

A Midwife’s Tale shows that in late 1700s America, a midwife provided not only her medical skills at a birth, but also her skills generally as a healer.  Martha Ballard attended to many ailments in her community. There was no shortage of additional non-midwife tasks – combing flax, weaving cloth, raising crops, managing livestock, giving birth to and raising her own children, and all of the management of the family and household.

 

In that era, extramarital sex (as evidenced by the resulting pregnancy) was a common thing and not as severely dealt with as I would have thought.  The knowledge of the time said that if a woman pregnant out of wedlock was asked, during the process of giving birth, who the father was, she was incapable of telling a lie in that moment.  It was part of the midwife’s job to ask this question and record the answer.  Often, the birth occurred and then the named father married the mother.

 

Midwives had dominion over the birthing process until forceps were invented, and then doctors (men) horned in on the process.  Doctors (men) also invented the latest up-to-date medical techniques, such as bleeding a patient.

Men working in the kitchen.
My father (on the left) is squatting Pakistani style
(a skill he learned as an infant and child) and
my brother is attempting the squat.
They are shelling nuts or cardamoms
or something for the biryani.

 

I was surprised not to find more in this book about abortions, but that might be for several reasons:

 

The illnesses are sometimes described obliquely.  Often Midwife Ballard would write that the person was “feeling unwell” which could mean: in labor, sick with a sore throat, infested with worms (yup – trigger warning!), or sick with just about anything.  There could be a number of euphemisms used to describe abortion.  (But Ulrich does not say anything about abortions or contraception.)

 I didn’t read the appendix first.  There are 8 pages listing the medicines used by Martha Ballard.  Some of these have uses listed such as

Hops: “bring down the courses”;

Pennyroyal: “deobstruent, particularly in hysteric and other female complaints”;

Rue: Used to promote menstruation;

Maybe the use of such herbs could denote an attempt to end a pregnancy?

 

The late 1790s to early 1800s in the territory of Maine was an era of contention over property rights (between factions of White people – the native population had already been forced away) with some shocking violence, as described in this book.

 

A few other tidbits: It seems that the Boston Tea Party was not the only instance where white men dressed up as natives in order to cause trouble.  Debtor’s prison was a thing, but the debtor could roam the town (to work, eat, drink etc) as long as he stayed the night in the prison.

 

When quoting the diary, the historian maintains the variable spellings of the original text, which makes for slower reading, but at least I didn’t have to try to read 18th century handwriting.  The prose sometimes got a bit dry, but overall I found it to be a fascinating portrayal of a woman important to her community.

Me doing my bit for women's well being. 
Can you tell I was (and still am) furious?

Three Dinner Guests

Cheerful dinner guests

 

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to dinner with you, whom would you invite?

This is the question that a cousin posed to my 88-year-old aunt, in order to get my aunt’s mind off her troubles.  If memory serves, my aunt would invite FDR, George Washington, and Queen Elizabeth II.  

My aunt and her sister, my mother, were captivated by Elizabeth and Margaret, who were just slightly older.  When I was a girl my mother gave me her book about the princesses, written before 1952 when Elizabeth became queen.  I was intrigued but not overly enamored of royalty.  

At the same age, I was also quite taken with a book my father read from, called Van Loon’s Lives, in which the narrator in fact has dinner with prominent people from long-ago history.  This was my first introduction to a guy named Erasmus.  Most of this book went over my head, because I was unfamiliar with most of the personages and wasn’t very interested in history at that time, but the whole idea of having these people for dinner fascinated me. 

The full title of the book is Van Loon's Lives: Being A True and Faithful Account of A Number of Highly Interesting Meetings With Certain Historical Personages, From Confucius and Plato to Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, About Whom We Had Always Felt A Great Deal of Curiosity and Who Came to Us as Our Dinner Guests in A Bygone Year.  And the author is Hendrik Willem Van Loon.  

My aunt recently asked my siblings and me the same question about three dinner guests.  My immediate answer was that I would invite my three children.  I said I made this choice because I know I could make a dinner that they would eat, whereas making dinner for Queen Elizabeth II would be too much pressure.  My siblings objected that nobody said that I had to cook the meal.  Yeah, right.  But my real reason is that I immensely enjoy my children’s company (although I’m still not sure if they are ready to dine with the Queen), and it’s been a while since I’ve been in their presence all together.

If I was forced to limit myself to non-family dead-or-alive dinner guests, I suppose my three might be prominent historical figures.  But maybe it would be cool to invite the historians who know all about the historical figures - how about Jill Lepore, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eddie S. Glaude?  Or Hendrik Willem Van Loon?  Nothing like a good argument among historians over dinner.

I recently had dinner with a man who, when he was a teenager, shook the hand of Malcolm X. Amazing! I guess that’s as close as reality can bring me to having dinner with prominent historical figures.

The cat helping my Dad cook something with
bacon and zucchini, sometime in the 1990s.

First lines: March 2022 edition

A small portion of my parents' books

Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in March.   Six books, including three (!) for kids/young adults, and two re-reads.  March was a very busy and tense month, with petition signing to get candidates on the ballot squished into a shorter time frame, and yet at the same time prolonged into an entire month.  Yinz please make all that activity worthwhile by voting in the primary election.

 

 

Book 1

The First Chapter: One home is forsaken in hopes of finding another

It was not Miss Penelope Lumley’s first journey on a train, but it was the first one she had taken alone.

         As you may know, traveling alone is quite a different kettle of fish from traveling with companions.

 

 

Book 2

Four young girls busily prepared for their big day. 

 

 

Book 3

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

 

Book 4

The First Chapter: A fit of pique encounters a bit of pluck.

“But the workmen swore the repairs to the house would be finished by now!” The blushing pink circles that typically adorned the cheeks of Lady Constance Ashton were now as scarlet as two ripe nectarines.

 

Book 5

After the thing was all over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tyres, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair. 

 

Book 6

I still remember the awe I felt the first time I walked into the Alameda County Superior Courthouse, in Oakland, California, as an employee.

 

 

The titles and authors revealed:

 

 

Book 1

 The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book 1: The Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood.  Illustrated by Jon Klassen.

This is really only half a book.  Many of the mysteries were not resolved, which will force me to read the next book.  Which is not a bad thing, as I liked the characters and the moderately snarky writing style.  It’s like a mild Lemony Snicket of the famous A Series of Unfortunate Events, although I have only read snippets of Snicket so I can’t really give a good comparison.  The Incorrigible children behave somewhat like wolves, and yet are much better behaved than many of the adults.  It was wonderful to read children’s literature.

 

Book 2

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby.  © 2019.  250 pages.

Second reading (first time was in 2019).  This time it is suggested reading for the church anti-racism group.  

 

 

Book 3

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.  Published 1813. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that this book’s opening line is one of the most famous in English literature.

Readers view this book either as a much-beloved classic exploring early 19th century English upper middle class society, or as a useless tome about a bunch of people who need to get real jobs and do something useful.  The book raises lots of questions.  Is Elizabeth Bennet a feminist hero, ahead of her time for wanting to marry for love and not just to secure her economic future?  Hard to tell – she ends up getting both love and economic security.  And when asked when was the first time she knew she loved Darcy, she says it was when she saw his mansion.  What’s not to love about a man with a mansion?  But still, I think Jane Austen wrote Lizzy Bennet as a bold character who wants it all and is willing to talk back defiantly to the authorities of her circle.

More on the Common Household’s reading of P&P at this link.

 

Book 4

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book 2: The Hidden Gallery, by Maryrose Wood.  Illustrated by Jon Klassen.

The plucky governess Penelope Lumley and her charges, the wolf-children of Lord Ashton, continue their adventures, leaving the countryside to spend some time in London.  Most mysteries of the first in the series are still not resolved, and new mysteries have been revealed.  We can guess at the answer for some of the unknowns.  And this book introduces a friend or possibly a love interest for our heroine. 

 

Book 5

Joy in the Morning, by P.G. Wodehouse.  Published 1946. 229 pages.

This book is the Anti-Pride-and-Prejudice.  Bertie Wooster does not want to get married and goes through contortions to avoid it.  It’s the usual Jeeves & Wooster caper.  Very funny.

 

 

Book 6

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris, adapted for young readers by Ruby Shamir.  Published 2019. Young Readers Edition.  260 pages.

This is one of those memoirs written by a person planning to run for higher office, except I read the kids’ version.  I especially enjoyed the parts about how Kamala Harris’ mother inspired her.  My mother has inspired me.