Finally! Let’s talk reading again, specifically my favorite books of 2023 so we can move onto what lies ahead in 2024. It was an interesting year in that I don’t remember another time when I had this many 5-star nonfiction books. I’m not even sure I’ve ever read so much great nonfiction in one year (and I’m too lazy to go back and check)! Somehow, 2023 came ... Read More...
Those We Thought We Knew
The residents of Jackson, a quiet county in the North Carolina mountains, are happy believing racism is largely in their past. Until that is, reality intervenes in David Joy’s new novel, Those We Thought We Knew. Joy uses the perspectives of three local characters: two white law enforcement officers and one Black woman to strip the veneer from a place and people who thought ... Read More...
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
I’m not sure I’ve ever started a review with an apology to the book and, possibly, the author. There’s a story here, so please be patient. I’ve always enjoyed Ann Patchett’s books, both fiction and nonfiction so I thought I was ready for her latest, Tom Lake, when it came out in August. A friend kindly loaned me their print copy. I tried it and loved its beginning, but print ... Read More...
Day by Michael Cunningham
A single day revisited for three years is the scaffolding that supports Michael Cunningham’s new novel, Day. The years are significant as they bracket the pandemic and lockdown, but this is not a COVID novel of suspense, terror, or disaster. Rather it’s snapshots of one family at three critical points in their lives as individuals and as a family unit. Dan and Isabel live in a ... Read More...
The Berry Pickers: A Novel
For one Mi’kmaq family summers in Maine have always been about sunshine, campfires, and reunions with old friends amidst long days of picking blueberries as migrant workers. Until 1962 when Ruthie, their youngest daughter, disappears, irrevocably changing the lives of the two main characters in Amanda Peters’ stunning debut The Berry Pickers. For Joe it begins a cycle of loss ... Read More...
One Woman Show
Caroline Margaret Brooks Whitaker Wallingford de Braganza Deen (aka Kitty), the epitome of 20th century American wealth, is depicted through art in the novel, One Woman Show. How does one represent a woman as art in a written format? Author Christine Coulson, whose imagination is as expansive as the art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she worked, makes it look simple in ... Read More...
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