Many Books to Celebrate in March

This month many of us will reflect on the year that wasn’t…the year that saw celebrations, trips and reunions cancelled. The new releases scheduled for March 2021, seem to indicate that authors, editors and publishers used their isolation well. Here are a few titles to look for:  

The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende
   Coming out in time for International Women’s Day on March 8th, Allende returns to non-fiction with a passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman.
   “When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have.
   As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, she for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between their teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what has been accomplished by the movement in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.
   So what feeds the soul of all women—and feminists—today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will “light the torch of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.”  

Klara and the Sun: A novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
   Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
   Yes, Klara is a robot who is purchased as a companion for Josie, a 14-year-old girl suffering from a mysterious disease. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?   

Foregone: A Novel by Russell Banks
   Forgone is novel about memory, abandonment, and betrayal—and a man’s end-of-life need for forgiveness and redemption—the first novel by Russell Banks in almost a decade. The novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself.
   At the center of the book is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession. 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
   Walter Isaacson is known for writing accounts of people thought of as geniuses. Now he continues with the account of a woman and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues who launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
   When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
   Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. 

This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism by Don Lemon
   Don Lemon brings his vast audience and experience as a reporter and a Black man to today’s most urgent question: How can we end racism in America in our lifetimes? Each if this book's three parts begins with a letter to one of his nephews—two of whom are Black, the third is White.
   The host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is more popular than ever. As America’s only Black prime-time anchor, Lemon and his daily monologues on racism and antiracism, on the failures of the Trump administration and many of our leaders, and on America’s systemic flaws. Now in a deeply personal plea, he shows us all how deep our problems lie, and what we can do to begin to fix them.
   Beginning with a letter to one of his Black nephews, he proceeds with reporting and reflections on his slave ancestors, his upbringing in the shadows of segregation, and his adult confrontations with politicians, activists, and scholars. In doing so, Lemon offers a searing and poetic ultimatum to America. He visits the slave port where a direct ancestor was shackled and shipped to America. He recalls a slave uprising in Louisiana, just a few miles from his birthplace. And he takes us to the heart of the 2020 protests in New York City. As he writes to his young nephew: We must resist racism every single day. We must resist it with love.

Books Worth the Wait

This week I feature books on my “catch-up” stack. Books I meant to read earlier but…the reserve list at the library was long, blog and review deadlines got in the way, or the publication date changed. Let’s face it there are so many books and so little time.

The Paris Library: A Novel by Janet Skeslien Charles
   The Paris Library tells the true story of the heroic librarians at The American Library in Paris which is a private library (or subscription library) that never closed during the war; never stopped sending books to their subscribers, on the warfront or in their Paris apartments. The story is told from two locations in two time periods.
   Paris, 1939: Odile Souchet works at her dream job dream job at the American Library in Paris and has a handsome police officer boyfriend. When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile and her fellow librarians, join the Resistance with the best weapons they have: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.
   Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager whose mother recently died living in small-town Montana. Her elderly neighbor never seems to go anywhere nor have many friends, so Lily decides to interview her. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language and the same intense jealousy of family and friends. But why and how did Odile come from Paris to Froid, MT?
   This book was originally scheduled to be published in June 2020 but just shipped last week and it is so worth the wait! It is an excellent historical novel told by an author who grew up in Montana and had a dream job at the American Library in Paris. She tells a powerful story about the consequences of our choices and relationships that make us who we are as family, friends, lovers and libraries. 

The Missing American by Kwei Quartey
   When her dreams of rising through the Accra police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her career. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. It’s not the future she imagined, but it’s her best option.
   Meanwhile, Gordon Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington, DC, has found solace in an online community after his wife’s passing. Through the support group, he’s even met a young Ghanaian widow he’s come to care about. When her sister gets into a car accident, he sends her thousands of dollars to cover the hospital bill—to the horror of his only son, Derek. Then Gordon decides to surprise his new love by paying her a visit—and disappears. Fearing for his father’s life, Derek follows him across the world to Ghana, Internet capital of the world, where he and Emma will find themselves deep in a world of sakawa scams, fetish priests, and those willing to kill to protect their secrets.
   Not only has The Missing American been nominated for a 2021 Edgar in the Best Novel category but the sequel Sleep Well, My Lady released in January. Emma Dian is now one of my favorite foreign investigators. This is the start of a second mystery series set in Ghana by Quartey—which immediately made my “catch-up” stack twice as big! 

The Pull of the Stars: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
  Ireland is doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders -- Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumored Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
   In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, nurses and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
   The Pull of the Stars originally came out in July and if my library reserve is any indication many people were anxious to read this new book by the author of Room. Donoghue was inspired by the anniversary of the Great Flu and began writing the book in October 2018 with the last draft completed in March 2020.
   One historic poster mentioned in the book shows how little pandemic alerts have changed:

THE PUBLIC IS URGED TO STAY OUT OF PUBLIC SPACES SUCH AS CAFES, THEATERS, CINEMAS AND PUBLIC HOUSES

SEE ONLY THOSE PERSONS ONE NEEDS TO SEE

REFRAIN FROM SHAKING HANDS, LAUGHING, OR CHATTING CLOSELY TOGETHER

IF ONE MUST KISS, DO SO THROUGH A HANDKERCHIEF

SPRINKLE SULPHUR IN THE SHOES

IF IN DOUBT, DON’T STIR OUT 

 

Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart
    Split apart by the war effort, the indomitable Kopp sisters take on saboteurs and spies and stand up to the Army brass as they face the possibility that their life back home will never be the same.
    The U.S. has finally entered World War I. Constance, the oldest of the Kopp sisters, is doing intelligence work on the home front for the Bureau of Investigation while youngest sister and aspiring actress, Fleurette, travels across the country entertaining troops with song and dance. Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location in France, Norma oversees her thwarted pigeon project for the Army Signal Corps. When her roommate, a nurse at the American field hospital, is accused of stealing essential medical supplies, the intrepid Norma is on the case to find the true culprit.
    Determined to maintain their sometimes-scratchy family bonds across the miles, the far-flung sisters try to keep each other in their lives. But the world has irrevocably changed—when will the sisters be together again?
    This is the sixth book in the Kopp sisters series based on real-life women who lived a century ago. The war adventures of Constance, Nora and Fluerette are told through letters as the sisters serve their country. Dear Miss Kopp came out in January so maybe I can now relax and look to March releases.

New year, new reading challenge!

Can you read 50 books in 2021? For the fifth year, Missoula Public Library is challenging people to read 50 books, one in each of 50 categories. One of this year’s categories sounds like a Jeopardy category--- Alliterative Author. Here are a few possibilities: 

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
   In 1998, Bill Bryson returned to America and decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. The AT offers the landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes—and with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
   For a start there’s the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson’s acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America’s last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is a modern classic of travel literature. 

Old Lovegood Girls by Gail Godwin
   When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron Hood with Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Feron, who has narrowly escaped from a dark past, instantly takes to Merry and her composed personality. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls—and their friendship—begin to thrive. But underneath their fierce friendship is a stronger, stranger bond, one comprising secrets, rivalry, and influence—with neither of them able to predict that Merry is about to lose everything she grew up taking for granted, and that their time together will be cut short.
   Ten years later, Feron and Merry haven’t spoken since college. Life has led them into vastly different worlds. But, as Feron says, once someone is inside your “reference aura,” she stays there forever. And when each woman finds herself in need of the other’s essence, that spark—that remarkable affinity, unbroken by time—between them is reignited, and their lives begin to shift as a result. 

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
   The classic novel of a quest for knowledge that has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers.
 This is the story of the quest of Siddhartha, a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege and comfort to seek spiritual fulfillment and wisdom. On his journey, Siddhartha encounters wandering ascetics, Buddhist monks, and successful merchants, as well as a courtesan named Kamala and a simple ferryman who has attained enlightenment. Traveling among these people and experiencing life’s vital passages–love, work, friendship, and fatherhood–Siddhartha discovers that true knowledge is guided from within. 

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
   In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax. 

Baltimore Blues: The First Tess Monaghan Novel by Laura Lippman
   In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz’s death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer’s notoriety—and his taste for illicit midday trysts—make the case front-page news in every local paper except the Star, which crashed and burned before Abramowitz did.
   A former Star reporter who knows every inch of this town—from historic Fort McHenry to the crumbling projects of Cherry Hill—now unemployed journalist Tess Monaghan also knows the guy the cops like for the killing: cuckolded fiancé Darryl “Rock” Paxton. The time is ripe for a career move, so when rowing buddy Rock wants to hire her to do some unorthodox snooping to help clear his name, Tess agrees.
   But there are lethal secrets hiding in the Charm City shadows. And Tess’ own name could end up on that ever-expanding list of Baltimore dead. 

Straight Man: A Novel by Richard Russo   
   William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character--he is a born anarchist--and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.
    In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions.

Other reading categories this year include: Controversial Issue; Graphic Novel; Nature; Psychological Thriller and Book with a Turquoise. I look forward to sharing other selections in the coming months.  Are you ready to take the challenge?

Notable Non-fiction to start the year

The first months of 2021 have seen the publication of many notable books, some by well-known writers and others by debut authors. Here is a sampling of recent non-fiction: 

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman
   The history of Homo sapiens is usually told as a story of technology or economics. But there is a more fundamental driver: food. How we hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology; our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell where we settled and how civilizations expanded. The quest for food for growing populations drove exploration, colonialism, slavery, even capitalism.
   A century ago, food was industrialized. Since then, new styles of agriculture and food production have written a new chapter of human history, one that’s driving both climate change and global health crises. Best-selling food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of the story and explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.  

Florentine: The True Cuisine of Florence (2nd Edition) by Emiko Davies
    For those missing travel, this book is a great way to escape to one of my favorite cities. Definitely a cookbook to read!

   Stroll through the streets of Florence with the 2020 edition of Emiko Davies' award-winning Florentine. This new format cookbook beautifully packages Emiko's recipes, photographs and insights, each informed by her experience of Tuscany's capital over more than a decade. As well, it includes new neighborhood itineraries—from 24 Hours in Florence, to Day Trips Outside the City Centre, to Best Bistecca and Pastry Shops, to Shopping for Cook's Tools.
   Emiko's recipes transport readers to the piazzas of Florence. From her torta di mele—a reassuringly nonna-esque apple cake—to ravioli pera e ricotta,mouthwateringly buttery pear and ricotta ravioloni—she shares an enchanting culinary tour of the city. Visit pastry shops bustling with espresso-sippers, hole-in-the-wall wine bars, busy food vans and lunchtime trattorias, and learn how and why the people of Florence remain so proudly attached to their unchanging cuisine. 

Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang
   In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five dollars at Kmart, too good a deal to pass up. But when she opened the box, something shocking fell out: an SOS letter, handwritten in broken English.
   “Sir: If you occassionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicuton of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”
   The note’s author, Sun Yi, was a mild-mannered Chinese engineer turned political prisoner, forced into grueling labor for campaigning for the freedom to join a forbidden meditation movement. He was imprisoned alongside petty criminals, civil rights activists, and tens of thousands of others the Chinese government had decided to “reeducate,” carving foam gravestones and stitching clothing for more than fifteen hours a day.
   In Made in China, investigative journalist Amelia Pang pulls back the curtain on Sun’s story and the stories of others like him, including the persecuted Uyghur minority group whose abuse and exploitation is rapidly gathering steam. What she reveals is a closely guarded network of laogai—forced labor camps—that power the rapid pace of American consumerism. Through extensive interviews and firsthand reportage, Pang shows us the true cost of America’s cheap goods and shares what is ultimately a call to action—urging us to ask more questions and demand more answers from the companies we patronize.

 The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura
   Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for a mission beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world at first recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity ultimately won her the acceptance of the male medical establishment. In 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician.
   Exploring the sisters’ allies, enemies, and enduring partnership, Janice P. Nimura presents a story of trial and triumph. Together, the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Both sisters were tenacious and visionary, but their convictions did not always align with the emergence of women’s rights—or with each other. As Elizabeth herself predicted, "a hundred years hence, women will not be what they are now."  

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
   The author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?
   That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
   In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space and cool the earth.