Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

 genre: contemporary fiction

When Theo arrives in the small Southern town of Golden, Georgia, he doesn't really have any huge plans.  He appreciates that it's warmer than his New York home and the way the river flowing by reminds him of his Portuguese childhood.  Although he is no longer a young man, by any measure, his heart is youthful and he finds pleasure in beauty wherever he can find it - and there is much to find in Golden.  When he sees some hand drawn portraits in the local coffee shop, soon his mind is occupied by both the faces in these pictures and the hand that drew them.

Theo's way of showing up in the world is a lovely thing to read. His interest, his kindness, his appreciation, all of this made him an interesting person to get to know.  Are the characters in this book a little simply drawn?  Maybe, but not so much that I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief and slide into the story. It got a little long and sometimes a bit too theologically preachy but I liked how it wrapped up at the end and I did like the cozy community Theo created.  Probably for the writing it deserves a three but for the cozy factor and some of the beautiful images I'm still thinking about I'm giving it a four.

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë (audiobook)

genre: classic fiction

Our Professor, William, does not start off in his profession.  In fact, in a Dickensonian way, he has to pull himself up by his bootstraps with hardly a friend in the world to care for him.  His loveless youth, however, does spur him to invest in himself and with determination he finds his way to Brussels.  In this fashionable city he chooses his path and tries to create a life for himself with good work and, hopefully, with someone by his side to join him.

The Professsor is Charlotte's first book, published after her death.  I am a devotee of Jane Eyre but this came no where near to that work of art.  There are so many caricatured and rather horrible people and the last half an hour of the book could literally just not exist and the story wouldn't have changed.   There is a LOT of French here, which I can handle, but there is no translation, which I can imagine would be irritating.  And YET.  You can still see her genius in there.  The romance, although dripping with Patriarchal drivel sometimes, also was also sometimes exactly what you'd want.  A few quotes that I had to listen to twice, they felt that lovely:

"I supposed the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are felt but once.  Treasure them, memory.  Seal them in urns and keep them in safe niches."

When I looked at her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew had consulted jealousy as an advisor and employed treachery as an instrument.  

I loved her as she stood there, penniless and parentless.  For a sensualist charmless, for me a treasure -- my best object of sympathy on earth.

That is my little wild strawberry, Hunsden, whose sweetness made me careless of your hot-house grapes.

So, not a complete wash but not great.

The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement by Laura Swan.

genre: non-fiction, history

As I've been learning more about Belgium, more than once I have heard of the "beguines."  In fact, in the lovely newly released book Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards, the main character becomes intimate with one of these communities of religious women who manage to stay out from under the thumb of the clergy.  This book is a non-fiction look at this fascinating medieval European women's movement and the individuals who stand out for their piety, their resourcefulness and the spiritual guidance that they provided to the men and women in their circle.

It is so hard to wrap my head around how long ago this happened.  These women were preaching and owning property and illustrating their own books in the 13th and 14th centuries! I haven't known much about the mystics either until the past year and I saw several familiar faces among these pages.  I am so glad that their wills and their teachings survived until this time so that we could learn more about them and what they valued.  It's not a quick read, unfortunately, it is mostly just straight history with a lot of Christian theology interspersed, but if you're interested in the subject, this is very straightforward and does share a lot of information.   I finished the book feeling both angry for what they were up against but honestly proud of all the things they managed to do.

The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave (audiobook)

genre: thriller

In this follow up to The Last Thing He Told Me, we start of knowing a few things.  Owen is still gone.  It's been over five years and now Hannah and Bailey have set up a new life together.  Bailey's grandpa is even a part of it and despite missing Owen like crazy, life isn't completely bad.  What Hannah knows, though, is that this kind of peace can never last, not when you're caught up in a web like they are.  So when she gets the slightest hint that things are getting shifty, all bets are off. And the only two things that keep her going are #1 keeping Bailey safe and #2, the possibility that Owen could be a part of their lives again.

This was a quick and interesting listen.  I was all in from the start and the multiple points of view helped move things along - maybe it helps that I did really enjoy the first book.  I  I like when people aren't just straight up good or bad, it makes my brain buzz with trying to figure out if I can root for them or not.  I DO know that I like Hannah as a character, I like her desperate love as a step-mamma for Bailey and the twists in this short book were just good enough.  

I Hope You Find What You're Looking For by Bsrat Mezghebe (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

For middle schooler Lydia, DC is home.  For her mother Elsa, however, "home" will always be Eritrea in Africa, a tiny country under the thumb of Ethiopia that has struggled for decades to win its independence.  This story goes back and forth in time as we experience the tightly knit Eritrea immigrant community in DC as well as Elsa's upbringing and experiences as a rebel fighter in the war.  When a distant cousin comes to live with them, Lydia is forced to look closer at her own mind and at the things she's always taken for granted.

The "current" time in the book is actually my own high school years and Lydia was born the same year I was, so it is crazy for my brain to make sense of her world versus my own, at the same time period.  Lydia wants so much to understand her own family, that yearning for herself making her show up as a really frustrating teenager sometimes. But I became so invested in these characters.  I adored Mama Zewdi, the matriarch of the family and as much as Elsa was like a closed book much of the time, I felt so much compassion for the trauma she'd endured.  I liked that this is a DC story, with so many of the places familiar haunts to me.  And I think, in the end, this story is about the triumph of human nature finding empathy and kindness even in the face of true horror.  It is about what we do for the family we're given and the family we choose and it is about love of country and culture and the ties that can bind us even from a world away.

Excellent narration.

The Unveiling by Quan Barry

genre: fiction

Even with all of the world she's already seen, Striker's still amazed by the vastness and beauty of Antarctica. Despite most of the people on the cruise ship drive her crazy, it's hard not to be awed by the scenery. When her kayaking excursion goes wrong, though, the lines around reality seem to blur.

This book was like a fever dream. I did not like it. It starts off like an actual story taking place in this actual world. But soon it's like I'm reading through a curtain, and I have no idea of what is real and what is not and sometimes it's so gross but then the gross thing isn't real or it's a ghost but in this world are ghosts real? I have no idea. It was just not fun to piece it together. When Striker's talking about the past, I was solid and I felt compassion for her childhood experiences. But then you zip back almost mid sentence to the present and the present is a s**t show. I don't hate books like this in theory, sometimes they come together and I'm awed by how things click, but this was not the case. I kept reading, thinking at some point it would coalesce in my brain but no. The writing is not bad, I just still can't even tell what I actually read.

The Wright Sister: Katharine Wright and Her Famous Brothers by Richard Maurer

genre: history

Until I was visiting Kitty Hawk last year and noticed this book in the gift shop, I had no idea that Wilbur and Orville had a sister. How sad is that? And she was SMART, a Latin teacher! She was capable and educated and her life exploded just like theirs did when they because famous. This is a slim book with lots of wonderful photographs from the period and while it is a lot about the brothers (too much so, if I'm honest), it does focus on her life and how it was woven into the Wright family. She was an avid letter writer and a sincerely dedicated sister and daughter. It is sad to think about how limited her options were in the time when she happened to be born a woman, but it's still impressive all that she was able to see and do.

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

The Last of Earth is a story of Tibet in the 1860s, a harsh and rugged land that has forbidden outsiders to cross its border.  But for two travelers from England, the belief that this rule does not apply to them means that they find themselves with tents and local guides helping them traverse this unfamiliar country.  Told from two different points of view, we see the world through the eyes of colonialism, racism, and even classism.  One of narrators is a the surveyor for a blustering English captain whose goal is to chart a particular river the runs through Tibet.  He has a large band of paid labor to help him cart all his stuff and aide him with his surveying.  The other narrator is a 50 something year old woman who just has desperate dreams of exploration.  

I'm just not feeling particularly literary right now in my thoughts about this book.  It was slooowww going for me, unfortunately.  I appreciated learning about Tibet and some of the geographical features of the area.  I liked when the two storylines would just occasionally intersect for a hot minute before going separate ways again.  It definitely made me think about the impact of British colonization, both in huge and small ways - and then to see the flip side of it, where the Tibetans were having NONE of this, refusing to have their land and culture be Anglicized.  The superiority complex of the British over the native people is so hard to look at, it's so deeply offensive, even though I know it is accurate to the time period.

Am I glad I stuck it out?  I can't decide, honestly.  The ending was rather blah and so the whole thing, while definitely a journey with a few lovely minutes, just leaves me feeling only spent, not exhilarated or redeemed or really anything other than meh.

Daily Life in the Age of Charlemagne by John J. Butt

genre: history, non-fiction

Yes, this is niche title.  But I need to learn about Charlemagne and I found so many books that looked far too long and too boring, even for me.  This was just right.  A straight up history book only JUST about Charlemagne and his time period.  The chapters are divided up nicely into lots of small chunks so my brain could handle it, ha ha.  I actually learned SO MUCH I am on the verge of embarrassed by how little of my European history is still in my brain. I'm sorry Mr. Mitchell, teacher of AP European!  My mind is so full! But now I remember about the huge impact Charlemagne had on literacy and education.  I learned about Carolingian science and medicine, how their economy worked and what people ate.  I even learned about writing scripts and sword production!  It's pretty repetitive and not particularly exciting, ever, but I ended up even reading with a pen because I was learning some cool stuff.  I love that even with giant gaps in our knowledge, we can piece together what life was like the 700-800s surprisingly well.  

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

 genre: magical realism

The Avallon Hotel and Spa is a special kind of place, it's elegance might as well be a world away from the closest town in the hills of West Virginia.   With its' trusty General Manager, June "Hoss" Hudson, it survived the Depression intact and now June is confident it can withstand a world war as well.  Until a curveball is thrown at her that she could have never seen coming: the State Department is going to take over her hotel to house Axis Diplomats until they can be repatriated.  And there really isn't anything June can do about it - except continue to do her job the only way she knows how.

This was a fast and interesting read for me, a love an upstairs/downstairs story, a hotel story, a wartime story, a love story.  Also, I do love some magical realism sprinkled in and in this one, the magic lies in the sweetwater that flows through the pipes and fountains at the Avallon.  June knows the sweetwater, can feel what it needs to keep the hotel humming with the kind of happy energy required to make it as special as June knows it can be.  I genuinely enjoyed the historical fiction aspect, I've never thought of what America did with all the German, Italian and Japanese folks who were living here as America entered the war.  I liked thinking about wealthy versus luxury and how different that can look for every individual.  I liked June's spunk and capability and compassion.  All the little threads interested me enough that while I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars, it deserves four shiny solid ones.