Quarantine Books (March, April, May)

Last year, my goal was to read a book a week. I chose pretty short books around 300-400 pages. This year my goal was to read half the number of books but make them meatier. I had plans for big complicated reads. Then novel corona hit. I started One Hundred Years of Solitude and wasn't understanding any of it and had to put it down. A neuroscientist explained why it is so hard to read right now, and it made me feel better about my book choices and grateful I'm able to read anything at all.

Here are the books that I have been able to focus on through the isolation.

The Highs

Becoming by Michelle Obama
Reading this made me long for the days of dignity and caring. Michelle Obama is a compelling storyteller. I admire her even more after reading what is required of the first family and how she managed to raise her children and keep her sanity.

The Country Club Murders by Julie Mulhern
This series set in the 70s was my favorite discovery of last year. I read the next five in the series (5, 6, 7, 8, 9). They are comfortable and entertaining, and Julie Mulhern does a great job of describing everything 70s.

The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers by Terri-Lynne DeFino
I know reading about a retirement home sounds depressing, but trust me, this story within a story is fun! The characters are witty and engaging. They aren't ready to be put out to pasture yet.

In Pursuit of Disobedient Women: A Memoir of Love, Rebellion, and Family, Far Away by Dionne Searcy
I read this on a friend's recommendation. Dionne Searcey is a New York Times reporter who moves her family to West Africa to be the bureau chief. She has to navigate her new role as the breadwinner and being gone from home for significant stretches at a time in a country that most Americans know nothing about. I like the glimpse of what it is like to be a journalist and how she and her husband compromised, worked together, and respected each other.

Hidden Island #1 & #2 by Ragnar Jonasson
Hidden Island is my favorite Nordic Noir series so far this year. It starts at the end of Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir's career (she's nearing retirement) and goes backward. It sounds like it wouldn't work, but it does. The third book will be released this summer. Ragnar Jonasson's writing is cozy to the point of being almost claustrophobic. It sounds like the last thing you would want to be reading during quarantine, but I loved it.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling
I never read these books when my children were reading them. During isolation, we watched all the Harry Potter movies while putting puzzles together, and it got me interested in the books. There is a difference in the books. I think the main one is Ron isn't stupid.

The Middlings

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W Twitty (audio)
I was so looking forward to this book, but it was not what I expected. I have been very interested in what we call "southern food" and how the slaves influenced it; it turns out a lot. I wanted to listen to it because the author, a food historian, read it, and I think that was part of the problem.
A large part of the book is him reading his 23andme genetic results. It's like reading a phone book. It keeps coming up over and over. I think him finding out where he came from was essential to his journey but not the book. When he explains the life of a slave and how they cooked and where we got the names for foods, it's very informative and interesting. If I had the print book, I could have just skipped over the boring sections and gotten to the good parts.

City of the Lost (Rockton #1) by Kelley Armstrong
I was looking for a new series, and I like a female-driven crime procedural. This book is more horror than crime to me. It wasn't bad, but I didn't get invested in the characters very much. I may try the second one because the first in a series is hardly ever the best.

Dark Iceland Series #1, #2, #3, #4 by Ragnar Jonasson
The order these books were published in the U.S. ruined this series for me. Book 1 is right, but then book 2 is actually the 6th book in the series, and then the third goes back to before book 2. The story is good but not as good as the Hulda series. If you are interested in reading this series, check the Goodreads review where someone listed the books in the proper order.

Women in Sunlight by Frances Mayes
This book was like Eat, Pray, Love but with retired women. The main character (if there was one, hard to tell) keeps talking about the woman she's writing a book about, but the woman never makes an appearance and doesn't add to the plot. Each character speaks in their voice, and it bounces around to each of them. It was difficult to tell who was talking because they weren't introduced. A lot of the time, I couldn't tell until a paragraph in who was speaking.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
The four Gold Children go to a mystic and are told the day they will die. The description says, "the prophecies inform their next five decades." I don't think it delves into that enough. The end may have tried to, but I was left disappointed. The story of Simon starts off good but then devolves onto cliche, Klara's is better, Daniel's boring as hell. I wanted this to come together, so I kept on with Varya. Her story started boring but then picked up a bit.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
This book hasn't aged well. I don't remember the movie being racist, and now I want to see it again to make sure.

The Lows

Snobbery with Violence (Edwardian Murder Mystery #1) by Marion Chesney
I love a good period mystery, and this wasn't it. I don't mind unlikeable characters, but these grated on my nerves. There was more emphasis on the snobbery than the actual violence.

Pietr the Latvian (Inspecter Maigret #1) by Georges Simenon
This classic detective series gets raves. In this book, a body is found, a detective walks around town in the rain, and he solves the murder. The series probably gets better, but there wasn't enough here for me to make me go back for more.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a classic collection of short stories with the first one being the best and the rest of the stories, unreadable. I enjoyed the first one and probably would have rated the book higher had I gotten it at a used book store for a dollar.

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