My favorite books from the last...whenever

It's been a long time, too long, since I wrote a post about what I've been reading. I love giving book recommendations, and sharing books with others. In fact, there are few delights better than recommending or loaning a book to someone and having them tell me that they, too, loved it. I gave a small stack of books to a friend who needed something light, because life was overwhelming, and when she gave them back she said they were just what she needed. Honestly, that made my whole week better.

I read most everything, depending on how I'm feeling. Unfortunately I haven't really been into crime, true crime, thrillers, or horror in the past couple of years. Life has just been too heavy to read about those things. I've read a couple of true crime books but they're not on my best of list because, while good, I'm still just not feeling it. There's already too much death and mayhem in real life. I'm living with death every day as I care for my mother, who has been in hospice since early fall. Instead, I've got a few book recommendations for books about grieving, grief, and the elderly.

When that gets to be too much, however, and when I need life, I turn to gardening books. And YA. And fantasy. Not nearly enough fantasy. (But hey, I've read the whole Wheel of Time series so give a girl a break.)

Without further ado, here are my favorite books that I've read in the past few years.

Grief, grieving, and dying

Everything Happens for a Reason, and other lies I've loved, by Kate Bowler.

The author for this book is a professor of Divinity at Duke University. She penned a book about the prosperity gospel and opens candidly with the fact that, though she herself was not really part of any prosperity gospel churches, in many ways it's so infectious that she found herself buying into some of the ideas. Everything happens for a reason. If you just pray hard enough, God will make everything better! God only does bad things to bad people, so repent and you'll be healed! She explains that for the sick and the downtrodden, this message is so seductive that it can block out all others.

And then she got cancer. In her mid-thirties, after months of debilitating stomach pain that was passed off by doctors as either reflux or psychosomatic she finally convinced someone to give her a CT scan that revealed stage IV colon cancer--"the second least-sexy cancer." And she was left wondering, questioning everything. Was there a reason? Was there a loving God out there who'd taken her in the prime and, as she thought, killed her? What about her toddler son, her husband? What did they do to deserve this?

I don't, as a general rule, like books about religion or that talk overtly about religion. They tend to get not just boring but prosy and self-righteous. Look at me, how much faith I have! Ugh. This one, I promise you, was not like that. She is a person of faith who manages to appreciate many flavors of Christian in her beliefs but also to poke fun at the parts which, really, should be made fun of. And if you've ever known grief you will be familiar with the questions she asked herself, the constant why? that you are left with, without any answers, which she handles it in a particularly sarcastic way that also resonated with me. The platitudes that people repeat endlessly when you or a loved one has died, or is dying and slowly going through painful hell. Even the non-religious will fall back on them. Everything happens for a reason, right? "Sometimes I want every know-it-all to send me a note when they face the grisly specter of death, and I'll send them a cat poster that says HANG IN THERE!" Having grown up Episcopalian, I genuinely laughed into an empty room at the furious, emphatic words, "Everyone is trying to Easter the crap out of my Lent!" You can't Good News! away pain and suffering, but everyone tries to help you plaster over them as if they don't exist. Sometimes, there is a season to lean into them, to accept that they are part of life. We get so caught up in the idea of being optimistic that we forget bad things still happen.

But sometimes there are moment of peace, even joy, and she focuses on that just as much. "I think the same thoughts over and over again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard." Yes.


The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4, by Hendrik Groen

"I hate old people," is how this book about living in an eldercare facility begins. He mocks the habits of the elderly, needing soft foods and complaining about everything and playing Bingo. All things that he does himself, to one degree or another. This book made me laugh out loud and managed to never lose its sweetness as he discusses real issues, such as problems the elderly face due to cuts in their benefits. (It's set in the Netherlands.) Or problems having to do with the fact that it's hard to get anywhere when you're old, even if your mobility is all right, simply because it takes forever. Or, worst of all, the fact that your friends keep getting sicker and dying. It was laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, sad, sweet, and an absolute gem of a book. I'm certain that I enjoyed it even more since I take near-daily trips to an eldercare facility and get to see much of this stuff happening in real time (little old lady fights are real) but I'm certain that this book would be fun to read for just about everyone.


Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande

This was one of those books that was the right book to read at the right time. I'd had several people recommend it to me because of my mother. It gives an overview of the care of the sick and the elderly, and what matters most to people when they know they're dying. It goes over palliative and hospice care, which was incredibly helpful as I was beginning the process of having my mother enter hospice. I knew what to expect. And, really, the biggest thing it gave me was peace of mind. I'm doing the right things. I'm helping my mother in the best ways possible. She may never know what I'm doing for her but I will, and I want to do my best. It also helped me think about what I would like at the end of my life in a calm and rational way. We are all mortal. We will all die. With any luck, each of us will have loved ones around to help us at the end, doing their best to comfort and show their love.


Gardening and Nature

Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway

This book helped me sooo much when I was planning out our garden last year. I actually read most of it over the summer in fits and starts because it was dense and made me want to do things right now. So I'd read a bit, then go out in my garden and play for a bit.

Not all of it is applicable to urban gardeners. There are chapters that talk about putting in ponds and caring for wetlands and creating your own forest. Um, yeah. Beautiful concepts to read about, but they don't really help me. But they're not meant to. This is a generalist's overview of permaculture to get you started. And if you're thinking that you don't want to grow vegetables, stop right there. Very little of this was about how to grow vegetables and fruits. Most of the book was about developing an ecosystem, planting things in such ways that they will help and sustain each other with minimal or no outside inputs. It's about creating systems, not gardens, and doing them in both efficient (in terms of space, water, other resources including time) and in life-building ways. I'm pretty sure I'll be using this book as a reference for the rest of my life.


Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon

This book...I actually hated it in many ways. Seriously. This guy is the Grumpy Grandpa of PNW gardening. One review on Goodreads complained, "He takes all the fun out of gardening!" and I couldn't agree more. The author is entirely certain that there is one right way to garden and it is his way. He references what other people and other schools of thought might say in only the most dismissive ways. I kept rolling my eyes. He's very certain that he can't possibly learn something from anyone else about how to garden. He knows it all, and we should all only be listening to him the end. Oh, and don't forget to fertilize but only if you use my special blend that I talk about nonstop!

So, why am I still recommending this book? Because I actually did get a lot of good ideas out of it. For instance, he talks about the fact that starting seeds indoors has become a big business but it can, actually, hurt your plants and set you back. By moving and disturbing the root systems the plants won't grow as effectively for quite a while after you transplant them, thus losing all or most of the head start you thought you were getting. So I tried it. Last year, because we finished the new garden so late in the spring, I direct seeded almost all of my plants. And he was right, they did so much better and were so much healthier than when I've started things indoors in the past. Especially my winter squashes. So I'm going to continue this practice, only starting indoors the things that need too long of a growing season (tomatoes) to wait until the weather turns.

There was other great advice in there, but I'll leave that for you to read about.


Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy

This book was, I will admit, a bit prosy. It can be forgiven, however, because the author is so earnest and so determined to change the way people think about nature. "The message I have tried to convey in this book is that, whether we like nature or not, none of us will be able to live for long in a world without it." We are not, he reminds us all, separate from our ecosystem. We need nature for literally everything including our own lives. We've parceled it out and sold it and told ourselves that we own it. But we need to be better stewards of our home, because it is our home. It's the one we share with all known life in the universe. We've taken the fun parts of ownership, now it's time for us to be responsible.

This is probably the manifesto for ripping up at least part of your lawn and planting it instead with native plants. And yes, he wants us all to plant native plants anywhere and everywhere. Vegetables and ornamentals are fine (as long as they're not invasive, which many ornamentals are) but to really give our ecosystems a boost we need to return some of the plants that have defined each of our ecosystems for thousands of years. Those are the plants that insects depend upon, and they are the base of our food web. Without insects we don't have birds and most rodents. The entire food chain falls apart. Which is what we're seeing. There are fewer insects, fewer birds. Fewer of basically every living thing except humans and our food.  It's time for us to change that. I know it's helping me to think much harder about what I'm going to plant on my property.

If you want a resource to get started right away, rather than reading this whole book, here is a website dedicated to finding native plants for your zip code which will also tell you how many species of butterflies and moths it supports. This is crucial because caterpillars are what most birds need for their young. Supporting butterflies is one of the best ways to also support birds.


The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

This book was not actually as depressing as basically every news article about it declared it to be. Was it sad? Yep. Reading about the changing world that we're all creating, which my kids and all the other kids out there will inherit, made me really sad. Did it still leave room for hope? Emphatically yes. We can still change things. We are not fated to destroy ourselves. There is so much beauty still in the world. We don't have to sacrifice that, and we can add to it. We just need to put in the hard work to do these things collectively. We need to work together on a problem that affects all of us already. He lays out the predictions and models because we need to know what's really at stake or we will ignore it, as we have since it was first brought up. We can't do that anymore. There's no time left. We need to act in big ways and we need to act now. But we can still act.


General Fiction

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

I'll be honest, this book has one of the most brutal openings I've ever read. Not because it's particularly violent or bloody. It isn't. But it's begins with a Lithuanian family being taken by Stalin's secret police in 1941. They have 20 minutes to pack before being carted off to Siberia. Their crime? Well, the teenage daughter (from whose perspective the book is written) doesn't know. There were signs that something was up but she was too focused on herself to really notice anything else. And now here they are, being packed up and shipped off in a cattle car full of people.

The author wrote this in such a way that you can't not feel for the family, for the people that these sorts of events actually happened to. And thankfully, she manages to write about some of the atrocities in a way where you feel for them, but you haven't gotten particularly attached to the characters. Some things might be just too horrific to imagine them closely, and she manages to write about them without giving details that would only make you feel wretched. And she ends the book with hope, despite the topic.

I'm anxious now to read the rest of her books.


The Three Dark Crowns quadrilogy, by Kendare Blake

There is an island shrouded in mist. The mist protects the island and its inhabitants from the outside world, because most eyes will bounce off and never notice it's there. Only a few privileged Mainlanders are allowed to come and trade with the island's inhabitants.

Sorry, I really am not a professional photographer. Or even
good at it in an amateur way.

This island is ruled by a Queen and her council. When the Queen's reign is ending she bears triplets, always daughters, and when they are weaned she sails off to the Mainland never to be seen again. Her daughters are raised by three different factions on the island depending on their talent: Naturalist, Elemental, or Poisoner. They are raised to hate each other. When they're sixteen, they will meet for the first time since they will children, and it will be each Queen's duty to try to kill her sisters to become the next Queen Crowned.

I loved all four books.


The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow

I loved this book so much that I made my book club read it too. Good news, it was universally enjoyed! It perfectly meets that intersection of happy but not sickeningly so. Beautifully written but not slow. Humorous but not ridiculous. Fun but with a lot of depth.

If you don't like magical realism, first of all what's wrong with you? But second, skip this one. For the rest of us, this book is about a young woman whose father, an archaeologist, is constantly away. She lives with her father's wealthy patron instead, under a series of governesses. She's an in-between girl, not really this or that. And she's temerarious, according to her guardian, often escaping and running away. One of those times she runs away, she finds a door. Something about the door calls to her, and she walks through into another world.

After finding the first door, she becomes obsessed with finding more. And more. And more. Along the way she discovers some very hard truths, but she also finds out what has happened to her family, why her father is always away. She hopes that the doors will lead them back to each other.

I only have one spoiler: the dog lives.


Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens

There is a little girl who watches her mother leave. She clings to the hope that her mother will come back someday, even as she watches her older brothers and sisters take off one by one. Then she's left alone with her broken, abusive father. She learns how to stay out of his way while also figuring out how to feed them, how to effectively fill her mother's role. Then her father disappears one day and she's left alone, still a young girl. She knows how to feed herself from the swamp she lives in, but she still needs money now that her father's disability check won't be coming anymore. So she figures that out too.

The other side of the story is about the murder of a young man in the town. A handsome young man, a rich young man with everything going for him. He was murdered and, since they have a history, fingers start pointing at the Swamp Girl. Could she have murdered him? If so, how? Why? And if it wasn't her, who did do it?

The two halves of this story were intertwined so beautifully. There are definitely parts I won't forget, wry remarks about animal (including human) nature that have stuck with me.


A Corner of White trilogy, by Jaclyn Moriarty

This is a young adult fantasy series set on Earth--specifically Cambridge, England--and in the Kingdom of Cello, a different world where colors can and do attack, the Butterfly child is desperately needed to save their crops, and a boy is convinced that his father could not have murdered someone and run away with the physics teacher.

One day he discovers a crack through to England and slips a note in there, not really expecting anything. A girl in England discovers the note in a broken parking meter, however, and thinking it's a joke she still writes back. The two correspond and they help unravel mysteries on both sides of this crack.

These were fun page-turners. Not particularly deep, but I really wanted to read what happened next and find out what was going on. They were good right on through the last page.


Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn

I put this in fiction but, honestly, I'm not sure where it should go. It's set as a conversation between a gorilla and a man, but it talks about humanity. The stories we tell ourselves, the lies. What we're doing wrong and why we're unable to stop. There was so much to think about with this one. It made sense of a lot of things that really never made sense, but we don't think about them too hard. They're so ingrained in society and culture that we don't even think about them. This book forced me to, and I can't help but see the world a little differently now. It was good, I enjoy the shift in perspective. I just don't want to give away any more.


The Me Before You series, by Jojo Moyes

You may or may not have seen the movie, which was a good representation of the first book. But the book itself obviously has far more detail and was even more entertaining. The subsequent books are about how to move on from such an event, and how to find yourself again. They were just really good without being too heavy.


Biography

Cycling Home from Siberia, by Rob Lilwall

This was like reading my brother's cycling adventures from a different perspective. Rob's friend asked him to go on an extended bicycling tour with him and, despite never having done a bike camping trip in his life, he decided to do it. What started off as a decent adventure with a friend turned into an epic tour around most of Asia, Australia, and Europe. What was supposed to be a months-long trip turned into nearly three years before setting foot on home soil in England. He talks about the fascinating things, the terrors, the downright bizarre. But also what he missed at home, the loneliness at times. He didn't idealize life on the road or the people he met, but fully admits that the adventure was worth having.


Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

This is in a similar vein as above. Cheryl made bad decisions in her life. She married the right man, but she cheated on him until he left her. Then she hooked up with a series of increasingly sketchy men, believing that she didn't deserve better. At rock bottom, she had an abortion and spent most of her days high on heroin. So she decided to change her life. How? By hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

This is one of the most grueling hikes in North America. She didn't have any backpacking or hiking experience. When she started, her pack was so heavy that she couldn't even lift it up. But she made it, thanks very much to the kind hikers she met along the way who helped her out.


Becoming, by Michelle Obama

This book is super dense, because there's so much to it. About her childhood in Chicago. About the legacy of the Great Migration and the effects of white flight from neighborhoods like hers. But then politics too, the emotional toll it took on all of them. Her reluctance to every political step her husband took, but knowing that it was something he needed to do and supporting him anyway. Trying to raise kids in the White House with some semblance of normal, while also acknowledging that the Secret Service had to do a background check every time her kids wanted a playdate or spend at least an hour making arrangements for an "impromptu" trip to get ice cream. What she tried to accomplish as First Lady and why. What it was like to be the first black First Family, and to have everything she did not only under a microscope but also criticized with harsh vitriol. In the introduction she says that she wanted to ask people what offended them most, "angry", "black", or "woman"? Why is that particular combination something that people are so afraid of?

Seriously, there's just so much. Go read it.


Parenting

I've become convinced that most parenting experts have a child like my second one. She started sleeping through the night at six weeks (I know, a unicorn child). She got herself on a schedule that worked for the whole family, not taking naps at inconvenient times for school pickup. She's strong-willed and likes things just so, but she's also pretty quick to get out of any ill temper and she can be reasoned with or we can do some small compromises. She happily plays by herself.

Then there's my older child. Two of my brothers are fonts of virtually limitless patience, and she has pushed them both to the point of anger. My aunt, also the soul of patience with children, once told me, "That child is a demon!" which I still think about and laugh. So I came across the book Raising Your Spirited Child and fell in love. It is for anyone who's got a kid that's just a bit harder. A bit more. More rambunctions, more sensitive, more inquisitive, more tenacious and determined. I cried several times while reading it because I finally found a parenting book that talks about my older child. It confirms I'm not crazy! When I think that other parents just don't have it as hard, I'm not wrong! Most people don't have a kid who checks so many of these boxes. I need to buy this book for myself and keep it on my bedside table. Because it's not about how to mold or change your child, it's about how to change your thinking and to work with your child's specific needs. It reframes your thinking so that you see the positives of all their traits, when it can be so easy to get bogged down in the negatives. Instead of saying that my child is f***ing stubborn and driving me crazy! I can instead think that she's very, very determined, so how do I help us to both get what we need?

Another Leigh Bardugo book.
Read this one too.

Parenting is a work in progress, always. One of my brothers said that he wasn't sure if my older child was sent to be my early death or to teach me patience. I'm working on the latter of those two, for both our sakes.




My current read is Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Since I've loved all of her previous books I'm going to go ahead and pre-recommend this, especially if you love fantasy.

There have been so many books that I've read over the last three years. Nearly 200, according to my reading list. Most of them have been really good, these just happen to be my favorites. I'm sure some of the others are great but maybe I didn't read them at the right time, so they weren't my favorites. My reading list might not be for you, or the books I loved might not be right for you. It is what it is. I hope you can find at least one that you fall in love with.