Six Months of Books

 

When I retired from teaching last summer I thought that I would spend entire afternoons reading. Reality, however, looks very different - since last summer I've seldom spent the afternoon hours just reading. I always found it curious when retirees would tell me that they just "don't have time" and I wondered, well, you should have all the time in the world. Now that I'm a retiree myself I just join that chorus of "not having time" - I have been busy all the time. However, I am slowly getting to the point that I don't have to feel guilty at all if I sit in the garden in the shade of the big tree and spend my afternoon lost in a book. I have a rather large library on my Paperwhite, but most non-fiction books I still prefer to read as a "real" book. As an alternative to reading I also like to listen to audiobooks while I knit, stocking up the inventory in my Etsy store.

Not surprisingly, the first six months of this year haven't been the best "book months" in my life. The shop kept me busy (here we go, "I don't have time"), but I was still able to get a few good and enjoyable reads in.

Please don't expect book reviews - I can't write them, but I will share some thoughts about them.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt was one of the first reads this year that I thoroughly enjoyed from the first to the last page. The remarkable bright creature is Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living in a small aquarium in the fictional little town called Sowell Bay in Washington state, who also is one of the narrators in the novel. The other two narrators are Tova Sullivan who is the cleaning lady in the aquarium, working the night shift, and Cameron, a young man who never knew his father and is now looking for him. While Marcellus definitely was my favorite character, I really liked everyone in this beautifully told story. There wasn't a single character that was bad or evil, something I don't find often in novels. The book woke my interest in octopuses (seriously, I had to research what the plural of 'octopus' is!) and consequently I also acquired Sy Montgomery's The Soul of an Octopus (haven't read it yet).

Years ago, Elephant's Child introduced me to the Australian writer Jane Harper and I am so grateful for that. Since then I have read some of Harper's books, my favorite being Exiles, the third of the Aaron Falk series. I was looking forward to Force of Nature, the second in the series, but I felt quite disappointed in this novel. I didn't like the characters (except for Aaron) and just couldn't get into the story. I found the plot dragging along. Usually I find Harper's books very atmospheric, especially The Dry (the first Aaron Falk and also the first book I read by her), but I missed that here as well. Still, I will go on reading Harper's books, they are so much more complex than just mysteries.

Did I ever tell you by Genevieve Kingston was featured in our local paper. It sounded interesting and it's a very personal memoir about a family who lived in the adjacent neighborhood to mine. All the places and even some people are familiar to me - it's different to read a book that has such a personal connection. When the writer's mother was diagonosed with terminal cancer, she made little packages and wrote letters for her two children for each of their birthdays up to the 30th and for special days like graduation, driver's licence, wedding etc. This way she still was there for her children's important events, even though not in person. I found this very touching and such an endearing act of love.

Sometime in the 90s I read the late Batya Gur's Michael Ohayon series - I think her books were published in the 90s in Germany and I read them "hot off the press". I remember that I really liked detective Ohayon, a Moroccan Jew now living in Israel, and all his cases were quite complex. Murder on a Kibbutz is the third in the series and describes Kibbutz life in great detail. It actually takes a while until the murder happens, but at that point we already know a lot about the people in the community and the existing rules in this particular kibbutz. This is not a typical mystery, but a rather slow and very interesting story. For me it was quite intriguing to read this book again, this time in English and not in German, and I have to say that I liked the German translation better. The language in the German edition was "rounder" and flowed better (I really have no other way to say this).

Let's stay with the mysteries for a moment longer. Saying that I love Tony Hillerman is like saying that I love wine, but yes, I love Tony Hillerman. And what I love even more is listening to his books, especially when they are narrated by George Guidall who does an excellent job in bringing the stories to life. In case you are not familiar with Tony Hillerman, his mysteries take place in the Four Corners area of Arizona and New Mexico featuring Navajo Nation Police Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and later joined by Bernadette Manuelito. Hillerman's books are always full with interesting cultural details about the Hopi and Zuni and especially the Navajo Nation Police. Since I have been to the Southwest fairly often, I can also picture easily the locations and the arid landscape. It's not really necessary to read these books in order, you quickly catch up. The series starts with only Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee turns up in book 4 and only in book 7 do they start to work together. Manuelito joins in book 12 (there are 28 books in the series). Hunting Badger is book 14; currently I'm listening to People of Darkness which is book 4 (and therefore the first Jim Chee).

Recently I was going through one of the chaotic shelves and realized that I have this book about California Native Plants for the Garden. I had bought it several years ago, but it kind of "disappeared" in a pile of books. I spent several evenings reading about native plants, making lists what I want to add to my garden in the fall, reading plant profiles and noticing that I am on the right track with my garden. I also have more shade now because I had planted a few trees and that opens up possibilities for different plants like Monkey Flowers (Diplacus). Fall planting time will be very exciting this year.

In the spring of last year, the Sonoma Land Trust (a local environment organization that I support) had invited Rosanna Xia to a webinar about her book California Against the Sea. I had registered for this webinar and found the outcome of her research fascinating. I eventually found her book in my favorite bookstore in Mendocino. Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She writes extremely well and parts of her book are almost thrilling. The way she describes how the California Coastal Act was finally adopted in 1976 and established the California Coastal Commission rivals a detective novel. Repeatedly she warns about how climate change warms our oceans and how rising sea levels will change our coasts and how we can work with nature to meet our future. California has a coastline of about 840 miles (general outline of the state's edge along the Pacific Ocean) however, including all the inlets, bays etc the total shoreline length is by far longer. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measures it at 3,427 miles. In short, lots of coast is endangered by rising sea level. Every chapter is dedicated to a different region/area, and I wasn't surprised to find that Gleason Beach was the object of one chapter.

Gleason Beach is on our Sonoma Coast and the first time I saw it was in February 2001 on our preview trip to Santa Rosa before we decided to move here. At that time the coast looked like this:

I remember being completely fascinated and also a bit envious of the people who were able to live so close to the ocean, hear the waves crashing on the shore all the time and have this stunning view over our beautiful, wild ocean. But on second glance I noticed the damage that was already happening, the tarps that were spread out to hold back the steps down the cliff. Yes, tarps against the ocean. What a concept!

24 years later it looks like this:

Xia describes what we pretty much witnessed over the past two decades - houses falling into the sea, homes being red taped, and the road, famous Highway 1, becoming undriveable. Now there is a new bridge further inland that was built with great care for the environment. My guess is that the last few homes will go down in the next 5-10 years as well.

And this is only one of the stories in the book. There are many more, some frustrating and some filled with hope that communities are doing the right thing to live with the new reality of a rising sea. It is a highly fascinating read.

Wild Sonoma by Charles Hood with a beautiful foreword by Jane Goodall is a splendid little guide to the flora and fauna of my county with rich illustrations and a good sense of humour. I learned quite a bit of interesting facts and there are trails described in the books that I still don't know and want to explore soon. 

Last but not least I got these two treasures - The Lives of Fungi and The Lives of Lichens. David posted book reviews about them on his blog and since I am eager to learn more about both, it was a no-brainer to buy these two books. They have excellent photos and description and are perfect for deepening my knowledge about both lichens and fungi (that knowledge is still pretty small).

These were just a few of the 24 books I read in the first half of the year, but certainly the ones that have stayed with me.  And since there are a couple faces on the book covers, I join Nicole's Friday Face Off.

My World of Books

 

Sometime in the first two or three months I usually write about the books I read the year before. These are not book reviews - I leave that to people who are much better equipped and eloquent for that than I am - but just a look back at what I read and what I liked (or not). 

Since 2008 I have been writing down the titles of the books that I read. While I was recently looking through the lists I noticed that since 2017 I've read much more books each year (almost double the amount) than in the years before that. First I was a bit stunned, then I realized that the Geek gave me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas in 2016. This was not for altruistic reasons alone - I love to read in bed, he doesn't, and he couldn't sleep that well with my nightlight on while I was reading. The Paperwhite is backlit, so I don't need the lamp on my nightstand anymore AND I can read as long into the night as I want without disturbing his sleep. Naturally I've read a lot more since then. However, I still love "real" books and I always will.

Here are two pages of the list for 2024.

I love to read fiction which for me includes mysteries (I'm aware that some people make a difference in that regard) and I read both English and German books. Fiction for me is a kind of escape (and I needed a lot of that last year, still do even more this year), immerse myself in a different world and just get lost a little bit in other places. But I also love to read non-fiction to learn, understand and achieve a deeper knowledge. Fiction I read on my Kindle (or "read" it as an audiobook), non-fiction as a book in my hand.

In 2024 I read 58 books which is less than in the years before. A few books got a star or even two in my "award" system and even one with three stars (one star is for books I really liked, two stars for those I loved and three stars for "exceptional"). The first four books of the year received each one star and I thought I was off to a good reading year. Of course it didn't turn out that way, there were a lot of mediocre books and even some that I didn't finish. If I had to recommend just one of the 1-star books, it would be "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, a historical novel about the fossil hunters Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. I was inspired to read it after David wrote about Mary Anning on his blog.

Another 1-star book was this one.

Hilary Melton-Butcher recommended it to me while we were exchanging a couple emails. Fran Sandham, a young man from England, describes his walking journey traversing the African continent from the West coast of Namibia to the East Coast of Tanzania. It's a fascinating, often funny read. I took it with me to Germany and gave it to my daughter, because a part of his journey passed through Malawi. Kaefer spent a couple weeks in Mzuzu last year as one of the instructors for a public health project at the university and fell in love with this small country.

The other books I liked and received one star were "Sea Defences" by Hilary Taylor (very good mystery), "Murder in Chianti" by Camilla Trinchieri (a lovely series of mystery and delicious food), "The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell" by Robert Dugoni (wonderful), "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" by Maria Semple (weird and hilarious), "The Chinese Groove" by Kathryn Ma (Chinese immigrants in San Francisco), "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro (interesting, a bit weird) and "We Never Asked for Wings" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (excellent).

There were three 2-star books - "Ins Nordlicht blicken" by Cornelia Franz, a novel mainly set in Greenland which was both interesting and taught me a lot about this territory which I hope will remain with Denmark; and two novels I listened to, "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus and "October in the Earth" by Olivia Hawker, a writer I like very much. Both stories were narrated extremely well and it was enjoyable listening to them while I was knitting.

This worn edition of Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Dreams" is the 3-star book. I've already read this beautiful novel twice before and always lost myself in it. This time I listened to it when I could get it as an audiobook, narrated by the author herself. It was like a completely new story, exquisitely read and thus putting the beautiful language it is written in on display. It is one of my most beloved books.

"Finding the Mother Tree" was recommended to me by David (I tell you, I get a lot of inspiration from David's blogposts). It was a fascinating read, but it was also full of scientific terms that I didn't know and had to look up. As a non-native speaker of the English language this was sometimes difficult to read and it took me a long time to finish. Much of what Suzanne Simard writes was not completely unknown to me, but it was interesting to see how she got to her insights. The complicated, interdependent cirlce of life of trees is amazing and very fascinating. It's a book I would happily recommend to anyone who is interested in our forests.

This book really made me go out, observe, listen and write in my journal. Sometimes I go to "my" lake, look for a beautiful spot and sit and write. I guess I will do this more often this year since nature always calms and grounds me - something I exceedingly need.

Of course there were garden books... This one as well as "The Humane Gardener" by Nancy Lawson were right down my alley - nothing really new, but a lot of inspiration for my garden and the confirmation that I'm going in the right direction with it.

You might have noticed in my top photo that my bookshelf is pretty messy. Unfortunately this applies to all of my bookshelves. The books are completely unorganised. Since 2012, when we moved into this house, I have wanted to organise our books, but have I done it? No. See for yourself.

And the bigger picture...

Chaos. Which reflects the state our country is in.

The gaps in the shelves are the result of me purging books. Those books that I've read and am sure I won't read again are being moved to my neighbor's little library across the street. German books are being donated to the German School for the annual book sale. A lot of books I will keep and hopefully, one day the shelves will get more organised. The bookshelf in my studio doesn't look any better...

Now I need a drink for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday. Sorry, I don't have any. These bags of Hawai'ian peaberry coffee that our friends brought from Maui have to do this week.

I'm writing this post on Monday - President's Day in the US. The Geek and I discussed flying the flag today. While it's a day to remember the great presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, we couldn't have it fly on its own. I don't know how you feel about our country right now, but I know that I am angry, mad and deeply embarrassed of the administration (I actually would use stronger choice words, but let's stay civil here), but also grateful for living in California (which, of course, means that we are on the revenge radar of same administration). Therefore we decided to fly three flags today - the Stars and Stripes in the middle in honor of before-mentioned former presidents, the California bear for our beautiful state and the inclusion flag for believing in the rights of ALL people.

And if you look hard, you can spot little Otis (my neighbor's sweet cat) in the lower right hand corner. He just had a sip of water.

Books 2023

 

Before the first month of this year becomes history I want to write my annual "book post". 2023 has been an interesting reading year in so far that I didn't "award" many stars. In fact, there were only 10 books that received one star, 3 that deserved two stars and only one three-star book. I read 62 books, many of them fiction (I include mysteries in fiction), seven of them were audiobooks that I listened to while knitting. Fortunately there was only one book that I didn't finish because I couldn't get into the story. I also read a good amount of books in German - all but one being mysteries, but the lone one that was not, actually received a star. "Sommer vorm Balkan" by Danijela Pilic tells about the author's childhood in a country called Yugoslavia - remember that one? The family moved to Germany when she was 12, but they still made the pilgrimage home every summer - until the war started. The country she was born in suddenly had a new name - she no longer was born in Yugoslavia, but in Croatia. She tells of a country full of beauty, lively people, politics that could distance itself to a certain  degree from the big brother, the Soviet Union. It was a highly interesting read.

One of my students was reading this biography of former German chancellor Angela Merkel and she was interested in my opinion about it, so I read it. It is not bad, but it is clearly written for an American audience. Unfortunately, it is very poorly edited and full of errors and mistakes. The author used terms that rubbed me the wrong way and - at least in my opinion - gives a slightly crooked perspective on Merkel's background.

"A Charm of Goldfinches" by Matt Sewell was one of the two-star books. For me it was very interesting since it speaks about the English collective nouns of the animal kingdom. It's quite quirky, but I did learn a lot. I did know about a "murder" of crows and a "parliament" of owls, but an "unkindness" of ravens? A "quarrel" of sparrows makes a lot of sense, doesn't it. But what about collective nouns for "land animals" - 

and 

Here's the entire list - did you know all of these nouns?

Of course I had my share of garden books...

... and knitting books.

Here you also see my drink for this week's T Tuesday, hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Do you want a closer look of the mug? My daughter gave it to me several years ago.

When the California Field Atlas about "The Deserts of California" by naturalist, writer and illustrator Obi Kaufman was published last year, our local paper wrote an article about it. It was so interesting that I bought the book as well as the other two by him, "The Coasts of California" and "The Forests of California".

These very fat books are full with interesting and worth knowing facts and beautiful illustrations by the author.

From "The Deserts of California":

From "The Coasts of California":

From "The Forests of California":

By now I assume you really want to know which book got the three stars. This gem:

This was one of the most interesting, moving and fascinating books I've read in a long time. It made me think about so many things, my relationship to our earth, to the land, to my family (yes, she also writes about parenthood in this book in words that I could fully relate to), to the way we consume. She writes about the garden, about the "Honorable Harvest" (my favorite chapter), the "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, squash). I wrote a lot of passages in my journal - because not only is she full of wisdom, but she also writes beautifully. Here are a couple examples, if you're interested:

"Knowing that you love the earth chnges you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond."

"I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed our-selves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts."

"People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, 'Plant a garden'."

And this in particular spoke to me:

"It's good for the health of the earth and it's good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery of nurturing connection, the soil of cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate - once you delvelop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself."

One last thing before I end this long post - the winner of the photo giveaway. These photos were the overall three favorites that you picked:

But who gets a set of photo cards of those photos that she has chosen? It is -

Congratulations, Sharon of Foxy Stamping!!!

Thank you to everybody who played along! It's always interesting for me to see which photos you like. Have a good week!

T is for Through the Year with Books

 

Do you keep track which books you read or listen to throughout a year? I started doing that 15 years ago and sometimes I look back what books I read and which "ranking" I gave. My ranking changed over the years - in the first years I gave one star for books I really liked. Eventually I introduced two stars for books that spoke even more to me. And in 2021 I added a third star for exceptional - it went to Nora Krug's "Belonging". No other book since then earned a three star rating.

When I look over my notes of last year I realize that I was very hesitant in giving any stars at all and only four books earned a two star rating - "The Midwife of Hope River" by Patricia Harman which was very atmospheric and brought the Depression era in Appalachia to life; "When the Moon is Low" by Nadia Hashimi who is a favorite author because of her description of the life of Afghan women; "The Storyteller of Casablanca" by Fiona Valpy which describes the life of Jewish refugees in Casablanca during World War II and is interwoven with the life of a woman in contemporary times. Having parallel stories in the past and the present seems to be a very popular way of novels these days and I don't always enjoy it, but in this novel it was well done. This book I actually listened to and enjoyed the narrator, Elizabeth Knowelden, very much.

The fourth two-star book is "Leave only Footprints" by Conor Knighton. Starting with a sunrise on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on January 1, he travels to every US national park within a year, ending with a sunset at Point Reyes on December 31. While he is not describing every national park, he highlights less visited places (without forgetting popular destinations like Yellowstone etc) and tells interesting tidbits. He writes about the recovery program of the Channel Island fox that was connected to the disappearance and eventual re-introducing of Bald Eagles - fascinating. He describes the problems of Big Bend right on the border to Mexico. He went to American Samoa and what he writes about this national park - the least visited because of its location - made me want to go there one day. As someone who has visited many of the American national parks I recognized much of what Knighton wrote, I learned a lot and most of all I was fascinated by his description about the people and nature.

He also writes about star gazing in Nevada's Great Basin National Park which is an International Dark Sky place (remember when Erika wrote about it?). That leads me to another interesting book I read last year - "Under the Stars" by Matt Gaw.

Even though it says "A Journey into Light" on the book cover, it is a journey into night - with all its natural light sources of moon and stars. He talks about light pollution and its consequences and then visits several designated dark sky places in Britain. He describes his walks in darkness and his fears at the beginning of such an outing, only to become familiar with the darkness and embracing it. It made me curious about these designated dark sky places and I found out that right here in my area there is a place that is on its way to becoming a dark sky place - Point Reyes National Seashore.

I love to read mystery novels. Of course there are the popular ones that everyone seems to read like Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway series which I enjoy a lot. But I found a few Northern European authors whose kind of dark crime novel speaks to me - Viveca Sten wrote an entire series that takes place on Sandhamn outside Stockholm, but her "Hidden in Snow" is not part of this series. Its setting is further up north in the mountains of Sweden close to the Norwegian border. This book is much more atmospheric than the Sanhamn murders (which I think have been made into a TV series). The other authors are Icelandic Yrsa Sigurdarddóttir's "The Silence of the Sea" (very dark) and Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's "The Creak on the Stairs" which is the first book in the Forbidden Iceland series. Before this book I wasn't familiar with the term Nordic Noir, but now I am. Dark and chilling. At the end of the year, I read on Elle's blog about the DCI Harry Grimm series by David J. Gatward and read the first book in the series. It's not your typical detective novel but rather unconventional written with a lot of humor - and boy, they do eat and drink a lot there!

Of course I also read German books - thankfully every year we have a book sale at the German School where I teach, and this year I found quite a good selection of interesting books.

crim

One genre that seems to be very popular in Germany is crime novels that are located in the North of Germany, mainly Ostfriesland (Northwestern Lower Saxony) and Schleswig-Holstein, the Northern most state in Germany. Of these books I especially like the novels by Anette Hinrichs. Her main characters are two detectives, a female from Flensburg, Germany, and a male from Padborg, Denmark. Since their regions are so close to each other, they often work together on cases that involve both Germany and Denmark. What I like about these books is all the background information about this particular region that has a Danish minority population that brings its own difficulties. One of Hinrichs's books deals with the refugee camps in Denmark at the end of World War II where thousands of Germans (including my paternal grandparents and aunt) landed after fleeing East and West Prussia by ship. It was a highly interesting read.

Of course there are a lot of gardening books that I read in 2022 - I never get tired of these. One of the most interesting and eye-opening books was Douglas Tallamy's "Bringing Natur Home". This year I want to read his "Nature's Best Hope" and learn more about his "Homegrown National Park" movement.

While reading, I often enjoy a glass of wine, plain water - or a nice hot chocolate; whipped cream on top doesn't hurt. This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday - I'm so glad that Elizabeth is hosting this year - the 10th! - again.