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.
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.
