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.

Books

 

Again, I am late writing about the books I read (or listened to) last year - but better late than never.

In 2021 I read 64 books, seven of them were audiobooks (so "read" is probably not the right term). As I do every year, I wrote all of the titles and authors down and used my very own star system for books I enjoyed more than others. Usually I give one star for a good read and two stars for a very good read, but last year for the very first time I had to introduce three stars - just once. Everything else without a star is an average read. I still need to figure out how to "star" exceptionally bad reads. Usually I don't finish those and note that in my list, but in 2021 I finished all the books. 

Most of the books I read on my Kindle Paperwhite. It's so easy to take it anywhere and wherever I am I have an entire library with me. I don't like to schlepp any books with me anymore like I used to do for most of my life.

But of course there are still "real" books I'm reading like "The Four Agreements" that I took home from work. That was at the beginning of the year, I had just processed all of the copies and was quite curious about this book. It ended up in the one-star category.

"A Stone in my Hand" was another book from the high school library that I enjoyed. It's written from the perspective of a pre-teen Palestinian girl who lives in Gaza. It was highly educational.

More one-star reads were "The Story of Arthur Truluv" by Elizabeth Berg (I have yet to read a book by her that I don't like), "The Moonlight Child" by Karen McQuestion, "The Light Through the Leaves" by Glendy Vanderah, "The Key" by Kathryn Hughes and "The Keeper of Lost Things" by Ruth Hogan that I listened to. "Nomadland" by Jessica Butler, "Freckled" by TW Neal (she usually writes mysteries as Toby Neal, but this one is about her childhood in Hawai'i), "Where the Forest Meets the Stars" by Glendy Vanderah, "Dovetail" by Karen McQuestion (audiobook), "The Paper Bracelet" by Rachael English (another eye-opener about a home for unwed mothers in the 1970s in the West of Ireland) and "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig (audiobook, narrated by the wonderful Carey Mulligan) all received two stars,

One Saturday our German School had a book sale in the parking lot of our campus. I got a few German books that interest me - "Nordlicht" is another mystery that is set in the North of Germany. These kind of 'local' mysteries are quite popular (I read quite a bit of those on my Kindle). This was quite interesting since it was set in a small town on the German-Danish border and I learned quite a bit about this special area that I wasn't aware of before.

The book at the bottom is of special interest for me. It's about displaced Germans after WWII, mainly those who had to flee from the approaching Soviet Army in the Eastern regions of the country. This is what happened to both my parents and their families.

Two of my German students gave me books as well - one because I love to read mysteries, and one because he wanted to know my opinion about it.

"Northern Spy" is more than just a mystery, it's about how the IRA still operates 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement. I had no idea and this book was a hard-to-swallow lesson. "On Being German" with the subtitle "A Personal Journey Into the German Experience" mainly angered me. The only interesting part was the diary of the author's mother about the time when they had to flee from their home in East Prussia. But the rest was hair-raising and appaling. 

If someone is indeed interested in a "personal journey into the German experience" I recommend this book:

I have this book in both German and English (Nora Krug wrote both of them herself, no translator) and this is my three-star read. Nora Krug is 17 years younger than I am, but her experience, her way of coming to terms with German history, the guilt and how to define "Heimat" (home or homeland - there really is no equivalent English word for it) is very similar to my own experience, even though I grew up in a refugee family while her family came from and had lived in the Southwest of Germany (these are two very different conditions that you are mainly aware of when you belong to the refugee side). So much sounded familiar. This is not a "regular" book - all is "hand printed" with the author's own illustrations, historic photographs and documents. Here's an example:

I owe it to my German friend B. who told me about this book.

You do know that reading makes thirsty, right? And since this is a T Tuesday post I'm showing a drink at my favorite place to read - in the garden with a glass of rosé. Life can be good.

Books and Beyond

 

Although the pandemic created much more work for me than in the years before, it also provided me with many enjoyable hours of reading. I read 55 books in 2020 (both as ebooks and "real" ones), 5 less than in 2019, but I'm not reading for the numbers anyway. However, I do find it interesting to see by the end of the year how much I have read over the past 12 months.

As usual I made a list of all the books I read including my rating system of zero, one or two asteriks. No asterik is for "okay", one is for "really enjoyed it" and two is for "outstanding". If a book is plain horrible or I didn't finish it I make a note about that as well.

 There are a few I want to mention here.

Four books got two stars - "This Tender Land" by William Kent Krueger, "One for the Blackbird, one for the Crow" by Olivia Hawker, "The Splendid and the Vile" by Erik Larson and "Memories of the Drift" by Melissa Payne. The last one was, if I remember correctly, an 'Amazon First Read', therefore I didn't have high expectations. Usually I find the 'First Reads' rather disappointing with a few exceptions - the best 'First Read' I ever read was "The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland" by Rebekah Crane - and I was plesantly surprised about "Memories of the Drift". I started rooting for the main character and loved all the other characters in the novel as well. There wasn't a single bad character and everybody was there to help the "heroine". I can't tell you more because it would mean to unveil too much, you have to find out yourself.

"The Splendid and the Vile" drew my interest when one of my students talked about it in one of my German conversation classes I offered over the summer. It describes Churchill's first year in office as prime minister 1940/1941 - I learned so much about him - he really was quite a character -, but also about his family and his cabinet. A great read that I recommend to anybody who is interested in British history.

Since the hand knitted items in my shop became in higher demand I had to sit and knit quite a lot, but I finally discovered audiobooks! I tried audiobooks when Amazon offered me a free audiobook for rent - it was "Everything my Mother Taught Me" by Alice Hoffman and I loved it. Then I listened into "One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow" which was on my wishlist anyway. I loved the narration by Jackie Zebrowski and decided to try Audible for free for a couple months. I enjoyed this book so very much. The often rough voice fitted the harsh setting of the novel, but Zebrowski changed her voice for each character - from hard to very soft. It is excellent.

Another audiobook I enjoyed was "The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett, read by Tom Hanks. He narrates very "Tom Hanks like", but I enjoyed that very much as well. Many socks got knit while I was listening to great (and less great) novels. In the end, however, I decided not to subscribe to Audible since I just didn't want to spend the money on it - and I had also started listening to podcasts.

I quickly found the excellent podcasts by the BBC World Service - my favorites were "13 Minutes to the Moon" about Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, and "Fall of the Shah". I also listen regularly to "The Daily", a podcast by the New York Times.

Since I taught a new class at the German School I also had to read for work - in this case "Writing Down the Bone" by Natalie Goldberg. This book gave me good basic ideas how to structure my creative writing class and also for my own growth as someone who loves to write.

I shall not forget the books that took up a lot of my time - books I enjoy over and over again. Every year I buy new ones and go back to the old ones. Of course I'm talking about gardening books.

One of the most interesting ones was "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway, recommended to me by an online friend in Australia whose gardening climate is similar to ours. This book was quite an eye-opener and I spent considerable time in my garden to implement some of the ideas. Not all of them work, but those that I chose to try out have worked out beautifully.

And in November, I bought this book (on the day it came out, actually), I am still reading and truly enjoying it.

What did you read during the pandemic?

What's Happening

At the beginning of this year I had this idea that I would spend much more time blogging. I had the intention of writing and also connecting more by reading blogs and commenting, starting a conversation. While this is something I still want to do, the reality looks a little bit different.

I honestly am not sure what happened to January and how come that we're more than half through February?

My friend's two daughters had their fifth and first birthday at the end of January and the middle of February, so I was busy knitting for them. The fox socks above were for the older girl and I learned a couple new techniques while completing them. It made me so happy when my friend told me that her girl is practically living in those socks - there is no nicer compliment! The younger girl got this dress which is the same pattern as the dress that I knitted for the newest member of our Turkish family back in the summer. Photos showed me that it was well received and it fits the little girl.

I was also busy knitting socks for my Etsy store since I got quite a number of orders in. Since last fall I have introduced new colors and thus extended the color range which proved to be a successful idea. I wear these socks myself and know how warm and comfortable they are.

Speaking about the Etsy store, I also got a lot of orders for Valentine's cards. Remembering Kaefer's classroom Valentine's parties in elementary school and how I always made those mini cards for her classmates myself, I had started to offer classroom sets of handmade mini Valentine's cards in my store - and so far every year I had many customers who wanted these cards. They're made to order and this year I made 480 Valentine's cards!

While I did all this knitting and also some of the Valentine's cards I was listening to an audiobook. In January I borrowed an audiobook through amazon prime reading; it was a short story by Alice Hoffman, "Everything My Mother Taught Me" and I was quite captivated. Out of curiosity I listened to the audio sample of "One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow" and was immediately drawn into the narration. The voice of the narrator - Jackie Zebrowski - fits the plot of the book perfectly. I thought for a few more days about it and then signed up for a 30-day Audible trial. I thoroughly enjoy this book, but I don't know whether I will actually keep Audible - it's not exactly cheap. If you listen to audiobooks I would like to hear your thoughts.

Whenever there is time I walk around the lake. I was very lucky to get a few early mornings in.

Unfortunately, time spent at the lake has become quite rare. My colleague at the high school library has accepted another job and left within a week. So far we haven't replaced her, but I do have a substitute who is the mother of one of Kaefer's classmates from 5th to 8th grade. We have a lot of fun together even though there is a lot of work and some days are quite chaotic. The interesting thing though is that I enjoy it - something that hadn't happened for quite a while. I still love my teaching job - we had to go through some rough times at the school that involved some hard decisions, something I am not very fond of. But I feel that our team has really come together which is just as important. We 're currently working on our budget for the coming school year, and since I'm on the board now as well that is quite a steep learning curve for me. Certainly never a dull moment. On top of that I have a new private student - every now and then I do private tutoring, and it's always very enriching since I learn a lot through it as well.

Beside all of that I'm trying to do this:

While I have made up my mind about most of the candidates, propositions and measures on the ballot, I am struggling with the presidential candidates. Honestly, I can't develop full enthusiasm for any of them. Our primaries will be on March 3rd, so I need to make up my mind soon.

On Valentine's Day I went to Davis to get her ballot to Kaefer (lucky her, she already made her decision) and we spent a beautiful day together. I met the crew at her workplace (I don't know whether I ever told you that she has had a job since the beginning of her sophomore year), chatted with her room mates and we had a lovely lunch on the patio of a bistro in downtown Davis (yes, outside on February 14th!).

Usually I don't elaborate in this space about the things I wear. I'm not particularly interested in fashion, I don't wear make up and my hair gets a cut a couple times a year. However, it's becoming more and more important for me that my clothes come from sustainable sources or are fair trade etc - I'm not a department store shopper (I'm not much of a shopper anyway!). When I heard of Allbirds shoes and saw them on my neighbor's feet I was intrigued by their environmentally friendly approach. Then they came out with a flat in the color "poppy" and I was sold (well, actually it was the other way round, but who cares...). Even Kibeau approves!

And when there is time - like yesterday - I drive out to the ocean. Yesterday I had the beach almost to myself - beside the seagulls and the seals.It's my happy place that always works its magic on me.