I wish certain books were marketed as much for adults as for teens. The Book Thief is one title I feel would be widely read by adults if only it wasn't listed as YA (young adult) fiction. It shows up on many school reading lists and a recent obsession with WWII finally got me to crack it open. It was finished over the course of two nights even though I continually told myself I would read just one more chapter before bed. Narrated by Death, The Book Thief follows a little girl through the horrors of WWII and the unfolding of events that deeply affect her even as she doesn't understand much of what happens.
Having worked at a bookstore for over ten years now, its not hard to collect recommendations from coworkers. Ella Minnow Pea is one such recommendation I was told about numerous times and my only excuse for not reading it sooner is that, well, sometimes I can be dumb. It's a relatively thin volume and yet it really got me thinking. Essentially I feel this book is a warning cry for the masses who do not pay attention to the events that surround them until it directly affects them. The small island community that Ella Minnow Pea is set in could easily be any of many American towns and cities where the citizens willingly keep the blinders on until it is too late for both them and their community. A wake up call that I wish more people would read.
Faithful Place is the third of Tana French's mysteries about the Dublin police squad and the cases it investigates. Despite eagerly anticipating its release, I waited a couple weeks before reading this latest one. But only because I knew that the sooner I read it (and finished it) the longer the wait for French's next book. While all three of her books have focused on the Dublin detective squad, the main character of each book changes and that new focus keeps me coming back. I can't wait to see which character I get a deeper look at in her next book.
After reading Julie & Julia when it was released a few years ago, I wanted to learn more about Julia Child. My Life In France details her time in France when she first starts cooking and attends Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. Perhaps one of the aspects of Child's life I warmed to first was the age at which she found her calling. She was in her early thirties when she dived into the world of cooking and never looked back. It is reassuring to know that a woman who helped transform the way cooking was viewed in this country and the world over didn't start young. Maybe I'll discover my own calling in the next few years as well.
I enjoy books set in a location that's familiar to me. Let's Take the Long Way Home chronicles a friendship and the subsequent loss of it. Set around Boston, I knew the places that were referenced and somehow that made me feel like I was a part of their friendship. Two authors, dog lovers, middle aged women with no children or husbands, and one strong friendship that anyone would be blessed to partake in. The book is sad; the friendship is lost not through missteps on either of their parts but to cancer taking down Caroline Knapp. I would also recommend almost any or Knapp's other books; I only haven't read Pack of Two.
Every so often, I find myself wanting to throw modern life to the curb and go retreat to living off the land. Reading The Blueberry Years certainly brought that feeling up once again for me. The Blueberry Years chronicles a husband and wife team as they embark on a dream of owning a blueberry farm. The book pulls no punches on a sentimental level; the work is backbreaking and luck has as much of a hand in their success as all the hard work they put into the soil. They find many obstacles to overcome and not all of them are on the fields. Transplanting themselves far from family into a small farming town created an isolation they had not anticipated, but by the end of their experiment, they have created a family out of their customers and neighbors and local wildlife.
Next up on the list is another book that I feel is begging me to go seek out the simple life. We Took To The Woods tells the story of a young woman in the '30's who marries and follows her husband away from the bustling city she called home to the great north wilderness in the state of Maine. This book is some of her tales from that life. How they made it through the winters when the ice literally blocked them off from the outside world. How closely one came to rely on neighbors though they live so far away that one might rarely see them. Neighbors in her life came to meant anyone within miles of her, maybe even someone on the other end of a series of lakes that spread through the forest. She wrote of the daily trials of a life so separate from a society she had previously been comfortable in, yet without ever making her question her love of this new life.
My Neck Of The Woods continues the stories from the wilderness of Maine but focuses more on the people encountered than the mere act of day to day living. I never went searching for this volume of work; I like to think it searched me out. The library copy of We Took To The Woods that I checked out included My Neck Of The Woods and, once I had enjoyed the first half of the book, I knew I'd have to read the latter part as well. In this day of dwindling in person social contact, it was refreshing to read about the relationships that helped form her time in the wilderness. Some people made brief appearances while others were long time fixtures in her life and she treasured the connections of both kinds that she made.
I've already included two books from one author on this list, so I had less qualms about doing it again. I Am The Messenger was written by the author of The Book Thief. He's had a few other books, but after reading these two volumes, I can't wait to see what he comes out with next. I Am The Messenger follows a young man on his quest to deliver messages he mysteriously receives to the proper recipient. As quickly as I had been drawn into The Book Thief, I was drawn into I Am The Messenger and didn't want to put it down.
American On Purpose rounds out my list this year. American On Purpose follows the rise of a Scottish comic on his way to rule America's late night tv. Well, maybe rule isn't quite the right term. But Craig Ferguson was my favorite of the late night hosts and still remains so after reading his memoir. A book that could have merely exploited the misadventures of his early years managed to avoid that without leaving any of those events out. He is not viewing his life through rose-colored glasses and he doesn't expect the reader to either. As someone with casual knowledge of his life, this book put me squarely in the fan category.
