My 2017 Year End Review of Reading

Oh dear. I read 160 books last year and I had been determined to read FEWER books.  But here I am, having read 176 books! I read so many amazing books this year.

Most of the books I read were e-galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) courtesy of NetGalley, Edelweiss, Blogging for Books, First to Read, IndieBrag, and Bookish First. These books were ones I requested.

Some were giveaway wins from the publisher on social media or on Goodreads or LibraryThing, and some were giveaways from fellow bloggers. I entered the contest for these books.

Other books were sent me directly from the publisher. These books are often ones I had not even known about. Sometimes I am approached through email and I accept to read it, and sometimes a publisher ships me an ARC directly.

The rest were book club choices and even--yes!--personal choices from my TBR lists, books I borrowed from the local library or purchased.

My 2017 goals included a focus on reading new authors and emerging voices and multicultural books on human rights issues, including racism, immigration, economic class, and LGBT issues.

My life long interest in biographies of women and writers, Polar and Space exploration, and the earth sciences make appearances in my choices, as does my more recent interest in politics and my long term interest in American and British history. I also like to read Michigan and Detroit related books, and Philadelphia settings since we lived there, too.

Sometimes I need to read something completely different and I turn to Science Fiction, mysteries, and Woman's Fiction. And of course, my true love of Literary Fiction and the classics is always evident in my reading.

My favorite books are italicized, which was a hard decision to make since there are so many I truly enjoyed. My decision is 100% personal and not reflective of the quality, importance, or my enjoyment of the other books.

Books which were published this year that I read in 2016 as e-galleys and ARCs are included on my list with an asterisk [*]. My book club selections are marked with an + and books from my personal TBR are marked #.

Stories of Young People Growing Up
The Barrowfields* by Phillip Lewis
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Everything I Never Told You# by Celeste Ng
Daphne by Will Boast [coming out in 2018]
The Futures* by Anna Pitnoiak
The Animators* by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon [coming out in 2018]
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin [coming out in 2018]
Another Brooklyn# by Jaqueline Woodson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
And Then She Was Born by Cristiano Gentilli

Literary Fiction
We Shall Not All Sleep by Estep Nagy
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Edrich
Some Rise by Sin by Philip Caputo
Abide with Me# by Elizabeth Strout
Idaho* by Emily Ruskovich
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk* by Kathleen Rooney
Spaceman of Bohemia* by Jaroslav Kalfar

Books to Restore Your Faith in Humanity
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Allie and Bea by Catherine Ryan Hyde
To the Stars Through Difficulties by Romalyn Tilghman
The Reminders* by Val Emmich

Classics
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn+ by Betty Smith
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Remains of the Day+ by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Age of Innocence+ by Edith Wharton

Hot-Button Social Topics
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
I Can't Breathe by Matt Taibbi
Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson
Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller
Who's Jim Hines?# by Jean Alicia Elster
Convicted: A Crooked Cop, an Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship by Jameel Zookie McGee
Wild Mountain by Nancy Kilgore

Immigration and Refugees
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Exit West# by Moshin Hamid
The Faraway Brothers by Lauren Markham
The Leavers# by Lisa Ko
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
The Boat People [Coming out in 2018] by Sharon Bala
In the Midst of Winter by Isabelle Allende

Resistance Reading
Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times by Carolina De Robertis
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek
by Rutger Bregman
What We Do Now: Standing Up For Your Values in Trump's America by Dennis Johnson
The Locals by Jonathan Dee

How We Got To Here
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and The Making of the Modern World by Joshua B. Freeman [coming out in 2018]
Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are by Zoe Fraade-Blanar

Short Stories
To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts+ by Cailtin Hamilton Summie
The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris
State of Fear [Coming out in 2018] by Neel Mukherjee
Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
The Refugees* by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Upstream# by Mary Oliver

Essays
Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Serious Books That Also Made Me Laugh
The Windfall by Diksha Basu
Tell Me How This Ends Well by David Samuel Levinson
(The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne can fall into this category, too)

Feminist Novel/Fantasy About Romancing a Frogman
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

Women Who Fought Back
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
The Other Einstein+ by Marie Benedict
My Live, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King
Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
His Eye is on the Sparrow# by Ethel Waters
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank+
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Huber Davis
Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women's Right to Vote by Joanna
Neuman
Hidden Figures+ by Margot Lee Shetterly
Victoria and Abdul by Schrani Basu

Flawed Masterpiece
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

Historical Fiction with a Mystery
The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow
The Winter Station [Coming out in 2018] by Jody Shields

Fantasy & Magic
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic# by Alice Hoffman
The Bear and the Nightingale# and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Grief Cottage by Gail Goodwin

Re-Tellings
Hook's Tale: Being the Account of an Unjustly Villainized Pirate Written by Himself, by John
Pielmeier
Mr Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker
New Boy by Tracey Chevalier
Nick and Jake by Jonathan Richards
Pepys in Love: Elizabeth's Story by Patrick Delaforce
House of Names by Colm Tobin

Science Fiction
Something Wicked This Way Comes# by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine+ by Ray Bradbury
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett

Biographies and Memoirs
Mozart's Starling by Lynda Lynn Haupt
A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City by Drew Philp
Dimestore: A Writer's Life# by Lee Smith
Promise Me, Dad by Joe Biden
Theft by Finding by David Sedaris
Leading Tones by Leonard Slatkin
The Last Bar in NYC by Brian Michaels
It Takes a School by Jonathan Starr
Mao's Last Dancer+ by Li Cunxin
The Book of Joe by Jeff Wilser
The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker
The Great Nadar by Adam Begley
Renegade: Martin Luther, the Graphic Biography by Andrea Grosso Ciponte

Non-Fiction
Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol  Gellner

Books About Exploration
Endurance by Scott Kelly
Ask an Astronaut by Tim Peake
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson

Our Earth
The Life and Death of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
The Great Quake by Henry Fountain
Quakeland by Kathryn Miles
Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell

Politics and American History
The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple
Building the Great Society by Joshua Zeitz
The Accidental President by A. J. Baime
Detroit 1967 by Joel Stone
The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall-and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill* by Greg Mitchell
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic* by Glenn Frankel

Exposés
White Wash by Cary Gillam
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee

Historical Fiction
River of Ink# by Paul M. M. Cooper
Grace by Paul Lynch
The Good People by Hannah Kent
The World of Tomorrow by Brenden Matthews
The Underworld by Kevin Canty
Golden Hill by Frances Spufford
The Lost Letter# by Mimi Matthews
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter by Mimi Matthews [publishing in 2018]
The Hidden Thread by Liz Trenow
Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson

Books about Books

The Uncommon Reader+ by Alan Bennett
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence

Books About Writers
Manderley Forever by Tatiania de Rosnay
In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown# by Amy Gary
As I Knew Him, My Dad Rod Serling# by Ann Serling
Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth Dimension Guide to Life#
by Mark Dawidziak
Dickens and Christmas by Lucinda Hawksley
Dickens: Compassion and Contradiction by Karen Kenyon
Charlotte in Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Brontë by Brian Wilks
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein
Over The Hill and Far Away: A Life of Beatrix Potter by Matthew Dennison
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf  by Emily Midorikawa
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser

War Novels
Devastation Road Jason Hewitt
Brave Deeds# by David Abrams
Spoils by Brian Van Reet

Woman's Fiction
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron
The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman
Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave
800 Grapes by Laura Dave
A Spool of Blue Thread+ by Anne Tyler
The Heirs by Susan Rieger
The End of Men by Karen Rinaldi
Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding
The Rosie Project+ by Graeme Simsion
Little Paris Bookstore+ by Nina George

Mysteries, Suspense, and Thrillers
Exposed by Lisa Scottoline
The Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough
The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs
Dr Sam Johnson, Detector by Lillian de la Torres
Perish From the Earth: A Lincoln and Speed Mystery by Jonathan Putnam
The Breakdown by B. A. Paris

Most of these books received 3 to 5 stars because if I really don't like a book I excuse myself and bow out.

Some of the popular books, including some book club selections, were my least favorites. I did not finish A Man Called Ove or The Little Paris Book Store for book club, I just sped-read to the end. While my book club members were mostly bored or confused by Wharton, I enjoyed Age of Innocence. I learned that most readers want a plot-driven book with characters of pluck and personality. I really try to consider that in my reviews, while also offering my reaction.

I learned several things looking over this list, and I hope to use my insights as I plan and select books for 2018 reading. I miss having more time to write my reviews, but then I worry I might miss reading another amazing book if I cut back. I also now have a huge TBR pile because I am mostly reading upcoming books. We will see if I can cut back in 2018...or read even more books!

To read reviews of any of these books use the Search side bar on the right and type in the book title or author.

Thank you for reading The Literate Quilter this year!
You can also follow me on Facebook at The Literate Quilter,
on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28397995-nancy
and on Twitter at @NancyAdairB

December 1958 Good Housekeeping Magazine

Here is the Good Housekeeping magazine from December 1958, part of my collection of vintage magazines. 

The Year's End review article was very interesting. Movies included Tom Thumb and Amahl and the Night Visitors was showing on television. The Purple People Eater "harassed the eardrums," Volare was all over the airwaves, and Elvis Presley got married and was in the service. Sputnik II and Explorer were orbiting the Earth, Hillary and his dog team reached the South Pole while the atomic sub Nautilus cruised under the North Pole. The Bridge Over the River Kwai won six Academy Awards and Sunrise at Campobello won a drama award. Anatomy of a Murder and Peyton Place were published. The Yankees won the pennant. "Trouble bubbled in Little Rock, and a few South American neighbors threw a few rocks." "King Faisal of Iraq was murdered in a coup and the U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon." Hula hoops were the new fad and Alaska was granted statehood.

I had several Hula hoops and was quite adept. I never forgot when I visited my mom's cousins Linda and Patty and they played The Purple People Eater for me. I actually recall seeing the Bridge Over the River Kwai, although my today's standards I was too young for it. And Volare was all over the airwaves. 

I was a huge Roy Rogers and Gene Autry fan! I watched the old movies on television as did all my friends. We would argue over who got to play Gene or Roy and who was 'stuck' with Dale Evans.  Roy had the coolest horse, but Gene got to sing. So it is no wonder Roy Rogers was a celebrity spokesperson for children's toys. But an antique phone and 'Western' dinner set? 

Roy Roger- Dale Evans Western Dinner Set. 

 Joe Palooka Bop Bag had Ham Fisher artwork.

I loved the Shirley Temple Storybook television show. Mom had a Shirley Temple doll when a girl. i had the Miss Revlon.

What a lucky girl to receive a Russell Wright American Modern Tea Set for children in plastic with aluminum flatware!

Children's fashions were adorable. The child below modeled a raincoat in Arnel sharkskin that sold for $11.

 Below is a red cotton jumper with leotard tights from Kate Greenway which sold for $4.

Formal fashions were also shown in the magazine. For $9 you could buy this (see photo below)  Helen Lee of Alyssa cotton-sateen dress with organdy lining and petticoat. The child is elegantly poised and wears white gloves as well.

Below left is an embroidered cotton-sateen dress with sash from Kate Greenway, selling for $8, and a cotton-sateen dress with Empire belt and lined in Dacron mesh, $8 from Muppets.

What an adorable ad!

 When not attending a formal affair, what did these munchkins eat? Tang and bozed pizza!

Of course there were recipes throughout the magazine.

Which Mom baked in her new Caloric gas range.

For more elegant meals, Mom would have used her Pyrex casseroles.

My mom loved her Sunbeam frypan. I wish I had it now.

Mom used her hand mixer when making pancakes to cook in the frypan. (Ours was turquoise.)

We had Melmac dishes in our family. But here is Idealware refrigerator-to-tableware in Mamie pink. 

Paper plates, napkins, and cups have been around a long time!

When mom cleaned up the kitchen she tossed the laundry in her new gas dryer from Norge.

Tammis Keefe is one of my favorite Mid-century fabric designers. I have a nice collection of her handkerchiefs. She also designed towels, cocktail napkins, and more. 

 A few years ago the towel below was reproduced and I bought several panels!

 The Keefe towels were linen,, but terrycloth was also sold.

When Mom's work was done it was time to party. Skirts were full, fuller, and fullest. The skirts below were made with ten yards of tulle and decorated with velvet ribbon and other trims.

Here are the instructions for making the fabric roses.

 For the home sewer, the Simplicity dress pattern below features a 'harem skirt' in red cotton sateen.

A quick and simple party top could be made in a morning from two squares of wool and several yards of trim. 

The stole pictured below was another DIY project.

 It is hard to imagine a slipper with a heel as high as on the Daniel Green below!

Those fancy dresses required sturdy under garments like a Warner's girdle and maidenform bra.

 Checks were on trend, suitable for all ages, male and female.

I get a kick out of this Royal vacuum cleaner ad. It looks just like the one I bought in 1991 and still use.

This issue also included several short stories with marvelous art and was loaded with poetry.

This is just a glance into the 200+ page magazine! I hope you enjoyed this look back in time. 

Mini-Reviews: Sontag and Knauusgaard

This post consists of shorter reviews of several books I am reading. At this time I have not finished these books, but likely will before year's end.

Debriefing by Susan Sontag gathers her short stories together in one volume. I will admit that I have never read Sontag, although I remember when her many books came out and garnered a great deal of press. I won this book from the publisher in a giveaway.

The first story, Pilgrimage, excited me. I related to the lightly fictionalized character, based on Sontag herself, who is overwhelmed when she has tea with Thomas Mann, a writer whose books had left an impression on the teenager. I discovered Mann as a teen, his story of Tonio Krueger especially resonating with me with it's view of the artist as outsider. I had collected his novels afterward, but never read them all.

In the story, two teenagers contact Mann and are invited to visit him over tea. "We were prodigious of appetite, of respect, not of accomplishments," we are told. The teens struggle to know what to say, and listen to Mann talk. What she remembers best was embarrassment.

The first time one meets one's idol can be a shock, learning "the gap between the person and the work" a jolt.

The narrator seeks to escape "childhood's asphyxiations, the "long prison sentence of childhood" and its enforced culture of suburban life which held no meaning for her.

In one story a successful man--good job, wife, children--is tired of his life and creates a robotic substitute to take his place. The original man just bums around, but is more content with sleeping in the train station. What a condemnation of the Middle Class way of life!

Many of the other stories left me perplexed and unsure of my own intellectual capacity: what was I missing? I asked myself. Some experimented with form, such as Unguided Tour which reminded me of a Monet painting of Rheims Cathedral, leaving an impression without real detail or form. Whereas Monet leaves me with an emotional reaction, Sontag seeks to elicit an intellectual one.

Are some of these stories inaccessible to the general reader, or are they mere failures in storytelling? I would guess it is some of each.

Debriefing: Collected Stories
by Susan Sontag
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374100759
Hardcover $27.00

Winter by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard is the second in his series of essays and letters written to his unborn daughter. Knausgaard is well known for his six volume biography My Struggle. His writing breaks all 'rules' about writing, and is spontaneous, unstudied, often confessional, and sometimes mundane. 

In almost daily meditations over December, January, and February, the author wrote about whatever was on his mind. Owls, Christmas, people he knows, the mythical legend Loki, and even toothbrushes. In the first letter, he warns his daughter that we expect life to be full of joy and light, but instead we encounter pain and suffering and loss. At times he shares an insight that sparks a new way of looking at things, such as the thought that society is based on a belief in the fiction that a coin has intrinsic value, but if our belief vanishes, so does a coin's value. He tries to describe inanimate things, but I note that his descriptions include concepts that are not concrete, which seems to defeat his intention. Some essays just left wondering what the point was.

I have been reading several essays each night before bed. I will finish the book, just to plumb it for those unexpected gems.

I won this book on a Goodreads giveaway.

Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost

I love the concept behind the Poetry for Kids books, beautifully illustrated selections for children ages 8 to 13, Grades 3 to 8.  Robert Frost is one of America's most beloved poets of the last century, whose poems were inspired by everyday sights and life of the country in New England.

Included are Frost's best known poems “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Each volume includes information for parents and teachers, including commentary, definitions of key words for each poem, and an introduction to Frost's life.

Robert Lee Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, and was named Poet laureate of Vermont.

I have not read Frost extensively and most of the poems were new to me. I appreciated the simplicity of his images, the concrete portrayal of his world, from which he drew lessons and truths. Such as in this poem:

Snow Dust

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I rued.

Or these lines from Choose Something Like a Star: "So when at times the mob is swayed/To carry praise or blame too far,/We may choose something lie a star/To stay our minds on and be staid."

The 35 were poems chosen by Jay Parini, author of Why Poetry Matters and a biography on Frost. Illustrator Michael Paraskevas's work has appeared in most major magazines, he has written and illustrated 24 children's books, and has created animated series for television.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost 
by Robert Frost, edited by Jay Parini, illustrated by Michael Paraskevas
Moondance Press
ISBN: 9781633222205, 1633222209
Hardcover $14.95