My Goodreads Year In Review, 2022

 

A Look At My Year In Books, 2022

If you use goodreads to track your books, you can find your year in review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2022

In 2022, I read 132 Books.  Don't be too impressed - if you look at the pages read, it's only 30,500.  Which works out to about 213 pages per a book.  My numbers were VERY skewed this year, by the Bunbury and Cherringham series, which are very short, serial style novels.  Meant to be read on your train commute to work.  I loved them.  I only gave them 4 stars, not a full 5, but I really did love these books so very much.  Even if they did inflate my book count and lower my pages per a book average.

"Cherringham is an ongoing “cozy crime” eBook series, that launched in December 2013 and features unlikely sleuthing duo Sarah and Jack. Released in monthly episodes, it is written by award-winning game and TV writers UK-based Neil Richards and US-based Matthew Costello in a transatlantic collaboration.  The series is set in Cherrinham, "  In the series, Ex-NYPD Detective Jack Brennan moves to a houseboat in the Cotswold village of Cherringham, where he is convinced by a local housewife to serve as a pro bono PI in a series of mysteries

The Bunbury Series by Helena Marchmont is described as "Miss Marple meets Oscar Wilde in this new series of cosy mysteries set in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry."  They were good, short, light, easy reads.  I think I gave most of them 3 stars.  It was because I read them that someone recommended the Cherringham series, and now in 2023, based on me reading these two series, Goodreads is recommending I try the Mydworth Series.  I will probably do that.  

Out of 132 books read, I gave around 7 of them 5 stars.  Two of  those are part of the same series, so lets say 6.  A good number of 4 star reads this year, but also so many 1 star reads. I think I've read some of the worst books I've ever read, this year.  My Christmas reading list was spectacularly bad this year.  (And in other years, I've read several 5 star Christmas themed books...)

My 5 Star Reads.  I don't give ALL of the Inspector Gamache books 5 stars...  but I have convinced so many people to read this series this year that my daughter accuses me of starting a book cult.  :-)  The funny thing is, I read one of these series years ago, and I was not impressed.  Not at all.  Then last summer I started reading them in order.  You need to read them in order.  You need to get to know the characters in order, experience their journeys with them, so that later events have the full impact.   They are technically a detective series, but often, the murders and mysteries are merely background.  It's the characters that make the books incredible.

While I loved the Three Pines movie made a few years ago, I was not overly impressed with the tv series that debuted in 2022.  

The Day The World Came To Town

When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held on board for nearly 24 hours while security checked all of the baggage, they were greeted with a feast prepared by the townspeople. Local bus drivers who had been on strike came off the picket lines to transport the passengers to the various shelters set up in local schools and churches. Linens and toiletries were bought and donated. A middle school provided showers, as well as access to computers, email, and televisions, allowing the passengers to stay in touch with family and follow the news.

Midwinter Murder

There's a chill in the air and the days are growing shorter . . . It's the perfect time to curl up in front of a crackling fire with these wintry whodunits from the legendary Agatha Christie. But beware of deadly snowdrifts and dangerous gifts, poisoned meals and mysterious guests. This chilling compendium of short stories—some featuring beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple—is an essential omnibus for Christie fans and the perfect holiday gift for mystery lovers

Surviving Savannah

The Titanic Of The South.

When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she's shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly can't resist the opportunity to try to solve some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the devastating night of its sinking.

Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of eleven who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah's society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.

The Betrayal Of Anne Frank

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents—some never before seen—and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest—and came to a shocking conclusion.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust. 

The Highest Rated Book from my 2022 Books, on Goodreads

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.  

I gave it 4 stars.

Surprisingly well written. She doesn't whine, doesn't even blame.. just tells her story. And she tells it well.

According to goodreads, the book from my list that was most shelved by other goodreads users was People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry.  I hated that book.  The book I read that was LEAST shelved by others is a rather obscure memoir from 1838.  If it was written 150 years later, I bet it would have been a lot more popular.  "The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Ann Carson V1-2: Daughter of an Officer of the U. S. Navy, and Wife of Another (1838)".  That's what the author titled the book she wrote about herself.  It was a fascinating tell all that left me wondering how many paid to keep their names OUT of the book.  Definitely not my normal reading, except that it was historical, and her convoluted love life is what lead her to attempt a kidnapping of Gov. Snyder, a Pennsylvania Governor with a mansion near my hometown.  To research the kidnapping plot, I read the memoir.  It is not easy reading.  But what a story!

I also read Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte - Mozart's Librettist, because he lived in Sunbury Pa for awhile. As a grocer. One of the greatest Librettists [writers of text for operas]  of all time came to America, settled in Sunbury, and failed as a businessman.  He did write some poems about the area while he was here.  :-)

My review of  People We Meet On Vacation

It is very difficult for me to review this book.

Because I hated it.

But that's not really the authors fault.

I read this for a challenge to read something "out of my comfort zone". Typically I read Mysteries, historical fiction, non fiction.. but not romances. I just don't enjoy romances.

So when someone who is typically reading a book where a murder takes placed and is solved within a short period of time picks up a love story that drags out over 12 years... well, it was unlikely to be a success.

But there were a few things I liked. The author did not rely on the trite misunderstanding theme - the characters seemed to actually communicate and clear up most of the misunderstandings pretty quickly. The various side characters were interesting and enjoyable.

The main plot was where it lost me - not because it was poorly written, just because I found it so annoying. Life is too short for that 12 years of "I don't know if we can make this work" nonsense.

That 32 page Margaret Atwood read was not great for my page count this year..  but it was  a really good read.  As was Blind Tiger, a historical fiction novel set during Prohibition.  I gave that one 4 stars.

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Other Notable Reads in 2022

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Magpie Murders 

Notable for two reasons.  1. I read it twice.  I almost never re-read any book.  2. I liked the tv version  better than the book.  Even after reading it twice, I learned things in the tv show that I missed putting together myself in the book.  It's a really interesting book.

Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer. His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. It's proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she’s realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.

Dinners With Ruth

 I think I gave it 3 stars.  It was an incredibly interesting look at a time when even those who disagreed and worked on the opposite sides of issues, could be civil, could be friends, and could handle themselves with dignity.

Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship.

Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house.

Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,” her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.

The Girl Who Came Home

A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman. . . .

Ireland, 1912 . . .

Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.

Chicago, 1982 . . .

Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about the Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.

Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.

The Kitchen Front

four women compete for a spot hosting a wartime cookery program called The Kitchen Front - based on the actual BBC program of the same name - as well as a chance to better their lives.

Two years into WW2, Britain is feeling her losses; the Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is putting on a cooking contest--and the grand prize is a job as the program's first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the contest presents a crucial chance to change their lives.

For a young widow, it's a chance to pay off her husband's debts and keep a roof over her children's heads. For a kitchen maid, it's a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For the lady of the manor, it's a chance to escape her wealthy husband's increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it's a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession.

These four women are giving the competition their all--even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together serve only to break it apart?

Meet Me At The Museum

Please be aware I am writing to you to make sense of myself ...

When the curator of a Danish museum responds to a query about ancient exhibits, he doesn’t expect a reply.

When Tina Hopgood first wrote it, nor did she …

Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife, along with his hopes and dreams for the future. He does not know that a query from a Mrs Tina Hopgood about a world-famous antiquity in his museum is about to alter the course of his life.

Oceans apart, an unexpected correspondence flourishes as they discover shared passions: for history and nature; for useless objects left behind by loved ones; for the ancient and modern world, what is lost in time, what is gained and what has stayed the same. Through intimate stories of joy, anguish, and discovery, each one bares their soul to the other. But when Tina's letters suddenly cease, Anders is thrown into despair. Can this unlikely friendship survive?

In 1810, a sister and brother uncover the fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs on the south coast of England. With its long snout and prominent teeth, it might be a crocodile – except that it has a huge, bulbous eye.

Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent for finding fossils, and whose discovery of ancient marine reptiles such as that ichthyosaur shakes the scientific community and leads to new ways of thinking about the creation of the world.

Working in an arena dominated by middle-class men, however, Mary finds herself out of step with her working-class background. In danger of being an outcast in her community, she takes solace in an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, a prickly London spinster with her own passion for fossils.

The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and jealousy.

The Book Of Eels

When my niece started telling our entire family they HAD to read this book, we were very surprised.  To put it mildly.    This is not a recommendation we expected.  But, she was right.  This book is really fantastic.  I can't remember why I didn't give it 5 stars - but I did give it 4.

Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery.

Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson writes a book about this unusual animal.

In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea.

Blending memoir and nature writing, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death.

The Girl Puzzle

Her published story is well known. But did she tell the whole truth about her ten days in the madhouse?

Down to her last dime and offered the chance of a job of a lifetime at The New York World, twenty-three-year old Elizabeth Cochrane agrees to get herself admitted to Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum and report on conditions from the inside. But what happened to her poor friend, Tilly Mayard? Was there more to her high praise of Dr Frank Ingram than everyone knew?

Thirty years later, Elizabeth, known as Nellie Bly, is no longer a celebrated trailblazer and the toast of Newspaper Row. Instead, she lives in a suite in the Hotel McAlpin, writes a column for The New York Journal and runs an informal adoption agency for the city’s orphans.

Beatrice Alexander is her secretary, fascinated by Miss Bly and her causes and crusades. Asked to type up a manuscript revisiting her employer’s experiences in the asylum in 1887, Beatrice believes she’s been given the key to understanding one of the most innovative and daring figures of the age.

I Must Betray You

Ruta Septys is one of my favorite authors.  She writes historical fiction for young adults, but they do not read like YA books.  Always well researched and based in facts, I learn something new every time I read one of her books.

Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.

About My Mother

A charming memoir by Peggy Rowe, the mother of Mike Rowe.

There’s a Thelma Knobel in everyone’s life. She’s the person taking charge– the one who knows instinctively how things should be. Today, Thelma would be described as an alpha personality. But while growing up, her daughter, Peggy, saw her as a dictator– albeit a benevolent, loving one. They clashed from the beginning– Peggy, the horse-crazy tomboy, and Thelma, a genteel controlling mother, committed to raising two refined, ladylike daughters.

When major league baseball came to town in the early 1950s and turned sophisticated Thelma into a crazed Baltimore Orioles groupie, nobody was more surprised and embarrassed than Peggy. Life became a series of compromises– Thelma tolerating a daughter who pitched manure and galloped the countryside, while Peggy learned to tolerate the whacky Orioles fan who threw her underwear at the TV, shouted insults at umpires, and lived by the orange and black schedule taped to the refrigerator door…

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There are no thrillers on my list this year, unless you count Magpie Murders...  I did read a lot of them.    It's still one of my favorite genres.  But in 2022, I just didn't read any  that are really worth mentioning

In Cozy Mysteries, I've been working my way through the Jana DeLeon Miss Fortune series. They are light, funny, and take no real thought to read.   Very enjoyable - a solid 3 stars for every book I've read so far.  If you like the Stephanie Plum series, you may like these too.

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