Books, Winter 2014-2015

I've had a very busy winter reading books that I mostly enjoyed.  Here's the list:

The Glassblower, by Petra Durst-Benning.  This is the first book in a three-book series.  It was okay  but not great -- it turned out to be a love story, which I don’t particularly care for.  The book is about three sisters in Germany in the late 1890s.  When the sisters’ father, a glassblower in a small village, dies the girls have to find a way to support themselves.  They start out working for another glassblower under appalling conditions.  One sister gets a job in town and their lives improve financially, but her boss turns out to be evil, so finally another sister begins using her father’s glassblowing equipment.  That’s when the love story aspect arises, and it loses its edge. 

1929 Jonathan’s Cross – Book One (The 1929 Series), by M. L. Gardner.  This is the first book in a series of about six.  Apparently the series follows the same cast of characters from the stock market crash of 1929 all the way into the 1970s.  This first book introduces the friends and takes them through about the first year-and-a-half of the Great Depression.  I enjoyed the book and will probably read some of the others. 

The Pearl that Broke Its Shell, by Nadia Hashimi.  I thought this novel was really good.  It tells the stories of two Afghan women who live 100 years apart – early 1900s and early 2000s.  Frankly, things have not improved much for many women in Afghanistan over the last 100 years, especially those in small villages.  Very powerful. 

 Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, by Sharon Salzberg.  I first read this book more than ten years ago, and I suggested it for a spiritual book discussion group I belong to.  Ms. Salzberg is a Buddhist who teaches meditation techniques.  This book is not so much about techniques as it is about her journey to having faith in her own abilities.  Highly recommended to people who are searching their path. 

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest J. Gaines.  Mr. Gaines tape-recorded a series of interviews with Jane Pittman (I believe in the early 1960s) and turned them into this book.  Miss Jane Pittman was a slave in Louisiana, about 11 or 12 years old at the end of the Civil War when she was freed.  She lived to be more than 110 years old, and had a lot of stories to tell – what a feisty woman.  There was a movie about her with Cicely Tyson in the 1970s, and it may have been based on this book.  I liked the book; found it interesting.  

The Girl Who Came Home:  A Novel of the Titanic, by Hazel Gaynor.  This is a poignant story about a group of travelers from a small Irish village who traveled together on the Titanic.  It is clear from the beginning that the main character, Maggie,  survived the sinking, but the reader is kept in suspense as to whether anyone else survived.  There is a side-story about Maggie’s great-granddaughter telling of Maggie’s experience.  My eyes leaked a few times while I read the book.  It was believable and well-told. 

Call of the Kiwi, by Sarah Lark.  This is the third book in a series about a family in New Zealand.  I read the first book, In the Land of the Long White Clouds, but I skipped the second.  I believe I liked this installment better than the original.  It takes place early in the 20^th century and goes through World War I.  The characters are the children and grandchildren of the matriarch who was the main character of the first book.  I recommend this one whether you have read the other books in the series or not.

Gray Mountain, by John Grisham.  Not Grisham’s best effort, but an okay book.  It is about a young New York attorney with a huge Manhattan law firm who is furloughed at the beginning of the recession.  Her firm says they will call her back to her position after a year and will keep her health insurance in place during that time if she will work as an intern in a rural firm, which turns out to be a free legal aid group in Appalachia.  Her experiences there are interesting, but an awful lot of time is spent repeating rants and stories about the horrors of strip mining and how crooked the mining companies are. 

The Captain’s Daughter, by Leah Fleming.  An interesting story that meanders through the years between 1912 and 1959.  It begins with passengers on the Titanic, the two main characters survive the sinking, and follows them through the two World Wars and aftermath.  I enjoyed this book and recommend it to those who enjoy long sagas (which I do). 

Daughters of the Dragon:  A Comfort Woman’s Story, by William Andrews.  It wasn’t very many years ago that I first heard about Korean comfort women – Korean women kidnapped and taken to China to “service” Japanese soldiers during World War II.  Even when I heard about it, I didn’t really understand the horrors of their lives.  Shocking!  This book is a novel, and parts of it are difficult to read, but it is very worthwhile, so grit your teeth and stay with it.  A must-read. 

The Towers of Tuscany, by Carol M. Cram.  Set in Italy in the 1330s to 1340, this book tells the story of a woman “painter” (as in “artist”) who learned to paint from her father but was not allowed to paint openly because women weren’t allowed.  She found ways to paint anyway, and that part of the book was interesting.  However, there was an unlikely love story which took up part of the book, and it just wasn’t credible to me – not for the character as she was presented.  I’d give it three out of five stars.    

The Boys in the Boat:  Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown.  This is the true story of the rowing crew from University of Washington who won the Gold Medal in the 1936 Olympic Rowing Competition.  It is very thoroughly researched, but perhaps a little too detailed.  I liked it overall but got impatient to finish. 

The Sweetness, by Sande Boritz Berger.  A novel about an extended family, part of them in Brooklyn, NY, and the remainder in Vilna, Lithuania, during World War II.  They are all Jewish, separated by the rise of Nazis in Germany and the war.  The main characters are two cousins who have never met:  an older girl in Brooklyn and a younger one in Vilna.  I enjoyed the lives and  interactions of the large family in the U.S. as compared with the lives of those in Lithuania.  A fine read, recommended. 

City of Hope, by Kate Kerrigan.  This is the third book in a series about a young Irish woman who leaves Ireland for America after the sudden death of her husband.  She arrives in New York in the midst of the Great Depression and finds herself helping homeless people create a family environment.  I liked the book pretty well.

Yellow Crocus, by Laila Ibrahim.  The story of a slave woman in the South and her relationship with the white girl she nursed as a baby and continued to nurture throughout her childhood.  Very poignant.  Recommend.

Take Me With You, by Catherine Ryan Hyde.  A teacher going on vacation from southern California to Yellowstone ends up taking two young boys with him.  This is a sweet story about a caring man and two boys who need someone who cares for them.  Recommend.

The Valley of Amazement, by Amy Tan.  This is the story of a woman who owns a famous courtesan house in China, and her daughter who becomes estranged from her mother for many years.  This is not Amy Tan’s most popular book, but I enjoyed it a lot. 

Maude, by Donna Mabry.  The author tells the story of her grandmother’s difficult life based on the stories her grandmother told her as she was growing up.  This is a REALLY GOOD book.