A just-bad-enough summer cold grounded me for over a week and I read 5 fantastic novels: THE LAND IN WINTER, SEA SCRAPPER, WHISTLER, THE THINGS WE DO NOT SAY, and LAND. Healthy now, but my reading addiction still flairs—I am mid-way through KIN, another keeper.
I read The Atlantic article and am sad for so many people, especially the young, who are missing out on so much. There are amazing writers living now and they keep producing; also writers we haven’t met, but will. Every morning, I wake in mourning for all that has been lost/destroyed since January 20, 2025. Then I remember whatever book I am reading, and I think of my precious great grands (all that promise!), the New River, just down the hill; and of the good work being done in Giles County.
And then, I can meet the day.
Oh! Shout out to the Blacksburg New School (which I founded) now celebrating its 54th year! (Time flies when you’re 80!)
The Reading List, so far, in 2026:
1/25/26 - THE LONLINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY - Kiran Desai - 5 What a sweeping, funny, insightful novel. So brilliant on India, India we’ve come to know through other great contemporary writers chronicling the country’s quirky, casteful, uniqueness. The tug of the ‘white culture’ the lure and shortcomings of the U.S.
Great descriptions of landscapes, wonderful flawed ridiculous and profound characters and a great many delicious pages to tie up the ‘loneliness’ of the name characters.
1/21/26 - HEART THE LOVER - Lily King - 4.9 I loved this novel as I loved King’s Writers and Lovers a few years back. Her characters are so interesting, well imagined, her dialogue and narrative so engrossing; her talk of the writing craft. In this book, I particularly loved page 94 that ended with: “…the truth has nothing to do with the facts’ one of my professors said Faulkner said. Professor Felske shows me what that really means.”
1/25/26 - HEARTWOOD - Amity Gaige - 3.9 AT hiker, beloved by all, disappears from trail in woods of Maine. A page turner with endearing characters, well-written, many facts of nature. The under current—really—is that it is a book of mothers, mostly mothers seen by daughters. A fine read, not great literature; still the insights are good.
1/26/26 - THE HOUSEMAID - Freida McFadden - 3.2 A trashy mystery story with surprise and also terribly predictable elements. Read it on an afternoon ‘between books,’ Probably don’t need to read any more about creepy men who are not as they present themselves. So.. satisfying ending.
2/4/26 - APEIROGON - Colum McCann - 4.9 1st problem, who wants to talk about a book with such a hard title to pronounce? 2nd problem, I almost didn’t read the book because so much of it is written in small (sometimes 3 or 4 per page) numbered sections, backed with a very occasional small b/w photo? A Novel? A novel and not a novel, as the core is the true story of two grief-stricken fathers, each of a daughter murdered by the others’ people; Israel & Palestine. The almost 500 pages filled with lots of facts and backtracks; chronicling of bird migrations & such; interesting anecdotes about Theresienstadt camp, etc. Such a comprehensive telling of the tangled complexity of that small section of our planet. Google Apeirogon and you will see that it is the perfect title. I don’t know why I knew nothing of this novel published in 2021.
So, a quote from the ever-insightful Elizabeth Strout: “A wondrous book, absolutely staggering. . . it will bring you to your knees.”
2/8/26 - ANGEL DOWN - Daniel Kraus - 4.5 All of this WWI story takes place in ‘No Man’s Land,’ heavy, heavy war porn; gruesome descriptions, no let-up on smells, evil, gore, desperate survival tactics. Basically a group of 5 are sent out to ‘mercy kill’ someone, tangled in barbed wire, who has been screaming for over a day. Turns out not to be a person but an angel—a celestial creature brought down in the space of sky between heaven and earth that had never been invaded before the invention of the first high-powered weapons. Each of the men (one, actually, a boy) wishes something from the angel, who appears to each in a subtly different manifestation. Four die gruesomely (and mostly deservingly) one-by-greedy-one. The narrator and the boy remain, and then just the narrator. I loved the Pat Barker novels about WWI and (way back) ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. I was happy to finish this novel and would only recommend it to the stout-of-heart. This was an interestingly written—not a single period--well-imagined, difficult novel. Kraus co-wrote THE SHAPE OF WATER with Guillermo del Toro and they worked together on other projects. Obviously both men attracted to ‘creatures.’
2/11/26 - FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY - Jennifer Smith - 3.9 What a relief this light novel was after ANGEL DOWN—like a beach read you settle into, mildly curious as to how it will reach its happy ending, all loose threads tied and everyone wiser and closer. I couldn’t imagine why Leila had given it to me until I tuned into the story about 4 siblings who’d been amazingly close, completely wrapped up in one another’s lives until… UNTIL one of the siblings wrote a novel based upon their lives. “Why didn’t you let us know, why didn’t you let us read it?” Making it a beach read, rather than a ‘story of family trauma’ was the fact that one sibling was a gorgeous world-renowned actress about to win an Academy Award, one a world-renowned soccer player; and one, the writer, a winner of The National Book award. From family to fantasy, all their success because they had bad parents.
2/14/26 - STAY AND FIGHT- Madeline Ffitch - 4.8 A (humiliating) personal encounter had me seek out this novel, a counter culture/off the grid pioneer story. Also, a story illuminating the elasticity of family and/or commune. The novel has 4 narrators, (4 POVs) 3 women and the one very young child the women share. All of the characters are so fleshed out, endearing (like many a good tale) eccentrics; everything very real, down to the shit buckets. The first page of this novel rivals my (almost 50 year) memory of the first page of THE DOLLMAKER. Slams the reader right in the face.
2/20/26 - PAPER GIRL -Beth Macy - 4 Beth Macy is something! She tells it like it is to readers who would have missed our century’s hard truths. This—like DOPESICK—is such an important book. I felt there was an urgency to it that made some extra editing prohibitive.
3/12/26 - CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS - Sally Rooney - 4 Such a different Irish writer than Claire Keegan, so witty, and quick with sassy dialogue and sophisticated characters, the power of youth and high i.q.s, flirtation, depression, adultery, lots of art openings; two brilliant college women caught up in all the goings-on: summer week on coast of France but mostly rainy Dublin.
3/22/26 - STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL - Charlotte Wood - 4 A gentle novel—but for the horror movie infiltration of mice—of a woman who joins a small community of nuns in rural Australia. It’s an ‘inward journey’—not my favorite type of journey, but well done. Grief, death, guilt and goodness mulled in solitude.
4/18/26 - BUCKEYE - Patrick Ryan - 4 The narrative begins just before WWII and is a good look at middle America, a small town becoming bigger, the effect of war on those who fight it, those left behind—with a very Ohio POV. A brief infidelity stirring outrage and family structure. What makes a parent? A family? The gender balance in a changing world. We follow two households into the early ‘80’s.
5/3/26 - INTERMEZZO - Sally Rooney - 4.8 A deep, yet funny books related to CONVERSATIONS… by Dublin and the theme of love complicated. This book addresses grief, but never quite directly, and family and prods into the inner life of three of its characters. Forgiveness as redemption and, again, non-traditional romantic/erotic love..
5/9/26 - ENORMOUS WINGS - Laurie Frankel - 3.5 Erma Bombeck could have written this, very witty little novel. 77 year old woman marooned in Retirement Home by her children has an instant affair with a widower and gets pregnant. The book makes points about ‘choice’ and about ageism, but near the end veers a bit too extreme, ties things up too neatly.
6/7/26 - THE LAND IN WINTER - Andrew Miller - 5 2 couples, each newly settled in cottages out in the country, just in view of one another. It is 1963 and WWII lingers with the scarcity, and vague references to rubble, the debris of bombings; there is an insane asylum nearby and a sense of madness carried into the new generation by those who witnessed the Camps during their liberations. We follow 4 POVs and know them, yet are assaulted by turns of plot a character. All of novel set in about 3 months, much of the time in a monumental winter storm and its aftermath. The people are almost always cold and almost never eat well. The story refused a satisfying ending, yet captivated me.
6/9 - THE OYSTER DIARIES - Nancy Lemann - 4 Though I vaguely remember her earlier novels, I do remember liking them, and not just because she does New Orleans so well. This novel is much later and reads more like a memoir. Sometimes it is very funny and sometimes poignant, and probably is not a book that could have been written by anyone under 60. She does DC (actually how would I know?) well, and NOLA perfectly. She is believable as a mother, betrayed wife, adoring daughter. Her trip to Africa is almost exactly like mine, except her attitude towards it is so very different. The book ends abruptly which—after some thought—was well done.
6/11/26 - SORRROW AND BLISS - Meg Mason - 4.5 While I continue to have a problem with smart novels written by women (always by women) where the male protagonist is an exemplary character: patient, has a great and important career, does all the cooking and cleaning; continues to adore his irrational ungrateful, often mean-spirited wife. That issue, I admit, is eventually directly addressed in this clever, funny story. Mason writes of how family wrecks and rescues you; questions and answers what makes art, uses the uterus as a plot device; gets exhaustion, hilarity, and routine just right; steps away, artfully, from a too pat conclusion.
6/14/26 - WHISTLER - Ann Patchett - 4.7 Patchett is pumping ‘em out! Interesting to read another novel (like SORROW…) where 2 main characters are sisters who hold one another together through family dysfunction. There is a narrative spine, within this novel, that Patchett stretches artfully from beginning to end--in here, literally, with a wreck. Again, like in the Mason novel—some pretty ideal men. And gosh, ‘mothers just can’t do it right.’ But there is more redemption in this novel and some interesting juxtaposing of Boston/Manhattan—the high life and the hard life. A lesson in the cultural evolution of attitude/acceptance of gay men from ’79 to ’26. And, yes, a horse named “Whistler.”
6/18/26 - SEASCRAPER - Benjiamin Wood - 4.9 While I easily read this 163 page novel in a day, I’ll think about it for much longer. The brevity, the purity, the fog and solitude reminded me of Keegan’s “SMALL THINGS…” with a much different story, by the sea with a 20 year old male protagonist and, really 3 days in his life. But so much happens, so quietly and without forewarning. A most satisfying ending, if a small one. Smelly & lyrical, tight with longing.
6/23/26 - LAND - Maggie O’Farrell - 5 This novel part historical, part family saga pulled me in, as O’Farrell’s HAMNET failed to. I gobbled up this book, set mostly in 19th century Ireland. Such an ode to the land. Without being directly about The Great Famine, I realized I learned so much about that—incredulous that there are so many excellent stories of the Holocaust, the genocide of the Native Americans, African slave trade, but I’ve never read a novel actually describing that famine that wiped out much of Ireland’s population and changed the population of so many other countries. Anyway, there is a touch of Druid myth, some history and geography. The main family, a family of 6, spins out in most imaginative ways and it was hard to let them go. If not the greatest literature, one of the greatest stories I remember reading in a long while.
6/27/26 - THE THINGS WE NEVER SAY - Elizabeth Strout - 4.9 A dirge to American goodness. A direct and heartfelt critique of Trump’s America. A small novel, small and heartbreaking and should be required reading for anyone planning to be a school teacher. Artie, so pure and loveable. We should all ask “What would Artie do?” This teacher of history, so beloved by his students. This man who most reminds me of The Mama in THE RUNAWAY BUNNY. I was surprised that Strout had a new novel, right on the heels of TELL ME EVERYTHING. None of her standby characters, tho one brief mention of a character (Olive) from a novel someone had read. This book was obviously written as a moral imperative.
7/10/26 - CATCH THE RABBIT - Lana Bastasic - 3.2 This “Winner of The 2020 European Union Prize For Literature” really hit me wrong. I stuck with the book without caring for the characters, and without understanding how it is supposed to be a re-telling of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. So I may have missed the whole point. Perhaps my ignorance about Bosnia and what all occurred there in the 80’s may have made me a rotten reader. The relationship of the narrator to the other protagonist reminded me of what I did not like about MY BRILLIANT FRIEND. Publishers Weekly claimed “This unforgettable tour de force surprises at every turn.” While I kinda want to forget I ever read it.