by Kristin Hannah, 2018 Glad I stuck with this book. The first 1/2 seemed like it was written by an amateur for teenage girls. After about 250 pages, however, it was a page-turner. Set in 1970’s Alaska, somewhere near Homer on the Kenai Peninsula, in a town called Kaneq, which I think is a fictional […]
Author: bookhound
The Great Alone
Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom
by David W. Blight, 2018 What an EXCELLENT book; 764 pages on the life and times of Frederick Douglass. It is so well-written, you lived with him and experienced all of his striving, anguish, pain and suffering for freedom, first for himself and then for all slaves.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith, 1943 A gift from Christie for my birthday last year, I finally read it and absolutely loved it. All of the characters are so lovable and endearing, and the setting and time (1912-1919 Brooklyn) are captivating. It’s 481 pages long but so well-written and engrossing, it was enjoyable and hard to put […]
Playing for Pizza
by John Grisham, 2007 Quick, easy read about an NFL quarterback (Rick Dockery) who is banished from the league because he throws too many interceptions. He’s had 3 major concussions. His agent finds him a job in Italy so he moves to Parma, Italy, and finds love and purpose among some Italians who love the […]
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969 This one was difficult to get into so I almost didn’t finish it but I did and it did get better towards the end. It was our last book club selection of the year. The characters, unappealing except for one: Estraven, also called Therem, also called Harth. The place, […]
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid, 2017 Very interesting premise–Nadia and Saeed, two people living in some unnamed Mid-Eastern country, fall in love at the same time that their country deteriorates into chaos and war. They hear about hidden doors that appear and disappear but allow you to escape the country. They pay an agent and escape first […]
Two Coots in a Canoe
An Unusual Story of Friendship by David E. Morine, 2009 Great true story about David (Bugsy) and Ramsay’s paddling adventure down the Connecticut River from source to sea in June of 2003. Rather than camp each night, they decided to “rely on the kindness of strangers,” and enlisted 27 “strangers” to put them up each […]
On Tyranny
Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, 2017 Short book about how the 2016 election of Donald Trump and his presidency have many similarities to the rise of Hitler and Communism in the twentieth century. I wish everyone would read this book, especially Trump supporters. They have been duped.
Ways of Grace
by James Blake with Carol Taylor, 2017 In New York City during the afternoon of September 9, 2015, James Blake was standing outside his hotel when a cop charged him, picked him up, slammed him to the ground, and handcuffed him. They held him, would not believe him when he told him who he was, […]
The Unwinding of the Miracle
by Julie Yip-Williams, 2019 Brutally honest book written by young wife and mother, Julie Yip-Williams, who was born blind in Vietnam, almost euthanized at the age of 2 months, escaped Vietnam with her family on a boat at age 3 or 4, ends up a Harvard-educated lawyer, world-traveler, married with 2 daughters, and diagnosed with […]
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, 2017 This book was one of our Old Town Book Club selections and I’m so glad it was. It is a fantastic, well-written non-fiction account of what some very evil white men did to Osage Indians in the 1920’s.
The Emerald Mile
by Kevin Fedarko, 2013 Excellent, fast-paced, non-fiction book about running the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, especially focused on the 1983 run by a wooden dory named The Emerald Mile, which broke the speed record, manned by three men: Kenton Grua, Steve Reynolds, and Rudi Petschek. They ran the river when it was at […]
Lights Out
by Ted Koppel (Edward J. Koppel), 2015 A well-written and easy-to-read warning about our vulnerability and lack of preparedness for a cyber-attack on our electrical grid. My three main take-aways are 1. The Mormons are the pros in disaster-preparedness; 2. The Red Cross is more concerned with appearances and fund-raising and uses disasters to further […]
The Leavers
by Lisa Ko, 2017 Good book about Chinese mother (Polly Guo) and son (Deming Guo) separated when Deming was 11 years old. He thinks his Mama abandoned him. He is adopted by a white couple in upstate New York but never feels comfortable there and his heart aches for his Mama. Finally, at the age […]
Paul Simon, the life
by Robert Hilburn, 2018 Scanned this book quickly after getting through the first 100 pages but then getting bogged down. Learned enough: Born in 1941, grandparents immigrated from Lithuania and Ukraine, long before the Holocaust, which would have killed them since they were Jewish. His father was a musician, stand-up bass. He was born in […]
Milkman
by Anna Burns, 2018 Fantastic book! So original! Never read anything like this! LOVED it! Learned what Ireland in the 1970s was like – brought home the problems. Written from the perspective of an 18 year old Irish girl, Middle Sister. We never learn her first name. She has a wonderful relationship with maybe-boyfriend but […]
Washington Black
by Esi Edugyan, 2018 Fascinating book about a little boy, George Washington Black (Wash), who is a slave on the Faith Plantation in Barbados. He works alongside a big black woman, Big Kit. She takes care of him and he gets to sleep with her at night and work alongside her during the day. One […]
The Joy of Less
A Minimalist Guide to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify by Francine Jay, Miss Minimalist, 2010 Easy, fast read about getting rid of S***, and living a more meaningful life. This was 4 years before Marie Kondo’s, ‘Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.’ Francine advises a room-by-room de-cluttering effort rather than Marie Kondo’s de-clutter by type effort, but […]
The Library Book
by Susan Orlean, 2018 What a fantastic writer Susan Orlean is! I haven’t read a book that flows this beautifully since Herman Wouk’s, The Caine Mutiny. She details the Los Angeles Public Library fire that happened on April 28, 1986. One of the first things she tells us is why we’ve never heard of this […]
Driving Miss Norma
by Tim Bauerschmidt and Ramie Liddle, 2017 When Tim’s mother, aged 90, is diagnosed with uterine cancer, rather than undergo months of chemo, radiation, etc., they invite her to go on the road with them (Tim, his wife, Ramie, and their standard poodle, Ringo). She says to the doctor, “I’m ninety years old. I’m hitting […]