book reviews

write meg!’s 2023 reading honors

/ Meg / 2 Comments

With just a few days left before we flip those calendars again, I wanted to sit down and ruminate on my favorite reads of the last 12 months. A lifelong list-maker, cataloguer, and chronicler of things, I still enjoy tracking my reading … even if I’m not the prolific reviewer of yesteryear!

I probably say this every December, but I’ve really recommitted to reading—and guarding my reading time, too. As a busy mom/human, it’s easy to be distracted and pulled into a thousand other projects I “should” be doing … but when I recognized that time spent in my fictional worlds is self-care as much as anything else, it became easier to protect that time. (It also helps that I have a long-ish commute.)

Interestingly, very few of the books I read this year were actually published in 2023—and all of my favorites were backlist items. Hmm.

My Year in Reading: 2023

  • Books read: 56 / Fiction: 40 • Non-Fiction: 16
  • Format – Audio: 40 / Print: 16
  • Countries visited: 9 (USA, England, France, Australia, Canada, Greece, Trinidad & Tobago, Italy, Sweden) / Bonus “Travel” to the Cosmos

See my full list on Goodreads

 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot (2011)

I started this book a decade ago, and my younger (and more easily distracted) self didn’t find it engaging. Fast forward to 2023 and there I was, weeping at my kitchen table, ignoring the world around me while I frantically googled to discover what has happened to the Lacks family in the years since Skloot’s work was first published. I now work in communications for a major healthcare system, and the medical aspect intrigued me — and my colleagues, who made The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks the first pick for our hospital’s book club.

It’s fascinating that, in the 12 years since it was first published, HeLa cells have also been used in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, among many other medical breakthroughs — and I wonder how differently our collective story might have played out without their availability. Like millions (er, billions?) of others, I have personally benefited and been protected by medications developed as a result of HeLa research.

Henrietta has helped me and my children, too. Her story lives on.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Rose Code
Kate Quinn (2021)

Historical fiction at its finest! Opening in 1940, Quinn’s novel follows the life of Britain’s code breakers and the secret world of Bletchley Park in its race to defeat Germany in World War II.

It’s impossible to distill this down into an easy-to-digest recommendation — it was so layered, dimensional, heart-wrenching, and just all-around captivating. I loved it so much that I reorganized a recent trip to London in the hope of seeing Bletchley with my husband and, though the mansion’s renovations had us changing plans again, I can’t wait to visit someday! I’ve also given out several copies to fellow book lovers and basically made a nuisance of myself singing its praises. Truly a remarkable book.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Black Cake
Charmaine Wilkerson (2022)

Ohhhh, I’m a sucker for a good multi-generational family saga — and this one delivered (and then some). Opening with Byron and Benny, children of the recently-deceased and larger-than-life Eleanor Bennett, the novel unfolds with a series of mysteries that eventually blend into a compelling symphony and rumination on inheritances and identity. It’s beautifully written, evocative, and kept me guessing throughout. The audio narration is especially powerful!

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah (2015)

I’m late to the Kristin Hannah game, but I got there! It’s not hard to see why readers tear through her books and spend countless hours discussing them afterward. They’re gut-punchers, thought-provokers, and all-around suck-you-in classics that don’t let you up for air. The Nightingale fell into this category — set in France during World War II, it’s the sort of book that means nothing else is getting done until you’ve finished it. It’s best to just allow yourself to be swept up and away … and hang on.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
Dave Grohl (2021)

This one was probably the biggest surprise of my reading year! As a dedicated library user, The Storyteller is one of those books I fell into serendipitously while scrolling through “available to borrow now!” lists in my Libby app … and then I just absolutely freakin’ loved it. I’ve long maintained that I can enjoy a well-written memoir by just about anyone and, despite knowing little about Dave Grohl, I dove in.

To my surprise, Dave is a fellow D.C. local who immediately sucked me in with his warm, engaging style and Washington-area references to his idyllic suburban childhood. His love and appreciation for his mom, combined with the way she supported him as he pursued his passions, was just really heartwarming.

It’s about music, certainly, but it’s really about life — parenting, family, resilience. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and completely absorbing. Those with rock knowledge will probably understand all the musical references way more than I did, but my lack of coolness in that regard didn’t hamper my enjoyment in the least.

Also, Dave seems like a truly A+ human. I want only good things for him. Rock on, sir.

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Circe
Madeline Miller (2018)

When’s the last time I lost himself in a fantasy novel? Well … November, as it happens, when I fell back into the genre with Circe. The audio experience was otherworldly. I mindlessly folded a lot of clothes while listening to Madeline Miller’s compelling take on this daughter of Helios, so absorbed was I in needing to know her fate. The Song of Achilles, Miller’s debut work, is definitely high up in my TBR for 2024!

Goodreads • Thrift Books

Creating ‘Black Cake’

/ Meg

Has a book ever made you long for home — only not your home, perhaps, but another’s. A stronger sense of identity? A feeling of culture, of connection, of deep community roots?

Black Cake did this for me — sucked me in like the unheeded hurricanes off the Island, ripping me down in its current. Rich, lyrical, beautiful, heartbreaking … Charmaine Wilkerson spins a multi-generational, multi-cultural saga like none I’ve read before.

What can I say? This novel has everything. Emotional resonance, complicated but relatable sibling and family relationships, deep love, heartbreaking separations, atmosphere and a sense of foreboding mingled with hope … I couldn’t get enough.

At the heart of the story is the titular dessert — a Caribbean black cake studded with soaked fruits, based on the author’s late mother’s recipe. But it’s not just about the food. As Wilkerson herself states, it centers around identity — innate and chosen. It was amazing to experience the transformations of each individual throughout the story.

And the water — it’s a character, too. Churning. Beckoning. At once welcoming and dangerous. Again and again, the Bennetts return to the ocean, and I found these slices of story deeply affecting. Perhaps because I’ve never learned to swim.

It’s been weeks now, and I’m afraid Black Cake has ruined me for other books. The audio was incredibly engrossing and well-done, with narrators Lynnette R. Freeman and Simone Mcintyre skillfully bringing the characters — their plights, joys, pains — to life.

Don’t miss it. Don’t sleep on it. Just run to this shoreline, friends, and dive in.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

write meg!’s 2021 reading honors

/ Meg / 1 Comment

You know how a really great book just sort of … ruins you for others? We’re talking a novel so engrossing, so ingenious, so thought-provoking that you can’t help but feel saddled by that unmistakable book hangover after you’ve closed the last page? These reads inspire the push/pull we live for as readers: too good to put down, but too bittersweet to finish.

I was fortunate to discover several new favorites in 2021 — year of the continuing pandemic. As we all sought escape in different ways, I binge-read into the wee hours or sank into the couch while my kids got lost in Minecraft. After getting very into memoirs in recent years, the vast majority of my books read this year were fiction — and only one non-fic read made my top five this year.

Probably not a ton of surprises in this grouping, but here they are: the best o’ the best in what I happily enjoyed in 2021, in no particular order!

Tia Williams’ Seven Days in June (2021) is as thought-provoking as it is drool-worthy. This story of two successful writers reconnecting after a tumultuous teen romance was riveting. I absolutely loved Eva’s character — strong and flawed … in other words, human. And Shane is a hero truly worthy of the moniker. Williams created a heart-stopping world in which two people revisit the past in order to determine if there is a path for them in the future. As a writer and all-around book nerd myself, I really enjoyed the depictions of Eva’s vampire fic fandom and the crossover of how both leads are processing their past through their writing. Listened to this one on audio, and the production was excellent. Part of me still expects to bump into Williams’ characters on the street — less far-fetched given that part of the plot is set in Washington, D.C. The local flavor for this Marylander was the icing on top.

Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation (2021) needs no introduction from the likes of me, but I found the heaps of praise totally justified. When done well, the friends-to-lovers slow build is so satisfying. And this book? Satisfying. For sure. Couldn’t stop reading until I knew how their feelings would eventually bubble up to the surface, and whew — steamy. Then passed along my copy to relatives, friends, coworkers … everyone, basically. It’s still floating around in Southern Maryland. I’ll eventually try to get it back — it’s one of the few books I could actually see myself re-reading.

Hilarie Burton Morgan’s The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm (2020) was an impulse buy that made me grateful I have zero self-control in Target. I knew little about Hilarie beyond her early fame on “One Tree Hill,” but the cover spoke to me. This book was just fresh. I loved her honesty on universal topics like family, love and marriage — and less relatable (but fascinating!) musings on fame. Its setting in Rhinebeck, New York evoked such a strong sense of place that I found myself idly browsing AirBnBs so I could camp out near Samuel’s Sweet Shop. A tender, memorable memoir that will, I think, make an especially strong impression on mothers. Hilarie just gets it.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising (2021) is a whole mood. This family saga manages to be both epic in scope and uniquely and memorably detailed. Reid doesn’t waste a word. I listened to the story on audio and appreciated the narrator’s impressive ability to coax separate intonations from each character, particularly brothers Hud and Jay. And like the incredible Daisy Jones & the Six, Malibu Rising found me again wanting to google Reid’s characters, so convinced was I that the Riva siblings were all actually surfing away their afternoon out there along the California coast. A must-read from a must-read author.

Finally, coming off the heels of my late “Hamilton” obsession, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie’s My Dear Hamilton (2018) started my reading year off with a bang. Eliza Hamilton, wife of Alexander, is the heroine of a story that follows her from general’s daughter to new bride to mother to famous widow, with passion and devotion and loss running deeply through the narrative. I loved the examinations of early America alongside the stirring romance between Alexander and Eliza. Very engrossing and wonderfully written.

Looking forward to more up-until-2-a.m. reading moments in 2022!

What were your favorite reads this year?
Share your recs in the comments, or join me on Instagram!

Past reading honors:
2020 | 2019 | 2013 | 2012
2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008

Colgan, take me away

/ Meg / 1 Comment

500 Miles from YouYou know how sometimes a book just finds you at precisely the right moment? Our current lives, so disrupted by COVID-19 and politics and the accompanying worries of just … everything, well … I’ve been reading again. Reading like I’m not the overextended mom/wife/essential worker that I am.

In short: I’ve needed a mental escape. Enter Jenny Colgan’s 500 Miles from You, a sweet tale of two nurses — one English, one Scottish — who spend about 300-ish pages communicating primarily through text and email. Cormac and Lissa are strangers, but they’re connected through a job swap initiated after Lissa is a first responder at a terrible crime.

Sensing she needs a complete change of scenery, the NHS reassigns her to a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands. She trades roles with Cormac, a community paramedic, and the pair are dropped into each other’s worlds: Lissa to Cormac’s cottage in a town where everybody knows your name; Cormac to Lissa’s utilitarian flat in London, where he finds himself suddenly (and delightfully?) anonymous.

IMG_5793_originalThe plot is relatively simple: Lissa helps others in Kirrinfeif as she heals herself; Cormac experiences life outside the familiar paths and rolling hills of home. The two learn much about each other throughout their ongoing chats … chats about their patients, obviously. Of course. The patients.

The story branches in other directions (there’s a court trial, PTSD, the scene-stealing friendship with Kim-Ange), but its heart is certainly the growing closeness — however geographically complicated — between Cormac and Lissa. Which was genuinely sweet and believable.

Colgan knows how to build romantic suspense. And you know where else she excels? Scene-setting, because lord I wanted to cash in all the credit-card miles accrued from daycare bills and high-tail it back to the Highlands. Living vicariously in Kirrinfeif has recently taken the sting out of some long days.

My love of London is serious, too, but Lissa’s thread and the Scottish scenes were definitely my favorites. Only after finishing 500 Miles from You did I learn this was actually the third book in a series — though obviously reading it as a stand-alone was no problem.

So the good news? I get to go back!

Can’t wait.

4/5

Review copy provided by publisher
in exchange for my honest review

Escaping with ‘Running Away to Home’

/ Meg / 2 Comments

Running Away to HomeWhen it became apparent that we were all going to be settling in for the long haul during COVID-19, I immediately looked for an escape.

Not a literal escape because, you know: quarantine. But definitely a bookish one.

With my kids increasingly tolerant of Mom’s reading time, I’ve been able to devour quite a few stories recently. Jennifer Wilson’s Running Away to Home: My Family’s Journey to Croatia in Search of Who We Are, Where We Came From, and What Really Matters is easily my favorite of the lot — the most engaging and delightful book I’ve read in ages.

It certainly helps that I relate deeply to Jennifer: writer, wife, and mom to two young kids — a son and daughter — who, along with her husband Jim, realized that the rat-race life in suburbia was leading to stuff, but little satisfaction. Or happiness.

Armed with the limited knowledge Jennifer has of her great-grandparents, who immigrated from a small village called Mrkopalj, the Wilson-Hoff family leaves Iowa to spend four months in a town of 800 people — where everyone knows everyone, the homemade alcohol is freely flowing, and lessons about abundance, scarcity, and friendship are abundant.

I knew I was in for a treat as soon as I cracked the cover … even if it took me eight years to get to this point. After finishing Running Away to Home yesterday, I immediately clicked over to send a quarantine copy to my mom, who identifies strongly with our Polish roots. Poland isn’t Croatia, but there were so many similarities in the stories (and recipes!) shared by Jennifer, I knew Mom would love this tale of roots and wings.

That’s when I saw the helpful “You’ve purchased this before!”-style note on Amazon. When I ordered it? Dec. 16, 2012, the day Spencer proposed. I purchased Wilson’s memoir along with a copy of The Wedding Book! (In a world before Amazon Prime, gotta get that $25 free ship.) Seven-plus years later, it finally called loudly enough to me from my bookshelf. If it’s any indication of how the past few years have gone, this memoir was perched next to Ignore It!: How Selectively Looking the Other Way Can Decrease Behavioral Problems and Increase Parenting Satisfaction (helpful book, by the way).

So. Right. Running Away to Home found me at a good time.

A4B61D47-ACEC-4E9D-9D58-5E612AAA2AEDIt’s hard to put into words just why I loved it so much. Certainly tons of credit goes to Wilson’s funny, warm, astute and tight writing, which drew me in immediately and never let go. Beyond Jennifer, Jim, and young Sam and Zadie, the cast of characters in Mrkopalj — particularly Robert, their landlord/bartender/friend — were endearing and unforgettable. Everyone had so much personality … because, well, I’m sure, they do have so much personality.

When Jennifer is able to connect with lost relatives who still live nearby, I was taken back to my own long afternoons in the sitting rooms of elderly relatives in Pennsylvania, where my own grandparents grew up. We made these pilgrimages every summer, around the time of my great-grandmother’s birthday, playing nearby as the adults reminisced over meals in family-favorite restaurants.

The world Jennifer draws is at once familiar and foreign. It was impossible not to imagine my own great-great-grandparents making the decisions that led to their voyage to America (from Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Poland, sayeth 23andMe).

Running Away to Home is full of revelations about family — the ones who made us, and the one we create ourselves — without ever becoming preachy, condescending, or eyeroll-inducing. Jennifer and Jim wanted to connect with their children, with the land, with others, with each other … and they did, often in ways they did not expect.

Finishing Wilson’s book definitely had me eager to:

a) Learn to officially make my grandmother’s cabbage rolls,
b) Start a garden and grow my own herbs, and
c) Plan a post-COVID vacation to explore my roots abroad.

Recommend highly to readers who are…

  • Fans of memoirs and family sagas
  • Interested in ancestry/genealogy
  • Looking to travel without leaving the couch
  • Like entertaining stories with heart, and no tragedy

In short, what I mean to say is … I loved it. And eight years after its initial publication, it totally holds up.

Get it for your Kindle. Grab it on audio. Borrow it from your library. I don’t care how you get here, just … get here if you can.

5/5

Book chat: ‘Midnight in Chernobyl’

/ Meg / 3 Comments

Midnight in ChernobylWhat do you know about Chernobyl?

What do you think you know about Chernobyl?

I’ll go first: until a few weeks ago, next to nothing. As the wife of a physicist, I’ve been with Spencer as he “talks science” on many occasions. He’s great at breaking things down when I ask questions, but I usually have to get him to start at the beginning. As an English nerd, I’ve always fashioned myself to be someone only moderately capable of understanding something like a positive void coefficient.

Adam Higginbotham’s stunning Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster changed all that. Not only am I apparently capable of understanding scientific principles a decade-plus after I last set foot in a classroom, but I can enjoy it, too. When Higginbotham is at the helm, at least.

Midnight in Chernobyl opens with the key players of the infamous April 1986 disaster — and that’s fitting, of course, given how many people and oppressive power structures all contributed to the eventual failing of the No. 4 reactor at the power station in Ukraine, then a part of the USSR. I already felt lost in the roll call, but my husband convinced me to stick with it. The names — unpronounceable, at first, to my western ear — all soon came sharply into focus: Akimov. Dyatlov. Brukhanov. Legasov.

It’s not about one person . . . not several people. Not a single system or single failure. Not just a single finger on one fateful button. “The holes in the Swiss cheese lined up,” as they say. And since zero people need a dissertation on Chernobyl from me, I’ll leave you to much wiser folks if you’re interested in the subject matter.

Better yet — read this book! It’s loads more fun than a bunch of Wikipedia entries, I assure you. Even if it is very interesting to see corresponding photos of everything Higginbotham describes.

What’s amazing about that, though, is I already had a thick stack of mental pictures: of the dark, water-filled tunnels beneath the reactor and its deep, burning throat; of the reactor hall blown open, and the people scrambling in its wake. Of the radioactivity so thick that it actually shrouds the bottoms of photos in something like fog. Higginbotham describes everything so poetically, it’s easy to forget we’re talking about nuclear meltdown. About science. This? It reads like literature.

I was hooked.

It’s no surprise that the author is a journalist. The book describes everything in stunning detail; his passion for the subject is evident. The level of research must have been insane. I loved when, toward its final pages, Higginbotham himself entered the narrative, describing the settings of his interviews with Chernobyl scientists still living or spouses left behind, picking up the radioactive wreckage all these years later.

Chernobyl2Now suitably intrigued by Chernobyl, like so many before me, I’ve started watching the acclaimed HBO miniseries after the kids go to bed. Spencer has already watched the whole thing through once (twice?), and it’s not exactly light bedtime viewing . . . it’s disturbing, of course. Incredibly well done and memorable, but not relaxing.

It’s hard to stop once you’ve started, though. From the evacuation of Pripyat — now an extreme tourist destination — to the government cover-ups and human toll eventually collected in Moscow’s Hospital No. 6, it’s impossible to look away from this terrible slice of history.

The show is great, but I didn’t need it to deepen my understanding of Chernobyl. Everything depicted in the show is as I’d imagined from Higginbotham’s writing. Midnight in Chernobyl paints such a vivid picture that I scarcely needed to “see” anything at all.

I won’t forget it. You won’t, either.

5/5

See more on Goodreads. 

Book chat: ‘The Hopefuls’ by Jennifer Close

/ Meg

the-hopefulsBeth can’t say she entered into her marriage with Matt ignorant of his political aspirations. But when her husband relocates them to Washington, D.C., as part of his work for President Obama, the tedious, seedy and, yes, often dull side of politics takes over her day-to-day life.

A friendship with Ash, a Texan also in the city due to her husband’s presidential connections, adds levity and companionship to Beth’s life — but Ash’s husband, Jimmy, has political goals of his own. When Matt and Jimmy become entangled in “turning Texas blue” as part of Jimmy’s campaign to earn a spot in local government, jealousy and indignation threaten to derail more than just their friendship.

Jennifer Close’s The Hopefuls caught my eye because, hello, I adore the cover. I’m also a Marylander who lives within breathing distance of Washington and am always swept up in politics, both local and national, and I’ll admit to being a bit wistful regarding the halcyon days of the Obama Administration. The story opens at the start of his first term, and it was actually bittersweet — especially given the current state of affairs — to think about how different life was then.

The Hopefuls had my attention early, gaining good ground even with the constant digs against D.C. (yes, it’s hot and humid; yes, everyone here talks about their job as a way of gaining status), but my enthusiasm for the story flagged by the time Matt and Beth departed for Texas to help with a weirdly unattainable political campaign put on by Jimmy.

Told from Beth’s first-person perspective, I expected … more of Beth in this story? As it stands, she’s merely an observer — and not a terribly interesting one at that. Though we’re told she’s a writer, she spends her time in Texas complaining and wandering around the house she and Matt now share with Jimmy and Ash, “helping” with the campaign here and there but ultimately doing nothing but seething with rage as Matt comes increasingly distant.

There was so much potential in a subplot regarding whether Beth actually wants to have the child she knows her husband longs for, especially as all of their coupled friends start families … but it never really goes anywhere, at least not in a satisfying way. Beth has an opportunity to look inward regarding the source of her anger as her closest girlfriends become mothers, but the novel just stays on-the-surface throughout. That disappointed me.

I enjoyed Close’s examination of adult friendships and liked brash Ash (hey, that rhymes), but her dynamic with husband Jimmy was pretty sad — and Matt and Beth’s marriage ultimately flounders, too. As a look at how changing priorities can impact — and damage — relationships as marriages mature, I think The Hopefuls works. But it’s just a little depressing, too.

3 out of 5

Pub: 2016 • Goodreads • Amazon • Author Website
Review copy provided by publisher in exchange for review consideration