Brother and Sister by Diane Keaton

Brother and Sister: A Memoir by Diane Keaton

Read by Diane Keaton

4 hours, 29 minutes

Published February 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

When they were children in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1950s, Diane Keaton and her younger brother, Randy, were best friends and companions: they shared stories at night in their bunk beds; they swam, laughed, dressed up for Halloween. Their mother captured their American-dream childhoods in her diaries, and on camera. But as they grew up, Randy became troubled, then reclusive. By the time he reached adulthood, he was divorced, an alcoholic, a man who couldn't hold on to full-time work—his life a world away from his sister's, and from the rest of their family.

Now Diane is delving into the nuances of their shared, and separate, pasts to confront the difficult question of why and how Randy ended up living his life on "the other side of normal." In beautiful and fearless prose that's intertwined with photographs, journal entries, letters, and poetry—many of them Randy's own writing and art—this insightful memoir contemplates the inner workings of a family, the ties that hold it together, and the special bond between siblings even when they are pulled far apart. Here is a story about love and responsibility: about how, when we choose to reach out to the people we feel closest to—in moments of difficulty and loss—surprising things can happen. A story with universal echoes, Brother & Sister speaks across generations to families whose lives have been touched by the fragility and "otherness" of loved ones—and to brothers and sisters everywhere.

My Thoughts: 

In the early years of their lives, Randy and Diane slept in the same room, sharing a bunk bed. When they moved into a new house, they no longer shared that room. Grown Keaton wonders if Randy's life would have been different had that not been separated so early, had he had a friend to confide in every night, had they not had other siblings. She ponders the "what-ifs" had Randy been raised differently. But she doesn't throw blame and she doesn't make excuses for his behavior or his troubles. Randy was blessed to have a family who cared so much and never stopped trying to help him. 

Keaton was candid and honest about how difficult Randy's mental health and addiction were on the family and on her She struggled to be honest about what was happening, to be caring. But she also found she needed to be tough when it was called for. 

As Diane's rose to fame, she had to also straddle Randy's descent. Fortunately, her rise allowed Randy to have the best care possible for the rest of his life, something she became well aware of being hard to find, even when you have money. In the end, Keaton is able to look back with humor at the things Randy did and be in awe of the way his brain worked and not entirely sad by the turn his life took and the toll it took on the family. 

It's so wonderful to hear Keaton's voice and I highly recommend the audiobook. But I know that I missed out on those photos, letters and art. I'm thinking a read/listen option is the way to go with this one! 

That's A Good Question, I'd Love To Tell You by Elyse Myers

That's A Good Question, I'd Love To Tell You by Elyse Myers

288 pages

Published October 2025 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary:

Elyse Myers is known to her twelve million followers as “The Internet’s Best Friend,” sharing her relatable stories and comedic sketches and serving as an advocate for topics such as neurodivergence, impostor syndrome, body image, and more. Whether she’s making people laugh with tales of disastrous dates or giving a voice to that awkward internal monologue many of us have, she has three simple goals behind everything she makes: To make people feel known, loved, and like they belong.
In That's a Great Question, I'd Love to Tell You, Elyse delivers a debut collection of deeply personal stories and hand—drawn illustrations, offering even more intimate reflections beyond what fans have seen on her social media, including:

• Spending 7 Minutes in Heaven accidentally friend—zoning her crush
• How Lucy, the Magic 8 Ball keychain, changed her life by accident
• Moving from California to Australia to Texas to Nebraska to like (maybe even love!) herself
• How to Fold Hospital Corners in 10 EASY STEPS!—a practical guide and a rumination about…everything
• The “meat cute” when she met her smoke show of a husband at a butcher’s counter in Australia—and how she revealed herself to be an emotional runner

Plus, tales involving bad dates and is—this—a—dates; the tempting yet futile urge to reinvent yourself, panic attacks and escape hatches, and favorite pens and systems to use them, all while loving and letting yourself be loved, preferably at the same time.

My Thoughts: 

I first came across Elyse on Instagram, initially drawn to her positive messages about dealing with depression and self doubt. I introduced her to everyone I thought would benefit from her messages. Then I began to listen to her stories, which always began "That's a good question; I'd love to tell you" and often went on for several  posts, generally accompanied by drawings. Her incredible empathy and honesty drew me to her, her humor kept me coming back for more. Myers had found a way to make her "too much" exactly the right amount and it resonated with hundreds of thousands of people. Soon she began hosting a podcast and now she's written a book. 

This is the story of her life, from the time she was little, through her time in Australia, through a trip to visit the man she'd been talking to on the phone for months in Kansas, to her marriage to Jonas. It's told through chapters that are centered on where she was in her life geographically at the time. After watching her stories and reading her posts for a couple of years, I was familiar with the bones of her life. But the book fills that in, reminding readers of Myer's openness, willingness to share her struggles, and ability to find the humor in the pain. 

Elyse reads the audiobook, which I'm sure is fantastic. But if you listen to this one, you'll miss all of the drawings which really make the stories come to life. There's at least one more book in Myers; at least I'm hoping there is. Her life has been just as interesting since her marriage. And there are all of those anecdotal stories she's shared on social media that I'm certain readers would love to hear about again. 

Would I recommend it? Certainly - who wouldn't love a book that shows how it's possible to overcome your struggles and find happiness? 

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell

Read by Daisy Donovan

6 hours

Published August 2017 by Knopf

Publisher’s Summary: 

We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death.

I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.

My Thoughts: 

It's been some time since I finished this book so I'm going to just stick with the notes I made about it when I finished it. 

• This is a sequence of near and not-so-near misses. It's shocking how often O'Farrell has had brushes with death in some way. It started with that childhood illness and ends with her own daughter's medical condition. At 16 she jumps off a harbor wall; but, because of childhood encephalitis and an inability to sense where things are and her place among them, meant she was unable to surface on her own and had to be rescued. At 18, she went for a walk during a break from work and encountered a man who appeared to be waiting for her; she manages to get away but later finds out the man has killed another young girl. Later she is on a plane to Hong Kong that almost crashes and her description of what it was like in that cabin is vivid. The chapter on one of her many miscarriages is superb and heart wrenching. 
• O'Farrell sometimes tells the experience in the third person, which makes it feel less like her own life and more like a story. But they are excellent stories and it's easy to accept them being less personal feeling. 
• I'm a big fan of O'Farrell's fiction and her ability to make readers feel like they are part of the book. This book gave me the same feeling. 
• Daisy Donovan's reading is excellent. 
• Would I recommend it? Definitely. But that recommendation comes with a trigger warning. There are a lot of things here that might be upsetting to some readers. 

Truth and Beauty: a friendship by Ann Patchett

Read by Ann Patchett

8 hours 6 minutes

Published 2004 by HarperCollins

Publisher’s Summary: 

What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when that person is not your lover, but your best friend? In her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett shines light on the little-explored world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about the first half of her life. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans 20 years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

My Thoughts: 

As you’re well aware, I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s fiction writing and I loved her essay collection This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage. But I might like her even better as a human being. Not that I actually know her, but I do watch her every posts every week. Did you know that when Nashville was hit with the ice storm last week, Patchett paid for the hotel bills of every employee who had to leave their home due to lack of power and paid employees even if they couldn’t get into the store. The store remained open every day as a place people could come to warm up. That’s a good human. 

She was also an incredible friend to Lucy Grealy, a woman who, in my opinion, often made it difficult. Lucy could be very self-centered and was terrible roommate. She took out loans she had no intention of ever paying back, wouldn’t do any work that wasn’t writing, fretted incessantly about never finding love or not getting the grants or positions she wanted. To be fair, Lucy’s life was tough – she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma which led to the removal of part of her jawbone; in an effort to repair the damage caused by that and chemotherapy, Lucy underwent dozens of surgeries. She suffered from the cruelty of children while in school and adults when she was older. 

Patchett and Grealy were only slightly familiar with each other when they became roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but Patchett had admired Grealy in college. Grealy had that “it” factor that seemed to draw people to her and Patchett was no exception. As roommate the two agreed that Patchett would do all of the cooking and cleaning while Grealy would leave plates of food on the floor and borrow Patchett’s clothes without asking. But Lucy was fun and Patchett needed someone to pull her off of her straight and narrow path and into the fun. Lucy loved Ann and it’s hard not to love someone back who loves you so much they jump into your arms regularly. 

Over the next nearly two decades the two stayed incredibly close and Patchett traveled regularly to spend time with Grealy. But Grealy began to check in less and less often as her depression deepened and then her addition to oxycontin and heroin consumed her. Patchett began more and more to have to mother Grealy, to be the voice of reason. In those final years, loving her became more and more difficult. Still, two years after losing Lucy, when this book was published, Patchett was clearly still grieving and feeling that Grealy was worth the hard times. 

This is an incredible story of love and friendship, written beautifully. Read by Patchett, it becomes all the more heartfelt and heartbreaking. 

Mini-Reviews: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; Go Gentle; Wild, Dark Shore; Broken Country; Between Two Kingdoms

 All caught up now and ready for the new year! 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Jessica Guerrieri

282 pages

Published May 2025 by Harper Muse

Publisher's Summary: 

Leah O'Connor is torn between her current existence and the allure of a phantom life that can no longer be hers.

Swept off her feet by the gentle charm of Lucas O'Connor, Leah's unexpected pregnancy changes the course of her carefree and nomadic existence. Over a decade and three children later, Leah is unraveling. She resents the world in which her artistic aspirations have been sidelined by the overwhelming demands of motherhood, and the ever-present rift between herself and her mother-in-law, Christine, is best dulled by increasingly fuller glasses of wine.

Christine represents a model of selfless motherhood that Leah can neither achieve nor accept. To heighten the strain, Lucas's business venture, a trendy restaurant that honors his mother, has taken all his attention, which places the domestic demands squarely on Leah's shoulders. Seeking an ally in her sweet sister-in-law Amy, Leah shares a secret that, if made known to the wider family, could disrupt the curated ecosystems that keep the O'Connors connected.

As Leah dances with the devil while descending further into darkness, her behavior becomes more erratic and further alienates her from both Lucas and the wider family. Leah's drinking threatens the welfare of her family, prompting Amy to turn to Christine for support. A duel for loyalty ensues. When the inevitable waves come crashing down, it's the O'Connor women who give Leah a lifeline: the truth of what they've all endured. But Leah alone must uncover the villain of her own story, learn how to ask for help, and decide if the family she has rejected will be her salvation or ultimate undoing.

My Thoughts: 

Despite the fact that this one was only 282 pages, I still felt like it could have been edited down and I did feel like there were options for the O'Connors that would have allowed Leah to continue with her artwork while also allowing Lucas to pursue his dream of recreating his parents' former restaurant that would have avoided the conflict that fueled much of Leah's active addiction.

Still, this one felt like a good depiction of addiction, told from a couple of viewpoints and a good examination of what happens when a woman has children she wasn't planning on having. In this case, Leah very much loves her children, but she never stops feeling like she lost a part of herself when she had them. The publisher's summary seems to insinuate that Leah is the villain of her own story; that's untrue. The only villain here is addiction. 

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

384 pages

Published April 2026 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a "coven"—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.

Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard to bury—lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.

My Thoughts: 

I first encountered Semple's writing in 2010 and might never have picked up another of her books. But then came Where'd You Go Bernadette and the promise that I'd seen in that first book came to fruition in Bernadette. Going into this book, I wondered which version of Semple I'd get and was pleasantly surprised to find that, once again, I felt like Semple more than lived up to my expectations. 

There are some jarring jumps, which some readers may struggle with. There are also a number of things that will be tough for some readers. But once again, Semple's written satire that works on many levels and this is an intelligent read. Adora is a great character and it's nice to read a book about a middle-aged woman that allows her to be a full-fledged person. It's not a book for everyone but it is a book that I'll be recommending to a lot of my reader friends. Jump on board for the ride! 

Wild, Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

320 pages

Published March 2025 by Flatiron Press

A Reese's Book Club pick 

Publisher's Summary: 

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. 

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

My Thoughts: 

One of my favorite books of 2025, which those of you who have been around a while will find surprising when I tell you there's an element of science fiction to this one. Climate change is having a devastating impact on the planet with drought resulting in fires and dying crops and rising sea levels devouring islands and the borders of continents. 

The Salts have to get off the island soon, before it's entirely devoured. Their job is to finish collecting seeds from the seed bank to bring back to the continent before the seed bank is flooded. But members of the family are all dealing with grief following the loss of their wife/mother and they're also harboring a secret they hope will never be discovered. When Rowan is found washed up after a boat wreck, she's also harboring a secret. Despite that, the family and Rowan begin to form an alliance that might just be what it takes to get them all off of the island before it's too late...as long as those secrets stay hidden. This would make an excellent book club selection. 

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall 

320 pages 

Published March 2025 by Simon and Schuster

A Reese's Book Club pick

Publisher's Summary: 

“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

My Thoughts: 

Another of my favorite books of 2025, one I recommend to everyone. Hall's writing is marvelous and if I could have, I might have read this on in one sitting. 

There's a mystery to that death of the farmer, one that is slowly revealed as Hall moves readers from the past (Beth's and Gabriel's youthful love story) to Beth's and Frank's life together to glimpses into the trial of the accused murder of the farmer. These are well-written characters placed in a story line that allows each character room to explore why they are who they are. This one has everything I love in a novel - terrific writing and characters, a lovely setting both physically and in time, an emotional impact that stayed with me long after I'd finished the book. 

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Read by Suleika Jaouad

13 hours, 2 minutes

Published February 2021 by Random House Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch-first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward-after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant-she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it's where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal-to survive. And now that she'd done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked-with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt-on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who'd spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. 

My Thoughts: 

I was familiar with Jaouad as the wife of musical virtuoso Jon Batiste, and familiar with her recent battle with leukemia through Batiste's movie American Symphony. But I knew nothing about how her battle had begun, how she had beaten leukemia previously, or how she and Batiste had come together. 

Jaouad writes in detail about how her symptoms first appeared, how she battled to keep moving forward with her personal life before she was finally diagnosed, the man she nearly married who stayed with her through much of her battle until it just became too much for him, and the treatments she endured as she fought the cancer. It brings home that fact that battling cancer requires a team far beyond the professionals in the medical buildings and how hard it is for patients to deal with that. It makes it clear how important finding a community that understands is, and how much someone has to want to live to be willing to go through what it takes to come out on the other end. Even though my family members have battled (and some lost that battle to) cancer, I learned so much from this book about what it takes out of a person and their loved ones and about cancers themselves. Jaouad was fortunate to be a skilled enough writer to find work that allowed her to work as much as she could and even to travel the country in search of other stories as she felt able. We are fortunate to have all of those stories. 

Mini-reviews: Ejaculate Responsibly, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, The Bright Years, Our Spoons Came From Woolworths

 More mini-reviews in a mad rush to be able to start 2026 all caught up!

Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way To Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Blair

Read by Gabrielle Blair

3 hours, 8 minutes

Published October 2022 by Workman Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America. In a series of 28 brief arguments, she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from*controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies. 

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.

The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility-and burden-of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.

My Thoughts: 

Don't look at that one word in the title and decide this isn't a book for you. In fact, if that word bothers you, there's even more reason to read this book. Blair (who I follow on Instagram for many reasons), has written a book full of ways the number of abortions can be vastly reduced. It's eye-opening and well-reasoned and I really wish the people who need to read and heed would do just that. I definitely recommend it, but you might want to hide the cover if you don't want people in the doctor's office waiting room to look at you strangely. 

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston

Read by Tim Carroll 

10 hours, 49 minutes

Published September 2024 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

“Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I'll take excellent care of it.”

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he'd return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is, at age eighty-two, there's nobody left in Fred's life to borrow from, and he's broke and on the brink of eviction.But Fred's luck changes when he's mistaken for Bernard Greer, a missing resident at the local nursing home, and takes his place. Now Fred has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head-as long as his look-alike Bernard never turns up.

Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.

As Fred walks in Bernard's shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.

My Thoughts: 

I learned about this book at my local library's annual Book Bash and I will say that the premise that sold me on picking it up lives up to my expectations. It is a unique idea that is the "feel-good...novel about grief, redemption, forgiveness and finding family" that the publisher's summary proclaims it. Unfortunately, it's not quite a clever as they also proclaim it. 

Being as the lead character is male, Johnston seems to have felt like she needed to throw some things in that made it feel more like a story a man has told - there are so many references to farts, peeing, and other bodily functions, most of which could have easily been left out. It does require that readers suspend disbelief (which, for the most part, I was willing to do), but it also gets repetitive frequently. Overall, I enjoyed it; it just required my forgiving the faults I found. 

The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff

Read by Ferdelle Capistrano, Joy Osmanski, and Lee Osorio

8 hours, 50 minutes

Published April 2025 by Simon and Schuster

Publisher's Summary: 

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn't told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn't told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian's son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family's history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them-or herself-while there's still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life debut that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.

My Thoughts: 

This one suffered, for me, from having had my listening broken up by several weeks. To the point where it took me a good 20 minutes, when I got it loaned again, to remember that I'd even started it before. I think if I would have listened to it straight through, it would have been a book I would have liked a lot more. Which is not to say that I didn't like it; I did. 

The characters are interesting, the relationships feel real, and I liked (even though I didn't think I would when the last narrator began), the way Damoff finished the book. This book is much more a novel about grief, redemption, forgiveness and finding family than is The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife. I would definitely recommend it for book clubs - so much to discuss! 

Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

224 pages

Published 1950 by Eyre and Spottiswoode originally

Publisher's Summary: 

“I told Helen my story and she went home and cried.” So begins Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. But Barbara Comyns’s beguiling novel is far from tragic, despite the harrowing ordeals its heroine endures. 

Sophia is twenty-one and naïve when she marries fellow artist Charles. She seems hardly fonder of her husband than she is of her pet newt; she can’t keep house (everything she cooks tastes of soap); and she mistakes morning sickness for the aftereffects of a bad batch of strawberries. England is in the middle of the Great Depression, and the money Sophia makes from the occasional modeling gig doesn’t make up for her husband’s indifference to paying the rent. Predictably, the marriage falters; not so predictably, Sophia’s artlessness will be the very thing that turns her life around.

My Thoughts: 

First published in 1950 and set in the 1930's, this is the kind of British book that's become a modern classic, even if you've never heard of it. It's also largely autobiographical, which I was not aware of until I was pulling the information about the book. In many ways that makes the book even more poignant. 

Sophia really is quite naive through most of the book, particularly vulnerable to society's mores and the belief that Charles isn't the bum he actually is. When Sophia gets pregnant, she is no longer able to work (because it's the 1930's and just not done, for the most part), throwing their little family into poverty. Charles doesn't want the baby and is the terrible father you'd expect. Sophia hungers for someone who cares, throwing her into an ill-advised affair. As terrible as things get for Sophia, as the publisher says, things turn around for her, just as I'd hoped they would. Thanks for the recommendation, Ann Patchett! 

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

224 pages

Published February 2025 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

My Thoughts: 

""Is this the home of Tony Horowitz?"

   Yes. 

   "Who am I speaking to?"

   This is his wife. 

   That is exact. The rest is a blur.

   "Collapsed in the street...tried to resuscitate at the scene...brought to the hospital...couldn't revive him..."

   And, so, now he's in the OR. And, so, now we've admitted him for a procedure. And, so, now we're 

   keeping him for observation.

   So many things that logically should have followed.

   But she said none of these things. Instead, the illogical thing. 

   He's dead. 

   No."

How's that for packing a punch to open a book? 

I'd forgotten that this was a memoir when I started it. As I read these words, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this is the way to make the death of a loved one sound real." Well, of course it was. Even so, I'm so impressed by Brooks' ability to make that moment, six years ago, still feel so very real and raw. 

Brooks writes about her own grief, about helping her sons and in-laws deal with their grief, about trying to understand how a person as healthy as Tony appeared to be could die so suddenly, about their lives together. She didn't make a saint of him. All of it brought Tony to life and made it even easier to understand why his loss was so difficult to bear. 

This book really resonated with me, for the storytelling, for the writing, and because I could so relate to it. No, I have not lost my husband. But I have faced the diagnosis of my husband's cancer and lived through figuring out how to tell my children, how to comfort them while also facing my own possible future, of having to manage the shock and sadness of others. I have dealt with the very sudden loss of my mother and all of the strategic decisions that had to be made for months afterward that put off of my own grief to an extent. I could understand the need to step away from it all to have time to allow myself to feel everything. 

Brooks did all of that while trying to finish the novel she was working on at the time of Tony's death, Horse. Because life moves forward, no matter how much we need it to stop for a little while. 

The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement by Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement by Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

352 pages 

Published April 2025 by Sourcebooks

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

October, 1997. Late one night in Fairbanks, Alaska, a passerby finds a teenager unconscious, collapsed on the edge of the road, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Two days later, he dies in the hospital. His name is John Gilbert Hartman and he's just turned 15 years old. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under the age of 21 and of Alaska Native and American Indian descent. Police lineup witnesses, trials follow, and all four men receive lengthy prison terms. Case closed. 

But journalist Brian Patrick O'Donoghue can't put the story out of his mind. When the opportunity arises to teach a class on investigative reporting, he finally digs into what happened to the "Fairbanks Four." A relentless search for the truth ensues as O'Donoghue and his students uncover the lies, deceit, and prejudice that put four innocent young men in jail.

The Fairbanks Four is the gripping story of a brutal crime and its sprawling aftermath in the frigid Alaska landscape. It's a story of collective action as one journalist, his students, and the Fairbanks indigenous community challenge the verdicts. It's the story of a broken justice system, and the effort required to keep hope alive. This is the story of the Fairbanks Four.

My Thoughts: 

Ever since Mini-me and Ms. S moved to Alaska, I've been drawn toward learning more about that state and its people, which is why this book initially caught my eye. But the subtitle is what really pulled me in. The more I read in general, the more aware I am of how often our justice system fails us as a society - corruption, racism, sloppy work, reliance on people who have a lot to gain by saying what the system wants them to say, society's expectation that crimes will be resolved quickly (fueled by watching it happen that way on t.v.). 

I made the mistake of reading this on my phone. I should know better - I don't think any book I've ever read entirely on my phone has ever gotten the fair shake it deserves and I feel certain that my opinion of this book would have been different if I'd have read it on my iPad. It wasn't helped, either, by the fact that I read it during a reading slump and never read it long enough at any one sitting to really get immersed in it. For me, it seemed to drag a bit at time and I got bogged down in trying to keep who was who straight. There are a lot of people involved in this story, from the four young men initially convicted of the murder, to the witnesses, the police, the attorneys, the judges, those working to free the young men, and those working with O'Donoghue to get to the truth of the murder. If I'd have been smart, I would have made myself a list. 

Do you ever watch Dateline or 48 Hours or any of those kinds of shows? If you do, then you're familiar with the way that, as details emerge and depending on who you're listening to, the truth seems to sway first one way and then the next. Even knowing going in (because of course this book wouldn't exist if this weren't true) that the four young men would eventually be exonerated, I still swayed back and forth. Certainly none of these young men were perfect angels, but it was clear early on that a desperately understaffed police department was being pressured to solve this case as quickly as possible by any means possible and that's what they did. 

O'Donoghue, left; the Fairbanks Four, right

O'Donoghue, who had been a newspaperman and then became a college professor, was convinced to look further into the case and used this case as a learning tool for his classes. Others in the native Alaskan community also took up the cause. Even so, it took 18 years of pressure and hundreds of man hours and digging for these men to be released. It took almost another decade before O'Donoghue was able to get the book published; not until the men won settlements from the city did the publisher agree that there was an ending to the story that made it worth publishing. 

As much as I struggled getting through the book (again, my fault more than the book's), it's the first book I've read in a long time that made me want to dig deeper. I discovered that the victim's brother still believes that the four men initially convicted were the real killers and he's extremely angry that they've not only gone free but have won settlements. It was brought home to me, once again, that when someone is released, it's hard to assimilate back into society - imagine how the outside world changed between 1997 and 2015. One of the men had a young daughter when he was imprisoned; by the time he got out, he had two granddaughters. Nothing can bring back everything that these men lost while they were behind bars. 

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

384 pages

Published May 2013 by Skyhorse Publishing

Publisher's Summary: On June 22, 1954, teenage friends Juliet Hulme—better known as bestselling mystery writer Anne Perry—and Pauline Parker went for a walk in a New Zealand park with Pauline’s mother, Honora. Half an hour later, the girls returned alone, claiming that Pauline’s mother had had an accident. But when Honora Parker was found in a pool of blood with the brick used to bludgeon her to death close at hand, Juliet and Pauline were quickly arrested, and later confessed to the killing. Their motive? A plan to escape to the United States to become writers, and Honora’s determination to keep them apart. Their incredible story made shocking headlines around the world and would provide the subject for Peter Jackson’s Academy Award–nominated film, Heavenly Creatures. 

A sensational trial followed, with speculations about the nature of the girls’ relationship and possible insanity playing a key role. Among other things, Parker and Hulme were suspected of lesbianism, which was widely considered to be a mental illness at the time. This mesmerizing book offers a brilliant account of the crime and ensuing trial and shares dramatic revelations about the fates of the young women after their release from prison. With penetrating insight, this thorough analysis applies modern psychology to analyze the shocking murder that remains one of the most interesting cases of all time.

My Thoughts: 

I'm playing catch up on reviews so I'm going to just do a quick bullet point on this one. 

• I don't remember where I first heard about this book but the idea that a well-known author had been involved in a murder as a young woman intrigued me. How, I wondered, had she gotten past that to become a respected writer? 
• By the time I actually got around to reading the book, I'd forgotten that Anne Perry was actually Juliet Hulme and thought that she was involved in some other way. Except that I always, always look at the photo inserts in a book before I start reading so I quickly figured it out. 
• Both Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker had difficult childhoods that caused them to have attachment issues with their mothers. Neither mother was ideal - Honorah Rieper ran hot and cold and Hilda Hulme struggled to connect with her daughter at all. Juliet was considered quite pretty and very bright - she thought perhaps even more highly about herself because of this than did anyone else. Both girls clearly struggled with mental health issues. 
• That being said, so little was known about mental health as recently as the 1950's that both doctors and the judicial system struggled to explain how two girls who showed no remorse and clearly understood that what they did was wrong could also be mentally ill. Also, the idea that these two young ladies might be lesbians was a big story - inherently this seemed to make them worse people but did it mean that they were just worse people or even more mentally ill? It seemed that it must be one or the other. 
• If this happened today, it would still be big, international news. We'd still struggle with the idea of matricide and how two young girls could be so remorseless. 
• As bad as the penal system was in the 1950's, as terrible as the conditions in the places where these young women were sent were, they were both allowed to continue their educations and actually served very little time, relative to the crime they'd committed. What was even more strange was the fact that they were both treated so differently when they were released. Parker was force to stay in New Zealand on parole, while Hulme (who took on the name Perry because her mother had taken that name on after she became involved with a new man by that name) was allowed to travel to Britain. 
• The two women dealt with the aftermath of what they had done very differently. Parker appeared to be very repentant and lived a quiet, religious life, trying to stay out of the spotlight. Perry (whose name evolved to Anne Perry) was able to live without anyone knowing about her past and became quite wealthy and well known with her writing. In many interviews, after it was discovered who she was, she showed very little remorse. 
• Director Peter Jackson got his big break when he and his wife produced a film adaptation of the case. Heavenly Creatures starred Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey. Now I want to track that movie down. 
• Reviews on this one are very mixed. Some think it's terrific. I thought it particularly dragged in the middle and that Graham tried to stuff in everything that he'd learned about the case. At the end of the book, we learned what had happened to all of the people who had played a part in the trial - honestly, I didn't really care. I don't know what that says about me. Did I want it to be more sensational? Not particularly. But I also thought it was a story that should have better held my attention. 

Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff by Myquillen Smith

Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff

By Myquillen Smith

Read by Lisa Wright

3 hours, 50 minutes

Published October 2018 by Zondervan

Publisher's Summary: 

Writing for the hands-on woman who'd rather move her own furniture than hire a designer, Myquillyn Smith—author of the The Nesting Place—helps you think through every room in your house, one purposeful design decision at a time. With people, priorities, and purpose in mind, you can create a warm, inviting, and timeless home that transcends the latest trends and centers around your personal style.

You'll have the tools to create a home you're proud of in a way that honors your unique priorities, budget, and taste. And best of all, you can completely transform your home starting with furniture and décor that you already have!

In Cozy Minimalist Home, Smith helps you:

• Recognize your role as the curator of your home who makes smart, style-impacting design choices
• Know what to focus on and what not to worry about
• Discover the real secret to finding your unique style
• Find a sofa you won't hate tomorrow
• Deconstruct each room and re-create it step by step
• Create a pretty home with more style and less stuff
• Make your home look the way you've always hoped so you can use it the way you've always dreamed 
• Fall in love with the space you've created

Discover how creating a cozy minimalist home goes beyond pretty and sets the stage for the true connection, relationship, and rest that you deserve.

My Thoughts: 

Confession: I actually own this book in print (and, in my defense, I have actually read it), but I choose to listen to it to complement the work I've been doing around the house with the Cozy Minimalist community this year. I could have pulled it off of the shelf; but, at the time, I felt more confident that I'd get through it this way. Lesson I learned: a lot of what Smith has to say comes across just fine in an audiobook, but I missed the visual part of a book like this. 

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I am a cozy minimalist. I love the homes that have layers and layers of things that tell a story, where you can really learn who someone is by the things they choose to display in their homes. My heart is drawn to that. But my brain knows two things about me that stop my heart from having it's way: 1) I know I'm not going to dust all of that stuff regularly and I HATE knowing my house is dusty; and 2) my mood is much better if my brain is not overwhelmed by stuff. Maybe that makes me a super cozy minimalist? Someone who needs more cozy than the regular cozy minimalist, but who also doesn't want to have as much stuff as she does now? 

So I'm refreshing myself with the idea of cozy minimalism - having just the right amount of "stuff" to make your home work for you, feel comfortable, and look lovely; but doing it in a way that's very intentional so that everything works together. Smith is very adamant that when you're working on redecorating a room, you do it in the right order and make very deliberate choices. About room arrangement. About the size of rugs and decorative pieces. And about NOT choosing a paint color until AFTER you've decided on your big pieces of furniture and rugs. Why? Because there are thousands of paint colors to choose from and it's going to be easier to match your paint to the other things you've chosen, rather than trying to find a rug to match the color you've painted on the walls.  

Smith (or Nester, as she's known to those who follow her teachings) uses her own homes to teach her community these lessons. It's a style that's all her own, and it wouldn't be for me. But I recognize that by using her techniques, she's made a room that is lovely, cozy, and works for her family. And I'm confident that those same techniques will work for any of us.