The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (2013)

This is an intense book telling many stories. I had not read anything about this book before I started, just chose it based on the fact that I like the author - Elizabeth Gilbert.

First of all, it is a history of the study of botany book. It starts with Kew gardens in England, reminding me of a Philippa Gregory's Earthly Joys. Henry Whittaker is the son of a gardner, who gets caught stealing rare plants and selling them to others, so instead of being hung, he gets sent around the world to collect specimens for Kew. He ends up starting his own business and settles in Philadelphia. He takes a Dutch wife and they have one daughter - Alma.

Some scribbled notes - the book takes us to Tahiti to collect specimens, where the Tahitians think that plants grow in shapes to help humans. They also mentioned that Eurpeans brought illnesses that decimated the population from 200,000 to 8,000. Wikipedia explains that the first number was an overestimation, but that the population did drop to 16,000 and even to a low point of 6,000.

One more unfinished review. It is the books I really loved and wanted to do them justice that I sometimes don't get around to finishing. This was from early in the year, so I don't remember details, just that I learned a lot about how early botanists worked and the main character, I believe, was a woman botanist, though I could find no historical character that she was based on.

Dance to the Piper by Nora Roberts (1988)

As soon as I heard the beginning, I was afraid it was one of the many Nora Roberts' books I had read, but then I realized it was just the story one of the other Hurley sisters, and I had read at least one of the others. Maddy, the youngest of the O'Hurley Triplets, is a dancer on Broadway. She meets Reed Valentine, the investor in the show and of course they have quite a bit to work through, but you know how it ends...

Book of Life by Deborah Harkness (2014)

Third in the All Souls Trilogy full of current day witches, vampires and demons, and I loved it again, could read more. The conflict comes to a head and of course our lovely couple - historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire Matthew Clairmont prevail. I am sorry I didn't have time to write this up when I finished reading it, but it is now the end of the year, and I just want to make sure I have it recorded. I do remember a very accurate description of the birthing process - a major event often glossed over in books. I am glad Harkness did it justice.  I also remember looking up the distance between the Bodleian Library in Oxford and London (about 60 miles) and the book seem to refer to it being in London. Ahh, small detail. I love that libraries and books play a major role in this story.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Numaweera (2012)

Learned about another corner of the world - Sri Lanka. I am sorry to say that though I believe I was aware of strife on this large island off the southeast coast of India at one point, if someone had asked me about Sri Lanka before I read this book, I couldn't have said anything about it. This covers the civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamils 1983-2009. The narrator tells of her family's life before the war, the hardships and terror during the war that made it impossible for her family to stay and ending up in the U.S. with all the difficulties of immigrant life. Other people's lives are shown in the book, including one woman who is forced to join the Tamil Tigers and is trained to be a suicide bomber.Wonderfully written.

Comfort and Joy by Kristin Hannah (2005)

A Christmas miracle novel. The novels I have read by Hannah so far have taken someone with a major life crisis and works them through to a level of healing. Here Joy is still reeling from a divorce and spontaneously gets on a plane to just get away for a while during the holidays, but the small plane crashes. She walks away from the wreck and walks into the life of 10 year old Bobby, who is suffering from the loss of his mother. His divorced father Daniel has returned to take care of him and get the bed and breakfast ready to sell, but they do not get along. Joy helps to heal the relationship, falling in love with both boy and father. But things are never what they seem to be...

Starry Night by Debbie Macomber (2013)

I was told this was "light" and so it was. Carrie works for a newspaper in Chicago, but dislikes her assignment as society reporter. She is given the opportunity to work on something more substantial, if she can get a an interview with the reclusive writer Finn Dalton from Alaska. She ends up finding him and spending a couple of days with him in his cabin, and of course they don't get along, but when they go outside to see the stars and northern lights, they fall in love. Of course it takes them the rest of the book to work it through. I liked the life in the cabin, the beauty of its nature, the need for family, especially around holidays, the difficulty of compromise in relationships, but I am not sure I will bother with any more of Macomber books. 

The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore (2004)

Subtitle: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror. I was looking for something light, and Moore has amused me before, though I don't think I can read his stuff too often. This is set in Pine Cove - a fictional California coastal town not far from Big Sur. It is town full of odd characters, some off their rocker more than others. Then we get a character I remember from his previous books - Tuck. There is a theme of not wanting to be alone at Christmas and I liked their lonely hearts Christmas party. There was a variation on the story where the woman cuts her hair to purchase a chain for her husband's watch and he sells his watch to buy her a hair comb. In this one she goes off her psychmeds so she can afford an expensive artsy bong for him, though he has gone off weed. He grows some weed again to buy her an expensive historical sword. Then there are the dead that hear what is going on and especially the hanky panky that goes on in graveyards. I used to sunbathe in graveyards in college and kept wondering what the dead thought about it, so Moore takes this a step further. It looks like there will be a movie of this book which I would enjoy watching.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (1961)

Listened to this with a techie friend on a road trip. I read it a long time ago, but it seemed like it would be fun to reread it, since it gets listed in not only top science fiction book lists, but top book lists in general. I wonder when I read it, but I get a sense that Heinlein influenced some of my own attitudes about things. 

Valentine Michael Smith was raised by Martians and is brought to earth to be studied. Since he is unused to the earth's gravity, he is hospitalized, where nurse Gillian Boardman rescues him from basically imprisonment. He is a quick learner, but one of the hardest things for him to understand is the earth's religions. He has learned a lot of powerful mind and body skills from the Martian's which he starts teaching Gill and the group of friends that surround them. Jubal Hershaw has gathered beautiful and intelligent women around him, where they live in relative isolation, and Michael and Gill find a refuge. It is complicated, but I really enjoyed this story, that is still so relevant today, even if a few details are outdated. I could not get mad at Heinlein for having Jubal call the women his "girls", as that was the speech of the times and all his women are strong characters. I like the individualism and community, though no longer would want to live that closely with a group of people, as I once may have dreamed to do. 

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian (2014)

I think I picked up this book, because it said it was set partially in Burlington, VT, where I have good friends. I will have to ask them about some of the details here. I did look at a map of VT and found Lake Memphremagog on the border with Canada, and found that there is not a nuclear power plant there. The author is a journalist from Burlington who has over the years met a lot of "troubled teens" and finds that some manage to struggle through difficult circumstances, while others just get lost. The interview with him and his daughter, who narrates the book, helped put this work in perspective for me. He had turned to his daughter to get the slang right, and in turn she admired her dad for being able to get into the mind of a teen girl.

At one point Emily goes back to her highly contaminated home, she misses her dog, her family, her things. This reminded me of a novel I read by a Ukrainian-American about an elderly woman, who goes back to live out her life in Chernobyl - she did not care how sick she got, she wanted to spend the rest of it at home.

The title comes from the school shootings in CT, when the other children were told to close their eyes and hold hands, as they were led out of the school, so they would not see the bodies of their schoolmates. I am not quite sure how this applies to this book, except that the book gives you a very real sense of the homeless and runaway teen world and the author is leading you through this, though maybe not with totally closed eyes. You know this is a fictional story, but you know this is happening to thousands of people across the country.

Maybe I will have time to add more to this review, but it will have to do for now.

The Virgin and the Gipsy by D.H. Lawrence (1930)

I found a box of books I had labeled "Classics" which contained books I had read from middle school, through high school and college, maybe a bit after that. I was amazed at what I found there, and maybe that deserves a post in and of itself, I decided to keep some, reread a few of the books. I remember hearing about D.H. Lawrence, so of course I read Lady Chatterly's Lover, but I had also picked up this book. Since I just recently finished the American Gypsy and want to delve a bit more into the world of gypsies, I decide to reread this short book that was published posthumously. The cover is from the yellowed paperback copy I own. 

I am amazed that I used to read these types of books that I now consider moving very slowly. It is about a young woman Yvette in the 1920's England, who comes home to the rectory from her schooling with her sister. Her mother left the family years ago and her father, aunt and grandmother try to do everything to make sure the girls don't turn out like their mother. Yvette is bored, goes out with friends, sews dresses, befriends an unmarried couple, and is fascinated by a gypsy man she sees in the gypsy encampment outside her town. He notices her too. The story seems to move excruciatingly slowly and then ends with a roller-coaster ride, so worth it in the end. I need to remember that it was a book ahead of its time - "The last and most provocative novel from the genius of D.H. Lawrence" as is written on the book cover.

As often is the case when I read books, it is the side things that fascinate me. Again, I don't get the inactivity of Yvette and women of her class. She seems to be waiting around to get married - as the only option for a future, and the pickings are slim. She hates her life, the food, living with granny, a sour aunt, and a disillusioned father. Her sister at least has a job, that gets her our of the house, provides her with her own pocket money. If she hates the food, how about learning to cook and make it tastier? Find a hobby, a charity, anything. I keep thinking there is so much to do out in the world, I keep wishing I could clone myself to do all the things I would like to do.

Then there were the gypsies, which is one of the main reasons I picked up the book. I am sure this depicts the way gypsies lived in England and in many other places in Europe, including Latvia. They would travel in a caravan, find a place to settle down for the winter, make and sell things, read people's fortunes. They looked and dressed exotically, had a certain pride and fierce independence, but knew to be deferent when needed. I am sure some could have the sensuality that Yvette noticed. I still need to read more about them.