My Favorite Books of 2018

HaHa! This is NOT a self-portrait!

I read 30-plus books in 2018. I relied on many different sources to pick them: suggestions from friends, selections of my local book club, recommendations by book critics and reviews in Bookmarks magazine to name a few. Here are my favorites in no particular order.

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott features an order of nursing nuns in 1950’s New York. Nuns have always fascinated me, probably because I attended parochial schools most of my education. To this day, my wardrobe palette reflects years of wearing blue uniforms (apparently blue is the favorite color of the Virgin Mary). I approached The Ninth Hour with some trepidations because I thought the novel might belittle nuns and their lifestyles. Instead the novel celebrates The Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. The good sisters provide shelter to the main character, a pregnant woman whose husband just committed suicide. I loved this book and its gentle tone even when dealing with religious values and mores of the era.

Circe by Adeline Miller. Who knew a novel featuring the trials and tribulations of a mythological Greek goddess could be such a good read? I loved Circe’s strong character and her interactions with other gods and goddesses as she copes with her exile from Mt. Olympus. She is one strong woman; as Ron Charles of the Washington Post writes: “The archeological evidence is sketchy, but the first pussy hat was probably knitted by Circe.”

Sun Burn by Laura Lippman and The Dry by Jane Harper. I love mysteries and my standards for them are high. I want suspense throughout and an ending I can’t figure out. Sun Burn and The Dry meet both criteria. Sun Burn is set in a small town in Delaware near the Atlantic Ocean. Every year since 1985, I have joined 7 other girlfriends for a weekend at the beach. We drive though small towns in Maryland and Delaware to get there so a beach related mystery by a favorite author attracted me like a moth to a flame. I was not disappointed. The Dry takes place in a more distant setting: a parched farming town in Australia. The main character Aaron Falk returns to his home town at the request of his childhood friend’s father. The father wants Aaron, now a federal agent in Melbourne, to look into this son’s death. Naturally, what seems obvious is not and the twists and turns kept me guessing until the end. Keep a glass of water nearby when you read The Dry; you might get thirsty in the arid landscape.

The Ghostwriter by Robert Harris was written ten years ago. A reader of Bookmarks magazine picked it as a favorite mystery so I gave it a try. I enjoyed it. A British Prime Minister (a thinly disguised Tony Blair) hires a ghostwriter to complete his memoir. Dead bodies start littering the New England landscape, where the prime minister is holed up. The ghostwriter becomes sleuth. Suspicious deaths? Conspiracies? An ending that surprised me? What’s not to like?

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. This really IS an extraordinary true story. Christopher Knight disappeared into the Maine woods in 1986. He stayed there for the next 27 years, living in a tent and raiding nearby homes and cabins for food and camp supplies. He was finally caught while breaking into a community building. Knight is not a sympathetic character (in part because he NEVER ONCE CALLED HOME TO TELL HIS MOTHER HE WAS ALIVE!!) but how he eludes capture and survives three decades alone in the woods is absolutely fascinating.

Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig. A friend kept telling me to read this book but I declined for years. I read lots of book reviews and this title eluded me. Published in 2015, this is a tale of a young boy and his adventures in the 1950’s as he travels by Greyhound bus from Montana to Wisconsin and back. Sometimes the action gets a bit slow but all in all it is a wonderful adventure story, peopled with lots of interesting characters. I found this book by the late Doig a perfect antidote to the high tech, fast paced, cyber dominated world we now live in.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg. After the unexpected death of her 47 year old husband, Sandberg struggles with grief. Option B presents her thoughts on overcoming loss and hardships. I do not usually enjoy self-help treatises but this was chosen by my book club so I felt compelled to read it—or at least some of it (according to my Kindle, I read only 20%). It turned out to be a great choice for a book group discussion. Every member of our club has faced loss: whether it be the death of a spouse or a child or a parent. Sharing how we cope was wonderful and one of our best book club discussions.

Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley: A Novel by Hannah Tanti. I am not fond of guns. So my decision to read this book is surprising as the story line revolves around guns. The 12 lives of Samuel Hawley refers to the main character’s father surviving 12 different gun shots from 12 different skirmishes. This is not a particularly easy read but I enjoyed it. Loo, the daughter of Samuel Hawley, is such an interesting character. I really cared about her which is more than I can say about the main character in my least favorite books of the year!

'Tis the Season to be Pestered by Charities

In his book Calypso, David Sedaris writes:

I donate a thousand dollars to the Hillary for President campaign and within what seems like minutes I get an email from them saying, in effect, “that’s great, but can we have more?” Her organization is by no means unique in this regard. Everyone I donate to acts the same sway, and I wind up unsubscribing from their emails and resenting them.

David, I feel your pain.

When my Dad died many years ago, he left me his IRA account. Every year I must take a mandatory distribution. To honor my dad, who gave money to a myriad of worthy causes, I donate it all to various charities and community groups during the Christmas holiday season.

Many simply send a note of thanks and I never hear from them again. I like those groups.

Others send me continuous pleas for more money. What is infuriating is they are not heartfelt requests but simply computer generated form letters. Charity may begin at home but charitable requests now begin with bulk mail.

David Sedaris and I are not alone is finding follow-up requests for donations annoying. In a survey conducted by Software Advice, people were asked: how many times should nonprofits ask for another donation? 41% said nonprofits shouldn’t ask for more at all. A slightly higher number of respondents thought asking one or two more times would be okay.

A missionary group that my dad funded all his adult life has not read this survey. I do not support them but they still send requests for donations to my dear departed father at my address. My father has been dead for 10 years and he definitely has no use for the return address labels they provide.

My requests to be dropped from their mailing list have gone unheeded. I have decided their persistent, holiday request for money is actually just a celestial reminder from my dad to give his money away to worthy causes—whether or not they continue to hound me.

When my Dad died, his checkbook included donationsSalvation Army, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Covenant House, Alzheimer’s Research, Alexandria Men’s Home, American Heart Foundation, Hospitalized Veterans, American Diabetes Foundation, Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Food for the Poor, St. Labre Indian School, Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, Maryknoll Brothers and the Ft. Belvoir charity drive.

Losing my daughter's dog

When my daughter and her husband take long trips, they first drop their dog Baloo at our farm.

Baloo is a mixed breed. His mother is a black lab and his father comes from a good neighborhood.

Baloo is a very nice dog, weighing in at 75 pounds. He is well-trained. Baloo will not eat his dinner until he hears “okay.” He can sit, shake, lie down and will even endure the humiliation of holding a small dog bone placed on his nose until told “okay.” He does not jump, he stays off the furniture and never eats food left out on the table or counter.

Baloo is nothing like the dogs I owned growing up. As a youngster I remember our Irish setter slipping into the neighbor’s kitchen and taking their Roast Leg of Lamb off the stove top while it was cooling. It really brought our neighborhood together as we chased Brick, proudly mouthing the meat, from one cul-de-sac to another.

Baloo is much loved so caring for him comes with heavy responsibility. Living on a farm, we cannot let him loose. Theoretically, Baloo will come when called but that is too much of a risk. If anything happened to Baloo, my relationship with my daughter would be forever strained. (“Sure, Mom, you SAY you love me but you lost my dog.")

So when Baloo disappeared into the cornfields on a pitch black Saturday night, I was panic stricken. I was combining Baloo’s evening walk with a visit to the corn silos because I had not heard from my husband and I worried he was caught in the corn auger. There was no moon so it was dark. We live on a 500 acre farm with lots of machinery but NOT A SINGLE WORKING FLASHLIGHT. Off I went, Baloo sporting his killer spiked collar and me with only my iPhone light to guide the way.

I found Ron who was fine and then disaster struck. Baloo heard a deer and charged. He is so strong he pulled me to ground and dragged me through 2 feet of standing water in the barnyard (the residue of major rainstorms). I finally let loose. Baloo was gone. Fortunately my still lit cell phone fell on gravel, rather than disappearing into a watery grave.

My husband retrieved the special whistle that theoretically Baloo is trained to answer. HAHAHAHA. No response. I would have traded Baloo’s entire repertoire of tricks for him responding to that whistle. I called a neighbor who showed up with 3 flashlights. Too late. Baloo was long gone. Ron spent the night in the car at the barnyard in case Baloo returned. I worried someone would find Baloo and call the number on his collar (Molly’s cell phone). She would get the message “We found your dog” and then I really would be in the doghouse.

At the first sign of daylight, Ron took the whistle and started walking through the cornfields. He whistled and whistled and finally hear a meek little “arf”. He whistled again and followed the arf trail to discover Baloo entangled in the cornstalk by his leash.

What a relief! Ron informed me this whole episode could have been avoided if I had jerked Baloo’s leash when he started to run so the collar spikes could do their work. I responded it was a little hard to jerk the leash when I was on my stomach being dragged through standing water.

My daughter and son-in-law Andy had different reactions to the adventure. Andy asked if I was okay. My daughter wanted to know what kind of flashlight I wanted for Christmas.

Ron returns from the cornfields with Baloo