The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante

 This was a lame story.  I guess I'm glad I got to the end because the conclusion was satisfying, but it was a slog to get there.  Don't read this book and you won't have to slog through it. Let me just go ahead and tell you about it.  Man leaves woman for hot young thing when she turns of age (probable statutory rape occurring beforehand), woman becomes mentally unhinged and obsessive, man claims to be a great guy and still wants the kids in his life, renege on the kids because hot young thing doesn't want to mother them, man starts looking worse for wear while woman gets her act together and moves on. There! That's the whole story. Now, read something better with your time!

If Walls could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home - Lucy Worsley

 A fun book and recommended for anyone who enjoys history or wonders about how everyday things got to be the way they are! This book was super fascinating and a lot of fun.  I was, of course, particularly interested in the kitchen section because it involved a lot of food culture.  I'm not sure if this is a book for every one, but is absolutely a book for the history buff and the curious-about-life crowd!  

An example to illustrate my point: In medieval times, there were 2 meals per day, not 3. The first was in late morning, beginning around 10, and the second was in the early evening, beginning around 4 or 5.  This was because people had to actually cook the first meal, and it was eaten as soon as it was fully prepared, so 10am. Many people, particularly the ones writing and written about (i.e. rich) lived in large houses/castles, and were feeding all the people/staff required to make those places function.  Large-scale food production wasn't something one quickly whipped together in the morning.  While eating these meals, the napkin was thrown over the shoulder because there were no silverware and all food was eaten with the hands, meaning the napkin would need to be out and easily accessible with messy fingers. 

The Mediterranean Diet - Marissa Cloutier & Eve Adamson

 If I ever need to go on a diet, this is the one I'm picking.  Honestly, it mostly is what I eat now.  It is all the same boring wisdom we've known all along and keep hoping to find a magical answer against.  There is no magical answer.  The way to maintain a healthy weight will never change: exercise regularly, eat less sugar, eat less meat, eat healthy fats, eat whole grains and vegetables, avoid processed "foods" (cause let's be real, so much of what you can buy at the grocery store isn't actually food, it's food-like products). I'm not sure you'd need to read the book to learn any of those things, but the book has lots of citations of studies that back up the ideas.  So if you need some motivation, this books is good for that.  It also has lots of recipes and a few meal plans to get you started that seem very nice. 

How Civil Wars Start (and how to stop them) - Barbra F. Walters

 This book is both terrifying and fascinating! I highly recommend it to everyone, everywhere, at any time! The author only uses examples from the last few decades and then applies it to current events in the US.  It is amazing to watch this unfold, even though I'd rather not watch my country lower its own democracy rating.  I wish the crazies who support the people dragging us towards anocracy would read this. . . but I imagine few of them read, and certainly could never move beyond their identity politics. 

I would encourage you to read it yourself, but to summarize: the author really brings home the point of how dangerous Trump and his supporters and sycophants are to our government and way of life.  We all know that right-wing terrorism is on the rise here (ref: NC power station attack earlier this month). But the author does a beautiful job of explaining why and how they are doing it, and then, of course, everyone else's natural reaction to it and how that will exacerbate the issue.  The only thing that seems, to me, like it could throw events off course is Covid's continued destruction of largely un-vaccinated people, which are the same people who are mostly likely to spread the propaganda and lies that keep the easily-led from understanding the real world.  If the people who can't critically think about what they read on the internet, which overlaps a lot with people who aren't vaccinated, were fewer in number, would less misinformation spread as frequently and as far? 

I'm keen to see where we go politically in the next few years.  I wish I knew now, so I could prepare.  I am of 2 minds about it: one part wants us to continue to cast off the nationalistic psychosis that seems to have gripped a lot of republicans, but the other part wants the idiots to win a little bit and give them what they deserve, what they voted for, like the anti-choice people who suddenly can't get abortions for their "special" case. 

The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka

 Was not impressed with this book!  The author clearly wanted to write all the stories and coudln't decide which was best so she did, in fact, write all the stories at once, and I guess it gives you a good overview of the Japanese women who immigrated to the US to marry in the first 2 decades of the 20th century, but the way it was written made it impossible to grow attached to anything or anyone.  She would have done better to write 5 shorter stories following women with a variety of luck in their immigration gamble. Even if she rotated between them so that the timepoints line up, that would have been better.  I think the is a serious case of ATBGE.

Skin Game - Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, Bk. 14)

 This one was real good.  Lots of fun! 

Fever Season: the Story of a Terrifying Epidemic and the People who Saved a City - Jeanette Keith

 This had the potential to be a great story.  The author dropped the ball.  There are so many people involved, that it's hard to keep track of them across the several months of this epidemic.  I think the whole book would have been easier to follow if it started with an overview or timeline of events and then each chapter focused on one individual or group/organization.  There is an amazing story to be told in the lives of Kezia DePelchin, J. M. Keating, and especially Bob Church!  Any of those could be a rich story.  I'd love to see them on the screen even!

But this book simply isn't well organized and doesn't do their stories justice.