My Year in Books 2024

Finally! I’ve got around to posting the books I read last year. There were 60 titles in all, with a combination of fiction and nonfiction, some memoirs and one allegory. (I will note that these only include books I read for myself, and not those I read aloud to my children. I will consider posting those at a later date.) I discovered 7 new-to-me authors whose books I want to read more of, including Barbara Pym, Alice Thomas Ellis, John Steinbeck, Josephine Ward, Dorothy Whipple, Shelie Kaye Smith and Mary Westmacott (the nom de plume for Agatha Christie). There were 3 books I re-read: Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road; Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard; and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Some recurring themes I noticed included: mental illness, especially OCD and hoarding disorder; addiction and recovery; trauma and healing; writing and creativity; and Communism/life in Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps.

Without further ado, here are the titles and authors, including my thoughts and some authors’ quotes…

• The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us by Carrie Gress

  I especially appreciated Carrie’s defense of traditional femininity and womanhood.

• The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

  “Writing was my survival strategy and a bridge to other people. It gave me a sense of self-worth. It gave me joy. But mostly it was how I let feelings flow through me.” - Lara Love Hardin

• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

  “…but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one had imagined one had long ago thought through thoroughly.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Light of His Eyes: Journeying from Self-Contempt to the Father’s Delight by Mother Iliana

• Lizzy and Jane by Katherine Reay

• Grey is the Color of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaya

  This book really deserves its own post. It’s about Irina’s time in a Soviet prison camp. It is inspiring because when things are darkest (and few things are darker than being imprisoned in a gulag) the smallest bit of light illuminates the darkness and gives hope and encouragement to people. I am always awed by the resilience of the human spirit and the beauty and redemption to be found in such bleak circumstances.

  “But if you allow hatred to take root, it will flourish and spread during your years in the camps, driving out everything else, and ultimately corrode and warp your soul. You will no longer be yourself, your identity will be destroyed, all that will remain will be a hysterical, maddened and bedeviled husk of the human being that once was. And this is what will come before God should such a creature die while still behind bars. And this is just what ‘they’ want.” - Irina Ratushinskaya

  “There were women in there with milk running down their breasts: due to the cold, they would get inflammation of the mammary glands, while the babies lay crying in the DMR (House of Mother and Child). One child in eight died there, and even more during epidemics.” - Irina Ratushinskaya

• The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

• The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman

• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

  This was Stephanie’s memoir of growing up with verbal abuse (her parents blamed her for their divorce!) and trauma, her diagnosis of complex-PTSD and her subsequent road to healing. In researching her Malaysian family history, she discovered that owing to various political/family situations, there was some generational trauma. She also included this fascinating piece of research: in 2013 at Emory University, male mice were presented with the scent of cherry blossoms repeatedly, eventually being paired with a shock. This was found to change their brains and affected their sperm. When their offspring were presented with the scent (I think the shock was withheld) they had the same response as their parents - thus giving evidence of generational trauma.

  “I’d been so overwhelmed with the responsibility of keeping myself and my parents alive that I didn’t have many moments to look out the window and appreciate the hummingbirds and clover.” - Stephanie Foo

  “…I came to see that the little things were everything. The little things were what I held onto at the end of the day.” - Stephanie Foo

• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

  “A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” - Alan Bennett

• Pure OCD by Chrissie Hodges

• Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D. E. Stevenson

• The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

• Only the Beautiful by Susan Meissner

• Where Hope Begins (The Orchard House Bed and Breakfast Series) by Heidi Chiavaroli

• The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick

• Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide by John Cleese

• I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

• And I Am Afraid of My Dreams by Wanda Poltawska

  Wanda Poltawska, a member of the Polish underground, was arrested by the Nazis and heroically endured 4 harrowing years in Ravensbruck. She was one of many women who underwent medical ‘experiments’; she and other women were treated as human guinea pigs. Wanda survived to document the truth of what happened to her and her fellow prisoners, having recently passed on 10/24/23 at the age of 101. She was known to be friends with Karol Wojtyla (now St. John Paul II) and was devoted to the cause of human life.

  “Right from the start we set about organizing some kind of cultural life for ourselves. It was difficult and dangerous, but it was the only way we could hope to triumph over the prison stripes. Stories, lectures, recitations, solo and choral singing, sketches, riddles, poetry.” - Wanda Poltawska

  “Roll calls were our salvation, for at those times we could watch magnificent sunrises and sunsets when the sky was radiant with unimaginable colors. The sky was not our enemy, it was wonderful, it healed us, allowed us to escape in imagination, to forget. Fierce winds whipped up seas of brightly - colored clouds, turning them before our eyes into fantastic shapes, of dragons and knights and scenes from the story books.” - Wanda Poltawska

• The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis

• Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman

• Shadows and Images by Meriol Trevor

  “That is just how God deals with us. The hardest trials are often his greatest providences.” - John Henry Newman (his character in Shadows and Images), as quoted by Meriol Trevor

• Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

• American Daughter: A Memoir by Stephanie Plymale Thornton

• Crossroads: A Journey from Communist China to Christ by Bob Blundell

• Anna and Her Daughters by D. E. Stevenson

  “And I saw how foolish I had been to fuss and worry about ‘the right approach’ because of course ‘the right approach’ to all our fellow creatures is just to love them.” - D. E. Stevenson

• Remedies for Sorrow: An Extraordinary Child, A Secret Kept from Pregnant Women, and a Mother’s Pursuit of the Truth by Megan Nix

  Megan chronicles the diagnosis of CMV in her infant child, which illness results in profound deafness in her child, as well as the possibility of future diagnoses common to this debilitating disease. Megan seeks to let other mothers know about this, as this information had been withheld from her, and she’d like to see more doctors speak of this to their patients as it can often be prevented with simple hygienic practices.

  I absolutely loved how affirming this quote was on motherhood:

  “And I don’t believe any mother needs to do anything else to feel she’s contributing something of great import to the world.” - Megan Nix

• The Long Goodbye: A Memoir by Megan O’Rourke

• Meredith, Alone: A Novel by Claire Alexander

• Coming Clean: A Memoir by Kimberly Rae Miller

• Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding by Jessie Sholl

• Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry

• Sarah’s Cottage by D. E. Stevenson

• My Unexpected Journey, My Surprising Joy by Nicole Johnson

• Images in a Mirror by Sigrid Undset

• The Summer House: A Trilogy by Alice Thomas Ellis

• The Little Italian Hotel by Phaedra Patrick

  “The artists had left great masterpieces behind that would be cherished for centuries to come and Ginny considered what her own legacy might be. Helping others was noble, if not as visible as the art.” - Phaedra Patrick

• The City Mother by Maya Sinha

• Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard

• One Poor Scruple by Josephine Ward

  “That quiet dull action of her sewing was suggestive to him of duties done and of an habitual patience which has schemed little for others and grasped at nothing for herself. It had been a long education in patience that had made possible her last and greatest sacrifice - for there was a heroism in her readiness to give up Mary that could have sprung out of no thin or poor soil.” - Josephine Ward

• The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis

• Brave Water by Sarah Robsdottir

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck

  Why did I wait so long to read this? I suppose it hadn’t come under my radar until I was perusing books at my friend’s library, had this book in hand, and was told by a woman there that a friend of hers reads it every year. That was enough for me, and I’m so glad I read it. It’s primarily - as per the back cover - a retelling of the “Biblical story of Adam and of Cain and Abel”. Full of depth and insight and lots of universal themes.

  “It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.” - John Steinbeck

  “In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.” - John Steinbeck

  “I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now - don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt - and there is the story of mankind.” - John Steinbeck

• Stories that Bind Us by Susie Finkbeiner

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Breakfast with the Pope by Susan Vigilante

• No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym

  “What a pity we can’t make a cup of Ovaltine, was her last conscious thought. Life’s problems are often eased by hot milky drinks.” - Barbara Pym

• Fairy Tale by Alice Thomas Ellis

• The Good Death of Kate Montclair by Daniel McInerny.

  I so appreciated the timely and thought-provoking subject matter (assisted suicide) of this story. After reading this, I was reminded of this quote from The Shoes of the Fisherman:

  “…he was in agony, and he kept crying over and over again for someone to kill him and put him out of his misery. I tell you I was truly tempted. It’s a terrible thing to see so much suffering. It degrades and terrifies those who see it but cannot alleviate it. That’s why I can understand, though I cannot condone, what your doctor friend did. It seems almost as though one would be bestowing a divine mercy with the gift of death. But one is not divine, one cannot dispense either life or death.” - Morris West

• Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

  “…but he was sick and tired of a prudent careful world that counted the cost of everything before doing it and never took a risk.” - Mary Westmacott

  “If you’d nothing to think about but yourself for days on end I wonder what you’d find out about yourself?” - Mary Westmacott

• I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

• The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

• I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice

• The Hermit: The Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage, and a Family by Kevin Wells

• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

• The End of the House of Alard by Sheila Kaye Smith

• They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple

• Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women’s Voices from the Gulag by Monika Zgustova

  I took so many notes from this book, that what I will share here will not likely do it justice (perhaps there will be more to come in a future post). Monica Zgustova interviewed nine women who survived Soviet prison camps and generously shared their stories in this book. It was clear that these women sought to do things that would maintain their humanity in the face of such extreme adversity, some of the things they prioritized included friendship, culture, routine, books and beauty. These were the very things that seemed to keep them going.

  “The work camp was my most important lesson. Those bitter, hard years were my best school, a school that would help me throughout the rest of my life. I can’t imagine my life without the camps. More than that; if I had to live my life over, I would not want to avoid that experience. Why? Because the most horrible struggles led to the strongest of friendships.” - Susanna Pechuro, as spoken to Monika Zgustova

  “No one can imagine what a book meant to the prisoners: it was salvation! Beauty, liberty, and civilization in the midst of total barbarity!” - Elena Korybut Daszkiewicz, as spoken to Monika Zgustova

  “This shows how hard my mother and the other prisoners worked to provide me with some sense of culture in an atmosphere where there was nothing. It’s impressive that people like her, deprived of their liberty in the most atrocious way, preserved their dignity and refused to accept the barbarity that surrounded them, making every effort to transmit their knowledge and culture from one generation to another. Each one of these books made me so happy! When I was a little girl, these were the only form of culture I had. Look, I’ve kept them all my life. They are my greatest treasure!” - Galya Safonova, as spoken to Monika Zgustova

  (This was in reference to some dolls and miniature books that Galya’s mother and other prisoners created by hand for her in the prison camps. One book was a hand-sewn miniature, “Little Red Riding Hood”, written in ink with pictures in colored pencil.)

• The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

• Consumed: The Joys, Sufferings and Debacles of a Life Ordered to Art by Heather King

  Having first encountered Heather King in her monthly “Credible Witnesses” column of the Magnificat, I quickly became a fan. I appreciate her authenticity, courage, love of the arts, and her ability to find beauty in unexpected places. She also writes a blog and I’ve been blessed to find many excellent book and movie recommendations on it.

As I wanted to add a photo, and don’t have photos of those books I borrowed from the library, I chose to add a picture of books I read this year that I own.

I’d say my favorite reads from this year were One Poor Scruple, East of Eden, They Were Sisters, The End of the House of Alard, Absent in the Spring, Grey is the Color of Hope, and Consumed: The Joys, Sufferings and Debacles of a Life Ordered to Art. Thanks for reading and have a good week!