Kate DiCamillo

Fiction 2000 | 182 pages

February in my book club is always a fun month.  Because it is a shorter month, we typically select a shorter book.  But lately we have been selecting two short books.  This month we will be discussing Grayson by Lynne Cox (see my blog post in November 2024) and Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

Because of Winn-Dixie is a children's book.  And it is as delightful as they come! In Because of Winn-Dixie, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni learns how to make sense of life after moving to a new town with her preacher father. Opal carries a sadness around with her, as does her father, because her mom left her when she was three. And she just left a town where she had friends and is beginning anew.

Opal goes to the grocery store one day and encounters a dog who is rambunctiously freeing all the vegetables from their shelves.  There are peppers and onions and tomatoes rolling around and the store manager is screaming.  The dog is clearly a stray, with patches of fur missing, a bum leg, and his ribs showing.   Opal claims the dog is hers and, when she needs a name, she can think of nothing else other than the name of the store they are in ... Winn-Dixie.

We follow Opal and Winn-Dixie as they make new friends in this town where her dad is the new preacher.  She meets lovely characters, some adult and some children. The story is about hope, love, kindness, forgiveness, listening, generosity of spirit.

A favorite moment for me is when elderly blind Gloria Dump ("unfortunate last name" Gloria says!) shares a family tradition, Littmus Lozenges, with Opal.  The candy tastes like root beer and strawberry and also … the secret ingredient … sorrow.

This is a really sweet book, a feel-good tale, optimistic and filled with love.  And yet, I had to make certain it was a children's book, because it spoke so clearly to my heart.

Yes, read this little gem.  You can get through it in about two luxurious cups of coffee.  I look forward to our discussion at book club.

February 2026

Stef Penney

Fiction 2006 | 371 pages

I was looking for a book set in the north Canada provinces and territories.  The one is set in the Northwest Territories.   (It is a long story WHY I was looking for a book set in the Territories, but if you want a list of books set in every province and territory in Canada, let me know.  I created such a list.)

The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny, isolated settlement in the Northwest Territories, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River.

On the day that Laurent is killed, his 17-year-old next door neighbor, Francis Ross, disappears.  The plot begins to unfold as Mrs. Ross, our protagonist and narrator, leaves her lackadaisical husband behind and goes in search of her son, traveling deeper into the northern wilds of Canada.  Others also begin to search, including Andrew Knox, the Dove River town magistrate; three men from the Hudson Bay Company; Thomas Sturrock, an amusing American itinerant trader; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide; and a native guide, Jacob, who works for the Company and has chosen to protect Donald Moody, a clumsy young Company representative

One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape - home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives - variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture, before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

Once all of these characters have been introduced, the novel follows their respective journeys - and the discoveries they make along the way - through a land gripped by winter.

Much is left unresolved at the end, so don't look for all the loose ends to be tied together with a bow.  We don't even actually find out who killed Jammet, though a number of reviewers have inadvertantly attributed the murder to various characters.

In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, romance, mystery and humor into an exhilarating thriller.  I loved her writing.  Penney suffered from agoraphobia at the time she wrote this novel and did not actually visit the Northwest Territories.  She used museums and books to do her research.  For a novel which takes place almost entirely outdoors in very remote and snowy land, I found her descriptions of the landscape and weather astounding.

The lovely title was a mystery until the end.  I don't think it is a spoiler for me to tell you what it refers to, but in case you don't want to know, I will add it below the date I read this fine book, February 2026.

I do recommend this mystery, with its myriad of fascinating characters, powerfully describing a time long gone.

February 2026

As it turns out, The Tenderness of Wolves refers not to the actual wolves our characters encounter, but it is a metaphor for the people of northern Canada, who work very hard and who wander and seek food and shelter, and love, who can be tender or violent, and are at times isolated and at times in community.

Rebecca Yarros |  Fiction

2019, 424 pages

The average reading level of The New York Times bestsellers has trended downward over the past 60 years, with most books from 1960 to 2014 falling into the seventh-grade level, and roughly 97% of 2014 bestsellers reading below a 7.2 grade level.  Since 2000, only two books on the list exceeded a ninth-grade readability level.

I know this, which is why I don't read off the NYT best seller list anymore.  I should have done my research before I started The Last Letter.  Its genre is romance.  The average writing level for this genre is fifth grade. I feel like I am not only being treated like a fifth grader, but the story and the characters are pure fluff.  I have way too many books on my shelf to spend my time here.  I wonder how this made it to my reading list?  Interestingly, it has one of the highest scores on Goodreads that I have seen in recent months, a 4.5.  Which causes me to lose trust in Goodreads, also.

Friends and book clubs and the occasional NPR article and Washington Post review generally source my TBR list, but this has me wondering ... is there another best seller list you use and recommend?  Is there a source of reviews, not Goodreads, that you use and recommend?

January 2026

Sarah Winman

Fiction 2017 | 462 pages

We begin during WWII, 1944, on the battlegrounds of Tuscany. As allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. He has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian, 40 years his senior, who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins.  Ulysses and Evelyn form a kindred bond amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses' life for the next four decades.

After the war, and the death of a soldier who is very important to him, Ulysses returns to London.  But his time in Tuscany remains in his heart.  When an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.  Perhaps it helps that I have been to Florence, but Winman's descriptions of the next four decades in my favorite Italian town are vivid.  I can see the town and feel the culture.  Once Ulysses and entourage leave London for Florence, reading Still Life is like a soft warm blanket thrown over my shoulders.  I guess the London time was necessary for context, but it doesn't compare to time in Firenze.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor, Still Life is a portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a life. Ulysses gathers Col, Cressy, Pete, his former wife Peg (at times), and his adopted daughter Alys, and eventually, years later, Evelyn, into an intentional family.  And, of course, I cannot forget the blue parrot Claude.  This family has more respect, love, and caring than many families.  It is a joy to experience vicariously.

An example of Winman's writing from page 128. "They'd traveled more than a thousand miles, had eaten twenty plates of spaghetti, nine stews, seventeen baguettes, a crop of apricots and a wheel of cheese.  They had drunk forty coffees and eight bottles of wine and seven beers and two brandies."  Instead of her describing the 1000-mile journey with roads traveled and villages encountered, she makes it real and tangible and visceral. This is her gift as a writer.

She also uses her writer's prerogative for an unusual display of style.  She employs no quotation marks (and thus uses the word "said" ad nauseam).  Now supposedly this technique creates more intimacy between the reader and the characters, heightens emotion, reduces distance, and is fluid.  I can't say if credit goes to this stylistic choice or not, but I felt intimately connected with the characters in Still Life.  I came to know and understand them well.  It takes a bit to get used to this way of writing ... and some reviewers never do. But I felt comfortable with it after a while.

The one disappointment I have is that we did not return at the end of the book to the opening pages.  I am wondering still today how many paintings Evelyn and her life-long friend Dotty actually found and saved.

This is our current book club read.  I highly recommend it as a novel to immerse yourself in.  It is particularly good as a winter read, because it made me want to build a fire in the wood stove and cozy up to it with my book.

January 2026

Sophie Elmhirst

Nonfiction 2024 | 249 pages

This is the story of an English couple, Maurice and Madalyn Bailey, who have simply had enough with living on land and occupying themselves with boring jobs.  They decide to build a sailboat and live on it, perhaps for the rest of their lives ... who knows how long?  Maurice is a quiet loner, awkward around people, and Madalyn is charismatic and ambitious.  But together they complement one another and build a powerful and obsessive dream.  In June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all goes well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocks a hole in their boat, and it sinks beneath the waves.  

What ensues is a dramatic fight to survive nearly four months in a dinghy and a rubber raft.  Starving, exhausted, resourceful, they have to figure out how to survive their physical and emotional challenges, and their marriage,  Their personalities are so in display in this adventure.  Maurice navigates using a sextant ... no technology for him.  Maralyn organizes food and water and the staples and basics of living on a boat and later, just a raft.  They end up fishing with a safety pin, and catching rainwater to drink, and, against their values, killing turtles for some sustenance.

Elmhirst"s writing is tight, as dramatic as the story is, and very readable.  The tale of their survival is jaw-dropping.  You will sail through this true story (pun completely unintentional!) and, if you are like me, you will find Maralyn's menus for what they will serve after they have been rescued, as intriguing as how they patch the hole in the raft, perhaps created by skeleton fish.

On the last page before the epilogue the author writes that one of the main characters  "...had a hard beginning, a dramatic middle, and an isolated end."  Yes, the end is difficult, as both Maralyn's and Maurice's lives come to an end.  But realistic, yes?  And this book is way more about the "dramatic middle."

I heartily recommend A Marriage at Sea."  I started it last year (New Year's Eve) and finished it this year (New Year's Day), and it was hard to put down.

January 2026

Daniel Kraus

Fiction 2025 | 385 pages

READ THIS REVIEW EVEN THOIUGH IT IS ONLY 2 STARS.  WHILE I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT, YOU MAY STILL CHOOSE TO READ IT

Wow, I have never read a book anything like this, and I suspect you haven't either, but before I drive into why it us unparalleled in its uniqueness, I will first get you up to speed on the plot of this book, listed as one of the top ten books for 2025 by the New York Times, and also acclaimed by The Washington Post and NPR,

U.S. Private Cyril Bagger, our main character,  is in France during WWI,  his job is to bury the dead, he and four other grunts are also given a deadly mission, to venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade, but what they find, however, is an angel,

and, if it weren't for the spectacular story telling of the author Kraus, this book would be unreadable, but Kraus drew me in and kept me at the edge of my seat, despite the challenges to overcome, and I could hear, feel, and see what the author was trying to create ... as best as possible through my naive lens,

and so, the challenges, first, Angel Down is extremely gruesome and gory, and the worst is at the beginning of the book, but if you can make your way through those gory scenes, you will be provided some relief, but not for long, and the unspeakable horror of life in No Man's Land continues sporadically throughout the book, and you will face it again and again, someone  who is burying the dead, not shooting at advancing forces, sees strewn body parts, embedded barbed wire, burns, acid, heads blown apart, and more ... all the results of unspeakable brutality, except Kraus has the courage to speak it,

and second, you have probably heard about this book .... it is one long sentence, commas and chapters help keep the pace (yes, like this!), and I didn't find it too hard to adjust to -- it actually rather amused me -- but some of you may,  (I found some periods in chapters 7, 33,  and 35.  I wonder if they are intentional, or an editing error?!), it is fluid and actually easy to follow, once you change your expectation, he employs this extreme style to convey the overwhelming, stream-of-consciousness experience of a soldier in World War I and the relentless, dizzying, blood-soaked atmosphere of the battlefield, and if you read my last review, The Guest Cat, in which every time I opened to a page, my breathing slowed down and I calmed, Angel Down did the exact opposite, it raised my heartbeat and my anxiety,

and, I cannot recommend this book to anyone, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a try, and if you have read it, or read it in the near future, I would very much like to hear about your experience and reactions

December 2025

Takeshi Hiraide

Fiction 2001 (English translation 2014) | 140 pages

Our friend Pam, on her last night with our book club in late November, gave us each a book written by her favorite Japanese authors, and asked us to share them with each other.  She opened my eyes to some learning about cultural differences, as expressed in writing and story telling.

The Guest Cat is a beautifully introspective novella that explores love, loneliness, connection, and the nature of life through the lens of a couple's relationship with a stray cat.

The couple lives in a small, rented cottage in Tokyo, and find themselves visited by a cat named Chibi.  The husband and wife, both freelance writers, experience a deepening emotional connection as they care for the cat, which brings new joy and meaning to their otherwise quiet existence. The narrative is rich with imagery and reflects on the fragility of life and the beauty found in everyday moments.

Hiraide's writing is poetic and lyrical.  This is a serene and meditative book.  There is no real plot, and there is no drama, mystery, or thrilling components.  It is simply the story, as told by the husband, of their developing relationship with the cat who lives next door, but spends much of its time with the couple.  Interestingly, the only creature in this book who has a name is Chibi.

The gentle but beautiful prose is like reading a mindfulness meditation.  Every time I opened this novella and began to read a sentence, I felt my shoulders drop, my breathing slow, and my blood pressure drop (since I have low blood pressure, this MAY not be a good thing!)

Yes, I suggest you read this short NYT best seller.

I had an important insight reading The Guest Cat.  I am attending an eight-day writing retreat in February.  I have no specific goal for this adventure ... just thought I might learn something.  I realize now that I would like to learn to write in a manner that elicits similar feelings in others:  gentleness, calm, relaxation, going inward, finding a place of meditation.

December 2025

Stacey Abrams

Fiction 2025 | 419 pages

When NPR chose this as one of their books of the year for 2025, and I heard an interview with her, and, having loosely followed her political career as Georgia State Representative and as a candidate for Governor, and then discovering she has written 19 books, I decided I MUST give her a try!

Former Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is featured in Coded Justice, the third book in a series.  Now working as an internal investigator for a prestigious DC law firm, she is requested to solve a mystery.  Elisha Hibner dies as a result of toxic chemicals in the air system in the lab he shares with two colleagues, O.J. and Isabella. Was it an accident?  Or murder?

These three highly educated scientists/engineers work for Camasca Enterprises, a technology company that uses Artificial Intelligence to revolutionize the medical industry by delivering cutting-edge personalized heath care and pharmaceuticals to veterans in the VA medical system.  The potential is staggering for the advancement of medical care.  But how safe is it?

Coincidentally, on the day I finished Coded Justice, I heard an article on NPR about the current use of AI in medicine. Though it appears we are not nearly as advanced as is hypothesized in this book, the fiction bears witness to what could, and is likely to, occur in the future.  To that end, Coded Justice is a thoughtful and informative read.

Avery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, are brought into this secretive company to investigate from the inside out. At the epicenter of a burgeoning, controversial industry, and with billions of dollars on the line, their task is simple: to determine whether Camasca’s technical troubles and rising body count reveal something sinister at work and what the moral and ethical considerations are beyond the artificial intelligence and medical consequences.

It sounds like an excellent plot!

I like Abrams' writing.  She is clearly smart, uses powerful big words, and writes in a cadence that I might beat a drum to.

And I don't like Abrams' writing.  Almost all of the book takes place in a conference room at Camasca, detailing conversations among Avery, her colleagues, the owners of company, the AI named Milo and Kayak, and others.  She writes in a style that I would call "tell, don't show."  Nothing ever happens!

Until page 316, when something important occurs.  I became quite engaged at this point, but soon Abrams fell back into conversation about what took place, rather than showing us.

I will not be reading other books by Stacey Abrams.  I wish her well in her political career, however!  I am glad to close the cover on this book.  Time to choose another read.  I have ten books waiting for me.  Can I read one each day over the holiday break?  Nah.  Stay tuned right here to find out what I DO read!

December 2025