Andrea Sigetich

Many genres | Thousands of pages

It has been ten years today since I started my blog, Dusty Shelves.  Hard to believe!  I still enjoy writing it and hope you still enjoy reading it too, at least once in a while.  First book I blogged on was Dead Wake by Erik Larson.  It received four hearts. Here is what the hearts mean.

Like it a lot or loved it; I recommend it; put it on your list!

Like it; I recommend, with some reservations.

I don’t recommend it, though it was compelling enough for me to finish reading.

I couldn’t get through it

May 2026

Rachel Joyce| Fiction

2015, 384 pages

Made it half-way through.  I found The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to be Insipid, implausible, simple, contrived.

Harold sits at breakfast one day with his wife and opens a letter from a long-ago colleague, Queenie Hennessy.  Queenie tells him she is in hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is some 600 miles north of him, and is dying of cancer.  He believes he likely has some unfinished business with Queenie.  He writes her a short note and goes to the post to send it to her.  But he walks past the first postal box and keeps going, past the second and third.  By the afternoon he has decided that Queenie will only stay alive as long as he keeps walking forwards her.  And so he does.  

What I find implausible is that by the evening, when he calls home, his wife Maureen knows that he is five miles north.  What wife would not throw a small pack in the car with e few clothes, a pair of shoes, his cell phone, and maybe some snacks, and take it to her husband?  Even if their relationship has seen better days?

What I find both insipid and simple is that he meets people who allegedly give him insight.  But what he hears is not insightful.  Only platitudes, and words that remind him of his past.

The story is contrived … forced, artificial … only the fantasy of the author with no real story.  And Harold Fry has no emotional pallet, no depth.

And so I am moving on to whatever is next on my shelf.

May 2026

Patrick Ryan

Fiction 2025 | 464 pages

Cal and Becky Jenkins and Felix and Margaret Salt, along with their sons Skip and Tom, tell a profound story from the 1940s through the late 20th century.  Richly written, with extraordinary character development, we follow these families against a backdrop of WWII and the Vietnam War.  Home is the small town of Bonhomie Ohio.  

There are themes of love loss, abandonment, death, grief, happiness, friendship, betrayal, loyalty.  An affair between Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt during WWII binds their families together with consequences that unfold over decades.  The characters are complex and multi-dimensional.  Take for example Cal, who is unable to serve in the war due to a disability, and his wife Becky, who is a seer who can communicate with the dead.  Felix enlists in the Navy and really has no idea what to do with his attraction to men, and not to his wife.  Margaret doesn’t ever warm up to motherhood and eventually abandons them all, adding greater complexity to the interpersonal relationships.

Someone described this book as slow-paced.  I don’t think that is true, though I did find myself wanting to savor it, rather than rush through.

I recommend Buckeye, no hesitation!

April 2026

Any Stewart

Nonfiction 2024 | 301 pages

This is a breathtaking book!  Amy Stewart discovered a community of tree collectors.  These are people who, typically, select a tree, say maples, or a characteristic, say tropical trees, or a mission, say, to beautify neighborhoods that have no trees, and collect every species they can, rare and common, and plant, nurture, and grow them on their land, or in pots.  She interviewed and visited 50 such collectors throughout the world (the number of countries represented in her sample is amazing). 

I present you with three of the tree collectors.  Januez Radecki is a Polish arboreal therapist who encourages the residents of the elder care home where he works to plant, prune, weed and water trees, prodding them with purpose, mission, fresh air, and exercise.  Joe Hamilton cultivates pines on land passed down to him from his great-grandfather, once a slave, saving the trees and history for future generations. Reagan Wytsalucy is replanting peach trees in the Canyon de Chelly region of Arizona.  Many died during the 1864 Long Walk when the US Army forced Navajo off their lands in New Mexico and Arizona.  Peach orchards, a source of food and trade among the Navajo people, were intentionally destroyed after the Long Walk to starve any Navajo who survived. Reagan’s work introduces culture, truth, and history to her Native communities.

You will learn about a subject you likely did not know much about and did not know what you did not know.  Her three pages on each tree collector are all fascinating, educational, and interesting.

I stopped buying books about a dozen years ago, unless there is something I need and cannot find at my library.  If you are still buying books, this (hardcover) should be in your shopping cart, because the additional bonus is the author is also a watercolor artist, and her paintings are on about two out of every three pages.  Her portraits of the tree collectors themselves communicate their sense of adventure, learning, uniqueness, and passion.

I highly recommend this book. Mary, you always give me good ideas of books to read, but this suggestion is extraordinary!  I thank you, my long-time friend.

February 2026

Anne Rivers Siddons

Fiction 2011 | 325pages

It is an empty box.  There is no story here.  For the first 290 pages, nothing happens except a young woman from Georgia marries an Irishman who is heavy into Celtic literature, lore, mythology, music, poetry, wars, language.  He, Aengus, gets to teach this knowledge to young boys while our narrator Thayer tries to get her life of privilege together.

Parts of the last 35 pages are interesting.  This author has 17 other fiction books.  I guess I will leave them on the library shelves.  This book received an average 3.0 rating on Goodreads … I think this is the worst I have seen.

Don’t even consider putting this on your reading list.  There are so many better options!

Novenber 2025