2012 Read Shelf

I stopped using Goodreads for quite awhile then started up again over the summer, so I'm doing my best to remember all the books I read this year! Joining the From Left to Write book club and signing up for Netgalley,  filled up my Read shelf quite a bit, but my goal had been to read 24 books this year. I fell a little short but I did read some really good books, along with some duds. Here are the books, in no particular order.

1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: Here's a little disclaimer...I'm not entirely sure that I read this in 2012 but I think I did! This was my first experience with Paulo Coelho and I want to read more of his books in 2013. I loved the mystical and spiritual aspects of this story, as a person who grapples quite a bit with being comfortable with religious belief. 
2.  I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markouvits: This was a From Left to Write book club selection but I was not yet part of the club when I read it. It is a gripping, compelling story that spans generations and time periods as the characters struggle with what it means to be a religious Jew. 
3. The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich: I love period fiction, and I loved this story of a daring Jewish midwife in segregated 17th century Venice who risks her life to save a non-Jewish noblewoman and her baby. 
4. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach: There was a lot of hype about this book, and I never thought I'd like a book about baseball but as with all things, it wasn't about baseball. It is about relationships, the ways we depend on each other for validation and struggle with our own shortcomings. There are some excellent lines in this book, and overall, is well written though it does drag on in some parts. It's not a short, quick read. 
5. The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy: This was a From Left to Write book club selection, and another period novel. The book switches from Germany during WW II to El Paso, Texas in the present day and follows a reporter as she tries to uncover a story about a bakery owner from Germany. I enjoyed the book and read it straight through one night in bed. I wrote about it here. 
6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: Though I am a child of the '90s, and not the '80s, I appreciated all the '80s references in this book, especially since we had a Commodore 64 growing up and plenty of video games to go around. Reviews have been mixed on this book but I thought it was fascinating, though the ending was rushed. 
7. The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty. Another From Left to Write book club selection, and set in Old Bohemia during the 17th century, I took a special interest in this book because I lived in Prague for four months, on study abroad Junior year of college. At it's heart, this is a book about the struggle between mystical belief, faith and science. Again, lots to think about in terms of my own relationship to these things. I wrote about it here. 
8. The Rabbi in the Attic and Other Stories by Eileen Pollack. This was a selection I chose from Netgalley, a collection of short stories, some of which have a slight Jewish-y tone to it, and others that were straight up Jewish. Most of the stories are set in the Catskills, where I spend a decent part of my childhood summers visiting my grandparents, so I enjoyed recognizing the names of small towns mentioned in the stories. I no longer have a copy of the book, since the egalley expired off my Kindle, which is a shame because I would to re-read some of the stories. Overall, enjoyable. 
9. Behind the Woodpile by Emily Rosenbaum. This is a book written by a member of From Left to Write, self-published on Kindle. It is a harrowing tale of child abuse and neglect. I was a little skeptical at some points that some events actually happened but I was sucked in. 
10. A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee. Another book from Netgalley, it reminded me of Revolutionary Road. I enjoyed it but didn't find it to be exceptional.  I wrote about it here.
11. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I don't remember how I came across this title but I discovered a new favorite author! Again, I'm a sucker for period novels and this one was set in the time of the Plague in England. I loved the main character and how she evolves into a strong woman. 
12. The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam. This was a From Left to Write book club selection that I read before the holiday hiatus. I went through a period in high school where I read a lot of fiction and memoirs about China during the 5 Year Campaign, so I really enjoyed reading this book about a Chinese expat in Viet Nam. I wrote about here. 
13. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I pretty much chose this book because of it's cover and because it was about sisters. I really did not appreciate that the narrator seemed to be some unknown 4th sister, and the Shakespeare references were overwrought. It would probably make a better movie than book. 
14. The Expats by Chris Pavone. This is the most recent From Left to Write book club selection, and I haven't written a post about it yet. It starts slowly but picks up speed about halfway through, to the point where I had to sit on the couch for a couple of hours, ignoring the kids so that I could get to the end. 
15. The Black Count by Tom Reiss. I found the historical aspects of this biography about the real Count of Monte Cristo fascinating but the book was more than twice as long as it needed to be. I didn't finish it; I tried to rally but ultimately, it was just taking up too much of my time. 
16. Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. After Year of Wonders, I was eager to read another book by Geraldine Brooks. This one was set in The New World, during the 1600s. Again, I loved the strong central female character. 

Feel free to leave a link to your own year-end reading round-up in the comments!
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Plan to Fail

I've written before about my reluctance to face other people's realities. I do this by not watching the news, skipping over articles in the paper, scrolling past news stories on Facebook. I mean, it's not like I don't know. And it's not like knowing more is going to suddenly spur me to action.

Actually, that's not true. After I watched Half the Sky, the first thing I did was offer myself as a volunteer to Pathways Togo. I've been helping them with their social media presence and outreach. A small thing but it helps to spread the message. A little can do a lot.

But for the most part, I block it all out. The anxiety of knowing, the guilt over feeling lucky, does me no good. And I have been very lucky. I lived an almost charmed life. Is it always easy? No. But easy is relative. I've never wanted for much, I have good friends and good family. My worries, as they say, amount to First World Problems.

This is where I sympathized with Percival, the main character in this month's From Left to Write selection, The Headmaster's Wager. Even though the stakes are higher for Percival, a Chinese ex-pat living just outside Saigon, I completely understood his subconscious refusal to pay attention to the rumors and stories swirling around Saigon about Chairman Mao's campaign in China. In the end, his determination to keep his head in the sand became his downfall. He found himself trapped between a rock and a hard place because he stayed in the present and didn't allow himself to consider the future, unless it was a rosy one.

Maybe it's only human? I'm the same in many ways. It's easier to think about now and live for now, than it is to do the hard work that will allow me to ride out whatever the future brings, good or bad. To paraphrase Peter Drucker:

Planning deals not with future decisions but with the future of present decisions

It's one thing to know it; it's another thing to act on it. I'm a slow learner sometimes. Even though I've already felt the repercussions of my past failures to plan, I still only do a half-assed job of it. But my stakes are higher now. I don't have to worry about the things that Percival should've worried about but they are important, First World Problems though they may be.  In my heart of hearts, I don't take my own problems seriously enough because I know that compared to the rest of the world, what I'm shouldering is small potatoes. Maybe it's a mistake to think that way. It's some kind of guilt complex, I realize.  This is the way my mind works: "It's silly to worry about worrying that you are making a big deal out of something that really is so silly when you think about the rest of the world." Are you confused? Now you know why I drink a lot of wine. *sigh*

Headmaster Percival Chen is a proud Chinese-born man who runs an English language school at the cusp of the Viet Nam Conflict. In his refusal to accept his adopted country's turbulent times, his gamble becomes a life-changer. Join From Left to Write on November 15 as we discuss The Headmaster's Wager, by Vincent Lam. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

A Believer.

Having lived in Prague and travelled around the area quite a bit, I felt a special connection to The Bloodletter's Daughter, a historical novel by Linda Lafferty that uses the legend of  Don Julius,  the mad bastard son of Emperor Rudolph II as the backdrop to the story of a young woman sold out by her mother, the owner of a bathhouse and doted on by her father, a bloodletter.  Interwoven through this tale are themes that are just as provocative today as they were then. A biggie in this book is the struggle between science and faith.
I think I'm a fairly enlightened person. I accept evolution. I recognize natural phenomenons as the result of various actions coming together to create a reaction. I know that the planets revolve around the sun. And yet, I have faith. Lots and lots of faith.
For all my modern scientific acceptance, I can't help but put my faith in the so-called universe. I believe in signs, I trust my instincts and intuition, I believe everything happens for a reason, even if we can't understand those reasons. And that, I think, is at the root of the struggle between science and faith. How do we explain the things we can't or don't understand? Sometimes science doesn't have answers. Sometimes the scientific reasoning is too hard to wrap our heads around. So, we invent ways of understanding that are based in mythology, superstition, mysticism. Every creation tale is an excellent example of this.
Honestly, I don't even know what I'm getting at here. My faith, in the religious sense, is something that  I struggle with. But my faith in the mystical powers of the universe rarely wavers. I witness and experience the mysterious workings of the world often, if not everyday. When my Grandpa Sol was convalescing at the Hebrew Home this past Spring, right in my very own neighborhood, after being estranged from him for many, many years, I immediately recognized it as a sign. I saw him nearly everyday during his time there, before my husband and I drove him upstate to my mother's house. He died shortly thereafter.
Every summer, my Grandpa Mike travels to Albany, along with my aunt and uncle, and cousins, from Florida for a big family dinner. And so it went this past summer. My 93 year old grandpa came up and while he was here, he didn't feel well so he was taken to the hospital. Because he lives in Florida, I don't see him very often, and we don't talk on the phone... because I'm deaf and he's deaf and it's never a good idea, a phone conversation. On my way home, I stopped by the hospital to see him and say goodbye. I was alone with him for 45 minutes, the longest I have ever been alone with him. We had a nice, funny conversation. He died not too long after that.
I truly, truly believe it was the universe that orchestrated these opportunities. Someone up there was tying up loose ends for us. I think I will be forever grateful that I had this chance to say goodbye to my two last living grandparents. It sounds hokey, I know, yet I cling to this belief in the universe because it is how I make sense of the world, it is how I cope with the unknown. It's really not so hard to understand then, the fear of medicine and science that serves as the undercurrent for The Bloodletter's Daughter or that once upon a time, it was believed that the sun revolved around the Earth.

Inspired by a real-life murder that threatened to topple the powerful Hapsburg dynasty in the 17th century, The Bloodletter's Daughter imagines how one young woman holds more power than she thought possible.  Join From Left to Write on September 25 as we discuss the The Bloodletter's Daughter. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. All links are IndieBound affiliate links, which means I get a cut if you buy the book, using one of my links. 

Seeking the Righteous.

When I first began reading The Baker's Daughter, I was struck right away by the realization that while I've read plenty of Holocaust literature, very little of it has been from the non-Jewish/non-Other perspective. The Holocaust seems to be one of those issues that is made out to be black and white, with no grey. Jew=good. German=bad. But few things in life are that simple. First of all, how about the fact that Jew and German often overlapped? Or the fact that Jews were merely a percentage of the total "Others" killed?

How much responsibility ought we place on a person that was emotionally vulnerable and easily brainwashed by propaganda, for whatever reason?  It takes a special measure of strength to go against the tide, especially one as violent and threatening as the Nazi tide. That is why it is imperative to shine more light on the Righteous Gentiles, especially the Germans. Not all those Righteous Gentiles started out as Righteous. Some probably unwittingly took up the cause when they came face to face with the human side of the Nazi campaign, as Elsie did in the book. Idealogy is easy to subscribe to when the details are abstract but when the victim of that ideaology takes on the face of a child, a mother, a father, looking you in the eyes and pleading, the human instinct kicks in, or at least, it did for some Gentiles.

I have a very good friend whose parents were born in Poland, and whose family still lives in Poland. Her family, along with others in their small Polish village, hid a Jewish schoolteacher during the war. (You can read that story here: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/107970/polish-village-secret). Another side of her family used to sneak bread under the fence to the Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto.  As a Jew, I find it important to know these stories, to know that in the face of incredible inhumanity, there were brave, brave souls who risked life and limb (literally) to shelter and rescue the persecuted among them.

But the lessons of the Holocaust are not translating to the modern day. Darfur, Rwanda, Srebrenica, to name just a few of the genocides that have occurred worldwide since the end of World War II. We rally, we spread awareness, we donate money. But I hope there are righteous people on the ground who help those poor souls in a way that money and exposure cannot. I have to believe there are but where are those stories?  

This post is inspired by Sarah McCoy's The Baker's Daughter. In a small Texan town, Reba discovers Elsie's German Bakery and falls in love with more than the pastries. She is drawn to Elsie's life in Germany during the last year of WWII. Join From Left to Write on August 29  as we discuss The Baker's Daughter. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. All links to the book are affiliate links. This means if you buy the book through my link, I get a percentage of the sale.