There is nothing more satisfying than finishing a good book.  Because I am currently laid up with a broken foot and can’t pursue hiking and other fun outdoor pursuits, I find I have much more time to read!  Here is my list of notable reads for November.   I would highly recommend all.  If you like to read a book before watching the movie you may like to know that the first three books on my list have been made into movies to be released in the near future.

1. Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff.  For those of you who are parents, your heart will break as you hear the story of how Sheff’s brilliant and beautiful son Nic begins a tormented life of addiction.  This life involves multiple rehabs, stealing from and lying to his family, and near death episodes, followed by periods of recovery we silently hope will lead to a happy ending.  Sheff relates how this experience affected him and his family.  At one Al-Anon meeting, Sheff writes “As I’m speaking in a rush of tears and panic, I think, Someone else is talking.  This is not my life.  Finally, drained, I say, ‘I don’t know how all you people in  this room survive this.’  And I cry.  So do many of the others.”  Sheff reveals how Nic’s two younger siblings react to his addiction.  His daughter Daisy asks “Do you know why that guy does drugs?”  His son Jasper replies “He thinks it makes him feel better…I don’t think he wants to do them, but he can’t help it.  It’s like in cartoons when some character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.  The devil whispers into Nicky’s ear and sometimes it gets too loud so he has to listen to him.  The angel is there, too, but he talks softer and Nic can’t hear him.”  The story ends with Nic completing a final rehab stay and his father’s epilogue.  We have all been touched by friends or family members with addiction problems.  This book is a reminder that addiction affects everyone, and that where addiction is concerned, suffering is inevitable.  The guilt a parent feels is overwhelming.  Sheff writes “Sometimes I know that nothing and no one is to blame.  Then I slip and feel utterly responsible.  Then sometimes I know that the only thing that is knowable is that Nic has a terrible disease.”  Sheff does an awesome job in reassuring us that are not alone.  Apparently, his son Nic has written a companion book to this, I will definitely be checking that out as well.   Beautiful Boy has been made into a movie that will be released November 9, 2019.

2.  The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, explores relationships in France during World War II and the German occupation. “Some stories don’t have happy endings.  Even love stories.  Maybe especially love stories.”  This poignant statement seems to be the theme of the book, in that the love between the father and his daughters is thwarted and ends in death.  Likewise, the relationship between one of the protagonists, Isabelle, and her lover Gaetan is thwarted and ends in death.  There is rape.  There are concentration camps.  Families are separated, children ripped from their mother’s arms.  At the heart of the story is the strength of two very different sisters, Isabelle and Viane.  The story begins with Viane’s discovery of something which makes her remember her past, during World War II, and this is something hard for her to remember.  Her patronizing son is clueless, until the very end of the story.  He asks her why she never told him about this part of her life.  She responds, “Men tell stories.  Women get on with it.  For us, it was a shadow war.  There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books.  We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.  Your sister was as desperate to forget it as I was.”  Be prepared with a box of tissues at the end, because Hannah will tug at your heartstrings like no other author.  This haunting novel has been made into a movie that will be in theaters January 25, 2019.

3.  Where’d You Go Bernadette, by Maria Semple.  We have all met or seen Bernadettes at some point: super anxious, often highly intelligent people who blame the world for their every problem.  This could be a real downer to read, but Semple has made it extremely funny.  Bernadette, formerly a high powered and award-winning architect, moves with her husband from LA to Seattle for his job with Microsoft.  There, she has multiple miscarriages and her daughter is born with a heart defect.  Whether or not this has contributed to her state of mind, she has nonetheless become an irascible and misanthropic human being, and her friend tells her “People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.”   The friend is right, as Bernadette progressively becomes more anti-social and neurotic.  She hires a virtual assistant online who does everything from paying her bills to finding medication for her which leads to further problems.  Marital problems ensue, although her 15-year-old daughter, Bee, is her mother’s staunchest supporter throughout the book.  When her mother goes missing, she will stop at nothing to find her.  In the end, her husband gives Bee a note to give her mother, reinstating his love and support for Bernadette by underscoring her achievements.

“1. Beeber Bifocal

2. Twenty Mile House

3. Bee

4. Your escape

Fourteen miracles to go.” 

This book is certainly innovative, using a variety of formats including emails, letters, FBI documents etc. to tell the story.  It made me laugh many times.  A fun read!  It has been made into a movie which is scheduled for release in March 2019.

4.  My Ántonia, by Willa Cather.  I think this novel is appropriate for the month of Thanksgiving because it fully embraces the importance of friendship and family.    Written in 1918, it is the final, and ostensibly the best book of her “prairie trilogy”, following O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark.  The story begins when orphaned Jim Burden goes to live with his middle-aged grandparents in Nebraska.  There, he befriends Ántonia Shimerda,  the eldest daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants.  Jim’s grandparents have a better understanding of how to survive in the environment and have a home, outbuildings, and even hired hands.  The Shimerdas, as immigrants, were basically scammed and although they paid good money for a homestead, end up living in a cave.  I love Cather’s description of how the Shimerdas kept their food warm in a featherbed.  I also love her descriptive language: “it seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars, one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green”.  Both children learn how harsh and yet rewarding life is like for pioneers in sparsely populated rural Nebraska.  There are many life adventures including when Jim’s grandparents move to town and Ántonia gets a job in town working as a housekeeper for the Harlings.  The academically astute Jim goes on to become a successful attorney in New York City.  Conversely, Ántonia, who has had to work in the fields or as a housekeeper all her life to help support her family, ends up getting scammed by her super turd biscuit fiance.  She eventually marries another man and has several children, but never manages to escape poverty.  Yet, she is very happy.  Her family is the most beautiful and important thing to her.  My Ántonia is basically a story of how friendship withstands the test of time and how meaningful and beautiful that is.  When Jim sees Antonia years later and is startled to see the physical changes in her, he thinks to himself “how little it matters…I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded.  Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life”.  At the end of the book he muses, “For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be.  Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again.  Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.”  I tend to re-read this book every few years and I am never disappointed.  A real gem.

Thank you for visiting my blog!  Wishing you love, peace, happiness, and good reading!