February 2020 in Books

Hey all!  I'm a little late with my February recap, but here it is for you:

The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War - Neal Bascomb - nonfiction - four stars - I really liked this one, but it got off to a bit of a slow start for me, mostly because it wasn't quite what the title suggests.  While the book does cover the breakout from Hellminden, it's really more about a whole series of breakouts from a group of airmen who were essentially serial escapees from POW camps in Axis territory.  These are folks who escaped over and over, never quite getting to Allied territory who were eventually sent to Hellminden which was supposed to be inescapable.  I loved reading about them and their determination to escape as well as how many people knew about and aided in their escape.  A great true story.

All the Lives We Never Lived - Anuradha Roy - historical fiction - three stars - This one just never really hit home for me.  It's about Myshkin, an Indian boy whose mother leaves him (although she had intended to take him with her) when he is nine.  This, of course, alters the course of his life and you get the sense that he has never quite felt whole or completely at ease with others.  When an old family friend, a very good friend of his mother's, dies, she leaves instructions that a packet of letters be sent to Myshkin.  When he opens them, he finds all the letters that his mother wrote to her, thus explaining the reason she left, why she did not come back to him, and what happened to her.  This was just kind of meh for me, probably because I just never connected with either Myshkin or his mother.  It was interesting from a historical perspective, but only so so.

The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead - historical fiction - five stars - This one was so good.  I had read Whitehead's Underground Railroad previously and this one is even better.  It's the story of Elwood, a good kid, who is inadvertently picked up and sent to a reform school, mostly because he is black and had the misfortune to hitch a ride with a black man who had stolen the car they were driving in.  You get Elwood's back story and how he was making a way for himself - had a job, was going to college.  And then he lands at reform school (this is based on a real school - the Dozier School for Boys) and is subject to the rules and whims of the administration.  It's a shocking and sobering look at what reform school was like, and there was a twist at the end that I did not see coming.  A must read.

On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 85 Years Old - Hendrik Groen - fiction - five stars - This is the follow up to the first secret diary that I read previously, and I actually enjoyed this one even more.  I think it's because the characters were already known to me, but also because Hendrik is better in this book.  By better I mean, he evolved a lot in the first diary from super grumpy to being party of this sweet and sassy group of seniors, the Old But Not Dead Club.  This diary continues to follow the exploits of the club and how they care for one another, as well as their subversions against management.  I think this one was more upbeat and positive than the first diary because although there was still lots of sadness, it was a hopeful book.  You could read this one on it's own, but I definitely think it's worth reading in sequence.  Loved it, and hoping there are more coming.

Mistress of the Ritz - Melanie Benjamin - historical fiction - four stars - So this month I lifted my ban on WWII historical fiction - I had gotten a little weary about it last year and decided to take a break from it.  I love WWII stories, but they were starting to sound the same to me.  This one tells the story of Blanche Auzello, an American married to the director of the Ritz in Paris.  The book details how they came to be married, and their rocky marriage, and how they survived the war, both assisted the Resistance, although neither realized what the other was doing.  I thought the book was pretty good, but the end of the story was jarring to me.  I wasn't crazy about how the story was tied up in light of the ending and the rate of the Auzellos in real life.  There was a real disconnect for me there.  Still a good read though.

The Last Chinese Chef - Nicole Mones - fiction - three stars - I picked this one off the shelf at the library based on the title.  I love books about food/restaurants, and this one seemed right up my alley.  It was a bit of a disappointment.  It's about a food writer named Maggie whose husband died a year before.  She's notified that a woman in China, where her husband traveled for business, is filing a paternity claim.  She goes to China with a paternity test to determine if the claim is real.  While she is there, her editor asks her to write an article about an up and coming chef, Sam, opening a restaurant in China.  When she arrives in China, she learns that Sam's investors have backed out, so he isn't opening the restaurant now, but he has been invited to compete in a cooking competition which will select chefs to represent China in a worldwide cooking competition.  I loved the parts of the book discussing food, the theory behind meals and dishes in China, and describing the dishes and how they were made.  I didn't love the backstory and the personal/relationship parts of the book.  It all seemed too much of a stretch for me.

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman - fiction - four stars - I love mythology, and I really enjoyed the last Gaiman book I read, so I thought I would try this one.  It's not a story per se with a beginning, middle, and end, but more a collection of stories that roughly follows a timeline.  So some of the stories/myths are there for character development or because they relate to something that happens later, but it's not necessarily linear.  I did enjoy this though, I thought Gaiman did a great job of taking a bunch of myths and pulling them together in an understandable way.  Looking forward to reading more from Gaiman.

30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South - Bill Steigerwald - nonfiction - four stars - The story of a reporter from Pittsburgh, Ray Sprigle, who went undercover in the Jim Crow south in the 1948 to see what life was like for a black man.  This is another book that had a bit of a slow start for me, but that's likely due to the fact that I kind of expected to jump right into the 30 days, and that the story would be primarily about that experience, but it was broader than that.  The book had a lot more background about Sprigle, his previous work, and the preparations that went into going undercover.  Then there was a section about his travels, and then the latter part of the book was about the public reaction to the book.  Still it was a very interesting look at conditions at the time, and really made me think.  Of course I knew it was unfair and that the Jim Crow laws were bad.  But, for example, I never considered that in some localities the blacks far outnumbered the whites, and all of them paid their taxes.  Yet, the white school was brand new, spacious, with new equipment and furnishings, whereas the black school was run down, with old furniture, discarded books (from the white schools), and few teachers, so basically black taxes subsidized white schools while the black schools were completely inadequate. An excellent book.

Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende - historical fiction - three stars - I've read several books from Allende, so though I would pick out another one at the library the other day.  This tells the story of Eliza, a baby left at the doorstep of the home of a British brother and sister in Valparaiso.  She's raised by them as the daughter of the sister, Miss Rose.  Later, Eliza falls in love with a lowly shipping clerk, Joaquin.  He decides to leave for California to make his fortune.  After his departure, Eliza realizes she is pregnant and stows away to follow him there with the help of a doctor/ship's cook named Tao Chien, Once in California, she and Tao Chien look for Joaquin, at some points she searches on her own, and sometimes together.  I feel like this was a little all over the place.  It was interesting, but definitely not my favorite work from Allende.

So kind of a mixed bag this month.  Definite favorites were The Nickel Boys and Hendrik Groen.  Currently I'm reading Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews, and after that I have All or Nothing, a WWII novel from a German author that's been translated.  Would love to know what you guys have been reading!