Nevermore Favorites for 2020

Since this is the end of 2020--pause for cheers-- we decided to list some of the books that delighted our Nevermore members during this dismal year.

Elizabeth Berg is a favorite author for many in Nevermore, and this year her book Confession Club came up a number of times.  It is a feel-good story set in a small Missouri town.  A group of women gathers each week to share stories about their lives and to support one another. Some of the characters were already familiar to those who had read the other books Berg had set in the same town (Night of Miracles and The Story of Arthur Truluv) but you don’t need to have read those to enjoy this one.      

 

Our next book was a nonfiction offering, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Retelling by Mo Rocca in which he pays tribute to people, things, and concepts which he feels have not received their due. It is beautifully written, well researched, and often funny.  Rocca is a compassionate author who treats all the subjects with respect.  There is a great deal of background for each entry which covers a wide variety of people and subjects, including Audrey Hepburn, disco, Thomas Paine, Prussia, Sammy Davis, Jr., and dragons.  The section on Billy Carter was a favorite of one Nevermore reader. He was interviewed after he was sober and reflected on his behavior during his brother’s presidential years. Another was quite taken by the history of the station wagon.  All agreed that this was definitely a must read!    

 

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helen Tursten made the list again this year!  It was quite a sensation in 2019 and made a return this year as people looked for some escapism.  Translated from the original Swedish, this slim book of stories tells about Maud, an 88 year old who has arranged her life as she wants and intends to keep it that way, including her rent-free apartment which she inherited.  Maud will do whatever needs doing to keep things the way she likes, and that may include murder.  One reader said she loved Maud because she knows how to solve problems.

 

Other authors who made an impression this year:

 

Noah Gordon for his historical series Cole, which included The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice aka Choices.  The books follow the Cole family of physicians who have The Gift, a sixth sense which tells them of impending death.  The saga begins in the Dark Ages and concludes in the modern era.

 

Erik Larson for his fascinating non-fiction, including his most recent book, The Splendid and the Vile which looks at Winston Churchill and his family during the Blitz.  Some of his other titles which came up during the year were Dead Wake (about the sinking of the Lusitania), Thunderstruck (about Marconi, mass communication, and a murder), and Devil in the White City (about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and a serial killer).

 

John Scalzi is a science fiction/fantasy author who caught the fancy of several Nevermore members, first through his collection of short fiction A Very Scalzi Christmas and then through his series which started with Old Man’s War. While not usually slapstick, Scalzi’s work employs humor to good effect which surprised one reader who didn’t know that science fiction could be funny.

Nevermore: Murmur of Bees, Bitter and Sweet, Alexander Hamilton, The Historian, Man on a Raft, Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good

 

Reported by Kristin

Nevermore began our latest Zoom book club discussing Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years by Michael E. Newton. Our reader is a huge Hamilton fan and has read many books about him over the years, but was highly impressed with Newton’s research. She said that she thought she knew everything about Hamilton, but learned so much more with this reading. Hamilton’s heroic exploits of the Revolutionary War were emphasized, even praising his compassion at the Battle of Yorktown as he quickly outmaneuvered the British troops, but let the defeated soldiers go rather than dispatching them with bayonets.

Our next reader picked up a recommended book from six decades ago, (1960!) Man on a Raft by Kenneth Cooke. Although faded and worn, this little paperback was proclaimed to be wonderful, even though the main character endured so much misery. Our reader said that it was truly about courage, and that she was inspired by others’ perseverance.

 

On another serious note, the same reader highly recommended the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. Set in Seattle and moving between the 1940s and the 1980s, this debut novel tells the story of Asian families removed to internment camps. The Panama Hotel once served as an intersectional place for the Japanese and Chinese communities, and indeed, Henry Lee met his first love, Keiko Okabe, there during the war years. Our reader said that one of the best parts of the book was how Henry and his father came to understand each other as they each tried to define their cultural identity.

 

Moving further back in historical fiction, another book club member read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, a venture back to the fifteenth century in another retelling of the Dracula tale. The novel uses three different narrators: an unnamed young woman in the 1970s, her father Paul in the 1950s, and Paul’s mentor a generation earlier in the 1930s. The story weaves much travel through Eastern Europe through the pages, visiting monasteries and villages while looking for the origin of Dracula.

 

Back on this side of the Atlantic, our next reader read another novel that sounds all too familiar these days because it involved an influenza pandemic, The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia. The first of this Mexican author’s books translated into English, this is the tale of Simonopio, a baby found under a bridge and covered in bees. As he grows, he has visions, causing some villagers to view him with superstition. With the 1918 pandemic and the Mexican Revolution intertwined, Segovia’s beautiful voice tells of turbulent times of change.

 

Finally, another reader enjoyed a book that has been making the rounds of Nevermore for months: An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten. This small book of stories was translated from the original Swedish, and has been well enjoyed by most readers. Maud is 88 years old and has been living in her inherited apartment for decades, (rent-free, mind you) and has no plan to give it up anytime soon. She is clever, possibly criminal, and an absolute joy to know—as long as you don’t cross her.

Nevermore: Elderly Lady, Station Eleven, Walking the Americas, Waco, Birdwatching,

 Reported by Jeanne

An old favorite made another appearance at Nevermore:  An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten.  This slim volume is a collection of stories featuring Maud, an 88 year old woman who wants to live in peace and comfort—and is willing to go to extreme lengths to see that she can.  Our reader loved it as had most before, though someone asked, “Is it because we are old or because we don’t want to put up with any nonsense?”  The group was too busy laughing to answer, but someone did add that Maud is “someone you don’t want to piss off.” The stories were originally published in Swedish.

Next up was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The book, published in 2014, is set in an apocalyptic world where a deadly flu has ended 99 percent of human life.  The book revolves around a group of survivors who travel from place to place searching for traces of civilization. They have formed an acting troop, as most of them had connections to an actor who died on stage just before the pandemic began.  Although the book had been praised by other readers, this time the Nevermore member put it aside after the first chapter because it just seemed all too possible these days.

Walking the Americas by Levison Wood was praised as being an entertaining and vivid description of an amazing journey.  Wood, a British adventurer and travel writer, starts his 1800 mile trek in the Yucatan, crossing eight countries. The reviewer said she enjoyed it because she could visualize the countryside as he walked and that Wood has a sense of humor.  She found it to be an easy read.

Our next member had watched a documentary on Waco and the Branch Davidians and now is reading books about the incident.  Others in the group recommended A Place Called Waco by David Thibodeau as an interesting and informative book on the subject.  Written by a surviving member of the group, the book provides an insider’s view of events.

Being quarantined has made some hobbies and habits be of greater importance, such as gardening and birdwatching.  Birdwatcher’s Daily Companion by Marcus H. Schneck and Tom Warhol provided some ideas and information, but the reader said she actually found Cornell’s www.allaboutbirds.org site and app to be better at providing identification.  The book did list activities to attract birds, places to visit to see birds, projects, etc.  Another book she enjoyed very much was What It's Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley which does an excellent job of exploring bird behavior.