BJ's Fantastically Awesome Reading Journal: 2024

January

1. As Good as Dead by Holly Jackson  458 pages This was the last of the trilogy that began with The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.  Pip is a high school girl who gets really good at solving all the murders that happen in her town.  She has a podcast and she’s gaining a following.  In this one she starts to notice strange things happening at her house. Someone keeps drawing weird chalk pictures in front of her house and leaving dead pigeons on her doorstep.  So she googles it and realizes it’s a local serial killer, who had been caught years ago and is in jail.  Thing is, if he’s caught why are these strange and scary things happening.  So she digs in, and these occurrences are tied to the first case she solved and it turns out they caught the wrong guy as the serial killer.  So now she has to solve another murder by covering up a murder, and it’s a convoluted story.  
   
   2. Emotional Labor by Rose Hackman 249 pages I thought I’d be more pissed off after listening to this book than I was.  This is a book about the extra mental labor that mostly women put in to make life happen—managing life for the family, managing moods, managing other people’s stuff. I suppose it was interesting, but I don’t think it really said anything new.
   
   3. Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan  319 pages Sam and her family spent the summers at their home in the Hamptons. It was a very idyllic childhood spending every summer there, right down to falling in love with the boy next door.  When she was a teenager the boy devastatingly broke her heart into a million pieces.  Then as an adult she and her fiancé spend a week out there trying to figure out where they want to get married.  She seems to have it all, the doctor fiancé and a great job.  But her life is ridiculously bland, it’s not her, and she kinda knows it.  And guess who’s next door that week she and her fiancé are visiting her parents in the Hamptons.
   
   4. Member of the Family by Dianne Lake 400 pages This is a memoir written by a woman who belonged to the Manson Family before and during the murders occurred in 1969.  She was 15 or 16 when she joined the family, and she describes how insane it was to live with the Manson family, how Charlie would run hot and cold with his girls and then what it was like when the members committed the murders and then came back to tell her all about them.  It was her testimony that ultimately helped bring down Charles Manson and the members who had committed the murders.  A very interesting insight into the family. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for January.  It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   That’s it for January, 4 books read and 1, 426 pages
   
   February
   
   5. The Storyteller by Dave Grohl 432 pages This wasn’t a linear memoir of Dave Grohl’s life, but more like a collection of stories from different points in his life. And it was amazing.  He’s funny, he’s real, he talks about Joan Jett hanging out in her pajamas in his house reading his kids bed time stories. Absolutely LOVED this one.  
   
   6. The Last by Hanna Jameson  353 pages Whoa, this one was super interesting. You ever read a post apocalyptic story and wonder how it got to that point?  This book tells you how it happens.  Jon, the main character, is attending a conference in Switzerland when nuclear bombs destroy other cities around the world.  Jon and a few dozen people stay in the hotel and try to figure out what to do next what with a dwindling supply of food and then they learn there’s another group of people living in the woods who perhaps aren’t exactly friendly.  Jon is documenting everything that happens when he finds a young girl dead in the water tank on the roof.  So he distracts himself with trying to solve the mystery of who the little girl was and who killed her.  
   
   7. From Cradle to Stage by Virginia Grohl 240 pages Another one I absolutely loved.  Virginia Grohl is Dave Grohl’s mom.  And she wanted to meet other mothers of famous musicians, so she set out to interview moms of famous musicians including the moms of Michael Stipe, Geddy Lee, Dr. Dre, Miranda Lambert, etc.  It was SUPER interesting.  Go Mama Grohl!
   
   8. The Guncle by Steven Rowley 336 pages This was an incredibly sweet book.  Patrick is an actor who was pretty famous and is currently on hiatus after losing his partner in an accident years before.  The story begins as his best friend, his sister-in-law, died of cancer.  He is asked to take her children for the summer while their dad, his brother, dries out in a rehab clinic.  He takes the children to his home in Palm Springs not knowing a thing about how to be around kids.  When he realizes he can teach them how to grieve and love and be loved all over again in a world without their mom.  It’s funny, and it’s very heartfelt.  Loved it. 
   
   9. Ocean State by Stewart O’Nan  207 pages I blew through this one it was that good.  It was told by 4 different women, and it didn’t always tell you which woman was talking—so I had to take a minute to figure out who was talking.  It was told from the perspective of Angel, a teenage girl from a working class family who was in a relationship with the popular rich boy.  Then it was told by Marie, Angel’s younger sister, Carol—Angel and Marie’s Mom, and Birdy, another teenage girl who had an affair with Angel’s boyfriend.  In the beginning Marie alludes to a murder that Angel had committed, so you know it’s only a matter of time that something happened to Birdy.  The story was told very well, and I really liked this book.
   
   10. Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar  288 pages. I blew through this one in 24 hours. I mean, I can’t go wrong with a book written by a woman who left a cult.  Jill Duggar is one of the older children of that extremely religious family that had that reality show about raising 19 children. One of the basic principles of their faith is that the children absolutely have to obey their parents no matter what for their entire lives.  Even when they are out of home and married.  Jill’s story is how her parents abused that principle.  They told her to sign a contract with the TV network, without showing her any of the contract—they just gave her the signature page and told her to sign it.  And she did because she was raised to obey them.  Her parents, her dad in particular, got dollar signs in his eyes and took advantage in the worst possible way.  The Duggar children were not compensated, the dad took all the money, and guilted her into continuing to obey. This book was about how she broke out from all that and managed to live a normal life with her own family without having to obey her parents anymore.  An insane story.
   
   11. Cultish by Amanda Montell 319 pages this one wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. I listen to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast, which Amanda Montell hosts.  She is a linguist, so she really dives into the language behind cults.  Which, yeah, interesting. But the book was a bit dry for me.

   And that’s it for February. 11 books read and 3,611 pages read

   March
   
   12.The Little Liar by Mitch Albom  350 pages I read this one for book club and some very interesting discussion came out of it.  This book is narrated by “the truth” who is an observer of 4 different people during World War II.  The story is about the relocation of Jews in a small city in Greece.  Nobody really talks about relocating Jews from Greece, and we’re all so focused on northern European countries when we think of the Holocaust.  One of the characters is a German officer whose role is to efficiently relocate all the Jews.  So he manipulates a young boy, who is known as the kid who always tells the truth in his town, to tell all the Jews that they’re going to be relocated and all will be well.  The kid has no idea he’s lying, and he looks Aryan so they don’t throw him in with the rest of his people on the train.  Then you have the perspective of his older brother who gets sent to Auschwitz, and then girlfriend who escaped the train.  They all have radically different points of view and what they all did to survive this horrible thing was incredible.  Overall a very well done book.
   
   13. Fed Up by Gemma Hartley 254 pages Eh. I kind of found this one annoying.  This author rightly pointed out the discrepancy between men and women and emotional labor.  The women do the most of the keeping track of life stuff to keep the family on time for things.  Sometimes I get frustrated when I am the only one who seems to notice that there are dirty dishes in the sink.  But I do wonder how the author’s husband felt at how publicly his shortcomings were pointed out.  
   
   14. The Only One Left by Riley Sager  398 pages Excuse me while I clean the bits of my brain off the walls.  Riley Sager has done it again.  In this one Kit is a visiting nurse who takes an assignment caring for an old lady who lives in that big mansion on the cliff.  When the old lady was younger her parents and sister were murdered and of course she was accused of killing them because she wasn’t also killed.  She was accused but never acquitted.  So she’s been living as a disabled shut in due to a stroke.  The lady can’t speak, but she has a typewriter and wants to tell Kit what really happened on the night that her family was killed.  Of course the head housekeeper keeps a tight fist on what goes on with the old lady, but nobody seems to know why the previous nurse left all of a sudden in the middle of the night.  Like, her belongings are still in the room adjoining to the old lady’s room. Bit by bit Kit gets the story, and the twist was twisty AF.  This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for March 2024.
   
   14. The Women by Kristin Hannah 472 pages This one is about a woman who goes off to be a combat nurse during the Vietnam war.  This is the war when we first started paying attention to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by being in combat. She did 2 tours in Vietnam working in front line hospitals, where she saw an incredible amount of traumatizing things.  Then she went home, back to her privileged life on Coronado Island in San Diego, where the wealthy live. She can’t fit back into that life. She’s a traumatized combat veteran in a world where nobody thinks that women actually went to war.  She goes to the VA to get help only to be turned away because “no women served in Vietnam.”  She leans closely on her two friends that she served with, who also understand everything she’d gone through as she had gone through it too.  It’s a very detailed view into when women first started to serve in combat and how poorly she, as a veteran, was treated when she returned. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for March 2024. It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   15. The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey  352 pages I never really paid much attention to Mariah Carey. Her music isn’t really my thing. But I heard her story on the Disgraceland podcast and never knew how much crap she endured in her life.  Her mother was white and her father was black, and of course she never fit into either world.  She grew up knowing she wanted to be famous, and she went for it. But man her childhood was messed up. Her sister pimped her out to her drug dealer boyfriend.  And then when she started to become famous she married a very high profile and famous record company executive who controlled every single move she made. She had zero freedom, and her only job was just to crank out the hits and make them money.  She ended up getting out of that marriage and then had to figure out who she would be after all that awful.

   16. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 264 pages This is the memoir of Trevor Noah, he’s a comedian and talk show host, I think? Anyway, he grew up under apartheid in South Africa. His father was white and his mother was black, and mixing races was strictly prohibited and against the law. So, his existence was literally against the law.  He talks about growing up with a black mother in a time when it was basically a crime to be black, and talks about the massive discrepancies between black life and white life.  All the while his mother is an absolute badass and raises him to be the best man he can be despite poverty and violence surrounding him at all times. Fascinating read. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for March 2024.

   And that’s it for March. 17 books read and 5,711 pages read

   April

   17. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva 291 pages. This one was super weird but boy was I into it! “Zoo” is in a reality show, kind of like Survivor.  She’s one of 12 contestants who are sent into the wilderness to engage in some really really hard endurance challenges.  Of course, being in a reality show, they are completely cut off from the world. She hasn’t spoken to her family or heard any news about the “outside world” the whole time she’s there.  Over the course of the challenges she goes into towns that are completely abandoned, and she thinks it’s because of the show.  She sees dead bodies and she thinks it’s a put on to challenge her mentally while she’s going through the challenge.  But then she figures out it’s not fake and something really terrible is going on in the world.  Absolutely fascinating. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for April 2024.
   
   18. I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout 447 pages I’ve watched Gossip Girl, I’ve developed a slight interest in the world of boarding school.  But this is definitely not like Gossip Girl, this is the memoir of a young woman who went away to an elite boarding school in New Hampshire—the same place where her father and sister have gone.  At the end of her freshman year she was sexually assaulted by a senior boy just before graduation.  She reports the assault, and an incredibly toxic culture of boys using girls is revealed at this school.  Chessy steps up to bat and not only reveals the ugly “traditions” of this school, but shines a light on how girls are exploited in these environments.  She is a hero! This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for April 2024.
   
   19. These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant 282 pages. I listened to this one and was riveted. The narrator was Bronson Pinchot. Remember that show Perfect Strangers—he played Balki the immigrant who arrived to live with his cousin in Chicago, and culture shock hilarity ensued. His voice is NOTHING like that of Balki, btw. Anyway, in this story Cooper and his 8 year old daughter Finch are living in an isolated cabin.  They are very strict with rationing supplies because they can’t just go to the store and buy more.  They’re in hiding.  Over the course of the story you learn that Cooper is a single dad whose custody of his daughter was being threatened by his in laws.  So he took Finch when she was a baby and took off to live in this cabin. Now Finch is 8 and wondering why they’re there and why they don’t have any contact with the outside world. Their supply line, his friend, didn’t show, and they have no way of knowing why or asking why.  This is a story of doing whatever it takes to be together, and then coming to grips with the fact that if they step into the outside world again, he could be arrested for kidnapping.  An amazing story. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read for April 2024. It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   20. unSweetined by Jodie Sweetin 256 pages Jodie Sweetin played the middle daughter in that sickly sweet TV show Full House.  This is her memoir about how, though she loved being an actor as a child, it put her in a weird spot of not being an adult yet being too much of an adult to be a kid.  Her identity really suffered and as a result she turned to alcohol and drugs.  She was a raging meth addict at her worst.  This book is about her figuring out who she is and trying to over come these massive addictions. She’s real and honest.  She relapses, she gets clean again.  Though I wasn’t a huge fan of the show, I think her book is an honest look into what it’s really like to be an addict.
   
   21. After Annie by Anna Quinlen  273 pages I read this one for book club and it was painfully sad.  Annie is a mom of 4 who suddenly dies of a brain aneurysm.  The story is told from the perspective of her husband, her teenage daughter and her best friend who is a recovering addict who all have different ways of coping with this massive and awful loss.  Nicely written but brutally sad.

   So far I’m at 22 books and 7,260 pages read

   May

   22. Being Henry by Henry Winkler 251 pages. When I was in grad school there were pictures of Henry Winkler displayed prominently because he did his undergrad at Emerson College, where I went to grad school.  I really enjoyed his positive attitude through out the telling of his life story.  
   
   23. The Drowning Girls by Paula Treik DeBoard  382 pages This one really had my attention.  And then it just ended.  No wrap up.  No police inquiry as to why Kelsey was found mostly drowned in the pool.  So I am very unfulfilled.  The story was great, though.  Liz, her husband Phil and their daughter Danielle move into a very exclusive neighborhood because Phil works for the company that manages the neighborhood. It’s filled with incredibly wealthy people who are super petty about a lot of dumb shit, like an HOA on steroids. Then the neighborhood girl befriends Danielle and this girl is trouble on legs. Kelsey, the girl, develops an all out obsession for Phil and worms her way into a position where it looks like he’s actually been pursuing her to the point where it’s absolutely bonkers. Then she ends up floating in the pool and bleeding.  The characters don’t know how it happened, but the reader does.  And then it just ends at that point.  Like, gee, thanks?
    
   24. Full Disclosure by Stormy Daniels 268 pages it was kind of interesting to hear about how she made her way and made her name. I literally don’t understand why she had sex with that scummy man whose name I won’t mention.  She didn’t relay any attraction for him and talks about the whole encounter as if it were completely gross.  If it was so gross when why not just leave?    I did like how brave she was in standing up and telling the truth about her encounter with him even with everyone threatening her and bullying her into keeping it quiet.  That was admirable.
   
   25. The Burnout by Sophie Kinsela  403 pages I have loved Sophie Kinsela and I am so saddened to hear the news about her brain cancer. I suspect this will be her last book. Sasha is incredibly overworked and epically loses her shit at work.  To the point where the HR lady is chasing her down the street and she runs headlong into a wall and knocks herself out.  When she comes to she realizes that she’s been put on leave from work and her mom has booked her into a hotel in the seaside town where they used to vacation when she was a kid.  The hotel isn’t at all the grand place she remembers, but she stays there anyway and the cast of characters running the place are purely Sophie Kinsela.  Sasha recovers from her burnout by trying to follow a wellness plan her mom recommended, when she meets a man also staying at the hotel who is also recovering from epically losing his shit at work.  So, we have a love interest, some comedy with the weirdos working at the hotel trying to source things like kale and noni juice because Sasha’s mom ordered it, despite the fact that they are terrible tasting.  And there’s also a bit of intrigue involving the local surf shop. I really loved this book. Thank you, Sophie Kinsella, for all the years of awesome books. This one was a fantastically awesome read in May 2024.  It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   26. The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins 281 pages Camden is the heir of a massive fortune by his North Carolina lumber tycoon family.  He was adopted by Ruby McTavish, the daughter of the tycoon, Ruby has since passed and the estate and the money has all fallen to him.  He wanted nothing to do with this legacy and has left it behind despite Ruby’s attempts to keep him close.  She wants to keep him close because her sister and their children and grandchildren are also still living on the estate and they suck.  Camden and his wife Jules go back to the estate in North Carolina to settle some legal matters and of course super drama ensues.  Is Camden really the rightful heir?  Lots of twists at the end of this, and basically all the characters except for Camden are pretty crappy people.
   
   27. Hot and Bothered by Jancee Dunn 303 pages I admit I am pretty clueless when it comes to menopause. And, well, I am on the verge of that someday soon. I read this book to learn more about what to expect, and let’s just say I am incredibly freaked out. I know a bit more about what to expect, and I am not psyched about it. This one was a fantastically awesome read in May 2024. 

   And that’s it for May. 28 books read and 9,148 pages read

   June
   
   28. Point Last Seen by Christina Dodd  430 pages OK, so this dude lives in a very weird little town on the California coast. He went to the beach and the body of a woman washed up, turns out she wasn’t dead.  Turns out she also cannot remember anything about anything. So then they immediately fall into bed.  And then the cast of weirdos who live in this town help her to remember things while the person who tried to kill her is still trying to find her and endangers everyone else in the town. It was an OK story, kinda meh. 
   
   29. If You Would Have Told Me by John Stamos  342 pages I remember when John Stamos was on General Hospital when I was a little kid.  My sister was mildly obsessed with him too.  He’s had an interesting life, I was entertained by his memoir. No big earth shattering reveals.  
   
   30. Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo  409 pages I read this one for book club, and I hate to say it but they took a really interesting story and made it really boring. It’s the story of two American slaves who escaped the south. She was light skinned and posed as a man traveling north with a slave companion. But really they were husband and wife. As you can imagine it was incredibly risky.  Once they got to Boston they still weren’t out of the woods as slave hunters were still hired to travel north and retrieve slaves who had escaped.  They got into speaking publicly about their experiences as slaves and actually got quite famous for it, which was an incredible risk for the time as well. They were basically spitting on the face of the slave owning establishment and the slave owners were not psyched about that. The story was super interesting but the author, for some reason, wrote it like a text book. It was a slog.
   
   31. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston 348 pages This was another book club read and I was totally obsessed with this one. Her real name is Lucca, but she’s going as Evie Porter. She’s a con artist for hire, and works for a man named Mr. Smith. Her job is to infiltrate whoever the target and retrieve something of interest for Mr. Smith—whether it’s to steal something or to get information. She’s had a ton of different identities and has been on a ton of different jobs.  So, she’s there posing as Evie Porter when she’s at a party with her newest mark, when she meets a woman who is going by her original name. And then she has to figure out why that is happening and who this woman really is and why Mr. Smith has planted this woman with her original name to mess her up. Super fascinating story. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read in June 2024.
   
   32. Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur  272 pages This was a memoir written by a woman who when she was a teenager helped her married mother have an affair with a married man. The whole time I was reading this story all I could think was “Dude, your mom sucks.” So Adrienne was 14 when her mom in appropriately confessed that she’d made out with her husband’s best friend. And then Adrienne was an active conspirator in the affair for a ridiculously long time after.  Her mother was truly a narcissist who wanted what she wanted and didn’t give a single care about the messed up situation she was subjecting her daughter to.  This family was gross. 
   
   33. My Effin Life by Geddy Lee  512 pages LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!  I grew up listening to Rush, the band where Geddy Lee is the lead singer and bassist. I listened to him sing the lyrics written by drummer Neil Peart. And man is his life story absolutely fascinating and well worth the entire time it took to listen to it. His parents were survivors of Auschwitz, and while he’s in his 70s now he still carries their stories of survival with him.  His parents’ need to thrive after such a trauma seems to have driven him to be the success that he is, while still being a great human being as well.  The love he openly expresses for his band mates is also wonderful. Very worthwhile read. This one was a Fantastically Awesome Read in June 2024. It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   So far I have read 34 books and a total of 11,461 pages
   
   July
   
   34. Hey Hun by Emily Paulson 384 pages  This is the memoir of a woman who got caught up in a MLM, a multilevel marketing company. She made a fake name for her company, Rejuvinat, and I kinda wondered if it was Arbonne.  Anyway, she talked all about how she got sucked into it.  And she was quite “successful” at it and tells us all about the tactics she used to recruit people and get them to stay at it even though they knew they were in a losing proposition.  She talks about all the love bombing that goes on to keep people in the machine so they keep feeling the people who are above them on the pyramid, because after all it is a massive pyramid scheme.  This book, combined with the podcast The Dream is a very interesting insight into the false dreams that these companies sell to people who literally bankrupt themselves for the sake of “working from home” and “being your own boss.”
   
   35. Katherine’s Remarkable Road Trip by Gail Ward Olmsted 242 pages Another awesome one by Gail Olmsted! This one is about the woman she mentioned in her book Landscape of a Marriage, which was about Mary Olmsted, wife of the famous Frederick Olmsted. In that book, Mary mentioned a woman named Katherine Prescott Wormeley, who was a friend of Frederick Olmsted.  In the Landscape book, there was a bit of a question about whether something more went on between Frederick and Katherine.  In this book Katherine is in her 70s, it’s 1907, and she decides she’s going to drive from her home in Newport Rhode Island to her other home in Jackson New Hampshire. Over the course of this multi day drive, during which she traveled a torturous 10 miles per hour, she encountered some adventures, met some people along the way, but this was also a very creative way for her to reflect on her life and for the readers to learn more about her.  Which was awesome.  This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in July 2024. It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
    
   36. Paris by Paris Hilton 365 pages I remember when she hit the scene in the early 2000s, she was famous for being famous and I was so annoyed by her.  But she was actually doing it right.  She was getting paid to attend parties and building her brand. But you didn’t see what was going on behind her smile at the cameras.  In this book she tells us how she was a victim of the troubled teen industry.  So in the late 90s early oughts parents were sending their “out of control” children to these behavior modification boarding schools.  The parents were presented with the pretty pictures of kids smiling and learning to adult. But really it was way worse than any state funded prison.  (Check out the docuseries The Program on Netflix.)  So, Paris Hilton got sent to one of these places when she was 15 and she was to stay there for 2 years. And it was an incredibly messed up place where kids had to “earn” the right to speak, put shoes on, walk into a room, etc. And of course tons of mental, physical and sexual abuse happened there.  She escaped 4 times, and was sent back every single time, and of course her parents were told not to believe her when she told them she was being abused. It was incredibly damaging and traumatic, and incredibly messed up.  And it messed her up.  A lot.  She’s become an activist against these “schools” (which still exist, somehow!) and she’s now very outspoken about how crazy this system is. And you know what, I kinda like her now! This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in July 2024. It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   37. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon  420 pages Whoa I LOVED this one. This is based upon a real woman named Martha Ballard. She was a midwife in Maine in the 1780s and delivered over 1,000 babies in her career. She was also the great aunt of Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross.  This book follows actual events of something that happened in her town in Maine. A woman was raped by two men who were the big men in town, and one of the men was murdered.  Martha Ballard was the only woman in town allowed to testify in court at the time because she was a medical professional.  And she testified that this woman had in fact been raped.  Over the course of the story the town is trying to figure out who killed one of the rapists. The other rapist was the town judge, and sketchy as hell in his business dealings because he owns the whole town.  It’s an interesting look into the politics against women of the day, like women can be convicted of fornicating but they don’t seem to bother convicting the man who contributed to the act, for example. A super interesting look into a very interesting woman’s life and it’s all based upon her daily diary of the goings on in her town. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in July 2024.
   
   38. Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See 357 pages Seems like I am on a historical midwife kick. This one’s about one in China in the 1500s. It shows what it was like to live as a wealthy and sheltered woman. The main character, Yunxian, comes from a wealthy family, she never set foot outside of her house. And it’s not like she could even get very far anyway because her feet were bound. When she was about 10 her mother died, and her father was always off living the life of a scholar. She is sent to another town far away with her father’s concubine to go live with her grandparents. There she learns that her grandparents are practitioners of Chinese medicine, and her grandmother teaches her how to be a doctor. At 15 she is married off and moves in with her husband’s family where her mother in law sucks and forbids her to practice medicine. When she was a child she was allowed a friendship with the local midwife’s daughter.  Then the story follows as her friend becomes a successful midwife, and Yunxian is slowly permitted to practice medicine. Super interesting look into Chinese culture back then.

   And that’s July! 39 books and 13,229 pages read
   
   August

   39. Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea  400 pages Sidney is a documentary maker who gets onto a case of a woman, Grace, who was accused of killing her boyfriend on a trip to Saint Lucia. She is accused and convicted faster than anyone can blink, so Sidney looks into it and makes a real time docuseries about the murder and whether or not Grace really killed her boyfriend. She ends up providing enough doubt that they have to release her. But then we start to wonder if she really did it or not.  Sidney learns that Grace had a boyfriend in high school who died the exact same way. Like it had me second guessing until kinda close to the end who the real killer was. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in August 2024.  It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   40. All the Broken Places by John Boyne  399 pages This was a read for book club, and I didn’t realize it was the sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  In that book a German family moves to Auschwitz because the father is the commandant of the camp.  The son befriends a kid who lives inside the camp, and he ends up sneaking into the camp to help the boy find his father and never comes out. In this sequel, the story is about Gretel the daughter.  When she’s 14 she lives with her family at the camp and embraces what it means to be in the Nazi party and is starting to be interested in the boys who are wearing the SS uniforms.  Then the war ends and her dad is tried and hanged for his crimes, Gretel and her mother escape to Paris.  But Gretel can never really escape her past. She is tortured by the memory of her brother and has to strictly hide her identity because everyone will consider her complicit in the crimes against humanity that were committed at the camp. It’s an interesting story about hiding in plain sight, then as a 90 year old woman she comes out with everything. Very very well done. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in August 2024. 
   
   41. The Magdalen Girls by V.S. Alexander  306 pages This is what the troubled teen industry was before corporations got involved. This is about a convent in Dublin that took in girls who were "too wild" for an indefinite length of time and forced them to work in their laundry company. The story follows two teenaged girls who were sent there.  One of them, Teagan, met the handsome young new priest. He started having impure thoughts about her and had her sent away so she wouldn’t tempt him. So, like, she didn’t do anything wrong. HE was the one who had those thoughts. Then another girl, Nora, had a boyfriend she wanted to run off with. The plan didn’t work out and her parents sent her away anyway just so she wouldn’t be able to run off at all. These girls were literally imprisoned indefinitely and forced to work while being physically and mentally abused. 
   
   42. Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter 385 pages Have you ever listened to someone complain about their job for 7 hours straight? This is a memoir by a woman who worked at Amazon corporate for 14 years. And from the sounds of it every single day was hell. She stayed because of the stock options made her wealthy, but she was passed over for promotion after promotion due to absurd red tape. Like this workplace seems to be the one that all the jokes about corporate America are based upon. It was interesting and annoying at the same time.
   
    42. The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray  400 pages I admit I don’t know much about Eleanor Roosevelt. This book talks about her relationship with a black woman named Mary McLeod Bethune. Mary ran a school for black kids and was a huge advocate for advancing black people in a time when massive racism prevented that from happening. Eleanor and Mary were able to, behind the scenes, bring about some sense of equality back in those times.  A very interesting look into Frankin and Eleanor’s separate lives marriage as well.
   
   43. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow 312 pages This was a book club read.  Opal and her brother Jasper are orphans living in a motel in a small town in Kentucky. Opal is trying to keep them surviving while trying to get Jasper into a fancy private school. She takes a job at the local creepy house doing house keeping.  The owner of the house is super weird, and weird things happen in the house. I kinda didn’t get it honestly. Like the house is built upon a portal where monsters live? I don’t like supernatural or fantasy stories that do not have any grounding in things that could actually happen.  Somehow she manages to talk the monsters into not killing everyone.  I would have preferred that this book didn’t do the weird monster thing. For me it would have been more interesting had some geological phenomenon under the house made the weird things happen.

   That’s it for August: 45 books read and 15,431 pages read.

   September

   44. The Never Game by Jeffrey Deaver 413 pages This is the series that spawned the show Tracker. I love the show! It’s about a man named Colter Shaw who us a rewardist. That means he tracks down and finds missing people for the reward money. And of course he’s a super badass who runs into all kinds of shady characters who like to shoot at him because they want to cover up why they kidnap people, and it’s usually some crazy reason. The book was pretty good, though I kinda felt like it wouldn’t end. Like you think it’s the end and then it’s like “Oh, wait, we have another loose end to tie up.”  Libby vaporized the book on me when I was at like 97%, so I still consider that a finish even though I didn’t read the very last sentence.
   
   45. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center 335 pages I liked this one. Cassie is a decorated firefighter in Austin TX. The book opens up with her receiving a medal of valor, and at the award ceremony a city councilman who she apparently has a terrible history with was the one presenting her the award. He secretly groped her, and she turned around and beat him over the head with her award, right in front of everyone. As you can imagine this earned her a suspension. Right around the time her suspension kicked in her mom called her from Massachusetts.  It would seem that Mom walked out on her and her dad when she was 16, and she’s been pissed about it ever since.  Mom has some medical issues and needs some help.  She has nothing else going on, so she commits to a year of living in MA with her mom to help her.  She gets a job with the local fire station there.  It would seem the local station isn’t really psyched about having a woman there, so she has to earn their respect.  This is a story of redemption and change.  She’s convinced she will hate her mother for the rest of her life, but then she learns to love her again.  She’s convinced that she will never meet someone and fall in love, but in Massachusetts she does.  She builds herself a new life in a new city and puts all the nasty stuff from her past to bed. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in September 2024.

   46. Famous In Love by Rebecca Serle 342 pages This one was pure fluff.  Paige is a teenager who likes acting in plays.  She’ll go on an audition here and there, and then a major motion picture us holding an audition in her city.  So she just goes on a lark.  And she gets the role.  It’s for a 3 movie series, and without really formal acting training she goes and acts with the big dogs.  So not only is she dealing with being away from home and having nothing in common with her friends anymore, she’s also dealing with a director that is hassling her to do better and trying to understand what that means.  And then of course she gets mixed up in a love triangle. This is the first of a series and I don’t think I am going to read the rest of them. But still a fun read.
   
   47. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett  316 pages This one was OK. It’s about a woman who was an aspiring actress when she was young, and is now an older woman with three grown daughters who owns a massive cherry orchard in Michigan. Over the course of harvesting the cherries by hand with her daughters she tells them the story of how she had come to date a very famous actor before he became famous, which was a subject of mystery to the daughters while they were growing up.
   
   48. Good Half Gone by Tarryn Fisher  312 pages I was pretty into this one. Iris is a twin and her sister Piper went missing. She was kidnapped right in front of her when they were leaving a movie theater together. They’d gone with some boys whose job it was to drug Piper and get her isolated. The police do not believe Iris when she reports the kidnapping, because who can really trust a 15 year old girl, I guess.  So Piper’s case goes cold. And Iris takes it upon herself to figure out what happened to her. And boy was it ca-razy.

   And that’s it for September. I’ve read 50 books and 17,149 pages
   
   October

   49. Beach Read by Emily Henry 380 pages January is a famous romance novelist, and her whole career was largely thanks to the magical marriage of her parents. When her dad dies she learns that the marriage is not at all as magical as she thought and that he’d been cheating on her mother. In his will he leaves her a house on Lake Michigan which he had purchased to be the love nest for him and his side piece. So she’s sorting all that out as well as grieving her dad.  Then she meets the man next door who of course she has an instant dislike of.  Then she remembers that she went to college with the guy and he was her rival in her college writing classes. Like why wouldn’t you remember your rival’s face when you first saw him? But whatever. We have to reveal that “Oh yeah, he was my arch enemy in school” like it’s a totally casual thing. They get thrust into hanging out, in a way, and they both learn that they are both blocked. So they decide to take a stab at writing in each other’s genre, and they bring each other along on research trips. Like, she’s a romance writer and she takes him on all these romantic dates, and he’s a much darker writer so he takes her to interview the survivor of a cult that had burned to the ground. Overall a fun take on a romance. 
   
   50. What You Wish For by Katherine Center  365 pages This is a story about a school librarian named Samantha who works at a very small school on an island in coastal Texas. It’s an idyllic little school, and she is very good friends with the couple who runs the school, to the point were she considers them family. When the husband of the couple dies suddenly, the school board has to hire a new principal. They hire this guy who she used to work with in a school in California, and she had a massive crush on him. She remembers him as a fun guy who loved doing silly activities with the kids, but the guy who shows up is a complete asshole who wants to lock down the school like a prison all in the name of safety and preventing a school shooting. All of her colleagues are all freaked out about the changes this guy wants to make, and she’s trying to figure out why this guy changed so much and so radically. It’s a story of hope, change, and rediscovering joy for living. This Was a Fantastically Awesome Read in October 2024. 
   
   51. Funny Story by Emily Henry  395 pages Daphne moved to a small town on a lake in Michigan to be with her fiancé Peter. She basically just stepped into his life and allowed his life to be hers. Then he comes back from his bachelor party and tells her that he hooked up with his best friend since childhood, the gorgeous Petra, and tells her that he can’t marry her in 2 weeks and that she needs to vacate his house that minute because Petra is on her way to move in. She has nowhere to go, she hasn’t really made friends because Peter’s friends were her friends. So she moves in with Miles, Petra’s ex-boyfriend. They get drunk together and they both got invites to Peter and Petra’s wedding, which is happening in like 5 minutes.  And wtf why would they invite the exes they stranded??? Anyway, they decide to RSVP yes with a plus one, and then post on social media that they are now a couple. But they’re not, they barely know each other. But they are both so heartbroken they want to stick it to their exes. So then they have to go through the charade of pretending to be a couple when they barely know each other. Pretty funny. This Was a Fantastically Awesome Read in October 2024.  It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   52. We Used to Live Here by Daniel Hurst 274 pages A couple bought a house, and it is their dream home. They imagine themselves raising their family here, and they start renovating. They tear down a wall and realize that this wall was put up in front of another wall.  On the wall they discovered there is a lot of writing that says “They’re trying to kill me” and the name William is written on the wall.  So of course the wife researches the people who used to live in the house and discovers that back in 1970 their son William went missing. And she starts to wonder what happened to this kid and whether the parents actually killed him. There are a few things wrong with this story. If the parents killed the kid, why go to the trouble of building a wall to cover the evidence? Surely there was paint and spackle in the 1970s. Also, the husband instantly started an affair with the real estate agent for like no apparent reason. That aspect of it was kind of unnecessary I think. To make matters worse, I don’t really even remember the ending and I just listened to this book. But I found the husband’s affair silly and Hurst could have done so much more with the mystery of this kid and his weird parents who kept showing up to stare at the house. 

   And that’s it for October. 54 books read and 18,563 pages read

   November

   55. When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle 351 pages This was kind a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, but from a different perspective. I guess Romeo had a girlfriend that he dumped so he could take up with Juliet. This is about a girl, Rosaline, who is in love with the Romeo character and it takes place in a high school era setting. I thought it was creative, but nothing terribly spectactular.
   
   56. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell 356 pages I read this one for book club but didn’t actually attend the meeting b/c I was traveling in South Africa.  This is the story of Lucrezia de Medici, who was actually a duchess in Italy in the 1500s. She was married to the duke at age 15, and basically her one job is to create an heir for her husband who she learns is kind of a horrible person.  The historical aspects were interesting, and I wonder how much of it was true as Lucrezia managed to escape what is basically her imprisonment. 
   
    57. Rebel Rising by Rebel Wilson 335 pages I think she is such an interesting person. She’s that Australian actress who was in the Pitch Perfect movies and she entered the scene as an obese and hysterically funny actress.  She talks about her life growing up lower middle class in a Sydney suburb and learning how to develop her self confidence.  I did not know that she went to law school and acting school simultaneously. She worked her ass off to get where she is. I also had no idea she married a woman and now has a family with her. But I really liked how she talked about her New Year’s resolutions and themed each year as she got older. Like the year she wanted to find love, and the year she wanted to get healthy, which promoted her very much talked about weight loss. I question whether she’s trying to act any more, or if she’s not getting those comic roles anymore because she’s not the funny fat girl anymore.
   
   And that’s it for November. 57 books read and 19,605 pages read

   December

   58. We Came Here to Forget by Andrea Dunlop  321 pages I want to know more. I know that this author has a podcast called Nobody Should Believe Me. She talks about Munchausen by Proxy and how it impacts people other than the patient involved. Her sister is a Munchausen by Proxy mom, and it has torn her family apart.  And this book was about that.  Katie is a champion skier who is on a sabbatical in Buenos Aires, where she meets a group of other ex-pats and hangs out with them.  She doesn’t tell them her real name or what brought her to Buenos Aires, because her real name is tied with the court case against her sister.  Her sister was accused and acquitted of killing her own toddler daughter with excessive medical treatments. Her sister was very public about her daughter’s illnesses online and sought attention for those illnesses. Then the daughter died and everyone figured out that the sister had a lot to do with it.  Turns out all the ex-pats she met were also fleeing some traumatic thing that happened in their lives. In the end they all came clean and started to heal. Very good book, and I know a lot of it is based in reality. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in December 2024.  It was also a Fantastically Awesome Read for 2024. 
   
   59. The Perfect Family by Robyn Harding 350 pages This one was super interesting. There’s this family living in a wealthy neighborhood and their house starts getting vandalized. First it’s kid stuff, eggs thrown at the door and stuff like that.  Then it escalates into worse things that are dangerous. And they can’t figure out who is doing it.  The reason why they can’t figure it out is because each member of the family of 4 has a secret they’re keeping from everyone else. So everyone in the family thinks it’s their secret that is causing the problems, and they all have to keep their own secrets so nobody finds out and they’re all trying to stop the danger that faces the family. Very well done, I was riveted the whole time. This was a Fantastically Awesome Read in December 2024. 
    

And that’s all folks. 59 books and 20276 pages.