2025 Recaps
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
This book is a true account of a girl growing up under her father's strict Rastafarian beliefs, which turned to fanaticism. Smoking weed was acceptable; eating meat was forbidden. The main tenets of the sect are disdain for “Babylon,” white people’s influence and Western ways. Yet even in their homeland of Jamaica, Safiya and her siblings were outcasts for being Rastafarian, ostracized by other Jamaicans for not cutting their hair and wearing dreadlocks.
Like many religions controlled by patriarchal dominance, girls and women were held to higher and hypocritical standards and forced submissiveness, living under fear of the father's rule.
It was their mother who set them on a quest for knowledge and education in which they excelled. Safiya eventually became a poet, exemplified in this book as her words flow and form into a beautifully expressed narrative.
Overcoming such a childhood and thriving as an adult offers parallels to The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Educated by Tara Westover.
I listened to this audiobook through Libro.fm.
When I Fell from the Sky by Julianne Koepke
This is an amazing true story of a 17-year-old girl who survived her plane being struck by lightning and then falling almost 2 miles into the Peruvian jungle. Sandwiched between the almost too-short section about her 11-day trek to civilization is a description of her life with her two German biologist parents researching and living in the jungle before the crash and the aftermath of unrelenting journalists and curious people asking her to retell her story over and over again after the crash.
After the crash her father sent her to live with his sister in Germany in order to escape the daily reminders of the crash and losing her mother in it. Yet as an adult, she too, became a biologist and returned time and again to her homeland, the place where she was born and raised, the jungle she loved.
It was an extraordinary tale of survival!
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-bridge-of-san-luis-rey-by-thornton.html
Libby Lost and Found by Stephanie Booth
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2025/01/libby-lost-and-found-by-stephanie-booth.html
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-glass-menagerie-by-tennessee.html
Don’t Forget to Write by Sara Goodman Confino
This is a touching and empowering story about a 20-year-old wayward girl who was sent to live with her great aunt as punishment for getting too close to the rabbi's son in 1960. And while Marilyn was sassy, she's no match for commanding great aunt Ada. Ada seems cold at first, but she teaches Marilyn one of the most important things and that is she has to make herself happy and not be beholden to societal expectations or anyone else.
This is a book club selection, and I think my group is going to love it. There’s a part where I cheered out loud!
The Garden by Nick Newman
LOVED it! This book immediately drew me in. It’s so well-written, slowly revealing a bigger picture of how two elderly sisters live together in their secluded compound and are still under their mother’s control from the grave. They’ve isolated themselves in a dystopian existence relying solely on each other for survival and human interaction—until a boy enters their world and unintentionally begins to splinter their reliance and trust in each other. Excellent!!
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
Applause for The Homemade God about four siblings trying to uncover why their father died unexpectedly in Italy where he was honeymooning with his young bride. The sisters’ and brother’s time together exposes the complexities of their relationships with each other and their father, a larger-than-life artist. The new wife seems to be the catalyst that causes a hairline fracture in their bond with suspicions that she had a hand in their father's death. Did she or didn't she? The strained family ties squeeze your heart and linger in your mind. So thought-provokingly well done!!!
Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson
Just like floating on a boat in the British canals, this is a slow, but steady, story of two strangers taking a journey together to help an old lady transport her boat to get maintenance on it while she tends to some health issues. Eve and Sally both had major upheavals in their lives: one got fired, the other asked her husband for a divorce. After rescuing what they thought was a dog in danger on a canal boat, the ladies meet the owner Anastasia, who had a dilemma of attending to her boat issues while dealing with medical ones.
Eve and Sally suggest that they could help out by taking care of the boat, and the escape gives them time to breathe and think about their lives. Along the way to take the boat to the maintenance yard, they form a friendship and meet other people who will play a role in their future.
I think I'd like the peacefulness of the canal trip floating 3-4 miles an hour with continual stops at locks where you have to work the mechanisms to go through them. The slow-moving boat with plenty of time to watch the beautiful scenery go by or read, the walks to towns at the mooring points to get supplies, and evening strolls to pubs, sound like a wonderful getaway to me!
Typewriter Beach by Meg Waite Clayton
The friendship of a young actress and a screenwriter in 1950s Hollywood was captivating! Behind the glamor and wholesome facades lies the smoke and mirrors of hypocritical moralities and the fanatical McCarthyism. Actresses sold their souls to the devil with 7-year contracts that allowed studios to dictate their lives, even force them to undergo surgeries. At the same time, screenwriters unwilling to expose communist-leaning colleagues got blacklisted and lost their livelihoods. Glittery lives on the big screen, devastation behind the scene. Wow!
How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle
explosion of wartime satire! The premise drew me in: a white boy joins a black regiment in the American Civil War. The writing catapulted me from page to page. Pure farcical entertainment!
Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2025/04/whistling-past-graveyard-by-susan.html
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
I have mixed feelings about this book. For the most part, I liked the story, but the writing style was distracting. It is intentionally nebulous, which made me scratch my head in confusion at times. There are also no quote marks signaling beginning and ends to dialogues.
Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser
An art lover’s dream-come-true! This book, about a grandfather who takes his granddaughter to a museum once a week before she may lose her sight, was deeply satisfying and insightful. It was like having a personal guide to great masterpieces. I loved it!
The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean
Thrilling page-turner! A 17-year-old girl goes missing and returns two years later. We slowly find out what happened to her, how she was kidnapped, what they did to her, and that she wasn't the only victim. But why won't she tell the police the whole truth? What is she hiding?
The end has a couple twists I did not see coming!!
The Elements by John Boyne
This is just the book I needed to get me out of a reading slump. I was hooked from the first page when we learn a woman has changed her name and shaved her head on a remote Irish Island that she has escaped to. By the second chapter, we find out that one of her daughters is dead and her husband is in jail. From there it’s a runaway train of secrets and depraved sexual crimes where victims and perpetrators sometimes hold the same titles. It’s difficult to fathom the heinous assaults, yet impossible to look away. Boyne’s writing and storytelling are excellent. I love how he weaves each of the four stories together, leading us from one atrocity to another, then coming full circle at the end.
March by Geraldine Brooks
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2026/01/march-by-geraldine-brooks.html
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-invisible-lie-of-euridice-gusmao-by.html
Futility by Nuzo Onho
Horror is not a genre I usually gravitate toward, but hot damn, this book hooked me like sharp claws, bloody fangs, and a nest of thirsty, hissing white snakes! A malevolent spirit grants a Nigerian woman wishes if she provides the necessary sacrifices. After offering the perfect victim, the spirit releases her and sets her sights on a white woman. This book is gross, vulgar, gory, and oh so entertaining! What a technicolor vision of vile viciousness that streamed through my brain! I’ve never read anything like it.
Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2025/09/anna-and-king-of-siam-by-margaret-landon.html
Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven
Book club alert!!! This book, about a wholesome family show that takes place in the 1960s where the facade starts to crack, is a book club dream selection! It's charming, engaging, and would give ladies sooooooo much to talk about!!!
It's about social expectations and restrictions, and the strain of judgement from others and ourselves.
Very good!
(This was an Advanced Reader Copy I read in 2025)
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2025/10/yesteryear-by-caro-claire-burke.html
Indignation by Philip Roth
This was my first Philip Roth novel and I’m glad I read it. It was a quick and easy read with an intriguing plotline.
A Jewish butcher’s son goes off to college in the early 1950s and is focused on his studies with the aim of becoming valedictorian and eventually entering the Korean War as a lieutenant instead of a foot soldier likely to get killed in the field. In a way, he's fighting for his life.
While he attempts to stay steadfast in his goal, he gets distracted by conflicts with fellow students and the dean. Then he becomes infatuated with a beautiful girl who gives him an education in sexual pleasures and soon turns his world upside down. These, and other issues, create stumbling blocks that turn the trajectory of his future.
Good book! One day I'll read Roth’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, American Pastoral.
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
This is the second time I've read Huckleberry Finn, but I have to be honest that it was so long ago when I first read it and I had forgotten almost all of it.
Almost every situation was new to me: Huck faked his death again? Huh? Miss Watson was going to sell Jim? Really? A floating house? What? And most of all I had forgotten about the two con men, Duke and King, who play a big part in half of the book! How could these swindlers, who take control of the raft, and Jim and Huck, have slipped my mind?
I did remember though that the written dialogue was a bit difficult to read because of their accents that sometimes required a double take. Yet, I was left with the same sense of adventure and empathy for both Huck and Jim.
I'm glad I read it again.
This was a book club selection and my fellow members thought it was entertaining. Some were glad they listened to the audio instead of trying to decipher the written dialect.
Side discussions of our book club included the horrors and benefits of AI 😲😲 and the vast distances in the US, where we cannot country hop all around as they do in Europe.
World’s Fair by E.L. Doctorow
I really enjoyed this semi-autobiographical account of Doctorow growing up in the Bronx during the Great Depression! The book is mainly narrated by Edgar recalling his youth, with a few entries from his mother, and a couple from his brother and aunt. It was a peek into childhood, family ties, love, and drama. There wasn’t much action driving it, but I really got a feel of place and time.
It was an era when the coal truck would dump a load of black dusty coal right on the sidewalk, and the janitor would have to move it one wheelbarrow at a time to the cellar. What a mess that must have been! During the Depression, people didn’t have much, but at the penny candy store a cent could get you a shot glass full of sunflower seeds, or for two cents you could get a hot roasted sweet potato from the vendor pushing a cart down the street.
Edgar and his family didn't actually get to the World’s Fair until the end of the book, and he described it marvelously through a boy’s eyes. Since the World’s Fair didn’t play a major part in the book, the title may seem a little deceptive. But it was all about life’s journey to get there, not so much about the destination.
🏆 This book was published in 1985 and Doctorow won the National Book Award for it the following year.
It was my first time reading Doctorow. I have added “Ragtime” by him on my TBR.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
This is a remarkable memoir dictated by a man who suffered a massive stroke and was reduced to locked-in syndrome, where he could not move or speak. He was only able to blink his left eye in a way of communication. And one blink at a time, he dictated thoughts about his hospital routine, memories of his prior life, the food he no longer could eat, dreams, and other reflections.
It sounds like it would be a very heavy and depressing book, but surprisingly it was not. Bauby wrote not with anger or anguish, as I would imagine my own musings to be in such a circumstance, but with eloquence, humor, and heart.
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
On December 10, 1905, The Gift of the Magi story first appeared in the New York Sunday Word. Who could ever forget one of the most beautiful stories of love by O. Henry? This short story of Della and Jim who make great sacrifices for each other, is one I can reread every year and never get tired of it. So sweet!!
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
No review on Edelweiss, only on Insta.
After having a discussion about AI at my last book club, I thought I’d see what Isaac Asimov predicted in his 1950 novel about futuristic, sentient robots. I was hoping for a thrilling robot-gone-bad story, much like in the 2004 action movie starring Will Smith. I was a bit disappointed. This book has robots that go rogue—but not in murderous, conniving, sweat-inducing ways. It’s more of a dissection of positronics and other jibber-jabber that lead to robots’ unanticipated actions. Problem. Assessment. Resolution. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The book is an interview with robopsychologist Susan Calvin, who recounts malfunctions, alarming situations, dilemmas facing robots, the logistics behind them, and the efforts to rectify them. (Insert yawn). Each chapter is a different robot scenario. Holy—howling—Jupiter! (one of the exclamations in the book), this is one rare case where the movie is better than the book.
Griftopia by Suzy Vitello
I gulped this book down like an amaretto sour! This book was deliciously addictive—hilarious and smart with just the right balance to make the characters very likable and biting at the same time. A dysfunctional family tries to catch their breath, each one dealing with their own dilemma. And in the center of it all is a little singing dynamo who’s often used as a stepping stool.
The writing was fantastic with many incisive nods to current times—ouch!
It starts with an anxious Pearl Freischin causing a scene on a plane, leaving her to pop five THC gummies at once. After landing, she is wheeled past ICE agents at the airport gate and transported to urgent care for cannabinoid poisoning—all before meeting up with her distressed sister. Then the real chaos begins!
Pub Date: May 5, 2026
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
No review on Edelweiss, just Insta.
I really enjoyed this gentle book that gives a glimpse into the life of a septuagenarian through her correspondence. Sybil’s letters and email exchanges reveal her relationships with her family, her best friend, and even a trouble kid. Little by little, we get to know this no-nonsense, headstrong (stubborn), retired attorney. We learn of a deep personal tragedy and ultimately discover to whom she continues to write one particular letter that she will never send.
A charming comfort-read!
Bonus: lots of books mentioned.
Escape! by Stephen Fishbach
Pure gold! I immediately got sucked into the thrumming energy of this wilderness reality show set on a remote island. Action. Tension. Humor. Manipulation. Strategy. Shock & betrayal! It’s absolutely bingeworthy!
Give this book an Emmy!
Persuasion by Jane Austen
https://readinginthegarden.blogspot.com/2026/01/persuasion-by-jane-austen.html
Happy Reading!
Annette
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