Eva's 2019 Selected Book List, in no special order, except non-fiction is first. Compiled Dec. 12, 2019

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama ©2018. 400 pp. Michelle grew up at 74^th and Euclid, 1.2 miles from my childhood home on the South Side of Chicago. Her father worked for the City, as did mine. Michelle was born in 1964, the year I graduated from high school. She covers her childhood, education, career, burgeoning relationship with Barack, friendships, marriage and motherhood, race and the political years. Photo plates.

2. Doing Justice by Preet Bharara. ©2019. 327 pp. Lots of stories from the author’s years as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office prosecuted insider traders, corrupt officials, money laundering, & organized crime. Standards of ethics start at the top. I also recommend the podcast Stay Tuned With Preet.

3. Educated by Tara Westover (1986- ) ©2018. 329 pp. Tara’s family were fundamentalist Mormons. They thought BYU was a cesspool of liberalism. The 7 Westover children were home-schooled only enough to read the Book of Mormon. Nevertheless Tara and a couple of her brothers passed the GED and defied their father by going to college. Several got Ph.D’s. Tara’s father did not believe in doctors and hated “the government.” OSHA violations abounded in the family junkyard. The serious accidents there, including full-body burns, were treated at home. Westover’s parents are portrayed with love, respect and realism. Tara’s father is so unshaken in his beliefs he should not feel exposed by having his faith described. Well, perhaps he’s embarrassed that Y2k didn’t vindicate his survivalist preparations. Even though Tara is “lost” her father keeps enough survivalist gasoline on hand to be able to pick her up when the end is nigh to bring her back to safety.

4. Inheritance, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love by Dani Shapiro ©2019. 351 pp (Large print) The author was born in 1962 to an orthodox Jewish family. She had a half sister, Susie. Susie and Dani sent their dna to ancestry.com. They were not related! Susie looked like their late father. Dani remembers Jared Kushner’s grandparents (friends of the family) saying to her when she was 6, “We could have used you in the ghetto, little blondie.” Long story short she found her DNA father. I read this in one day. Held my interest.

5. From Housewife to Heretic by Sonia Johnson (1936 - ) ©1981, 406pp. This memoir could have been condensed to 300pp if it had gone lighter on the politics & philosophy. Sonia and her husband Rick were Mormons. Both have Ph.D.’s. Their family of six lived abroad a lot. Sonia became active in “Mormons for the ERA.” In 1978 she testified before Congress. She was excommunicated in 1980. Mormons believe they are the “One true church” and that its prophets are infallible. Women are barred from the priesthood.

6. Village of Secrets, Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead ©2014. 340pp. I’m glad I experienced Chambon sur Lignon in the 1970’s when its history of rescuing Jewish children during the war was not known to anyone in my walking group. I’m also glad I never found the 1987 “documentary” by Pierre Sauvage. This book, complete with black and white photos, is a history rather than an entertainment or hagiography. It was impossible to keep all the characters straight but their individuality was not the point. The plateau is in the northern Massif Central. This book reinforced things I learned about France this May birding the southern Massif Central. Protestant churches are called temples. The area surrounding a village is its commune. France was not, overall, heroic during the war. Switzerland was reluctant to let in undocumented immigrants. When children were separated from their parents, meticulous records were made (and kept hidden). Maybe 800 people were sheltered in Chambon. Myth put the number at 5000. There were a couple of pacifist Protestant pastors. Eventually the Marquis became active in the area, so pacifism did not conquer all. I learned of Darbyists, a strict sect.

7. Code Name: Lise, the true story of the woman who became WW II’s most highly decorated spy by Larry Loftis ©2019. 280pp. More enjoyable than Village of Secrets because the author allowed himself to imagine the details of factual events. Odette’s background, recruitment, training, and 6 mo. as a courier in a British ring in Vichy France were page turners. Then she was captured. Her chief, Peter Churchill, was no relation to Winston, but the Gestapo thought he was, and that Odette was his wife (after the war she was}, so they kept her alive for a possible prisoner swap. Photo plates. I also read Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson. Her Citizens of London was a memorable book on my 2015 Season’s Reading List.

8. Seeing Vietnam by Susan Brownmiller ©1994. The author went on a magazine assignment to Vietnam in 1992. Travel restrictions had just been lifted. She followed the same itinerary Kathy McCann and I followed in March 2019. Brownmiller was disappointed there was still prostitution in Vietnam. After 10 years of disastrous pure communism, Vietnam was moving toward a market economy. She was shown the “McNamara Fence.” There was nothing there. That was the joke. McNamara proposed putting a fence across the DMZ, extending it into Laos, to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. Everyone was trying to learn English. “France loves Vietnam, but Vietnam loves the USA.” She raves about the food, esp. the crab dishes.

9. 52 Porterfield (©2011 402 pp.) and One, Two, Three!!! (©2002/2017, 512pp.) by my cousin James Gillcrist. The first is about Jim’s childhood as the 3^rd of 9 kids, the second is about being the father of 9 sons and a daughter in Oak Ridge and Vienna. I applaud immortalizing family lore like this. There are a few photos.

10. WW II Diary by George R. Casey. The mark of a good book is that it bears re-reading. This diary is a good book!

11. Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) ©2010. 422pp. Glossy photo plates. On the NY Times list of 50 best memoirs in the past 50 years. Number of lines made it into my bon mot collection. Could do w/ less politics.

12. Family Secrets by David Leitch (1936-2004) ©1984. An account of finding the author’s birth mother, and a full sister he had not imagined. It was a lot harder before DNA websites! David was a well-known British journalist.

13. The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer ©2019, 10 CDs. A novelistic telling of the story of Lee Miller (1907-1977), American artist and journalist. The bulk of the novel is about her time in Man Ray’s (1890-1976) studio in Paris 1929-32. In 1974 they meet again at a Man Ray exhibition in London curated by Lee’s husband. What I appreciated about this book is its description of the creative process: the work, the inspiration, the highs, the treachery--Man Ray stole the credit for Lee’s bell jar series and took all the credit for their solarization collaboration. A description of a party Lee “designed” in 1930: Everyone was told to wear white. Lee projected poems and images of hands on their clothing. Lee was a photojournalist at the end of WW II.

14. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline ©2013, 7 CDs. Molly, a 17-yr-old raised in foster homes, does community service with Vivian, 91, who had also been abandoned as a child. Viv lost her family in the late 1920’s in a NYC tenement fire. The Children’s Aid Society sent a trainload of orphans out West, where farm families chose them off rural train platforms. The box says Orphan Trains ran from 1854-1929. Molly and Viv bond. Molly introduces Viv to the internet to search for long lost friends and relatives.

15. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver ©2018. 14 CDs read by the author. 16 ¾ hrs. It’s set in a falling down house in Vineland, NJ, chapters on the contemporary occupants interwoven with chapters on the occupants in 1878. Vineland was founded as a utopian community by Col. Landis, who put out his own rag boasting about how great he was. His archenemy was the editor of the independent newspaper in town. Landis shot him on Main Street and was acquitted! (True fact). Landis’s ally, the high school principal, forbade Thatcher Greenwald, the high school science teacher, from mentioning Darwin. Meanwhile, the 20^th century family has followed all the rules—he (Yanno) worked in academia, she (Willa) in journalism, yet they find themselves in their 50s without $400 for an emergency. Their son is staggering under student loan debt. Yanno’s father, Nick, is dying of emphysema and diabetes, but refuses to sign up for Obamacare. Nick blares his rightwing talk shows whenever he gets control of the radio. Willa asks Nick how he can respect “the bullhorn,” who never did a day of work in his life that Nick would respect. “He respects ME.”

16. The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien (1930 - ) Country Girls ©1960. 175pp, The Lonely Girl ©1962. 198 pp., and Girls in their Married Bliss ©1964. 127 pp, plus an epilogue ©1986 21 pp. Later when I read O’Brien’s memoir, Country Girl ©2012. 353 pp. I realized how much those first novels drew from O’Brien’s own life in the 1950’s and up to her divorce and child-custody battles in the ’60s. Her early novels were banned in Ireland. It’s not like the books make the teenagers’ involvement with older married men look attractive. Warts and all portrait of Ireland. Caithleen and Baba drop out of school and move to a boarding house in Dublin. O’Brien’s father was an alcoholic. Her sons turned out well. She partied with the glitterati.

17. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett ©2019, 337pp. Novel about two generations of a family and the extraordinary ostentatious house near Philadelphia that dominated their psyches. Danny turned into his father. Maeve, born in 1941, mothered Danny, 7 years younger, after their mother left when he was 3. Danny could have been a doctor, but it becomes clear his vocation lay elsewhere. Maeve has diabetes. Danny’s marriage and children are adequately sketched. Elna Conway returns after 40 yrs. Maeve is happy, Danny resentful.

18. A Gentleman of Moscow by Amor Towles ©2016. 14 CDs. I was bowled over by the writing. The novel includes a whiff of pre-revolutionary aristocratic Russian life via reminiscences, and the development of Soviet Communism from 1922-1954 from a contrived perspective that works: Count Alexander Rostov is under house arrest at the posh Metropol Hotel. Rostov applies his manners and culture to advantage in his new circumstances. He has personal relationships. In the last chapters the story becomes a thriller. The defection of Sofia, Rostov’s 21-year-old ward, during her trip abroad as a pianist. Rostov escapes too, with a twist.

19. Upstate by James Wood ©2018, 214pp. Alan, a 68-yr-old Englishman from Newcastle, visits his daughter Vanessa, 40, who is a philosophy prof at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY, in the company of his other daughter, Helen, 38, a Sony exec, who was in the States on a business trip. Van suffers from periodic depressions and the family was on a rescue mission, alerted by Van’s b.f. Josh, 33. A book group selection. Both Alan and Helen have worries too, but they don’t get suicidal over them. Set in 2007. Character driven.

20. The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis ©1999. 311 pp. Batsheva, 34, a widow and a convert, moves with her daughter Ayala, 5, into the small Orthodox community in Memphis where her husband had grown up. Batsheva, being a little different and a lot creative, causes a stir, but the Rabbi’s wife, Mimi, likes her so she is accepted, sort of. The Rabbi’s son can’t tell his father that he doesn’t want to be a rabbi. Destructive gossip.

21. Among the Living by Jonathan Raab ©2016. 398 pp. In 1947 Yitzak “Ike” Goldah, 31, a concentration camp survivor, arrives in Savannah where his only living relatives, Pearl and Abe Jessler, have a shoe shop. Eva de la Parra, Ike’s love interest, belongs to the Sephardic reformed Temple, whereas the Jesslers go to Shul. Ike was a journalist back in Prague. He has a chance to get newspaper work. A book group selection.