2018: the non-fiction

Here's the non-fiction for 2018.  Again, bolding some of my favorites. 

LOTS of memoirs and biographies:

A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: the Ladino Memoir of Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi
Sacred Ground: the Chicago Streets of Timuel Black, by Timuel D. Black, Jr.
The Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell
Bookshops: a reader's history, by Jorge Carrion
Fashion Climbing: a memoir with photographs by Bill Cunningham
Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World, by Hasia Diner
My Family and other Animals, and Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, by Gerald Durrell
Escape through the Pyrenees, by Lisa Fittko
By Appointment, by Sidney Berry Hill
Black Tudors: the untold story, by Miranda Kaufman 
Can't Nothing Bring Me Down: Chasing Myself in the Race Against Time, by Ida Keeling
The South Side: a portrait of Chicago and American segregation, by Natalie Y. MooreTwo Schools of Thought: Some Tales of Learning and Romance, by Carolyn See and John Espy
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: the Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce, by Colm TóibínThe Girl with the Hat: Esther Mercy vs. Marion Talbot, by Harriet Reynolds Tuve

History, too:

To Sleep with the Angels: the story of a fire, by David Cowan and John Kuenster
Love and Death in Renaissance Italy, by Thomas V. Cohen
Women and the Making of the Modern House: a social and architectural history, by Alice T. Friedman
A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889, by Frederic Morton
Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis, by Liesl Olson
Food and Cooking in Roman Britain: History and Recipes, by Jane Renfrew
Shade: a Tale of Two Presidents, by Pete Souza
The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, by Ned Sublette
Forever Open, Clear, and Free: the Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront, by Lois Wille

And various other things:


New York è una finestra senza tende, by Paolo Cognetti
The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, by Donald Keene 
Maestros and their Music: the Art and Alchemy of Conducting, by John Mauceri
Mutts Shelter Stories, by Patrick McDonnell
Ciao, Carpaccio! an Infatuation, by Jan Morris
Venice on a Plate: but what a Plate!, by Enrica Rocca
Frank Lloyd Wright at Oberlin: the Story of the Weltzheimer/Johnson House, by Athena Tacha
Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, by Calvin Trillin
The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and other tales of a New York City Block, by Daniel J. Wakin
Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and their Audience, by Colin Watson
 
 
 


 

 

 

2017's Non-fiction

Yes, I know.  Really behind with this post, but I was doing the previous one and discovered this draft.  I'm bad.  So here you are.

As promised, here are the non-fiction titles I read last year.

1.  Deborah Alun-Jones, The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory  A rather delightful book in which Alun-Jones discusses the effect of growing up, or living in, a rectory on some British literary figures, ranging from the Brontes to Dorothy L. Sayers to the various Bensons.

2.  Tim Anderson, Japaneasy: Classic and Modern Japanese Recipes to Cook at Home  Anderson seeks to demystify Japanese cooking for the nervous westerner.  The recipes are straightforward, but there's humor as well.  Each recipe has a different description for the level of difficulty, ranging from "not at all difficult" to really bad puns like "soy not difficult" (for edamame).   It's also a beautifully designed book, with lovely photographs and drawings.  I haven't tried any of the recipes yet (hey, I just got it at Christmas), but I expect that I will.

3.  Anomymous, Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen  For those who are "perplexed by doubtful points of Etiquette, or by the frequent changes in the fashions of Society".

4.  Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who read them  A combination of memoir and literary criticism, with some travel writing thrown in.  I enjoyed it, but then I spent one summer when I was in college reading nothing but Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

5.   Pierre Berton, The Dionne Years: a Thirties Melodrama   Gosh, it certainly was!   Poor kids.  Mom gives birth to quintuplets at home, and everybody thinks they know better than the parents how to raise them.   The girls are basically put on show.  They didn't do very well as adults, and it's no surprise.

6.  Stefan Bollman, Women who read are dangerous  The title is misleading; it's actually a collection of images of women reading with short essays about those images. 

7.  Timothy Brook, Vermeer's Hat: the Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World  Globalism isn't new, kiddies!   Brook uses the objects in a painting by Vermeer (fur hat, pottery, etc.) as jumping-off points for a discussion of the expansion of trade around the world. 

8.  A.S. Byatt, Peacock & Vine: on William Morris and Mariano Fortuny  

9.  Franco Cardini, et al., The Medici Women  A collection of essays, and quite a collection of women

10.  Katherine Reynolds Craddock, Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College

11.  James Gleick, Time Travel: a history 

12.  Daisy Hernández, A Cup of Water under my Bed

13.  Angela Jackson, A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: the life and legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks

14.  Dean Jackson, Empire of Deception: the incredible story of a master swindler who seduced a city and captivated a nation

15.  Michael Lenahan, Much Ado: a Summer with a Repertory Theater Company

16.  Ethan Michaeli,  The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America

17.  Craig A. Monson, Habitual Offenders: a true tale of nuns, prostitutes, and murderers in 17th-century Italy

18.  R.J. Nelson, Dirty Waters: Confessions of Chicago's Last Harbor Boss

19.  Paul Poiret, King of Fashion: the autobiography of Paul Poiret

20.  Leigh Eric Schmidt, Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made their Way in a Godly Nation

21.  Vincent Scully, The Meyer May House, Grand Rapids, Michigan

22.  Edward Sorel, Mary Astor's Purple Diary: the great American sex scandal of 1936

23.  Hilary Spurling, La Grande Thérèse: the Greatest Scandal of the Century

24.  Wendy Welch, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

25.  Frank Lloyd Wright, The Japanese Print, an interpretation

Fiction read in 2019

Looks like most of my reading this year was fiction (I'll do a separate post with the non-fiction titles).   I've put my five favorites in bold type. 

Quite a few mysteries/detective stories:

The Sacco Gang, by Andrea Camilleri
Death at the Dog, by Joanna Cannnan
Who Killed Zebedee? and John Jago's Ghost, by Wilkie Collins (in the same volume)
Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone and Nameless Serenade (a Commissario Ricciardi mystery), by Maurizio de Giovanni
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Charles Dickens
The Lost Stradivarius, by J. Meade Falkner
Death and the Pleasant Voices, by Mary Fitt
The Glass Key, by Dashiell Hammett
An English Murder, by Cyril Hare
Cave of Bones, by Anne Hillerman
Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales, by P.D. James
The Grand Complication, by Allen Kurzweil
The Temptation of Forgiveness, by Donna Leon
Take Out, by Margaret Maron
The Color of Fear, and The Breakers, by Marcia Muller
The Great Impersonation, by E. Phillips Oppenheim
Shell Game, by Sara Paretsky
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers (a re-read on Armistice Day)
To Each His Own, by Leonardo Sciascia
The Labyrinth of the Spirits, by Carlos Ruiz Záfon

It's an interesting variety, actually.   A touch of noir, some classic English works, contemporary American (mostly by women), and some recent European authors.  A few, such as the Záfon and the Falkner, have a touch of the supernatural about them.

Speaking of the supernatural:

A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life, by Deborah Harkness (her All Souls Trilogy)
The Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman

I read several short story collections:

The Teeth of the Comb and other stories, by Osama Alomar
The Coast of Chicago, by Stuart Dybek
Night Hawks, by Charles Johnson
The Logic of a Rose, by Billy Lombardo
The Decapitated Chicken and other stories, by Horacio Quiroga
Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories, by Alexander McCall Smith

A couple of children/young adult books:

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (another re-read)
Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
The Sixty-Eight Rooms, by Marianne Malone (a bit of magic here)

In Italian:

La Più Amata, by Teresa Ciabatta
Le Otto Montagne, by Paolo Cognetti
L'arte della gioia, by Goliarda Sapienza (read it in English, too:  The Art of Joy)

and lots more:

The Everlasting Story of Nory, by Nicholson Baker
Wish Her Safe at Home, by Stephen Benatar
Summer Crossing, by Truman Capote
The Outcry, by Henry James
The World Goes On, by Lázló Krasznahorkai
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (yet another re-read!)
A Guide for the Perplexed, by Jonathan Levi
Fludd, by Hilary Mantel
Summer's Lease, and The Narrowing Stream, by John Mortimer
Malacqua: Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples, Waiting for the Occurrence of an Extraordinary Event, by Nicola Pugliese
Garments the Living Wear, by James Purdy
The Stone Tide: Adventures at the End of the World, by Gareth E. Rees
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney
Memento Park, by Mark Sarvas
Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher
Hope Never Dies!, by Andrew Shaffer
A Time of Love and Tartan, by Alexander McCall Smith
The American Lover, by Rose Tremain
Orley Farm, by Anthony Trollope
The Neighborhood, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Jeeves in the Morning, and Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse

Some of these were by familiar authors, others by authors new to me.