#24 March 6,2025
So another year has gone by and What's Ted Reading? Not that anyone has asked or clamored for a new Stuff to Read but here are some high points from 2024's reading,,,in alphabetical order:
Kevin Barry's Heart in Winter is set in 1891 mining town of Butte Montana and it doesn't get colder or more desolate than that. Tom Rourke is a poet, photographer's assistant and man about town as an alcoholic, drug user and general degenerate. When assisting with wedding pictures of newly arrived east coast bride Polly Gillespie and copper mine captain Long Anthony Harrington, Rourke falls madly in love with Polly. Following a short honeymoon, Polly is ready to escape husband and Butte and head west to San Francisco with Rourke. They steal one horse and head west into the winter wilderness. Polly has some history back east and her husband wants her back so he has the Butte sheriff hire a trio of Cornish trackers to catch the couple. Not necessarily a Happy Ending but the book really lays out the place and period very believably.
Armando Correa's Silence in Her Eyes is a winner. Leah Anderson (28) lives near Columbia University on the 3rd floor of the Mont Cenis apartments on Morningside Drive. She has akinetopsia (motion blindness), a rare neurological disorder. She hasn’t seen movement since she was 8. People think she’s blind, but Leah sees a lot-in static images. Her senses of smell and hearing have risen to almost superpower levels as she registers snapshot views. She lives very quietly with contacts of her doctor, the housekeeper and an elderly neighbor until a new neighbor awakens her with noise from a volent fight next door. Alice is trying to leave her abusive husband but it's not going well. Leah tries to help but is limited and when her apartment is broken into at night, it's too much.
Erik Larson's latest The Demon of Unrest is relevant and timely review of how Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor became the focal point for the South's moves to secede from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln. The book is equal parts a history of secession moving from South Carolina across the South and what was happening inside the fort as the few soldiers short of food, ammunition and materials to repair the fort prepared for the inevitable. The book really illustrates how quickly things get out of hand and become inevitable.
Lois Lowry's latest Tree.Table.Book is an interesting departure for the two-time Newbery award winner. Sophie Winslow is an 11 year old schoolgirl and very best friend is 77 year old Sophie Gershowitz and they share everything over their daily cup of after-school tea. When Sophie senior seems to be slipping a bit, Sophie junior hears that her son is looking into placing his mother into assisted living in another state. Sophie junior, with help from her neighbor friend, Ralphie, begin working on cognitive practice sessions with elderly Sophie. This leads to her opening up her life story which is a real eye-opener for her friend.
Another non-fiction book worth reading is Rick Steve's On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer. During covid lockdown, Rick re-discovered his journals and photographs from his 1978 trip from Europe across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. This is what transformed the piano teacher into the travel writer and organizer, but it was not an easy journey for two young guys on public transportation and cheap housing and food. Lots of illness and travel drama but equally beautiful photos and stories of the hippie trail.
Finally, Holy City by Henry Wise, a debut novel, is the hard telling of life in very rural, south Virginia. A sheriff's deputy returns home after working in Richmond, the title's Holy City, and is confronted with a murder and an accused black man who claims innocence and the deputy believes him. The local black community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from Richmond, to find the real murderer and Watts and the deputy try to work together. And "try" is the operative word as they both bring Richmond attitudes to a very rural Virginia.