Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

 

In a sentence, this book is about love, loss, and the environment. It's made up of the stories of three women who are living in a small struggling area of farmland at the base of a mountain in southern Appalachia. A wildlife biologist lives a reclusive life in a rustic mountain cabin, observing a newly-arrived pack of coyotes, until a young hunter interrupts her solitude. An entomologist from the city moves to the small town for love, and eventually has to decide whether to stay and care for the land she's come to love and become part of the large farming family or go back to the city. Just down the road, sparks fly as a couple of elderly neighbors – one with an organically grown apple orchard and the other with a dream to repopulate a decimated species of chestnut tree – feud over how to care for the land.

Over the course of a summer, the three determined women fight for what they want and discover how they are connected.

I really loved this book. Its pace is languorous and the language is lush and beautiful. The reader is surrounded with stories of love and loss, and presented with the challenges of the balance between farming and mastering the land and protecting the wild. I've read a couple of other books by Barbara Kingsolver – Flight Behavior and The Lacuna – and I enjoyed those as well. I love the depth and nuance of her characters. Happily, she's got quite a few books out there, so I'll keep picking them up.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

 

In the distant future, Rosemary Harper (resident of Mars) joins the crew of a spaceship that drills wormholes through space-time to make shortcuts from one location to another that would otherwise take much more travel time. Rosemary is withholding information about herself in order to stay under the radar. The crew of the ship are a bunch of interesting characters from all walks of life. As this adventure story progresses, and the crew members agree to a major new job that will keep them from being “planet-side” for quite a while, the story delves deeper into the lives of each crew member. The major job they've hired on for has a big payoff that will take them to the next level in their field, but it comes with a lot of risk. It's not certain all of them will make it safely home.

I don't read a lot of sci-fi, space opera types of stories, but I really enjoyed this book. The ideas were fresh, and I enjoyed the diversity of the characters and the openness with which the story was told. I was drawn in by the characters and their stories more than any other aspect. It was a delightful adventure, and I look forward to picking up the next book in the Wayfarers series.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

 

Hope Jahren's love for the trees and plants she studies is evident in this memoir of her life. Loving descriptions of how trees live, grow, endure, and propagate are intertwined with Hope's memories of growing up in wintry Minnesota, leaving to attend college in California, and making stops in Georgia, Hawaii, and Norway along the way. Hope includes introspection about her very different relationships with her mother and father. Hope's deep and unconventional friendship with fellow scientist and eventual lab partner, Bill, is central to her life story. That loyal friendship carried her through some very trying times, including the challenges of poverty, an initially undiagnosed mental illness, and the struggle to be funded as a research scientist, especially a woman research scientist, in the field of geobiology.

It's an honest, deeply-moving book about not fitting in, but not giving up in the struggle to find balance and create the space where you belong. Hope Jahren's book about climate change came out in March 2020 – The Story of More. I can't wait to check it out.

Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton

 

This heavily-researched historical fiction novel tells the tale of rival paleontologists who are both dangerously passionate about their work uncovering the fossils of dinosaurs in the American west. Student William Johnson, the purely fictional main character, spends time in both paleontology camps, starting out with Othniel Charles Marsh, who abandons him mid-trek under paranoid suspicion of him being a spy. William Johnson is left with no alternative but to join the expedition of Edwin Drinker Cope, who has plans to travel to dangerous areas in search of fossils not yet discovered, and barely believed to have been real creatures, in this modern age of 1876.

This wild adventure that travels from the 'civilized' East Coast through Cheyenne, Wyoming, the wilds of Montana, the Badlands, and the historical gold mining town of Deadwood while featuring many historical people from that time was riveting. Dragon Teeth was written by Crichton in 1974 and published posthumously in 2017. I don't know why I haven't read more of Michael Crichton's superbly researched and action-packed works (to date, I've ready only Timeline and this one), but I plan to investigate his 20+ books for future sure-fire adventure reads.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

 

Porto Vergogna is an all but unknown port where there is a community of fisherman and their families who live in a dozen or so houses that cling to the cliff face along the shore and, surprisingly, a single hotel with only an occasional client. In 1962, when an ailing American actress arrives unexpectedly by boat (the only way to arrive at Porto Vergogna), Pasquale, whose family owns the hotel, is smitten and does his very best to get to the bottom of what ails the young actress. The task involves getting in touch with the Hollywood people who are working at the Roman film set for “Cleopatra,” a set the actress was also working on until she became ill.

The story leaps back and forth through time from 1962 to near-current as the tale unfolds from both ends, and the reader sees from the points-of-view of a few different main characters in various locales that include Italy, Hollywood, the Pacific Northwest, Scotland, and England.

I loved this book of historical and literary fiction. The writing, the story, the characters and locales. It was intricate, complicated, nuanced, and beautiful.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The initial vibe I got from this book was so wrong. Years ago, when there was a big buzz surrounding this book (even Gilmore Girls had an episode paying homage!) I imagined it being another self-indulgent Eat Pray Love wine/whine fest and I ran far, far away from it. Until a few weeks ago, when a respected individual at work who is an avid hiker suggested it. I was dubious but decided to give it a try on audio. Turns out, I loved it! It did remind me a bit of Eat Pray Love in that Cheryl makes some really unsound decisions that put her at risk while she is out on the trail. But it is very unlike that other book in that Cheryl, at the time of writing Wild, seems very self-aware and shares her thoughts and the details of the adventure of her hike along the Pacific Crest trail with such unfailing honesty and heart that I could not help but feel engaged by the story. She talks about the death of her mom and how it affected her and how the extended hike, away from civilization with only what she could carry and relying so heavily on just herself, helped her put her broken self back together. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 My Top 10 Reads in 2020

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Leguin

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker

Every book on this list was an exceptional read for me in 2020: Beautiful Ruins and Prodigal Summer both had lush, lovely descriptions that put the reader right there in the middle of everything. Wild and Lab Girl were honest, brave, and interesting. Where the Crawdads Sing had that focus on the natural world that I crave. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous pushed the boundaries of the form. The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula LeGuin, you are amazing; this was a timely read for me and the main character's perspective on life balance was relatable.

The standout for me, though, was Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker. It is fresh, futuristic, and smart. This collection of short stories knocked me out. I look forward to reading Pinsker's 2019 A Song for a New Day and her forthcoming novel, We Are Satellites, out in May. I feel like she's showing us what fiction will look like going forward.

Look for reviews for each of the above at this site soon.