Last of the 2018 reading

I finished out 2018’s reading with two nonfiction books and three mysteries.

Women and Politics by Julie Dolan, Melissa M. Deckman, and Michele L. Swers covered both the history of American women’s political involvement and the current culture.  It was pretty depressing.  We have a long way to go and the path leads through intersectional justice.  Most of the book’s contents were not new to me, but the concepts were backed with scholarship and laid out well.  The authors did not hesitate to deal with complexity (news flash:  all women do not think the same way!).

Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat was a Christmas Eve gift from Brent.  I can’t say I have read every word of every page, but I did read the entire theory section and I’ve been cooking out of the other part of the book this week.  Nosrat is an engaging writer, funny and smart.  I liked her mix of personal and informational data in the text.  So far, the recipes are tasty and the theories are reasonably applicable.  I personally like it when recipes give a time estimate at the top so I don’t have to read in detail to figure out if they will work on a weeknight or only on a weekend when I’m not running around, but that’s a quibble.  Definitely a keeper.

Ellery Queen writes perfectly acceptable entertainment.  I would not describe The Scarlet Letters as anything more than that, but it was a fun read.  Also, coolness points for choosing to call the main character Ellery Queen, which, I realize, applies to his work generally.

I am not one of those people who gets book gift certificates for Christmas and hoards them.  I spend them right away on books I’ve been wanting.  So, not surprisingly, I hurried to order Louise Penny’s new book Kingdom of the Blind.  It was great, as usual.  I pretty much never even care about the mystery part; I just want to hang out with her characters and their meals in Three Pines.  She can write as many as she likes; I will read them all.

Finally, I bought The Witch Elm by Tana French.  (I gave it to Brent in e-book form on Christmas Eve, but wanted my own actual book.)  Brent and I bought French’s first book on our honeymoon in Ireland.  She continues to write evocative prose.  The plot of this particular book took a long time to get moving, which was mostly all right because of the aforementioned prose.  The second half of the book worked better for me, although I did figure out the mystery.  Then there was the ending, which I did not like.  On the whole, I would say it was all right, but not fabulous.

Total for fall:  21 books.

On to 2019, with a goal of 51 books.