Reading List 2016

What I Read the Rest of 2016

January 10, 2017 by Abbigail Kriebs 4 Comments

My reading updates have been rather sporadic this year as I took the summer off from blogging… and then most of the fall and winter, too. The combination of having no internet connection + building a house + incubating a baby turned out to be too much to handle and still make space for writing words, and my last update was back in October.

I’m still incubating a baby, but we are finally living in our house AND we have the internet – both things that make life in general easier, but especially blogging. I’m making no commitments to blog regularly or often in 2017, but it does feel good to be sharing books again.

I do try and send out a newsletter once each month. If you want more regular updates from me, sign up here.

These little reading round-ups help me form opinions about what I did and didn’t like about a book, making me a better reader and hopefully a better writer. And I hope you are able to add (or cross off!) a book to your list once in a while because of them, too.

Here’s what I read the Rest of 2016:

How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living by Rob Bell – NonFiction – At Ashley’s suggestion, I picked up this book and really enjoyed it. I read it while we were still in transition while building the house, and I think I might buy a copy and read it again this year as I need reminded that “here” is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times by Don & Petie Kladstrup – NonFiction – I picked up this book at my part-time job at a wine store (it was a super fun job, until I found out I was pregnant and could no longer drink anything we sold!). When we think Champagne today, we think glamour and celebration – but it was neat to read about how it used to be considered a dud wine that no one was really proud of. This history is full of surprising stories and fun facts, and doesn’t get too overloaded in detail. If you like history and bubbly, it’s definitely worth a read.

Outfoxed by Rita Mae Brown – Fiction – This was a novel chosen by one of my book clubs (the one that LOVES horses) and it was definitely enjoyable. An interesting read, since the animals talk and the murder of the murder mystery doesn’t happen until about three-quarters of the way through the book, but the characters were vivid and the story unfolded well. If you like stories about horses and people who are crazy about them, as well as reading up on a more southern way of life, I recommend it.

You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day – Memoir – This book was the pick of the other book club I’m in that meets about every other month. It was a classic celebrity memoir, and I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen more of Felicia’s work first. I enjoyed hearing about her unconventional childhood and how she wrote and directed and self-produced the first few seasons of her TV show before ever finding any investors. It was fine, but if celebrity memoirs aren’t your thing, pass on this one.

Books I Did Not Finish

I’m not usually very good about putting a book down once I pick it up, but I let (made?) myself do that more often in 2016. With the limited time that I had to read, and the knowledge that once this baby arrives there will be even less time, I really only want to read books that are actually grabbing my attention. Here are a few that I may come back to someday, but that I didn’t quite finish this year:

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta – Young Adult Fiction – This was another recommendation from Ashley, so I know that it’s a good book, I just could not get into this last fall. I don’t think I could read for a long enough stretch of time to absorb what was happening, and kept having to flip back to remember who was who and why things were happening the way they were. Another day, maybe.

Dog Run Moon: Stories by Callan Wink – Literary Fiction – This is a collection of short stories from an author who I heard a segment from on the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. I enjoyed the segment immensely and really wanted to read some of his work, but it was not the time for me for these short stories.

What have you been reading lately? Anything you can’t put down?

Fiction in Review: Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

May 17, 2016 by Abbigail Kriebs 1 Comment

I almost always love a historical novel set during World War II, and Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave was no exception.

The novel focuses on a group of young people, in their early- to mid-twenties in London: Mary, an affluent eighteen-year-old who wants to do anything her parents won’t approve of; Tom, a school administrator who truly loves education; and Alistair, a museum employee who restores art – at least, until he enlists. The story follows these three as they learn about love, survival and sorrow amid a London in shambles and a blockaded island of Malta.

This novel has all the ingredients of a great WWII novel: a love story, a society that doesn’t know what the rank and file is anymore, and people stepping outside of themselves to be more. Unusually, it is also a novel that confronts poverty and injustice, and does so in a way that feels genuine.

My Favorite Quotes from Everyone Brave is Forgiven:

“She hated being eighteen. The insights and indignations burned through one’s good sense like hot coals through oven gloves.”

“They were only human, even if they hadn’t yet made the effort to become tall… the only different between children and adults was that children were prepared to put twice the energy into the project of not being sad.”

“The first problem of war what that no one was any good at it yet.”

“She supposed she must be in love. That [he] was slightly infuriating, and that she didn’t mind in the slightest, might be proof of it.”

“If the task had been, say, to rebuild Europe rather than to blast it to pieces, Alistair might have worn his rank with more pleasure and felt less bashful about asking the men to follow him.”

“It occurred to him that no one who hadn’t been in battle could know what things were worth.”

“Why should one expect to feel the same every day, in a world that was rearranging itself by the hour?”

“After the war of course it will be like the start of spring, which is always so brilliantly sudden.”

Should you read this novel? If you found yourself heartbroken after finishing All The Light We Cannot See, then yes. And if novels like The Book Thief and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society are your genre, definitely read this one.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a moving picture of war-torn London, filled with imperfect characters who are just trying to be brave and be forgiven.

Have you read Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave? What other historical novels would you recommend? I’m always open to suggestions!

Fiction in Review: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

April 12, 2016 by Abbigail Kriebs 1 Comment

I’m 100% behind the curve in reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

I had the opportunity to hear Paula speak at the Madison Public Library a few weeks ago. I’d never heard of her work, and never read her books, but I was volunteering to help run her talk and signing – and I am so glad I did! Her words about writing during the margins in a busy season of life were so encouraging to someone who feels like they are just plodding through their first novel. Paula was funny and engaging and so very concerned with capturing the voices of women who haven’t been heard by history.

The Paris Wife is told from the perspective of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. Knowing that she is his first – and knowing that he had many – I was curious how reading a novel that I already knew the ending to would go. Would I care about the characters? Would I like them? Well, I did, wholeheartedly. I could not help rooting for Hadley and her marriage and for Hemingway to pull his head out of the sand (spoiler: he doesn’t, but you knew that, didn’t you?). I sobbed for Hadley when the time came. She owned her own story, even when she didn’t have much of a chance. And I loved her for it.

Favorite Quotes from The Paris Wife:

“I wasn’t reading the pages then, but I trusted his feeling about them and trusted the rhythm of every day.” – p. X

“I was tired of being sensible.” – p. 14

“My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.” – p. 21

“Ernest and Nick weren’t the same guy, but they knew a lot of the same things.” – p. 128

“It’s like someone has taken a broom to his insides and swept them out until everything’s clean and bright and hard and empty.” – p. 135

” ‘ When does it mean something? When everyone finally gets smashed to bits?’ ” – p. 145

” ‘ I’m trying to want this.’ ” – p. 154

“That laugh would eventually set off a series of events, but not yet. It just stood there in the room, tipping and tipping, but not falling. Not falling yet. Not quite.” – p. 199

“Her edges were already blurred when she stood to shake our hands, and she looked as if she cultivated that – a fine blurriness.” – p. 203

“I want things to make sense again. They haven’t in a long time.” – p. 212

“I couldn’t be new.” – p. 242

What made this a good story?

This novel captured the feel of 1920s Paris – the pace and the places and the people. It handled gently the time in history when people had to idea how to move forward, still reeling from what they has seen in the great war. It gives you a view into the lives of artists like Hemingway and Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but from the perspective of a young woman yearning for wholeness, not more excess.

If you like historical fiction and memoir, if you like rooting for the character telling the story, and if you like to see strong women make their own decisions – this is a novel you should read as soon as possible.

I can’t wait to dive into Paula McLain’s newest novel, Circling the Sun, about Beryl Markham and her life in Africa.

Have you read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain? What did you think?

P.S. Like this book? I recommend The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman OR The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.