"JUST LIKE" BARACK OBAMA: BOOKS OF 2025 (Cheri)

A few weeks ago I told you about how I slept across the street from [the inn where] George Washington [slept in 1791].

(Image Credit:  ​https://ar.inspiredpencil.com)

Full of myself, now I'll imply that Barack Obama and I have a lot in common,

by suggesting that what I've read this year is as important as his annual list of favorites!

So here are my favorites of the year, organized only by category, alphabetically, along with five also-rans.  I must say that these are among the books that I finished this year; the Sackler book, for example, was a multi-year book.

​AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

​Heart the Lover, by Lily King.  If you've read Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett, you'll see some similarities of theme here.  An old friend and lover reappears twice during the protagonist's marriage.  Without disrupting the marriage, the old relationship takes more and more importance.

​​FAMILY FICTION

​Sandwich:  A Novel, by Catherine Newman.  Three generations of a family spend a week at the Cape Cod cottage they visit each year.  The "kids" are grown and Mom/daughter considers the past, fearing the future.

(I see a theme here, as Ann Patchett blurbed this book:  “Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry.")

While Sandwich is more book-club fiction, Between, Georgia, by Joshilyn Jackson, leans a little more mass-market.

It definitely hits some Southern-fiction standards, including people so unusual that they would be unbelievable placed outside of the South, but almost expected here.  It even has a Hatfield and McCoy-style duel over the affections of the protagonist, who could be counted as the daughter of either family.

Extremely heartwarming.

I loved the atmosphere that first-time author Bobby Finger created in The Old Place:  a Texas town so small that you can sit on your back porch and see for miles, and even in retirement your social circle has been set since at least grade school.

Mary Alice has dealt with a lot of loss in the last few years, but she's not about to talk about it!  There is arealistic resolution, which I appreciate.

HISTORICAL FICTION​

The Golden Apples, by Eudora Welty is set in a town even further-removed from larger society, this time in the early 19th-century Mississippi Delta.  This is a set of interconnected short stories, with a novella at the end.

I don't know whether memorializing time and place as if in amber was a primary goal of Welty's, but it was an experience like no other, entering and re-entering the fictional town of Morgana each evening, feeling almost as if I were travelling to a small, unvisited planet.

My only  proviso is that the novella, which follows one character to San Francisco, is pretty odd.  I enjoyed the beginning because I've always been intrigued by the City's history, but I definitely considered stopping before completing it.

MEMOIR

​

You will likely want to listen to cookbook author and TV personality Ina Garten's Be Ready When the Luck Happens.  Her life story is so interesting, and hearing her inflections, particularly her "Really?" is a lot of fun!

​MEDICINE

Some physicians are so good at figuring out the hard-to-diagnose that to ask them to then spend time treating patients might be a waste of society's resources.  Dr. Lisa Sanders may be one of those.

Her book Every Patient Tells a Story starts with about five different ailments-in-common, then in each section, branches from the common characteristics to the truly unusual permutations, through individual patients' stories.  I have retold one story, which revolves around denture cream, many times.

Sanders was the inspiration for the television show House, M.D., writes a column for the New York Times, and starred in a Netflix documentary entitled Diagnosis, which utilized crowd-sourced methods.

MYSTERY / THRILLER​

phyMany people follow Louise Penny's work, usually set in a small fictional Quebecois town.  Bury Your Dead differs from a lot of them, in that it is set in Quebec City.

No fireplace in the village cafe to warm you, and oh, how cold it makes you feel!  Seriously, Quebec City is on my go-to list after reading this, though you won't catch me there after snowfall.

The central mystery didn't draw me in as much as 1) learning about the tension between French and English-speaking Quebecois, 2) the City's architectural culture, and 3) a secondary story which has invaded the Inspector Gamache's psyche.

It had been a while since I read my last Gamache story, so that secondary story confused me at first.  It was set in the past, but I didn't remember reading it before.  Nope, look online, and you'll learn that it occurs between books five and six in the series.  This was an inventive and extremely effective way to tell the story.

Awards:  

• 2010 Agatha Award for Best Novel
• 2011 Dilys Award
• 2011 Anthony Award for Best Mystery
• 2011 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel
• 2010 Macavity Award for Best Novel
• 2011 Nero Award

​SPORTS​

Both Mark and I really enjoyed One Shot at Forever:  A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season!

You do have to understand baseball in order to follow the detailed play-by-play, but if you do, it is so worthwhile:  heartwarming, funny, full of the small statistics and details that make baseball fun.  It's no surprise that author Chris Ballard was a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated for 20 years.

Be sure to read to the end.  I don't have the book with me, but I think it is an afterward that talks about how different team members felt about their parts in this magical year.  One player's feelings still haunt me.

​WAR​

I first heard about Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life in the context of the pandemic.  The setup is that one family's life, particularly one daughter's, starts over and over throughout the book.

Because she is born in 1910, the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 looms over the family.  In each iteration of the story, tiny changes make heartbreaking differences in the family's trajectory.

Why did I place this in the "War" category, rather than "Family Fiction"?  Because it moves on, through the first and second World Wars, and the description of daily life during WWI guts you.  I would recommend this and the two war-themed books below, to anyone who thinks that today's politics should be taken any further.

ALSO-RANS

Nonfiction

• Empire of Pain:  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe

• What Stands in a Storm: A True Story of Love and Resilience in the Worst Superstorm in History, by Kim Cross

Social Justice Fiction

• Whistling Past the Graveyard, by Susan Crandall (possible YA recommendation)

War
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• 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

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• The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice, by Simon Parkin