It is always good to start the year with books you enjoy and so in December I decided to save for January a number of books that I wanted to read. It worked. I started the year off on a good reading foot.
I finished my read of the 2025 Booker Prize short listed novels. I read a book of poetry that I enjoyed (which was a relief after not finding enjoyable poetry last year). Surprisingly I also read three nonfiction books this month, all memoirs. That puts me half way to my goal of reading 6 nonfiction books this year.
I also carried through on my resolution to write more, individually, about books I read. I didn't do a "Short Take" for each of the books I read but I have provided a link for where I did.
These are the books I finished in January.
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz
The last of the 2025 Booker short listed books that I read, I enjoyed this one. After learning of his wife's affair Tom Layward makes a decision. He will leave her but only after their youngest child leaves for college. Years later the time has come. Tom considers his options as he drives his daughter to college in Pittsburgh. Once in Pittsburgh he decides to continue the drive cross country to Los Angeles to see his son, stopping along the way to visit old friends. He is in ill health, suffering from what his doctor has said was "long COVID". Told in the first person, we are in Tom's head the entire novel. This is a character driven novel that focuses mostly on the one character. My Short Take is here. Recommended.
My Beloved: A Mitford Novel by Jan Karon
Yes, yes, yes. Jan Karon's Mitford series is kind of hokey but that's ok. Sometimes in dark times you need to read the heartwarming hokey books. How great that she published her 15th Mitford book now. This one takes place at Christmas time and I read it during the 12 days of Christmas. My Short Take is here. Recommended only if you have read and are a fan of the other Mitford novels.
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
A memoir of loss, grief, joy and finding calmness through surrounding yourself with beauty. In his twenties Patrick Bringley quit his job at the New Yorker after his brother died and took a job as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he worked for ten years. This memoir is a love letter to the Met but also a story of how he dealt with his grief by surrounding himself with beauty and stillness. Another book to read during hard times. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.
The Snow Lies Deep by Paula Munier
The latest in Paula Munier's Mercy Carr mystery series, this one takes place at Christmas time and where better to celebrate Christmas than in Vermont's Green Mountains? But someone is killing Santas, which puts a crimp in the local holiday festival. Former Army MP Mercy and her husband, game warden Troy Warner, just want to celebrate their daughter Felicity's first Christmas in peace. Instead they are called on to help solve the mystery with their dogs Elvis, a retired bomb sniffing Malinois, and Susie Bear, a search and rescue Newfoundland. In addition, they have to deal with both sets of grandparents who have their own ideas about how to celebrate the holidays. I really like this series because the author clearly understands dogs and the dogs are integral to solving the mysteries. But the mysteries are also usually good and Munier does a good job developing her characters. And you can't beat the beautiful location. This one had a fairly convoluted plot but it all came together at the end. You can read this as a stand alone mystery but as always I recommend you start at the beginning of the series.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
I know that some people dislike when an Ian McEwan novel has a twist that reminds the reader that s/he is reading fiction. But I don't mind it. This novel is set in a dystopian future in the year 2119, and the humanities are still under siege at the university level. Thomas Metcalfe specializes in the literature of the early years of the 21st century, specifically the poetry of the poet Francis Bundy (a sort of lesser Seamus Heaney). Bundy is reputed to have written a long poem for his wife Vivien and given the only copy to her. Thomas is determined to find it even though the geography of the world has changed immensely. Through the archive of emails, text messages and social media posts, he traces Vivien's days, especially the date of her birthday when the poem was given to her, and draws what conclusions he can. Through this research he creates a narrative that seems to fit the facts. But does it? There are always things about people that remain unknown because neither the person nor anyone in the person's life ever refers to it in any kind of writing. The novel is divided into two parts: the search and Vivien's actual story. Truthfully, I thought the second part, the shorter of the two, dragged a bit. Too much narrative, not enough action. But on the whole I enjoyed this novel. My Short Take is here. Recommended with reservations.
Doggerel by Reginald Dwayne Betts
After a disappointing year with poetry in 2025 I was glad to start off 2026 with a collection I enjoyed. I admit I would have understood it better if I had read a bit of the poet's biography before finishing the collection. When he was 16, Betts, otherwise an honors student, committed armed carjacking and was sentenced to 9 years in prison as an adult. While in prison he began to write poetry and after his release and receiving his GED he went to graduate school and received a number of degrees. It would have been very helpful to have known that in prison he received the name Shahid because through the collection he refers to Shahid. This collection examines his life both in prison and after prison using primarily (but not exclusively) his relationship with dogs. Sometimes as a person puts their lives together only their dog is a witness. Sometimes their dog reminds them to live in the here and now. Sometimes other people's dogs allow connection with other humans. This is not necessarily a light hearted collection and, as with most modern poetry, it is very personal and therefore not always understandable to a third person (my major complaint about modern poetry). It is a tribute to man's best friend although in the acknowledgements he thanks "Fiesty, the cat, a rescue, that circles my legs whenever I sit near her, & purrs that doggerel is kind of incomplete without a cat." Recommended.
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
This memoir has been on my TBR list since it was released more than 10 years ago. Since there is a feature film of the book being released this month it seemed to be the right time to pick it up. Helen Macdonald tries to deal with her grief over the sudden death of her father by retreating from the world and raising and training a goshawk she names Mabel. Helen was an experienced falconer but goshawks are supposed to be difficult to train. Over the first year with Mabel she learns as much about herself as she learns about Mabel. The memoir is interspersed with memories of her father (who seemed to have been a lovely man). She also becomes somewhat obsessed with a memoir by T.H. White in which he describes how he (badly) tried to train a goshawk. Although filled with information about birds of prey and the woods around Cambridge, this actually reads more like a novel than the usual memoir. Macdonald seamlessly integrates facts into her narrative so that it doesn't feel like a digression but an essential part of the narrative. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.
Honey, Baby, Mine by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd
I listened to this joint memoir on audiobook and I'm really glad I did. The book arose out of a series of walks that Laura Dern forced her mother to do when her mother was diagnosed with a life threatening illness. The doctor said that increasing her lung capacity by walking would be good for Diane. To distract her mom during the walks Laura asked her questions. That led to Diane asking Laura questions. The book is a transcript of the conversations (clearly also edited) but in the audiobook each of Laura and Diane read their own "parts" and, being actresses, that makes the whole book sound like it is taking place in real time. There is a lot of interesting information about working in Hollywood but the personal parts (especially when they disagree over their memories) are equally entertaining. My Short Take is here. Recommended.
Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville
This was a month long read-along with my usual BlueSky reading group. I think most of the people in the group (at least the ones that were posting the most often) had read it before but I hadn't. You might expect more "action" in a book about a whaling ship searching for and trying to kill the Great White Whale but most of the book is more like a treatise on whales, whaling ships and whalers. Fortunately Melville writes with humor, and his descriptions are vivid and every time I would think that I was bored out of my mind he would pop in with some quip that made me laugh. Also, the sections on whales and whaling included most of the "deep thoughts" that Melville had (or seemed to have). While I'm glad I read this book (finally) and I appreciated the writing, it was my least favorite book that I read this month. I don't need a novel to be plot-heavy (this isn't) but I do like my novels to be character-driven and through most of this novel (really, until the last part) it isn't. Even though the plot (such as it is) is driven by Ahab's obsessive search for the White Whale, Ahab himself isn't really much in the novel until toward the end. I will say that Melville created a good sense of place - being on a whaleship hunting for and processing whales - which is usually a plus for me but I found that I really wasn't that interested in whaling ships and whales. My Short Take is here.
In some ways it is a shame I chose to read "Moby Dick" and "H is for Hawk" in the same month. "H is for Hawk" could be read as a treatise on hawks and hawking but Macdonald's digressions into hawks and hawking were integrated into the greater narrative and were necessary for her character arc (even though it was a memoir and not a novel). On the other hand Melville, who was ostensibly writing a novel, did not integrate his information about whales and whaling into his narrative but put them into (many) separate chapters. This was, I think, partly because of the age in which the novel was written but also the digressions may have been his way of showing how time slowly passed on a whaling ship where you might have nothing to do but reflect on life. Either way, I have to say that in my opinion those sections went on much too long.
