Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

"There’s a castle on the coast in Fanteland called the Cape Coast Castle. That is where they used to keep the slaves before they sent them away, to Aburokyire: America, Jamaica. Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewe, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or the Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were…we all are.” - Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing.

Homegoing by the Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi begins in 18th century Ghana with two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, who live in different villages.  The sisters are told when they are young that they have a sibling but they never meet each other.

Effia remains in Ghana and marries a British man, James Collins, who is the Governor of Cape Coast Castle.  It will be a happy life for Effia although she blocks out the fact that her husband makes his money in the slave trade.  

And that brings us to Esi who, in comparison to Effia's life, is living a nightmare.  Esi along with others from her village is kidnapped, sold into slavery and put on a ship headed for America.   

The novel proceeds and we learn about the different paths Effia and Esi's lives take.  We also learn about the lives of their descendents.  We watch Effia's children, grandchildren, great grandchildren navigate the changes happening in Ghana.  And we follow Esi's descendents in America through the Civil War, the Great Migration, the Jazz Age and on up to the present.  

In 2016 Homegoing won The National Book Critics Circle Award and I can see why.   I was invested in the lives of Effia and Esi's descendents all the way through this novel.  Yaa Gyasi is an excellent writer and Homegoing is one of the best books I will read this year.

Walden: Or, Life In The Woods by Henry David Thoreau

"I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone ... but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there." -  Henry David Thoreau

This year I am taking a classics challenge created by Anne at In Search of Wonder.  Anne's prompt for January was to read a book from our TBR list and so I decided to read Walden; Or Life In The Woods (1854) by Henry David Thoreau.  

Currently I am half way through Walden.  It's not a book you can breeze rhrough and so I am taking it slow so I can reflect on what Henry David Thoreau has to say about nature, solitude, civilization and the meaning of life: 

These days Henry David Thoreau is more popular and widely known than he ever was during his lifetime.  And today with people building their tiny houses or getting into their RV and heading west the philosophy behind Walden lives on.  And with the weather getting better maybe the best way to read Thoreau is outdoors experiencing the natural world that he loved and wrote about so powerfully.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Muderers by Jesse O. Sutanto

"No one can say that Vera is boastful. No, Vera is many things, but boastful is not one of them. And yet, even she has to admit that her first day of investigating has exceeded all expectations ... Truly, even the police would be forced to admit that she’s very nearly solved their case for them. It’s not even time for her afternoon tea yet, and already she has three whole suspects. Superb work, Vera, simply marvelous, she tells herself, as she brews a pot of jujubes and goji berries tea. When the tea is done, Vera settles on her chair with a satisfied sigh and takes out her notebook." - Jesse O. Sutanto

Thank you Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery for introducing me to Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (2023) by Jesse O. Sutanto.  This novel is funny, touching and Vera Wong is such a great character and how thrilled am I that there is now a second book in this really fine new mystery series.  

The setting is present day San Francisco and Vera is a 60 year old widow who owns a tea shop which she has named "Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse" so that she can attract more business.  Her son Tilly is exasperated by this name since if the famous  designer were to find out about this his mother could be sued.  But then again Vera's tea shop, which has seen better days, is in no danger of being discovered until one day Vera who lives above her shop comes downstairs and discovers a dead body.  

Most people would be horrified.  But Vera who lives by herself and has a son who is too busy to visit is lonely.  And so when Vera finds the dead man, Marshall Chen, on the floor of her tea house its exciting and a chance to be useful.  Vera calls the police and prepares a special tea for the occasion.  But the two officers decline the tea and are not amused when they discover that Vera has taken a sharpie and drawn an outline around the dead body as the investigators do on the CSI programs she watches.  

The officers order Vera to stop interfering.  But that's not happening and Vera decides to place an ad in the newspaper in an effort to attract suspects.  Aquaintances of Marshall Chen begin arriving at the tea shop to talk with Vera while sipping the teas she has prepared. 

 

The chapters alternate between Vera's perspective and those of her customer/suspects.  There is Marshall's wife Julia, his twin brother Oliver and Riki and Suna who also have a connection to the deceased. All four have been unnerved by Marshall's death not because they are grieving.  Marshall was a bad guy and each of the suspects has motive.

But it's Vera who makes this book special.  She is such an endearing character who despite her loneliness faces life with determination.  She goes for a walk every morning and then opens her tea shop despite the fact that it is attracting no business.  But even  Vera as the novel begins is wondering what's the point of it all until an exciting purpose enters her life, solving Marshall Chen's murder.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is a real treat.  And I hope this novel is the start of a very long mystery series. 

Where Are The Children? by Mary Higgins Clark

I was looking at bestsellers from the 1970's listed on Goodreads and Where Are The Children? (1975) popped up.  I had never read Mary Higgins Clark before but the plot of Where Are The Children? caught my attention.  The backstory is the late 1960's in California where a young woman, Nancy Harmon, is living with her professor husband Carl and their two children, Peter and Lisa.  

But then Peter and Lisa go missing and are later found dead and we learn that Nancy's husband Carl shortly after this tragedy committed suicide.  The evidence points to Nancy and she is charged with Peter and Lisa's murder.  She is tried and convicted but her case is overturned on a technicality and cannot be retried since a key witness cannot be found.  And so Nancy is released from prison and set free. 

The book opens seven years after the trial. Nancy is now living in Cape Cod. She has changed her name and appearance and tried to rebuild her life marrying Ray Eldridge, a local real estate agent,  and they have two children, Missy and Michael.  The Eldridge family lives in a beautiful home in a quaint town where no one knows about Nancy's past.  Life outwardly seems like it is going well for Nancy but in reality she remains afraid and very protective of Missy and Michael.  And then the nightmare repeats itself when Missy and Michael go missing.

Where Are The Children is a novel where as the saying goes "the pages turn by themselves". I loved this book which is told from several points of view.  And the central question is where are Missy and Michael and who murdered Peter and Lisa seven years prior?

In addition to Nancy there are other interesting characters in this novel.  Jonathan Knowles for example, a retired attorney and neighbor of Nancy's who is a 1970's version of today's true crime podcaster.  He is determined to solve the case.  Also, Where Are The Children? touches on a disturbing topic that I was surprised to see brought up in a 1970's novel but clearly people were talking about this issue back then.

I am late coming to the Mary Higgins Clark fan club but now that I am here I will stay awhile and definitely be checking out at least two or three more of her novels.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed and Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) by Cheryl Strayed is a collection of the advise columns she wrote anonymously for the Rumpus magazine from 2009 to 2012.  Cheryl answered letters from readers seeking help under the pen name, Dear Sugar. 

People wrote in with relationship issues, grief over the death of a loved one, substance abuse problems, questions about one's career path etc.  Cheryl would choose certain letters to respond to in the pages of the Rumpus, often bringing up stories from her own life which might help the letter writer see a path forward.  

Tiny Beautiful Things is part self help book, part memoir.  Cheryl Strayed writes beautifully and as with Wild she is very honest about sharing the events of her life.  

Do I recommend Tiny Beautiful Things?  It's hard to say because Cheryl's advise is compassionate and well thought out.  But my issues and  worries were different than the letters profiled in this book and so there wasn't as much I could relate to.  That said, Tiny Beautiful Things would be a good book to read when you are in your 20's and 30's.  And over 12,000 have reviewed this book on Amazon with 88% rating it 4 and 5 stars.  

"I am not one of those purists who insist on reading the entire untrucated text at all costs.  Moby Dick is a long book and time is short.  Even a sentence, a mere phrase will do.  The important thing is to spend some time with the novel, to listen as you read, to feel the prose adapt to the various voices that flowed through Melville during the book's composition, like intermittent ghosts with something urgent and essential to say" - Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby Dick?"

I have never read Moby Dick.  It's a long book and I hear difficult to get through.  But Why Read Moby Dick? (2011) by Nathaniel Philbrick is only 129 pages and serves as a great introduction to Melville's masterpiece.  It's not surprising because Philbrick is an excellent writer.  Winner of the 2000 National Book award for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. 

And as Philbrick tells us it was the sinking of the Essex that partly inspired Mellville to write Moby Dick.  The other inspiration was Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Melville prior to meeting Hawthorne had been a popular writer of sea novels.  But Hawthorne's writing which included passion and darkness inspired Melville to go deeper with his fiction.  I have never gotten around to reading The Scarlett Letter either but at a little over 200 pages it is doable.  And I might take Nathaniel Philbrick's advise and dip into Moby Dick at various points to see how I like it.

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against The Sea by Sebastian Junger

"It’s now way too late for anyone to back out. Not in the literal sense—any one of them could still take off running out the door—but people don’t work like that. More or less, they do what others expect them to. If one of the crew backed out now he’d sit around for a month and then either go to a welcome-home party or a memorial service. Either would be horrible in its own way. Half the crew have misgivings about this trip, but they’re going anyhow." - Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm

I saw the film The Perfect Storm  when it was released back in 2000 and the film has stayed with me all these years.   I have now gotten around to reading the bestselling book by Sebastian Junger and it was everything I hoped.

The Perfect Storm is a true story.  In October 1991 multiple weather systems converged in the North Atlantic with devastating results. Its been called the storm of the century with waves reaching 100 feet.  No one knew a storm of this magnitude was coming and so fishing boats went out to sea in the North Atlantic not knowing the life-threatening danger they would be facing.

One of those boats was The Andrea Gail.  The six men on this boat were sword fisherman: Billy Tyne Jr, Dale Murphy, Michael Moran, Alfred Pierre, Bobby Shatford and David Sullivan.  They never made it home.

Billy Tyne was the Captain of the Andrea Gail and at 37 he was the oldest person on the boat.  Billy treated his men well and he loved fishing.  For his crew though fishing was a job that they were not thrilled about.  That surprised me because I assumed fishermen love being out at sea but as Junger explains it, fishing is grueling, dangerous work.  And as David "Sully" Sullivan said before his final voyage on The Andrea Gail: "It's the money ... If I didn't need the money I wouldn't go near this thing."

And the risks aren't only that the boat might break apart and sink in a bad storm.  Being on deck is dangerous as well due to all the equipment on board.  Fishing hooks for example can go flying about and end up seriously injuring the crew.  And then there are the fish themselves.  The Andrea Gail was a boat that caught swordfish and they are dangerous animals.

The Perfect Storm also tells the story of some of the other boats that were in danger in the North Atlantic when the perfect storm hit.  We learn about The Satori and its crew members who were stranded in the middle of this storm.  Their boat was breaking apart but fortunately a coast guard team was able to locate and rescue them.  One of the brave coast guard members was Dave Moore who was dropped from an aircraft into the middle of this storm:

"He just skimmed over the top of the water, flying towards us,” says Stimpson. “When he gets there he says, ‘Hi, I’m Dave Moore your rescue swimmer, how are you?’ And Sue says, ‘Fine, how are you?’ It was very cordial. Then he asks who’s going first, and Sue says, ‘I will.’ And he grabbed her by the back of the survival suit and skimmed back across the water.” Moore loads Bylander into the rescue basket, and twenty seconds later she’s in the helicopter .... Moore’s the last one up, stepping back into the aircraft at 2:29"

That was a great outcome.  Sadly for the men of The Andrea Gail no one was able to locate and rescue them.  And also Sgt. Rick Arden Smith USAF who was on a rescue mission died n the storm as well.  

One final thing needs to be said about Captain Billy Tyne Jr.  When I saw the movie the image I got was that he was reckless.  A captain who ignored the bad weather report because he wanted to stay out longer so that he could increase his fish haul.  But the book does not show that. In the book by the time Billy Tyne got the warning that a very bad storm was coming the Andrea Gail was already on their way home.  Billy Tyne wasn't reckless.  The Andrea Gail was just unlucky that they were in the worst place they could be when the storm hit.  

I highly recommend The Perfect Storm.  You will learn about the lives of fishermen and their families, meteorology the town of Gloucester and the brave officers of the Coast Guard and USAF who put their lives at risk to rescue others in danger at sea.

A Great New Classics Reading Challenge for 2025

Here is a really fine 2025 classics reading challenge from Anne who runs the youtube book channel In Search of Wonder.   Anne's challenge is similar to the Back To The Classics Challenge which defines a classic as any book that was written at least 50 years ago (any book published no later than 1975).  Below are my choices based on Anne's prompts:

Jan:        Read a classic from your TBR list purchased before 2025 -  Walden by Henry David Thoreau.  

Feb:        Read a gothic classic  -  Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

March:   Read a classic children's book -   The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

April:      Read a classic memoir - The Big Sea by Langston Hughes

May:        Reread a favorite classic - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

June:       Read a classic book 500 + pages  - Men To Match My Mountains by Irving  Stone             

July:         Read a book Jane Austen might have read - Self-Control by Mary Brunton                              

August:    Read a classic in translation -  The Red And The Black by Stendahl

Sept:         Read a Shakespeare comedy - Much Ado About Nothing

Oct:           Read a science fiction classic - Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

Nov:          Read a classic essay or book of essays - Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Dec:           Read a classic Christmas short story - A Christmas Dream, And How It  Came To Be by Louisa May Alcott 

Thank you to Anne and I love these prompts because they challenge us to read books we otherwise would never have thought of reading.

Hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy and healthy 2025 and alot of good reading!