Amanda K. Jaros, author of the forthcoming book In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps on the Appalachian Trail wrote a lovely review of Uphill Both Ways over at Mom Egg Review. She writes:

"Uphill Both Ways is more than a hiking travelogue, more than a motherhood journal, more than a natural history reader. It is one woman’s attempt to unify the pieces of her life in search of happiness. It’s also a reminder to other women out there. You don’t have to be just one thing."

You can read the whole review here.

As the days grow shorter, that doesn't mean you have to curtail your outdoor explorations! In my latest article for Green & Healthy Maine (Winter 2024), "Oh, What a Night! Exploring Maine's Winter Wilds after Dark," I share lots of ideas for exploring the wilds at night, from stargazing to owl-prowling. Look for a copy at your local co-op, coffee shop, or tourist information center. Or read the article online here.

I started this month reading a book about World War II (and Nazi collaborators in England) and one about the history of witch trials, for no other reason than I'd been recently given the first one and had bought the second one at a literary Halloween bash. Both felt portentous, and not in a good way, once the election results came in--not the way we want life to imitate art.

Nonfiction
Bring Down the Little Birds by Giménez Smith. I don't often read pregnancy and new motherhood memoirs these days, now that I'm nearing the far end of that journey, but I've been seeking out books that incorporate themes of motherhood and nature. This one does not have much to say about nature, but it's still a lovely meditation on a second pregnancy and on motherhood and daughterhood. It would make a wonderful gift to an expectant or new mother.

Wintering by Katherine May. I've been meaning to read this book for a while, and I finally picked it up on the day after the election, when I was consolation shopping at one of my favorite bookstores. I figured now would be a good time for settling in to a little self-care. I really enjoyed this book, but it is an incredibly quiet read (as might be expected from the title), and I think May really lucked out by its being published during the pandemic, when lots of people were looking for ways to cope with a period of wintering. I have a hard time imagining it being a bestseller otherwise in our normally frenetic world. (And let me reiterate--I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm happy that it became a bestseller. I'm just amazed also.)

Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson. I've been wanting to do more research into the history of witch trials for a while, and this book was a good place to start, focusing on 13 specific cases where a person or group of people were accused of and tried for witchcraft, and how the religious and political milieu of the time fed into the charges and trials. I learned a lot, and was surprised to find out that witch trials began a lot later in history than I had understood (coming into prominence during the reformation years, beginning in the 16th century; I had thought they were common in Medieval times, thanks mostly to Monty Python). It was also interesting / distressing to note the way that humans blame all of society's problems on marginalized members who have the least amount of power (usually women in the case of witch trials, and often women who were also poor, disabled, outsiders, or in some way "other"), and to consider the way this scapegoating continues to this day.

Fiction
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal. This is a murder mystery/spy thriller set in London during WWII, in which a young woman gets a clerical job in the Prime Minister's office, while someone in her inner circle is spying for Nazi sympathizers. It was a good read, and would have been a lot more fun if it didn't feel like history is repeating itself in the modern era.

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutano. This book, by contrast, was all fun: a madcap caper in which the main character accidentally kills her blind date and her mother and three aunties all pitch in to help dispose of the body, in the midst of putting on a spectacular wedding. One farcical calamity after another occurs, leaving the reader breathless wondering how they would get out of their mess unscathed.

Sisters in Crime edited by Marilynn Wallace. I picked this book up at a library book sale, and it was so much fun--a collection of short mystery stories by many of the big names of mystery from the 1980s (it was published in 1989). It left me wondering if the 1980s can be considered a second golden age of (women) mystery writers?

Discipline by Debra Spark. I recently met Debra Spark at a book event in a nearby town, and while I'd heard her name bandied about in the Maine literary world, I hadn't ready anything by her, so I picked up her latest, in which an art appraiser discovers that the art she's been hired to value has gone missing. This leads down the path of the history of the paintings, which includes a case of mistaken identity of the actual artist, a child's experience at an abusive school for troubled kids, and other subplots, as well as the main character's struggle to connect with her own teenage son. It sounds like the plot of a thriller, but it's not, which is kind of an intriguing thought: take a plot premise and make it into either a literary novel or a thriller (or another genre). Can that be done with any story? Either way, I enjoyed the story, and Debra's writing style, and I'll be looking out for more books by her.