#90/156 - Belleweather by Susanna Kearsley
The story of a colonial family asked to give shelter to two captured French officers on Long Island, this story was told in two timelines - the story of the family in the 1700s and the story of the museum keeper unearthing it in the modern day, with the heroines in both times finding romance along the way - and had a bit of a supernatural element woven into the modern day story as a ghost in the family's home helps guide the discoveries. Well researched and set in a part of the country that doesn't get a lot of love in the historical fiction I've read, I really enjoyed this one.
#91 - The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, like most second books this one wasn't as good as the original. It was still quite interesting, particularly in the choice of the main characters through whose eyes the story unfolds, and it ends on a much less ambiguous note than The Handmaid's Tale which is both more and less satisfying, I think, because that ambiguity is a part of what made the original so great. But seeing the whole thing through Aunt Lydia's eyes was fascinating and disturbing in a very different way - not the sheer brutality of the world of Gilead but the individual look at how and why ordinary people became complicit in building that world.
#92 - The Unwinding: An Inner History of New America by George Packer
This was very creatively told, a non-fiction narrative bringing together the stories of a half-dozen Americans from diverse backgrounds and experiences to paint a picture of the changes that have shaped our government and economy over the past generation. Written only a few years after the recession, before the recovery really got rolling, it foreshadowed a lot of the current fault lines and unrest in examining what went wrong both before and during the '08 recession and how it impacted everyone from a Washington insider with Wall Street ties to a Ohio factory worker and a Florida journalist.
#93 - Harvest the Vote by Jane Kleeb
A guide to grassroots organizing, seeking common ground, and reversing some of the political polarization that has taken shape over the last 30 or 40 years, written by an organizer and party official who has spent her entire career in Nebraska. Interesting, positive, forward-looking political thinking, if perhaps a little simplistic or overly optimistic in the current climate.
#94 - Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson
This book frankly amazed me. I don't think of myself as a "science person" and the sciences that do capture my imagination tend toward the naturalism of John Muir and other early conservationists, not cosmology, but this little book really did an excellent job of explaining core concepts in simple, plain English. And the author has a way of communicating his fascination with and love for the subject matter in language that at times borders on poetic, while also not being above ridiculous puns at other times. My 19yo science-nerd daughter recommended this one and I really didn't expect to like it nearly as much as I did.
#95 - Someone to Love by Mary Balogh
A historical romance by one of the authors I've read a fair bit of, this one was pretty good. The premise revolves around a young woman who finds out as an adult that she is nobility, so rather than all the crazy high-society rules of the time being sort of background like they are in most historicals, they're more explicitly laid out which added an extra layer of interest to what would otherwise have been a fairly generic romance. I've already borrowed the second in the series from out library ebook portal to start next time I'm in the mood for a fluff read.
#96 - Tip of the Iceberg by Mark Adams
A chronicle of the author's travels along the Alaskan coast, roughly retracing the path of a historic expedition that John Muir and other early American scientists, naturalists and industrialists took. The narrative blends to the two journeys, along with material about the history, culture, biology and geology of coastal Alaska. Travel books are always a fairly dangerous read for me because I'm cursed with a rather extreme tendency to want to see and do everything, and this one had that effect in spades, particularly since the author made extensive use of the Alaskan Marine Highway (car ferry system). My uncle, who used to live in Alaska and work fishing boats, has always told me driving is the way to go there because otherwise you end up stuck on the well-tread path. I read the whole book cover-to-cover once, then skimmed it again to take notes on some of the weird or beautiful places the author described that I want to keep in mind for a future trip... maybe next summer, if the rest of the world is still closed to us Americans.
