My Fiction Reading List

• 2017: John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I read this with my husband, who went to Phillips Exeter Academy, very similar to the book's Gravesend Academy. I studied Gunter Grass' Tin Drum in highschool -- Oskar Matzerath and Owen Meany are similar characters.
• 2017: Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose." My husband introduced me to Stegner whose books are not so easy for me to read, but I do get drawn in by statements like "I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial."
• 2018: "Pachinko" by Min Jin Lee. I connected with the themes of refugees, immigration, and family drama.
• 2020: T.C. Boyle's "San Miguel" -- not as satiric as Tortilla Curtain, themes of exploration/exploitation of nature, self-efficiency, isolation. Male author gets the women's viewpoints.
• 2020: Paulette Jile's "News of the World." Interesting story in 1870s Texas (in my bat imaging research, we went to Fredricksburg, San Antonio, Kiowa territory). I read the book before I saw the movie. I kept thinking during the movie, this is different than the book, but I liked the movie too.
• 2021: Imbolo Mbue's "Behold the Dreamers." Story about a Cameroon family in NYC during the financial crisis of 2008. The book touches on race, economic class, immigration, addiction, family, friendship, and, of course, Cameroonian food and culture.
• 2022: Marina Endicott's "The Voyage of the Morning Light." The Morning Light is a merchant ship sailing from Nova Scotia to Polynesia pre World War I. I always enjoyed exploration stories, including Captain Cook's to the Pacific. I connected with the main character Kay, a girl who is studious and enjoys exploring language. Themes of family, growing up, organized religion (wry humor) and colonization, impact of technical advances (here sailboats to steamships), connecting with nature (swimming with whales). The book mentions the classics a lot (Homer's Odyssey). In discussion of 'What does it mean to be home?' Kay compares Cicero's "Omnia mecum porto mea," all that is mine I carry with me, to Seneca's "Omnia mea mecum sunt," all my things are with me. She likes Seneca's clarity and Cicero's rhythm.
• 2022: Ada Cambridge: "A Humble Enterpise." This book was published in 1896 -- at a time when there were not many female authors. The heroine of the story is a young Australian who takes care of her family after the death of her father and eventually finds love. This is an authentic description of the cultural boundaries that women had to navigate.
• 2022: Simone de Beauvoir's "Inseparable" with an introduction by Margaret Atwood and an afterword by Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir. This a moving book with strong autobiographical character. Simone de Beauvoir is Sylvie and her ten-year-old friend Zaza is Andree.

My Non-Fiction Reading List

• 2018: "Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren. A memoir by professor in STEM, my age. Easy for me to relate. I loved her story but also the chapters about soil, seeds, trees, etc.
• 2020: "How to be an Antiracist" by BU's Ibram X. Kendi. The author's honesty elicits the reader's introspection. I learned a lot.
• 2021: "Hoping for More. Having Cancer, Talking Faith, and Accepting Grace" by Deanna Thompson. A professor, my age. The subtitle summarizes this book well. Inspiring, very fast read.
• 2021: "The Hummingbird's Gift. Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings" by Sy Montgomery. Fun book about hummingbirds and a woman who raises hummingbird orphans in California. Makes me want to pull out my hummingbird feeder this summer.

Books in German

• 2016: Helmut Schmidt: "Was ich noch sagen wollte." The West Germany Chancellor has some interesting stories about his interactions with Deng Xiaoping, Anwar as-Sadat, his amazing wife Loki, and contributes discussions about democracy, philosophy, and role models.
• 2020: Xiao Hui Wang/ Monika Endres-Stamm. "Toechter des halben Himmels. Sieben Frauen as China." In each chapter is a biography about a woman living in China. Following the stories by a farmer's daughter, a dancer, an author, a civil servant, a taylor, a merchant, and a music professor means following Chinese history in distinctly personal viewpoints.
• 2021: Etgar Keret's "Die sieben guten Jahre. Mein Leben als Vater und Sohn." Translated into German from "The Seven Good Years." Each chapter is a funny and thought-provoking short story about raising a son in Israel.
• 2021: Volker Kluepfel/Michael Kobr: "Erntedank. Kluftingers zweiter Fall." Krimis sind mir eigentlich nicht so lieb, aber dieser war amuesant mit dem Allgaeuer Kommissar und seinem Wortgeplaenkel mit seiner Frau, ihren Freunden, seinem Sohn, der Polizei. Die Szene mit den Milchkannen war wirklich lustig.
• 2022: "Die Karawane der weissen Maenner" by Karl Rolf Seufert. Ein Jugendbuch aus den Sechziger Jahren, das ich vor 40 Jahren zum ersten Mal gerne las. Es ist eine spannende Geschichte ueber die 1849 Expedition des Afrika Forschers Heinrich Barth durch die Sahara.
• 2022: "Postkarte aus Copacabana" by Stephanie Kremser. A story about a teenage daughter, her mother, and grandmother in the Bolivian town Capacabana next to the Titicaca Lake in Bolivia with a connection to Germany.
• 2022: Juli Zeh: "Ueber Menschen." A woman's flight from COVID isolation in Berlin to new beginnings in a village with neighbors with clashing political backgrounds. The English translation is called "About People" and gives a fun and thought-provoking introduction to contemporary Germany.
• 2024: Norbert Scheuer: "Winterbienen." A gripping story of a beekeeper who smuggles Jews in bee hives to the Belgian border during the last 18 months of World War II. The setting is the countryside Eifel, Germany, near where I grew up. There's a story within the story, since the beekeeper translates Latin diary fragments of an ancestor who lived in the same village in the 1500s. The book is beautifully written, with fascinating facts about bee societies, European history, and the Eifel landscape.
• 2024: Juli Zeh: Neujahr. A German family spends New Year 2018 on Lanzarote, a beautiful volcanic island off the coast of Africa. While Henning is biking up a pass, he is thinking about his overwhelming roles as husband, father, son, and brother, and his struggles with PTSD. At the top, his cause for PTS is revealed -- he had been there as a child. This wonderful novel has only about 190 pages -- a short, tight, exciting, tragic, and funny story. Almost like a Greek play -- unity of space and time -- a single day and physical space. The flashbacks span only a few critical days.