Four-and-a-half books

 I've been doing a lot of hand sewing and organizing, and so there has been plenty of time for listening to books. It is always a struggle to find books that I want to read in a particular moment. I have plenty of books in the Audible library that I haven't listened to yet and a few others in Everand and Chirp. But just like the books on my physical shelf, I got them for some reason and haven't been in the mood to read them since.

Scrolling through all the books I could borrow from the library through Libby is daunting. As with most of the book reading/listening apps, the filters don't work the way I want them to, and there end up being thousands of books to look through. One option I wish Libby had is a way to filter out books that I have already read, but it is clear from the way Libby works that would be a difficult thing to program.

For a while I was just looking through the books that Libby offered strictly through my own library filtering for audiobooks and available now. That cut down the number of books to look through, but I have since exhausted the books in that list that were of interest to me.

The current strategy is to look at all books filtering for audiobooks, available now, general content (to avoid the young adult books), and fiction. Most recently this resulted in 6,580 options. After sorting by popularity, I quickly scrolled through just looking at the titles. This took about a half an hour.

Then I filled up my shelf with 5 audiobooks, the maximum I can borrow at a time, and the goal is to listen to them before the loan expired. 

That is how I ended up borrowing and reading these 4.5 books.

• A Nearly Normal Family by M. T. Evardsson
• A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey
• The Husbands by Chandler Baker
• The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore
• Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein

A Nearly Normal Family by M. T. Evardsson 

I thought this would be a true crime book, but instead it is a fictional family and courtroom drama. Because I like going into a book having no preconceptions, I didn't look anything up about this book and had no idea of its popularity. On the other hand, I saw in the Libby description that it is "told in an unusual three-part structure," but there is nothing new about a story having multiple narrators, who lay out the story bit by bit. It makes me wonder if the author of that blurb had ever read Faulkner.

The book begins by hearing from the father of the family, Adam, telling us about his daughter Stella's behavior and how it has disrupted the family. A church pastor, he has tried everything he could to get his daughter to some sense of normalcy, but she continues to be obstinate, rebellious, and withdrawn. Through Adam, we are introduced to several significant events in Stella's life, but only from his own perspective, which may be unreliable. After Stella is arrested for the murder of a 32-year-old man, Adam tries to get information from the people who knew Stella, including Rebecka, Stella's best friend and daughter of Stella's handball team coach.

The second part of the book is narrated by Ulrika, Stella's mother, an attorney. The story picks up after Stella's arrest, and we learn about the legal system and the defense team's strategy. Stella is denied bail and is detained, and since Adam and Ulrika may be witnesses, they are not allowed to visit with Stella in prison. During this part of the book, we see another side of the events in the family's history and learn more about the complex dynamic of the their relationships. Ulrika leads us through the first part of the trial.

In the final section, Stella alternates telling us about her early life, the events that lead up to the murder, and her experiences while being detained. During the required counseling sessions in jail, she reflects on her relationship with her father and other father figures in her life, trying to understand for herself how she came to be in this position and whether it is worthwhile to continue living. The book ends with the verdict of the court.

I see that this has become the basis of a Netflix series, and I can understand the attraction. As with all good books, there are a lot of questions...questions of ethics and morality, paternalism versus empowerment, the reliability of the narrators, the principle of reasonable doubt, and the rights of the accused.

A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey

I like to read books grouped by a theme, and so this title grabbed by attention by its similarity to the previous book. However, I'm not sure why I chose a book where someone goes back to their hometown where secrets are discovered and things aren't as they seem. That trope has worn thin for me, but the specific situation of the protagonist in this book intrigued me.

Natalie Walker works for a Boston architectural firm that specializes in renovating historic houses. She is one of the original employees, and her job is to research the older homes. Her boyfriend is a new architect at the company, and she helped land the job for him as a favor to his sister, Natalie's best friend. The day the boyfriend gets promoted to the job Natalie assumed was hers, she also finds out that her estranged mother had died. The ancestral home in Santa Cruz, California, is to be left to Natalie and her two siblings, Jake and Lynn, with the stipulation that all three meet together at the old home. Her brother and sister are also estranged, probably because Natalie called the police on The Night fifteen years earlier, which resulted in both being incarcerated for three years on drug charges.

At first blush, this sounds like a serious thriller like A Nearly Normal Family, but instead is a family drama with humor and romance. It is not clear whether or not to like the characters of Jake and Lynn, but there are many character to love: Natalie's nephew, Kit, wise beyond his years; her cat, Penguin, who truly knows how to explore an old house; Buck, the stepfather who loved Natalie's mother more than anything; and of course, the attractive and mysterious Spanish marine biologist.

This is a warm-hearted beach read, and I seldom have patience for the genre. Yes, there were many predicable outcomes, and I wanted to kick Natalie in the butt sometimes. But the characters were people I wanted to meet, and Natalie's situation with her boyfriend in Boston reminded me of some of my life, and I wasn't any smarter in those scenarios than is Natalie. 

I think I might have to recommend this book to my sister, which should be considered high praise.

The Husbands by Chandler Baker

Continuing the family theme, we return to the thriller genre. The hook for me was the description of Libby, which made me think of The Stepford Wives in reverse. Come to find out, Chandler Baker has other books in this genre, feminist thriller.

Nora is a successful attorney, living in Austin, Texas, with her account executive husband, Hayden, and their two children. She has some typical stress points for a professional woman: the need to out-perform men on the job to get the same rewards, how to balance maternity with professional goals, and how to do all that and be the primary caregiver at home. 

It is this last issue that drives the plot. Interspersed throughout the book are blog posts, interviews, and articles about the struggles of working women who lack the support of their husbands in the home. I've had most of the complaints that are voiced in the comments to these items*: Why doesn't HWC know where the paper towels are stored? Why does he leave a dish on the counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher? Why does he get two nights off a week but complains if I ask him to watch the kids for just an hour? And on and on ad nauseum.

While Nora and Hayden are looking at a home in an exclusive suburban neighborhood, Dynasty Ranch, they meet a group of women in high-powered jobs who have supportive husbands that work outside the home and take care of the housekeeping and children, a situation in reverse of what is typical. Nora is intrigued, but Hayden has nothing in common to talk about with the husbands.

Pressured at work to take on new clients, Nora agrees to handle a Dynasty Ranch woman's wrongful death case. Between her work on the case and social events with these successful women, she learns more about how they are able to have their cake and eat it too. But, of course, its not all high heels and dinner parties.

This is not as good a thriller as A Nearly Normal Family. The complaints about husband behavior were repetitive and exasperating. Nora's plight was understandable, but there would have been better solutions if Hayden's character hadn't been so one-dimensional. I did find a surprise or two, but mostly the results were predictable. I'm not eager to check into Baker's other feminist thriller's after reading this one.

*Note: in our household, HWC does the majority of the work. He not only knows where the paper towels are, he never lets them run out. I'm the one that leaves the plates on the counter, and he always empties the dishwasher when it is done. He does his own laundry (but doesn't do mine because I'm too high maintenance.) He takes the trash out on time every week. I do have some issues with household tasks on occasion, but we talk about those issues. We're not perfect by any means, but we're nothing like Nora and Hayden. BTW we don't have any kids to watch, and HWC always waters the plants.

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore

Definitely a continuation of the family theme, but this time the plight of educated and strong-willed women in the Nineteenth Century. This non-fiction book is a rewriting of the history of  Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, who later in life was a lobbyist for the rights of women and men that have been committed to insane asylum's.

Theophilus Packard was an ambitious minister, and changed the theology of his church to a more conservative form in order to curry favor with men who were willing to fund the building of a new church. Elizabeth, an educated woman who taught Bible studies and wrote unpublished articles on the subject, disagreed with the new direction of her husband's church, and left it to join another. Ostensibly to silence the dissent of his wife for fear it would jeopardize his chances to get funding for a new building, after being married for 21 years, Packard's husband, Theophilus, had her committed to the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, under the so-called care of Dr. Andrew McFarland. 

According to Elizabeth's writing, at the asylum she found other women like herself who were held there against their will for no reason other than that there husbands found them inconvenient in some way. Of course, there were people at the state hospital who had mental illness, but she witnessed cruel treatment and neglect at the hands of the attendants and in full knowledge of Dr. McFarland. 

After three years at the asylum, Elizabeth Packard was released only to be held captive by her husband in a hostile household. One of the issues she faced was that at the time in Illinois, women could be committed without legal recourse, and even though she was out of the hospital now, she still feared being committed for life to some institution worse than the state hospital. Her friends were finally able to file a writ of habeas corpus, and the court took of the matter of her captivity within her own home. In a rare case, the court determined that she was sane, and could not be held at home or committed. Few, if any, women had the benefit of a jury trial to determine there sanity even though that was available to men.

Elizabeth Packard had been writing two books while in the state hospital, one on her experiences and one of the abuses sanctioned by Dr. McFarland. Using what we would now call crowd sourcing, she published the books and other writings using her own money. She then campaigned for legislation to improve the rights of patients in mental hospitals, such as requiring external monitoring of conditions in hospitals and to prohibit administrations from intercepting patients' mail. Her lobbying efforts also helped pass a law in Illinois protecting the property of married women, which prior to that time would be relinquished to the husband after the wedding. 

The importance of this book is that it tells the story of Elizabeth Packard beyond that of her experience in the Illinois State Hospital, the twenty-plus years she worked to improve patient life and women's rights, successfully obtaining new laws in several states including Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts and Oregon. However, she also tried to expose the abuses by Dr. McFarland, but he was backed by other psychiatric professionals and instead of curtailing his job, he went on to found Oak Lawn Sanatorium in Jacksonville, Illinois. 

In 1968, the State of Illinois honored Dr. McFarland by naming the new mental health center in Springfield, Illinois, after him. This book was published in 2021 by Kate Moore as a reponse to the #MeToo movement. A petition drive launched by Miranda Bailey-Peetz secured enough signatures that in August 2023, the facility that once was named for McFarland was renamed to the to Packard Mental Health Center, in recognition of the injustice of her institutionalization and in honor of her tireless work in support of patients' rights. 

Note: I love looking for graves of people I read about.  Elizabeth's grave is in Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. The grave of Theophilus Packard Jr. can be found at Elmwood Cemetery, Manteno, Kankakee County, Illinois.  Dr. Andrew McFarland's final resting place is in Diamond Grove Cemetery, Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois. All three gravestone locations can be found in Find a Grave.

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein

I wasn't able to finish this book before the due date, and I also couldn't renew it, but I have put a hold on it and am waiting to check it out again. I might write a post on it when I'm done, but here is a little bit for what I have read.

This biography of Attila Ambrus is incredible, literally. The book starts with his escape from prison, but we go back in time, beyond his birth, to a history of Hungary to help us understand how he ended up in prison to begin with. I found this part a refresher on what I had learned of Hungarian history before traveling there.

Growing up in Transylvania, Ambrus always wanted to live in Hungary, the land of his ancestors. In a convoluted way, he ends up in Budapest, doing odd jobs, one of which was an unpaid custodian at a broken down hockey arena. To supplement his income, he began smuggling animal pelts into Hungary, but the overhead, that is, bribes to cross the borders, became too high. So he began robbing post offices. Like most robbers, he would run through his loot pretty quickly and would need to hit another post office. He graduated to robbing banks, and was called the Lone Wolf.

For 6 years, Ambrus continued his life of crime, robbing 27 banks, post offices, and travel agents. Meanwhile, the police kept trying everything they could to catch him. Their failures were partly due to the history of policing in Budapest, but the way Rubenstein tells it, they sound like the Keystone Kops.

This is as far as I've read, but since Ambrus is something of a folk hero, you can find plenty of information about him on the interwebs. Having seen a photo of him in 2013, I think the image on the cover of the book doesn't do him justice at all. I didn't pay much attention to the dates in the book, so I didn't realize that he is 9 years younger than I am.

I'm eager to get back into the book to see how he is eventually caught, how he escapes prison, and how he is caught again!

The next 5 books: I spun the Libby wheel again and came up with 5 more books in much the same way. I'm about 20% of the way through 2 of the books, and so far I like what I see.  Here is the selection.

• Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
• Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
• The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan
• Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson