Books read 2021 (A-O) & #'s

Books not in Wake County Library: (1) Hildegard of Bingen's Holistic Approach to Wellness: A 12th Century Healer & Visionary, 4 Stars (Linda Lee Smith); (2) The Constitution of the United States of America (30 pp), 5 Stars (National Archives & Records Administration, Washington DC) (3) The Bible in 52 Weeks, 4 Stars (Dr. Kimberly D. Moore, Pastor; have Kindle edition) (4) Williams-Sonoma Collection: Soup, 4 Stars (Diane Rosser Worthington, have hardcopy) (5) Finding Hildegard: Healing through Medieval Wisdom, 3 Stars (Gregg Koskela) (6) What Falls Away, 5 Stars (Mia Farrow, have Kindle edition) (7) 6-Minute Fitness at 60+, 4 Stars (Dr Jonathan Su) (8) Mrs. Entwhistle series #1: Once You're Over the Hill, You Pick Up Speed, 4 Stars (Doris Reidy) (9) Apropos of Nothing, 3 Stars (Woody Allen) (10) Strength Training over 40, 4 Stars (Alana Collins) (11) Spiralizer Cookbook, 4 Stars (Violla Green, have Kindle edition) (12) The Last Duel, 5 Stars (Eric Jager) (13) Outer Banks Scenic Byway, 3 Stars (Douglas Stover) (14) The Vines, 3 Stars (Shelley Nolden, have Kindle edition)

Showing 1 - 20 of 40  There are a total of 63 valid entries on the list.

1. 1984

Book cover for "1984"
Star rating for 1984
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
5 Stars. Have Kindle edition.
Description:
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."...
Book cover for "After the fire"
Star rating for After the fire
Average Rating:
5 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"Fredrik Welin is a seventy-year-old former surgeon who retired in disgrace years ago. He has retreated to a Swedish archipelago, where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He is perfectly content to live out his days in quiet solitude. Until he wakes up one autumn evening to find his house on fire. Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed boots. All that remains in the morning...
Book cover for "Before she disappeared"
Star rating for Before she disappeared
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"A propulsive thriller featuring an ordinary woman who will stop at nothing to find the missing people that the rest of the world has forgtten ... Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will--searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media...
Book cover for "The boy in the field"
Star rating for The boy in the field
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy's life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim's brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford,...
Book cover for "Brave new world"
Star rating for Brave new world
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom. First published 70 years ago, the classic, prophetic novel capturing the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia remarkably explores the now-timely themes of cloning, individual creativity and freedom, and the role of science, technology, and drugs in humankind's future.
Book cover for "The bridge of San Luis Rey"
Star rating for The bridge of San Luis Rey
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Notes:
5 Stars. Have Kindle edition.
Book cover for "Constance"
Star rating for Constance
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Notes:
5 Stars. Have Kindle edition.
Description:
In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it's an abomination against nature. For young Constance "Con" D'Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it's terrifying. After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness--stored for that inevitable transition--something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic,...
Book cover for "The deep"
Star rating for The deep
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"Yetu holds the memories for her people--water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners--who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one--the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her....
Book cover for "The disappearing act"
Star rating for The disappearing act
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
4 Stars.
Description:
"Once a year, actors from across the globe descend on the smog and sunshine of Los Angeles for pilot season. Every cable network and studio looking to fill the rosters of their new shows enticing a fresh batch of young hopefuls, anxious, desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to make it ... British star Mia Eliot has landed leading roles in costume dramas in her native country, but now it's time for Hollywood to take her to the next level....

10. Dust

Book cover for "Dust"
Star rating for Dust
Author:
Series:
Silo series volume 3.
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Notes:
5 Stars. Have Kindle edition.
Description:
Armed with secret knowledge, Juliette, now mayor of Silo 18 and her crew set out to rescue a world she hates but now understands better -- the world of the Silos with its rigid rules and terrible consequences for disobedience.
Book cover for "Einstein's dreams"
Star rating for Einstein's dreams
Average Rating:
4 stars
Notes:
4 Stars. Have Paperback edition.
Book cover for "The enemy"
Star rating for The enemy
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
4 Stars.
Description:
Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier's son. An elite military cop, he was one of the army's brightest stars. But in every cop's life there is one case that changes everything. For Jack Reacher, this is that case. New Year's Day, 1990. In a North Carolina motel, a two-star general is found dead. His briefcase is missing. Nobody knows what was in it. Within minutes Reacher has his orders: Control the situation. Within hours the general's wife...
Book cover for "An event in autumn"
Star rating for An event in autumn
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Notes:
4 Stars. #11 in series but #10, The Troubled Man, is actually last chronologically in the Kurt Wallander series. #11 was written many years before 2013 publish date.
Description:
After nearly thirty years in the same job, Inspector Kurt Wallander is tired, restless, and itching to make a change. He is taken with a certain old farmhouse, perfectly situated in a quiet countryside with a charming, overgrown garden. There he finds the skeletal hand of a corpse in a shallow grave. Wallander’s investigation takes him deep into the history of the house and the land, until finally the shocking truth about a long-buried secret...
Book cover for "The four winds"
Star rating for The four winds
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"[A]n epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America's most defining eras--the Great Depression. Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with...
Book cover for "A gentleman in Moscow"
Star rating for A gentleman in Moscow
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"In all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight.this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility." - Kirkus Reviews (starred) From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility--a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established...
Book cover for "Golden Girl"
Star rating for Golden Girl
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
Entering the afterlife due to a hit and run accident, a successful author learns she can observe the earthly lives of her nearly grown children and is also permitted three "nudges" to alter the outcome of events.
Book cover for "Hamnet"
Star rating for Hamnet
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder...
Book cover for "Heat and dust"
Star rating for Heat and dust
Average Rating:
4 stars
Notes:
4 Stars.
Description:
Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins...
Book cover for "The hellfire club"
Star rating for The hellfire club
Author:
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Notes:
4 Stars.
Description:
After a mysterious fatal car accident kills his predecessor, Congressman Charlie Marder struggles to navigate the dangerous waters of 1950s Washington, D.C., where he finds an underworld of backroom deals, secret societies, and a conspiracy at the highest levels of the government.
Book cover for "The henna artist"
Star rating for The henna artist
Author:
Series:
Henna artist volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
5 Stars.
Description:
"Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist--and confidante--to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own. Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation...