Walking with Ghosts (Gabriel Byrne)

Gabriel Byrne's Walking with Ghosts is definitely not your standard memoir or autobiography. In fact, I came away from it not really knowing much more about Byrne than when I started. 

This book is set up in a nonlinear fashion with Byrne telling vignettes in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. Some vignettes are funny and others heartbreaking. Because they're not written in any particular order and are rather short, the reader never really gets to fully immerse themselves in Byrne's life story, which in my opinion, is a detriment.

However, Byrne's poetic writing is second-to-none. He has a way with language where the reader can picture the setting and story in their mind's eye. I just wish the stories he tells had a little more depth to them.

MY RATING - 3

The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders (Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer)

In The CEO Test,  Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer compile a list of effective strategies that they feel will help any leader or executive navigate their position. The book is described as the “authoritative, no-nonsense insider’s guide to navigating leadership’s toughest challenges…” Bryant and Sharer interview several CEOs from major companies, who share their strategies and secrets that have helped them become successful.

The book identifies seven tests: Strategy, Culture, Team-building, Transformation, Crisis Management, Listening, and Leadership. Within those seven tests, the authors outline various pitfalls that can derail any leader and share some strategies to help them succeed. At times, their advice sounds contradictory or confusing, such as their ingredients for leadership; at others, the advice is sound and helpful, particularly in crisis management.

The only ingredient missing from the recipe list of “leadership” for effective CEOs is the ability to perform miracles. While the book offers some clear guidance on effective communication being necessary, it offers little more than a few empathetic remarks to help CEOs better understand the needs of today’s workers. Also missing are examples where the CEO fails in one area but succeeds in another and why their failings in the first place had little to do with the CEO themselves. In some cases, the “failure” of the CEO is less at their feet and more a product of not being able to spin up a miracle when one was needed.

MY RATING - 3

The Book of Lost Friends (Lisa Wingate)

One thing I love about author Lisa Wingate is that her novels depict historical events that most of us have never heard of. In her bestselling Before We Were Yours, she wrote about a fictional group of children who were stolen from their family and thrown into a Tennessee Orphanage. This particular group of children may have been fictional, but this did unfortunately happen to many other children. 

Wingate alternates timelines in The Book of Lost Friends; both take place in Louisiana, one in 1875 and the other in 1987. In 1875, three girls as different as can be set off for Texas: Lavinia, the heir to a plantation; Hannie, her former slave; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia's half-Creole sister. Hannie is on the journey for a much different reason than the other two: she wants to find the members of her long-lost family, who were wrenched from her and sold.

In 1987, Benny Silva is a first-year educator teaching at a poor rural school. Her unorthodox methods as she tries to reach her students get the attention of the school board, who is desperate to keep what the students are learning secret. The timelines of Hannie and Benny come together in a rewarding way as Benny discovers what happened to the three girls from the other timeline.

Wingate includes real excerpts from "Lost Friends" advertisements that ran in Southern newspapers after the Civil War. These ads were taken out by people desperate to find their relatives who had been sold as slaves. The inclusion of these excerpts adds even more authenticity to a story that so needed to be told and shared.

MY RATING - 4

The Project (Courtney Summers)

I had mixed feelings about The Project by Courtney Summers. On the one hand, it was very well written and the characters well developed. On the other hand, I found it easy to put down, with a plot lacking in believability and without much of a payoff at the end.

Lo is seriously injured in the hospital, having just been in the same car accident that killed her parents. Her sister, Bea, keeps vigil, and then suddenly disappears to join The Unity Project. She leaves Lo in the care of their great aunt, but Lo is determined to find her sister and expose The Unity Project for the cult it is.

The Project is told in alternate timelines between Lo and Bea, and Summers does a nice job of paralleling the characters. But it just didn't keep my attention the way I was hoping it to.

MY RATING - 2.5

The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager)

 Any book about writing will tell you that if you want to be a better writer you need to read more. In The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives, Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager interview 23 writers about their favorite books and which ones influenced them the most.

When I pick up a book by my favorite authors, I don't really think who THEIR favorite authors are as well. It was so interesting to read these interviews. Pearl and Schwager ask very interesting questions to authors like Donna Tartt, Jennifer Egan, and Richard Ford, who in turn, provide thought-provoking answers. At the end of each interview is a list of many of the books mentioned in the interview, making it easy to put them on your own reading list.

I came away inspired to read not only many of these authors' works but also the books they recommended. I, for one, wholeheartedly recommend this to those who love books about books.

MY RATING - 4

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (Robert D. Putnam)

Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone drew critical acclaim for its research into the decline in civic participation among Americans. His newest book, The Upswing, takes his research on civic engagement and broadens it into a historical narrative of our nation’s progress and view of itself in the past century.

The Upswing focuses on a broad curve and trendline that he refers to as “I-We-I”. This trendline and curve is reflected in several indicators, from taxation to economic equality to progress in civil rights through the country to political partisanship. Putnam parallels historical events in each of these trends to show a broad narrative that the nation swung from a Gilded Age full of individualism and relatively deep partisanship to an era where the nation was conformist, community-oriented, and more egalitarian, before pivoting back into an era that is more individualist and more unequal economically. Putnam points out a number of events that drove these changes but does not suggest any one event as a trigger point for the changes, offering that the numbers of events happening in short succession would promote a turn in trajectory (the rights’ movements, Vietnam, and lowering of tax rates in the 1960’s and the Progressive Era in the early 20th Century).

Putnam, with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, offers some suggestions on how to pivot the current perceived nadir of American life into one that is more optimistic and better (more support of pragmatic reform, bipartisanship in political life, and the use of technology to foster group efforts to combat issues that face the country to name three). While the suggestions are shorter and broader than the research and evidence on “I-We-I”, Putnam does show a roadmap to how American can become a more united, community-oriented country in the decades to come. It may take more than the pundits and politicians among us to take that roadmap and make use of it.

MY RATING - 4

The Four Winds (Kristin Hannah)

I've read quite a few books by megapopular novelist Kristin Hannah, with The Nightingale being my absolute favorite. I'm always excited to pick up her books. Her latest, The Four Winds, was not her best, but fans of hers will probably still enjoy it.

The Four Winds is mostly the story of Elsa Martinelli and begins in Texas during the Dust Bowl era of the Great Depression. Elsa lives on a farm with her husband, in-laws, and two children. They all must fight every single day to survive both literally and financially. This part of the novel is completely engrossing as you root for their spirit and survival. 

What is less successful, at least for me, was part two of the novel, when the Martinellis need to decide if they will stay in Texas or go west to California. I believe that the most riveting historical fiction draws the reader in to what was happening at the time without relying so much on dialogue to explain it. Part two moves the story along mostly by dialogue instead of action, which makes it less successful than part one in my opinion. 

But Hannah should still be commended for her well-researched account of one of the darkest times in American history.

MY RATING - 3

Available February 2021