Year-End Reads
This was a really busy season for my daughter and I, since she turned two and I published two books, Twitter Marketing for Microbrands and 500+ Blogmas Ideas. We still made time to read every day, though.
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First, let’s look at the reads available for free with Amazon Prime in the United States. Those were rather hit-and-miss this month. Jerry Bledsoe’s Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder was not very good. I read it in its entirety but the deliberate pace and the way the ending was foreshadowed made an interesting topic boring.
The Meaning of Our Tears: The True Story of the Lawson Family Murders of Christmas Day 1929 by Trudy Smith was one of those rare books that I couldn’t finish. I tried. I really did. The book opens with the murderer’s brother and niece cleaning out their home, which they have displayed to curiosity-seekers for several years. That’s a fascinating psychological concept: I could not show off my family tragedy to anyone who asked, looking at bloodstained floors every Sunday afternoon. But the book relies so heavily on the niece’s published memoir that I wished I was giving her my page views. The author also carried out her own interviews with people who knew the family, which led me to the point where I quit: an absolutely asinine description of the family’s mules.
Another Prime Read was Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar. A spooky read that offers a compelling reason for the sudden deaths of the hiking group, I enjoyed this one.
My final Prime Read was Innocent Victims: The True Story of the Eastburn Family Murders by Scott Whisnant. Please do not do what I did and check out the Wikipedia article on the case–instead, take the twists and turns of the case as they come on the book. This could be a difficult read for some, however, as it involves the death of children.
Non-Prime Reads I checked out this fall included I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank the Irishman Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt. This has just been made into the Netflix film The Irishman. I came to this without knowing much about Hoffa’s life and murder, and this book meticulously filled in the blanks. This is one of the best books I read this autumn.
When Like Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan was one of the most touching books I read this year. She writes beautifully (and at times, hilariously) about the brain tumor that landed her in the Intensive Care Unit for months. One of the best books I read this season.
Currently a free self-pub, Robert Keller’s The Deadly Dozen serves as an entree to his books, but contains no real information for true crime aficionados. Still, it’s worth the download if you don’t know much about American serial killers.
Toddler Reads
On to the books my toddler loved. Corduroy’s Trick or Treat by Don Freeman and Lisa McCue was charming and my daughter spent a lot of time moving the pumpkin-shaped pages of this board book. We both enjoyed the sweet book Leaves by David Ezra Stein, about a bear experiencing its first fall.
She read me Treasure Island: A Shapes Primer by Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver, which features a new shape on each page, similar to the duo’s Frankenstein: An Anatomy Primer. Highly recommended!
The Wall in the Middle of the Book by Jon Agee was hilarious. It’s about a knight who is very happy about having a wall in the middle of the book–until it becomes obvious that the dangerous stuff is on his side.
I hope you enjoyed this quick blog post about some of our recent reads, and I would love to hear about some of yours!
