#23 [2026/CBR18] Heartwood by Amity Gaige

Heartwood (2025) by Amity Gaige is yet another book that I originally saw on NPR's Favorite Books List. It is about a woman who goes missing on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and the search to find her. Heartwood sounded like something I would like, so I got it from my library back in December. But I was about to do some solo backpacking and camping, and I wisely decided I didn't want to read a book about a missing hiker while I was sitting alone in my tent at night. Now it's about five months later, and I finally got around to it.

Gaige states at the end of this book that this story was partially inspired by the tragic story of Geraldine "Gerry" Largay, a 66-year-old woman who had been hiking the AT. When she went off the trail to go to the bathroom, the woods were so thick that she could not find her way back. She survived for 26 days in her tent before succumbing, writing to her family in her journal. Her body was found two years later.

In Heartwood, Valerie Gillis is a 42-year-old nurse who is hiking the AT as a way to take a break and reset after the heartbreak of being on the frontlines during COVID. She is alone, but her husband is supporting her trek, meeting her every few days with supplies and logistical support. Valerie is in Maine, but she doesn't show up to meet her husband as they'd agreed. He waits one day because she is often delayed and then goes for help.

Beverly is a Maine State Game Warden. She is 57 years old, and has been in charge of missing persons cases in the woods for a number of years. She is good at her job and has a great record. Beverly is fleshed out with details of what it's like to be the only woman in a male dominated field, her complicated relationship with her mother and sisters, and her determination to find Valerie.

Lena is a 76-year-old woman who is living in a Connecticut nursing home. She is immediately sucker punched by the news of the missing hiker because her own estranged daughter is the same age as Valerie and also a nurse. Lena's immediately takes it upon herself to find out everything she can about the case.

The search brings out hundreds of volunteers and wardens as they search for Valerie. But their confidence in finding her decreases as the days continue. It's possible that she's lost, but there's also the outside chance that she was the victim of foul play. There are a number of suspects, including Valerie's husband. Some hikers are also suspicious of Valerie's last hiking partner, who had already left the trail because of a sick father. In addition, there is a SERE campus that is right near where Valerie disappeared. SERE is military training for captured soldiers and it stands for: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. Plenty of internet sleuths think the military is hiding something, and their poor relationship with the Maine State Game Wardens don't help.

I liked this book. It was well written and seemed to have a good understanding of what long distance hiking is like. The characters are developed and feel like real people. My wanting to know what happens kept me reading, although I was sometimes frustrated when I felt like we were finally getting somewhere and the book changes perspective. I had the hardest time understanding Lena. I wish I could have related to her more. 

Recommended.

#22 [2026/CBR18] Unshrunk by Laura Delano

Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance (2025) by Laura Delano is another book I discovered on NPR's List of Favorite Books. I have an older brother who fell into some major mental health problems when he was in college. He has had a very hard life since then. He is often difficult, nonsensical and hard to be around, but I also know what he was like before he got sick. In an effort to understand him better or maybe find something to help him, I find myself reading a fair number of books about Schizophrenia and mental health. When I saw Unshrunk, I was intrigued and was able to get the Audiobook from the library.

Laura Delano is the author and narrator of Unshrunk. She grew up very well off, an outstanding student, and a competitive squash player. But at 14 years old, she began having mental health problems--struggling with her feelings and anger towards her family. She saw her first psychiatrist who labeled her as bipolar and started her on a mood stabilizer and antidepressant. And so for the next thirteen years, Delano's life was a parade of more psychiatrists, more prescribed drugs, more symptoms, repeated stays in hospitals, thoughts of suicide, and one serious suicide attempt.

Delano's family was able to give her access to some very good psychiatric resources. She also managed to graduate from Harvard and go to a debutante ball in the middle of all of this. But her mental, and then physical health was such a struggle, that Delano did not want to live anymore. Doctors told her she had "treatment resistant" bipolar, which meant the drugs weren't helping  her, and she needed more.

After being put in a Borderline Personality Group Therapy class, Delano met another woman who convinced her to go to AA meetings. These meetings helped Delano get sober, and she started taking a more active part in her care. She read all of the information she could get about the drugs she'd been prescribed. Most of them were FDA approved because the drug's efficacy had been shown through six-week trials. (And sometimes this efficacy was only marginally better than the placebo effect). There were no long-term trials, and they had never been tested on children, including the ones she had been prescribed as a child. She also read about some of the debilitating side effects, many of which can cause new mental or physical issues.

Delano decided to get off of her meds, but there was also very little information about safely getting off psychiatric medications. These meds can affect every system in the body, and she'd been taking them for years. Lithium is the go-to drug for bipolar, but there is a very fine line between the amount of drug that is therapeutic and the amount that is toxic. In addition, getting off bipolar medication too fast can trigger a larger manic episode than never taking it in the first place. Delano found her best information on various online forums from other patients who had used trial and error to very slowly wean themselves off.

In the end, Delano was able to wean herself off all of her medications, stay sober, be a part of a healthy relationship, run a business, and raise her children. She says that her brain is certainly not always healthy, but she is better now at dealing with negative thoughts and emotions. Delano is not against all psychiatric drugs for all people, but she thinks they are pushed too quickly without adequately informing the patients of the real risks and other options.

I appreciated that Delano telling her own story really showed how difficult dealing with mental health problems can be. Some people are under the illusion that psychiatric drugs are some kind of panacea. If anyone has mental health issues, they just need to get on their meds. But it's not that simple. Delano was compliant with her meds and trying everything, desperate to get better. Instead, she kept spiraling down. I could see why she was hopeless.

In the end, though, like most psychiatric books I read, I found it kind of depressing. I'm glad that Delano was able to figure out what worked for her. But she is very smart, determined, and has a large amount of support and resources. Also, what worked for her, isn't necessarily going to work for someone else. There are plenty of people whose psych meds are incredibly helpful to them. What it comes down to in the end, is we don't really understand mental health very well.

#21 [2026/CBR18] These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

I saw These Summer Storms (2025) by Sarah MacLean on NPR's Favorite Books List. I've never read anything by Sarah MacLean, but I'm a fan of romance novels, and this one seemed interesting enough. So I picked it up. Unfortunately, I found this one more disappointing than not. After a fun beginning, the plot did not feel believable, and I didn't like the characters. By the end of the book, I was curious how it was going to end, but I was also ready for it to be done.

Alice Storm hasn't seen her very rich family in five years. She is the daughter of a tech billionaire, Franklin Storm, who is egotistic, controlling, and unlikable. When she publicly outed her father's company for its bad practices regarding sexual harassment, her father told her to "get off his island." In all that time, Alice has not seen her mother, Elizabeth; her two older siblings Greta and Sam, and her youngest sibling Emily. She was cut off from all of the money and made her own way as an artist and art teacher in New York City.

But she has just received news that her father is dead from an accident, and she is on her way back to their private island off the coast of Rhode Island for his funeral/celebration of life. Her ex-fiance, Griffin, has just recently broken things off with no explanation. On the train, she sits next to a good-looking man who helps her get away from paparazzi and gives her a ride. They end up hooking up before she sneaks away in the morning.

Alice sails across the island to meet her mostly rude and obnoxious family--except for Emily, who is in a happy relationship and seems like a genuine, caring person. It doesn't take long before the guy Alice slept with the night before shows up at the island. He is Jack Dean, and her father's number two man at his company. Jack Dean is there to tell them about their father's wishes as far as the will is concerned and oversee/judge the process.

Franklin Storm gave most members of the family a personal letter with a task to fulfill. All members of the family must complete the task or none of them will get their inheritance. Greta must break off her years-long relationship with her father's bodyguard--a man she loves more than anything. Sam can only talk on even hours, and he has to clean and fix a bunch of things on the island. Alice did not get a letter at all, but she must stay on the island for the whole week. Even though Alice is now self sufficient and doesn't care about the money, she is facing incredible family pressure to stay. Emily did not receive instructions, and Elizabeth, their mother, was instructed to say one nice thing about Franklin every day and "tell the truth."

I'm pretty sure there is nothing remotely legal about this, but it also doesn't make a lot of sense. Greta is supposed to break up with the man she loves. Franklin is not a likable character, but it's still a mystery why he would do this to his daughter. The book says he doesn't like to share, but he's dead; he doesn't have to share. And wasn't he already sharing his favorite bodyguard when they were secretly, but not so secretly hooking up before he died. And Franklin liked his bodyguard. Why would he do this? Also, all Greta has to do is tell her beau everything that's happening. He can disappear until the end of the week, and people can think they broke up. Greta inherits the money, her bodyguard boyfriend comes back, and the problem is solved. This plotline drove me crazy.

Another big problem for me was that I didn't like Jack Dean. This book could have turned around for me if I had been into the love story. And when they first met on the train, he was really promising. But when they're on the island, they were always fighting. He never apologized or explained anything to her. He was constantly lying or withholding information, and I didn't trust him. He is too much like her father. The only thing they had going for each other was the physical attraction--not the best basis for a long-term relationship. Not my favorite book of the year.

#20 [2026/CBR18] West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

I read West With Giraffes (2021) by Lynda Rutledge because it was chosen by my book club. After reading some pretty bad books, we've made up a loose rule that you need to have read the book before nominating it for book club. Well, it didn't happen this time. The husband of one of our book clubbers said it would be a good book for us. I think the majority of us would agree that it was not. I think I was most frustrated at what it could have been.

It is the midst of the Great Depression. Woodrow Wilson Nickel (Woody) lost his family in the Dust Bowl in Texas. He made his way up to New York City to live with his unfriendly cousin. But then a raging hurricane came through, killing his cousin. Woody is hurt, and has just figured out he's on his own, when he sees the giraffes on the dock. One of the giraffes is hurt as well. Woody learns the giraffes are going to be trucked across the country to the San Diego Zoo. Woody decides to follow them to California, the land where dreams come true.

Eventually Woody ingratiates himself with the "old man" in charge of transferring the giraffes, and he becomes the driver. They have many adventures, including being followed by a young woman Woody calls "Red" who says she is taking pictures for Life magazine. Woody is enamored with Red, and she is a pretty large part of the story.

This story is told from far in the future when Woody is over one hundred years old and about to die in a nursing home. He is desperately writing down this story from his childhood. He wants it to get to someone. I think this is supposed to make the story more meaningful, but it didn't do much for me.

I found this book occasionally interesting, and I like that the author was trying to bring awareness and appreciation for the animals that we are constantly losing through habitat destruction and climate change. In addition, it is true that two giraffes were trucked across the country after surviving a hurricane, which was the inspiration for Rutledge's story. Finally, Rutledge touches on real aspects of The Dust Bowl, how it was affecting people, and how desperate it was. 

However, reading this book was primarily a frustrating experience. I often found the descriptions lacking, and many of the events seemed unbelievable. I never had a good idea of what the truck looked like or how it worked. The situations they got in felt absurd and impossible. Both people and animals acted and reacted in ways that did not make sense to me. I often felt physics was not being taken into account in many of these situations.

For example, the old man has a hand that is so mutilated he cannot drive. But when the giraffe starts choking on a hat, he grabs a hose and climbs up the side of the truck. That's problematic enough because that would be challenging with two good hands. But then he sticks the hose down the giraffe's throat and the hat comes back up??? I don't see how waterboarding a giraffe is going to help a choking situation. And even if that was somewhat possible, I imagine you'd need some pretty intense water pressure to do anything--although that pressure is going down on the hat, so I still don't see how it would work. 

In addition, as far as I can tell from the internet, giraffes do not "caterwaul." The most I could find is something that sounded kind of like a growl when a mother giraffe was fighting with lions over its baby. I could go on for quite a while with things that were unrealistic or not described well enough to feel realistic. Red's car bumped the big giraffe truck at 5 mph, and suddenly the truck is leaning over the edge of a cliff. Later, Red somehow uses her car to keep the truck from tipping over in a flood. I had no understanding of how these things were physically happening.

I was also disappointed in the ending. Red was a pioneering woman who traveled across the country on her own. Except that we got no actual details of her journey. And in the end, she loses all of her pictures in a flood, she's pregnant, and she very quickly dies of heart problems. What a lame journey for her character. Even Woody is frustrating. He finally gets the giraffes to San Diego, but he doesn't even see them settled. Instead he steals another motorcycle and is forced into the army. This book has thousands of positive Amazon reviews, and many people enjoyed it, including my friend's husband. But I cannot recommend it.

#19 [2026/CBR18] Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

I saw Memorial Days (2025) by Geraldine Brooks on a number of year-end lists. I wasn't sure I wanted to read a book about grief, but there was something about the description that made me want to give it a try. This was my first book by Brooks, but I really enjoyed her writing. I thought she was honest, vulnerable, and insightful.

On May 27, 2019, Brook's husband and partner of over thirty years, Tony Horwitz, collapsed and died on a sidewalk in DC, where he was promoting his new book. He was sixty years old and seemingly fit and healthy. Brooks was at their home on Martha's Vineyard when she got a phone call informing her that her husband was dead. The caller hung up and she was left by herself, blindsided, and hundreds of miles away from him. She wanted to fall apart, but instead she held everything inside--forced to deal with the logistics of death first.

Three years later, Brooks is flying to Flinders Island, a beautiful, sparsely populated, and isolated location off the coast of Australia. Brooks is Australian, and thinks if she hadn't met Tony, she may have ended up there instead of living in the United States. Tony was one of those diverging paths in her life that took her in a different direction. In going to Flinders, she is getting a glimpse of something she gave up in order to be with him. And she is finally taking the time to properly grieve her husband.

Brooks jumps back and forth between her time grieving on the island; what exactly happened to her husband back in 2019; and more information about the lives she and her husband created together. I found all parts of this book interesting.

When Brooks describes finding out her husband is dead, having to tell their children the news, and not being able to see his body, I couldn't stop crying. It was very emotional. But she also points out a number of practical things. Tony died at a busy, urban DC hospital, but Brooks found them lacking in empathy and patience. Red tape kept her from seeing his body, and also kept him from donating his organs. Later, Brooks struggled taking over the financial tasks that Tony had taken care of for most of their marriage. She gives practical advice to couples in order to make these logistical things easier when you're already dealing with so much.

While on the island, Brooks thinks back to how she and Tony met, their work throughout the years, as well as their children. She also looks into different forms of formal grieving across cultures--all while using the isolation for her own grieving.

I was surprised by how much this book affected me. Her descriptions felt so real and relatable, and it made me think about my own life and relationships. I listened to this book on Audiobook, but I'm tempted to get a hardcover copy. I also might try some other books by Brooks.

#18 [2026/CBR18] The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

I'm not sure if it was because I was getting older or my interests just shifted, but back in 2019 I suddenly became fascinated with birding. It felt like a whole new world opened up simply because I started paying attention. Now that I have a dog, I spend more time walking her than going out with my camera looking for birds. However, I still look out for them, and I still find birds (all animals, really) fascinating. I'm officially hooked.

Recently I stumbled on bird drawing classes from John Muir Laws. He has a ton of great resources and is an encouraging teacher (johnmuirlaws.com). He teaches nature journaling as a way for people to pay more attention to the natural world around them and thus want to protect it. This is relevant because my brother gifted me a copy of The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024) by Amy Tan for Christmas. She took drawing and journaling classes from John Muir Laws, but she can't drive, so she started nature journaling in her backyard in Sausalito, California. The Backyard Bird Chronicles is Amy Tan's chronological drawings, descriptions, and stories about a whole different world happening right under her nose.

This book seemed designed specifically for me. I feel like I have so much in common with Tan. She started out knowing only three kinds of birds in her backyard. I began knowing only three birds in Colorado: robins, mallards, and crows. Tan did not take a drawing class until she was 64. I only just started drawing. I related wholly to Tan's excitement and wonder as she learned and observed. The birds' lives played out in front of her as chicks learned to fend for themselves, dominance patterns emerged, and life or death drama occurred daily.

Now, even with my love of birds, I went into this book wondering if a description of backyard feeders would hold my attention. It did. Tan is observant and empathetic, and she is a natural storyteller. She notices interesting aspects of her birds, and asks intriguing questions as she wonders about their behavior. All of the drawings of birds in her book are done by her, and they are great. I've found myself looking carefully at them as I try to figure out how to draw my own birds.

Occasionally the outside world intrudes into Tan's backyard. Raging wildfires led to unusual visitors as birds struggled to get away from the stifling smoke. Covid affected the world, but Tan's backyard remained a calm oasis, full of feeders and bird baths.

I really enjoyed this book. I have been inspired to try my own hand at nature journaling. I love the idea of learning to draw, and paying more attention to the natural world around me--wherever it can be found. I'm not sure if some admiration/appreciation of birds is required to enjoy this book or if Tan could win over even those who are still apathetic about our flying, feathered neighbors.

"I don't feel indifferent to any creature struggling to survive. I think my distress over theirs is a good thing." (168)

"I rationalize the cost of mealworms by calculating the amount of money I have saved by not having children." (178)

#17 [2026/CBR18] The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

I'm a little burned out on self-help books, but I always think the next one will help me a little more. On the whole, I've learned some important things about myself, as well as various coping strategies. I keep reading them even though I'm tired of them because I have a little FOMO when it comes to missing that one book that will fully explain me to myself.

Brené Brown was recommended to me by my therapist, and The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) seemed like something of a classic, so I went with that one. I was expecting Brown to dive right into shame and perfectionism, but instead The Gifts of Imperfection is centered around "wholehearted living," which is defined as a process of becoming, rooted in self-worth and embracing one's authentic self. I think I expected something a little different from this book, and it probably didn't help that I was listening to it instead of reading it. I was sometimes confused about what Brown's focus was. It took me awhile to figure out that this was more general advice for a better life.

But looking back on it, and with the help of the internet, this book is pretty straightforward. It has three tools and ten guideposts to help you achieve a "wholehearted life." It's interesting how many of these self help books fall back to the same things. Brown talks a fair bit about self compassion, something I've already read an entire book on. It seems that there is general agreement in what makes a happy and fulfilling life.

Cliff's Notes:

-Let go of perfectionism for wholehearted living.

Three tools:

1) Courage    2) Compassion     3) Connection

Ten Guideposts for Wholehearted Living:

1) Authenticity - letting go of what people think

2) Self-Compassion - nurturing kindness toward oneself

3) Resilient Spirit - cultivating a resilient spirit

4) Gratitude and Joy - practicing gratitude

5) Intuition and Trusting Faith - believing in oneself

6) Creativity - engaging in creativity

7) Play and rest - allowing time for play and rest

8) Calm and stillness - managing anxiety

9) Meaningful work - engaging in work that matters

10) Laughter, song, and dance - embracing joy

The one advice that stuck with me the most was Brown's recommendation to follow the vowels every day: A - abstain from something bad for you (Instagram, alcohol, whatever it is for you); E - exercise; I - do something for yourself; O - do something for others; U - see if you are holding on to unexpressed emotions; and Y, yeah, be grateful or excited about something good that happened. Perhaps I forgot the last two vowels, but it's a pithy little way to get yourself back on track.

I like how Brown uses personal stories to make some points, and I found this book readable and potentially helpful. Perhaps if I'd read this book earlier in my self-help book education, it would have had more of an impact on me.