Not every novel in the New York Times top ten of 2022 was a hit with me. I skidded through a baffling cast of cameo characters, each offering some meme evoking my real-life digital experience. 

I felt a Where’s Waldo vibe, with aha connections between characters and plot twists revealed in a phrase to keep me reading. I was also drawn in by plot pieces like the machine that can download a lifetime of memory to a flash drive, or the one that can upload it to a searchable collective consciousness…feeling to me like Google on steroids. Prophetic? Possibly. Scary? You bet!

Still, I give the book three stars at best.

This book reminded me of another book, On Trails, and the pleasure of meeting it’s Canadian author, Robert Moore, at the 2017 San Miguel Writers Conference.

This book is a smaller project than that one, and it’s much more reflective and “poetic” about the zen of walking. I liked its Norwegian vibe, especially “friluftsliv”. That means, “the fresh air life” and refers to the cultural craze for the great outdoors.

I read it with pleasure over Christmas, and feel energized by it to restart my walking habit in 2023.

This series of linked short stories explores the idea of black identity, set in muggy Miami, and what it means to be upwardly mobile yet stuck in poverty and tangled in family tensions.

The book tickled my funny bone at times, but also challenged me to slog through Jamaican patois and some dirty bits.

Interesting. I give it a three.

This is a non fiction book written by someone who does deep research but misses the potential for character development, crafting a cliff hanger, and writing rich description.

It’s actually like the narrator is reading the journals of the castaways. But what a true story this is! This voyage of exploration in 1913, out of Victoria BC, went horribly wrong just off the coast of Siberia.

I enjoyed reading this hidden history of Canada.

Janet Dunnett
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