My 2023 Retrospective

 

 

 

 Would you believe that I had almost twice as many views of this blog in 2023 as I had in 2022?  I'm astonished.  I read fewer books this year and posted fewer reviews.  Nice to know that so many more people wanted to see them.  I had a total of 64,387 views in this blog's entire history as of the end of  2022 and 79,622 total views at the end of 2023.

So in 2022 I had 8,346  views.   This year I had 15,235 views.  To me, that's a staggering statistic, but I'm glad to see it.  I must be doing something right.  

I read 37 books this year which is three fewer than last year. On the other hand, I had four five star reads, which is the same number as last year.  So I'm holding steady, but I hope I will have more five star reads in 2024.

Without further delay, I will now post those four books, which are the recipients of the Golden Mask Awards for 2023.

The Doctor and the Saint  by Arundhati Roy

This book caused me to re-evaluate Gandhi.  He apparently had typical prejudices against the Dalits who are the lowest caste in the Hindu religion.  This means that he shouldn't really be viewed as some sort of saint.

When We Do Harm  by Danielle Ofri

This book revealed how and why doctors make errors. We need to know that the practice of medicine is far from perfect despite the best intentions of medical doctors.  Doctors are human beings who are capable of making mistakes. 

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields  by Christina Lamb

This book dealt with rape in the context of war.  Lamb obtained the stories of wartime rape survivors.  I hope that Our Bodies, Their Battlefields will have an impact that will increase the prosecution of rape during wars.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

This year I had an A rated novel. So I would like to celebrate that fact. It's also the best mystery I read in 2023, but what most impressed me about it is the way the violinist author portrayed the relationship between the musician protagonist and his violin.  As I wrote in my review, "This novel lives and breathes music."  Bravo!

                              

The Amish Wife: A Frightening Non-Fiction Book

 I received a hardcover copy The Amish Wife by Gregg Olsen in the mail. I'm not certain if it was directly from the publisher Thomas & Mercer or from the publicist Jennifer Musico, who has sent me quite a number of e-books.  I finished The Amish Wife on December 23.  I am writing this review on 12/24.  It was about a real life monster.

                                     

 

Apparently, the first book that Gregg Olsen wrote about killer Eli Stutzman,  Abandoned Prayers, isn't very different from The Amish Wife except for containing details about Stutzman's sex life. So readers who really don't want to know those details, would be better off reading The Amish Wife. I'm one of those who will probably never read Abandoned Prayers.

The Amish Wife states that the Amish believe that saying negative things about someone reflects poorly on the speaker.  Jews also believe this.  It's called Lashon Hara. (This is Hebrew for "evil tongue".)  This belief is probably why Amish were unwilling to say things they knew about Eli.  Olsen calls Eli "an Amish fabulist".  I understand "fabulist" to mean someone who tells stories that are either not completely true or absolutely false.  The stories with elements of truth are the most insidious because listeners need to determine when the fabulist is lying. 

Olsen tells us that the only way a marriage could be ended in the Amish community was death.  He believed that Eli killed his wife, Ida.  Eli was evidently gay and wanted out of his marriage.  So Olsen thinks the fabulist manufactured a story about her death that would allow him to evade responsibility for it. 

 Eli was the one who reported his wife's death to the authorities. His story about his wife being woken up by a fire in the barn and then wanting to milk the cows instead of rushing to get them out of the barn is a real doozy though.  I don't know how anyone could have believed that.  Ida's death was officially an accident.

Eli also made up stories about his son, Danny.  At the age of two, he allegedly wrote a note that he had fun on the beach.   I don't know of any brilliant two year olds who can write.  I learned to write at age six in first grade like most children. A two year old could theoretically learn to write, but there are prerequisites for writing.  I read online that children need to learn to draw to develop manual dexterity before they learn to write.  This makes sense to me.  Obviously, they also need to learn the alphabet.

At the age of nine Danny was found in a ditch frozen to death on Christmas Eve.  As I write this paragraph, it's still Christmas Eve 2023 and therefore the anniversary of that poor child's death. I wanted to cry when I read that.  He was supposedly a brilliant prodigy at two, but it looks like Eli couldn't be bothered with Danny seven years later.  I wish that Danny had been removed from Eli's custody before that happened.

I found Eli Stutzman's mug shot at a website called Daily Crime for those readers who are interested.  He looked like the sort of person who didn't care about anyone or anything.  He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1985, but was released in 2005. Stutzman committed suicide in 2007.  Good riddance!

 I can't say that I enjoyed this book,  but it was eye opening that this happened in the Amish community.  I suppose that the Amish are like everyone else.  They run the gamut of personalities.  Some Amish people try to behave decently toward their fellow human beings, and there may be a few who perform notable acts of benevolence, and then there are the people whose lives are horrors like Eli Stutzman.   I could never write one book about Stutzman, let alone two.  I wouldn't want to live with Stutzman's terrible actions for the length of time it would take to research and write about him.  This book was about terrible events.  It was well-researched and convincing, but I would be very happy not to encounter such a monster in the pages of a book in the foreseeable future.   True crime isn't a genre that appeals to me.  I hope my next read deals with people who don't make me feel sick.

                                 

 

 

The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr: A Petticoat Diplomat

 I considered whether this book could be considered my first strong female protagonist of 2023, so I could review it on my other blog that is devoted to strong female protagonists, Flying High Reviews.  I haven't reviewed any books there this year.  I decided that Mary Emmons didn't qualify even though the back cover blurb says she is a strong protagonist.  I think it's because she is a real historical individual. The complexity of a real person means that she won't have the stature that I want in a strong fictional protagonist.  That's the way I feel anyway.  We'll see if I can read any fiction with a strong female protagonist in December.  I hope so.

This is the second novel of Susan Holloway Scott, who is a bestselling author.  I read very few books by bestselling authors.  The last one I read was  Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: An Anthology Edited by Jeffrey Deaver in November 2020.  It will probably be some time before I read another book by a bestselling author.  

Petticoat Diplomat, the subtitle of this review, is a quote from Mrs. Prevost, who is a major character in the book.

                          

There is a mention of Elizabeth Freeman who was the first African American slave to sue for and win her freedom in the state of Massachusetts during 1781.  In this book, a fictional version of Alexander Hamilton said this would never become a precedent in law because the Southern states wouldn't agree.  Yet it did become an important precedent in the state of Massachusetts.  In fact, it was one of the precedents that brought about the abolition of slavery in that state.  

Yet  The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr  largely took place in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York.  The Articles of Confederation governed the U.S. for almost that entire period.  The Constitution wasn't ratified until close to the end of this book. 

I liked this book enough to give it a B+ which means it will have four stars on Goodreads.  I have only one A rated novel so far in 2023 .  Since the year is almost over, I don't really expect that I will read another novel that I will consider that exceptional. We'll see. There is a slim hope that it will happen in December.