As promised in my April 1, 2024 blog post, Three of the Six Books I Read in March 2024, today I’m blogging about the other books I read last month. I received some comments of interest two weeks ago, and I hope you will also find some books you want to read today.

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The Caretaker, by Ron Rash

I have read most of Ron Rash’s novels. Some I liked more than others. This one is my favorite.

The Caretaker fell off my radar somehow after its 2023 release. It wasn’t until I read a review of it on the Fiction Fan Blog (https://fictionfanblog.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/the-caretaker-by-ron-rash/) in mid-March that I realized I’d failed to read it.

The Caretaker is shorter than his other novels at 252 pages. It takes place during the Korean War and is an examination of family and friendship in the small Blue Ridge Mountain town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Having attended college at Appalachian State University just eight miles up the mountain from Blowing Rock, I was familiar with the place names and surnames Rash used in the book. For example, references to the Brown Mountain Lights brought back a fond memory I have of the time I got to see that natural phenomenon for myself many years ago.

In The Caretaker, Rash weaves a gripping story of the things people are capable of doing in the name of love for family. Jacob is drafted and sent to Korea where he almost gets killed. His desire to get home to his wife and their unborn child gives him the fortitude to try to beat the odds and not die from the injuries he sustained.

Jacob leaves his good friend, Blackburn, the caretaker of the church and cemetery, to look out for his wife while he is deployed.

The story Rash weaves about what Jacob’s conniving parents do in the name of loving him while he is in Korea will make you gasp! You will keep turning the pages to see just how this bizarre turn of events will end.

I really enjoyed this book, and I hope you will check it out.

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The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann

This book was voted by readers on Goodreads.com as being the “Best History & Biography” in 2023. Many of you have probably read Killers of the Flower Moon, also by David Grann, or perhaps you saw the movie adaptation. David Grann is a master at writing creative nonfiction – nonfiction that reads much like fiction.

I listened to The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder on CD. The story kept me reaching for the next disc as soon as I finished listening to another one. The audio reading was done by Dion Graham. Mr. Graham did a spectacular job of reading this book for the recording. The written words and the verbal inflections of the voice made for a memorable listening.

The Wager was the name of a British ship. In 1740 it left England as part of a squadron on a secret mission to chase a Spanish ship laden with treasure around Cape Horn and hunt down Spanish interests in the Pacific.

Rounding the cape was thrillingly and shockingly illustrated by tales of the vengeance of the meeting of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the tip of South America; however, the stories the captain and crew had heard paled in comparison to the baptizing they received at the hands of the ocean’s fury. When The Wager wrecks ff the coast of Patagonia, the reader thinks all is lost, but that is just the beginning of the story.

As the subtitle indicates, there is also mutiny and murder as the survivors of the shipwreck become desperate. There are twists and turns to the story resembling a modern-day thriller. Each survivor had his own description of what had transpired in the end. And did I mention there was a court-martial.?

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have bought the movie rights to the book.

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Change Your Brain Every Day, by Daniel G. Amen, MD

After catching a few minutes of Dr. Daniel G. Amen’s program on PBS, I checked the public library for his book. I want to give my brain a chance at being healthy. I would like to say I’m giving it “every chance” to be healthy, but I do indulge in an occasional salty or sugary snack.

After reading Dr. Amen’s book, though, I do feel more inspired to work on this. The essence of the book is that we can make little changes or small practices in our daily lives that are good for our brains. Of course, most of us slip up even when we have good intentions.

I won’t steal Dr. Amen’s thunder by telling you his specific recommendations. The book is made up of 366 daily steps to better brain health you can take, theoretically, over a year’s time. Being a book I borrowed from the public library, I could not take a year to read it. I’m not sure I have the discipline to do that. I took notes on the things that struck a chord with me… and there were many!

Over the coming weeks and months, I will try to take some of Dr. Amen’s recommendations to heart and take better care of my brain. The book is an interesting read. Dr. Amen does not just throw out suggestions; he explains from a medical viewpoint exactly what he bases those recommendations on. In concise, understandable terms, he tells you how the different systems in the body work and how your brain health effects and is affected by those various connections.

In this era, when we are bombarded by written and verbal media telling us things we ought to know and things we really shouldn’t be concerned about, Dr. Amen tells us how to calm the noise as much as possible and be assertive and kind in how we treat ourselves, others, and specifically how we treat our brains.

If you desire to have a healthy brain, I recommend this book. If nothing else, it will make you more aware as you make decisions regarding what you eat, drink, listen to, and breathe. Every little bit of effort helps.

Reading the book prompted me to start playing my dulcimer every day after not touching it for maybe a year. I’m knitting again, too. It is surprising some of the things we can do that make new connections in the brain.

Until my next blog post

I hope you are reading a book that is so good you can hardly put it down.

It looks like I won’t have as many novels as usual to blog about in May. I have neglected some of the books I needed to read for research, so I changed my focus this month to support the fiction I am writing. April is already half over, and I don’t have a very long reading list to show for it. We’ll all find out together on May 6 how many books I read in April.

Speaking of reading… be sure to let me know what you’re reading so I can mention it (and you!) in my May e-newsletter. We all learn from each other.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine.

Janet