Patchett’s collection of 22 essays covers a variety of subjects. We meet her family-mother, father, sister, step-fathers, step-mother and husband. She describes experiences with several of her closest friends, some she has known since childhood, one is a very recent friend. Ann Patchett tells her readers what it’s like to own a bookstore, write a novel and go on a book tour. What all these essays have in common is the subject of death. In some death hits you in the face; in others it is a subtle suggestion. But obvious or obtuse, the grim reaper is in all 22 essays and in the introduction and the epilogue.

If you are squeamish about death and dying, I suggest you don’t read These Precious Days. However, if you enjoy Ann Patchett’s nonfiction, especially when she cynically honest, read her most recent work.

Nonso, Remi, Aisha and Solape are best friends at a boarding school in Nigeria. When a new, abusive principal heads the school, three of the four girls join a somewhat violent protest with disastrous results. Told through a series of short stories, narrated for the most part by three of the four friends, Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions, describes the lives of these girls in the past, present and future.

It took me a while to get the hang of this novel, especially to be able to differentiate each of the girls. Also, there are a lot of foreign words and phrases thrown in which might be annoying to some readers.

It is the 1970’s in a small town in Northern Ireland near Belfast. The main character, Cushla Lavery is a teacher in the town’s Catholic school. She also helps out at her family’s pub and has just begun an affair with Michael Agnew, a married man who is a barrister. Cushla lives with her alcoholic mother. She helps the McGeown family who has seen more than their share of misery since “The Troubles” began.

Louise Kennedy’s first novel is great. The characters, especially Cushla and Michael, are realistic and complex. I fell in love with Davey McGeown, the youngest of the unlucky Mcgeowns, who is a student in Cushla’s class. Trespasses rendering of what it’s like to live in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles” is true to life and unnerving.

Jun and Hong are the daughters of a wealthy, illustrious Chinese family. Both are smart, hard working girls who have an almost idyllic childhood. At the start of the Chinese Civil War, Jun is visiting her friend on an island that is under Nationalist control, and Hong is on the mainland. Although both women become successful, Jun is an entrepreneur, Hong is a doctor,their lifestyles, loyalties and philosophies are very different. However, they both feel that their lives are incomplete because they have been separated from each other for decades.

The author of Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden is Jun and Hong’s great niece. Li does a fine job of presenting what life was like on mainland China before, during and after the Cultural Revolution. She also describes the interesting lives of two bright, hard working, practical women.

Gil was orphaned at a young age, grew up living with a strict, reserved grandmother, and inherited a small fortune when he became an adult. After a long term, live in girlfriend breaks up with him for the second time, Gil decides to move from New York City to Phoenix and walk the whole way. When he moves into a house that he bought online, he becomes very friendly with the family of four who live in a glass house next door.

I loved Dinosaurs and I especially loved Gil. He is a very decent man who always tries to do the right thing. Something I don’t see much in literature these days. In fact, one of the highlights of Dinosaurs is that almost all of the characters are decent, yet complex, human beings. Millet’s novel even gave me a new appreciation of the desert and the birds that live there.

The narrator, Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead, is a young boy living with his drug addict mother in Appalachia. Young Demon’s life is plagued with poverty, addiction, abuse and death, yet somehow he maintains a sense of humor and a realistic look at the world around him. Demon is bright, perceptive and talented, but sometimes that is not enough for him to overcome all that the world has thrown at him.

Barbara Kingsolver readily admits that Demon Copperhead was inspired by David Copperfield. Having never read Dickens’ novel, I can’t make a valid comparison. Kingsolver’s tome is clever, and Demon is a likable, sympathetic character. However, for me, there were descriptions of his bad luck life that became tedious.

Although The Mosquito Bowl is the title of Bissinger’s work of nonfiction, the game itself is merely a blip in the book. Rather, it is a vehicle to bring together the story of five young men who participated in the bowl game and how their lives played out in Okinawa in 1945. Bissinger tells the biographies of Marines George Murphy, Tony Butkovich, Robert Bauman, David Schneider and John McLaughry. All five could have remained stateside and played football, but instead they chose to join the Marines and fight for their country. In depicting their lives on Okinawa, Bissinger vividly describes the horrors of war.

While the title of this book is totally misleading, Bissinger does a good job of describing five good men and their gruesome life in World War II.

*I’ve just read two works of nonfiction that describe the atrocities and senselessness of war. No more “war books” for me for a while.

Ng’s third novel takes place somewhere in the near future. Our country is run by a group called PACT which, among other things, stresses allegiance to the United States while at the same time promoting anti-Asian feelings. Twelve year old Bird lives with his father in a Harvard dorm. His father used to be an etymologist, but due to the way the country is heading, he now shelves books at the school library. Bird’s mother left the family three years ago because her parents were from China, and she felt Bird and her husband were safer if she disappeared. Recently, Bird has discovered scraps of paper that he thinks if he is able to decipher their meaning, will help him find his mother.

At first glance, all of Celeste Ng’s novels seem very different, but all three have the theme of prejudice running throughout them. Like Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, Our Missing Hearts is very well written with characters readers will empathize with.

Simon Mawer has traced his roots back five generations. Emphasizing his family that was formed around the 1850’s, Ancestry describes relatives such as, Abraham Black who leaves home to become an apprentice seaman at the age of fifteen and Annie Mawer, nee Scanlon, an illiterate Irish girl who finds ways to keep her family fed and housed after her husband is sent off to fight in the Crimean War.

Perhaps because these and other characters in Ancestry are real yet ordinary people, I was captivate by this work of nonfiction. Mawer is a fine writer who not only keenly depicts the hardships his ancestors endured, but also what life was like for so many during those times.

Warning: Mawer’s descriptions of the Crimean war are difficult to read. The most horrific rendering of war that I’ve read in a long time.

In 1926 Nellie Coker, mother of six who owns several night clubs in London, has just been let out of prison. Meanwhile, Inspector John Frobisher is looking for a reason to send Nellie back to prison while also hunting down missing girls, discovering several drowned young women and taking care of his French wife who is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He distrusts most of the policemen he works with, so he employs Gwendolen Kelling, and ex librarian from York, to dig up dirt on the Coker family. The results are a sometimes fun, sometimes dark romp through post war London.

I usually enjoy Kate Atkinson. She has a knack of being lighthearted yet serious at the same time-not easy to do. There’s a lot going on in Shrines of Gaiety, and it may be confusing at first, but if you’re an Atkinson fan, stick with it.