I read 50 books this year, and these are my 5 favorites.
Part philosophical and part instructive, this is a book that is full of wisdom.
This is a modern retelling of Dickens’ classic, “David Copperfield,” set in the Appalachian Mountains, a part of the country that I came to love while my daughter was getting her Master’s Degree in northeastern Tennessee. Kingsolver won me over as a reader when she wrote “The Poisonwood Bible,” but if that book hadn’t done it, this one would have. It won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2023, too.
Memoir combined with classic literature and how the forces around us change our lives but the literature we consume shapes our character.
What a crazy life this man has led; yet, he’s most certainly a modern-day philosopher because of it. This book is unique, to say the least.
The following quote is from the column I wrote about this novel:
This book has a bit of everything in it – from small town scandal to large philosophical questions. Religion plays an important part, and the title comes from an explanation by the town doctor that is a blend of science and religion. He says, “‘Nature never sleeps. The process of life never stands still. The creation has not come to an end. The Bible says that God created man on the sixth day and rested, but each of those days was many millions of years long. That day of rest must have been a short one. Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.’”
As I look back over 2023, there are also 5 main things that stand out.
My daughter completed her Master’s and became a full-fledged paleontologist. While that’s not my accomplishment, I did have a lot to do with helping her attain it. The thing that occurred in 2023, though, is that I had to help her find and acquire an apartment in Rapid City after she was hired by the School of Mines to manage their paleontology lab and building. After doing that, I had to go to Tennessee and help her finish packing and then load everything into the trailer and move her halfway across the country to her new place. Others helped, thank goodness. There’s no way she and I could have done it alone, but I was the one she turned to for help and advice, and I was the one who helped her set up her new apartment and get familiar with her new town before leaving her there. Her graduating and stepping into this career was the culmination of a journey that began after one fateful day in the summer of her seventh-grade year when I took her to Ashfall Fossil Beds — while there, I struck up a conversation with an intern who was working on excavating fossils, and that seemingly random conversation that my daughter was listening to was the match that started the fire in her to become what she is today.
Sam in her lab.
I finally got back to Mexico to see Silvia and to take part in the Day of the Dead festivities — something I never got to do in all the 30 years that I taught Spanish, unfortunately. Silvia and I hadn’t seen each other in person since her kidneys failed her 3 years ago, and she left Nebraska to go back to Mexico and get into the social system there, so she could receive the medical care she needs to stay alive. In the interim, she’s switched from hemodialysis to peritoneal dialysis, with a failed kidney transplant between them. I wrote a blog post about part of my time there, so if you haven’t read it, you can click here to do that: Mexico blog post
Silvia and me on my last night in Merida, Mexico, in November.
I had 25 appearances at libraries and other literary events to promote my books and my writing journey. For one of them, at the Columbus library’s author fair, I was the keynote speaker.
I wrote many feature articles for the Norfolk Daily News and three stories for the quarterly magazine called “Living Here.” Two of the stories are running in the most recent edition and in the Spring 2024 edition.
Here’s a feature story about a former student of mine and her horse. I may have shared this with you before, but I like the story.
Last but certainly not least — because it’s probably the most important to me as a writer — I finished a story I’d started writing in 2018 and turned it into my 6th novel, “Her Ride or Die.”
As I look ahead to 2024, I can pinpoint 5 things that I most want to accomplish:
Finish and publish a 7th novel.
Attend one or both of two major writing conferences that I want to go to: Thriller Fest in NYC and/or Killer Nashville.
Expand my readership and sell many copies of my books. I do sell copies, but the numbers must increase if I hope to never return to the classroom to pay off my debt. Ugh. Just thinking about that possibility makes me want to cry.
Visit David, one of my former exchange students, in Germany. This will fully depend on my financial position come summertime.
Read more of my extremely lengthy TBR list, focusing on those classics and older books that I haven’t yet read.
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Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
The following two bits both have Christmas as a theme.
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