Books of October

 I read quite a bit in October, but it was not a good reading month.  See below.

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picault. I am adding her name to list of authors I will never read again.  This was a strange book.  After surviving a plane crash, a woman travels to Egypt to re-connect with her first love.  Never mind that she has a husband and daughter and a supposedly happy marriage in Boston.  If you long to know everything there is to know about Egyptology, pointillism, the work of a death doula, then this is the book for you.  I believe the author's son is doing graduate work in Egyptology.  She might have been better off helping him write his thesis.  By the way, the ending of this book is really disappointing.

The Vanishing Half.  This book has been on the best seller list for a long time so I decided to read it.  It's the story of twin sisters who are light-skinned Blacks from a town where all the Blacks are light-skinned.  They run away from home and their lives diverge.  One marries an abusive Black man and one passes for White.  Various subplots intrude on the story and the ending is so weak, I thought my Kindle had left out some pages.

How to Be an Anti-Racist.  Interesting book about not only how to be anti-racist, but about differences among Black people in terms of caste, gender, color, etc.