The Year 2023 in Books

Continuing with our year in review, Matt Lynn Digital invites you to look back at the last year in reviews of books, movies, music and television. We look at these with individual categories, one per day through Sunday. Today we share the twenty-six (26) book reviews offered by Matt Lynn Digital in 2023.

(The cover for the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin).

Our highest rated read for 2023 was The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Earning 4.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5, the book, Rubin “set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” The subject matter was offering suggestions for how best to engage the construction of creatively made content effectively.

(The cover for the book Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon).

Five books earned 4.5-stars from Matt Lynn Digital in 2023, with Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon earning the top billing. The proper means for reading Heavy: An American Memoir is with an open mind and an open heart while aiming for empathy and understanding. Other books earning 4.5-stars include 60 Seconds & You’re Hired! by Robin Ryan, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael D. Watkins.

(The cover for the book Sea of Tranquility: A Novel by Emily St. John Mandel).

Led by the Emily St. John Mandel book Sea of Tranquility: A Novel, three books read in 2023 earned 4.25-star ratings. The notion of experiencing a life moving through time and space on an emotional journey of self-discovery drew us to the St. John Mandel work. Other books also earning 4.25-stars were the extraordinary Dan Chaon book Sleepwalk and the Ernest Hemingway book To Have and Have Not.

(The cover for the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers).

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as written by Carson McCullers tops a stable of six books to earn 4.0-stars. The central point of the book using a mute as the protagonist while sharing the semi-autobiographical character Mick Kelly as an exposition for the writer were appealing concepts for the work. Others to earn a similar 4.0-star rating included Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

(The cover for the book The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel).

The Dava Sobel book The Glass Universe How the Ladies of Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars leads a stable of eleven (11) books to earn 3.75-stars for books that we read in 2023. Learning the histories of women including Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin made this reading worth the effort in recognizing women contributing to science and the social fabric of a society simultaneously. The remaining ten books we read this year included Stone Cold by David Baldacci, Red War by Kyle Mills in the Vince Flynn series, The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien with Guy Gruviel Kay and Christopher Tolkien, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving, Lethal Agent by Kyle Mills through Vince Flynn,  Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work by Marilee Adams and Divine Justice by David Baldacci.

Matt Lynn Digital appreciates your continued interest in the content we offer. Should you have albums that you’d like us to review, or similar work to that mentioned above, please be sure to let us know.

Matt – Saturday, December 30, 2023

Ernest Hemingway and the book ‘To Have and Have Not’

The year was 1937 when Ernest Hemingway gave us the story of a fishing boat captain named Harry Morgan. Having To Have and Have Not pit the ‘have nots’ of Key West, Florida against the wealthy ‘haves’ in Havana, Cuba gives rise to an escalating tale against making an honest living with ever increasing criminality, risk and depravity.

(Alternative covers for the 1937 Ernest Hemingway book To Have and Have Not).

Based in part on the Hemingway written short stories One Trip Across and The Tradesman’s Return, To Have and Have Not is densely packed with commentary of Cuban politics, experimentation of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt United States presidency through the Great Depression, and a sympathy for Marxism from Hemingway that the writer likely picked up while taking sides in the Spanish Civil War.

(Ernest Hemingway wrote To Have and Have Not, which was released in 1937).

That commentary, launched in To Have and Have Not after a three-week fishing trip left Harry Morgan destitute in Havana, Morgan took to criminality of an appalling kind to keep his family afloat, metaphorically. The costs this had between Morgan and his wife, Morgan and those who supported his enterprise, and the direct victims his crimes had gave the multiple points of view this story was shared through depth. The underlying racist language and actions towards many ethnic groups, shown through the raw language, behavior against, and behavior by those groups surprisingly mingles into a distinctly Hemingway brand of maleness coupled with conflicting views of female and male relationships. Views of those using contraband or others fighting at the smallest triggers for sport extends this concept further.

(Alternative covers for the 1937 Ernest Hemingway book To Have and Have Not).

From the point of the book’s release, I can sympathize with there being a sense of unevenness in the storytelling for To Have and Have Not. The commentary was brutal in the distrust of class on a wealth and political perspective, in addition to the deal that was being offered to those categorically being harmed by a system that didn’t seem to care. That the work gave the public a popular, action-driven perspective additionally gave the work an appeal that belied the commentary. For doing these things at seeming cross purposes, I give To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway 4.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Kate Chopin and the book ‘The Awakening’

Historical fiction from the end of the nineteenth century brings us to a book by Kate Chopin of St. Louis, Missouri and later New Orleans, Louisiana. First published in 1899, The Awakening offers a bold look for the time of what fidelity, adultery and the demands of society say about duties to self, children and marriage from the female perspective. There was controversy about The Awakening as a book, with the quote from a contemporary of Chopin‘s saying this: “Willa Cather, who would become a well known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid.” This review includes some spoilers; skip to the last paragraph to receive my rating of the book.

(Alternative covers of the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).

The Awakening is set in New Orleans and along the Louisiana coast with the Gulf of Mexico. Set in the same era of the book’s publishing, the book predates the realism of novelists including Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner while echoing such contemporary writers as Edith Wharton and Henry James.

(Kate Chopin is an American author, whose The Awakening was published in 1899).

The novel itself first sets the stage by introducing businessman Léonce Pontellier, his wife Edna, and their two kids Etienne and Raoul vacationing with the management and support of Madame Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and Victor. Edna spends much of the vacation with her friend Adèle Ratignolle, who helps to establish a central conflict for the story by pointing Edna to her responsibilities as a wife and mother.

(Additional covers to the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).

Robert Lebrun, the son of the woman helping watch the Pontellier children, seeks and earns the affection of Mrs. Edna Pontellier. Robert sense problems with a romantic relationship developing from his affection, so contrives a business venture in Mexico to avoid the impropriety of a relationship with Edna. The feelings this brings for Edna become a focus for the novel.

(The message of works like 1899’s The Awakening made American writer Kate Chopin controversial in some circles).

With Edna reassessing her place in the world following the vacation, publicly observed changes in the traditional roles of a mother of a businessman husband in society lead to an insidious yet societal norm of the period of Léonce Pontellier approaching his physician with questions about his wife’s mental health. Things develop from this place to include a business trip to New York City, New York for Léonce, explicit further behavior for the marriage partners in isolation, and what society truly owes women in the United States and the American South of this period. The story culmination to these questions addresses themselves either through Robert Lebrun or Léonce Pontellier for Edna; my point in not sharing specifically reflects my suggestion that you read the book.

(Even more covers to the 1899 Kate Chopin novel The Awakening).

The Awakening offers mature themes on the subject of marriage. The book prompts readers to confront their feelings about the subject matter, specifically about where to set relationship boundaries. Doing this in the safety of a book where dialogue can exist feels like a strength for the book. This leads me to give The Awakening by Kate Chopin 4.5-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

Matt – Wednesday, June 8, 2022

The Year 2020 in Books

Matt Lynn Digital had respectable year reading in 2020. Today we walk down memory lane for the 40 book reviews made in 2020. We’ll refresh your memory of the books we felt were the biggest successes first. Look for repeat efforts in this listing from Vince Flynn, Stephen King and Ernest Hemingway.  Charles Dickens and Erik Larson, while having a single book in the 40 this year, have been reviewed here in the past.

(The books Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan earned the top rating of 4.5-stars by Matt Lynn Digital for books reviewed in 2020).

We offered two books rated at 4.5-stars on a scale of one-to-five in 2020. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan combined to write Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. The book shares specific skills to improve listening, facilitation, and safe feelings when having productive, meaningful conversations. Charles Dickens offered a satiric “Dark” novel in the form of Hard Times. Hard Times comments on the harsh realities for families with business and governmental policies designed to fight against them.

(The Dale Carnegie book How to Win Friends and Influence People leads a group of seven nonfiction books that earned a rating of 4.25-stars by Matt Lynn Digital in 2020).

We rated seven nonfiction works at 4.25-stars in 2020, with the book Mafia Cop Killers in Akron: The Gang War Before Prohibition by Mark J. Price leading the listing. Fans of true crime would appreciate the journalistic tendencies of the writer for this piece. The Pulitzer Prize winning book  Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond takes a serious look into extreme poverty, affordable housing and economic exploitation. Richard Rothstein takes a different look at a similar subject with the book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie rates well as a book offering training on public speaking and leadership development. The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein turns the notion of specialization in life or the workplace on its head in an interesting way. Carmine Gallo offers practical advice through a series of relatable stories in the book The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t. Erik Larson looks into the early 20th century with his narrative nonfiction book Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.

(Stephen Markley and Josh Ritter offer a pair of fictional books that earned high marks of 4.25-stars from Matt Lynn Digital of 2020).

Josh Ritter offers one of the two fictional works earning 4.25-stars from Matt Lynn Digital with the book Bright’s Passage. The storytelling approach uniquely and ambitiously increases emotional tension across timelines with a revelation that really works. A similar, growing tension makes the book Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley in offering a stunning yet mysterious sense of vengeance and confused understanding.

(Ron Chernow offers a biography of Ulysses S. Grant that earns 4.0-stars by Matt Lynn Digital).

The book Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northeast Ohio by Jane Ann Turzillo, as another work of true crime, offers the first of nine nonfiction books earning 4.0-stars on a scale of one-to-five in 2020. The Robert A. Musson book Akron Beer: A History of Brewing in the Rubber City sticks in the same region while looking into a niche market impacted by Prohibition and other economic factors through time. Phil Rosenthal looks into the life of a sitcom writer in the book You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom. The book A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway autobiographically looks at the life of the writer, autobiographically as did Rosenthal. Ron Chernow offers a revealing biography of eighteenth US president Ulysses S. Grant with Grant. Jonathan Kozol returns to a theme of opportunity inequality running through our books this year with the book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. Tara Westover‘s book Educated: A Memoir is unique in offering a firsthand account of educational difficulty prompted by extreme familial difficulty. Rachel Carson started an environmental movement with her book Silent Spring. Michael Michalko approaches fundamental creativity as a learned approach with the book Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques.

(Stephen King‘s The Stand earned 4.0-stars by Matt Lynn Digital in 2020).

The Ernest Hemingway collection of short stories called In Our Time begins a group of fictional books earning a rating of 4.0-stars by Matt Lynn Digital. Romantic chaos is the fare of the Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion. The character Mitch Rapp makes his first appearance in our listing with Vince Flynn‘s book Extreme Measures. The Stand by Stephen King proved to be a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy book to be reckoned with this year.

(The Margarat Creighton narrative nonfiction book The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair earned 3.75-stars from Matt Lynn Digital).

The book Alexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death by Anthony Everitt is a review of the life of the military and political leader Alexander the Great, who lived almost 2,400 years ago. The first of six books earning 3.75-stars for nonfiction. Getting more contemporary, the World’s Fair of 1901 was the fare of Margaret Creighton‘s narrative nonfiction book The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair. The exercise of political power gets earnest reviews with the David Maraniss book A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father, the Tom Brokaw book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate, and the Peter Bergen book Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos. The Robin DiAngelo book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism admittedly is uncomfortable subject matter for many that serves a legitimate purpose that all are not ready to confront.

(Consent to Kill, Act of Treason and Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn earned 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital in 2020).

The fictional work The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, in earning 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital, plays in a similar playground to The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford.  2009 Pulitzer Prize winning book Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout brings together short stories like Hemingway‘s In Our Time.  The Dead Zone by Stephen King brings the notion of multiple head traumas to an extrasensory tale mixed with political intrigue. Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn began a sequence of three books featuring Mitch Rapp to earn 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital. The others were Act of Treason and Protect and Defend.

(John M. Barry and Richard Preston wrote on similar subjects and earned a similar rating of 3.5-stars by Matt Lynn Digital).

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History as written by John M. Barry and Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come as written by Richard Preston are nonfiction accounts of the response to deadly disease that, if read by people in leadership, could offer learning for how to effectively respond to pandemic. Both earned a 3.5-rating from Matt Lynn Digital.

(The fictional book The Consultant by Bentley Little earned 3-stars from Matt Lynn Digital).

The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan’s Guide to All-Time Player Rankings by Sean Lahman offered an interesting book for my analytical style. The work is speculative nonfiction. Bentley Little wrote The Consultant, a work of fiction that came recommended by Stephen King. Both offered an interesting premise with a something that we had hoped would resonate with us a bit more than they did. That they earned 3-stars on a scale of one-to-five rings true for us today.

Share the Matt Lynn Digital blog with your friends if you see value in what we are doing. Before the end of this year, a similar review for entries on movies will also be coming. We feel these reviews provide excellent content that we would like to continue offering.

Matt – Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Stephen Markley and the book ‘Ohio: A Novel’

Does a reasonably new coming-of-age book that looks into some recent politics of the United States set in the midwestern United States sound interesting? Does the random convergence of a group of high school students a few years after some gut wrenching trauma capture your fancy? Do snippets revealed in a slow burn of haunting yet brutal cruelty begotten from other brutal cruelty sound cathartic? These all become salient in the shocking yet psychologically book Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley.

(Stephen Markley wrote the book Ohio: A Novel).

The stories of alcoholic, drug-abusing activist Bill Ashcraft, belatedly aware gay doctoral candidate Stacey Moore, shy yet haunted Iraqi war veteran Dan Eaton, and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose scorned and brutally traumatized story justly must come last, are set against the mythology of a fictional Ohio town that may never have had a true sense of community. A surrogate sense of binding based in superficial religious belief used as avoidance strategy mingle in a set of trauma and searching for love, meaning, and lacking true adult guidance converge in the years high school of the recent past and, on a fateful day in 2013, a macabre set of separated yet overlapping revelation, fresh understanding, and surprisingly contextualized humanity.

(An image of someone reading the book Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley).

The horrific quality of the trauma that is presented, with sparse commentary within the work itself to suggest meaning, offers what I take to be an attempt to judge the truth of an ugly time in the lives of a real, salt of the earth place in the current time. The notion of revealing just enough truth evokes the writing temperament Ernest Hemingway, if not the execution. To compare the two after this beginning for Stephen Markley isn’t fair to either writer, yet here I am suggesting it. Overall, I walk away from Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley offering a rating of 4.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Ernest Hemingway and the book ‘A Moveable Feast’

Fashioned as an autobiographical account of living in Paris, France as a young, poor writer in the 1920s and during the European cultural transformation following World War One, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is our most recent read.

(Ernest Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast beginning in the fall of 1957. Published after Hemingway‘s death, the book first appeared in 1964).

A Moveable Feast is the story of Hemingway‘s apprenticeship as a young writer, husband, and father in Paris. Hadley Richardson was the young author’s wife during this period, with the marriage partners having formally parted company by 1927. The book itself is a memoir including personal accounts, observations, and stories of what life was like in the literary circles of Paris and nearby regions in Europe during the period his family lived there. The inclusion of specific addresses of places visited was unique, at theoretically can be used as a means of visiting places that survive 100-years later.

(From left, Ernest Hemingway and wife Hadley Richardson. Though the couple divorced, they were married during the period discussed in A Moveable Feast).

Many contemporaries and predecessors of Ernest Hemingway were expatriates with the writer during the era discussed in A Moveable Feast. Gertrude Stein hosted Hemingway at her salon for a period, including the young writer in what has become known as The Lost Generation. Impressions of Stein and others are discussed, sometimes at length, through the memoir.

(Avant-garde American writer and self-styled genius Gertrude Stein used her Paris home as a salon for leading artists and writers between World War One and World War Two. Ernest Hemingway speaks of visiting Stein in A Moveable Feast).

While Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Ford Madox Ford, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and others are mentioned, F. Scott Fitzgerald of renown for having written The Great Gatsby was offered a special place of resonance in A Moveable Feast from my ear in part for being represented as a bit of a hypochondriac and eccentric caught in a difficult transition with his writing and his wife at the time Hemingway gets to know something of Fitzgerald‘s character. The details of this are worth the reading, for fans of Fitzgerald and Hemingway alike.

(F. Scott Fitzgerald was a contemporary featured prominently in Ernest Hemingway‘s A Moveable Feast).

Overall, each chapter reads as a standalone experience that can be read of their own accord in mostly any sequence. Most readers will not lose understanding of the shorter narratives nor of the larger narrative of thematically related yet individually unrelated memoirs of experience from the period. I am glad to have stumbled upon this book accidentally while spending the time engaging in this read. I rate the book A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway at 4-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, May 23, 2020

Ernest Hemingway and the book ‘In Our Time’

The first introduction of Ernest Hemingway to the United States readers was with the collection of short stories called In Our Time. The collection of fifteen loosely tied short stories start with a short vignette, or scene for capturing a “single moment or a defining detail about a character, idea, or other element of the story” (Literary Terms).

(Ernest Hemingway wrote the book In Our Time, which when released made him famous in America).

Nick Adams serves as the fictional yet autobiographical object of many of the short stories contained within. Hemingway employed The Iceberg Theory of storytelling by omission in this, his introductory style of writing that simultaneously leaves much of the story under the water line, hidden from view. The notion gains particular expression in the short story format of this book, which leaves things out an leaves the essence of an experience behind. Through the stories in In Our Time, Hemingway aimed at stripping away detail while offering an emotionally powerful story that spoke to the feelings he meant to convey.

(The first short story included with In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway‘s Indian Camp).

Indian Camp opens the path where Nick joins his father in an Indian camp where a woman is giving birth. The symbolism of life beginning is placed against an existential teaching about the ending of life as well. The feeling Nick takes in being with his father upon visiting then leaving this place with his father is one safety and a life that, at least in this memory, will never end. Stories that follow are The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, The End of Something, and On the Quai at Smyrna.

(The fifth short story included with In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway‘s The Three-Day Blow).

The Three-Day Blow moves the tale forward to a day where Nick has grown from being a young lad into an age where he wishes to drink. Nick Adams visits Bill Wemedge, and the two drink Irish whiskey with water. The two talked about baseball, fishing, and then Nick being the reason that a prospective wedding had ended. The essence of the story comes in the conclusion, when Nick comes to the realization that, despite the missed marriage, he can still party on a Saturday night. The Battler and A Very Short Story follow The Three-Day Blow in In Our Time.

(The eighth short story included with In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway‘s Soldier’s Home).

Soldier’s Home is the story of an Oklahoma lad from a Kansas church coming back from World War One as a marine. Harold Krebs returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919. By the time Krebs had come home, he found it hard adjusting to life back home as the masculine appetite returning veterans had for a heroes welcome and the various degrees of telling war stories could bring little consolation. The girls back home were of no consolation for Harold Krebs, and finding work was beyond him. Harold avoided his father, could feel nothing but anger or indifference for his family. The essence of Soldier’s Home was that the war had taught Harold Krebs to make do with being angry, indifferent, and consoled by distancing himself from responsibility and love.

(The fourteenth short story included with In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway‘s My Old Man).

The Revolutionist, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, Cat in the Rain, Out of Season, and Cross-Country Snow each preceded the story of My Old Man. My Old Man itself recalls uses Joe Butler’s voice to first-person narrate direct recollection and conversation to show what he felt and remembered of his father, a jockey. The narrator shows admiration for the physicality his father and the sport of horse riding. The relationships among the athletes with ethnic slurs crept in along with some difficulty, along with Joe leaving Italy for France. The pageantry and romance of the horses in France fascinated Joe, yet that gives way when Joe Butler’s father died in a steeplechase accident. The essence of the story, and of his father in My Old Man, is that folks considered him a crook.

(The fifteenth short story included with In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway‘s Big Two-Hearted River, which is told in two parts).

Big Two-Hearted River closes the book In Our Time as the telling of a fishing expedition. The essence of the story, returning with the autobiographical Nick Adams at its core, explores the destructive qualities of war placed in comparison to the healing,  regenerative powers of nature.

(Ernest Hemingway wrote the book In Our Time, which when released made him famous in America).

The stories of In Our Time show the movement of Ernest Hemingway from his influences into the clear voice on display with the novels that many have read. The themes, style and subject matter for what was to come in Hemingway‘s novels show clearly in this  installment. My rating for In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway is 4-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, April 8, 2020