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All That She Carried by Tiya Miles. It was a rare non-fiction read for me; a person discovers a sack at a flea market that once carried the possessions of a young slave girl. Years later, the granddaughter of the young slave girl recorded the contents of the sack on the side, embroidering her name, the name and age of the slave girl, the name of the slave girl's mother and the date of the embroidery along with a list of what the sack contained. It was a fascinating, and saddening, glimpse into a disgraceful period of American history, but the author handles the subject with tact and grace. I liked how TM dedicated chapters to explanations of, and the potential symbolicism of each item: why a dress, why a handful of nuts (and why THOSE nuts), why a braided lock of the girl's mother's hair, etc. I'm giving the book an A-; it falls just short of being a spectacular book (IMO) because a) it's a tad too long (as always when I read non-fiction, I was thinking this would've made a magnificent 15 page article or 4 part series in a magazine or newspaper as opposed to a full on book) and b) there's just a bit too much speculation and fancifulness concerning the significance of the items in the sack. Still well worth the read.

Next up was a reread of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. When I was in my teens, I read some sci-fi (mostly Star Trek tie in novels) and more fantasy; I remember reading THGttG back then but didn't remember much about it. Honestly? After rereading the book, I decided it was too absurd (for the sake of humor) for my taste and maybe not worth its place on the various lists of "best" books or "must read" books. I did like the message--ahead of its time, perhaps--that if humans aren't careful, we're going to destroy the earth with both our inventions and our dismissive attitudes towards how finite our resources are. I didn't *dislike* the book so...I'll give it a B. I kind of want to see the movie now.

Probably my favorite read of the month was Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiaverini. It's a historical fiction based on the accounts of women who "did their part" in England during WWI, making munitions. The book follows a group of women from different backgrounds working as "munitionettes" in a fictitious factory. In their spare time, they form an all women's football (soccer to us Americans <g>) team and play female workers from other factories in the area, often while fighting off mysterious illnesses that are later linked to their exposure to TNT when filling mortars and shells. The exposure also causes the women's skin to yellow and their hair to change color, hence their nickname (and the title of the book) "Canary Girls". Throughout the book, JC touches on the subjects of women's health, women's right to vote (it was about this time in England that suffrage was ramping up, leading to demonstrations across the country) and women's rights and their "place" in society in general, and she does so without ever coming across as preachy or heavy-handed. I enjoyed the HECK out of this book (and I'm not usually a big fan of historical fiction)--solid A, maybe even an A+.

Sometimes I like to take a break from novels and read short stories, so next up was The Best American Short Stories 2023, edited by Min Jin Lee. Like any other book of short stories, there were some I loved (I thought "Tender"--the very first story in the collection--was particularly good) and some I...did not love (the second story--"Do You Belong To Anybody"--was mostly confusing) but fortunately, there were more good than bad. Many of the stories touched on current events; there was a story partly set in the Ukraine just after the Russian invasion. Overall, it was a decent collection of stories that I mostly enjoyed, and it was a nice change of pace from spending days with the same characters.

I ended the month with another book that referenced historical events: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. From 1854-1929, over 200,000 children in America were taken from east coast cities and put on trains to the Midwest. Theoretically, it was supposed to help children find new homes, and new parents (even though not all of the children were actually orphans) but a good number of the kids wound up being free labor on farms or in factories or mills. In this book, a young woman about to age out of foster care gets in trouble and agrees to do community service which comes in the form of helping an elderly woman clean out her attic. The elderly woman was one of the last riders on the orphan train and as they go through the boxes in the attic, the reader (and sometimes the young woman) gets pieces of the elderly woman's life story based on what they find in the boxes. It was an interesting premise and it stirred my interest in orphan trains but I thought the book was a little bland in spots and a little, I don't know, "obvious" in other spots? Like of course <certain event> happens, and at one point, there's a happy coincidence that was just a little too neat and convenient. I wound up predicting a lot of what happens towards the end of the book. Not a bad read but not worth giving it more than a B, maybe a B-, and not good enough to make me look up more books from the author.