Line 'Em Up, Knock 'Em Down

This is concert week: our Symphony closes out its season this Saturday evening. Concert weeks are packed no matter when the time; this one is extra full because of the programming, the guest artist (astronomer/visual artist), the activities planned around the guest artist, an after-concert reception, and on and on. My weekend will be extra special because my longtime close friend Katrina is flying in from Miami to spend time with me and close out the season. In fact, I just finished putting the guest bedroom (well, both of them, actually, because we have another friend/colleague staying overnight on Saturday) and feel that I can now let out a sigh and say "come on in."

And yes, I am still recovering from the viral infection that knocked me for a loop. I am almost back to work at my full schedule (24 hours a week) but I still have to measure out carefully my energy and my daily activities. I rest a lot. It has been a humbling experience, to say the least.

However, one benefit of all that downtime in my reading continues unabated. Here are the latest additions to the done list:
78. Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad by Krystal A. Sital (a memoir of three generations of women and not only the secrets they kept, but the secrets that were revealed when the patriarch, the author's grandfather, became debilitated and the stories started to flow)
79. Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, The Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich (the author of Nickel and Dimed, among other works, turns her keen eye and caustic pen on the inevitability of death, no matter what we do, in large part because of the cells that make up our bodies; Ehrenreich has a PhD in cellular biology, incidentally)
80. Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous With American History by Yunte Huang (a breezy and insightful history of Chang and Eng, truly the original Siamese twins, and their unlikely history in this country)
81. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (this novel follows a Nigerian woman from birth to, well, I'm not sure, told by the multiple identities within her)
82. I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death by Maggie O'Farrell (these are the author's seventeen brushes with death, from being almost hit by a car as a young child to an encounter with a murderer; Plath fans will recognize the source of the title)
83. The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer (a novel about feminism in the 21st century, where does one's loyalties lie, when does one break from an icon who puts pragmatism before ideals, and how do we define love—Wolitzer pulls it off)
84. Political Tribes: Group Instincts and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua (my youngest brother, whose politics differ from mine, called me up after hearing Chua interviewed and asked me if I'd be interested in reading this and discussing it; for those of us on all sides of the political spectrum who shudder at the polarization of this nation, Chua offers both a warning of what could happen if we don't close the gap and some commonsense suggestions on how to begin that long, hard process)
85. The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone (I'd never heard of David Fairchild before reading this book, but his life work indeed fulfills the title of the book)
86. The House of Erzulie by Kirsten Imani Kasai (vodou, bloodlines, African-American Gothic: a novel set in our time but reaches back to Louisiana in the 1850s through letters and diaries)

I just started #87 tonight.