February 2025 Reading

What a month. I did everything I could to avoid the news and spent much of the month watching TV. When I read, I found it hard to concentrate, so I gave up on all my reading goals for the year and decided to just stick with light fare (with one brilliant exception).

In all, I read 9 books, all fiction (although I am working my way slowly through a non-fiction book and a book of poetry, neither of which I finished this month). No surprise 6 of them were mysteries, my go-to comfort read.  But I did read a wonderful work of literary fiction that may end up being my favorite book of the year.

These are the books I finished in February:

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

This book was chosen by my in-person book group that was supposed to meet in February. Actually, we were supposed to meet in January and I was still on the library waiting list a few days before the meeting date. I didn't think this would be the kind of book I wanted to spend money on so I took myself off the wait list and was prepared to go the book group without reading it. Then a snow storm intervened and we rescheduled for February. So I put myself back on the wait list (there were now 400 people ahead of me) but figured my number still wouldn't come up by the end of February. The library has, however, this "jump the line" feature where they (randomly I guess) just ask people on the list if they want to borrow (seems unfair to me, but I'm not in charge). I was offered to "jump the line" so I took the opportunity. How glad I am that I didn't buy this book. It started out with a good premise - 72 year old widowed Grace Winters is living a small life still grieving the death of her only child in a bicycle accident years before and still feeing guilty that she wasn't the wife she thought she should have been after that. Then a former work colleague (Grace was a highschool math teacher) suddenly out of the blue leaves Grace a house in Ibiza in her will. So Grace goes to Ibiza and her life changes. All of that is fine, but her life changes through magic (alien magic). Maybe because I read 100 Years of Solitude last month I was not in the mood for magical realism, especially not heavy-handed magical realism. I lost interest as soon as the magic appeared (about 150 pages into the 500 page book - on e-reader) and had to force myself to finish (I really should have just DNF'd it and gone to the book group anyway). In the end my book group meeting was cancelled again so we still haven't discussed it. 

The Rivals by Jane Pek

A sequel to The Verifiers, which I read in 2022, this is the further adventures of Claudia Lin, a Chinese American English major who ended up working for Veracity, a company that people go to in order to verify that the people they meet on a match site are telling the truth about themselves. Basically an on-line dating detective agency. In the first novel, they also discovered an AI conspiracy and that is continued in this novel. Claudia Lin is a fan of mystery novels  (specifically mystery novels with a Chinese detective) and also spy thrillers and so she uses the techniques she reads about in them to investigate, much to the chagrin of her partners at Veracity. I enjoyed the first novel and I enjoyed this follow up, although I was sorry that there were not as many off-the-cuff literary references as in the first novel. I assumed that Pek was going to go on to write sequels that were a detective novel series but it looks like she is going for one long story about the AI conspiracy. This one ends on a bit of a cliff hanger leading me to wonder if it is only going to be a trilogy. In some way the real world of AI is catching up to the conspiracy in the novel. This novel was longer than I expected (over 500 pages on my e-reader) but the pacing is good (except for a segment in the middle) and it kept my interest along the way.  I recommend it. You don't HAVE to have read the first novel, but I think you would enjoy it more if you did.

Bad Day at the Vulture Club by Vaseem Khan

This is the fifth in the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency series set in modern day Mumbai. Inspector Chopra is a retired policeman, now acting as a private detective, who inherited (he doesn't know why) a baby elephant that he calls Ganesha. He takes the baby elephant around with him in his investigations (it is India so apparently not completely strange to see a man with an elephant). In this installment he is investigating a murder of a prominent Parsee man at the Towers of Silence. Coincidentally I was at the same time re-watching The Jewel in the Crown, the 1980s TV production of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, which is where I first encountered the concept of Towers of Silence. The Parsees did not believe in burying or cremating their dead. Instead they leave them exposed on special "towers" for vultures to destroy. I am also enjoying another mystery series set in Bombay in the 1920's with a woman detective who is Parsee. So this must be my year to read about Parsees. This is a light hearted series.  At first I was thinking that Ganesha, who has good instincts, didn't have enough to do in this story but eventually he acted heroically. I did not guess the solution to the mystery. If you are looking for escape, like to read mysteries that are set in foreign locations and like elephants, this series might be for you. You could probably read them out of order but they would be more enjoyable in order. 

Midnight at the Malabar House by Vaseem Khan

After I finished Bad Day at the Vulture Club, I learned that Vaseem Khan had another series and I thought, why not?  This series is set in 1940's India, after the end of WW2 and after Partition, where the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, and the withdrawal of Great Britain. The main character, Persis Wadia is the first woman police officer in Bombay (now Mumbai) and she has been relegated to Malabar House solely because she is a woman. Think Slow Horses, but set in India. On New Year's Eve she is the sole person at the desk when a call comes in about a murder. Persis is determined to solve it, but why did they call Malabar House? I liked this novel as an introduction to the series and will be reading more of this series. 

Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood 

In March last year I read the first book in this series, Fortune Favors the Dead. Because this was a month in which I needed a lot of light diversion I decided to continue the series. Set in the 1940s, the twist is that the two detectives are women:  Willowjean (Will) Parker and Lilian Pentecost. Will is a former member of a circus and has many diverse talents.  Lilian is known as the best PI in New York City. She suffers from Multiple Sclerosis so her energy levels go up and down. In this installment there is a murder at the circus - the tattooed lady, who was a friend of Will's. Will and Lilian travel down to Virginia, where the Circus is currently playing, to solve the crime. I liked this book although I think it was a little overlong due to a lot of exposition that could have been eliminated. 

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Nominated for a Booker Prize last year, it took forever for this novel to be published in the United States. But it was worth the wait. Set on a convent property in a rural part of Australia this is a beautifully written novel. It is not at all plot driven, but is a meditation on death, grief, guilt, forgiveness and despair taking place during the pandemic and during a mice infestation due to climate change. It is unexpectedly uplifting. This was the first book in years that I immediately re-read after finishing it. I wrote a separate blog post about it here. It is my favorite book so far this year and I'm positive it will end up in my "best of 2025" list, possibly even at the top of the list.

Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood

Yes, I read the third book in the series this month too (and am on the wait list for the next two). In this case, Will and Lilian have a client who writes murder mysteries. Someone is killing people using the methods she puts in her stories. For complicated reasons she doesn't want the police involved. I liked this one the best of the three, it seemed tighter in terms of pacing than the last one. 

Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon

This was the 2021 One Book, One Minnesota selection. Set during the Vietnam War era (late sixties, early seventies?) in the Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota, the main character is Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman who grew up in many white foster home situations and is now making it in the world as a farm laborer who shoots pool for money in her spare time. (She also smokes incessantly, which I found distracting.) Her only real friend in the world is a local sheriff named Wheaton who believes she could do more with her life. Cash helps Wheaton solve a brutal murder but that isn't the main point of the book.  As a mystery story it is pretty poor. As a picture of the results of white policy towards native people it is much better. There are sequels but I'm not sure I will read them. Cash solves the crime using "visions". I get tired of the magical Indian trope. William Kent Krueger uses it too but at least this author is an enrolled member of a tribe. 

Back After This by Linda Holmes

This is Holmes' third book and it is more, it seemed to me, of a romance than her first 2 books (which featured romances but seemed to be more). This one features a podcaster (which Linda is) and a youtube influencer who team up to make a series of podcasts in which the narrator goes on 20 dates. In the meantime, on her own, she meets a personable guy with a dog who lives in her neighborhood. I don't read a lot of romances mostly because you always know how a romance will end, it's simply a matter of how they get there. In this case there were few of the interesting interpersonal obstacles that make for the romances I do enjoy. The biggest issue was the fact that the narrator couldn't stand up for herself in the face of people telling her she couldn't date the person she wanted to date. I got tired of that. Also, while I'm sure Homes knows everything there is to know about podcasting, I have no real interest in the ins and outs or in the typical work day. And there are a lot of ins and outs in this book. This is all to say that it just didn't hit the spot for me although there is nothing wrong with it and I'm sure many people will enjoy it.  

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

A number of years ago I served on the Board of Directors of a private Catholic girls high school. The school was sponsored by an order of nuns whose "Mother House" was in another state. One year the Board was invited to the Mother House, along with the Boards of other schools the nuns sponsored, to share ideas and to "recharge" ourselves. During our visit we were given a tour of the property which was, among other things, a working farm. At the far end of the property were some small bungalows that we were told could be reserved by outsiders for "silent retreats". I was a busy corporate lawyer at the time and the whole concept of a "silent retreat" fascinated me. The idea of being away from work, family, responsibilities, for a period of time with NO ONE talking to me, and NO ONE expecting me to talk to them, sounded like heaven. I kept the possibility in the back of my mind but never followed up.

I was reminded of this while reading Stone Yard Devotional, a beautifully written novel by the Australian author Charlotte Wood, in which an unnamed narrator visits a rural convent property inhabited by members of an unidentified order of nuns and stays in a small bungalow on their grounds. She basically is there for a silent retreat. 

The convent property is near the town where the narrator grew up and where her parents are buried. The nuns appear to be part of an enclosed order which interacts with the outside world only as needed. They go to the little church on the property many times a day to pray. The narrator at first wonders how they get anything done since they are constantly interrupted by the bells bringing them to prayer. Then she realizes that prayer is the work. The narrator makes clear that she is not religious but at some point she decides to permanently leave behind her life in Sydney and live with the nuns, although she does not become a nun. 

The novel is written in the form of an undated journal. But Wood's use of the word "Devotional" in the title is, I believe, illuminating. A Christian "Devotional" is a book that is not a theological treatise or a commentary on the Bible but is usually filled with accessible writings meant to be helpful to ordinary people in connection with their faith. Its form is flexible but in this context the most appropriate definition is a series of meditations. The journal that makes up this novel is partly a record of daily happenings but it is also a series of meditations on the past experiences of the unnamed non-religious narrator that helps her in her life journey but may also be enlightening for the reader.  

There are two epigrams at the beginning of the novel that give us a clue as to what her meditations will focus on. The first is a quote from Nick Cave: "I felt chastened by the world".  This is from Faith, Hope and Carnage in which he discusses, among other things, his grief over the death of his son. It isn't clear at first how this is applicable to the narrator who has no, and has never had any, children. But grief is universal. The second is a quote from Elizabeth Hardwick's novel Sleepless Nights in which her character confesses that what she is willing to tell us about her life may be distorted by the passage of time and the life she has chosen to lead.  And, in fact, Wood's unnamed narrator tells us little of the life she left behind in Sydney where at one time she was married and worked for (perhaps led?) an organization devoted to endangered species conservation. Her memories are mostly, but not solely, of earlier times. 

This is not a plot-driven novel, but three events occur that shape the life of the narrator and the nuns. Wood uses the word "visitations" for these events. The first is the return of the bones of Sister Jenny who went missing, presumed murdered, in Southeast Asia years before while running a shelter for abused women. Jenny left the enclosed order because she no longer wanted to withdraw from the world and pray but wanted to be out in the world directly helping people. The nuns want to bury Jenny's bones on their grounds but that needs council approval and the novel takes place during the pandemic when getting administrative approvals for anything was time-consuming. 

The second "visitation" is the arrival of Helen Parry, an activist nun with, everyone seems to agree, a "difficult" personality. Helen went to high school with our unnamed narrator who remembers her as a friendless girl, abused by her single mother and bullied by the local teens including the narrator. It is Helen Parry who brings the bones of Sister Jenny home to the nuns but then she stays on for months, partly due to the pandemic. The third "visitation" is a plague of mice through the summer brought on by climate change (something that apparently really happened in Australia).

The novel is divided into three parts. In the first part the narrator's journal entries are concerned mostly with factual matters of day-to-day life and her observations of the lives of the nuns. But in the second and third parts the nature of the entries change very slowly to more personal memories and into meditations on despair, death, grief, guilt, and forgiveness. The narrative arc of the novel is the evolution of the attitude of the narrator towards her past, her current life and the community of which she is a part and yet not a part. 

The factual circumstances that caused the narrator, who is in her early sixties, to leave behind her life are unclear to the reader and maybe even to the narrator, but she admits that it had to do with despair. She admits that she could no longer "pretend to a fervor" about her projects that she no longer felt. At lunch with a young colleague who worked at her organization she realizes that her despair is infecting the people she works with who still want to believe they can save endangered species and change the world.  She writes:

I read somewhere that Catholics think despair is the unforgiveable sin. I think they are right; it's malign, it bleeds and spreads. Once gone, I don't know that real hope or faith -- are they the same? -- can ever return.

Sister Jenny, apparently in hope, left the enclosed life to be a part of the outside world and try to directly change it. The narrator, in despair, left the outside world and stopped trying to actively change it. The reader can compare her choice to retreat from the world to the choice of Jenny and, especially, of Helen Parry, to meet the world head on. Is one way more right than the other? Or is there room in the world for both kinds of people? And how does the narrator compare with the nuns she lives with who have retreated from the world but believe in prayer, which the narrator says she does not.  

The narrator begins to meditate on the concept of forgiveness and how it is affected by death. Death means, among other things, the inability to offer apologies or grant forgiveness, on the part of both the living and the dead. She observes the grief of Sister Bonaventure over the death of her friend Sister Jenny and tries to offer Bonaventure comfort, misunderstanding Bonaventure's grief. The narrator believes Bonaventure wishes she could apologize to Jenny for questioning her choice to leave the order for the outside world. But Bonaventure isn't praying for Jenny's forgiveness, she's trying to find it in herself to forgive Jenny for not understanding why Bonaventure would continue to lead an enclosed life of prayer.  

Equally as important in this novel, it is not only death that can foreclose the granting of forgiveness. She remembers her friend Beth, who while dying, receives the request of someone in a 12 step program who wants to meet with her to apologize and atone. Beth doesn't have it in her to deal with the man. The narrator remembers an earlier, adult encounter with Helen Parry during which the narrator tried to apologize for how she had treated Helen as a girl but Helen just moves on with what she was doing and doesn't offer forgiveness.  The narrator writes:

I have never forgotten that strange feeling, left standing there in the wilderness with my regret and my remorse still around me, suspended in the air. Not denounced, not forgiven. It made me admire her, if I am honest, this refusal to alleviate my discomfort. It made me wonder what forgiveness actually is, or means. What was it that I wanted from her that day?

Many of the narrator's memories are about her own parents, especially her mother. The narrator claims that her focus on her mother is because she completely understood her father but never completely understood her mother even though they were close. At one point she says that "My mother trusted me and I trusted her" and she wishes should could have told this simple truth to her mother before her death. But, as with apology and forgiveness, death forecloses further communication.  

Her parents were not ones to stand back, they jumped in to help people and to make the world better. Her mother composted before anyone else did and while the narrator was embarrassed by this her mother didn't care. Her parents helped to re-settle Vietnamese immigrants while the narrator pretended to her friends that she didn't know them. Her mother raised funds for an obscure English charity that no one else knew or cared about. But she continued to send them money until the day she died. People were always telling the narrator how good her mother was. When the  narrator is trying to comfort Bonaventure she says that we "all make saints of the dead, it is the only way we can bear it" but that is really a reflection on her own memories of her deceased mother. 

The narrator is constantly thinking about death, although at first you don't really notice that. There are daily encounters with death that the narrator mentions in her journal (Sister Jenny's bones in her casket, a baby chick that needs to be buried, a local animal stealing the chicken eggs, a local farmer who dies). On a daily basis the community is forced to catch, kill and dispose of mice, hundreds and hundreds of mice. Living with the mice is bad enough but worse is figuring out out how to dispose of all of the dead mice. The smell of death permeates the grounds and neither the narrator nor the other nuns ever become completely inured to finding and disposing of the dead mice. As the mice plague gets worse it seems to be the impetus for the narrator to meditate more and more on the deaths in her own life and the fact that one day she too will die.  

As a child, the narrator viewed people who suffered the death of a loved one somewhat dispassionately, mostly with curiosity. In school there was the boy whose mother was killed moving cattle across the road.  Later there is the boy who kills his parents with a shotgun. And, indeed, she observes the nuns' grief over Sister Jenny ("their sister") from a distance. But perhaps the distance is a protective measure. As she delves deeper into her memories of the deaths she has encountered throughout her life, including the death of her friend Beth but especially the death of her own mother from cancer when the narrator was a young woman, she meditates more and more on the helplessness she felt in the face of death. At one point the narrator wishes "for the thousandth time that I had been older than I was when [my mother] fell ill.  I feel sure more maturity would have brought with it some greater capacity to help her than I had."  (No, I thought. It doesn't.) 

The narrator finally comes to understand some of of Helen Parry's younger life and wonders that no one in the community she grew up in, not even the narrator's mother, did anything to help her. No one, not even her mother, is perfect in their attempts to help in the world. And Helen Parry, who has much to forgive, needs to deal with it in her own way.    

The narrator eventually comes to the realization that, for her, grief and shame are intertwined, not just the shame of not being able to apologize or forgive or to tell a loved one the depth of our love, or to be more helpful to them in their dying, but the shame of feeling grief itself. We live in a society that does not appreciate grief. We are told to get over it. Especially grief over long ago deaths, like the death of Sister Jenny and the death of the narrator's parents. But grief never leaves us, she realizes, it recedes and then returns.  "The fact of grief quietly making itself known, again and again."  It is this realization that helps to free her. 

The push and pull between prayer for the world and activism in the world is a constant theme in this novel but Wood never comes down on one side or the other. Both seem to have their place depending on the personality of the person. The narrator's mother was a non-conformist always active in helping people in the town and perhaps that's why the narrator chose to work for an organization that wanted to change the world and married a man with many projects to make the world better. But the narrator did not have her mother's personality and in the end despaired of her ability to make change, leading her to withdraw from the world. Nor was it likely that someone like Helen Parry would ever decide to join a cloistered order and not be out in the world pushing for change. The world needs active people; it is the actions of Helen Parry that finally allow Sister Jenny to be buried. But Wood does not condemn the life of the nuns or imply that they are misguided although perhaps she draws a distinction between withdrawing for the purpose of prayer (an action) and simply withdrawing (inaction).

At the beginning of the novel, when the narrator stops at the graves of her parents she remembers thinking that lowering a casket into the ground by ropes "instead of arms" is so impersonal. And she remembers little to nothing about the decisions about the burial or what she was feeling. At the end, when Sister Jenny is finally buried, the community lowers her casket into the earth by hand into the hands of two people standing in the grave and the narrator now thinks of her as "our" sister.

This is a novel that I will be thinking about for a long time. There are ideas in this novel that I haven't mentioned, such as the nature of prayer, the relationships within a community, our connection to the earth and the impact on lives of the pandemic and global warming. If you are a person who requires a plot driven novel, this definitely isn't for you.  If you are looking for a novel of ideas with an intriguing main character, give it a try. 

January 2025 Reading

When January began I knew it was going to be a stressful month and so my reading theme was "escape". I planned for it by putting aside a number of books (mysteries) that I had been looking forward to reading. I had been holding on to them for months. Maybe that built them up too much in my mind, but they didn't do the trick for me this month.  Unfortunately.  Very disappointing.

Although one of my reading resolutions for the year was to, again, try to read fewer mysteries, four out of the seven fiction books I finished this month were mysteries. I think when I set my goals I didn't realize how traumatic the news of the world would be this year so I am letting myself off the hook.  This may be a year when I do mostly "lite" reading. I did also read one book of poetry and one non-fiction book. One of the fiction books was a classic and three were historical (literary fiction or mysteries). 

These are the books I finished in January:

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard

I was on the library hold list for this novel for quite a long time. I can see why it was popular. The dramatist/author Oscar Wilde infamously had his life ruined by the Marquess of Queensberry who accused Wilde of debauching his son leading to a criminal trial and imprisonment for Wilde. In this novel Bayard looks at Wilde's family: his wife Charlotte, his mother and his two sons, Cecil and Vyyan.  From what I can tell, Bayard seems to stick to the facts and, in fact, credits interviews with Vyvyan's son Merlin for some of his facts. A lot is made (quite rightly) about the travesty of the anti-gay laws in countries like the UK and how they forced people to lead double lives. And that was certainly hard on non-heterosexual persons. But the wives and children who were lied to were also harmed, psychologically and, if the spouse was ruined, sometimes financially. Wilde's family suffered financially but mostly psychologically, changing their name to Holland and hiding their connection to him. Wilde, who is depicted in the novel as a very good father, never saw his sons again. This is an interesting novel because it doesn't try to tell Wilde's side of the story (and Lord Alfred Douglas comes off as a complete ass), it follows the rest of the family. I found it quite engrossing and rather sad. This is literary fiction at its best - the characters are well drawn and the move through time from the late 1800's to the 1920's is handled well.  I'm glad that the first book I finished in 2025 was so good.  Recommended. 

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

When someone posts their three favorite books of 2024 and you have read two out of the three, it's only logical to find the third and read it. I would never have heard of this book otherwise.  First published in 1931, this novel was re-issued in 2021.  Sherriff  was more well known as a screenwriter, working on Mrs. Miniver, Goodbye Mr. Chips and other films, but did write several novels and at least one well known play.  In this book the Stevens family (father, mother, three children of which two at this point are adult and working) take a yearly holiday to Bognor, a seaside town on the coast of England.  Every year they stay at the same boarding house, a place that the parents stayed on their honeymoon more than 20 years earlier.  They do the same things every year and rediscover the familiar places each year - noting the changes that have been made in 12 months. Of course the boarding house is getting shabby and the children are perhaps getting too old for these types of family holidays but for this year at least they enjoy their traditions. The Stevens are always aware that with the passage of time things may change so it's important to enjoy them in the moment.  Anyone who has ever vacationed each year at the same place can relate to this. This is not at all a plot driven book but by the end you know the characters like they are your own family and you know the place so well it is as if you, too, had holidayed there each year.  It is a book that explores what it is like to be in a family that loves each other and looks forward to being together on holiday each year - even if they also worry about things going right. I finished the novel with the hope that the characters enjoyed more years on these holidays even though knowing that nothing is for certain.  

Death on the Tiber by Lindsey Davis

The most recent Flavia Albia mystery, this one also includes her dad Marcus Didius Falco in a small role.  A woman's body is found in the Tiber and Flavia is determined to find out what happened to her.  It turns out that she was from Britain (as was Flavia) and was the common law wife of the man who raped Flavia when she was a young girl.  He is now in Rome and she is determined to avenge herself. (and the dead woman). This was one of the books I was saving for January and it didn't quite do it for me. I enjoy this series because I like ancient Rome, but for some time now I've felt that Davis' very thorough research has gotten in the way of the pacing of her stories. I don't remember that being an issue with the Falco series but I do find it with the Flavia Albia series. I only recommend this if you really like reading about ancient Rome - if not, you will probably find yourself skimming a lot. I also think this series is best read from the beginning.   

Water, Water (poems) by Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the former poet laureate of the United States. He is known to write "accessible" poetry because he writes about day-to-day things. I generally enjoy his poems for that reason. I like that he can take something perfectly ordinary and write a poem about it. This most recent collection was, however, not one that particularly resonated with me. Usually there are a few poems that I really, really like - that I would read aloud or say to someone: "listen to this".  But this time, there were none. Which is not to say that I did not enjoy it.  I did.  I just don't think it will stay with me like, say, Picnic, Lightning did. 

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

Another book that I saved to read in January that didn't quite do it for me. This is #19 in the Inspector Gamache series and, while I enjoyed it, it was not my favorite of the series.  A few years ago Louise Penny collaborated with Hillary Clinton on a thriller that I thought was very good.  Well, this also seems like a thriller with international travel and big national consequences. While the premise of the threat seemed very real to me, the actual finding of the culprits seemed very forced to me.  A lot of "coincidences" needed to occur to get to the end. And then it ended on a cliffhanger. There wasn't enough of the residents of Three Pines in this book to satisfy me. I like this series best when Inspector Gamache is solving actual murders and not trying to avert national (or international) catastrophes. 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

I am a big fan of Kate Atkinson, although I like her literary fiction more than her Jackson Brodie mystery series.  Possibly this is because she only writes an installment when she feels like it (there was five years between the last one and this one) and she is far more interested in characterization than in plot. This was the main book that I was saving to read in January and ... it didn't quite hit home for me.  Atkinson is exploring the trope of the Golden Age mystery by setting it (at times) in an English Country House where everyone is stranded due to a snowstorm.  But she also throws in everything but the kitchen sink - art theft, a killer on the loose on the Moors, the death by accident(?) of a character we never really meet, the local Vicar who has lost his religion, and more. There is also a Murder Mystery Weekend going on at the Country House. It's all somewhat farcical - although I think it is intended to be that way.  In true Kate Atkinson fashion she gives many of her characters a lot of depth. Part of the problem for me was that there were so MANY characters that I found myself wanting her to get back to the plot and away from their back stories. I enjoyed this novel but it won't go down in my books as the best Jackson Brodie mystery.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This was another BlueSky read-along. Maybe if I had read this at a different time I wouldn't have disliked it so much. But given the state of the world right now, and following on the heels of reading Gravity's Rainbow, Cat's Cradle and Things Fall Apart, it was just too depressing for me to like. And the constant themes of pedophilia, incest and rape were enough to make me dislike it. I find it interesting that the book reviews that I've read (and watched) gloss over the pedophilia, incest and rape - most of them don't mention it and when they do mention it they don't analyze it's use in any way. One said that the book was like mythology and you would find all of  that in myths. Ok, but myths are short and this was a long book. Another said that Garcia Marquez was using them, along with all the other bad things that happen in the story, to show that humans were constantly doing things like this throughout history. And I agree that history as circular time is a theme of the book.  But the thing is - not ALL history is bad. In my opinion, this novel was unrelenting in its negative view of people and history. And the actions that he chose, over and over, to reflect this were actions that I'm tired of reading male authors write about. I guess I'm glad that I can cross it off of my list of classic books I "need" to read.  But I didn't enjoy it.  And I think it colored my reading for the whole month because every day I dreaded picking it up and reading the assigned pages. 

Gallows Court by Martin Edwards

Desperate to find a mystery that would keep my mind occupied (which didn't happen with any of the other mysteries I read this month) I went to my very, very long TBR list and chose Gallows Court.  My expectations were low but I was so happy to discover that it was a real page turner.  The story takes place in London in 1930. The main character is Rachel Savernake, the enigmatic daughter of the late Judge Savernake. There is a lot going on in this novel - Rachel is very mysterious - is she good or is she evil?  Jacob Flint, the new crime reporter for The Clarion isn't sure but he is desperate for a scoop.  And Scotland Yard thinks a woman should mind her own business and not try to assist them in solving crimes. I actually guessed one of the major twists in the story fairly early but it didn't matter.  There are at least two more books in this series so far and I'm sure I'll read them. 

How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch

This was a book I was looking forward to because I love the music (and lyrics) of Stephen Sondheim so I was happy my library hold came up during my "escape" January.  But what a disappointment it was.  First, it really didn't focus on "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life", it didn't even focus on how Sondheim changed the author's life. The author is a drama teacher and the book seemed to be written for people who didn't have enough life experience to understand the point of some of Sondheim's lyrics. Maybe he has spent too much time around college students. It is also possibly written for people who had never seen the Sondheim shows. There is a lot of explaining the plot and the characters.  I didn't need any of that and there were no new revelations to come from him. Not recommended. 

In addition to the books I finished in January, I embarked on a year-long read of Don Quixote with a BlueSky reading group which I am very much enjoying. I also joined in on a read of Clarissa which is an epistolary novel (written in letters).  The letters are dated and we are reading each letter on the day of the month on which it is dated.  It should take all year (if I keep up with it - it's too early to tell). 

 

My Year in Reading - 2024

2024 is now in the books and it is time for me to look back on my reading and my reading goals for the year. I'm not one to set reading goals based on a projected number of books I want to read. Who knows how many books it will be possible to read?  That depends on my schedule and the length of the books I choose. I usually have goals about the types of books I want to read.  

Goals and Statistics

I decided at the beginning of the year that my goals would be: (1) to read more classic novels, (2) to re-read more books that I had previously enjoyed, (3) to be more selective in the mystery novels I read (in other words to read fewer mysteries leaving me time for other types of books), and (4) to read more non-fiction. As I moved into January, I also decided I would try to read some poetry in 2024. 

In all, this year I read an even 100 books. This total is more than last year's total of 73 but I was retired this full year and had more time to read. Breaking down this year's total into categories, 86 books were fiction, 9 books were non-fiction and 5 books were poetry. Of the fiction books, 44 books were non-mystery fiction and 42 were mysteries.  I borrowed 34 books from the library (almost all digitally) and the remainder were purchased either in tangible form or on my NOOK app or occasionally digitally through Apple books (although a number of them were not purchased this year but were books I had owned for years and had never yet read). I also read two short stories this year which I did not include in my totals. (I'm not really a short story reader and almost never read short stories.)

Did I meet my goals and how did this year compare to last year? I met my goals in poetry and non-fiction, definitely topping my numbers from 2023 when I read only 2 non-fiction books (both were memoirs) and no poetry. I read 11 Classics this year (I read no Classics last year) and 6 of them were re-reads.  Last year, in 2023, I read 44 mysteries and this year I read 42 mysteries, so I didn't really reduce the number of mysteries that much but, as a percentage of my reading. last year 60% of the books I read were mysteries, and I got that down this year to 42%. I don't think I will get those numbers much lower; mysteries are my comfort read.  

I continue to love historical fiction, 34 of my 86 fiction books were historical (and that didn't count the Classics I read that were set in their own time period).  I continue to read more fiction written by women. 26 of the 44 non-mystery fiction books were written by women and 18 were written by men. 

Summary of Reading

Before we start, I refer you to my previous post in which I list my 10 favorite books in 2024. 8 of them were fiction and 2 were non-fiction.  I will not be describing the fiction favorites in this post, you will need to go back to that post.  

Ok, buckle in because this is a long one. Click the links if you want to read the mini-reviews the wrote at the time. 

Poetry

In order to read more poetry I decided that if I found a book of poetry I wanted to read, I would read it in short spurts:  an average of 10 pages a day for epic poems, about 2 poems a day for collections of poetry. I thought that if I read 6 works of poetry this year, that would be great. I ended up reading 5- but I only fell short because I decided to forego a separate poetry selection when I read Judi Dench's memoir about performing Shakespeare (described below in Non-Fiction). Shakespeare is poetic enough.

I began the year with epic poems starting with Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad. I had read The Iliad multiple times before but this was the translation that I enjoyed the most. I don't think I will ever need to read another version of The Iliad.

I followed that up with a modern translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. Like The Iliad, I had read Beowulf before but Headley's translation was nothing like any other translation; it was very modern as if a modern day rapper decided to translate it, focusing on alliteration and not internal rhymes. I loved it.  

Although neither The Iliad nor Beowulf made my "favorites" list for 2024, I truly enjoyed both and highly recommend them. I also count both of them as contributing to my goals to read more Classics and to re-read books I read long ago. 

In addition to those two epic poems, I also read a few collections of poetry:  The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, which I liked;  The Best American Poetry 2023, which I did not like at all; and Call us What we Carry by Amanda Gorman, to which I had mixed reactions. 

All of my poetry books were either translated by, written by or edited by a woman. All in all, I thought 2024 was a success in terms of poetry and I think I will keep the same goal for next year to continue to find poetry books to read slowly.

Classics and Re-Reads

I read a surprising number of Classics this year mainly because I joined in with read-along groups on the BlueSky social media site. We usually read the books in short increments so it was manageable to participate and still read other books. All the books we read were Classics but many of them I had read before, long ago, so that helped with my goal of re-reading books that I've read before.  In fact, all of of my re-reads in 2024 were Classics (I count The Iliad and Beowulf as Classics). 

The first group-read was Middlemarch, by George Eliot, which was new to me. I'm glad I  finally read it  but I didn't love it the way other people love it. This was followed by a group-read of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which I had read before but enjoyed reading again. Next we read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which I had also read before, but very long ago. I truly enjoyed re-reading it and I think I got so much more out of it by reading it very slowly. Next we read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, which was new to me. I'm glad I read it but did not like it at all. In November we read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a classic of African literature that was new to me. We finished out the year in December reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.  Other than Gravity's Rainbow, I can recommend all of the above novels if you are interested in reading Classics (although I only recommend Cat's Cradle with reservations, some of it didn't age well). 

In addition to the BlueSky read-alongs, on my own I read The Real Charlotte by E. CE. Somerville & Martin Ross, which made my "favorites" list.  I also read Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I listened to it on audio because working through the dialect in prior attempts to read it had defeated me. I also re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Again, I listened to it on audio because I didn't want to work through all the dialect. I recommend both of them in audio. I also re-read a classic mystery which I describe below. So, all in all, except for Gravity's Rainbow, there were no big fails in my Classics reading. 

Six of my Classics (counting the mystery classic below) were written by women and five were written by men (one by an African man). 

Non-Fiction

When I set my goal to read more non-fiction, I was particularly thinking of two long books that had been on my shelves for a few years. I decided that if I set a goal of reading an average of  20-25 pages a day it would take me about two months each to read them. If I stayed on that type of schedule I could read six non-fiction books in 2024. In the end, I read eight non-fiction books.

I started with Grant, Ron Chernow's very long biography of Ulysses S. Grant. I was familiar with much of Grant's early married life because I live in St. Louis and spent my younger years going to Grant's Farm every summer. I also knew quite a bit about his war years but I knew next to nothing about his years as President and after. I found the parts about Reconstruction fascinating. It took me almost two months to finish this book and it was well worth the time. 

The other book that had been on my shelves for years was She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potentials of Heredity by Carl Zimmer. Zimmer, a science writer for the New York Times, is able to make complicated subjects accessible. I learned so much from this book and I highly recommend it. It made my list of "favorites" for the year. 

After such long books on such complicated subjects, I gravitated to memoirs. First was The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop.  Bishop started her career as a dancer on Broadway where she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Sheila in the original production of A Chorus Line.  Those parts of her memoir were fascinating, especially her relationship with choreographers. Then her career moved on to movies and television. I enjoyed those parts of the book but felt she held back a bit (perhaps because the people she worked with are still alive). 

The other two memoirs I listened to on audiobook. Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench was specifically a memoir about the various Shakespearean roles she had played in her career. I'd rather listen to Shakespeare than read him so audio was a good choice for me. Her analysis of the roles and the plays was fascinating and this book made my list of "favorites" for the year.   

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand was the mega-memoir released in 2023 by Babs. I heard that the audio book had "extras" that weren't in the hard copy book (snippets of songs she was talking about and some commentary by her) and that, plus it's length, made me decide to go the audio book route. It is definitely a commitment at over 48 hours! It took me about a month to listen to all of it while I was cooking and cleaning. Streisand seems to remember every piece of clothing she ever wore and, more important, she wants to set the record straight on every untruth ever (according to her) told about her. But she tells it all in a fascinating way.   

Two other  non-fiction books I read were specific to my area of interest in North American French Colonial Studies (An Infinity of Nations by Michael Witgen and French St. Louis:  Landscape, Contexts, and Legacy.)  I also read The Ride of Her Life, the story of a woman who rode a horse across the United States. The final non-fiction book was a history of baseball that I didn't particularly enjoy: How Baseball Happened:  The True Story Revealed by Thomas W. Gilbert. 

So, all in all, my non-fiction reading was successful.  Two books made my "favorites" of 2024 list and only one was a fail.  Five of my non-fiction books were written, or edited, by men.  Three were written (or co-written) by women (all memoirs). 

Fiction - Non-Mystery/Non-Classics

As I said above, I previously published a post about my 10 favorite books of 2024 and 8 of them were novels. So please go back and read that post to see what I thought were the best of the best in 2024.  

I also read a number of novels that didn't make my "favorites" list for one reason or another but that I enjoyed. In no particular order they are the following: 

• Menewood by Nicola Griffith is the sequel to her previous novel Hild.  Set during medieval times it tells the story of the real St. Hilda in her early years. In general, I enjoyed this very long novel but only AFTER the first third of the novel which I found somewhat hard going. 

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, otherwise known in reading circles as "The Octopus Book". I was doubtful that I would enjoy a novel told partly from the point of view of an octopus but it ended up being a delightful read. 

• The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. An odd book that is hard to describe without spoilers. It seems to be a historical mystery, but it's not. The title refers to the habit that medieval people had of sleeping for part of the night, then waking and doing constructive things, and then sleeping again for the rest of the night. It is in fact a metaphor for what happens in the novel.  This is not a novel all people will enjoy but I did. 

• Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford.  I really hoped this would make my "favorites" list this year but it fell short by a slight amount. Set in an alternative America with an alternative Cahokia, this is a noir thriller that also examines the issues of race in America.  

• In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas.  Historical fiction set in the 1800's in Canada where a town of free black persons live and help those in America trying to escape their enslavers. This came very close to making my list of "favorites". It is Thomas' first novel and I look forward to reading his next novel. 

• Help Wanted by Adele Waldman.  A novel set in a big box store similar to Target involving characters who work in the stock rooms. They arrive at work at 4 in the morning, unload the trucks and put the new merchandise out, leaving when the customers arrive. Very good on describing corporate politics and the frustration of being a low level worker in America. 

• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.  A trained scientist, the female heroine ends up starring in a cooking show based on chemistry. This novel really captures how difficult life was for educated, working women in the 1960's and it is sad that some of the issues remain to this day.  

• The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson.  If you are looking for a quick, relatively easy read, this delightful book will suit you. It is set in a British seaside resort town immediately after WWI when women who had worked as motorcycle messengers during the war wanted to keep driving and supporting themselves. The plot is not all sweetness and light, but it is an enjoyable read.

• You are Here by David Nicholls.  The story of a post-pandemic hike across Northumberland by two persons who have been traumatized in their personal lives, this is actually a very funny book.

• Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. Three characters (a ghost, an older man and a young woman) co-exist in a town, each of them dealing with unrequited love. The meditations on the meaning of love are interspersed with information about astronomy, particularly comets.  

• Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel.  This one also almost made my list of "favorites", it is the story of girls competing in a youth boxing tournament. I know that description doesn't sound interesting, but I truly enjoyed it. 

• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon.  A novel set in ancient Syracuse, it explores the power (and the limits) of theater when two out of work laborers decide to stage Medea and The Trojan Women in a prisoner of war camp. 

• Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  The winner of this year's Booker Prize, this exquisitely written novel describes a day in the life of astronauts on the international space station. 

• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. Beautifully written, it explores life after World War II in Holland.  This is a first novel and I look forward to reading her next.    

• Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein.  Set in Trinidad in the 1940's, this is a story set among the minority Hindu population. Hosein's characterizations are suberb. This novel won the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. 

• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich.  This novel just missed being on my "favorites" of 2024, probably because the main characters are teenagers and I just wasn't in the mood for teenage angst. However this is a beautiful novel (as are all Louise Erdrich novels) about life in a small farming community along the Red River trying to deal with the financial crisis of 2008, the use of pesticides on their crops and teenage trauma. 

In general, I really liked many of my general fiction reading in 2024.  I won't go into the ones that didn't work for me. You can check my monthly blogs for 2024 to see those. 

Mysteries

Mysteries (especially historical mysteries) are my comfort read and at certain times I can simply immerse myself in mystery after mystery, some of which are not really great, at the expense of reading better literature. I was better this year about not doing that, but I still read a lot of mysteries partly because a number of mystery series that I enjoy had new books released in 2024 or late 2023. 

The following are some of my favorite series all of which I recommend (and all of which you've probably seen in other year-end blogs):  

• C.S. Harris writes the Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series set in England (mainly) during the Regency. This year I read What Cannot be Said and I was relieved to find the protagonists back from France and in their familiar setting of London . 

• Elly Griffiths finished her popular Ruth Galloway series last year but she continues to write the Harbinder Kaur series (although she continues to insist isn't a series but each are stand alone novels).  The series is set during the current times and some of the sleuths are local people in Brighton including an elderly man living in a retirement home. It's nice to see writers include characters of all ages in their novels. This year's installment was The Last Word which mostly focused on the investigations by the amateur sleuths and not Harbinder.  

• Jacqueline Winspear also finished her popular Maisie Dobbs series this year with The Comfort of Ghosts and I thought she stuck the landing. I will miss this series but it probably was time to end.

• William Kent Krueger continued his Cork O'Connor mystery series (which is now up to 20 books) with Spirit Crossing. This series is set in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters area. I also read the stand-alone mystery he released in 2023, The River We Remember. 

• Anne Cleeves is a perennial favorite and this year I read the next book in her Matthew Venn series, The Raging Storm, and her next Vera Stanhope mystery, The Dark Wives. 

• I wondered if Ian Rankin could write a mystery using his detective Rebus with Rebus in prison - but  in Midnight and Blue he did it quite well. 

Besides the above, there are a number of other series that I enjoy but don't think are quite as good as the above:

• Although I find the plots of CJ Box's Joe Pickett mystery series sometimes eye-rollingly far-fetched I continue to read them.  (I mean, c'mon, in real life Joe would have died in each novel.)  This year I read the latest:  Three-Inch Teeth involving a grizzly bear on the loose - or maybe not? If you like Joe Pickett you will like it. 

• Kerry Greenwood writes the Phryne Fisher mysteries set in Australia (and made into a television series). Murder in Williamstown was the latest..

• Paula Munier writes a series of mysteries in which the main character, Mercy Carr, solves mysteries with her dog Elvis. The latest, which I enjoyed, was The Night Woods.

• Alison Montclair writes the Sparks and Bainbridge series set in London following WWII in which two women set up an agency to help single people meet each other. Mysteries ensue. I am not caught up with this series but read A Royal Affair, the second. I enjoyed it although I found the plot completely unbelievable (involving Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth).

• Andrea Penrose writes the Wrexford and Sloane series set in Regency England in many ways similar to the St. Cyr series written by C.S. Harris.  The main characters are aristocracy but the wife has an alter ego as an anonymous political cartoonist.  I read the latest, Murder at King's Crossing.

• Sujata Massey writes the Perveen Mistry series set in Bombay in the 1920's.  I read the latest:  The Mistress of Bhatia House. This series is interesting because the main character is a woman solicitor and she is Farsi.  

• A.M. Stuart writes the Harriet Gordon series set in Singapore and Malaysia in the 1920s.  I read the latest,  Terror in Topaz, which may be the last in the series (we'll see). 

This year I also re-read one classic mystery - Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers, the first in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. I may continue to re-read these in 2025. I counted this toward my Classics and my re-reads.

When my mom passed away I took her set of British Library Crime Classic mystery novels so I tried to read one each month.  In general I didn't like most of them - they were very dated.  I did find that I liked the novelist John Bude including his The Sussex Downs Murder. I also liked Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg and The Death of Mr. Dodsley by John Ferguson.   I still have a few left to finish in 2025.

For those of you who have enjoyed Magpie Murders on PBS and its sequel, I can recommend the Hawthorne and Horowitz series of novels by Anthony Horowitz, of which I read three this year:  A Line to Kill, The Twist of a Knife, and Close to Death.  I enjoyed all of them.  But be warned, a friend of mine who worked as an editor for years, thinks that his depiction of editors and editing is unrealistic (sort of the way I feel about courtroom drama novels). 

A new author(s) that I read this year was (were) John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan who, together, wrote The Murder of Mr. Ma.  Set in London in 1924 it involves the ex-patriot Chinese community.  I hope they write more. 

Other

I generally don't read a lot of science fiction and fantasy.  This year I did read Gravity's Rainbow and Cat's Cradle as part of my Classics read.  And maybe you can count Frankenstein as science fiction?  Some people are counting Orbital as science fiction, but I didn't think of it that way. 

I generally like Jasper Fforde's books, although I never know how to classify them.  This year he finally (FINALLY!) released the sequel to Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron, which I re-read in anticipation.  The sequel was Red Side Story which I also read.  This is supposed to be a trilogy and I hope it doesn't take him 15 years to write the last book.  But at least he didn't leave us with another complete cliff hanger. 

My Favorite Books of 2024

Every year I read other people's "best of" lists but I've never done one myself. I'm a little ambivalent about the word "best" because it is, in my opinion, subjective but often interpreted as objective. 

To me, literature is a dialog between the author and the reader. The author writes the book and puts it out into the world where it has a life of its own. Each reader is different. Some books will speak to you but leave others cold; some books will leave you cold but be adored by others. In books that I really love, I often find myself talking in my head (and sometimes aloud) to the author. As AS Byatt wrote:

Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

So this is a list of books in which I most felt that I was in dialog with the author this year.  I decided to limit myself to 10 books. Two books were non-fiction, the rest were novels.  These books will not speak to everyone as they spoke to me. I don't need a lot of plot in my novels, but I demand deep characterizations and I gravitate to books that give me a clear sense of place.  And, of course, the excellence of the writing is a must. 

You will see that, in terms of novels, I love literary fiction (although I read almost as many mysteries).  Six of the eight novels were historical fiction. Seven of the  books were written by women; three were written by men of which two were persons of color.  I would have liked a bit more diversity.  Maybe next year. 

I've linked to my original posts about each book if you want to click through and read more.

1.   James by Percival Everett.  I could pretend that this list is in no particular order but I would be lying. James was my very favorite book of 2024. This is a re-telling of Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but told from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man accompanying Huck on his adventures. I did re-read Huck Finn before reading this novel but it is NOT necessary; this novel can stand on its own. Everett has changed a few parts of the original story, including the time period (this novel is set closer to the Civil War) but he retained the spirit of Twain's original. It is simultaneously serious, heartbreaking, absurd and funny.  

2.  Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.   This was the first book I finished in 2024 and I was blown away by it. At first I was doubtful that a novel about young gamers building a successful company would hold my attention (I don't game) but it was not necessary to be a gamer to enjoy the plot of this book. It was also refreshing to read a novel about an intense relationship between a man and a woman that wasn't sexual. As Sadie tells Sam, lovers are common; true collaborators are rare. 

3.  Clear by Carys Davies.  This is an exquisitely written, short novel set during the Highland Clearances in Scotland. John Ferguson, a minister who has broken away from the official church,  is under tremendous stress, wondering how he will support himself and his wife Mary. He takes a job to travel to a small island (somewhere near Shetland) and, on behalf of the landlord, oust the only remaining inhabitant of the island, a man named Ivar. Ivar doesn't speak English, he speaks only a language called Norn. This lovely little book about relationships and cultures is a quick read at less than 200 pages, but it stayed with me for months.

4.  The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland.  A novel based on the true story of a devastating 1811 fire at a theater in Richmond Virginia, Beanland follows the lives of four main characters: Sally Henry Campbell, a young widow and the daughter of Patrick Henry; Cecily Patterson, a young enslaved woman who is sitting in the "slave gallery"; stagehand Jack Gibson; and Gilbert Hunt, an enslaved man who wants to buy his freedom and comes upon the theater in flames. Each of their lives is changed by the catastrophe. 

5.    Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench. The great British actress Judi Dench's memoir, it is written in the form of an interview of her by her co-author. She talks about (and brilliantly analyzes)  Lady Macbeth, Tatiana, Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and others. She talks about rehearsals, audiences, famous scenes, and much more.  She is very funny but also enlightening. I'm not usually into audiobooks but I recommend this one on audio because hearing the recitations of Shakespearean lines somewhere other than in my head was delightful.

6.    Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. Strout returns us to Crosby Maine where Lucy Barton is still living with her ex-husband William and is still friends with Bob Burgess. Bob introduces her to Olive Kittredge who is living in the local retirement home and Lucy and Olive begin to share stories of "unrecorded lives".  Strout explores loneliness in its many forms and the nature of love. Strout is not for everyone. People who need a lot of plot don't generally like her and, in fact, it took me a while to appreciate her understated writing. But now I look forward to each of her novels.

7.       She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer.   Zimmer is a columnist for the New York Times who writes about science.  This book is about heredity - both scientifically and culturally. He writes about complicated subjects (like genetics and CRISPR) in a completely accessible way. I learned so much reading this.  

8.    The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng.  This is the fictional story of when Somerset Maugham visited Penang, resulting in him writing a famous short story. Besides being a story of the British in colonial Southeast Asia, it also includes a Chinese community that is trying to overthrow the Emperor of China. The plot is slow moving but the characterizations and sense of place drew me in.  

9.    The Real Charlotte by E. CE. Somerville & Martin Ross.  A classic of Victorian Irish literature, this is the story of Charlotte Mullen, an Irish spinster, who reluctantly takes in her pretty young cousin Francie Fitzgerald. Charlotte plans to marry Francie to the son of the local gentry but Francie has other plans. Things build slowly (as with most Victorian literature) to, as the back of the book says, a shocking conclusion. 

10.  Held by Anne Michaels.  An exquisitely written little novel by Anne Michaels, a Canadian poet and novelist. It is structured as a series of vignettes involving various characters in different time periods who are all linked in some way to each other. Even within a chapter, the story is often told in little snippets of pictures. This is a beautifully written study of the effects of trauma, war, and love on individuals across generations.  

December Reading

I'm posting this before the end of December because I know I won't be finishing any more books before the end of the year.  The following are the books I finished in December:

The Night Woods by Paula Munier

The latest in the Mercy Carr mysteries, this one finds Mercy very pregnant with her first child which does not stop her from solving three mysteries with her dog Elvis.  The first mystery involves the murder of an academic who was visiting Mercy's friend Homer in his remote cabin.  When Mercy and Elvis come upon the body, Homer and his dog Argos are missing.  The second involves a missing billionaire from a nearby hunting preserve. Are they connected? The third mystery is a mysterious drawing that is left on Mercy's front door. As usual I loved all the dogs that show up in the Mercy Carr books. This book was heavy on references to Homer's The Oddysey which I didn't mind. 

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Whew. I chose the audio version of this memoir (narrated by Barbra herself) so that I could listen while I was making meals or cleaning my house. At over 48 hours I figured it would take me about a month and 1/2 to finish it. In fact I finished it in less than 30 days and my house was very clean because I always wanted to get to the end of a chapter. Streisand seems to go through every minute of her long life, analyzing herself, her politics, her movies, her TV specials and her music.  She doesn't hold back. I admit that I found the last few chapters a bit of a slog as she got into all of her political activism but maybe that was the result of reading it right after the election. Fortunately for her she kept a journal that she could refer to, although she seems to have very specific memories of every piece of clothing she ever wore. She is very up front that she wants to set the record straight on all the things that people have gotten "wrong" about her throughout her career (including the Streisand Effect). I don't know if she will achieve that but I was entertained. 

Held by Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels is a Canadian poet who also writes novels. This is a beautifully written novel that isn't for everyone. When I first heard it was a multi-generational novel I thought - oh no, this isn't for me. Those are usually huge and involve a lot of drama but may skimp on the character development. But I also heard that it began during WWI and I'm a sucker for WWI novels. So I thought I would give it a try. It's hard to describe the structure of this novel. I won't say it is a series of linked short stories because it isn't - and that was good because I don't really care for short stories anyway. It is more a series of vignettes, or even pictures, of various characters in different time periods who are all linked in some way.  And even within a chapter, the story is often told in little snippets of pictures (photography is a recurring plot element in the novel). As I said, this is not a novel for everyone.  If you like a linear storyline this isn't for you.  If you want to know every detail of a character's back story, this isn't for you. This is a beautifully written study of the effects of trauma, war, and love on individuals across generations.  It is definitely going on my "best of" list for 2024.  I wish there had been time to re-read it immediately but it was due back at the library and there was a long wait list. Although I read it digitally I think it would be best read in hard copy so that the reader can easily flip around figuring out how the characters are related to each other. 

French St. Louis:  Landscapes, Contexts and Legacy edited by Jay Gitlin, Robert Michael Morrissey and Peter J. Kastor

No one who isn't, like me, interested in French colonial North America will need to pick up this book although if you do you will find 10 well written essays about the colonial legacy of St. Louis.  This book arose out of a symposium at the Missouri History Museum in 2014 when the City of St. Louis was celebrating the 250th anniversary of its founding.  I did not attend (and I'm not sure why since I was VERY interested in all the celebrations that year).  It is divided into five parts:  (i) Fashioning a Colonial Place:  (ii) St. Louis between Empire and Frontier; (iii) St. Louis and New Orleans, a Regional Perspective; (iv) Visualizing Place:  New Sources and Resources for Telling the Story of St. Louis; and (v) Maintaining the French Connection of St. Louis.  All were interesting to me.  It was helpful that the essays were not written in too much of an academic style.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

This was a BlueSky read-along for December. I had read some Vonnegut before but not this one. I can see why some people really like it because it is funny (in the usual Vonnegut absurd way) and you can't really disagree with his underlying message (dour though it is, as usual). But it also came off as very dated especially with respect to the characters that were people of color and women. I didn't really care for it but I'm not sorry I read it. 

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

I love Louise Erdrich's writing and I don't think she has written anything that I haven't enjoyed. I purchased this book as soon as it was published but I saved it to read toward the end of the year. (I like to end the year on a high note if possible.) The novel starts after the 2008 financial crisis and has as its main characters three teenagers living in a small farming town near the Red River. At first I admit that I found the story hard to get into because I just wasn't in the mood to read about teenage angst. But as the story developed I found myself engaged, especially with the adults and their problems (including worrying about their teenage kids).  As the story moved into the problems of farming, especially beet farming, with industrial herbicides I (surprisingly) found myself engrossed. There is a section where a character is working in the fracking industry and I found it nerve-wracking because it is so dangerous. If you want great writing, Louise Erdrich is for you. If you want deep character development, Louise Erdrich is for you.  If you need a galloping, page turning plot, she probably isn't for you - but there IS a plot and she does build suspense. Most of her novels take place in the same general vicinity and there are usually Easter Egg references to characters from other novels - she's sort of the Upper Midwest/Native American version of William Faulkner in creating a sense of place that extends through all her novels. This is not my favorite Louise Erdrich novel but as usual I enjoyed it tremendously.  

The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey

This is the fourth in the Perveen Mistry series set in Bombay (Mumbai) in the 1920's. Perveen is the first woman solicitor in Bombay but she is not allowed to act as a barrister (appear in court) because she is a woman. This series is interesting because although it is set in colonial India (and there are so many books that are set during the colonial period) Perveen and her family are not Hindu or Muslim, they are Farsi (Parsi) and live by a different set of rules. I find that background interesting and Massey certainly creates a deep sense of place in these novels. I like Perveen as a character and the mysteries are fine. It isn't my favorite mystery series but I enjoy it and I was pleased to discover this fourth book. 

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Another BlueSky read-along, this ghost story has been filmed so many times that I found myself distracted by remembering film versions of the story and I couldn't even remember if I had ever read the original. When I reached the end I was positive that I had not read it before. The Victorians liked to be told ghost stories at Christmas (think A Christmas Carol) and so I tried to think like a Victorian. But I truly don't get the enjoyment of ghost stories at Christmas unless they involve Christmas. It is an interesting story because James purposely explains nothing and it seemed as if almost every sentence was ambiguous.  And the end came out of nowhere! I listened to the audio book for this reading which may have influenced my reading because I was very aware of just how impressionable the governess was (and also the reader made every sentence out of the little boy's mouth creepy). I enjoyed reading it but I think in the future I will stick to my annual re-reads of A Christmas Carol.

Murder at La Villette by Cara Black

I've always enjoyed Cara Black's Aimee Leduc mysteries. She sets each one in a different arrondissement in Paris, but each takes place about 20 years in the past. She says this is because that is the time period she lived in Paris and remembers well. I've always enjoyed the sense of place in this series. One thing I don't like in a mystery series is when the author apparently runs out of crime ideas and starts having the detective and his/her family be the targets of the crime. It just seems so unlikely to me. And that is the direction this series has been going in for some time. This time Aimee is accused of murder and must find the real murderer in order to clear her name. The part that I found most unlikely is that her close friends wonder if the accusation is true.  This is a short book, about one hundred pages shorter than her usual mysteries and I think it's because there isn't much there. Mostly Aimee runs around Paris noting well known sights.  So, unless you are already invested in this series I don't recommend it. 

PS: 

I am adding a book to this post that I read in August while I was on vacation.  As I was drafting my end-of-year summary of reading I realized that I had neglected to include this book in any blog post. 

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

Set in Trinidad in the 1940's this is the story of cultures existing in a period of change. This story centers on the island's minority Hindu population. Hansraj Saroop lives with his family in the "Barrack", a dilapidated shelter that houses multiple families. His wife wants him to purchase land in the village for a real house and that leads to him taking a job as a night watchman at a local estate where the wealthy husband has disappeared leaving a wife behind. But to me it was the peripheral characters who made this novel come to life. There is a plot but it seems secondary to Hosein, who draws vivid pictures of all the characters in this novel. This novel won the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Fiction and, while it wasn't my favorite historical novel this year, I did enjoy it. 

 

November Reading

 I finished the following books in November:

Two Short Stories

In the leadup to the election, on BlueSky we diverted ourselves by reading two short stories:  Edgar Allen Poe's Murder in the Rue Morgue and Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia.  I had read both of these long, long ago.   While I'm not much of a short story reader it was good to re-visit them.  I knew that Poe somewhat invented the murder mystery but I had not remembered (or maybe did not know) that his characters were precursors of Homes and Watson.  I vaguely remembered the direction that the story took (which is a crazy direction) but was amused by it all the same.  I enjoyed re-reading the Sherlock Homes story because Irene Adler was the only person to outwit Sherlock (although this is more because he underestimated her, perhaps because she was a woman).  

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves

This is the book I read in the aftermath of the election, my library hold came in just in time for me to escape into Ann Cleeves' next Vera Stanhope mystery.  This one finds Vera still trying to deal with the sad aftermath of the last case, dealing with a new team member named Rosie Spence and trying to change her ways at work and be more open with feedback to her subordinates.  All with mixed success.  The main mystery is a young volunteer at a local home for troubled teens who is found murdered at the same time that one of the teens disappears.  So it is a mix of a murder mystery and a missing teenager case.  I enjoyed this mystery, it was just what I needed at the time. I did think that all of the detectives were missing a blatant clue throughout most of the book that I thought of at the beginning, but I still didn't guess whodunnit.  I recommend all the Vera Stanhope mysteries and, while you don't necessarily have to start at the beginning, I do think you get more out of the character development if you do.  

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

Who would have guessed that a novel about girl youth boxers would be just what I needed after the election?  But it was. The novel is set up in accordance with the grid for a boxing tournament and each match gets its own chapter.  Bullwinkel tells the story in the third person where we know what the girl is thinking in the moment, we know about her past and she even tells us what the girl grows up to be.  This is a fairly short novel but I thought it was exquisitely written and she made the characters come to life.  There is also a certain amount of page turning plot as you wonder which girl will win the match and the tournament.  Recommended. 

Agony in Amethyst by A.M. Stuart

This is the latest, and perhaps the last (?), of the Harriet Gordon mysteries. The story is set in colonial Singapore circa 1911.  Harriet assists in solving a murder that takes place at Government House. Stuart based the story on a true story involving a high diplomat who was a known pedophile.  In the afterward she says that "she is not going to say that this is the last you will see of Harriet and Curran but I do feel that this series arc is concluded."  I enjoyed this series mostly for the sense of place, although I liked the characters too.  The mysteries were always fine but weren't the real draw for me. 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

This was a BlueSky read-along that began the day following the election.  I'm not sure I was in the right frame of mind to read about a man who abused women but it was a very good book. At first I wondered if it was intended to be a series of vignettes about village life in Africa but eventually I realized these vignettes were important in order to understand what was lost to colonialism.  It is the first in a trilogy but I'm not in the frame of mind right now to read the others. 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

An interesting first novel set during the Peloponnesian Wars in ancient Syracuse.  Three years earlier Syracuse had been invaded by Athens but, in the most unlikely turn of events, they defeated Athens. The prisoners of war were put in chains and lived outdoors in a quarry where they were basically starving to death.  Two out of work Syracusians decide to put on performances of Medea and The Trojan Women using the prisoners, giving them extra food in exchange for acting in the performances.  It is in some ways a difficult story to read because of the brutality of the situation but it is also is a tribute to the power of theater. Recommended. 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The winner of this year's Booker Prize this is a very short novel about one 24 hour period on the International Space Station.  Harvey follows the astronauts and cosmonauts, American, Russian, Italian, British, and Japanese, through their day.  It isn't clear what year it is (on this day there is the liftoff of a manned flight to the Moon) but it is clear that the ISS is on its last legs.  This is a beautifully written little novel in which nothing much happens but you get a clear idea of the characters and their lives before they went into space and on the ISS.  I've seen people call this a science fiction novel but I think it is meant to be a realistic novel that incorporates the everyday science of the space station. It is her writing and the sense of place that elevates this novel rather than any kind of plot or even the characterizations. 

Tell me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

All of Strout's novels (that I've read) are set within the same fictional universe and this one is no different. We return to Crosby Maine where Lucy Barton is still living with her ex-husband William and is still friends with Bob Burgess.  Bob introduces her to Olive Kittredge who is living in the local retirement home and Lucy and Olive begin to share stories of "unrecorded lives".  Bob, although mostly retired, represents the defendant in a local shocking crime.  But plot is not the point of Strout's novels.  She, as usual, has ideas she wants to explore and in this novel the idea of loneliness and the nature of love are front and center.  Bob often reflects that you can tell people your story but they don't care "except for one minute.  It was not their fault, most just could not really care past their own experiences."  And who, asks the omniscient narrator, "who, who, who in this whole entire world -- does not want to be heard?" How rare, then, to find a friend who truly listens to you.  And Strout also seems to explore the When Harry Met Sally question:   Can men and women ever truly be friends without the sex part getting in the way?   Whenever I start a Strout novel I'm not sure if it is for me.  The conversational tone always throws me.  But I soon get beyond that and end up truly enjoying each novel and this one was no different.