October Reading

I found myself very impatient in my reading this month and it was in general unsatisfactory.  This may partly be because I was traveling for a period of time and didn't do much reading that week.  I also found myself less able to concentrate on books this month because of the election news and also because I found the group-read that I was finishing so time consuming (and depressing).  That may have made me more impatient with the other books I was reading.   

 These are the books I finished in October.

West by Carys Davies

Back in June I read Clear by Carys Davies, a delightful little book related to the highland clearances in Scotland.  West was Davies' debut novel and, again, it is very short, longer than a novella but under 200 pages.  This novel is set in the United States in the early 1800s where a widower named Bellman becomes obsessed with finding wooly mammoths (or other such extinct creatures) living somewhere in the American west.  He leaves his 10 year old daughter behind in Pennsylvania and sets out to follow the paths of Lewis and Clark in search of the mythical beasts.  He is obsessed.  This story has both tragic and comic elements and is very much a first novel.  It shows great potential but the ending is wrapped up a bit too tidily.

What Time  the Sexton's Spade doth Rust by Alan Bradley

The latest installment in the Flavia de Luce mystery series.  I think this series has gone off the rails (jumped the shark?).  Flavia is growing up, which makes her less annoying.  She more or less gets along with the sister that is left at home and she is simultaneously amused and annoyed by the younger cousin who has moved in with them and wants to solve mysteries with Flavia.  But the underlying story has become more and more unbelievable and in this episode Flavia (who, if you've never read these, is a child) manages to infiltrate a secure American air base.  I'm not  saying I wouldn't read the next installment when (if) it comes out but my enjoyment level has deteriorated.  

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

This is the new mystery series by Richard Osman as he puts his other popular series on hold for a time.  I didn't like this one quite as much, mostly because the characters are very spread out geographically.  Some are in England, some are in the US and then they go to the middle east.  The characters themselves are fine and I won't mind reading about them in future books, but I felt that this was very much a "set up" book for future sequels. 

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

A lovely novel set in the 20th and 21st century but with very much an 18th century feel.  In the first section I had to keep reminding myself that it took place in 1997 and not 1897.  The two main characters, Thomas Hart (I continually thought of him as Thomas Hart Benton - I'm from Missouri) and Grace Macauley both belong to a very conservative Baptist Church in the fictional Essex town of  Aldleigh. The church sits on the edge of an estate with a deteriorating "big house" and, supposedly a ghost.  The ghost, Thomas Hart and Grace co-exist in the novel, brought together by each having an unrequited love.  The meditations on the meaning of love are interspersed with information about astronomy, particularly comets.  The only other Sarah Perry novel I've read is The Essex Serpent which I liked in general but felt it didn't quite live up to expectations.  I liked this novel much more.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

This was a group read through BlueSky. After I finished I googled reviews (both formal and blog reviews) of this novel.  One person wrote that "Depending on who you ask, it is 770 pages of unreadable, pseudo-intellectual tripe or a massively ingenious re-imagination of the genre."   I'm among the first group.  I can see why the Pulitzer Committee refused to award it the prize when it was recommended.   But  mostly, in a lifetime of reading novels by white men obsessed with their own and others' penises, this was the most penis-centric book I've ever read.  And in a lifetime of reading novels by white men that are (or border on) misogynistic, but that I  put up with for the sake of the good writing, this is the most misogynistic book with, as far as I'm concerned, not enough redeeming writing characteristics.  I read it.  That's all I can say. 

Midnight and Blue by Iain Rankin

In a month in which I had trouble losing myself in books, this was the most enjoyable of my reads.  The next in the Rebus series, this finds Rebus in prison (I honestly thought at the end of the last book that by the time this book came around Rebus would be out on appeal).  The death of a prisoner is being investigated by the police and Rebus is also investigating at the request of the prison Governor. In the meantime Siobhan is investigating a missing teenager that eventually ties into the main story.  Everyone is back:  Rebus, Siobhan, Christine and Malcom Fox (the character all the other characters love to hate).  I wasn't sure that Rankin could pull off a good mystery with Rebus in prison but he did it.  I'm guessing that by next novel Rebus will be out, because how many prison mysteries can there be?  But I could be wrong. 

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

This was my book club book for the month and if it hadn't been I would have DNF'd it.  The author says "this completes a trilogy of novels that explore the complexity of female relationships and the diverse roles that women play in contemporary society." I haven't read the other two novels (and have no interest in reading them.)  It is also a murder mystery.  As I've said many times, I have a problem with mystery novels written in the first person because it requires the narrator to be unreliable - often because they are lying to the reader (and maybe to themselves) and/or because they are stupid.  And I do not like to be in the heads of those people unless there is a really good literary reason. It was clear from early on that the narrator was a habitual liar in life although she justified it by just trying to "make things go away" and she also seemed really stupid with respect to her stepson.  Late in the novel there is a big "reveal" that the narrator has been keeping from us - for no good reason other than so that the author can have a big "reveal" late in the novel.  I didn't like this novel.  At all. 

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

This first novel, by Dutch author Yael van der Wouden, is a wonderfully written story of  love, repression, sexual awakening and living with the history of World War II.  The main character, Isabel, is not a particularly likeable character.  She lives alone in the house she grew up in, that she moved into with her mother and two brothers after the War.   She seems determined to preserve every thing in the house exactly as her mother kept it, but in reality she has no claim on the house which is owned by her uncle and is to go to her older brother, Louis, when he marries.  Isabel's life is upended when Louis' latest girlfriend, Eva, comes to stay with her. Although I liked the writing, I thought the section regarding falling in love and sexual awakening went on a little too long.  Also, I'm not sure if the twist at the end was meant to be an unexpected twist but I figured it out pretty much from the beginning.  I also think that having a character find and read another (living) character's diary in order for the plot to move along is taking the easy way out as a writer.  But none of that affected my joy in reading the beautiful prose in this novel.  This has a very slow moving plot so if you are looking for a page turner, it isn't for you.  If you are looking for beautiful writing, give it a try. 

September Reading

 I've been involved in a BlueSky reading group of a novel that has taken up a lot of time this month (and is not yet finished).  I haven't particularly been enjoying that novel and it is very long and dense so I tried to find other, lighter reading in September that I was likely to enjoy.  None of it was very challenging.  The following is what I finished in September.

Shakespeare:  The Man who Pays the Bills by Judi Dench

This memoir began as a series of interviews in which Brendan O'Hea asked the brilliant actress Judi Dench questions about all the Shakespearean roles she has played.  It was turned into a book, retaining the question/answer format.  I chose to listen to the audio version because I knew there would be much Shakespeare quoting and I'd rather listen to Shakespeare than read him.  Dench does not read her own part, that is done by the actress Barbara Flynn who does a wonderful job and made me forget that I wasn't listening to Judi herself.  If you like Shakespeare (or even if you don't but you love memoirs by actors) I recommend this book. She talks about (and brilliantly analyzes)  Lady Macbeth, Tatiana, Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and others.  She talks about rehearsals, the audiences, famous scenes.  She is very funny but also enlightening.  I won't look at any of these plays the same way again. 

You are Here by David Nicholls

This is the story of two lonely people who find themselves together on a hike through the English (specifically Yorkshire) countryside.  Marnie is divorced and finds herself feeling disconnected from all her old friends who are getting married and having babies. She works from home as an editor and spends much of her time reading.  Michael is separated from his wife and deals with this by taking long, solitary walks to avoid being in his house. A mutual friend demands that Michael organize a walking trip on the Coast to Coast trail through Yorkshire and also demands that Marnie come along.  The very bad weather conspire to bring the two of them together, but it is never clear if they will end up together.  There is not much plot to this book, it is completely character based with a strong sense of place as you travel with them along the often soggy path. Maps at the beginning of each chapter tell you where they are on the journey.  I realize that the setup makes this seem like a very serious novel but it is, in fact, funny and I enjoyed it tremendously. 

The Witching Hour by Catriona McPherson

This is the next installment of the long running Dandy Gilver mystery series.  Dandy is a woman, married to a rich Scottish landowner.  The series started in the 1920's which was why I picked it up. It is now the late 1930's and WWII is upon them.  Dandy is now middle aged and her children are grown, her sons old enough to go to war.  Over the years Dandy has passed the time solving murder mysteries with her friend Alec.  This time the murder involves the philandering husband of a good friend.  This is not my favorite mystery series, it is a little too cozy for me.  But it has a nice sense of place (Scotland) and the mysteries themselves are often somewhat interesting.  This could be read alone easily but, as always with a series, I recommend you start at the beginning.

Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead 

It is 1936 and famed magician Joseph Spector is assisting with the illusions in a new play.  But he is soon also assisting Scotland Yard in a mysterious case of a man discovered dead in a locked room with no way that the killer could have escaped unseen. Although this book was released in 2022 it reads like a classic whodunnit. (So, if you don't like classic whodunnits you won't like this.) Apparently the author has previously published short stories featuring the magician character.  I enjoyed it, I always enjoy a locked room mystery.  I am assuming that the author will publish more novels featuring him. 

The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves

When I put my name on the list for the next Vera mystery I realized I had missed this book, the third in the Matthew Venn series of mysteries, which had come out last year.  I enjoy this series.  This installment is set in a bleak village on the Devon coast where a famous adventurer (he sailed around the world) has been found dead. There are many twists and turns and the setting is very atmospheric.  I like the characters that Cleeves is building in this world.  The main detective was raised in a conservative, stifling church environment but long ago broke away from it.  He still feels the psychological effects however.  And he is still trying to repair his relationship with his mother, who broke off contact with him when he came out as gay.   This could be read alone but you would probably enjoy it more if you started at the beginning of the series.  Take heart, that is only a couple books before this one. 

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

This poetry collection was written during and published immediately after the pandemic lockdown.  I bought this collection when it came out but it was too raw for me at the time.  Now that time has passed I found myself able to read it slowly over the last couple of months.  Parts of it are wonderful and other parts left me cold - I guess you could call it uneven.  But that probably isn't unusual for a young poet just starting her career.  She experiments a lot - with words, with format, even with other people's words.  I'm glad I read it but I don't think most of the poems will stick with me. But I wait to see what she will do next. 

The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

This memoir by Kelly Bishop is strongest in the first half in which she remembers her childhood, her dance lessons, her disappointment in not being chosen for American Ballet Theater and her years on Broadway where she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Sheila in the original A Chorus Line. She dishes on her professional relationship with Michael Bennett, which is fascinating.  When she gets into her later career (including the film Dirty Dancing and her role on Gilmore Girls as the grandmother Emily Gilmore) the story seems more generalized and vague.  She is specific about what it takes to build a career like hers but there is less dishing on her co-stars. Maybe because that's because most of the people are still alive.  There is a wonderful introduction by Amy Sherman-Palladino.  If you like memoirs about Broadway this is for you.  If you are looking for a lot of dirt about Gilmore Girls you may find that you wish there was more. 

Deep Beneath Us by Catriona McPherson

My second Catriona McPherson book this month, this one is a standalone mystery told from a couple of points of view but the main point of view is named Tabitha.  I often don't like first person narratives because, in mysteries, the only way to make them work is for the narrator to be unreliable.  That usually means they are either a flat out liar OR they are too stupid to figure out what is going on.  In this case, McPherson gives Tabitha a kind of amnesia - she can't remember things that she was too young to understand and, instead, remembers things wrongly or the way other people described them.  But in some cases she's just blocked things out. It's an interesting concept.  But when the four teenagers in the novel catch on faster than her, it still borders on her being stupid.  I didn't much care for this book. 

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

This Booker long-list debut novel involves the kidnapping of a young Irish lad to be held until his ne'er do well older brother pays back the drug dealers he owes.  Barrett did a good job with the characterizations in this novel - there are a lot of characters in this short book and he differentiated them well.  I thought the story just kind of petered out at the end in a way that I didn't find particularly believable and I never had a specific feel for the part of Ireland in which the story was set.  But the sense of tension throughout was well done.   I think I would have enjoyed this novel more if I had read it at a different time. 

Death of Mr. Dodsley by John Ferguson

Another of the British Library Crime Classics with which I have had mixed results, I actually really liked this one.  Mr. Dodsley is the proprietor of a secondhand bookshop on Charing Cross Road who is found murdered in the early hours of the morning by a patrolman.  There are few clues but the murder seems to bear some resemblance to a new detective novel authored by the daughter of a rising member of parliament. Although I did guess the murderer before the end, some (but not all) of the motives surprised me although I'm not completely sure that Ferguson played fair with the motives.  The police in this novel are not too stupid and the detective is fairly low key.  Recommended.

Murder at King's Crossing by Andrea Penrose

The next installment of the Wrexford & Sloane Historical Mystery series, this one finds Wrex and Charlotte hosting the wedding of their close friends only to have the weekend celebration interrupted by the discovery of the body of  a friend of the bride's.  As with all of Penrose's mysteries, this one revolves around technological innovation, this time involving lengthening the span of bridges to support improved transportation. The mathematics (calculus) discussion in this one was a little too much for me but I enjoyed the rest of the mystery.  As always I recommend starting the series at the beginning. 

An Infinity of Nations:  How the Native New World Shaped Early North America by Michael Witgen

This book is somewhat of a follow-up to Richard White's work The Middle Ground, which I read years ago and found fascinating.  This is the story of the indigenous peoples of Middle America - the Anishinaabe and the Dakota peoples of the Great Lakes and Northern Great Plains.  While European powers were colonizing the Eastern Seaboard and claiming North America as parts of their "Empires" they had no control over the "infinity of Nations" that occupied the interior of the continent.  Until the middle of the 1800's, the native peoples controlled the majority of the continent.  They had to change to adapt to the strangers coming into their midst, changing their economy, and they had to create their own Native New World.  This was a fascinating book and I recommend it to anyone interested in native America during the colonial period.  But be aware that this is written in the "academic" style which tends to be very, very repetitive. 

July and August Reading

I was away on vacation at the end of July and never posted my July reading. So this post is a combined post for July and August. 

In the past I've done a great deal of reading while I am on vacation, sitting on a deck overlooking a lake. But since I retired, and have more time for reading in my ordinary day-to-day life, I didn't feel the need to cram in as many books as it was possible for me to read on vacation (although I still read quite a few books). The following are the books I finished in the last two months. 

How Baseball Happened:  The True Story Revealed by Thomas W. Gilbert 

Gilbert tells the history of amateur baseball in the 1800's, before the professional baseball leagues were formed. I am a baseball fan but this book was a little too deep in the weeds for me. The book gives a lot of pre-civil war history of New York and Brooklyn with a little bit of Boston and Philadelphia thrown in. It was a relief when he got to Cincinnati and its amazing winning streak.  If you are a BIG baseball fan in general (not just of professional baseball but amateur too) and/or you live on the east coast, you may enjoy this book. Otherwise, I'd give it a skip.  

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

A disappointing mystery set mostly on a Greek island owned by a retired American movie star. The narrator is unreliable and you know that from the beginning. The plot is incredibly complicated - well, actually not that complicated, it's just told in a complicated way. I listened to the audio version and the narrator reminded me of Addison DeWitt from the movie All About Eve. As a mystery, it wasn't very suspenseful and the characters seemed undeveloped despite great efforts to develop them. I do not recommend.  

Gib Rides Home by Zilpha Keatley Snyder 

One of my favorite books as a middle school aged child was The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (a Newberry Honor winner). But other than its sequel I never read any of her other books. This one is loosely based on the story of her father, who grew up in an orphanage. It was delightful. Yes it's low middle grade, but the characters are really well drawn and the story, while somewhat predictable, has enough twists to make it interesting. If you have a middle grade child, I recommend.  

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

This was our mid-summer readalong book on BlueSky. I had read this novel many, many years ago but was happy to read it again. In fact, in the pre-pandemic times I had this plan to read all of the Virginia Woolf novels in order of publication.  I had made it through Jacob's Room and had reached Mrs. Dalloway and was trying to decide if I should read it again or skip over it when the pandemic hit. I probably should have read it during lockdown because part of the plot is that the main character, Clarissa, is still feeling the effects of the Spanish Flu. There were many parts of the novel that I had forgotten. I remembered that it was a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, who was preparing for an evening party. I remembered the subplot of poor Septimus Smith who suffered from PTSD from WWI.  I had not realized it was a post-pandemic novel. Reading it slowly let me savor Virginia Woolf's prose and also allowed me to really think about the minor characters we meet throughout Clarissa's day.  If you are looking for a plot-heavy book this probably isn't for you.  But the characters are interesting and the writing style is fascinating. Recommended. 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

An enjoyable little book set immediately after World War I. (Ironically I chose it as some light reading in the middle of reading Mrs. Dalloway only to find that it was set in the same time period with characters that had many of the same problems arising out of  WWI and the Flu Pandemic!) The main character has lost her job as an estate manager because the men are back from the war and "need" the jobs. She reluctantly takes a temporary position as the companion of an elderly woman recovering from the flu.  They travel to the seaside and adventures ensue when they encounter a group of women who were motorcycle messengers during the war and want to continue to ride.  A delightful summer read.  

All the World's A Stage Fright:  Misadventures of a Clandestine Critic by Bob Abelman

Written during the COVID shutdown, this is a fictional "memoir" of a theater critic (and former actor) who is embedded within a local theater company in order to write about it from the inside. He must deal with his fear of Shakespeare because the show is "As You Like It". This is a funny novella that isn't for everyone. I don't think people who are not theater geeks would like it much. But for those of us who are, it was enjoyable. 

Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

Another of the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my Mom, this was my second by Mavis Doriel Hay (the first was Death on the Cherwell which I read in June). The plot involved a murder on a spiral staircase at a Tube Station in London.  All the people at the boarding house where the victim lived have ideas and all of them withhold information from the police. If nothing else it made me appreciate why lying to the FBI is a crime - it really does waste law enforcement's time. I didn't care much for this one and don't much recommend it. 

The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

A pick by my book club which I read even though I had to miss the meeting because I was on vacation.  Set in 1920's London, the main character is a Chinese academic named Lao She who becomes caught up in a murder investigation being conducted by an acquaintance named Judge Dee Re Jie. (These were apparently real people but the authors take literary license in putting them in a murder mystery). Dee is investigating the murder of a man he knew during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labor Corps. I liked this book although there were long action sequences that I could have done without (I'd probably like them in a filmed version). They were very Jackie Chan. Although set in a time period I'm familiar with, I had no real knowledge of the expatriate Chinese community in London at the time. I found that interesting. And the mystery itself was fine.  Recommended.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Set in Penang during the months that the writer Somerset Maugham visited the area, this is the fictional story of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn who host Maugham at their house. Lesley tells Maugham the story of her friend Ethel Proudcock, an English woman who was accused of murder, on which Maugham will later base a famous short story. But it is also the story of the British in Southeast Asia and the Chinese who lived there and were trying to overthrow the Emperor from afar. I really enjoyed this book. There is a plot although it is slow moving; it is really a character based book.  The sense of place is very good and I loved the writing itself. Recommended. 

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Of all the books I read on vacation, this was the biggest disappointment. I really liked Catton's Booker Prize winning novel The Luminaries and was looking forward to this one. Catton was raised in New Zealand and both novels are set in New Zealand.  Birnam Wood is the name of a gardening collective that sometimes illegally cultivates land it doesn't have permission to be on. The idealistic leaders (Mira and Shelley) want major social change. Then there is Tony, who used to belong to the group, and thinks he knows everything. He's as far left as only someone born entitled can be. The group finds a piece of land to cultivate on an estate outside a small town where they come up against an (evil) American billionaire Robert Lemoine who has made his fortune in high tech drones (which he uses unsparingly). (If nothing else, this novel will convince you that we are all constantly being surveilled.) The two sides start working together for their own reasons which eventually clash with horrifying results. This is very much a plot driven novel. But  I found the plot eye-rolling, and I couldn't figure out if it is supposed to be satirical (I don't do well with satire, I'm too literal) because the end of the novel seemed completely implausible to me and many of the characters verged on (or simply were) stereotypes. Maybe this is because I have encountered too many high minded lefties (in person and on line) and all billionaires today seem to be evil stereotypes. In any event, I spent the last part of the novel rolling my eyes so hard they began to hurt. I don't recommend it. 

A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Wishaw

The first in the Lane Winslow mysteries set in a small town in Canada (British Columbia) after WWI.  I chose it because I was looking for a new mystery series and the setting intrigued me. I enjoyed this story and will probably read more of the series. Lane has moved to Canada to start over after losing the love of her life in WWI. Unbeknownst to many people, she had worked undercover during the War but now she just wants a simple life.  The mystery was fine and I liked all the characters from the area who were introduced.  

The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland 

A historical novel set in Richmond, Virginia in 1811, this was the best book I read while on vacation and will likely make my "best of" list for 2024.  It is the night after Christmas and the local theater is packed with hundreds of people there to see performances put on by the local theater troupe. Fire breaks out in the middle of the performance to catastrophic results.  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.  Beanland keeps the story moving and develops her characters (and other minor characters) so that you feel you know them.  The sense of place makes you feel you are there.  Recommended.

The Real Charlotte by E. CE. Somerville & Martin Ross

I can't remember how I learned about this book, but I do know that the minute I heard about it I ordered a copy. Somerville and Ross wrote the delightful The Irish R.M. which was later turned into a television series. I had never read anything else by them.  Written in 1895, this is the story of Charlotte Mullen, an Irish spinster, who reluctantly takes in her pretty young cousin Francie Fitzgerald. All the men in the village love Francie.  Charlotte plans to marry Francie to the son of the local gentry but Francie has other plans. Things build, as the back of the book says, to a shocking conclusion.  This novel had a slow beginning but once it gets going it became more of a page turner (for a Victorian novel).  Somerville and Ross were clearly Anglo Irish and the "real" Irish (the Catholic Irish) get short shrift, but despite that I enjoyed it very much.  The characters were interesting.  Recommended.  

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

Memorial Day, 1958, and the town of Jewel Minnesota is celebrating.  But the sheriff is called away because the town's richest, and justifiably hated, citizen has been found floating in the river. The whole town suspects Noah Bluestone, a Native American married to a Japanese woman (two points against him in MN following WWII).  There are a lot of subplots in the book, too many to summarize.  What Krueger does best is capture the essence of small town mid-America in the 1950's - idyllic on one hand and yet teeming underneath with all the problems of society.  As a mystery, I was not surprised by the ending but I don't think Krueger really intended us to be. This is more a portrait of characters and the town.  

Waters of the Dancing Sky by Janet Kay

I met the author of this novel at the Ranier Days Festival in Ranier Minnesota while I was on vacation.  She has written two novels that are set up in the area of Minnesota where I vacation so I bought the latest and borrowed this one (her first) from a friend up there who had it.  The main character is escaping an abusive marriage and returns to the home of her grandmother on an island in Rainy Lake. The plot is pretty predictable. The author clearly did a TON of research on the area and she tried to include all of it, which bogged down the story. There is a lot of exposition. On the whole I think this would really only be of interest to people who know the locale. 

Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with recipes) by Lorna Landvik

A story revolving around a small town newspaper in Minnesota, this is the book chosen for my next book club meeting.  Haze Evans has been writing a column for the paper over a 50 year period but now she has suffered a stroke and she lies unconscious in the hospital.  The newspaper decides to run, in chronological order, a selection of her past columns, along with selected letters from readers at the time the column was published. (The reader letters show that trolls are not a new phenomenon and were not invented by the internet.)  One reader in particular objects to her liberal ideas and dubs them "the chronicles of a radical hag" which delights Haze.  Along the way in this story we meet a number of the townspeople and learn about their lives, including Susan and her teenage son Sam who has the job at the newspaper of reading all of Haze's old columns.  This novel is a journey through American history since the 1960s, but in a soft and funny way. The plot is light but there are good characters.  I would categorize this as a good summer read.   

Spirit Crossing (Cork O'Connor Series #20) by William Kent Krueger

The latest in the Cork O'Connor mystery series set near the Boundary Waters in Minnesota (I did not intend to read so many books based in Minnesota this summer!).  Cork and his family just want to pick blueberries but of course they find a dead body.  Is it the body of the missing white woman that has taken up most of the headline news or is it the body of a local Native American woman who is missing but the media doesn't care about?  Cork solves the mysteries, all in the leadup to his son's wedding, for which his daughter Annie has returned and is withholding some secret from the family.  Along the way everyone gets involved in environmental protests of a proposed pipeline from Canada.  I like this series although sometimes I think some of the plot points get a little far fetched.  Krueger is not Native American but Cork is 1/2 Native American and is at this point married to a Native American Woman.  Krueger leaned heavily into spirituality and visions in this novel - so you may need to suspend your own disbelief.  But on the whole I recommend this series. 

June Reading

This was an odd month for reading.  Each time I finished a book I felt at a loss about what book I should read next.  There just wasn't anything I was particularly in the mood for this month.  I kept borrowing books from the library and then returning them without even starting them. But despite that, I still ended up reading the usual average number of books and enjoyed (most of) those that I read just fine.  The ones I didn't enjoy, well I REALLY didn't enjoy them.  These are the books I finished in June,

The Best American Poetry 2023  David Lehman Series Editor; Elaine Equi Guest Editor

I like poetry generally and one of my goals this year was to read more poetry.  I picked up this book at the beginning of the year thinking it might give me an idea of contemporary American poets I should look out for because I have a hard time finding contemporary poetry I like.  I subscribe to The New Yorker and every week when the new issue arrives I flip through it to read the cartoons and the poetry first. Very, very rarely do I find a poem I like.  Most of the poems in the New Yorker I am at best indifferent to and at worst detest.  I assumed this had something to do with the poetry editor. Well, the same thing happened with this book. Of the 75 poems in this volume, I dog eared 12 to go back to after I finished.  And of those 12, only 6 still interested me on the re-read.  And not one of them made me want to go find other poetry by the poet.  I read this slowly, only 2-3 poems a day.  By the final few days I couldn't WAIT to finish this book and get rid of it.  

Clear by Carys Davies

What an exquisite little book this is.  It is very short, less than 200 pages.  The story takes place in 1843 near the end of the Scottish clearances when landlords would force the people who had lived on the land for generations to leave their homes to make way for sheep.  It also is the year of "the Great Disruption" of the Scottish Church when approximately 1/3 of the ministers broke away in rebellion against the patronage system whereby the landowners had the ability to install ministers in the parishes on their estates.  John Ferguson is one such minister who has broken away, but he is under tremendous stress about how he will support himself and his wife Mary.  And so he takes a job to travel to a small island (somewhere near Shetland) and 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 is the story of John, Mary and Ivar.  I can't say more without spoiling the story but it is a beautifully written little book.  Although it was short it took me a week to finish because I didn't want it to end (and I was also afraid how it would end).  Highly recommended. 

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the the last of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries according to the author.  And she tries to tie up a lot of the loose threads in this book.  Mostly she succeeds (and also maybe sets the stage for mysteries in a later period featuring one of the younger characters in this book?).  I've enjoyed this series although I liked the books that took place in the 1920s better than the later WWII era stories.  I don't think this particular book would appeal to those who haven't read the entire series but I do recommend the series. 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

This was a a re-read for me and part of a BlueSky readalong.  It had been years since I read it and I was surprised how little I remembered details, just the broad story.  I enjoyed re-reading it especially in conjunction with reading "Her Mother's Laugh" which I finished last month.  The comparisons with Victor Frankenstein creating his creature and then abandoning him was interesting to compare with the scientists doing genetic engineering research.  I recommend that everyone read this novel at some point in their lives, it isn't a long book. And it reads much differently than all of the movie adaptations that have been made.

Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg

I've had mixed results reading the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my mom, but without a doubt this one has been my favorite.  I think it's because I love stories that involve amateur pilots from the 1920's and 30's.  I'm not sure why.   In this story from 1934, one of the flight instructors at a private air club crashes and dies.  But all is not as it seems.  He was a good pilot and inspection shows nothing wrong with the aircraft. Was it an accident, was it a suicide or was it murder?    Edwin Marriott, the visiting Australian Bishop of Cootamundra, who is taking flying lessons at the club, is on the case with Inspector Bray from Scotland Yard. Sprigg wrote only seven crime novels and was killed in the Spanish Civil War before the age of 30.  It is good that this one was republished. 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

This was the book for my book club.  The main character, Elizabeth Zott, is a chemist working in 1960's America.  She puts up with a lot of misogyny.  She also finds and loses love.  And she eventually becomes a television celebrity with a cooking show that is based on chemistry.  Basically the author explores all the various meanings of "chemistry" which I enjoyed.  But the best part of the novel for me were the portions that were told from the point of view of her dog.  He was a great character.  Some parts of the novel I found depressing, because life for women in the work force has improved but not as much as one might hope. While I enjoyed this book and do recommend it, I also didn't take it very seriously and thought of it as a good beach read. 

The Extinction of Irina Rey by Jennifer Croft

A group of translators are gathered in a Polish village to translate the latest novel of a "great writer".  The narrator is unreliable and we know that because she is so stupid.  Sorry.  Others may not find her stupid, just misguided and not very observant.  I found her stupid.  I think I was supposed to find her funny, but I didn't. Then to make it more complicated it was supposedly a book in translation and the "translator" would insert footnotes telling you how full of s**t the narrator was.  It wasn't clear to me who actually "wrote" the novel (obviously Croft did but I wasn't clear if the purported narrator actually was supposed to have written the novel given the way the novel ends) which mostly just frustrated me. The plot meanders (and was in my opinion unbelievable), I had a hard time keeping the characters straight and I never really had a sense of the "mysterious" forest they were living on the edge of.  I don't recommend this. 

May Reading

The May weather was good and I traveled part of the month, both of which cut back on my reading time.  These are the books I finished in May:

Shades of Grey:  The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde

This was a re-read.  It's always hard to categorize Jasper Fforde's books.  He is best known for his Thursday Next series in which people can actually jump into books and meet the characters (as long as they are backstage).  Personally, I liked his Nursery Crime Series which features characters known from their appearance in nursery rhymes.  (As an aside, I'm particularly bad at remembering nursery rhymes so I drove people crazy when I was reading the first book in the series.  I would look up and say, for example, "Jack Spratt" and the people in the room would all look at me and start reciting the rhyme. Admit it, you're doing it in your head right now. I would then say, oh yes that's it, and go back to reading.)  This particular book was published in 2009 and was intended to be the first of a three part trilogy.  It, in fact, ends on a bit of a cliff hanger.  Of all of his books this was my favorite, possibly because it was the most original and didn't rely on any knowledge of literature or nursery rhymes. This is a future dystopian novel but the dystopian event occurred so long ago that people just refer to it as the "Something That Happened" and no one can remember what it was.  But it left a society that is ruled by a Colortocracy.  Let me quote the flyleaf:  "From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green, to the healing hues viewed to cure illness, to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by color.  In this world, you are what you can see."  Most people can perceive only one color.  The main character, Eddie Russett, has good Red perception and he wants to move up in society. He plays by the many, many rules of the society. For various reasons he and his father have relocated to a backwater village where he encounters, among others, a Grey girl named Jane who breaks all the rules and who opens his eyes to the fact that all is not what it seems.  I enjoyed this book as much this time as the last time.  However, the promised other two books in the trilogy never materialized ... until now.  I re-read this in anticipation of the next book FINALLY being issued this month.   FINALLY.  Because as much as I like this first book, it spends most of its time on world-building and only in the last 20% of the book do we finally get to what will clearly be the crux of the story.  This is a book for people who like complicated world building and clever writing.   The plot evolves slowly so anyone plot oriented may find it a bit slow going.  The character building is also slow building, but it is there.  I ordered the new book as soon I found out about it.   See below. 

Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde

Per the end of the first book (see above) this was supposed to be called Shades of Grey 2:  Painting by Numbers.  But I guess in the fifteen (15!) years it took for him to write the sequel, he changed his mind. As a sequel this is very good - I don't think it would make as much sense if you hadn't read the first book.  I can't really discuss the plot of the book without giving too much away, just know that Eddie and Jane continue to fight the color bureaucracy.   While this book doesn't answer ALL the questions it answers a number of questions and at least doesn't end on a complete cliff hanger which is good to know in case it takes him another fifteen years to write the final book. I really enjoy this series and recommend it if you like complicated world building and clever writing. 

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston 

A lot of people on line were recommending this thriller.  In my youth I read a whole lot of Robert Ludlum so I'm generally not particularly surprised by twists in thrillers and that was true for this one.  I figured out that the mysterious boss of the main character had to be one of two possible characters within the first third of the novel.  The author didn't give enough facts until the end to let the reader figure out which one but I still wasn't surprised when it turned out to be one of those two.  I thought this was a relatively slow read for a thriller.  There were a lot of sections that went back into the main character's past to show past "adventures" she had that were supposed to tie into the ending and some of them did.  But it really slowed the pace of the book for me.  I also thought the secondary characters were somewhat undeveloped.  This is a book meant for people who like page turners (even though I thought it was too slow), not people who want deep characters.  There was no particular sense of place and the writing was fine but not anything special. 

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths

This is a "standalone" novel in the Harbinder Kaur series that for some reason Elly Griffiths does not call a series.  In fact, Harbinder is hardly in this novel, it is mostly populated by the amateur sleuths that helped Harbinder on another case.  I generally like Elly Griffith's mysteries and I really like this group of characters:  Natalka (her Ukranian heritage is a little more front and center this time with the war), Benedict the former monk and Edwin the 80-something year old retiree who loves mysteries.  Here the mysteries involve deaths that all seem to be connected to a writing retreat.  Griffiths has a bit of fun with people who want to write murder mysteries.   On the whole, recommended.

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

Another in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series where Anthony Horowitz is a character in his own book.  This one actually preceded the last one I read, but somehow I had missed it.   This one involved a play that Horowitz (really) wrote and that (apparently really) didn't get great reviews.  The murder is of the critic who panned it, which must have been a joy for him to write.  I always enjoy these novels.  The mysteries are fine, it's the style and tone of the writing that make me enjoy these novels.   

She Has Her Mother's Laugh:  The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer. 

I've had this book since Christmas 2019, fully intending to read it in 2020.  But then 2020 happened and, well ... you know.  Zimmer is a columnist for the New York Times who writes about science.  This book is about heredity - both scientifically and culturally.  I am so glad I finally picked it up and read it.  Zimmer writes about complicated subjects (like genetics and CRISPR) in a completely accessible way.  In fact, since it is a few years old I found myself wanting an update to talk about discoveries in the last few years.  I learned so much reading this.  Be aware that it is long and dense, I read it 20-25 pages at a time over the course of a month.  I found it was necessary to stop often and think about what I had read. I may, in fact, read it (or selected chapters) again in a few months. 

 Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay

Another of the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my mom.  This one takes place at a fictional women's college at Oxford (apparently based on St. Hilda's which the author attended).  It had a little bit of a Nancy Drew feel with four undergraduates led by Sally investigating the crime.  The Detective Inspector is remarkably patient with them.  It is fairly light reading and doesn't hold a candle to, for instance, Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night which is also set at a women's college at Oxford. 

April Reading

I had a few goals at the start of the year:  (1) to read more classic novels, (ii) to re-read more books (I used to re-read a lot), (3) to be more selective in the mystery novels I read, and (4) to read more non-fiction.  I ended up finishing a couple of classic novels this month, one of which was a re-read (sorta).  I also read a non-fiction book in one of my areas of interest that I used to read in all the time.  I also read a few very good mystery novels.  So it was, in many ways a successful reading month.  And yet ... perhaps because it was the beginning of spring, I felt less like reading this month than I did in the prior months.  The following are the books I finished in April.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain read by Elijah Wood

I decided I wanted to read the new novel "James" this month (see below) which is based on Mark Twain's Huck Finn novel.  But it had been years and years since I had read Huck Finn and I wanted to refresh my memory.  This novel was never in any of my school curricula although we had a copy at home that I read (although I'm not even sure that I finished it.)  I had a vague recollection of the plot and I had a vague recollection that it went on and on and on in some places describing all the hijinks that Huck got up to.   And, yes, it does go on and on but it is much funnier than I remembered.  I don't think this is a novel for young people to read.  I don't think they would really get the satire. Much of the humor requires the reader to have a certain level of education in history and literature to understand all the allusions.  I did remember all the dialect Twain used so, after my success reading Their Eyes Were Watching God in audio, I decided to listen to an audio recording.  If you've never read Huck Finn I can highly recommend the Audible recording done by Elijah Wood.  He does all the voices wonderfully, even the women.  And most importantly he makes Huck (and Tom Sawyer) sound like the youngsters they are in the book.  If you don't remember that they are youngsters, they could be very annoying. This was a groundbreaking anti-slavery novel in its day but be warned that Twain uses the vernacular of the day including much casual use of the N word.  It can be jarring.  Perhaps the best thing about the novel in my opinion is his description of floating down the Mississippi on the raft.  Growing up next to the river, this was delightful to me.  The runaway slave, Jim, is of course a main character in the novel and I paid particular attention to Jim since his story is the story of "James".  Although it is clear that Twain is fond of Jim as a character, he also uses a lot of stereotypes and often Jim sounds like a simpleton. The real point of the novel comes when Huck wrestles with his conscience which tells him that legally and in accordance with religious mores of the day he needs to deliver Jim to the authorities but he can't do that to his friend.  When he finally decides that if being true to Jim means he will go to hell, then he will go to hell.   Even without the publication of "James" I'm very glad I re-read this novel. 

James by Percival Everett

First, you do not have to have read Huck Finn to enjoy this tour de force retelling of Twain's story. But remembering the Twain story does add to the enjoyment.  Huck Finn is told from the point of view of a boy who, no matter the danger, just wants to enjoy the adventure.  James is told from the point of view of a grown man with a wife and child.  He is also a character that is in danger every minute from all the people he and Huck meet.  So while Huck may know that the two men known as the Duke and the King are con artists, its still an adventure for him.  For James, he knows they have the power of life and death over him. Everett also is less wordy than Twain and there wasn't a point where I grew tired of the side characters.  In Huck Finn there are multiple places where Jim and Huck are separated and the story stays with Huck (since it is told in the first person).  Everett fills in the blanks.  He does make a lot of changes, especially to the end of the story and even the time period in which it takes place.  And there is a big unexpected twist that I'm not sure was necessary but certainly made the story more interesting.  The best thing is that he retained the humor and added many ludicrous situations that I think Twain would have approved of.  And he made James a real person, not a stereotype. All in all, highly recommended.  I'll be thinking about this novel for a long time. 

Middlemarch by George Eliot

I read this as part of a group read-along on BlueSky and I'm glad I did it that way.  I tried to read it last year but only read about 1/3 of the novel before leaving it behind.  In general this novel was not for me but I know that some people consider it their favorite novel of all time.  I discuss why it didn't work for me in this post. 

Murder at the Merton Library by Andrea Penrose

This is a part of a continuing mystery series set during the Regency Period.   The thing I like about this series is that the plot usually revolves around some kind of scientific experiment or invention that really happened during the period and I always learn something.  This time the plot revolved around the race to develop a steam powered vessel that could cross the Atlantic (there were steam powered paddlewheelers at this time but paddlewheels were not suitable for ocean swells).  Eventually they would come up with the screw shaped propeller blade but there was also the problem of generating enough steam which required more fuel than the ship could carry.  We know that eventually all these problems were solved but not until after the time periord of this novel.  The mystery was, as usual, decent.  I also like the gradual development of the characters over the span of the books. 

What Cannot Be Said by C. S. Harris

This is the next installment in one of my favorite mystery series: The Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series.   Set during the regency, Sebastien St. Cyr is a Viscount who helps the police from time to time.  It started because he was better able to assist when someone in the aristocracy was involved.  I enjoyed this installment although the possible solution occurred to me early on and I thought "no, she would never go in that direction".  The thing I like best about this series is her slow character development.  She never rushes anything.  For a few books I've been waiting to hear what the reaction of his community has been to Sebastien and his wife Hero adopting a child who looks just like Sebastien.  Oh the gossip there must be.  And yet it isn't until this book, in one line, that we begin to hear it.  And I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on what Hero's cousin Victoria is up to.  If you are going to read this series you need to read from the beginning.  Know that the first few books are fine but they really start to get good at about book 4. 

The Lake District Murder by John Bude

This is another of the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my mom.  This is the third John Bude novel that I've read and of all the BLCC books I've read I've consistently understood why his are being reissued.  This one is more of a police procedural than a whodunnit.  We have a pretty good idea early on whodunnit, but the why and how (and how to prove them) are the mystery.  Sometimes this novel got bogged down in describing the procedures the police (Inspector Meredith) used to catch the criminals but otherwise it was perfectly enjoyable. 

Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

Back when I was in college I worked at the local JC Penney.  Usually I was "customer facing" (in the coat department) but every once in a while they needed help back in the stock room, unboxing stock and putting price tags on things.  This novel brought back memories of that time. The characters work at a nationwide big box chain (similar to Target I think because it is supposed to be more upscale than Walmart) who arrive at work at 4 in the morning, unload the trucks and put the new merchandise out, leaving when the customers arrive.  They are underpaid and never have enough hours so they live hand to mouth.  On the other hand, most of them feel lucky to have the job. They like the store manager (Big Will) but he is leaving to manage a better store and they realize that their direct boss, Meredith, is likely to take his place.  On the one hand Meredith is incompetent, on the other hand, if she moves up that will create an opening for one of them to move into management.  More hours, better pay, better benefits. Thus is hatched a plot to make Meredith look better than she really is.  I really liked Waldman's debut novel "The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P." in which she created very realistic characters.  But there were only a few characters in that novel.  Here she also creates realistic characters, it's just that there are so many characters.  Waldman writes in third person omniscient, which I like, but much of this novel involves descriptions of what brought these characters to this point in their lives and their interior thoughts.  There is dialog and there is action but I could have used a bit more dialog (my "need to hear the voices" problem).  She does a great job of describing the day-to-day routine and puts in some great jabs at the unnamed "online retailer" that is the biggest competition of brick and mortar stores.  This is a character driven novel that has a plot (albeit a slow moving plot).  Even though I liked "Nathaniel P" better, I did like this one too.  I recognized the characters from that other time in my life. On the other hand, the boredom of their jobs and the poverty of their lives sometimes got to me. 

The History and Archaeology of Fort Ouiatenon: 300 Years in the Making edited by Misty M. Jackson, H. Kory Cooper, and David M. Hovde

This book will only be of interest to people like me who love to read about North American French Colonial History, and even for me it was a little too "in the weeds". Fort Ouiatenon was a trading post established by the French in the 18th Century near what is today Lafayette, Indiana. After the conclusion of the French and Indian War the British took it over as a military post and then, after the American Revolution it was destroyed.  This book is a collection of papers about the archeology that has occurred at the site over the last 70+ years.  I did learn some things about costume (paste) jewelry in colonial times and there was an interesting section about the Miami tribe that originally lived in the area (now living in Oklahoma).  

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

This is the fifth book in the Horowitz and Hawthorne series in which Anthony Horowitz is a character in his own book.  Horowitz is the Dr. Watson to Hawthorne's Sherlock Holmes and never did that seem clearer than in this book when they didn't even work together on the case.  Horowitz is writing up an old case that Hawthorne solved years before, having access to all of Hawthorne's notes.  Unusual for this series, parts of it are told in the third person.  These parts are broken up by the usual first person narration of Horowitz as he tries to figure out what is going on from all of Hawthorne's notes and how to write it up.  I liked this novel but not as much as the others and I think that's because of the separation of the two characters.  This is also a locked door mystery (in part) and (as Horowitz himself says) locked door crimes require the kind of planning that doesn't usually happen in crime. But on the whole, recommended.  

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot is one of those classics of English Literature that show up on most "you must read these novels before you die" lists.  Published in installments in 1871-72, it was historical fiction even in its own day.  The story is set fifty years earlier during what was apparently a time leading up to great changes in English political life.  

Full disclosure:  I started reading this novel last summer on a very long daytime flight to London.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  On my previous trip to London I had read an Anthony Trollope novel and enjoyed it.  But this time I found Eliot a bit of a slog and I got about 300 pages in when circumstances outside my control made me stop.  I wasn't enjoying it enough to pick it up again later. But then I saw there was to be on-line read-along on BlueSky and thought it would be a good way to finish it.  So I read the first 300 pages twice, once last year and then again last month. 

The novel follows the stories of a multitude of characters living in and around the fictional town of Middlemarch.  However, at its center are two characters: Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate.  Theirs are essentially stories of self-deception and coming to terms with reality.  They each enter into marriage (not with each other) believing that the person they are marrying is different than they actually are, with unhappy results.  I am told that Eliot was the first novelist to take the story of marriage past the wedding day . I don't know if that's true but it is certainly what she does in this novel.   (And she certainly wasn't the first story teller to do it as the play Medea takes the mythological story past the fairy tale wedding to tragic results.)

In addition to these four characters there is the story of Fred Vincy, who is in love with a local girl named Mary Garth.  There is also a small plot involving the local banker, Mr. Bulstrode.  Along the way we meet many other folk including the entire Vincy family and the entire Garth family as well as the local vicar and a variety of medical men.  Eliot intertwines all of the stories but she always comes back to the main stories involving Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, but especially Dorothea.  

While I know that this is a novel that is loved by many people, I have to honestly say it was not for me. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why it didn't work for me and I think it has to do almost completely with how I take in novels that I enjoy. 

First, let me say that I think Eliot's prose is sublime.  She created a narrator character that leads us through the stories and comments on the other characters and forces the reader to consider things about the other characters that they may not have otherwise taken into account.  Sometimes the narrator mocks the other characters; sometimes the narrator has empathy for characters who don't seem to deserve empathy (and Eliot's use of the adjective "poor" is used both ways). Sometimes the narrator simply opines upon the world the characters live in.  The narrator is often very funny. The voice of the narrator is clear and distinct and is a joy to read.  

Those who have read my blog for a long time will recall that when I read novels I don't see a "movie in my mind".  The visual images I see are indistinct.  If there is a forest, I have a general impression of trees but could not give you any specifics.  I generally don't play the movie-casting game with novels because I never see the characters clearly enough to care what actors look like.  But in novels that work for me, I can specifically "hear" each character's voice, including any narrator. 

I have never heard a narrator's voice as clearly as I did with this novel. The voice of Eliot's narrator  is so clear to me that I think of it as a character in the novel separate and apart from Eliot herself.   But the narrator, in addition to having a distinct point of view and commenting upon the action, is also omniscient and tells us what the other characters are thinking. 

And therein, I think, lay the problem for me.  I don't have a problem with third person omniscient, in fact I like third person more than first person almost all of the time.  But I consistently felt with this novel that I  could not clearly "hear" the main characters.  They didn't seem to have their own voices. It was like I was hearing them, especially Dorothea, from a great distance where I could occasionally directly hear what they said but more often it was the narrator telling me what they said and what they thought.  I felt as if all of Dorothea's thoughts were filtered through the viewpoint of the narrator and the narrator was such a distinct character for me and was so opinionated that it was as if a separate opinionated person was telling me what Dorothea was thinking rather than me feeling that I was eavesdropping on Dorothea's thoughts. And I think that meant that Dorothea was never "real" to me. I felt the same way, but to a lesser extent, with Lydgate .  To a lesser extent because Eliot gave Lydgate dialog more often than Dorothea.  I could judge Lydgate a little more on his actions and words rather than solely on the perception of the narrator.  But Dorothea spends a lot of time with interior thoughts; she spends a lot of time holding her tongue, especially in the middle of the novel, because she's trying to be "good". 

I would say that, of all the characters, I never heard Dorothea's voice clearly at all - which was a big problem for me because so much time is spent on Dorothea.  I grew tired of the narrator telling me about Dorothea - I never had to figure anything out about Dorothea because the narrator always told me what I was supposed to know about Dorothea at any given time.  I never related to Dorothea possibly because she is so young and naive and I am no longer young and was never naive. I never felt like I saw life directly through Dorothea's eyes, only as mediated through the narrator's eyes. I found Dorothea tiresome and I found the parts of the novel that dealt with Dorothea boring and usually I couldn't wait until they were finished and we could move on to other characters. It's a real problem for a reader when they are bored by the plot concerning the main character. I remember being on the plane to London and wondering how Eliot was going to sustain an 800+ page novel about such an uninteresting character and being so relieved when the attention shifted to Lydgate, who ended up being only mildly more interesting but was surrounded by other characters that I found interesting. My re-read of the first 300 pages didn't change my mind. 

Interestingly, I did not have that problem with the minor characters.  They seemed very real to me and I could hear their voices clearly.  I think this was because the narrator spent less time telling me about these characters and more time describing what they did and what they said. Their character was revealed by a combination of their actions, their words and the narrator's commentary.  The best part of the novel for me was the story of Mr. Bulstrode which ended up being gripping.  But, alas, it is only a very small part of the novel. 

So rather than have empathy (something the narrator kept preaching) for the main characters, I mostly thought they got what they deserved based simply on the setup of the story.  When you marry someone under a delusion, you are going to be disappointed. Your life is going to be unhappy.  That's just the way it is.  And much of modern literature is about this, which may have also been part of the problem for me. 

I look at it as the Citizen Kane problem.  Citizen Kane was a groundbreaking film in which Orson Welles used innovative cinematography techniques.  But those techniques have been copied so many times that we, the viewers, are used to seeing them.  So Citizen Kane viewed outside of a film class may seem dated to the viewer.  Perhaps in a seminar on Victorian literature, reading my way up to Middlemarch, I would appreciate it more as a groundbreaking novel.  But I'm long past the days of seminars. 

So, in the end, it just wasn't for me.  It never engaged me and I didn't greatly care what happened to the characters.  But I am not sorry I read it because I very much did enjoy Eliot's use of language when observing life through the character of the narrator.  

Who might like this novel?   If you are looking to be transported to another time and place, this isn't for you. Eliot doesn't spend much time on world-building so "setting" is not a big part of this novel. Middlemarch is set in a fictional town and fictional county in England that could have been anywhere in the midlands. If you are someone who wants a page turner, this probably isn't for you either. In terms of story, there is a plot but it meanders over the 800 plus pages.  It seems to me that most people who enjoy Middlemarch relate to the brilliant writing and identify in some way with the main characters and don't need to hear their voices directly as I do.  I also think they like the psychology of the novel - Eliot's take on life in general as exemplified by the characters and (probably mostly) by the narrator's commentary.  Others in the read-along were consistently raving about how Eliot captured the essence of life in perfect language (and she did, in the narrator's voice using the characters, in my opinion, mostly as examples.)

Be warned that if you aren't engaged in the first few hundred pages your reaction probably won't change much.  Mine didn't.  But, in fairness, know that for many people this is their favorite novel of all time.