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. 

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.