It's the start of a new reading year. January was cold, damp and blustery, the perfect kind of weather to curl up under a blanket and read books. And that's what I did. Here's what I read in January.
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It's always nice to start off the new year with a book you like. This book was so hyped last year that I was sure I was going to think it did not live up to that hype. But I found it just as good as everyone else said it was. This is the story of Sam and Sadie, childhood friends, who grow up to develop games and form a successful company. Their relationship is full of ups and downs to say the least. One thing that was SO refreshing about this novel was that it was not a story of romantic, sexual love. As Sadie says, lovers are common, true collaborators are rare. So many novels fall into the trope of romantic love even in work environments when, in real non-novel life, most people have lots of work relationships that aren't romantic or sexual. In fact MOST, if not all, of our relationships aren't romantic or sexual. But to find a true collaborator and meeting of the minds, isn't that what we all want in our work environments? I know I always did. This a beautifully written book, the only part that I would have edited was the penultimate section which went into great detail about the storyline of a game. I understood what the author was doing but I found it a little tedious but that may be because I'm not a gamer and had a hard time picturing what was being described. This novel has a plot but it meanders, it is mostly a study of characters over time but it also evokes the time period so well. I found both characters endearing and annoying, as I think I was supposed to. Highly recommended. You can read my full thoughts here.
- A Scream in Soho by John G. Brandon. This is another of the British Library Crime Classics I inherited from my mom, which I have had mixed luck with. This one wasn't too bad. Published in 1940, it takes place in London during the blackout. The darkness gives criminals cover to operate and this book involves a scream heard, and blood found, one night in Soho. But where is the body? There are Italian gangsters, German spies, a mysterious Austrian countess and a transvestite. It's a lot for Inspector McCarthy of New Scotland Yard to take in. But solve the case he does. This is a thriller, not a whodunnit and I'm more of a whodunnit fan. But this did keep my interest and I generally liked it (although as always with books from previous times you have to ignore the casual racist, sexist and anti-semitic remarks that occasionally come out of the mouths of characters). Not a book I'd recommend you seek out but if it is already on your shelves, as it was on mine, you may be entertained by it.
- A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz. This is the third in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series in which Horowitz makes himself a character, following around the mysterious detective, Hawthorne. This time he takes a page from Agatha Christie and sets the mystery on a Channel Island where everyone is in one place and can't leave. The real joy of these books for me are not the mysteries, but the satirical look at the book publishing and book marketing business. When his editor in horror says "you won't write about me, will you" (and of course it is in the book) it is amusing. I'm really enjoying this series because I think the writing is superb and the mysteries are perfectly fine. He can delineate a character in a few succinct but invariably funny words: "She was the sort of woman who would always make tea no matter the crisis. Lose your leg in a hideous industrial accident and she'd be there with a nice cup of Earl Grey." Also, although this book is published by Harper Collins, in the novel his publisher is Penguin Random House so he can make fun of them without end and without annoying his real publisher. I probably need to pick up a different, stand alone, Anthony Horowitz novel and give it a whirl.
- Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood. This is the latest in the Phryne Fisher mystery series. This time Phryne has a multitude of mysteries to solve including a dead body on a beach, evidence of cocaine use in the Botanical Gardens, a missing woman and financial skulduggery at a local charity. In some ways it was too much and I would have appreciated only one mystery. But I do enjoy the side characters and they were involved in the peripheral mysteries. This series has a great sense of time and place: Melbourne Australia in the 1920s. I think that's why I enjoy it so much. That and the unabashed feminist tendencies of Phryne.
- Menewood by Nicola Griffith. At over 900 pages, this sequel to the 2013 novel Hild is not a novel for the fainthearted. The cast of characters is huge and you definitely need the maps at the beginning of the novel to follow along with the story. I read this during the sub-zero weather that we had and it was the perfect long novel to read while stuck indoors. In the end I was ambivalent about it. This is a novel that drops you into Northumbria in the seventh century, its sense of time and place is wonderful. Griffith writes beautifully about the location. She also creates a compelling character in Hild but I found the secondary characters underdeveloped. And I found the first 300 pages very difficult to plow through while the second two-thirds of the novel move along quite well. I'm not sorry I read it but I can only recommend it with reservations. My full thoughts are here.
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I remember hearing about "the Octopus book" last year and thinking "that's not for me." But then my book group chose it for our February meeting. I was pleasantly surprised. This is a delightful book. Sure, the plot is mostly predictable but there are a few surprises along the way and Van Pelt keeps the story moving. The real joy is in the characters. This is the story of three characters: Tova, an elderly widow who also lost her only son when he was a teenager; Cameron, a thirty year old whose mother abandoned him at age 9 and who has never been able to hold down a job; and Marcellus a Giant Pacific octopus. Each character has a specific voice and, yes, some parts of the story are told from the point of view of Marcellus who is counting down the days of his captivity until his inevitable demise. Each of these characters are trapped by circumstances and are basically going in circles. But by the end they have helped each other move on. The waiting list for this book at the library was so long that I ended up taking the audiobook. I intended to listen to 1/2 hour a day but by half way through it I ended up binging it as I cleaned and puttered around the house. People who like great plots may not like this as much but recommended if you are looking for a feel good, light read with good characters.
- The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel. Gavin Sasaki always wanted to be a newspaperman ... or a private detective. But the newspaper business is not what it once was and when he is fired from his job in New York he must reluctantly return to Florida where he is from. There he decides to play private detective in his free time, tracking down his old girlfriend Anna. This puts him back in touch with three high school friends who played with him in a jazz quartet back in the day. All have issues, including Gavin. Anna, especially, has issues. And all of his former friends seem to know things about Anna that they aren't telling Gavin. Mandel seems to be trying to make this a modern day noir story but it never really worked for me. The characters never really made sense to me. I get that kids in high school do dumb things, but at this point they are all adults. This story mostly left me cold, which is a shame since I loved Station Eleven and really liked The Glass Hotel. But if I were you I'd give this one a pass.
- The Passing Bells by Phillip Rock. This novel from the 1970's was billed as Downton Abbey before Downton Abbey became a thing. And it is, in some ways, very similar. Much more emphasis is placed on WWI in this novel and that was part of the appeal to me. I'm a sucker for a good WWI novel. This novel encompassed the entire war, jumping from high point (or low point) to the next big event with the various characters always present in some way. We had the Western Front and Gallipoli. We had newspaper coverage of the war and the woman's nursing services. We had people living in the Big House with not enough servants and we had the chauffeur becoming a designer of new aeroplane engines. We had death and PTSD. There was something for everyone. But in the end it didn't really engage me on an emotional level. The characters all seemed to be "types", especially the women. This is apparently the first book in a trilogy but I think I'll give the sequels a pass.
- The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. It is "the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468" and a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, is sent by his bishop to a remote village in Essex to conduct the funeral of the resident priest, Father Lacy. But did Father Lacy die of natural causes or was he murdered? Things are not what they seem in many ways in this novel. Let's just say that Harris did not set out to write, and did not write, an historical mystery. I won't say more because I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise. The title refers to the habit of medieval people 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. I truly enjoyed this novel and almost read it in one afternoon. It began to bog down for me a little bit in the last 25% and I can see how some people might find the ending abrupt. But the more I think about it, the more fitting I find the ending.
