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.
