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.
