June 2025 Reading

The beginning of the month was a very slow book month for me. I just could not seem to get myself to focus on reading (probably because of <waves arms around>).  I finally gave up, went to some libraries and stocked up on some mysteries I'd been wanting to read.  That did the trick. I also continue on my year-long reading of Don Quixote. 

These are the books I finished in June. 

Precipice by Robert Harris

It is the summer of 1914 and Britain is in the middle of some significant "Irish troubles" and, unbeknownst to them, on the verge of World War I. The Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, has a lot on his plate. To add to the stress in his life, he has become smitten with Venetia Stanley, a socialite less than half his age and a member of his son's group of friends. He writes to her at least once daily and takes her on long drives in the country every week. He frets if she doesn't respond to his letters immediately. These are the days when there were 12 mail deliveries every day in London - writing a letter was almost the equivalent of texting. As Britain slides slowly into war and as the war goes on the Prime Minister obsesses over his relationship with Venetia and begins to share more and more confidential information with her. This comes to the attention of Scotland Yard who assigns a young intelligence officer to look into things. Harris tells us that the intelligence officer is fictitious but Asquith and Venetia were real people and Venetia preserved all the letters he wrote to her (her letters were destroyed and Harris must create her side of the correspondence). This is the third Harris novel I've read and each of them has been totally different:  The Second Sleep had a seemingly medieval setting; Act of Oblivion involved two men who signed the death warrant for Charles I being pursued all the way to the New World by agents of Charles II; and now this novel is set amongst the high society of WWI London.  And I've enjoyed each of them.  I will warn that this novel sometimes gets into the weeds of WWI. This was not a problem for me as I love WWI fiction but some might find it a little too much. But the relationship between Asquith and Venetia does hold the attention. 

It's Easier Than You Think by Sylvia Boorstein

I listen to the "Currently Reading Podcast" each week and two different hosts recommended this book at different times. Both of them read it after going through personal losses. I didn't realize before I picked it up that it was basically a beginner Buddhism book. That was ok because, even though I'm not a Buddhist, it had a lot of good insights into putting your life in perspective. It is written in very simple terms with examples. I don't think I would rave about it like both of them did (I think one of them put it on the list of best books she read last year) but I'm also not in the middle of a personal crisis either. I did like it and am not sorry I read it. 

Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin

Kauser Khan is a recent widow who hasn't visited her old hometown, Toronto, in the 20 years since her son died. Her daughter and grandchildren have had to travel to visit her ever since. But now her daughter is suspected of murder and needs her. Part of this story is Mrs. Khan being able to face her old self and her old neighborhood in Toronto and part is her solving the mystery. I suspect this is the first in a series since, although the mystery is solved (and I didn't guess until the end), there are still unexplained loose threads. Jalaluddin is, apparently, an established writer of romance novels and this is her first cozy mystery. She did a good job establishing the characters and, as I said, I didn't automatically guess who dunnit. It's also always nice to see an older woman as the main character. 

A Decline in Prophets by Sulari Gentill
Miles Off Course by Sulari Gentill
Paving the New Road by Sulari Gentill

These are books #2, 3 and 4 in the Rowland Sinclair Mystery Series that I started a few months ago. My libraries only had the first book in digital form so I had to track down hard copies of some of the next in the series and when I found them I picked up books 2-6.  In A Decline in Prophets Rowland and his friends are on their way back to Australia from Europe via New York, on an ocean liner in the early 1930's.  Murders ensue. I'm always fascinated by ocean liner travel back in the days when it took weeks if not months to travel across oceans and this certainly had a sense of place.  Miles Off Course takes place in a more remote part of Australia where Rowland and friends are searching for a missing person. Paving the New Road takes the group to Germany in the 1930's. I liked this one the least, partly because I easily guessed who the bad guy was (and easily guessed who their woman friend was) but mostly because it made me sick to my stomach to see how similar are the times we are living in.  Again, Gentill is wonderful at giving a very specific sense of place. Books 2 and 3 were good mysteries; although I had suspicions about many characters it wasn't until the end that I honed in on the murderers. I will look forward to getting to know the characters even better as the series progresses. I still have the next 2 library books that I need to read before they are due.  

The Dying Day by Vaseem Khan
The Lost Man by Vaseem Khan

Back in February I read Midnight at the Malabar House by Vaseem Khan which I described as Slow Horses but in Post-War Bombay. The main character, Persis Wadia, is the first female police officer on the force but since they didn't know what to do with a female police officer they assigned her to Malabar House. While browsing books at the library I found the next two books in this series and immediately snatched them up.  The Dying Day involves the theft of a rare copy of Dante's Divine Comedy; The Lost Man involves solving the identity of a body discovered in the Himalayas. Both books involve Persis navigating the sexism of the Bombay police force. I really like this series, it has well-drawn characters and a good sense of place and the mysteries are set up very well. I didn't immediately guess whodunnit in either book. Unfortunately my libraries don't have any of the remaining books in the series so I may have to actually purchase them if I want to continue the series. 

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler

This is a brand new mystery novel that is clearly meant to be the first in a series. It is 1898 in Chicago and Harriet Morrow has just been hired (on a probationary basis) as an investigator at a detective agency. They have never had a woman detective before and Harriet must navigate many hurdles. For her first case she is sent to investigate a missing maid at the home of her boss's neighbor. He thinks it will amount to nothing but it becomes very complicated. The blurb describes Harriet as a "bike-riding, trousers wearing lesbian" which is accurate but a bit reductive. Harriet is a complicated person.  I liked this novel and will definitely read more.  Harriet is an interesting character and Osler created a variety of interesting side characters. Osler also used Chicago as a great backdrop, creating a good sense of place. If you are at all familiar with Chicago you will enjoy seeing the various neighborhoods at the turn of the last century. (Part of the plot takes place in my sister's old neighborhood back in the day when the entire population was Polish.)  And I didn't guess whodunnit.  In many ways this reminded me of Amy Stewart's Miss Kopp series although it takes place in a different city and in a slightly earlier time. 

A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey

This seemed to be my month to read novels set in Australia.  This 2018 novel by Peter Carey takes us on a 1950's car race around the entire continent of Australia and we see it principally through the eyes of Irene Bobs, a woman who loves to drive. Her husband is a good car salesman and wants a licensed car dealership.  Irene hopes winning the race will be the kind of publicity they need to make a successful dealership.  As their navigator they take on their next-door neighbor, former quiz show champion Willie Bachhuber. Things become interesting for all of them as they head out of white Australia into the outback.  Carey wants to show us, through a humorous story, the clash between white culture and the ancient aboriginal culture. I liked the idea of this novel and I liked the character of Irene but it disappointed me as far as a sense of place went. I never really had a "feel" for most of the landscapes because Carey was so focused on the driving.  Late in the novel it takes an unexpected turn and I thought it was interesting but really slowed down the narrative. 

May 2025 Reading

Throughout May I kept thinking that it was a bad month for reading. Looking back on it, though, although I read fewer books than usual in May, I read longer and more complex books than I have been able to get through in recent months. 

These are the books I finished in May.

These Days by Lucy Caldwell

It is a deficiency in my education that I never knew that Belfast suffered a Blitz during WWII. This novel begins in April, 1941 right before the first bombing. There also is another bombing on the Tuesday after Easter. The final bombings were at the beginning of May. The novel is divided into three parts (one part for each bombing) and follows the lives of one family: the father Philip is a doctor at the local hospital, the mother Florence is still in grief over the loss of her first love in World War I and trying to find a purpose in life now that her children are mostly grown, oldest daughter Audrey is dating a (controlling) doctor named Richard who works with her father, middle daughter Emma is a volunteer and in a secret relationship with a women, and son Paul is too young to really feel the panic. There is also Mrs. Price, the family's daily help, as well as Betty who comes in to help her. Caldwell also briefly introduces another somewhat middle class family with a young daughter named Maisie. The bombings change all of them, and Belfast, forever. Along the way the women in the novel grapple with cultural expectations and changing times. This novel won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2023 which is why I picked it up - I'm not usually one for WWII novels. I learned a lot and it was very sad but I never really became invested in the characters. For instance, Maisie and her family tell a part of the story of the Blitz but the characters don't seem to exist other than for that purpose. This novel has a very good sense of place and some of the individual stories are compelling but as a whole I had trouble with the narrative flow and I kept putting it down for days at a time. 

The Trees by Percival Everett

It is hard to categorize this novel and it really needs more than a paragraph to really describe it. It starts out as a murder mystery but moves into horror (including zombies) but is also very funny. I mean laugh out loud funny. The action begins in Money Mississippi sometime during the first Trump administration although the racial attitudes seem to still be stuck in the 1940's. The (white) sheriff is perplexed. There is a murder of a white man whose body is castrated. A dead black man is found with him, holding the white man's testicles. Did the black man kill the white man? But then how did the black man die? Then the body of the black man disappears from the morgue, and reappears with another dead white man who is also castrated. How did the body disappear? Two (black) detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are sent to assist, to the chagrin of the Sheriff (and the town). Eventually the FBI gets involved. Everyone agrees that the whole thing is strange. And things just keep getting stranger.  Everett takes as his starting point a true story - the lynching of Emmet Till, a boy who was accused of speaking to (and touching) a white woman. The woman, years later, said she lied about it. The two dead men at the start of this novel are descendants of the killers of Till. I don't want to give too much away but this is a novel that is enjoyable AND thought provoking. 

Breaking Creed by Alex Cava

This is the first book in a mystery series but I think the main character is a spinoff from another series (because the person who seems to be from the other series and the main character here have a past). I've had this series on my TBR for a long time because it is a mystery with dogs. Ryder Creed, an ex marine, trains dogs to do various searches and then hires himself and them out to law enforcement. This story involves a drug cartel and human trafficking. I'll probably read another of these although it was a little bit more violent than I usually like.  

Under Lock and Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian

This is another mystery (first in a series) that has been on my TBR for a while. The premise is good. Tempest Raj is a magician with a big successful Las Vegas show but something goes wrong that puts the whole audience in danger and she ends up broke and back at home with her widowed dad and grandparents. Her dad runs a construction company that installs secret rooms and hidden staircases in homes. When a body is found in a secret room on his latest job, it isn't clear if the victim was actually intended to be Tempest. This is a locked room mystery which I generally like, but I did not like this book because I did not like Pandian's writing style. At first I thought maybe this was first novel problems, but it wasn't. Not even close; she's written a number of novels. Pandian does a lot of "telling", not "showing" and most of her telling is, in my opinion, just unnecessary. Here is an example where Tempest is visiting a friend:  "Tempest hopped onto a window seat in front of the ceiling-high wall of windows in this industrial live-work apartment in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco known as SOMA."  None of that detail was necessary or added anything to the scene. That's what the whole novel is like. This novel was not for me at all. 

Radio Girls by Sarah Jane Stratford

In 1926 Maisie Musgrave, a Canadian with a secretarial certificate, is living in London looking for a way to support herself. There is an opening for a secretary at the BBC, a public corporation in charge of radio broadcasting, which is still fairly new. Maisie surprises even herself by getting the job and ends up working as an assistant to the secretary to the Director General of the BBC himself.  But she discovers that she is also to be "shared" by the head of "Talks" programming, a woman named Hilda Matheson.  Sarah Jane Stratford, in an afterward, tells us that she was fascinated by the career of Hilda Matheson and wanted to write about it and the early days of the BBC which was one of the few places that hired women for important jobs. Stratford weaves in a tale of incipient fascism to be discovered and revealed (although this book was published in 2016 there are many parallels to today unfortunately) that was interesting but I thought was ultimately unnecessary - the story of the BBC was enough. I did enjoy this novel. Maisie is our point of view character but Stratford doesn't make her too naive or stupid to be annoying, just an outsider needing to ask a lot of questions. 

 Air-Borne:  The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe by Carl Zimmer

Last year, one of my 10 favorite books of the year was She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer. That was a book about genetics (broadly). This latest book is about aerobiology, the study of what's alive (or can stay alive) in our atmosphere. It traces, among other things, the quest to prove whether some diseases, like tuberculosis and measles, can be transmitted through the air (spoiler alert:  they can). He starts at the beginning with the discredited theories of miasmas, and takes us through history including the attempts to catch germs in the air by Louis Pasteur, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earheart. He scares us (at least, he scared me) with the attempts by the US Military to perfect biological warfare with anthrax and other matters. And he frustratingly recalls the early days of COVID where we were told that washing our hands and not touching our eyes was enough to protect us. Zimmer writes for, among others, the New York Times and he has the ability to relate a compelling narrative in terms "Everyman" can understand.  I fully expect this book will be on my list of favorite books of 2025.

Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor

In April I read and very much enjoyed My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor, which probably will go on my list of favorite books of 2025. This month I read his 2020 Walter Scott Prize-winning novel Shadowplay. The main character is Bram Stoker who is known as the author of Dracula. What I never knew was that he supported himself as the manager of the Lyceum Theater in London, and as the personal assistant to its owner the great actor Henry Irving. O'Connor tells Stoker's story through snippets of letters, newspaper articles and bits of unfinished autobiography (all fictional) of Stoker. The novel revolves around Stoker's relationship with Irving, a mercurial figure, and with the great British actress Ellen Terry (sort of the Meryl Streep of her day).  At night the sleepless Stoker wanders the streets of London at the same time that Jack the Ripper is at large.  He writes unsuccessful books in his free time, all the while gathering subconsciously the bits and pieces that will eventually become Dracula. O'Connor doesn't try to recreate the writing process but as the novel goes on the reader who remembers Dracula will notice where certain ideas came from. And if you have never read Dracula, you simply won't notice those and will just enjoy the story. This is a very good novel; I really like O'Connor's writing style. I think for the general reader they would like My Father's House a little bit better - it is more of a thriller. People who enjoy theater and/or Dracula will like this novel which provides a wonderful look backstage at a Victorian theater. 

April 2025 Reading

I know I keep saying this every month but concentrating on anything these days with everything <waves hands around> is difficult.  Last month I said that I've pretty much given up on reading anything that takes a lot of concentration.  Despite that, I surprisingly did read more than just mysteries this month, mostly because a lot of library wait lists came through. I also managed a book of poetry this month. 

These are the books I finished in April.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor

This book was on the Walter Scott Prize longlist last year but since I'm not drawn to WWII as a topic I didn't rush to pick it up. Eventually I put my name on the library wait list for it and am I glad I did!  Wow! I thought this was an excellent novel. The hero is Father Hugh O’Flaherty, a resident at the Vatican during WWII. Rome is occupied by the Nazis and Father Hugh and his intrepid band of helpers (calling themselves The Choir), are doing what they can to help thousands of people being hunted by the Nazis make it out of Rome. The local German commander is desperate to find them and shut the operation down. This is one of the most suspenseful novels I’ve read in years; I truly never knew what was going to happen. This was partly due to a very smart structure that O'Connor adopted. I've been recommending this novel to everyone I know. I highly recommend it if you like good plots, good characters, a sense of place and good writing. I understand that O'Connor has written a follow-up novel but I think I will wait to read that one for when I feel calmer. (As an aside, I learned that the author is the brother of Sinead O'Connor - what a talented family.)

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Another BlueSky readalong book, I really enjoyed this one. I've never seen any of the movies or TV series based on this novel but from reading reviews I basically knew the plot going in. That didn't matter. Highsmith was brilliant in making me care about finding out what happened to Tom Ripley and whether he could get out of his responsibility for his actions. I didn't LIKE him, but I wanted to know what happened to him, which is the mark of a great book for me. This book was shorter than I expected and it has good pacing. Ripley is a complex character. In terms of a sense of place - at times it was almost like a travelogue of Tom's journeys through Italy.  Recommended. 

A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill

On the recommendation of someone who knows I love historical mysteries set in other countries, especially if it is part of a series, I picked this up and I'm glad I did. Set in 1930's Australia, the amateur sleuth in this series is Rowland Sinclair. As a member of the upper class he is relatively unaffected by the Depression that is sweeping the country (the world). Living in the family home in Sydney, working as a portrait (and sometimes a landscape) painter he allows his artistic but poor friends to live with him. Although Rowland is somewhat apolitical but left-leaning, Rowland's friends are (pre-Stalin) Communists who want to change the world for the better. When Rowland's uncle is murdered and the police seem to have no suspects, Rowland goes "undercover" suspecting that the villains are a fascist militant group. I liked this book and I'm sure will read more in the series even though my library has no more of the series in e-version and I'll have to find the hard copies. (By the way, apparently this is a reissue and the original name of the book is "A House Divided"). 

A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan
Death in the Dark Woods by Annelise Ryan
Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan

I'm combining these into one description because I read them in order, one after the other. Morgan Carter, the owner of Odds and Ends Bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin is also a cryptozoologist - someone who hunts creatures that have never been proven to be real, like the Loch Ness Monster. When a couple of bodies show upon the shores of  Lake Michigan, drowned but with giant teeth marks and all of their internal organs crushed, she is brought in to investigate. At first I thought I wouldn't like this premise, but Morgan is a skeptic and she also has an adorable dog named Newt. I enjoyed it more than I expected. It was a quick read and, since I was at a point where I really needed distraction (a recurring theme these days) and the next two books in the series were available on Libby, I downloaded them. The second book takes place in northern Wisconsin near Bayfield, Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. Strange deaths have been occurring in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and maybe it's Big Foot?  I was a little confused by the geography of this one until I figured out that the national forest had different sections in Wisconsin and although the main section is down near Rhinelander (2 plus hours from Bayfield) there are smaller sections including one near Bayfield. Once I figured that out I could relax into the story. I didn't figure out the mystery before the end and I thought it was clever.  The third book does take place in Rhinelander, Wisconsin (a place I've flown in and out of) and involves a death supposedly caused by a creature that was long ago proven to be a fraud. This is not the best mystery series I've ever read but it does have a good sense of place and the premise is unique. Be warned that there is a lot (a LOT) of  exposition and I often thought that the dialog was clunky. But I liked the main character and I found it entertaining during a time when I pretty much wanted mindless entertainment. 

Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

This is the 20th installment of the Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series by C. S. Harris set in Regency England. This is one of my favorite (if not my absolute favorite) mystery series mostly because I just love the way that Harris writes. Mysteries are my comfort reads and I don't get picky about them but when I find an author that entertains me AND I like the way she writes, it's a win for me. In this installment, Sebastien is approached by a waif who tells him of a dead man hanging in an abandoned church. The dead man turns out to be the son of a Duke and it is clear that his body has been staged to match the picture on a Tarot card. It's a decent mystery; I didn't guess the whodunnit. But I mostly read this series because of the time and place that Harris evokes. This installment takes place in 1816 - The Year Without Summer. Crops are failing not only in England but all over the world. The rain is never-ending. The weather is cold even in August. Although not part of the story, over in Switzerland Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are passing the days of terrible weather writing gothic tales, including Frankenstein.  Although we know now that the massive eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies caused the bad weather, many people of the time thought the world was coming to an end. This story hit pretty close to home because the dead man was of the "judgmental religious" type that we see all the time now. He even threatens heresy to a geologist who posits that the weather could be caused by a natural occurrence. This is not my favorite novel of the series (not enough Hero in it) but I always enjoy these books and always look forward to the next one and I always recommend this series. Although you can read each book separately, the series is one you really should read from the beginning. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

It is the Southern Australian Outback in the late 1800s. In a fairly new but already dying town, the community tries to raise sheep and grow wheat. One day a farmer and his hired man (an aborigine) are out working in the fields, the five daughters have gone into town for a wedding, the mother is doing laundry and the little boy (6 years old) is collecting tinder, when a dust storm comes up. The boy gets turned around and is lost. The town rallies to search for him. The novel is structured as a series of days and nights. As the story unfolds McFarlane's focus shifts in 3d person omniscient between all of these characters and the other characters searching for the boy. This is a well written novel but the constantly changing perspectives interrupted the flow for me and it took me longer to finish than I expected. McFarlane evokes a strong sense of place and that is probably the strongest point of the novel.  The characterizations are good but, in the end, the number of characters kept me from becoming engrossed in the story. Recommended with reservations. 

Double Negative by Vona Groarke

As the back of the book says: a double negative equals a positive. It also says that Groarke is one of Ireland's leading poets, and I have no reason to doubt this. I enjoyed this collection of poetry. Many of them are on the theme of aging, which I relate to. I wish I understood more about poetry so that I could say something intelligent about her poetry rather than simply "I enjoyed it."  Given that I haven't enjoyed the last few books of poetry I've read, I was relieved to finally read poems that I (mostly) understood. 

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

This is an odd little work of historical fiction. It is set in Idaho (Butte and environs) but most of the (male) characters are Irish or Cornish. Were there that many Irish who came over to work the mines?  (I actually understand the Cornish, they had mines in Cornwall). The plot is very basic, local (Irish)man falls in love with another man's wife and they run off but are pursued. Neither of the main characters (in fact none of the characters) is very likeable, but that's never been a problem for me. I kept reading because I wanted to find out what happened to them all (and, this is a relatively short novel). Annoyingly Barry doesn't use quote marks for his dialog and the structure of the novel is a shifting perspective among the characters where their thoughts (and the story) is presented in short little bursts of paragraphs. On the whole I can't say that I liked this novel but I guess I appreciated it. Perhaps my biggest problem was that the whole thing seemed like fan fiction based on the TV series Deadwood.  Yes, I know Deadwood is in South Dakota not Idaho and I know it involves prospecting for gold, not copper mining, but the whole ambiance that Barry created seemed to be taken right off the visuals of that TV series.  (Maybe that's because Deadwood was so good at evoking the Old West in all of its horror.)  I can't recommend this but if you want to read it because it has been nominated for some prizes, know that it is short and it did keep my interest.

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. 

 

First Quarter Reading

 Last year my resolution was to blog monthly about my reading but in the end I just did an end-of-year summary.  This year I made no resolutions.  But since I have time I thought I would do a first quarter summary of my reading.  

JANUARY

January started out slow.  I only read 3 1/2 books and two of them were really short:  2 mysteries, 1 memoir (?) and the half book was historical fiction.   I spent most of January in a fog, mostly watching TV in my free time.  (See my blog post about January TV watching.)

The January books I read were:

        A Hanging at Dawn: A Bess Crawford Short Story by Charles Todd. In this short story (which is actually kind of long) we finally get to learn why Simon worships Bess’s mother. I don’t really like short stories and this had all the shortcomings of one.  Just not enough there for me.  Recommended only if you are reading the series.

        Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart.  A continuation of the wonderful Miss Kopp series.  WWI is ongoing and Norma is in France with her pigeons, making a friend called Aggie and solving a mystery. Constance is working for the Bureau and Fleurette is entertaining the troops stateside and acquiring a parrot.  I love epistolary novels and liked that she tried that with this book.  Recommended but read the whole series. 

        The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett.  I've been re-reading the Lymond Chronicles with The Lymond Book Club on Youtube.  In January they and I finished the reread of this third book in the series.   The entire series is HIGHLY recommended but you have to start from the beginning. 

        Olive, Mabel & Me by Andrew Cotter.  A memoir about Dogs. If you haven't caught their videos on YouTube you are missing something.  Recommended if you like dogs.  ️ 

    

FEBRUARY 

In February I read six books and a couple of them were quite long:  1 Classic, 2 mysteries, 1 memoir, 1 young adult/children's book and 1 non-fiction book. 

        

        Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.  This was actually the pick by my book group to read for January and I started it in January but only finished half in time for the Zoom meeting.   But I'd read it before.  Multiple times.  I decided to finish it in February just because I always enjoy it.  Always recommended. 

        The Searcher by Tana French. I generally like Tana French's crime novels.  This one was a bit different, it didn't involve the London Murder Squad and was set on the western side of Ireland not the eastern side.  The main character was an  American ex cop. I actually guessed who did it immediately.  But the real question is:  Why would anyone want to move to western Ireland if they weren't at least of Irish heritage?   I've been there.  I'm of Irish heritage and I didn't want to live there.   Recommended because of her writing style. 

        A Fatal Lie by Charles Todd.  This was the new Inspector Rutledge mystery.  The murder involved a famous aquaduct (I googled it) and a missing child. I mostly liked it but felt like they didn’t know how to end the part with the child.   Maybe the child will return in a future novel. But the "Plan B" of farming the kid out to friends was daft.  Melinda is too old to take it and how can he push it off on Scottish friends.  Recommended with reservations. 

        I Want to be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom.  I got this book for Christmas.  I really enjoy Rachel Bloom and I could hear her voice as I read it.  I did think that maybe I would have enjoyed it even more if I had listened to the audio book.   Recommended only if you like Rachel Bloom. 

        Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.    Where to start?   Not as good as her previous book.  Good anecdotes. Good metaphors. But non-rigorous in its arguments. Very repetitive.  And the same annoying style as her last book.  I listened to the audiobook version of this so I could listen as I did other things.  If I had been reading it in book form I doubt I would have finished it.  Not recommended. 

        The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.   Ok, ok, it's a kid's book.  But I was cleaning out my book shelves and came across it, started to read it and couldn't put it down.  If you know any girls in middle school it's a great book to give as a gift.  Recommended if you are at least middle school aged. 

MARCH

March was my best month for reading, I read 15 books:  10 mysteries, 2 historical novels, 1 alternate history historical novel, 1 gothic novel, 1 fable (?) 

        The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse   by Charles Mackesy.   Another Christmas gift.  Hard to describe.  A fable (?) with hand drawn illustrations.  It was actually just what I needed.  Very comforting.  Recommended if only for the illustrations. 

        The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau.  A novel set in the 1700s that involves the mania for collecting porcelain and the search for a perfect blue color. Lots of exposition about porcelain and blue. Because it was told in first person narration it required the heroine to be a bit dumb which was annoying.  I learned a lot about porcelain but didn't really enjoy it.  Not recommended. 

        Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukharjee. This is the 3d book in a series set in India in the 1920's involving a drug addicted white Raj police officer and his Indian sidekick.  I enjoy these books a lot.  Recommended and I don't think you have to have read the other two books to enjoy it. 

        Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia.  A Very Weird book that involves a creepy house, and a fungus and requires great suspension of disbelief. Didn’t really hang together in my opinion.  Not recommended. 

        Outlawed by Anna North.  An alternate history of the Hole in the Wall gang is the best way to describe it.  It's an odd book but I did enjoy it.  Recommended if you like odd alternate histories. 

        Death in the East by Abir Mukharjee.  The 4th book in the series.  This involved a convoluted plot set partly in England and partly in India at an Ashram.  Less successful than the other three books in the series mostly because of the flashbacks.  But the growth in the characters almost made up for that.  Recommended with reservations and you really need to have read the other books. 

        The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.  British retirement community crime solvers. If this hasn't been optioned for a TV series with Judy Dench, Maggie Smith and company - what are they waiting for?   Recommended for fun, light mystery reading. 

        The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey.  Since I was enjoying mysteries set in India I tried this one.  Set in the 1920’s it involves a woman solicitor.   The flashbacks to her awful marriage were too long and she should have stuck to the mystery.  Not recommended. 

        Boundary Waters Mysteries.  I also started reading a series of mysteries by William Kent Krueger set in Northern Minnesota in the Aurora area (just south of Vermillion and near the Boundary Waters).   The detective is former sheriff Corc O'Connor who is three quarters Irish and one quarter Ojibwe.  The first book is called Iron Lake.  I've now read the first six (6).   I love the setting because I'm so familiar with it.  I like his incorporation of the Ojibwe people into it.  His women characters leave a lot to be desired but they aren't absolutely horrible.  I'll probably end up reading them all.   Recommended with reservations.  Pretty sure men who like mysteries would like them. 

        Finally, my Lymond Book Club read along that I finished this month was Pawn in Frankencense. They won't finish talking about it until April but I finished it in March.   Always recommended but you have to read the whole series. 

My February and March reading turned out to be pretty good, considering that I also watched a whole lot of TV. 

A Year in Reading - 2020

2020 has ended (!!!) and it is time to tally up and evaluate my reading for the year. I only read 36 books in 2019, so my goal in 2020 was to increase the number of books I read and make it more in line with the number of books I normally read in a twelve month period. I did that. There was a moment in March, at the start of lockdown, when I thought I might read twice as many books this year. But, like so many other people, the pandemic and the election made it more difficult for me to concentrate and less likely to pick up a book. 

But I did read 77 books this year, which is more in line with my usual totals. I'll list them all below but first, here are the highlights. 

Mysteries

Mysteries, especially historical mysteries, are my favorite genre reading. I read 46 mysteries this year. I love a good mystery series with a recurring detective and a number of my favorite writers released new adventures for their detectives this year, including Ian Rankin, Louise Penny, Lindsay Davis, Charles Todd, and Elly Griffiths. I enjoyed most of them. But the highlight of this year was that I discovered the Sebastian St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris. These stories are set in London during the Napoleanic wars and are not only good page turners but are well written with a delightful style and good characters. The author also wrote a series of modern thrillers with her husband under the name CS Graham which I also read but did not enjoy quite as much. Another series I discovered and enjoyed was written by Alis Hawkins and set in Wales in the mid 19th century. Her "detective" is going blind, which makes things a bit more complicated. I found two more series that I enjoyed, each written by Andrew Taylor. The first, the Marwood/Lovett series, is set in London around the time of the great fire, a period I knew little about. The second (which I'm not sure is a continuing series) is set first during the American Revolution and then the French Revolution. 

Other Fiction.

In other fiction, I read 28 books. I had less luck with these; many of the books I read were disappointing. But a few stood out. The highlight of the year was Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, which I took with me on my birthday weekend retreat in March right before the lockdown began. It took me weeks to finish this, in part because the pandemic was so distracting but also because I knew how it ended. Another highlight of the year was Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman. I also really enjoyed Now We Shall be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller about a soldier returning from the Napoleanic wars with PTSD. Finally, Normal People by Sally Rooney was also one of the best books I read this year (which made me not want to watch the TV show.)

Non-Fiction

I had no interest in reading non-fiction this year because I read enough of that in the news.  The few books I read I did enjoy:  Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer; Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith; and Bush Runner:  The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson by Mark Bourrie.   

Lymond Book Club

As many people know, one of my favorite authors is Dorothy Dunnett, a Scottish writer of historical fiction. This summer I discovered that three people (strangers to me, but they are friends to each other) planned to read Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles slowly and discuss the books on YouTube.  One of them has read the series multiple times, the other two are newbies. At first I just planned to watch each episode as it came out, but of course I started reading along. First came The Game of Kings and then Queen's Play. At the end of December they (and I) were three-quarters of the way through the third book, The Disorderly Knights.  This is a great series of novels but the first 100 pages of the first novel are REALLY hard to get into.  Anyone who has considered reading the series but feels a little daunted could read it a couple of chapters at a time and then watch the corresponding Youtube episode. Their discussions are very good. 

COMPLETE LIST

The following is the complete list of my 2020 reading. 

Mysteries

1.    Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson.  I read this because it was set in Orkney and going to Orkney is on my bucket list. It was a so-so mystery with a dumb heroine. Characters felt flat although the descriptions of Orkney were good. Clearly this was a first novel.  I probably won’t read the next one in the series. But I may try her novels set in Victorian Orkney.  (Not Recommended)

2.    Thistles and Thieves by Molly Macrae. After reading a few lit fic books I needed a break and grabbed this from the library, mostly because it is set in Scotland (which I love) and in a bookshop.  I very quickly remembered I’m not a “cozy mystery” fan. Lots of setting of the atmosphere and lots of narrative-explaining between the characters. I was mostly bored but I finished it because it was a very fast read. (Not Recommended.) 

3 - 5.    Alis Hawkens Mysteries (Recommended):

• None so Blind. A mystery set in mid-nineteenth century Wales in the time following  something called the Rebecca riots. Lots of unexpected twists which were satisfying and that made up for the somewhat unsatisfying ending. A partially blind amateur detective was an interesting premise. (Side note.  The Nook version had teensy tiny print that could not be changed. Very annoying. )
• In Two Minds.  The sequel to None So Blind which I had read earlier in the year.  Wanting light mystery reading during the pandemic, I wondered why I hadn’t immediately bought this sequel to a book I recalled enjoying so much. Then I opened the Nook version and remembered the tiny print that couldn’t be adjusted. But I still enjoyed it. I know nothing about that part of Wales in the 1800s or how a coroner’s jury works, so I learned things. And the characters are well drawn. Not enough women, so far.
• Those Who Know by Alis Hawkins. The latest, just released in 2020, and thanks be to god the Nook version is normal and not so hard on the eyes. This series gets better as it goes along. I only wish there was a glossary on how to pronounce the Welsh words.  I am really enjoying this series and plan to continue reading it as new books are issued. 

6.    The Yard by Alex Grecian. A mystery involving the Scotland Yard murder squad in the 1800’s. The first in a series.  It was a little too long and it needed a number of obvious coincidences to resolve the mystery but on the whole I like it and would probably read another in the series. (Recommended)

7 - 9.    Charles Todd Mysteries (always recommended): 

• A Divided Loyalty. This is 2020's new Inspector Rutledge Mystery. I liked this one better than the last one. Plus this one is set among the stones at Avebury, which I have visited. I did guess the ending pretty early, but it didn’t matter since the psychology of the characters is more important.  
• Wings of Fire and No Shred of Evidence. These were re-reads because they were set in Cornwall. I read these before I ever visited Cornwall and decided to re-read them now that I’ve been there.  Wings of Fire actually didn’t give me much of a sense of place but I had visited a number of the locations used in No Shred of Evidence. No Shred also featured Kate and I wanted to refresh my memory about her relationship with Rutledge.

10 - 12. Oldies that I had Never Read Before:

• Women Without a Past and Emerald by Phyllis A. Whitney.  I came across these in the library in March, early in the pandemic when I was looking for some very light reading. I remembered liking Whitney when I was in my teens when I liked romance-mysteries and I read these more as a curiosity than anything. I don’t remember ever reading these particular books before. They were fine and good palette cleansers but didn’t make me want to read more. (Recommended with reservations)
• Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart. Another oldie.  I guessed the “mystery” almost immediately and the whole paranormal aspect didn’t appeal to me. (Not recommended)

13 - 18.  Andrew Taylor Mysteries  I read two series of mysteries by Andrew Taylor. The first I call the Marwood/Lovett mysteries.  The second is set in NYC during the revolution and then France.  (Recommended):  

•  The Ashes of London. A good mystery set in 1666 London during and after the great fire. The main character, Marwood, is not a true detective but is an interesting character. The principal woman character, Cat Lovett, is perhaps not really true to her time period but I really liked her. It made me want to go on and read the rest of the series.  As you will see.  
• The Fire Court . The second Marwood/Lovett mystery.  The Fire Court was set up to work out judgments between freeholders and tenants after the great fire of London. I learned a lot and enjoyed the story.  
• The King’s Evil. The third Marwood/Lovett mystery. I learned that "The Kings Evil" was scrofula. Again I learned a lot and enjoyed the story. 
• The Last Protector . The latest Marwood/Lovett mystery. This one was good but I did not like it as much as the others.  Richard Cromwell, the son of the Protector, was a character.  The main thing I didn't like was how Taylor suddenly changed the essential characteristics of one of the characters.  I suppose it is possible that otherwise good men can become not so good once you marry them but it just didn't ring true to me. I can't tell if this is the last in the series or not.  I hope not. 
• The Scent of Death A mystery novel set in New York during the revolution. I liked his evocation of colonial occupied NYC and his emphasis on loyalists. I thought the mystery was weak. And truthfully I don’t think parts of the plot hung together very well.  His women characters also don’t seem deeply drawn. But despite all of that, I did enjoy it. 
• The Silent Boy (Sequel to The Scent of Death, but set about 15 years later, during the French Revolution).  In general I enjoyed this book but his women characters left a lot to be desired. 

19.  A Step so Grave by Catriona McPherson.  This was the next installment of the Dandy Gilmer mysteries set in Scotland in the 20’s and 30’s. Light reading but always enjoyable and this one lived up to expectations.  (Recommended, although you might want to start at the beginning of the series.)

20. The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths. Book 12 in the Ruth Galloway mystery series. Ruth is an archaeologist who teaches at a local university and sometimes assists the police.   I enjoy this series and this one was as enjoyable as ever. But I am getting tired of Ruth being in mortal danger and Nelson saving her. (Recommended but you might want to start at the beginning of the series.)

21. Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black.  Cara Black writes the Aimee Leduc mystery series which I love.  This was a stand alone thriller featuring an American recruited by the British to assassinate Hitler. But is she really just meant to be a patsy?  It was a page turner even though I have little interest in WWII.  (Recommended)

22. The Grove of the Caesars by Lindsey Davis. The next in her Flavia Albia series set in Ancient Rome.  Flavia is a female detective, the daughter of Davis' detective Marcus Didius Falco (who is now retired) from her first long running mystery series.  I have loved both of these series.  This, however, was maybe the first Davis mystery I didn’t completely enjoy. Too much telling. Lots of narrative and not enough dialogue or action. The main mystery wrapped up early, was easily guessed and was anticlimactic.  The secondary mystery was somewhat uninteresting.   (Recommended only if you are reading the whole series, but tepidly)

 23.  Crossbones Yard by Kate Rhodes. Meh.  A thriller with a stupid principal character and lots of familiar tropes. (Not Recommended)

24 - 36.  C.S.Harris Mysteries.   This mystery series was the find of the year.  I flew through them in August because I could spend every night reading them while I sat with an ill relative.   I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ENTIRE SERIES  and can't wait for the next book to come out.  I felt bereft when I finished the last one and realized there were no more until she writes another. 

• What Angels Fear.  First in the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries. Set in the early 19th century, during the Napoleanic Wars and the beginning of the English Regency in London. Sebastian is the son of a nobleman and is framed for a murder.  Rather than flee the country he sets out to solve the murder.  
• When Gods Die. Second in the series. Like the best mystery writers she sets up her detective to also have a mystery in his life that will keep you reading the series. The actual mystery was also very good.  Because Sebastian is a nobleman he doesn't work as a detective but the local law enforcement find him useful when crimes among the upper classes are committed. 
• Why Mermaids Sing. Third in the series and even better than the first two, although I’m pretty sure she cheated by making us think she had told us that one of the characters was the daughter of a nobleman when I'm sure she didn’t.
• Where Serpents Sleep. Fourth in the series. She  makes some interesting choices in this novel with one of the women characters.  When I finished it, I was somewhat apprehensive of where she was going with the character. 
• What Remains of Heaven.  Fifth in the series and I needn't have worried.  She knows what she is doing. 
• Where Shadows Dance.  Sixth in the series.   I really enjoyed this one.  Her main female character is now officially one of my favorite mystery series characters ever -- she is able to save herself from danger!  Plus, at the end Harris had Sebastian quoting a portion of a certain poem by Thomas Wyatt.  What?   I of course immediately looked it up, and yes, Harris is a Dorothy Dunnett Fan. 
• When Maidens Mourn.  Seventh in the series. This one involved Arthurian legends. And a mysterious pub keeper with yellow eyes.
• What Darkness Brings.  Eighth in the Series.  An unexpected death puts Sebastian on the case. 
• Why Kings Confess.  The ninth book in the series involved the legend of the lost Dauphin. And a birth.
• Who Buries the Dead . In the tenth book she took the plot in a direction I didn't expect.  This one involved mysteries with headless victims. 
•  Where the Dead Lie.   This eleventh book is dark and involves serial killers of children.  And someone we know marries one.
• Why Kill the Innocent.  This twelfth book involves the death of the piano teacher to Princess Charlotte, the heir to the throne. 
• Who Slays the Wicked .  Book 13.  Could someone we know have killed her husband?
• Who Speaks for the Damned.  Book 14 finds Sebastian  investigating the death of a lost earl and also contemplating for himself what could have happened to him if he hadn't been able to clear his name of murder in the first book.  It also involves a half Chinese child trying to live on their own on the streets of London.  This was the latest book and I can't wait for the next one.  

37.   A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukharjee.  Mystery set in India in the 20’s with an Anglo police detective and his Indian assistant. This is the second Mukharjee mystery I've read and I've enjoyed both of them.  I need to remember to look for more.  (Recommended)

38-39. Charles Finch Mysteries:   I read a few of Finch's Charles Lenox Mysteries a few years ago and I wondered why I hadn't read more. So I read a couple, but I can't recommend. 

• A Burial at Sea.  This is the fifth in the series.  Charles Lenox who is now a member of Parliament has to leave his Mayfair  home to go on a mission for the government and ends up solving a shipboard murder.  Of the two that I read, this was the better.  But he tends to go on and on about ... things. 
• A Death in the Small Hours.  This is the sixth in the series.  It includes an interminable description of a cricket match.  Need I say more.  (Although Dorothy Sayers was able to do it well in Murder Must Advertise.)  Don't think I'll be reading more of this series. 

40.  All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny.  Latest Gamache mystery but this time the whole family is in Paris where, of course, they solve a murder. Not my favorite of the Gamache mysteries, but entertaining.   And it was nice to remember a time when I could travel to Paris.  (Recommended)

41 - 43. CS Graham Thrillers:   CS Graham is the name that CS Harris and her husband ( a former Army intelligence officer) write under.  These are thrillers set in modern times.  I didn't like them as much as the Sebastian St. Cyr series.  Although realistic modern thrillers it also involved "remote viewing" which is sort of like clairvoyance.  But not really.  Anyway I found that part hard to get into. But I liked the rest.  (Recommended with reservations)

• The Archangel Project 
• The Solomon Effect 
• The Babylonian Codex  

44.  A Song For Dark Times by Ian Rankin.  Rebus is back. This mystery takes place partly in the north of Scotland in Caithness, but also of course in Edinburgh.  The surprise here is that the mystery involves  Rebus’ daughter Samantha.  Which was a nice surprise.  It's amazing that Rankin can keep writing this series and it never grows stale.  (Highly Recommended)

45.  The Reckoning by Rennie Airth.  I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t read more of this John Madden WWI series. But there was a lot of telling, not showing, in this tale of revenge.  (Not recommended)

46.  Murder is in the Air by Frances Brody.  The next volume in her Kate Shackelford series set in the 1920's, Kate solves a mystery set in a brewery. (Recommended if you are reading the series)

General Fiction

1.  Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussman.  Half mystery/half novel. This won a British National Book Award but didn’t appeal to me - too predictable. I didn't find any of the characters interesting enough.  I think I don’t like multiple points of view books when I’m bored by the characters. (Not recommended.)

2.  Now We Shall be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller.  I really enjoyed this novel.  Mr. LaCroix is home from the Napoleanic wars, suffering from PTSD. He leaves on an excursion to the Scottish isles to find himself again. But his past (and Corporal Calley) are following him. Miller is good at creating both hope and dread. (Very Recommended). 

3.  The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey.  This is set in a medieval village where a leading citizen drowns. Did he commit suicide, was he murdered or was it accidental?  The Dean wants to know. The parish priest tells the story. Backwards. I guess I could have counted this a mystery but I felt it was more lit fic.  I enjoyed it. (Recommended)

4.  To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon.  Always nice to stop by and visit Mitford. (Recommended for fans of Mitford. ). 

5.  To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek.   We are in England during the onset of the Black Death. There is a group of people heading toward a port city where they can take ship to Calais.  Will they make it?  My biggest problem with this book is that it was written in fake old English that was not only difficult to follow but mostly meant I couldn’t  “hear” most of the voices in my mind.  I found it frustrating, although I admit that during these months of pandemic I have found myself thinking of it from time to time. (Not Recommended) 

6.  A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier.   A “surplus woman” after WWI, Violet is starting a new life in Winchester where she becomes involved with the group of women needlepointing the cushions at Winchester Cathedral.  There were moments in this novel where I felt sad that single women still have to put up with many of the same issues they had to deal with in 1932.  The plot was somewhat predictable but I enjoyed it. (Recommended)

7.  Nine Women, One Dress by Jane L. Rosen.  A small book that a friend had read and passed on to me. I wasn’t sure I would like it, but it ended up being very enjoyable.  A classic “beach read” that I read in January. A little black dress finds its way into the lives of various unconnected women as it is purchased, returned, lent. etc.  (Recommended if you are looking for something short and very light) 

8. Vaucluse by Donna Every.  A novel set in Barbados in the first half of the 19th century. Sometimes historical research gets in the way of a novel. This is based on a real person, apparently.  But lives don’t have narrative arcs.  After all this time, I barely remember the plot. (Not recommended.) 

9. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Sort of a realistic novel about slavery but also an alternate reality novel where the underground railroad was a real train. I’m not much for alternate realities but the writing was beautiful, which made up for that. Whenever the story was with Cora, the main character, I was deep into the story but when it switched to others I often lost interest.  On the whole I am glad I read it.  (Recommended)

10.  The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Gowar.  A beautifully written but odd novel involving a London merchant, a courtesan and a mermaid that takes place in the 1780’s. The characters were well drawn, the writing was witty but the plot was a little too odd to suit me. I found I would read a few chapters, shake my head and have to put it down for a while. The character I kept thinking about at the end was a minor character named Polly, who disappeared from the story and seemed to have been included as a warning about what happened to women who had to prostitute themselves on the streets. (Recommended with reservations) 

11. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh.  Weird book.  Very weird book.  The main character just wants to take pills that let her sleep away her life because of ... reasons.  It also unexpectedly turned into a bit of a 9/11 novel.  It isn't very long which is I why I finished it. (Not recommended). 

 12. Star Gazing by Linda Gillard. I can't remember who recommended this.  I don't read a lot of romance novels but I thought it would make a nice break.  It involves a blind woman and an unexpected pregnancy and an oil rig explosion.  As with many novels there was too much telling and not enough showing. Most of it bored me and I skimmed the last third.  (Not recommended)

13.  Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich.   This novel involves a dystopia and an Indian reservation.  I put off reading this for two years because life is too dystopian.  So I read it at the start of the coronavirus outbreak. Because, why not?  It is not my favorite Erdrich novel but I always enjoy her writing.  (Recommended)

14-16. Hardwired by Meredith Wild.  Hardpressed by Meredith Wild. Hardline by Meredith Wild.  Recommended to me by a friend as an escape romance series in the 50 Shades genre, which I don't mind. It was the beginning of the pandemic and I really wanted light reading. The first book in the series is a total beach read. But it was downhill from there. The plot of the second book was ludicrous with a villain who might as well have twirled his mustache etc. and the heroine kept getting dumber and dumber.  And by the third book I could take no more of the obsessive, controlling, abusive billionaire love interest.  (Not recommended)

17. Normal People by Sally Rooney. One of the best books I read this year. About two young people made for each other but constantly misunderstanding each other.  She captures the angst of high school and college.  Very realistic. I haven't watched the TV series because I liked the book so much.  Maybe someday.  (Highly recommended)

18. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel.  The end of the trilogy finally. Not as tightly written as the first book but more compelling, to me, than the second book. A little too long, as most books at the end of a series are, as if she wanted to cram all her remaining research into it. It also didn’t pull me along in a way that compelled me to keep reading.  I started this on March 14 and by March 16 had read three quarters of it. It then took me three weeks to read the remainder partly because of the disruption of lockdown but also, with all the death in the world, I didn’t really want to read about another death. Was that a failure of the novel or just a sign of the times? But still, beautifully written and a great ending to the trilogy.  (Highly recommended). 

19. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich.  Maybe one of her best novels.  The main character, who works as a Night Watchman, is trying to save his tribe from the machinations of the politicians in Washington.  He is a delight and as usual all the secondary characters are also good.  I especially liked the subplot of the missing sister in Minneapolis/St. Paul and the search for her.  (Highly recommended). 

20. My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. A very short read but thought provoking.  I really did not know what to expect from this novel and wondered whether I would enjoy it, as I usually don't like serial killer stories.  But I enjoyed this.  A good first novel for the author, I look forward to reading more from her. (Recommended)

21. Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.  What happens when you know something but you don’t admit you know, even to yourself? The Ponzi scheme that is part of the plot of this novel is only part of that question. I didn’t like this as much as I liked her last novel but I did enjoy it.  (Recommended)

22. The Oracle Year by Charles Soule. An odd book about a man who wakes up one day knowing a finite list of things (108) that are going to happen in the future.  It kept my interest but the end was a disappointment because it never explained how he knew these things. (Recommended with much reservation)

23. Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim. Meh. Again I was trying to find something light to read and someone recommended this.  It is a romance but has mystical elements, reading tea leaves sorta.  (Not recommended)

24. The King at the Edge of the World by Arthur Phillips. I had high hopes. It involved London and Scotland at the end of QEI’s reign. The main character was a physician from Turkey.  But it ended up being too meta even for me. (Not recommended)

25. One Night Promised by Jodi Ellen Malpas.  Another meh romance with a dumb heroine recommended by someone who obviously doesn't know what I like to read. (Not recommended). 

26. A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib. An Egyptologist comes to terms with her sister’s death in Cairo from a suicide bomb.  It's a dark topic but that didn't bother me.  (Recommended)

27-28.  The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett,  books 1 and 2.   A re-read explained above. 

Miscellaneous

1. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer (copy chief of Random House).  A Christmas gift that I enjoyed immensely. Sister Francis Xavier (my 6-8 grade English teacher) taught me well but there were many things I didn’t know.  (Recommended)

2. Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith. Thoughts during quarantine.  I always like Smith's writing. (Recommended)

3. Bush Runner:  The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson by Mark Bourrie.   Recommended for those who like French Canadian history.