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. 

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Evocative.

That was the word that kept coming to my mind in the first half of Esi Edugyan's Booker Prize nominated novel Washington Black.  This is the first time I've ever read a novel set in the West Indies where I felt like I was there.  And everything made sense.   And I could see it in my mind (which happens rarely when I read) and I could feel the heat and I could sense the fear.  

And when the story moved on to the Artic and Canada I felt the same way. She was able to evoke the cold and the blinding snow and the sense of the vastness. 

It was a delight to my senses. 

The plot was pretty good too.  Washington Black, a slave born on the plantation Faith in Barbados, is the eponymous title character of this novel.  As a young boy he is chosen to become the personal servant and assistant to the brother of the plantation owner, whom he is invited to call Titch. Titch is an early 19th century scientist who, at that moment, is interested in building a balloon that can cross the Atlantic. Through a series of events that I feel no need to spoil, Titch and Washington (or Wash, as he is called) end up escaping Barbados in the balloon and embarking on a series of adventures that take them all the way to the Artic.

But is Titch really the enlightened fellow that we would like him to be or is he just using Wash?   And why can't Wash move on and forget about Titch after they part ways?  These are the questions posed in the second half of the novel.  The second half is much less evocative (or maybe I've just read too many novels set in London) but is where Wash, still young but an adult, begins to ask these questions.   And we the reader ask them too.  And if you are like me you have arguments with yourself and with Edugyan about it. 

This is a novel of ideas and the questions that are raised are good questions, ones that I'll be thinking about for a while.   The characters are well drawn.  She doesn't answer all of our questions about them but gives us enough to see them and understand them and care about what happens to them.

I will say that the plot of the novel does rely on us believing a number of coincidences.  (All novels rely on coincidence to move the plot along; a great writer makes us forget that).  A few times I rolled my eyes.  But then I shrugged and moved on - they didn't really affect my enjoyment. 

My only complaint about the entire novel is the very last paragraph.   I won't say too much other than that I like my novels with definitive endings that I understand.   But up until that last paragraph, I was hooked. 

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

The discovery that a skeleton buried under what is now a parking lot near Leicester England is the skeleton of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet monarch of England was very exciting news for those of us who love history and archaeology.   It also made me think of Josephine Tey's novel, The Daughter of Time, which I read many years ago.  So I dug it out and read it again, in honor of the finding of Richard.

I'm not a British historian and I have no dog in the fight about the true nature of Richard - monster or good man?  Murderer of his own nephews or scapegoat for Henry VII?  I leave the arguments to those who spend their time reading about that period.

But what I do know is that history is written by the winners and even if winners don't intend to skew history in their favor, they inevitably do if only because they have more access to their own "facts" than to the other side's "facts".  I also know that history in textbooks is never as interesting as history that you "discover" for yourself.  That is why I am enjoying delving into North American French colonial history, which is not taught to us in school except at the most basic level.

In the years since I last read this novel, I had forgotten most of the arguments Tey made for why Richard was not a monster.  I had also forgotten what a good writer Tey was.   And how witty.  In this novel, her regularly appearing Scotland Yard detective, Adam Grant, is laid up in hospital after falling through a trap door.  I'm assuming he is in some kind of traction, but in any event he is required to be flat on his back for a very long time.  He is bored. Very bored.  But he cannot bring himself to read any of the books that well meaning friends have brought him. 

Tey spends a couple of pages describing these novels and I was struck by both her wit and by how much life has not changed in over sixty years of publishing:

Authors today wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it.  The public talked about "a new Silas Weekley" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush."  They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be.  Their interest was not in the book but in its newness.  They knew quite well what the book would be like.

Tey published this novel in 1951, at the beginning of the Cold War.  Although the subject that begins the discussion of truth-in-history is Richard III, Tey spends some time pointing out that even in modern times stories are circulated that the public accepts as true even though there are many people alive who know for a fact that the stories aren't true.  The American researcher assisting Grant talks about the true story of the Boston "Massacre" and Grant tells him about an incident that allegedly took place in Tonypandy Wales that never really happened.  The term "Tonypandy" becomes their code for accepted history that turns out to be myth.

If I was a professor trying to make students understand the importance of research into "minutia" I would have them read Tey's novel.   As a lawyer I've understood for year's that eyewitness accounts are inherently unreliable.  What most people think of as "circumstantial" evidence can be much more reliable.  Tey understands that too.

Give me research.  After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in anyone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house.  The price of a ring.

Tey's Detective Grant grows disgusted with historians who report only on what someone said happened without wondering about the likelihood of something happening or not happening.  Grant asks where human nature comes into things.  He wonders if the Queen Dowager, the mother of the two boys who are allegedly murdered by Richard, could actually bring herself to be in the court of the man who murdered her sons, accepting a pension from him and having her daughters attend court functions?

But the thing is ... maybe she could.  Maybe she was that kind of woman.  Tey does a good job making the case for Richard but, as a lawyer, I know that with the ambiguity in the story I could argue either side with a straight face.   But I do like that Tey puts the argument out there and shows the average reader that history is messy, the interest lies in the gray areas and sometimes it just isn't going to be possible to know for certain exactly what happened. 

As I finished the novel, I recalled that Richard made an appearance in Dorothy Dunnett's final novel in the House of Niccolo series, Gemini.   King Edward is still on the throne of England and his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is in the north on the Scottish border, part of an invasion force.  Since the point of view of the novel is Scottish, not much time is spent on the English characters.  I don't think it was technically necessary for the story to have Nicolas specifically meet Richard, but it must have been too tempting for Dunnett.  Here she has this complicated historical figure, Richard, right there on the Scottish border, how could she not have him at least meet her very complicated creation, Nicolas.

Gemini is the only Dunnett novel that I've only read once and I couldn't remember exactly how Dunnett came down on Richard's character.  I did recall that he wasn't a major character, he simply appears in the story at a key point.  So, I dug out my copy of Gemini to see how Dunnett made Richard, Duke of Gloucester and the future king, come to life. 

[Nicolas] had never met Gloucester, but was prepared for the black hair, the jagged profile, the uneven shoulders.  His voice was charming and so were his clothes:  a soft brocade robe over a fine shirt, doublet and hose.  There was a brooch in his hat. 

Dunnett refers to Richard as "Dickon Gloucester" and I wonder if there is historical precedence for that or if she just realizes that most people probably didn't call him by his full name any more than people today named Richard are called that by their friends.

Dunnett gives Nicolas two audiences with Gloucester and both are in relatively formal settings.  In the second, Gloucester gives Nicolas some unexpected and, to Nicolas, shocking, information.  "His voice was solicitous, but his eyes hinted at a wicked amusement ... He smiled.  Nicolas could not bring himself to smile back."

And that's pretty much all we get from Dunnett about Richard.  There is no meeting of the minds between Nicolas and Richard but they do speak as intellectual equals which generally means that Dunnett had some respect for the historical personage.  In the entire encounter she seems to have decided to treat Richard as pragmatic and intelligent, which by all accounts he was. It is also made clear that Nicolas expects him to be ruthless but is not shocked by that understanding.  There is nothing in these encounters to give us a clue as to whether or not Dunnett believed he would eventually murder his nephews, but she creates him as a character who was the kind of man who could have done it.

Since this comports pretty much with how I view Richard, I was satisfied with my re-reading. 

Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy

Pat Barker's novel Regeneration was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but it was the third novel in the trilogy, The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize the year it was published.  Sometimes this can smell like a consolation prize for not winning earlier but in this case I think the right novel won. If, of course, only one novel was going to win.  All three are wonderful works. But, in my opinion, The Ghost Road packed more of an emotional wallop than the other two and I believe Barker was able to create that wallop because she created a fictional character.

That may sound odd because novels are, by their very nature fictional.  But historical novels, in particular, often have real life characters in them.  I find that I tend to like historical novels where the real life characters are peripheral to the main action.  And the Regeneration Trilogy has many real life characters. 

In the first novel,  Regeneration, Barker used real life World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon, as one of the central characters.  Sassoon is an interesting person.   He was a decorated hero who grew to believe that the War was wrong.  When he spoke out he was placed in a mental institution where men suffering from shell shock were treated - he was put there mostly for PR purposes because it was easier for the authorities to claim that he was out of his mind than to take action against a decorated officer for speaking out against the War.  His friend, the poet Robert Graves (of I Claudius fame), was instrumental in convincing him to go along with the institutional route. But, in the end, Sassoon chose to go back to the front and he survived the War.  The tension between his feelings about the War and his sense of duty to his men and the others who were still there fighting is one of the stronger parts of the novel. 

But ultimately Sassoon's story, interesting though it is, is bounded by the facts of his real life.  And there are other real life characters.  While in the mental hospital Sassoon formed a close relationship with his treating physician, Dr. Rivers, whose job it is to rehabilitate men so that they can go back but who knows there is nothing really wrong with Sassoon.  Rivers is a principal character in all three novels and he, too, was a real life person.  Sassoon also became a mentor to young Wilfred Owen who would ultimately become perhaps the most famous World War I poet and who would not survive the War.  Too much knowledge about the fate of the characters can detract a bit from the usual dramatic tension of a novel where the reader wants to know what happens.  If the reader knows the fate of Sassoon and Owen right from the beginning, the author needs to find some other hook

In Regeneration Barker ultimately makes the Sassoon story a novel of the mind in which the varying perceptions of the War are debated.  Sassoon is against the War but is not a pacifist.   He ultimately returns to the War on his own volition but not because he has changed his mind, ultimately, about the War.  This tension in his character is what Barker explores and, while it is fascinating, I'm not sure she really explained it to me.  The anti-war sentiment of Sassoon is easy to understand when you understand the slaughter that was going on in Europe.  I had a harder time understanding why his anti-war feelings seemed to be based on the ultimate purpose of the war.  He believed that the British people were being lied to.

And probably they were being lied to in many cases.  ]Most wars are fought for monied interests and not the altruistic reasons that are given to the public.  Propaganda is a part of every War and it is good to try to spot it.  But in the case of World War I, notwithstanding the propaganda there was an actual invading force to fight.  Did Sassoon really think that the people of Belgium, France and, perhaps ultimately, Britain should live under German domination?  He thought that peace should be made but Barker gives no evidence that anyone really thought it was possible at that particular point in the War to make peace without simply caving into German will.  That is what makes the debate particularly interesting but ultimately unsatisfying as a core component of a novel.

It seemed to me that the War was a travesty on the Allied side not particularly because of its purpose but because the people running the War were either inept and/or unable to match tactics to modern weaponry. To refuse to condone the War for that reason seems reasonable to me.  I remember reading that at one point the French soldiers refused to advance because they were simply being slaughtered.  On the other hand, they didn't walk off the field - they didn't want to allow the Germans into France they just didn't want to move an inch forward.   The cost of advance was too high but the cost of defense was still supportable. If Sassoon were a fictional character Barker might have been able to have brought some of that into his reason for opposing the War.  But since he was a real person who wrote an actual manifesto against the War she was stuck with using what he actually stated were his reasons for opposition.  And those reasons didn't seem particularly coherent to me.   And the reasons he went back weren't particularly coherent to me.

Barker also created a few fictional characters in Regeneration who I thought were in some ways more successful than Sassoon as characters. One of them was Billy Prior who was rendered mute by what he had experienced at the front.  Dr. Rivers eventually helped him get his speech back.  Prior wanted to go back to the front but Rivers discovered that he had asthma and the medical board denied his request to return the front, assigning him to home duties.

Prior is the one of the main characters of the second and third novels.  In The Eye in the Window he is working for the War Department and in The Ghost Road he finally convinces them to send him back to the Front.  Sassoon makes another appearance in The Ghost Road as does Wilfred Owen.  And Dr. Rivers is in every novel, moving from the suburbs of Edinburgh down to a London hospital where he continues to treat men suffering from shell shock.   The main intent of his treatments is to be able to send them back to fight and what is surprising in the novel is how many of them do want to go back to the Front.

Billy Prior isn't always a particularly likeable character but he seems much more coherent to me as a character than Sassoon or even Rivers.  I think that is because Barker created him and could make of him what he needed to be for the novel.  Although hindsight is 20/20, when writing an historical novel it seems useful to use that hindsight to good purpose.  The real characters like Sassoon and Owen must do whatever they actually did and think whatever the historical records indicates they thought.  Billy Prior can do and think things that possibly no one could actually verbalize at the time - only with 20/20 hindsight can certain things be said.  That is useful.

There was so much in these novels that made me think that the world just hasn't changed much.  The men back from the Front, especially Billy Prior, find it incredibly difficult to be around civilians whom they find particularly out of touch.  But of course civilians "at home" are always out of touch - it isn't really possible to understand war unless you've been there.  And for the men who do come home, they find a world far removed from the world they left.  Things have moved on without them.  In World War I, especially, there were great social upheavals - women going to work in factories and doing urban jobs that, previously, only men did was a huge social change. 

Billy Prior says:

'You know if you were writing about ... oh, I don't know, enclosures, or the coming of the railways, you wouldn't have people standing round saying ... ' He put a theatrical hand to his brow.  '"Oh dear me, we are living through a period of terribly rapid social change, aren't we?"  Because nobody'd believe people would be so ... aware.  But here we are, living through just such a period, and everybody's bloody well aware of it. I've heard nothing else since I came home. Not the words, of course, but the awareness. And I just wondered whether there aren't periods when people do become aware of what's happening, and they look back at their previous unconscious selves and it seems like decades ago. Another life.'

Of course people can look back over a five or ten or fifty year period and marvel how much life has changed.  My Grandma would occasionally do that.  But when you are living through an upheaval like World War I, perhaps you are aware of it minute by minute.  Wondering where your old life went.  Not sure you necessarily like the new life.  In some ways I think 2001 through about 2005 was a time of hyper awareness here in the States but it was nothing compared to what WWI would have been like.

It is hard to know if the words that come of Barker's characters mouths are representative of what someone would have said or felt at that time or if they are more representative of the times we live in.  Or maybe things just don't change.  As an anti-war character says, talking about her anti-war mother who also would help women who wanted to terminate pregnancies:

You know, killing a baby when it's mother's two month's gone, that's a terrible crime.  But wait twenty years and blow the same kid's head off, that's all right. 

That could be said then.  That could be said now.

In the end I liked The Ghost Road the best because, while it was just as much an "intellectual" book as Regeneration, it was also more personal and brought the cost of the War much more into focus. The novel ends at the beginning of November, just days before what we know will be Armistice Day and the end of the War.  It ends with an insignificant battle over a canal that, in the end, will be irrelevant.  Insignificant, that is, for everyone except the men who die in it.  And their families and loved ones who will live with those deaths.  With 20/20 hindsight we can say that it was insignificant to the course of the War because we know what happened a few days later.   All I kept thinking was ... what a waste.  What a terrible waste.

I'm not sure this series ultimately sated me on WWI novels.  I wouldn't mind reading more.  But I also feel ready to move into other universes too. 

Wow! It's July Already?

I can't believe how long it has been since I posted anything here.  Life ...

Well, let's just pretend that all this time hasn't gone by and plow right in to what I've been reading. Mysteries. Lots and lots of mysteries.

Last summer I read one of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs novels and swore I was going to go back and read all of them from the beginning. I did. Then I moved on to Charles Todd's Inspector Rutledge novels which in turn led me to Charles Todd's Bess Crawford novels. And those led me to Anne Perry's Joseph Reavely novels. Finally, I just finished The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller.  The common theme? The First World War.

I enjoyed all of them but I would rate the Inspector Rutledge novels as my favorites. Charles Todd is the pen name for an American mother-son writing team who set their mysteries in the English countryside in the years immediately following World War I. Ian Rutledge is a detective inspector with Scotland Yard who has returned from World War I a damaged man, suffering from what was then called shell shock. As an officer, he was required to execute one of his sergeants for refusing to obey an order to go into battle. Rutledge is now haunted by the memory of the man, Hamish McLeod, and hears his voice as though Hamish is standing just behind him.

The cases that Rutledge is sent to solve are fairly standard mystery fare. What I really like in these books is the portrayal of Rutledge himself. His recovery from the war is very slow. Each novel takes place over a short period of only a few weeks and the next novel always seems to pick up almost immediately after the previous story ended. After 14 novels we have moved less than two years in time. I like this slow pace. The struggles that Rutledge goes through, his aversion to sleeping anywhere that might allow others to hear his screams in the night, his hesitation to get involved with any woman, all ring true to me. Todd creates, for me, a very believable universe that I can envision and relate to and yet still is clearly of another time and another place.

Todd uses the same universe for a second series of mysteries: The Bess Crawford mysteries. The universe is clearly the same because a minor character in the Rutledge books is distantly related to Bess Crawford, although so far Bess Crawford has not met Ian Rutledge. Bess 's stories are set a few years before Rutledge's stories, during the course of World War I where Bess is a nurse in France.

Although there are things I like about the novels, they have too much of a Nancy Drew feel to them for me to take them very seriously. Where Rutledge is a Scotland Yard professional, Bess is an amateur sleuth who is thrown into situations where mysteries need solving. Like Nancy Drew, Bess has a well connected father (in this case a retired army officer who is involved in some way with British intelligence) and there is even a Ned Nickerson-like character - a handsome escort who is always there for her but never gets in the way emotionally or otherwise. If the story were at all realistic he would be her gay best friend. But these aren't particularly realistic stories.

Although Bess is a nurse in France much of the stories take place in England where Bess always seems to end up. Don't get me wrong, they are enjoyable books but seem more like fluff than the Rutledge books.

The Maisie Dobbs books take place in the 20's, after the war. Maisie is still dealing with the after affects of the war in which she was a nurse. Now she has opened her own investigation agency and is trying to move on with her life. Although born to humble parents, Maisie was fortunate to find a sponsor in a wealthy woman who paid for her schooling and helped set her up in life. I didn't really have too much of a problem with this fairy godmother but I do find the storyline where Maisie falls in love with the wealthy heir to be a bit much. Fortunately this isn't a large part of the story, so far.

What is interesting is that I don't find Maisie herself particularly likeable. I constantly think she is too uptight and needs to lighten up. And I regularly think to myself that I wouldn't like her in real life. But I don't find her so annoying that I don't want to read the next book.

The Anne Perry books are different because there are only five of them and they attempt to encompass one long mystery that runs the length of the war itself. The first novel begins with the summer that the war starts and the series runs through the war, taking place partly in France where one character is a military chaplain and partly in London where another character works in military intelligence. I thought Perry did a better job than Todd of depicting the actual war, especially the smells of the trenches. But I found that I had little interest in the over-arching mystery and didn't really care when they finally solved it.   But I did like the characters that she created and I did think that she made the war and the trenches seem very real.

I finished The Return of Captain John Emmett a few days ago.  I don't think this is intended to be a series as the main character isn't a detective.  Perhaps because I have glutted myself on World War I stories, this one didn't hold any surprises for me.  The actual mystery was tied up in a way that seemed a little unbelievable to me, but not so much as to spoil the whole book. The characters were realistic enough.  But at this point I just can't be surprised by stories of the British shooting their own men and strong, healthy men coming home in vegetable states.

Someone recommended to me that I should read Pat Barker's Regeneration, which is a fictionalized account of the time spent by the WWI poet, Siegfried Sassoon, in a mental hospital during the war.  So I've picked it up and we'll see how it goes.