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. 

My January 2019 Reading

This month I finished the following books:

In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin.  There is no better way to ring in the new year than with a new Ian Rankin book.  I started this on New Year's Eve (the day it was published in the U.S.) and finished it on New Year's Day.  John Rebus is back (and up to all of his old tricks).  Siobhan Clarke is called in to assist when a long dead corpse is discovered in the trunk of a car lying abandoned in a gulch (or whatever the Scottish word for gulch is).  It turns out that this is an old missing persons' case that had been handled (or mishandled) by Rebus' team back in the day. That brings in Malcom Fox to review all the old case files.  I love the "team" of Rebus, Siobhan and Malcom.  This time there is also a new character, DCI Graham Sutherland, who is a good addition and I hope Rankin keeps him around for more cases.  I was particularly struck by how Rankin managed to include a warning against Brexit by the end of the story without being preachy.

Early Work by Andrew Martin.  If this novel hadn't been short I wouldn't have finished it.  In my opinion the world doesn't need any more novels about men thinking with their dicks - John Updike perfected that genre.  I'm making a note of the people who gave this novel good reviews so that I remember that we don't agree on what is good and I don't take their reading advice in the future without looking into the recommendation more.  I was reminded, yet again, how boring I find novels about people who are drunk or stoned most of the time (which also reminds me of how good a writer I found Edward St. Aubyn despite the fact that his main character was a drug addict.)  Anyway ... not recommended by me.

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday.  A somewhat odd little book, in three parts where the second part seems unconnected to parts one and two (except it isn't).  I really enjoyed part two - I liked the characters, I liked the writing and the plot took me in an unexpected direction.  I found part three entertaining because I like to listen to the BBC's Desert Island Discs and it was a riff on that.  But part one left me cold.  I really never understood the main female character and, worse, I just didn't care about her. And I had no real interest in the writer she was involved with.  But it is a small novel so that part doesn't go on for very long. And I do like the way that she writes, even in part one.  The first paragraph is an homage to Alice in Wonderland and the main character is called Alice.  And as she slips down the rabbit hole into her relationship with this man, there is a lot of "eat this" or "drink me".  I found that amusing.  The problem is that, just like the "real" Alice, this one is very passive.  That's ok in a little girl but I found it tedious in a grown woman.  As a side note, this book should carry a trigger warning for St. Louis Cardinals fans - it will bring back your memories of the 2004 World Series.

Milkman: A Novel by Anna Burns.   I loved, loved, loved this book.  It was chosen by my reading group (although I planned to read it anyway) and from what I can tell, no one loved it but me and most people didn't get through it.  (I missed the meeting.)  Burns sets her story in an unnamed place with unnamed people (the time period appears to be the 1970's).  With just a little effort it's easy to identify the locale as Belfast, Northern Ireland during "the troubles".  The characters are the narrator, her family, "sometime boyfriend" and the people who live in her neighborhood.  Oh, and a character known only as "Milkman" who has taken an interest in the narrator and is sexually harassing her - but without touching her or saying anything.  The plot is not the point of this novel (and in some ways it is tied up far too neatly at the end) and the characters are somewhat secondary.  Burns was trying to evoke what it felt like to live in that kind of situation and I think she handled that perfectly. The thing that struck me was how brilliant it was to not name the characters or the locale - because it was so easy to analogize the situation to many OTHER situations:  the #metoo era, what life must have been like in Beirut back in the 1980's, what life must be like in parts of many American cities in the 20th century if you were black and living in the midst of the drug war. 

Here are some representative lines that seem to me to evoke the ideas of the novel, but could be applied to many different stories, not just this one - I could put most of them as a lead-in to a tweet about a news story of the day somewhere:

"I did not want to get in the car with this man, I did not know how to say so though, as he wasn't being rude and he knew my family for he'd named the credentials, the male people of my family, and I couldn't be rude because he wasn't being rude."

"I did not like twentieth-century books because I did not like the twentieth century."

"...if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening,, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn't there?"

"If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave."

"I said this was because of the twisting of words, the fabrication of words and the exaggeration of words that went on in this place."

" 'it's not about being happy, he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I've ever heard."

"They killed it because it liked them, because they couldn't cope with being liked, couldn't cope with innocence, frankness, openness, with a defencelessness and an affection and purity so pure, so affectionate, that the dog and its qualities had to be done away with."

"This was why you didn't get many shining people in environments overwhelmingly consisting of fear and sorrow."

"No one has ever come across a cat apologising and if a cat did, it would be patently obvious it was not being sincere."

"... because no information could be forthcoming that wouldn't be perceived by at leats one party to be a distortion of the truth."

"... their survival as an armed guerrilla outfit in a tightly knit, anti-state environment depended upon local support in that environment."

"Hard to define, this stalking, this predation, because it was piecemeal."

"...the only time you'd call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them, and naturally they would know this and so wouldn't come."

I could go on and on.  I was constantly highlighting phrases in this novel, stopping to think how the thought applied to more situations than simply a girl living in Belfast in the 1970's being stalked by an older man who was part of the IRA.   

 A lot of people have said this book is difficult to read because it has an almost stream of consciousness style.  I didn't find it difficult, but maybe because when I read I "hear" specific voices very clearly and this character had a very distinctive voice.  The two people in my reading group who made it through the book both listened to the audio version.  That may make a difference.

Warlight and The Witch Elm

I blame the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Really.

After the last few weeks of focusing on the Senate Judiciary Committee and their Supreme Court confirmation hearings I was just not in the mood to read a novel in which a white youth can't be bothered to see the world through anybody else's eyes.  I definitely wasn't in the mood to read TWO novels with that kind of protagonist.

Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje, and The Witch Elm by Tana French, are two novels that couldn't be more different.  Warlight is the story of a boy growing up in post-World War II London.  His parents leave he and his sister for a year, ostensibly to travel to the other side of the world due to his father's job.  The people that they are left with are unusual to say the least and it becomes clear very soon that the parents have lied to the children and there is more going on than meets the eye.

The Witch Elm is a crime novel in which the protagonist is beaten to a pulp in the first fifty pages by two burglars, causing a loss of memory.  This becomes important when skeletal remains are found and the protagonist can't remember details that might lead to the discovery of who killed the victim.

But despite their differences, they seemed to have basically the same premise.  The male protagonist  is so self-centered that he spends his youth oblivious to what is going on around him.  In Warlight, Nathaniel can't even be bothered to know the real names of the adults who are ostensibly in charge of him.   Ostensibly he can't remember them years later because he was so traumatized by his youth. 

Oh c'mon.

In The Witch Elm, Toby remembers his teen years at school as being a pleasant time where people occasionally play pranks on each other.  He is shocked to learn, years later, that others have memories of bullying and sexual assault.   HE doesn't remember that.

Oh c'mon. 

I rapidly lost interest in both of these characters.  I found myself utterly bored by Nathaniel's story.   But it's a short novel so I finished it.  I was annoyed by Toby and his white male privilege from the first few pages of The Witch Elm and rapidly found that I didn't care what happened to him.   I kept reading because, up until now, I have loved Tana French's books.  It never improved.  I was never shocked (or even surprised).  Even her writing style in this novel annoyed me - far too much exposition.

So all in all, I didn't care for either book and I can't recommend either one.  Especially after the last few weeks and the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

January 2018 Reading

I miss doing a monthly summary of all that I've read so I thought I would try it again.  We'll see how long this lasts.

Here's what I read in January:

The Medicus Mystery Series by Ruth Downie.  I spent the early part of the New Year catching up on all the Ruth Downie Medicus mysteries.  About  year ago I read her first book in the series, simply entitled Medicus.  Since I am a big fan of Lindsey Davis' Roman mysteries I thought I might like it.  I did, but it took me a while to get back to them.  Finally I loaded up on the rest of them through the beginning of January and filled the very cold nights reading away.  There are now seven published novels with the eighth coming this year.  Although they are Roman, most of the action takes place in Brittania where Gaius Petreius Ruso is a doctor to the Roman legions.  Ruso is from the south of Gaul (France) and has joined up to make some money to pay off the debts left by his deceased father and to escape his ex-wife. Two of the books move out of Brittania, one into Gaul and one into Rome, but Downie constantly returns her hero to Brittania, specifically the area up near the border with Sccotland where the "barbarians" live.  Hadrian is building his wall during this time.  Her books seem well researched, her main character is appealing, the other characters are interesting and  it is a time period I'm interested in.  She does particularly well writing a male character that thinks the way women assume that men think (I have no idea of course if they really think that way.)  She also allows him all the prejudices of his time and doesn't make him perfect.  While I think I like the Lindsey Davis books a bit better, this is a good series and I'll continue to read it as books come out.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Eagan. I'm not sure what to say about this.  Full disclosure, I wasn't wild about A Visit From the Goon Squad.  I liked this novel better.  It kept my interest through most of the story.  She created a very believable world.  The story includes graphic descriptions of what it was like to go down in a diving suit during WWII that I found difficult to read because they made me claustrophobic.  There was an entire section set on a merchant marine ship that I found fascinating.  But it felt like she didn't know how to end it so, she just ended it.  And a key part of the story is how one character avoids sure death - and I found it completely unbelievable.  All in all, I think Jennifer Egan is just not for me.

Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett.  This was a re-read.  Lots of people I follow on Twitter are reading this series so I decided to re-read it.  I'll probably write about the whole series when I finish the re-read (and there are eight novels).  Dunnett is one of my favorite authors.  I read this novel when it first came out and then re-read it before every succeeding novel in the series came out.  But I didn't re-read it after the end of the last novel and I find myself interpreting the story in light of what ultimately happens to all the characters eight novels from now.  

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.

What I’m Reading

I haven’t blogged about what I’ve been reading lately because I’ve been lost in French Colonial History,

particularly the history of the French in the Ohio River Valley, and I doubt anyone is much interested in that.  That’s a picture of '”the pile” I’m working on.  The only one I’ve finished is Elusive Empires by Erik Hinderaker which came out in 1997 but I hadn’t yet read. Starting with the culture of the Mississippian Indians (the mound builders) he works his way through the refugees from the Iroquois wars, the French entering the Illinois Country and the Ohio Valley through Detroit and the English entering through Pennsylvania and Virginia.  It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know but it was an excellent overview of the history and put much in a timeline perspective.  Although it seemed to lean more heavily on the “American” side of the history than on the French, it was much more balanced than many other histories. 

The others I’m reading more or less simultaneously as the spirit moves me.  The New Peoples edited by Jacqueline Peterson isn’t really about the Ohio Valley.  These appear to be papers written by participants at the first international Conference on the Metis in North America, hosted by the Newberry Library in Chicago.  But since some of the peoples of the Ohio Valley (especially on the French side) were metis, I thought it fit into the bunch.  Metis means “mixed” and literally the metis people were children of europeans and native americans. 

Chasing Empire Across the Sea, by Kenneth J. Banks is about communications in the 18th Century between France and her American colonies, including the French Caribbean.  Communication between France and Canada was limited by the freezing of the St. Lawrence River each winter.  Communication between France and the West Indies was relatively simple.  Surprisingly, communication with Louisiana was the slowest because it was the longest distance and the journey up the Mississippi to New Orleans was treacherous.  This book is full of a wealth of information that I’m slowly digesting. 

The Ohio Valley in Colonial Days by Berthold Fernow is a reprint of a book published in 1890 and written by the custodian of the State Archives of New York.  I haven’t started it yet but I never discount books because they are old, especially when they are written by someone who has access to an archive. The language is sometimes florid but there is often good information to be had.

Finally, there is The French and Indian War by Walter R. Borneman, published in 2006.  I’ve read much about that portion of the great world war known in Europe as the Seven Years War. But I never get enough. 

As far as fiction goes, despite my desire to start a new mystery series I’ve been catching up on old friends.  I just read This Body of Death by Elizabeth George and all I have to say is … Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.   Alcoholics are not people you want to mess around with.   I also read The Judgment of Caesar and am now reading The Triumph of Caesar, both by Steven Saylor and featuring Gordianus the Finder.   Don’t know how I fell behind by two books on that series.  Probably because my local library is always late on getting the next one.   I know my Roman History enough to know that Caesar comes to a bad end.  Beware the Ides … and all that.

And I’m still working on Eliza Fay’s Letters from India.   She’s finally reached India after many, many adventures.  In some ways it’s hard to remember that this isn’t a novel.

It’s a Mystery

It’s summer and I feel like binging on mystery novels. I’d like to pick an author and read all of his/her books straight through, like I did with Laura Lippman’s books. I guess I need to check The List. But ideas are welcome from commenters or emailers.

While I’m thinking mysteries, Simon Hoggart, in The Guardian is collecting television detective show cliches. I love television detective shows and partly because they are so full of cliches:

Your detective show cliches continue to pour in. A couple of my own: when a detective is watching the TV report of his case, he invariably snaps the set off midway through, even though you'd think it would be vital to know what the public was being told. If someone has just been interviewed, and the camera lingers on the back of his head as he watches the detective walk back to his car, he or she did it.

Terry O'Hara asks why, when a suspect is being interviewed at the station, there is always a uniformed officer waiting at the door. "This has never happened during my 28 years in the police."

WM Stack of Norwich points out that anyone who walks alone at night with blue floodlights behind the trees is a goner, just like anyone filmed through their kitchen window making a bedtime cup of cocoa. It's nearly always fatal to have a housekeeper, whose job it is to stumble on their employer's stiff, cold body, and scream.

Frank Desmond points out that anyone who coughs, however gently, is for it later on. Likewise anybody foolish enough to show people pictures of his loved ones.

Bruce Antell points out that if someone says something like, "Hello, what are on earth you doing here?" without using the name, he or she is about to be murdered by the unnamed visitor.

Eamonn Burgess says that whenever an underling is spooling through hours of CCTV footage, the boss always walks by at exactly the right moment: "Hey, wait a minute, go back – yes, him! That's our man!"

I think my subconscious is keeping me from having a housekeeper. Well, that and my budget.