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| Selection of books mentioned in this post (plus an aging bouquet) |
The thing is, I've not been inclined to post so much for considerably more than a minute, even in its most current, slangy sense. It all seems sort of pointless, you know? What sort of posts would the average German woman be writing in 1939, you know? As it happens, I can answer that, because I bought On The Other Side: Letters To My Children From Germany 1940 - 46 when we were at the Persephone shop in Bath a few years back. It seems that one just sort of goes on with the quotidian of existence, regardless, and that's pretty much what I've been doing.
For me that means a fair bit of reading so I've decided to post a reading recap here, rather than wait until the end of the year. Possibly because I don't have so much certainty about the end of the year, the way things are going. Happy thoughts. Books then, in reverse order, because that's how I do things. I expect this list to become vaguer about the books as we go along. Let's see, shall we?
The Tainted Cup I put my name on the lengthy hold list for this at Seattle Public Library (hereinafter SPL) after asking Victoria, from whom we buy our goat cheese at the farmers market, what she was reading. It's sort of a Mycroft Holmes-esque mystery in a fantasy setting. I found it surprisingly engrossing and have since put my name down for the sequel at SPL.
Little Weirds This one was also a recommendation, this time from an anonymous librarian. In addition to reading, I'm filling my idle hours by collecting SPL passport stamps (another post, perhaps, some day), which means I'm going to a lot of new-to-me library branches. This collection of short essays from a stand-up comic/actress is sort of a mixed bag; just when I found myself thinking she was insufferably shallow, she'd say something particularly insightful.
Runaway Horses Another library book from another SPL branch display, this time all the books on the display had a horse component because it's now the Year of the Horse. I thought this was an Italian mystery and it sort of is, but mostly it was just fucking weird. (On the up side, googling for the Iain Pears mystery series that I thought about referencing here, led me to discover that Mr Pears has written a couple of new books since I last checked in on him--hurrah!)
Castle Richmond The long-time Imaginary Reader will realize that things were seeming particularly bleak a few weeks back for I turned to the Trollope shelf for distraction. Sadly, this stand-alone novel was set during the Irish Famine and so a little less fully escapist than I might have hoped. The main story was pretty decent though there was shockingly little in the way of foxhunting.
Murder in Mesopotamia It's sort of too bad that this list is in reverse chronological order because this was the last of the Agatha Christie re-reads, rather than the first. Poirot enters, as I dimly recall, on about page 180.
Cat Among the Pigeons Or maybe this is the one in which Poirot is a very late addition to the story. A murder set in a girls school, several characters make use of the titular phrase which struck me as a little odd.
4:50 from Paddington Jane Marple this time, with a plucky young sidekick / stand-in.
Two Women Living Together Another book from SPL (as were, come to think of it, the Agatha Christies), possibly from the Peak Picks display. Nonfiction, for a change, this one is written in alternating chapters by the two women in question. They're friends and roommates, not romantically involved, and the book offers a window into daily life and concerns for unmarried Korean women. I liked it, rather.
Mrs Christie at the Mystery Guild Library The book that (obviously) inspired the Christie kick already recorded. This again came from SPL (do admire how financially responsible I've become!), checked out because, well, why wouldn't I? It's a mystery set in more or less present-day NYC, featuring a ghostly Agatha Christie, and it was a bit of a hoot.
The Lincoln Highway A serendipitous read--I found this in a Little Free Library while on a bike ride and I was between books. I'd read Mr Towle's previous blockbuster and liked it okay (while not seeing what all the fuss was about) so I figured I'd give this one a try. It was much the same: a good time while not exactly earth-shattering. And a bit morally ambiguous in the end, which I found surprising and refreshing.
Halcyon Alas, we have come to the first real stinker of the list. Thankfully, this was another SPL book so only my time was squandered. I have no one to blame but myself; I was attracted to the font of the title on the spine and the flap-copy was intriguing. But the story itself was sloppily written and, oh, just painful to read.
The Way to Colonos The first one I've drawn a blank on, though looking at the link I see it's the retelling of three Greek myths/stories, originally published in the early 1960s. You know how books written in the 1960s often feel oddly dated and sort of permeated with an air of self-conscious thrashing against societal constraints? This is one of those.
Five Found Dead Another title that now draws a blank. Unsurprisingly, it's another mystery, this time by Sulari Gentill, some of whose books I've really liked while others have been a bit so-so. This one falls on the more favorable end of so-so. Also checked out from SPL. (I'm determined to get my money's worth on my local taxes, apparently.)
A brief intermission to note that I heard somewhere that mysteries
are popular because they make people feel like there's order in life,
that things happen for a reason, that there's a logic at work. And that
when people do bad things, they get found out and punished.
Which might explain why I've been reading so many mysteries this year.
The Correspondent Another one checked out from SPL, this time based largely on the cover art though I also had read a good review of it. The reference librarian looked at the book enviously and said she was looking forward to reading it herself, so I had some reason to have high expectations. Shockingly, given that it's an epistolary novel and I still have PTSD from Pamela, it did not disappoint. This is possibly the best written-for-adults book I've read this year.
Rock, Paper, Incisors The third in a series of children's books about two friends and not-romantically-involved roommates, Skunk and Badger. A lot of the action in this installment revolves around the couple of orphaned rats they have taken in. Yes, these books are the reason I have to qualify my "best read" endorsement of The Correspondent above with "written for adults."
The Mystery Writer This mystery novel by Sulari Gentill starts off much stronger than the one listed above, but it becomes seriously unbelievable in the final sections. Great characters, somewhat absurd plot.
The Black Wolf It saddens me to say--and I will refuse to be held to it--but I sort of think the time has come for Louise Penny and me to part company. I get that she doesn't want to write cozy mysteries for the rest of her life and that there's only so much she can do with the population of Three Pines, but the increasingly extreme international conspiracies . . . Well, I was going to say that the plots are just getting too outlandish, but given recent events, I sort of feel that maybe they're just too realistic. Regardless, it's not really my sort of thing.
The Dog of the South Another sort of stinker--and this time I own the book. I loved Portis' True Grit, but this one just left me fairly cold. The style is sort of Lolita-esque in some way that I'm just incapable of detailing. Meh.
Eyes of the Rigel Translated from Norwegian, this is the third in a series that is just so fine. Not a ton happens and it's slow moving and somehow spare and it's just lovely. I'm happy this one is on my shelf.
A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband My mother bought this odd cookbook--though I swear it had a different title--at a yard sale when I was a child and I was charmed by the little stories that introduced each batch of recipes. I was ever so pleased to track it down some months back and order a copy of my own for my mother's has long since disappeared. The edition I got clearly resulted from someone scanning an existing book and hastily reassembling the layout; the typesetting is awful and the index is a mess. And, for the record, the recipes are truly vile; I made one of them and I won't make that mistake again. But Bettina is just as charmingly know-it-all as I remembered.
The Paris Apartment A sort of far-fetched but still engaging enough mystery. I checked this one out of SPL because a friend had mentioned reading a Lucy Foley novel, and while the local branch didn't have the book she was reading, they had The Paris Apartment. If nothing else, it made me remember fondly the place Scott and I rented in Paris a decade ago. We should go back. And maybe just never leave.
Egg Marks the Spot The second in the Skunk and Badger series, this might be the weakest of the three. It seems to me that the truly best children's stories of this sort (and I'm deliberately leaving that vague because I'm not sure what "this sort" is) don't have a real villain in them; the protagonists may have to overcome some obstacles, but there's no one actively bad in the story. There's a villain in this installment so it's a little weaker than the first and third volumes, but it's still a good time and features a Very Surprising Development.
The Luminaries I'd pretty much forgotten this book entirely despite it being one I bought (at Paper Boat Booksellers) based, I think, on a shelf talker recommendation. It wasn't awful, but I also didn't love it. As the review I've linked to puts it, "as we read on, we don't read in." I'd forgotten how the final forty pages or so are essentially just notes for how the chapters might be written. Forget the "not awful"; that ending was just fucking lazy.
"Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Sloth Okay, so I bought this boardbook to give to my new nephew; I had to read it first to be sure it was appropriate, right? Sloth knows how to approach existence. Recommended for all ages!
Wintering This one (also borrowed from SPL) was recommended by a friend, but--forgive the pun--it left me cold. It was less a how-to than a "why-I-did" and I just didn't care all that much about the author or her issues.
All the Birds, Singing A Christmas present from Scott, I hadn't heard of this and I don't think he really knew a lot about it either. It was a weird, dark-dark-dark sort of book that just got weirder and darker as it went along. I loved it.
