A travel and reading group friend messaged me this week, wondering when I was going to post another book blog. Honestly, it wasn’t on my radar, but my life right now could use a distraction from drama, so I spent the day looking back at my favourite leisure time activity: reading. (Thanks, Abbie!)

Since getting back from our wonderful 5 month stay in Mérida, where I scavenged our landlord’s bookshelves for reading material outside of my usual comfort zone, (Episode 400) I’ve continued to mix things up a bit – although always with a good dose of mysteries thrown into that mix.

Here’s what this April through the end of October looked like back in Canada: we were in Ireland for 2 weeks in May, hosted visitors for 2 weeks in June, cruised Alaska for a week in August, and toured Morocco for 2 weeks in October. I did NO reading during any of those periods; they were just too jam-packed with activities and completely exhausted sleeps. Yet somehow, I still managed to read almost 50 books! I’ve broken them into 3 separate “episodes” so as not to be overwhelming.

I have to note how much I love having LIBBY, my on-line library access. Not only does it mean I can read anywhere in the world without having to lug physical books (which I love, but they’re HEAVY!), but Libby also allows me to pull up the lists of all the books I’ve borrowed, sorted by month. What a bonus when it comes time to track my reading!

That said, I did have the pleasure of borrowing a few “real” books from the Coquitlam Public Library’s “librarian recommended” shelf, and one of those (Son of a Trickster, by Eden Robinson, from August) was a particularly terrific read.

I’d been posting my progress in Facebook as I went along, so am cheating by using those photos with their (often VERY brief) comments here too.

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My favourite book of the past 7 months? The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki, from June. A close second would be Looking for Jane, which I just finished in October.

My “don’t bother” books? The Embroidered Book, by Kate Heartfield, from June’s very short list. Its premise held so much promise, but I found the writing so uninspired that I simply couldn’t finish it. Ditto for Janet Evanovich’s The Recovery Agent in April.

Most eye-opening? The non-fiction Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder, from September.

NOTE: There are no plot synopses here, just my impressions/opinions of each book. If you’re intrigued, it’s really easy to find out more about the plots by searching for the book or author on Google, Amazon, or in your own specific library app.

APRIL

I was in the mood to revisit some of the very early British mysteries that got me hooked on the genre way back in high school, so I borrowed the first 2 compilations of Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn novels, comprising her first 6 of the 32 books featuring that character. While they’re a bit dated – they were written beginning in the 1930’s after all – their depictions of Britain’s high society, class distinctions, and the era’s mores remain interesting. Ngaio’s Alleyn was also one of the early depictions of a feminist male.

Then it was on to more modern authors.

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The Christie Affair, by Nina de Gramont. A truly wonderful inventive take on the real-life 11 day disappearance of the world’s most famous mystery writer. If you knew nothing about this chapter of Agatha Christie’s life, this book will make you want to explore what little is known about the real events of 1924.

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The Sleeping Car Porter, by Suzette Mayr, is the story of a queer black train porter on a Canadian passenger train in 1929. It shares sensibilities reminiscent of “The Green Book”, but in this case set in Canada, and focussed on someone at the opposite end of the spectrum from The Green Book’s celebrities. I absolutely loved the look into an era and a life both very different from mine, but continue to be frustrated by how little some of our prejudices have changed in the century since the book’s setting.

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The Second Mrs. Astor, by Shana Abe. An insightful and romantic story about the woman who influenced John Jacob Astor to become a world-renowned philanthropist, and the very real challenges of crossing socio-economic lines. Until reading this, I’d completely forgotten the Astor/Titanic connection.

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Murder in an Irish Village, by Carlene O’Connor, was just the kind of murder mystery fluff I needed to intersperse with some of the heavier themes – plus, we were headed for Irish villages! I enjoyed it, but not enough to continue with the series.

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MAY

The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn. If you enjoyed reading about the women working virtually unacknowledged at NASA, as I did, then you’ll definitely enjoy reading about a female spy network operating in France during World War 1.

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Peter Pan, by J.M.Barrie

I borrowed this to read to our grandsons, after we’d watched Robin Williams’ wonderful performance in the movie Hook. Maybe it’s because that movie was so much fun, or maybe because the televised version of the Broadway play starring Mary Martin was the first version of the story that I remember from my childhood, or maybe because we’ve all become “Disney-fied”, the book felt very stiff and formal. I had to keep reminding myself that the language and prose style date to 1911, and reflect that time. The bottom line, though, was that no matter how many entertaining voices or inflections I used, none of the boys understood the vocabulary or enjoyed the telling. We gave up by Chapter 4.

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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. What better protagonist than an 11 year old girl, brewing up poisonous concoctions in her home’s abandoned Victorian chemistry lab, while plotting revenge against her older sisters?

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid reads like the very best gossip magazine spliced with the very best Hollywood novel.

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Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger. A terrific read, reminiscent of the tone of “Stand By Me”, featuring a teenage boy, his Methodist minister father, his artistic mother, a musical prodigy older sister, and a precocious younger brother. Mix in some almost Gothic mystery and end up mesmerized.

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JUNE

The Embroidered Book, by Kate Heartfield. The premise held so much promise – the Habsburg princesses using magic to gain power – but (for me, at any rate) simply failed to deliver. I wanted to love it, but in the end I didn’t even bother finishing it.

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The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki. This was hands down my favourite read, about a young man who hears the “voices” of inanimate objects, and eventually finds a “talking” book in the library that seems to narrate his own life. The novel somehow manages to be funny and poignant, amusing and heartbreaking all at the same time.

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The Italian Party, by Christina Lynch. This one reads like a romantic spy movie script. Think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Mr & Mrs Smith.

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The Messy Lives of Book People, by Phaedra Patrick is the first book I’ve read by this prolific author, but it wouldn’t be the last (see the next couple of book blogs). What I realized as I was reading this book about a cleaning lady who ends up ghost-writing a famous author’s last novel is that, as I’d always suspected, the best way for an author to pull me in is to create an irresistible set of characters. After that, the plot hardly matters (although this is a good one).

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Murder by the Book, by Lauren Elliott. While Lauren Elliott is no Phaedra Patrick, I liked this “cozy” mystery enough to continue the series. My Facebook comment remains unchanged though: no deep thoughts required.

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That was it for April, May, and June this year. More book blogs to come in the next couple of days.