I just realized that I hadn’t journalized my reading since the end of May … and despite a girls’ trip to Vancouver Island, a couple of weeks in Germany with son #2, a river cruise in Eastern Europe, and a cruise to Italy, I actually read quite a bit, starting with a rarity: a physical book! (courtesy of our wonderful neighbour)

The Lady In Gold was a wonderful art history book. It is absolutely a “must read” if you’re a fan of Klimt’s masterpiece, but even more interesting if you’re at all curious about life in Vienna prior to and during WWII. There are some quite scary comparisons to the world right now that are pretty obvious. History, hopefully, will not repeat itself.

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When I was settled back in after Germany, I read Michael Crummey’s The Adversary. Set in Newfoundland in the last century, it’s the story of grudges held onto so tightly that they become the entire reason for the main characters’ every thought and action. There was a nice twist at the end.

A friend who knows that we’re already the poster children for downsizing suggested Nobody Wants Your Sh*t (by an author whose pseudonym is Messi Condo) mostly as a joke.  Think Marie Kondo with potty mouth. Still, there is some good advice hidden between the curse words!

I’d started Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series back in the spring, and would have completed all 12 books much sooner had I not had to wait on hold for some of them (I read almost exclusively on the Libby app on my iPad). Combining magic, mythical creatures, and police work in London England, the books (in my opinion) are the perfect mix of crime and fantasy.

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In a break where the Aaronovitch series wasn’t available, I picked up March, by Geraldine Brooks. The novel creates the backstory of the March family patriarch from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Set during the American Civil War, it is a tender and often heart-wrenching depiction of a decent man living in turbulent times – an affirmation that goodness can, at least sometimes, prevail. 

I was only one chapter into March when I felt compelled to write about it to mu friend Josie: “The first chapter is heart-wrenching, and yet at the same time I can picture Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy in Louisa May Alcott’s vividly described March house, reading their father’s letters and never knowing the true horror he is experiencing. If only those who glorify war could read these words and be changed by them.”

I’ve been a big fan of Fredrik Backman ever since reading A Man Called Ove and Anxious People, but I’d lost track of his books for a while. A friend recommended his newest, My Friends, which had a long wait list, so I decided to get caught up a bit. The Deal of a Lifetime is actually a collection of 3 novellas, each populated with Backman’s flawed imperfect characters, trying to make sense of their lives and determine what gives them meaning. The three stories each left me emotionally drained, and with lots to think about. 

Kelly Link’s White Cat, Black Dog is a book of fairy tales, but definitely not for children – these are dark allegorical stories reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm. I especially enjoyed the twists and turns of The White Cat’s Divorce, in which an aging billionaire pits his sons against each other in their quest to become his sole heir.

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During another couple of weeks when there were no Ben Aaronovitch books available, I veered into a few standalone mysteries, and also caught up with Louise Penny’s latest Three Pines mystery, The Grey Wolf, the 19th in her Inspector Gamache series.   This time there’s a crime that needs to be prevented instead of solved, and the action moves outside the village her readers have come to know so well.  I definitely enjoyed getting caught up with the characters who have grown and aged with every subsequent novel.

John Grisham and James Patterson are such prolific writers that it’s hard to keep up with the pace at which they churn out new books. 

Grisham’s Camino Island is quite different from the thrilling legal dramas (like The Pelican Brief) that I used to enjoy so much. The premise here is that an original handwritten copy of a famous American manuscript has been stolen, and we’re a party to both the theft and the investigation that leads to its recovery.  It was interesting, but not so interesting that I’m going back fir the next book in the series.

Unlike Grisham, who is still writing on his own, James Patterson seems to be collaborating with just about everyone.  Still, The Writer lived up to what I’ve come to expect from Patterson’s books: lots of action, lots of plot twists, and lots of intriguing characters. While the Grisham novel centred around the search for a book, Patterson’s is all about finding a murderer, when the main suspect in the crime just might be a writer of true crime books. 

I got sold on reading Ally Condie’s The Unwedding because it was described as “White Lotus meets Agatha Christie”. There’s an anniversary being celebrated by only one of the partners in the marriage, a wedding that doesn’t happen, and a storm that traps an entire resort full of people with a murderer.  It’s pretty much made for TV.

I really enjoyed Ben Stevenson’s Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.  It shouldn’t have been so funny given the premise, but working through an entire family and the havoc they’d wrought was strangely satisfying. 

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My Friends finally became available, and was definitely worth the wait: absolutely incredible and simultaneously absolutely heartbreaking.And absolutely a must-read if you have a teenager or work with them. Sometimes we adults forget that teenagers are the best kind of humans… and fragile and strong in equal parts.

Most recently, I’m reading Anthony Horowitz’ series that began with The Word Is Murder and continued with The Sentence is Death and A Line to Kill. I chose them mostly because Anthony Horowitz is the creator of Foyle’s War, the AppleTV series that Ted and I enjoyed so much this summer. This series of novels features Horowitz telling the stories of crimes solved by ex-policeman (now private detective) Daniel Hawthorne in an arrangement akin to Watson documenting Holmes – although Horowitz is both Watson and Conan Doyle in this case. The writing style is “reluctant”; it’s as if he really doesn’t want to be writing the novels we’re reading! Interestingly, Horowitz has also written a couple of highly acclaimed novels featuring Sherlock Holmes. They’re on my holds shelf.

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And that’s it! I’m just figuratively cracking open #4 in the Horowitz/Hawthorne series, with a view to finishing it before we leave for Egypt in 7 days.