mysteries

Book Report: September Round-Up

/ nagneberg48 / 2 Comments

October 6, 2022

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway mysteries dominated my September reading time. I read the last four in the series of fourteen books, but the last line in the most recent book certainly indicates there will be a fifteenth book to come.

Along with the Ruth Galloway books, I read other mysteries this month.

  1. The second Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice (2021). His third in the series featuring old and retired characters solving mysteries was recently released and is, of course, on my list–The Bullet That Missed.
  2. Fox Creek by William Kent Krueger (2022). I enjoyed it and swallowed it almost whole in a couple chunks of reading time, but I didn’t think it was his best. But, that being said, his best is better than good.

The novel I want to highlight from this month’s reading, however, is The Midcoast by Adam White. (2022) I wish I knew who recommended this or where I learned about it. Sometimes I note in my TBR list the source of a recommendation, but I didn’t in this case. The title refers to a section in Maine where the story takes place. The narrator, Andrew, grew up in the area and returns there with his family. He is a teacher and a writer and becomes an observer of another family: Ed, a lobsterman, his wife Steph and two children, Alli who is a lacrosse star and son EJ, a police officer. How is it that this family seems to have unlimited funds and money is no object? Thus, the story unfolds.

I also recommend a nonfiction title, Windswept, Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abby (2022). I’ve always been attracted to books about walking; for example, Wanderlust, A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit. I do like to walk, but I am not a long-distance walker or major hiker, so I laugh at myself when I read a book about walking. Am I like the woman I once knew who collected a pile of books about running, but never put on her running shoes and headed out the door? Oh well.

This book features women for whom walking, and often walking solo, was a major part of their lives–Georgia O’Keefe, Simone de Beauvoir, and others unfamiliar to me. The author then decides to walk some of those same paths, musing that the women walkers she admires, “walked to become,” and also how walking often leads to new thoughts. That is certainly true for me–even my short walks in the neighborhood.

The author also writes that silence is an element–like water and fire–and I keep thinking about that.

September was an incredibly busy month, and I was grateful, as always for my book companions, which allowed me to pause and take a deep breath. As much as I enjoyed the mysteries I tended to reach for in recent months, I now feel a desire to read fiction with a bit more substance. I’ll keep you posted.

An Invitation

What did you read in September? I would love to know.

NOTE:

For two other nonfiction books I read in September and highly recommend see my September 15th post.

Book Report: Summer of Mysteries

/ nagneberg48 / 4 Comments

July 14, 2022

Note: I’m taking a break next week. The next post will be Tuesday, July 26, 2022.

I’ve always loved reading mysteries, beginning with Nancy Drew, of course. Later, I worked my way through Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and more recently, I’ve indulged my Louise Penny and Jacqueline Winspear addictions. (The next Louise Penny, by the way, won’t be released until November.)

I’ve always balanced reading mysteries with reading nonfiction and literary fiction, but this month? Not so much.

At the beginning of the month I read one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. My only regret was that I wasn’t on vacation at a lake resort where the only diversion was the occasional putt-putt of a motor boat or the haunting call of a loon. It is that kind of book –witty and subtle and oh, so upperclass English.

Then I got sucked into the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. I recall reading at some point the first book in the series, The Crossing Places and enjoyed it, but I did not feel compelled to grab the next in the series–and there is a total of 14 of them with a new one planned for 2023. This month, however, that changed, and not only am I reading them, but so is my husband and our daughter.

I am currently reading #5, A Dying Fall, and will more than likely finish that today.

Ruth Galloway is an English forensic archaeologist who often helps the police, developing a close relationship with copper Harry Nelson. The unfolding of the plot is always interesting, but as is usually the case for me, the characters interest me more. I just discovered when I looked up the author website that she has also written other mystery series and stand-alone books as well. Oh no!!!

I know I don’t need to justify, nor should you, why I choose to read a particular book or series of books or genres, but I admit I am curious why I am so enamored of mysteries right now. I seem to need lighter reading, a quick read, or what is often called “summer reading,” or “beach reading.”

Yesterday I received the weekly online newsletter from one of my favorite bookstores, Arcadia Books in Spring Green, WI, and the opening column referenced a bumper sticker, “It’s brutal out here.” How true that is. Often, the crimes committed in the mysteries I read are brutal, too, but in 300 or so pages, the mystery is solved and good people have worked to make that so. The known is made known. The uncertainty is resolved. And life goes on.

if only the real world was that simple.

So…to balance watching the January 6 hearings and listening to the news on NPR and reading the NYTImes and Washington Post, as well as informed and thoughtful online newsletters, I am reading mysteries, and Elly Griffiths is a good choice.

An Invitation

Has your reading changed in recent months? I would love to know.

Note:

Arcadia Books : https://readinutopia.com