In December I finished 6 books, including a set of essays,
a murder mystery, a serious novel, and some lighter fare.
Book 1
“All of them? Even the children?” The fireplace sputtered and crackled and swallowed his gasp. “Slaughtered?”
Book 2
The Plight of Cats in South Australia
Domenica Macdonald, anthropologist, resident of Scotland Street, and wife of Angus Lordie, portrait painter and long-standing member of the Scottish Arts Club, sat in the kitchen of her flat in Scotland Street.
Book 3
My novel Turtles All the Way Down was published in October of 2017, and after spending that month on tour for the book, I came home to Indianapolis and blazed a trail between my children’s tree house and the little room where my wife and I often work, a room that depending on your worldview is either an office or a shed.
Book 4
08:05 Hampton Court to Waterloo
Until the point when a man started dying right in front of her on the 8:05, Iona’s day had been just like any other.
Book 5
It’s the year 50 BC. All of Gaul is occupied by the Romans… Well, not all of it.
Book 6
1: The Hurricane
There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew’s house was the first place they went to.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Gamache #5), by Louise Penny. 336 pages. Published 2009.
There are some clever sentences, as usual, in this Louise Penny murder mystery. I was not able to concentrate enough to follow every minute detail of the solving of the crime.
Book 2
The Peppermint Tea Chronicles (44 Scotland Street #13) by Alexander McCall Smith
256 pages. Published 2019.
An enjoyable light read. Takes place in Scotland. No surprise that there is tea drinking. Perhaps also not surprising that there is a surreptitious acquisition of a puppy.
Book 3
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
John Green. 293 pages • first pub 2021.
Thoughtful essays with equal parts worry and love. I greatly appreciated these and will be coming back to read them again sometime. Thanks to CP and HH for recommending this book to me.
Book 4
Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley. 352 pages. Published 2022.
(First published in Great Britain as The People on Platform 5).
Fun, poignant, light novel. Interesting, diverse, and likable set of characters.
Book 5
Asterix Volume 10 (3 stories in 1 volume). Written and illustrated by Albert Uderzo. Comic book. 148 pages. Published in 2023 in English by Papercutz. Originally published in 1987, 1991, and 1996. Translated by Joe Johnson.
Fun. I first encountered these comic books in French in my 20s, and loved the puns and drawings. They are full of politically incorrect stuff, but perhaps less so in these later versions, which were written by one of the comic book genius duo Goscinny and Uderzo. René Goscinny died in 1977; Albert Uderzo continued writing/illustrating until 2011, and died in 2020.
Book 6
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride. 400 pages. Published 2023.
Fascinating characters and stellar plot, with a sizable amount of deep tension for me, but the plot and the humor overrode my tension. The feeling I had when I was about ¾ of the way through was the same anticipatory feeling I had as I reached the climax of McBride’s The Good Lord Bird. And I won’t say more than that. Recommend.
