January Reading 2

Here is the second half of my January reading wrap-up.

The Silkie by Gill Edmonds (borrowed from a friend)

In December, a friend handed me this book and said she thought I'd like it. She said that she was in no great rush to get it back so I brought it with me and read it with a dog on my lap. It was fascinating. It's a layered novel based on folklore and with more folklore embedded in the story. I found the structure quite interesting. It's not the kind of thing I usually read so I did have to pay attention to what was going on. I was reminded of the time Bill and I were doing an independent study class in Inupiaq Eskimo language and one of our assignments was to translate some stories from Inupiaq to English. This was somewhat tricky at times because of the folkloric nature of the stories and we would be wondering, for example, whether the rug really was turning into a polar bear or whether we were way off in our translation. But back to the book, which starts out with a disturbing rape by a water person against a woman who lives on land. When a pregnancy results from intercourse between sea males and land women, eventually the sea male comes to claim 'his' child. In this case, there are twins and one is claimed and the other hidden. Neither knows their origin story and neither fit into the cultures and societies in which they're brought up. The sea hominids have their own cultures and ways of being. They interact and befriend other sea creatures. At times they attempt to befriend land humans, but mostly they hang around with each other and other sea creatures observing and trying to come to grips with the devastation of the sea and her creatures by the land people. I found this book very engaging and I'm glad I read it.

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace (my e-book)

An episode of the Shedunnit podcast dropped with this as the subject, so before I listened to that, I read the book. I loved it. It's the only novel that Sayers collaborated on and the only one of her novels that doesn't involve Lord Peter Wimsey. It's an epistolary novel, written in the form of letters between various people. We first meet the Harrisons--an older gent and his much younger second wife. Also present in the household is her live-in companion, Miss Milsom. In the downstairs flat, an artist, Lathom, and a poet, Munting, move in. Munting is engaged and many of the letters are from him to his fiancee. The Harrison's marriage is not in great shape. In addition to being much older than his wife, Harrison is quite controlling and doesn't want her to have friends outside of those that are mutual, nor does he want her to have a job outside the home. She's bored and stifled and reads voraciously. The Harrisons do not have any interests in common, but he will defend her and shows affection for her when speaking of her to others and when writing to his grown son (from his late wife) who is abroad. It is this son who, after his father's death, believes there is foul play at work. He collects the documents and talks to people and eventually gets the police involved. Published in 1930, this is an excellent Golden Age mystery, which includes newfangled (at the time) discoveries in science and thoughts about psychotherapy.

The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield (Serial Reader app)

This novella was apparently autobiographical. Set in New Zealand, it follows the Burnell family as they move house and settle in. It's a quiet book about the daily lives of the different people in the family--mother, father, three daughters, grandmother and sister/sister-in-law. There's no great plot or intrigue--just ordinary lives and in that way, quite an interesting read.

Taking Chances by Molly Keane (published under the name MJ Farrell) (personal copy)

This one one of Kean's earlier novels, published in 1929. The story revolves around the aptly named Sorrier siblings (and it'd be hard to find a sorrier trio). They live in the big house called Sorristown, their parents having died. They're all adults--Roguey is the oldest, Maeve the only woman, and Jer is the youngest. Maeve worships Roguey, and Jer worships Maeve. The dynamics of the relationships change when Maeve becomes engaged to Rowley. With the wedding fast approaching, Maeve's bridesmaid, Mary arrives. It's clear that her arrival will be the cause of much upheaval, the ripples of which will impact several people. At first I wasn't sure that I'd like this book all that much because it seemed pretty predictable. In a superficial way, it was. Deeper into the layers though, it became a page-turner and one that I quite enjoyed. This is, I think, the third Molly Kean novel I've read and I'm keen to read more. 😉😏

A Dangerous Train of Thought by Faith Martin (BorrowBox audiobook)

This is the latest in the Arbie and Val mystery series. I'd read the first two and enjoyed them well enough, so when I saw this had been added to BorrowBox and was available, I checked it out to listen to whilst stitching at night. It was a fun book. Arbie is a young man who doesn't really need a job but on a lark wrote a book called The Gentlemen's Guide to Ghost Hunting, which was about ghost hunting tourism, basically. We're talking 1920s. This was the foundation in the first book. By the second book, Arbie was a bestselling author working on book two. In this book, he's working on book three and he and his childhood friend/literary assistant and vicar's daughter Val, are off to a big house party. In the nearby village, there are stories about a ghost train and they're going to investigate. It's quite a coup for the hostess to have the bestselling author as a guest at her weekend party of people who probably shouldn't be together at all. But together they are until one of them doesn't make it to the second day. It looks like suicide but there are things that bother Arbie and Val about the situation, so their sleuthing skills will be needed once again. These are fun books, but this one was also a bit sad as far as one of the characters went. The ghost hunting aspect seems to take less of a role as the series goes on, other than being a reason for the pair to be in various places. That said, there is a storyline associated with the ghost train. 

And this concludes my January reading wrap-up. Three weeks left in February, which I hope are filled with many excellent books! Happy reading.

Share

January Reading 1

 Here we are already a week into February, so it's time to post my January reading wrap-up. Here we go--in the order in which I read them.

Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska (NetGalley book--to be published on February 26, 2026 by Penguin Press UK)

In this book, Jane Rogoyska is exploring the experience of exile in various forms. She does this describing the lives of people who fall within three different groups, all having interacted in some way with the Hotel Lutetia on Paris' Left Bank. She states that, "This is not the story of a famous Paris hotel. It is about three groups of people who are connected to a particular city, to that particular hotel, to one another, and to the grim ideology which dictates the course of their lives. These groups are linked--willingly or not--by race, nationality, language, and their status as outsiders. They all live in exile, in profoundly different ways. They are displaced, dislocated, their lives disrupted. They are temporary beings who live out of suitcases. Their drama plays out in many hotel rooms. The Hotel Lutetia is the prism through which we view their lives." (p 3) The three groups she focuses on in this book are people in the resistance movement in France, Nazi occupiers, and finally, people who have been liberated from concentration camps at the end of the war. Within each group, there are particular people the author writes about and through them readers get a sense of the larger environment in which events occurred. She writes in present tense for most of the book, with occasional paragraphs of objective historical fact written in past tense. She does speculate at times about how someone might have felt in a particular situation, but it's very clear to the reader when this is happening. I found this to be a fascinating, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and very readable book. At times it read like a novel in that I cared about what was happening to some of the people she highlighted and wanted to know what happened to them. This is an important book both for the historical information provided but also because of the idea of different kinds of exile. More and more people are finding themselves in one kind of exile or another, whether through war, invasion, climate crisis, hunger, political oppression, etc. It is important for all of us to understand better what this means. Of course, exiled people today will have different circumstances in some ways than people described in this book. But there will be similarities as well. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time. I highly recommend it.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (personal copy)

This book opens with Price Myshkin on his way home to Russia from a hospital in Switzerland. On the train he meets Rogozhin who will remain an important figure in his life. Upon arrival, Myshkin goes to meet a woman who may be a distant relative--and his only living relative. He becomes attached to the family (her, her husband, her three daughters) and their circle. Myshkin is known as an idiot because he doesn't play the kinds of games that are expected in this kind of society. He also suffers from epilepsy. He's very open and honest with his thoughts and feelings, which is unusual. He is popular, but also set apart and seen as odd. He's been described as a Christ-like figure. The story follows Myshkin as he tried to acclimate to Russian life after being away. There is much running through this book as we follow Myshkin and those he encounters--philosophy, religion, class structures and expectations, gender roles, and more. I loved this book. Having read a couple of Dostoevsky's novels on Serial Reader before this one, I can say that this is an author I love and I will definitely be reading more of his work.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (personal copy)

I picked this book up at a charity shop in December and decided to bring it with me when we were away. The story begins in Alaska in 1920, where Jack and Mabel have settled to try and make a go of farming there. They'd come from Pennsylvania where they made an unlikely pair--she the daughter of a professor and he a farmer. They married and had a stillborn baby which drove a wedge between them due to lack of communication about their grief. Alaska was a chance to start over, but it wasn't what they thought it would be. Hardship can drive people apart or bring them together and as they struggled at the beginning of winter, they had a momentary thaw in their relationship at the first snowfall. They built a snow child. Shortly thereafter, a girl entered their lives. Are these two experiences connected? Based on a Russian folk tale, the story goes on from there. I enjoyed this book for many reasons--the characters were well drawn, the cultural aspects were interesting, the relationships were true to life, whether the marriage between Jack and Mabel, the friendships that developed, and the parent-child relationships. I will say that the book is set in rural Alaska in the 1920s. There is hunting and lots of it. This would be true of life in rural Alaska today, but even more so a century ago. So if that's something that would be disturbing to you, this might not be a book you want to pick up.

A Danger to the Mind of Young Girls by Adam Morgan (BorrowBox book)

This is a biography of Margaret C. Anderson who was a lesbian publisher--the first to publish James Joyce's Ulysses in the US. She was arrested for this. Her trial would change literary history, but she's largely forgotten today. At the time, it was thought that reading modern literature would turn young women into "disease-ridden lesbians and prostitutes." I suppose this was a step down from the ideas of the Victorian era that too much reading and education for women would cause wombs to shrivel. 

The book opens in winter 1921 in New York City with this sentence, " On a cold afternoon in the heart of Greenwich Village, Margaret C. Anderson bumped into the man who wanted to put her in prison." From there readers are taken back to Margaret's childhood through her teenage years and into young adulthood and independence from her family of origin. The author writes about her passion for literature and art throughout her life and how this put her at odds with her family and the larger society. This book is all too relevant today as the Comstock Act and its successor are being used--again--as threats against citizens of the States. Now as then, misogyny plays a role. Margaret C. Anderson lived a fascinating life and this is an excellent book. 

Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen (personal copy)

I reviewed this book here

I think I'll end this post here at the halfway point and post the second half of my January reading tomorrow. I hope February is a great reading month for everyone.

Share

What's Old Is New Again

 We're home. The friend whose house we were staying at came back the other day and stayed at Finn's mother's house. We spent the day with him as he came over to have coffee in the morning and later supper with us. In between we took Finn to Inver Beach, where he had some fun. He's a fierce one when it comes to sticks 😄 We didn't bring balls with us, so sticks were an acceptable substitute.

Not to worry--he had balls back at the house.

You can see that it was a grey day--the wind was sharp. I was glad I brought a cowl so my ears were very well protected.

He could tell something was up after supper as I started packing and he was subdued and looking at me with his big brown eyes. I explained that his mom was coming home and he'd be so happy to see her. Of course he just kept watching me--poor guy understands what suitcases and bags mean.

Yesterday we left early enough to stop at the grocery store, haul our stuff in, and have coffee here while they were on their way to the airport. Since we're not that far from the airport and it's a two hour trip one way from Finn's home, it made sense to do it that way. I was sad when I said good-bye to Finn and he was too, but I knew he'd be very happy shortly thereafter when he saw his mother after a month apart. I'm told that's exactly what happened--he was very quiet and somber until they were at the airport and then the joy arrived. He was apparently shattered last night.

As I was putting the groceries away, I discovered that the food in our very small freezer compartment in our under-the-counter fridge was no longer frozen. Thankfully there wasn't much in it--probably around €10 worth--but still, I don't like to waste food. There was nothing else to do but throw it out though. I'm not sure what happened--the food was cold and the fridge seemed to work fine. I'd bought a few things to put into the freezer so I did that and decided to see what would happen. I figured that since it was still keeping things cold it'd be safe and if I had to, I could cook everything and keep it in the fridge to eat over the next several days. Thankfully that won't be necessary since this morning everything is frozen solid. 

I got the rest of my stuff put away this morning and am getting my head into normal life mode again. I'm having a laugh or two at myself because we were gone long enough for me to do many things on autopilot at our friend's house. We've spent just less than half of our time there in the last 4 months. Now that we're home, I sometimes find myself having to stop and remember how I do things here, where things are, and that kind of thing. Time to put away the new autopilot that became normal and embrace the old autopilot which seems new again. And the beat goes on...

Share

Not Just Another Thriller: Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen

 Last month I was in Letterkenny with a friend. I was in a charity shop scanning the shelves when I spotted Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen. 

This is an author Bill loves so I grabbed the book. I wasn't sure if he'd read it before, but the title didn't seem like one I'd seen before and besides, for 20 cents it didn't matter anyway. He hadn't read it and brought it with him when we came to care for our furry friend. Soon after he started it, he commented that this book isn't like what he's come to expect from her. He said more than once how good the book was and that he was sure I'd like it. So when he was done, I picked it up and started reading. I'll be honest, it didn't grab me at first. In fact, I set it aside to read a biography, which i finished yesterday. This morning, I was sitting here with a sleeping dog on my lap and this book was within reach. I picked it up again and read on. I was gripped. Later on I was glad that I had a quick supper planned because I was going to finish the book before I did anything else. And I did. It's an excellent book and I think the publisher did the book and the author a disservice in the way they packaged this book. They make it look like the usual thriller sort of book. There's nothing wrong with that--plenty of people love thrillers and that's what Gerritsen in known for, I suppose. It's certainly what Bill expected to find when he started the book, both because of the cover, the description on the back, and his knowledge of the author's work. There is a thriller aspect to the story, but it's so much more and, for me at least, that was the least interesting. 

This book has a dual timeline. The book starts with the main character of one of them, Julia, in Rome. She's a violinist in a quartet and is soon returning home to her husband and three-year-old daughter in the Boston area. She's looking for a souvenir for herself and she finds it in a dusty antique shop--a musical score for an intense piece of music she's never heard before. She buys it for €100 and brings it home. After a week or two, she gets it out and as she's on the patio with her daughter and the elderly cat, starts to play it. She's so intent on the music that she's unaware of the violent occurrence taking place. The cat is dead. A while later while she's playing again, another violent incident occurs. What is going on? Is there something wrong with the child? I confess that at this point, I wasn't having high hopes for the book, but then things moved to Italy in 1939, where the story shifted to Lorenzo, a talented violinist, and his Jewish family.  I was engrossed in this from the start and when it was time to switch back to Julia, I was annoyed. This changed though and I was soon immersed in both storylines which revolve around this piece of music. It was the historical storyline that gave me goosebumps, hit me emotionally, and was far more powerful--and all too familiar. 

I've read just a couple of Tess Gerritsen's books. One was fine and enjoyable. Then there was this one, which was at a whole other level. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. 

Gerritsen herself seems to have many talents. She trained as a surgeon and her medical training is evident in parts of this book. She's also a pianist and composer who composed a piece of music called Incendio, the name of the composition at the center of this book. Here's a performance of the piece:

I'll close by saying that Bill was right--I did love this book--and I'm not really a thriller reader. I can highly recommend this one, though.

Share

Spirals and Balls

 Greetings from our temporary home! We're dog sitting again, so have been playing lots of ball--our furry friend prefers the ball to be kicked, but will accept throwing on occasion. It also has to be the right ball, so he chooses among the many he has available to him. As for the humans, we just try not to step on them and trip over them as they lie around underfoot. When I was given a crate of his supplies, I was told in a low voice (to avoid him hearing), that Snowflake the bunny, the dog's one plushie toy, was in need of help. Upon examination, I discovered that poor Snowflake was suffering from a severe laceration of the leg and was leaking stuffing. Since this is clearly the leg that gets pulled on the most during games of tug o' war, based on the fact that it's about three times longer than the other leg, it was clear that emergency surgery was indicated. I got out my needles and threads and got to work. Once the surgery was done, it seemed a bath was in order, so into the washing machine she went. The dog was busy elsewhere during this time, so didn't know any of this was going on, which is just as well. 

I've had a little time these past couple of nights to play with some yarn and I finished a kumihimo braid. I made it to go specifically with a pendant that I acquired by deconstructing a necklace I got at a charity shop several years ago. 

photo by Bill Burke

To make the braid, I used 6 strands of a nylon ribbon yarn that a friend gave me a while back, and 2 strands of a chunky boucle taken from a scrap ball. The cabochon in the top right of the pendant is a pale purple--not so light as to be lavender, though. Rather than leave the ends hanging plain, I sewed them in a small spiral, leaving the fringe. For some reason, I've been quite smitten with these braids sewn into spirals and am always thinking of new colour combinations and embellishments to go with them. Ah well, I have plenty of yarn scraps to play with--at home at least--and it keeps me out of trouble. It's very meditative. Making the braids is mindless so I can do it even if I'm tired--no counting or anything. Once the yarn or thread is set up on the disk, I don't need any other tools, either, so it's a good thing to take with me when I want to have a project just in case I find myself with time on my hands. It was difficult to decide which stitching projects to bring with me when I was packing (same with books, although the e-reader helps there), but I did make sure to cut the yarns for a couple more braids in case I finished this one. I started the next one last night. I find that this is a good way to use certain novelty yarns that I've been gifted, particularly ribbon yarns. I wouldn't like them crocheted or knitted, but they work well for kumihimo. Many of these yarns were very popular at one time and people were making scarf after scarf. Now they've gone out of style and people don't want the yarn anymore. They're fun yarns with gorgeous colours and textures, but the scarves made with them just aren't my thing. I love using the yarn this way though and I'm glad they can be used.

Well, I think Himself wants to go outside, so I'm off for a stroll around the grounds in the dark. Hope you're having a pleasant day, whatever you're doing!

Share

A Riff in Snicker-ish Dates

 A friend gave me some medjool dates recently, so I decided to make a version of the date 'Snickers' that there are a gazillion videos/recipes for. But I changed some things. Most of the recipes I've seen have you stuff the dates with peanut butter and cover with chocolate. But we use peanut butter that is just peanuts and is very runny. The bottom of the bucket is a bit more firm but I was opening a new bucket so it was very loose. It would've been quite a mess to try to stuff the dates with that. Then there's the chocolate. I was using dark chocolate so I knew that when it hardened, it would be very hard indeed. So I made these in such a way that those issues were avoided. I pitted the dates, placed them on a plate, and put a few walnut pieces in each one before closing them up. I melted dark chocolate and mixed in some peanut butter, which keeps the dark chocolate from getting too hard as it cools. I covered each date with the chocolate peanut butter mixture and placed in a baking paper lined container, since they were sticking to the plate. And here they are:

photo by Bill Burke

They are so good! I love them. I think I showed great willpower in stopping after tasting just the one for quality control purposes. I don't think they'll last very long.

By the way, the melted chocolate with peanut butter mixed in makes an excellent fudge-like confectionary (the runny peanut butter is excellent for this). I melt the chocolate, stir in the peanut butter, and spread the mixture in a paper-lined container. When it's cooled, it's easy to cut. It's also excellent with walnuts mixed in. I suspect coconut would be pretty great too. Just sayin'.

Share

December Reading Wrap-Up: The Second Half

 That's it--another month and year done and dusted. It was quite a year, but as always, I was happy to have books with me along the way. Below you'll find thoughts on the books I read in the second half of December. The books I read in the first half of the month can be found here and here. 

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (personal copy)

This is the first novel in Trollope's Palliser series. A few of the characters appeared briefly in the Barsetshire Chronicles, which was centered around the role of the church and church politics in English life. This series revolves around governmental politics. I first read the series 45 years ago--I remember going to the library every week and choosing the next couple of books in the 6-book series. I do not really remember any of the storylines, except vaguely, so with this book at least, it was almost like reading it for the first time. The book has two main threads which intersect. Following one, we see Alice Vavasor, who lives with her father, her mother having died some years before, and who is engaged to John Grey. She was previously engaged to her cousin George Vavasor, who is a jerk, but who is the brother of a cousin Alice is very close to and who really wants Alice to marry her brother. Alice does things out of a sense of duty to the extent that she gets herself tangled up in knots. Another, more distant cousin is Lady Glencora Palliser, who is connected on her mother's side of the family. She is married to Plantagenet Palliser, a man who is ambitious and working towards becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer. She didn't want to marry him and doesn't care one iota about government and politics. She's very young and still carrying a torch for the rather dissolute guy she was tempted to run away with before her family stopped her. As we follow these two women as they muddle through their young lives, we also earn about parliamentary politics and the culture of the time and place. I quite liked the book--it was a fun read. I've got the whole series so can pick up the next book soon.

High Rising by Angela Thirkell (borrowed from the library)

I'd read about Angela Thirkell somewhere and kept her in the back of my mind. I was reminded of her when I was watching a booktube video and someone got this book in their book advent. I requested it from the library and it came pretty quickly. This is part of Thirkell's Barsetshire series of novels--I don't think any of the characters were lifted from Trollope, but 'Barsetshire' was. From what I read, she was pretty easygoing about taking things from classic authors, but I didn't see anything explicit in this book. Author Laura Morland and her son, the train-obsessed Tony, leave London and go to High Rising, where they spend Christmas in their country cottage. Her agent comes to visit, her secretary comes in and out, and the locals are frequently there. There is some intrigue in the village because of a newcomer, Una, who is secretary to Laura's friend, George. It seems pretty clear that Una has some designs on George, but being an outsider she's looked on with suspicion anyway. There are the usual interpersonal issues you find in village novels (and villages), which is what drives the book. It's a fluffy book in some ways, but funny too. I did find Tony to be irritating. I think he was realistically drawn--there are children (and adults) like that--obsessed with one thing and that's all they talk about. So I don't think she exaggerated there, it's just that I don't enjoy being around children anyway, whether in books or in real life, and a child like this would be especially annoying--as this one was, even on the page. There are many more books in this series available online and I will read more in future. They're just right for certain reading moods.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin (read on the BorrowBox app)

Earlier in the month, I read Uncle Paul by Fremlin and loved it. I went looking in BorrowBox to see if they had any books by her and this was the one they had so I borrowed it. It was another winner. It's quite different to Uncle Paul, but just as good. In this one, Louise is a stay-at-home mother with two school-age kids and a newborn that will not stop crying. Money is tight. All Louise wants to do is sleep, but she has a cranky, clueless husband and money is tight so they advertise for a lodger. They get one, but is she too good to be true? It's pretty clear that something is off, but is it something sinister or is it Louise's sleep-deprived paranoia? This was a page-turner. I'll be seeking out more books by this author. I'm glad that her work is being republished.

An English Murder by Cyril Hare (my e-book)

I read about this book just over a week ago and when I saw that it was a classic Christmas mystery, I went looking and found it online, so I downloaded it. I'm a huge fan of classic British mysteries, but hadn't read any Hare. I will be reading more. This was a good read. It's the classic set-up--big house, rich old guy at the end of his life, a holiday gathering of people who aren't that keen on being with one another, and at least someone hoping for an inheritance of money, title, and property. In this one there's an interesting twist because the son is the leader of a neo-fascist organization, one of the guests is a foreign scholar who is there to do work in the family archives, and who has been in a concentration camp, and the somewhat distant relation is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Oh yeah--one of the other guests is married to a guy who has designs on that office himself. So it's not a festive house party, but it gets even less festive when the patriarch dies. Fortunately, the Chancellor has a police bodyguard with him, so someone is on site to begin the investigation in spit of the blizzard that has cut them off from the outside world. 

Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau (personal copy)

I've wanted to read this book for a long time and I decided that this holiday season it was going to be a treat to myself to start it. I've had it for months, but then other books with more of a time limit (NetGalley and library books) were always there to read first and this one sat around. I'm glad I got to it because it was a really enjoyable read. In this book, Hester and Margaret Ibbotson arrive at the home of a distant relation in the village of Deerbrook after their father dies. They soon become part of village life, including the feud between the business partners' wives/neighbors. Their cousin, Mr. Grey, is in business with his neighbor, Mr. Rowland. Mrs. Rowland is a horrible gossip--mean and nasty and not above spreading malicious rumors and lies about people. This has tragic consequences for many people. There are the usual romances that you'd expect to find in such a novel, but they're not the usual kind of thing. Martineau is better known as a sociologist (this was her only novel) so the village itself is a character in this 1839 novel. In the course of the novel, the culture is well illustrated--religion, politics, class issues, gender issues, and more are all there. It's definitely my kind of book. I'm quite interested in reading more classics and modern classics by women, especially those that are less well known, so I'm thrilled to have this book. It's available on Project Gutenberg, but my copy was published by Virago and contains a great biographical and analytical essay.

Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple (borrowed from library)

As I mentioned above, I'm quite interested to read more classics and modern classics by women authors. earlier in the year, I discovered one of Whipple's books in the e-audiobook section of the library website and listened to it (They Were Sisters). It was excellent. I went searching at the main library website and decided to request this one. When I got the book and saw this on the inside flap, I laughed. My expectations for the book were high at that point.

The book did not disappoint. From my limited experience, it appears that Dorothy Whipple is an author who is fast becoming a favorite. I am thrilled that there are many more books of hers for me to discover. This book tells the story of the Ashton family, primarily through the relationship between Louisa and her granddaughter Rachel, but also branching out to include other members of the family to varying degrees. In the scene above, the author is describing the relationship between Rachel's parents. Louisa lives in a big house with a philandering husband who isn't seen much and then dies in an accident. No one seems terribly broken up by his loss. When the book opens on Christmas Day, Rachel is a small child. By the time the book ends, she is an adult. She grows up in a home that is stifling and tense because of her pompous, ego-driven, self-inflated father, so she prefers to spend as much time as possible in her grandmother's home, which is nearby. Rachel is a curious person and extremely smart, which isn't valued by her father. Her grandmother loves her and provides stability and encouragement while also navigating various family crises involving her children. I loved this book. I sat down and read it in a day--I just didn't want to stop. I had to check to see when it was published (1932) because I was not expecting the overt, strong feminist vibe, which only made the book that much better. Can't wait to read more of Whipple's work.

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (personal copy)

This was my last book of the year. I'd started it back in October because of the Gothic vibe, but it proved to be too heavy and cumbersome to hold up with one hand while I had a dog on my lap, so I set it aside. I wanted to get back to it and finish it by the end of the year, so I'm glad I did.

I don't know what to say or think about this book, other than it's weird. It's quite a structure, which is sometimes tricky to follow. The book starts with a younger nephew going to see the elder uncle at Christmastime, I think. It's clear younger Melmoth will inherit when elder Melmoth dies. The house is not being kept in good shape and something is terrifying elder Melmoth. When he dies, the younger Melmoth makes some disturbing discoveries. Documents and paintings are destroyed. Eventually, a Spanish ship is shipwrecked near the house. Younger Melmoth goes to help and saves one sailor who is brought back to the house to recover. When the sailor finds out where he is, he is terrified, but is finally convinced to tell his story. Within this story, there are other people telling other stories which sometimes include still other people and other stories. It's stories all the way down. Then the stories end and readers are brought back to the present day and a rather abrupt ending. Maybe the author had no idea how to disentangle himself from all those story threads. My edition contains an excellent essay at the back which explains Maturin's life and the story of the book. This was fascinating. According to the essayist, he considered making this a book of short stories. This makes sense and it would have been a better book had he done so. Some of the reviewers of the day (1820) were angry about the way Satan's guy was portrayed, but he did have some reasonable things to say about society and the church of the time. Maturin himself was an Irish cleric, who always felt like he didn't get the respect he desrved. The back cover and the essay both mention the violence and it is a violent book, but since a large chunk of it takes place during the Inquisition in Spain, this is not surprising and the violence isn't gratuitous in any way. I wanted to read this book because a few years ago I read Melmoth by Sarah Perry and loved it. In an author's note, she explained how this book inspired hers. Now that I've read this one, I think I might grab the audiobook of hers and listen to it as a re-read. I'm glad I read it, because it seems like I'll continue to think about the book, but it was strange.

Finally, I read one book that will be published in February

Emily Dickinson: 100 Poems on Life and Love (to be published on February 17, 2026 by Gemini Book Group)

This is Book 2 in the publisher's Women in Poetry series. I read the first book earlier in the month. This book is a lovely introduction to the life and work of Emily Dickinson. The book begins with a short biographical essay before presenting a selection of Dickinson's poems, separated by theme and including helpful and interesting critiques of some. The themes of the poems presented here are: love, death and spirituality, identity and creativity, and nature. The selection of poems is excellent, the biographical introduction and poem critiques are very informative, and the book as a whole is a delight to read. I highly recommend it. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy.

And that wraps up December and the year. Another bookish year begins. I'll be starting with the last (for now) book on my NetGalley shelf and then, who knows. I have so many excellent books to choose from! Hope your reading year starts off with a 5-star read and goes on from there!

Share