Middle Sister's Fall Reads

The past few months have gone by in a blur because of all kinds of personal chaos, but I did get some reading in to keep my sanity. Forthwith is a single post for the books read this fall, and yes, gentle readers, it is a small list, but in my defense, I was also trying to make a dent in a huge pile of magazines, including a literary magazine chock full of books I want to read.

The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout  In case it hasn't been clear the past two years, I've been trying to read or listen to as many Nero Wolfe mysteries as I can. In this title, Wolfe and Archie tangle with the FBI and the NYPD; guess who will win? More topical than some of the Wolfe mysteries, and very resonant today, despite the 1965 original publication date. Perhaps not my favorite Nero Wolfe,

The Dancing Floor by Barbara Michaels  I love Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, love, love, love. My great regret is she died before I could meet her. They are top notch entertainment in my book--just enough mystery with just enough romance, and in the case of Amelia Peabody novels accurate historical detail and laugh-out-loud funny. I'm pretty sure I've read them all, but I don't mind re-reading ones I haven't read in a while. The plot to The Dancing Floor didn't sound familiar, so I took it out from my library. It didn't engage me the way a Barbara Michaels usually does, so I wondered if this was a very early book in her repertoire. It isn't, published in 1997, but it's not as good as others. I thought the way she incorporated Heather Tradescant, our plucky heroine, into the Karim family was a little too easy and unbelievable, even for someone like me, who happily suspends rational thought for a ripping good book. Barbara Rosenblatt's reading of this audiobook was as a good as I had heard she was.  The Wiccan culture at the center of the mystery made this a great Halloween read. Not her best, but still very enjoyable.

Death of a Witch by M. C. Beaton Another fun visit to Lochdubh! I love the Hamish MacBeth series, and recently re-watched the television series just to spend more time with the quirky Highlanders and the beautiful scenario. In Death of a Witch (Halloween theme continued), a newcomer upsets the entire community with her herbal medicines, and Hamish manages to solve the murder, smooth the ruffled feathers of everyone in Lochdubh, and even engage in a passing romance with Leslie from forensics. The romance was typically Hamish-funny, with Leslie's disinterest in him until she realized Hamish is smarter than he acts pretty accurate as to how most of us feel about Hamish. I thought this was one of the more amusing of the Hamish stories, because so many of the eccentric community were embroiled with the mystery and I love it when they stymie Hamish.

The Bat  by Jo Nesbro  Scandinavian noir has been very popular in the mystery world for several years, but giventheir grimmer, grimier nature, I've resisted it. However, my library's acquisition of a audiobook of the first Harry Hole mystery was too much to resist. I enjoyed first half of the novel, even if it didn't take place in Norway. I overlooked the sometimes television-script-like dialogue between Andrew and Harry. I liked the burgeoning relationship between Birgitte and Harry. I especially liked the shock of the second murder, which threw some genre expectations out the window.  The first and third thirds were great, fast-paced and attention grabbing. Hated the middle third when Harry, understandably upset after the second murder, tossed his hard-won sobriety (which had garnered a lot of sympathy from me) and the joy (existence?) of his new romance for a week of drunken excess and one night stands. This was trite and cliched and evaporated my sympathy for Harry, despite the rest of the story and its effects on him. I have read that this was not Nesbro's best effort; perhaps I should've followed my usual routine of starting with a later title in along series to allow for the author to learn their craft and their character better.

The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson I love the British Library Crime Classics imprint, and this is latest title from that series I've read. It's a great locked room mystery that reads as only slightly dated, despite dating to 1932. Further enjoyable since the portrayal of the politicians shows some of them to be just as inept and out of touch as to have been pulled from today's headlines. We can enjoy that ineptness more because it's fictional. Wilkinson served in Parliament, so her insight into the inner workings of that political body are fascinating. I can only hope that this just demonstrates that 85 years later, things have changed and yet some things have remained the same, which may mean peril can be averted.

The Body by Bill Bryson Bill Bryson and a deep dive into human physiology and bodily functions--perfection. One of my favorite books of the year!

Aunt Bessie Assumes by Diana Xarissa You know how I love cosy mysteries located in unusual or exotic (to me) locations with an overarching, country-home-murder vibe. So naturally when I stumbled upon a series called the Isle of Man mysteries, I had to give it a try. The writing was okay, the setting was described well, the mystery was obvious and could have used a few more suspects, but the main drawback to reading another in this series is Aunt Bessie herself. She's so self righteous and almost intolerant of anyone who does things differently than she. I like a curmudgeon, and I'm on my way to being an old spinster lady myself, but that doesn't mean I have to be a silver seniors version of a mean girl in high school. And yet she's supposed to be so beloved by everyone on the island that they call her Aunt Bessie and tell her everything? I also was floored at the end when a policeman on a stakeout left to go grocery shopping, especially as this took place immediately after an attempt on the life of the person whose home was being staked out, the eponymous Aunt Bessie?
And the other policeman watched  through a window as Aunt Bessie nearly get killed "to see what the killer would do?" Generally I don't include spoilers, but I had to here to underscore why I found it hard to enjoy the book, despite liking some of the secondary characters and wanting to read and 'see' more of the Isle of Man.

Middle Sister's Mid-January Review:Bill Bryson's Road to Little Dribbling

I just finished reading Bill Bryson's soon-to-be-published "Road to Little Dribbling." I have read several of Mr. Bryson's books and enjoyed them all, and while I enjoyed much of this one, I have to reluctantly admit that my takeaway from this one can be summarized easily: meet Bill, the curmudgeon. Mr. Bryson writes about his forte, walking around various parts of England, the subject his first book many years ago, but does not revisit all the places he wrote about then. Unfortunately, he usual conclusions are: "I visited here in 197-, and it was nicer/prettier/cleaner/less crowded then." Oh, there are a few places that charm him today, but in general, it seems that England today is nothing like the England of 40 years ago, and not in a good way. I'm pretty sure people in the 1970s said the same thing about the England of the 1930s. And of the England of the 1880s, and so on, and so on...

If you like Mr. Bryson's books, you'll find enough to enjoy in this one, but if you've never read his work before, start with another one, or you might be put off forever, and that would be a shame.

Middle Sister's February Books

February flew by in a blink, but I still managed to read some books while continuing to plow through my book club's Mark Twain selection for this month (which I will clearly not finish by the end of the month). Here's what provided some distraction from Twain:

At Home by Bill Bryson Very entertaining discourse on the different parts of the house as we know it, where they came from, how they came to be, with a few splashes of famous names like Thomas Edison and the scoundrel Samuel Pepys for good measure. I've been to the Pepys Library and hod no idea he was such a scoundrel. Naturally, the historic homes were of particular interest to me, and I was glad to hear mention of Skara Brae. Mr. Bryson is so adept at weaving what at first glance appear to be disparate threads together into a dazzling, informative, yet fun whole. This was an audiobook I listened to while gardening, and let me just say right here that I'm blaming Bill Bryson for my sore back two weekends ago. He made pulling weeds so enjoyable that I kept doing it, hour after hour after hour...

Rosemary and Crime by Gail Oust This was an ARC from NetGalley that I really, really wanted to like. The protagonist is a woman about my age, starting over after a divorce, with a teenaged daughter and a spoiled ex-husband, who opens a spice shop in a small town in Georgia. Yup, see, that was the problem--that part of the premise. Had her shop been set in a fancy strip mall, or a restored tourist attraction--then I might have bought it. But the downtown of a small town? Not buying it. The downtown of big cities and small towns alike have been deserted for decades, and are not the place to set a specialty store of this kind unless, unless, the owner was part of a larger redevelopment project. That could have introduced a whole slew of people, but nope, our shop is downtown with the bank and  used car lot. While the mystery and murder itself wasn't bad, the premise, plus Piper's inconsistent attitude towards her former mother-in-law were glaring problems. Another gripe--I'm not sure the author is a chef or a spice expert. Those that she mentions and the recipes she discusses are all generic and standard (chili, lamb) and didn't convey that Piper or her shop would offer me the reader anything I couldn't find in a cooking magazine. I did find Piper's relationship with her daughter to be realistic and understandable, and very well portrayed. But really, Piper should have let her ex-husband find his gorgeous home trashed by drunken teenagers and cleaned it up himself--Piper cleaning it all up before telling him about the drunken prom escapade meant any lesson learned by Dad was going to go in one ear and out the other, which makes me ponder her character. Probably not recommended except to diehard genre fans.

Miss Marple's Final Cases by Agatha Christie Another book group read. While I've read all of Christie's novels, I haven't read her short stories, so this CD of stories narrated by Joan Hickson (the perfect Miss Marple), Anna Massey, and Isla Blair was fun to listen to. All except the creepy The Dressmaker's Doll. Creepy dolls are as creepy as creepy clowns and I don't like them. Perhaps Dame Agatha was trying her hand at a different genre with this short story--there was no mystery, no murder, just a creepy doll. Still, it's Dame Agatha...

The Marseille Caper by Peter Mayle I have enjoyed Mr. Mayle's nonfiction but had steered clear of his fiction up till now. I should have kept steering away. I wasn't terribly impressed. Beautiful people, all wealthy, all gorgeous, and rivals over a local development in the south of France sounds like perfect light summer reading, but it left me wanting much, much more. I hate perfectly gorgeous people in perfectly wonderful relationships--they never seem real. Elena in particular was very flat and one dimensional; she's a high-powered executive in an international insurance firm yet she acts like a high school tween when she meets Mimi or Fifi or whatever the journalist's girlfriend's name was. Francis Raboul is a self-made multi-billionaire, yet he didn't write a prospectus for the presentation to the development committee until Sam suggested it just days before the presentation? How did he make those billions? The descriptions of local French food were the best part of the book, and that's pretty pathetic in what was supposed to be a funny, fast-paced romp through the south of France, with menacing thugs, attempts to disrupt large real estate developments, and kidnapping. Just re-read a Year in Provence instead of this; it's much, much better.

Two out of four--not bad, I guess.