November Books

I did better this month than last, despite feeling restless much of the time.  I started a few large books that have since been idling on a table.  But here's what I did finish:

The Lost Boy  -  Camilla Lackberg

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd  -  Alan Bradley

The City Baker's Guide to Country Living  -  Louise Miller

Fifty Days of Solitude  -  Doris Grumbach

Bodies in a Bookshop  -  R. T. Campbell

Bear  -  Marian Engel

Turn Right at Machu Picchu  -  Mark Adams

The Princess Bride  -  William Goldman

The Skeleton Road  -  Val McDermid

Hiss and Hers  -  M. C. Beaton

You can see a trend here toward mindless reading, comfort books, things that don't require too much attention.  I started and discarded a couple of books.  Life's too short.  I can't imagine December's list will have much more depth.  We'll see.

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd - Bradley / The City Baker's Guide to Country Living - Miller

I finished these two library books in the last few days.  I whipped through both of them, so you get a 'two-fer' today.

I've read all the Flavia de Luce books.  They're like a cross between Nancy Drew and the Addams family.  I like that sort of mix.

Flavia rides off on Gladys (her bicycle) to deliver a message to an old man who does wood carving.  Someone has damaged some of the carvings in the local church.  Flavia finds the man dead, hanging upside down from a contraption of some sort.  She, of course, investigates before calling the police.

I think the mystery in this one is a little thin.  I was a bit disappointed by the perpetrator and the solution.  But, on the way, there were some interesting characters and incidents.  The ending was abrupt and unexpected, though.

Danielle at A Work in Progress mentioned The City Baker's Guide to Country Living a while ago and just recently posted her review of it.  Danielle is a much better reviewer than I am.  I'm always in too much of a hurry to get on to the next book.

Olivia Rawlings is a baker who sets a prestigious private club in Boston on fire while serving Baked Alaska.  She was ready to leave anyway, to leave the club and her married, wealthy lover.  She goes to visit her friend Hannah in Vermont and ends up taking a job baking at the Sugar Maple Inn.

Livvy, as her friends call her, also plays the banjo.  She's invited to play with a group in town.  One of  the other musicians, a fiddler, is handsome and she falls in love with him.  His family treats her like a daughter.  But it all comes apart when his father dies.  It's the kind of small town where everyone has known each other for generations and where everyone knows everyone else's business, even though there are lots of secrets.

This was a light read, full of lots of baking and cooking.  It inspired me to bake a Lemon Drizzle Cake, which I've been intending to do for weeks.  Once it's baked, it has to be eaten, which is why I'm feeling a big porky at the moment.

It also ticked several of my boxes, as they say.  Olivia lived and worked in Boston, where I used to live and work, she has an Irish Wolfhound mix, and I've had the pleasure of sharing my life with three Irish Wolfhounds, and she uses Nancy Drew books to level the legs of a table, and I love Nancy Drew.  Although I'd never use them to level a table.

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust - Alan Bradley

                   

       

I finally finished a book!  I finished four in January, a paltry amount for me.  I've been struggling with a post holiday / mid winter slump.  I think things are looking up.  The amaryllis my cousin gave me for Christmas, eight orange-red blooms, is lifting my heart. 

Sometimes it's the little things:

                                                                        Dust of Snow
                                                                       by Robert Frost

                                                                      The way a crow 
                                                                     Shook down on me 
                                                                       The dust of snow 
                                                                     From a hemlock tree

                                                                      Has given my heart 
                                                                      A change of mood 
                                                                    And saved some part 
                                                                     Of a day I had rued. 

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust has also helped me climb out of the abyss.  It's not a short book, almost 400 pages, but it's a fast read.

Some reviewers haven't liked this Flavia de Luce book because it takes place at a boarding school in Canada and not in Flavia's crumbling home in England.  That didn't bother me at all.  I'm more interested in Flavia than I am in her home or her family.  I did miss Dogger, though.

Flavia has been shipped off to the boarding school her mother went to.  It's also a training ground for members of the ultra secret and (to me at least) mysterious organization headed by her Aunt Felicity.  It's so secret that no one knows who's in it and I'm not clear on what their mission is.  Maybe I missed something in a previous book.

That doesn't detract from the murder that Flavia finds herself solving.  Her first night at the school,  she's attacked in her room by a fellow student  -  and a body falls down the chimney.  It ain't Santa Claus.  It's been up the chimney for a while.  The head that rolls off the body is a mummy's head, but the body is thousands of years younger.

Flavia must find out whose body it is, how it got there, why the person was killed, and who the killer is.  Just when she thinks she knows all, she realizes she doesn't.  

I enjoyed As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust and will look forward to the next Flavia book.