Books Read in February and March 2025

 

I read a lot of good books in February and March, in a variety of genres and different settings. 

Fiction

The Goodbye Cat (2021) by Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel

This book consists of seven short stories; all of the stories are about cats and are set in Japan. See my review.

Rachel's Holiday (1997) by Marian Keyes

This book was one of two books I read for Reading Ireland Months 2025. It is the second in Marian Keyes' Walsh family series. The story focuses on Rachel, the third of five sisters, after she overdoses on drugs and almost dies. I enjoyed this book and the preceding one, Watermelon. See my review.

Plays

Much Ado About Nothing (1598) by William Shakespeare

I read this play for my Classics Club Spin in February. I haven't written a post about it but I will do one, soon I hope. I was leery of reading any Shakespeare play, so I picked a comedy that I was more familiar with. I read the play in the Folger Library Edition which presents explanatory notes on the left hand page and the actual text of the play on the right hand page. That was useful at first but with the last three acts I found I could pick up the meanings myself and move faster through the play. All in all it was a good experience.

Historical Fiction

A God in Ruins (2015) by Kate Atkinson

I am sad that I don't have time to review this book, because I loved it so much when I read it. I did not like the ending and I still gave it 5 stars. It is a hard story to summarize and describe. This book is sort of a sequel to Life After Life by the same author. Life After Life was about Ursula Todd, and is a time loop novel, where portions of Ursula's life are repeated over and over with different results. A God in Ruins is about Ursula's brother Teddy. It also has a strange structure jumping back and forth to various times in Teddy's life and focusing most often on his years in the RAF during World War II.

Science Fiction 

The Ministry of Time (2024) by Kaliane Bradley

This was another book that I rated very highly, even though it was confusing and I was not fond of the ending. The book is advertised as time travel, romance, espionage, and "a workplace comedy." Looking back on it, it does have elements of all of those, but having these thrown into one book diluted each of them. Nevertheless, it was a compelling read and I wanted to get back to reading it every day. The characters were interesting and fleshed out and mostly sympathetic. One thing I especially liked was that I learned a lot about the Franklin Expedition, a failed attempt to find the Northwest Passage. I have never been interested in that story but now I am. 

Diving into the Wreck (2009) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

This is the first book in Rusch's Diving Universe series. The protagonist in this story is a woman who makes her living diving into derelict ships out in space. She does these salvage operations to support herself, but her real love is history and she likes to study the ships. See my review.

Crime Fiction

Silent Parade (2018) by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray

This book is the 9th book in the Detective Galileo series, but only the 4th book translated to English. It is about two crimes that take place in Tokyo, separated by about 20 years. In both cases, young girls have been killed. The suspect is the same for both but all the evidence is circumstantial. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi turns to his old friend, physics professor and sometimes police consultant, Manabu Yukawa (aka Detective Galileo), to help solve the murders. See my review.

Fall From Grace (1991) by L.R. Wright

This is the fourth book in one of my favorite Canadian mystery series. The main character is Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Karl Alberg. I have found most of the books in the series to be more of a character study than a mystery. See my review.

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (2012) by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, translated by Rod Bradbury

This book is  kind of a comedy / heist / romance all mixed into one. (The romance is very low key.) It is the first book in the League of Pensioners series. The main characters are all around 80 years old and living in a retirement home that is going downhill. The owners are medicating the residents to keep them in line and manage costs. Five of the residents, three women and two men, decide to carry out some robberies, sort of a Robin Hood scheme to give money to the poor. I enjoyed reading this book, but it required suspending my disbelief a lot. 

I have seen a lot of good reviews of this book, but this review at AnaBookBel was my favorite. The book was published in 2012 in Sweden, then a few years later in the UK and the US, but this was the first I had heard of it. It was an interesting picture of Sweden. 

Scene of the Crime (2024) by Margot Kinberg

This is the fifth novel in Margot Kinberg's Joel Williams series. The setting is academia; the protagonist is a college professor in Tilton University’s Department of Criminal Justice. Joel is not a policeman but he was in the past, and he has ties to the police department. Thus, the books are part academic mystery and part police procedural. I have read the four previous books in the series and this was another good one. See my review.

Winterland (2008) by Alan Glyn

This book is another book I read for Reading Ireland Month 2025. It is a thriller, and I don't always like those, but this one worked for me. Very dark and a good bit of violence, but none of that bothered me. Two men named Noel Rafferty die in one day in Dublin. The younger one was part of a gang; the second one was his uncle, who was chief engineer for the development of a high rise building.  Supposedly the second death was the result of a car accident, but Gina Rafferty (sister of the older Noel Rafferty) doesn't believe that. And she refuses to stop asking questions. I liked the book; if you are OK with thrillers and enjoy reading about Ireland, you might enjoy it too.

Three Witnesses (1956) by Rex Stout

This book is a collection of three novellas in the Nero Wolfe series. In January, I reviewed "Die Like a Dog." In March, I reviewed "The Next Witness" and "When a Man Murders." All three novellas were entertaining and clever.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken at the Santa Barbara International Orchid Show that we attended in March. I plan to share more photos from the show in a future post. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Rachel's Holiday: Marian Keyes

I was initially drawn to Marian Keyes' Walsh family series when Moira at Clothes in Books reviewed The Mystery of Mercy Close. That book is a mystery; the protagonist, Helen Walsh, is a private investigator. When I saw it was part of a series, I wanted to read the previous books, in order, even though I knew that they were not mysteries. I first read Watermelon (about Claire, the oldest daughter). Now I have read Rachel's Holiday, the second book in the series.

The story is set mostly in Dublin. Rachel is the third daughter in a family with five daughters. She has supportive parents, although there are communication issues in both directions. In her late twenties, she has been living in New York but she overdoses on drugs, almost dies, and her family brings her home to Dublin to go into a rehab facility called The Cloisters. Rachel mistakenly thinks it is a luxurious spa and is eager to go. The majority of the book takes place at the rehab facility, which treats people with various addictions. It was an emotional, immersive book, but it could have been shorter.

My thoughts:

• I liked the depiction of the rehab facility.  I don't know how accurate it was, for the time it was written, or for now. But the approach to the actual rehabilitation process seemed valid. The story continued after she left the facility and covered how she adjusted to recovery from her addictions. This sounds like it would be a sad story, and there were plenty of low points. But there is also humor throughout.
• I empathized strongly with Rachel, even though her experiences and what she was looking for in life seemed very different from mine. I liked the emphasis on how the events in one's childhood can mold you, and how different personalities react to the same childhood experiences. 
• This book had more emphasis on romance than I care for. It also had a little more sex and too much detail in that area than I wanted. However, I don't want to give the wrong impression, for most readers it would be fine. 
• There are a lot of interesting characters, both those going through rehab and the counselors. None of them got the attention and character development that Rachel did, especially since she is the narrator of the story, but they offered looks at different types of addictions and different reasons behind it.
• Most of the books I read set in Ireland are crime fiction; it was interesting to read about family settings, daily life, and relationships in a non-crime fiction setting. 
• Overall I enjoyed the book. I intend to keep reading the books in this series as long as I like them. And I will read The Mystery of Mercy Close for sure.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   William Morrow, 2002. Orig. pub. 1998.
Length:       565 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:       Walsh Family, #2
Setting:      Dublin, Ireland
Genre:       Fiction
Source:      I purchased this book.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Prophet Song to Rachel's Holiday

  

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. I have not read that book, but from what I gather it is a dystopian novel set in Ireland and written by an Irish author. That novel follows one woman trying to keep her family together as the country moves towards totalitarianism. This sounds like a very good book and I may want to read it some day. 

The books that I have linked to for my Six Degrees chain are all set primarily in Ireland, and are written by Irish authors. 

1st degree:

My first link is to an Irish crime fiction book on my TBR pile – Winterland by Alan Glynn. From the book dust jacket: "The worlds of business, politics and crime collide in contemporary Dublin when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That's the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels."

2nd degree:

Winterland can be described as dark and gritty, and that leads me to The Guards, the first of the Jack Taylor novels written by Ken Bruen. The series is set in Galway, Ireland. Jack Taylor was in the Garda Síochána (the police force of the Republic of Ireland), and thrown out because of serious problems with alcohol. He becomes, almost accidentally, a finder, a sort of private detective. One element of the writing is frequent mentions of books, especially mystery novels, and quotes interspersed here and there, often with no apparent connection to the story.  The mystery portion of the plot is slight. The emphasis is more on Jack, his relationships, his life, his battle with alcohol. It isn't a happy book, but it isn't depressing either.

3rd degree:

Like The Guards, the The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black is more of a character study than a mystery. And beautifully written. Set in Ireland in the 1950s, it is the 2nd book about Quirke, a pathologist working in a hospital in Dublin. Deirdre Hunt died and the assumption is that it was suicide; Quirke suspects that this is not correct, so he spends some time looking into her death. Dierdre also went by the name Laura Swan and ran a beauty salon, The Silver Swan. In looking into Deirdre's death, Quirke discovers that his daughter Phoebe has some connections to that salon also, and he becomes more interested. After reading this book, I was hooked on the series.

4th degree:

Benjamin Black is a pseudonym used by John Banville for some of his crime fiction books. In 2020, John Banville published Snow, set in Ireland in 1957. The Catholic Church is powerful in Ireland at that time. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been sent to County Wexford to investigate the death of a priest, found dead in the home of a well-known Protestant family. DI Strafford is also Protestant, an unusual occurrence in the Garda. He finds himself in an uncomfortable position, isolated in the small community by the accumulating snow and getting little cooperation from the family or the townspeople. 

 

5th degree:

My next link also involves Garda detectives. The Secret Place is the 5th book in the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French. It is set in a girl's boarding school and the investigation takes place in one day. Holly Mackey, daughter of a policeman and student at St. Kilda's, brings a new piece of evidence related to the death of a teenage boy to Stephen Moran, a detective in the Cold Cases division who would really rather be in the Murder Squad. Stephen takes the information to Detective Antoinette Conway in the Murder Squad. They pursue the investigation. Tana French's mysteries are very good, but none end happily, and they usually leave me a bit down.

6th degree:

To be honest, most of the books in my chain are dark and bleak. For my last link, I am switching to the opposite. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes is from my TBR pile. One Goodreads review described it as "dark, depressive, and sad" which is strange for a book categorized mainly as chick lit. Although the story is about a woman who returns to her home town of Dublin and goes into rehab for drug addiction, I believe this is handled with humor and wit. It is the 2nd book in the Walsh Family series; I read Watermelon and liked it, so I am expecting to like this one too, although it is close to 600 pages long.

In my Six Degrees I stayed in Ireland, although two of the books do go back to the 1950s.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

Have you read any of these books or authors?

The next Six Degrees will be on April 5, 2025, and the starting book will be Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Western Lane to The Sisters

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

This month we are starting with Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, a novella about an 11-year-old girl who lives with her father and her two sisters and plays squash to get over her grief after the death of her mother.

1st degree:

Over ten years ago I read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, a Canadian author. That book also featured a 11-year-old protagonist, Flavia de Luce. Flavia narrates the story, which are set in post World War II Britain, in the village of Bishop's Lacey. She is the youngest daughter in the de Luce family, and lives with her two sisters and their father in an ancient country house. This book was the start of a mystery series in which Flavia is the sleuth.

2nd degree:

My next book is also by a Canadian author, and involves three sisters. The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott is a historical novel set in the years preceding and during World War I. The sisters, teenagers as the story begins, travel with their mother to support the family as a vaudeville act. This book covers the years from 1912-1917 and thus World War I figures a great deal.

3rd degree:

The Case of the Weird Sisters by Charlotte Armstrong is another book about three sisters. Alice Brennan has decided to marry her rich boss, Innes Whitlock. On a car trip, they get stranded in his home town, Ogaunee, Michigan. Innes decides to visit his three half-sisters. Each sister has a serious disability. Gertrude is blind, Maud has lost her hearing, and Isobel has only one arm. And they are very, very strange. Until Innes proposed to Alice, the three sisters expect to inherit from him. So when accidents start happening, Alice and the chauffeur think that the sisters are trying to kill Innes before he changes his will.  

4th degree:

I am staying with sisters as a theme. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is a story about four sisters, this time set in Massachusetts. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March live with their mother. Mr. March has volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War, and he is stationed far away. The fear that they will never see him again weighs heavily on all of them. The family once was well-to-do but Mr. March made some bad business decisions so that they have now moved to a smaller home and have to live frugally. Right next door, however, is a very rich man and his grandson, Laurie. Over time the girls and Laurie become good friends. 

5th degree:

Watermelon by Marian Keyes is the first book in a series about the Walsh family, about a family of five sisters. In this book, Claire, the oldest daughter, gives birth to her first child and finds out that her husband is leaving her on the same day. Claire had no clue that her husband was unhappy with the marriage and was having an affair with a woman that they both know. Her reaction is to leave London, where she works and lives with her husband, and go to Dublin and stay with her parents for a few months. Although Claire is the focus of the books, I enjoyed reading about the Walsh family, especially Claire's parents. Her parents were wonderful, supportive people and had all the normal reactions to the situation. Her two youngest sisters still lived at home, and had very unique and irritating personalities, but were also supportive in different ways.

6th degree:

And my last connection will be to a nonfiction book about a family of six sisters: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell. This is my brief overview of the sisters, who were born between 1904 and 1920 to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sidney, née Bowles. The sisters were very different and some of them were notorious. Diana was a fascist and married Oswald Mosley, who founded and led the British Union of Fascists. Unity was a huge fan of Hitler and visited Germany regularly prior to World War II. Nancy, the eldest, was a successful author of both fiction and nonfiction books. Jessica eloped with Esmond Romilly, a nephew by marriage of Winston Churchill, became a Communist, and moved to the US; she was also a successful author, of memoirs and nonfiction. Pam had the most normal life, preferring rural life. Deborah was the youngest, apolitical; she married Andrew Cavendish, who became the 11th Duke of Devonshire. Tom, the only son, was born in 1909, and was loved by them all. 

This was a very fun Six Degrees to put together. It took me from a coming-of-age book set in the UK to other books set elsewhere in the UK, and in Ireland, Canada, and the US. The first book featured a young girl with two sisters, and my theme was books about sisters. 

Have you read any of these books? I am especially interested in more book in the Walsh Family series by Marian Keyes. Has anyone read those? The books seem to be categorized as chick lit but Watermelon was more than that.

If you did this month's Six Degrees meme, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on December 2, 2023, and the starting book will be the culinary classic, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Reading Summary for March 2022

 

I read seven books this month and every one of them was very good. Five books of crime fiction, one historical fiction, one general fiction. Two books published between 2000 and 2020, three books published between 1960 and 2000, and two books published in the 1950s. Five books by women, two by men.

General Fiction

Watermelon (1995) by Marian Keyes

Claire found out that her husband wanted a divorce on the day her first child was born. Claire had no clue that her husband was unhappy with the marriage and was having an affair with a woman that they both know. Her reaction is to leave London, where she works and lives with her husband, and go to Dublin and stay with her parents for a few months. My review here.

Historical Fiction

The Spies of Shilling Lane (2019) by Jennifer Ryan

This is historical fiction set during World War II. However, I was not sure how to categorize it because there are elements of spy fiction in the book; some of the characters are intelligence agents for the government. There is a mystery, and many characters who may or may not be who they seem. The main character is a middle aged woman divorced by her husband, who goes looking for her daughter living in London, and gets mixed up with Fascist spies. I did not find that part of it terribly realistic, but I still liked it. 

Crime Fiction

A Most Contagious Game (1967) by Catherine Aird

This was Aird's only standalone novel. Thomas Harding and his wife Dora have moved from London to a manor house in Easterbrook. Harding retired early because his health was bad, and he doesn't like the quiet life he is leading... until he finds a skeleton in a hidden room in his house (which turns out to be a priest hole that had been plastered over). This mystery was not a police procedural like Aird's Inspector Sloane series, but there is a death in the village about the same time. The story of Harding's research into the skeleton's origins and his settling into the small town with his wife was excellent. 

Death Likes It Hot (1954) by Edgar Box

Edgar Box is a pseudonym of Gore Vidal. Vidal used it at a time when he was having a hard time getting books published. This book is the third of three books featuring Peter Sargeant, a publicist and amateur sleuth. This one is set in the Hamptons. I have an omnibus edition published in 2010 with introductions for each book by Gore Vidal. I loved the book.

Monk's Hood (1980) by Ellis Peters

This is the third book in the Brother Cadfael series. The setting for the books in the series is between 1135 and 1145 in England and Wales, primarily. I love this series; Brother Cadfael is a wonderful character. My review here.

Once a Crooked Man (2016) by David McCallum

This book by actor David McCallum was published in 2016 and is a thriller. A crime family decides to go straight but first they have a few people they want to silence so they won't be going to jail for past crimes. An actor who survives on small parts in TV episodes and movies and stage plays overhears what they are plotting and get mixed up in all the mayhem, mainly because he wanted to do a good deed and warn one of the victims. This was the perfect read for me at this time, and I enjoyed it a lot. There are a lot of very short chapters and they move from character to character, which some readers might find distracting. I like this style of writing so it worked well for me. It kept the tension level up. Nicely paced with a lot of humor.

The Gazebo (1955) by Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth's books are my go-to comfort read. The Gazebo, the 7th book in the Miss Silver series, was published in 1955 and is a story about a woman who had to drop her plans to marry her fiancé to take care of her invalid mother for five years. Now he is back in the village and they are going to find a way to get around her controlling mother and get married. Then the mother is murdered and the fiancé seems to be the obvious culprit. The plot is complex, there was more romance in the story than usual, and I enjoyed it. And there are some really bad guys, which is sort of unusual for the Miss Silver series.

Status of my reading:

Most of my reading in March was based on spur of the moment decisions, not much planning. Watermelon was read for the Reading Ireland event at 746 Books, which always takes place in March. Death Likes It Hot was read for the 1954 Club run by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings. The other five books were just for fun, and I enjoyed that.

In April I have read three books at this point, and all of them are for a challenge or similar blogging event. I read another book for the 1954 Club (Go, Lovely Rose by Jean Potts)and I finally read a book for the TBR Pile Challenge (Dog On It by Spencer Quinn). I read my book for the Classics Club Spin, Beast in View by Margaret Millar.

The photo at the top of the post shows a succulent among overgrown Santa Barbara daisies. The two plant photos immediately above are geraniums and an overgrown Dusty Miller. The photo of the Dusty Miller looks like a black and white photo, but it is just that the plant is all white. If you look closely you can sent tints of light green here and there. All of the plant photos were taken in early April in the front garden beds that I have been working on cleaning up.  As usual, my husband took those photos. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Reading Ireland: Watermelon by Marian Keyes

I was initially reluctant to read this book because it is described as chick lit. At the time I bought the book, in 2014, I mainly read mysteries. All kinds, all vintages, but mostly mysteries, and very little general fiction. I was curious because I had read a review of The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes at Clothes in Books, but it was part of a series about a family of five girls, and I was interested in starting at the beginning. As you can see, it took me eight years to get to this book. My reading tastes have changed a bit since, and I was not disappointed in this book at all. 

The main character is Claire and the book starts out thus:

February fifteenth is a very special day for me. It is the day I gave birth to my first child. It is also the day my husband left me. As he was present at the birth, I can only assume the two events weren't entirely unrelated.

Claire had no clue that her husband was unhappy with the marriage and was having an affair with a woman that they both know. Obviously, such an announcement right after the birth of a baby would be upending. Her reaction is to leave London, where she works and lives with her husband, and go to Dublin and stay with her parents for a few months. A very good decision, I think, a place where she will have support.

I don't exactly know how to describe this book. It is frenetic. Claire describes her ups and downs, her settling in with her parents and sisters and her child, and the new people she meets. It does cover topics that I normally would not be interested in. Shopping, for instance. Claire goes through despair and then anger at her husband and her predicament. And a lot of wine.

It was frustrating for me that neither Claire nor her husband made contact for several weeks after the baby's birth. Thus the reader does not know why the difficulties in the marriage occurred, and that was a mystery to me. How they could not address support issues and how to deal with their joint properties seemed very strange. But everyone is different.

I love the Walsh family, especially Claire's parents. Her parents were wonderful, supportive people and had all the normal reactions to the situation. Her two youngest sisters still lived at home, and had very unique and irritating personalities, but were also supportive in different ways.

I read this for Reading Ireland month at 746 Books, and I think it was a very good choice for that event. I enjoyed reading Watermelon; it was a good change from my normal reading. It was too long for my tastes (over 400 pages) and I was not thrilled with the sex scenes, but both of those are minor quibbles. I do want to read more books in this series about the Walsh family, especially the mystery novel, which features the youngest daughter.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   Perennial, 2006. Orig. pub. 1995.
Length:      417 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:       Walsh Family, #1
Setting:      Dublin, Ireland
Genre:       Fiction
Source:      On my TBR since 2014.