Books Read in September and October 2024

I read 12 books in September and October. I enjoyed all of them. Seven of the books were mysteries; five were in other genres.

Humor / Cartoon Collection

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection (2020) by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

In this book, Steve Martin partnered with the cartoonist Harry Bliss to create a collection of cartoons and comic strips. Steve provided caption and cartoon ideas, and Harry created the artwork. It was a fun read.

Fiction

My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather

The story, which is narrated by Jim Burden, focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. Jim and Ántonia were both children when they arrived in Nebraska, on the same train. See my review here.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox and Elgin Branch have promised their daughter a trip to Antarctica if she makes excellent grades. She succeeds, but unfortunately Bernadette get so mired down in the preparations that everything falls to pieces in their already precarious marriage. This is a real mishmash of a book, and there were many times that I was totally lost. Fortunately, it was worth the effort getting to the end. Bee Branch, their daughter, was my favorite character. The story is told partially through emails and documents.

Orbital (2023) by Samantha Harvey

Although I did have a few nitpicks when reading this book, I loved it. I was very pleased and surprised when it won the Booker Prize. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the space station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen. It is short, about 200 pages, and very meditative. It inspired me to read more about the space station, and I wish it had been longer.

Fiction / Short Stories

Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories (2017) by Lore Segal

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. Ten of the sixteen stories in the book are about a group of older women, now in their 90s, who have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The White Lioness (1993) by Henning Mankell

This is the third book in the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Henning Mankell is a Swedish author. This book is set mostly in Sweden but there are also sections of the book set in South Africa. See my review here.

Silent Voices (2011) by Ann Cleeves

This is the fourth book in the Vera Stanhope series. DI Vera Stanhope is relaxing in the spa of a health club, after swimming laps in the pool. I know this doesn't sound like Vera at all but her doctor has strongly recommended some exercise, and this is what she can manage. She discovers the dead body of a woman in the spa with her. This series has great characters; I like Vera's relationship with Sergeant Joe Ashworth, her 2nd in command, and the way she works with her team of investigators. The setting is very nice too.

The Mayors of New York (2023) by S.J. Rozan

I am a big fan of Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series, totaling 15 books; this is the newest one. The first book was published in 1994. I started reading the books in 2008; since then I have read all the books in the series. See my review here.

Winter Work (2022) by Dan Fesperman

I regret not having the time to review Winter Work. This is the third book to feature Claire Saylor, an agent for the CIA. Safe Houses was the first book in the series, set in 1979 (Berlin)and 2014 (US), and it was fantastic. The second book, The Cover Wife is set in 1999. This book goes back to 1990; it is set in Berlin after the fall of Berlin Wall. The trilogy features strong female characters and intelligent plots.

The Hamlet Trap (1987) by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm, who wrote both science fiction and mysteries, published her first novels in the 1960s and published her last novel in 2017. She was married to Damon Knight, a well-known science fiction author. This book is the first one in the Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn mystery series. The story is set in Ashland, Oregon and the story revolves around preparation for a play to be performed there, and the people involved in creating it, the author, director, set designers, etc. The story is excellent, very complex, with lots of characters. I have two more books in the series to read.

Then We Take Berlin (2013) by John Lawton

This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. Wilderness's real name is John Holderness; he is sometimes an agent for MI6 and sometimes a con-man and thief. I learned a lot about Berlin during the time immediately following World War II, when the city was divided up into four sectors. It was a good, although very confusing, story up until the end, which was a cliffhanger. I will be reading book 2 in the series.

Big Sky (2019) by Kate Atkinson

This is the 5th book in the Jackson Brodie series. Reading mysteries by Atkinson can be confounding. They just seem to meander along and several unrelated threads come together to resolve themselves. Nevertheless, I love them. The fourth books in the series, Started Early, Took My Dog, was published in 2010, and I read it in 2011. Big Sky did not come out until 2019, and I just read it this year, so after 14 years I had forgotten a lot about the series. But I settled into Atkinson's quirky approach very easily, and was certain that I would be satisfied with the experience and the ending. It was a wonderful book full of eccentric characters and I have bought the 6th book, Death at the Sign of the Rook, to read sometime in 2025.

Currently reading

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid, the second book in the Inspector Karen Pirie series. Karen Pirie investigates cold cases. I am about a third of the way in, and I am loving the book. It grabbed me immediately. In 2007, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984. At the time he left, the family thought that he had deserted the family and did not look for him, but now she needs to find him desperately because her son is dying. 

The three photos at the beginning and end of this post are ones my husband took while we were walking around in downtown Santa Barbara. The ones directly above are from a bridal shop in 2014. The top photo was taken in 2010. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Books Read in August 2023

I read nine books in August and completed all of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list. I did not review them all, but did better than usual in that area. I read four nonfiction books, although three of them were shorter books. All of the books I read in August were very good.

Graphic Nonfiction 

Number One is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions (2022) 

by Steve Martin, Drawings by Harry Bliss

This is a short and entertaining graphic memoir, in which Steve Martin, star of many films and currently starring in the TV series Only Murders in the Building, tells selected stories about his career in the movies. That portion of the book is supplemented by cartoons drawn by Harry Bliss. This book was his second collaboration with Harry Bliss; the first was A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection.

A Fire Story (2019) by Brian Fies

Brian Flies tells the story of his and his wife's escape from the Tubbs fire that engulfed their home in Santa Rosa, and their experiences following the fire, with all their possessions gone. My review here.

Nonfiction / Letters 

84, Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff

I loved reading this very brief book of letters between Helene Hanff in New York City and Frank Doel in London, starting in October 1949. My review here.

Nonfiction / History

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (2010) 

by Ben Macintyre

This is an extremely well-written history telling the story of Operation Mincemeat, a plan to deceive the Germans related to the next target that the Allies planned to attack. Sicily was the most obvious target, but intelligence agents wanted to convince the enemy that the attack would be on Greece or Sardinia. My review here.

Science Fiction

The Last Colony (2007) by John Scalzi

This book is the third in the Old Man's War series; the first two books are military science fiction, which I did not think I would like, but I did. This entry in the series was an interesting combination of a story about the colonization of a planet and the resulting effort to protect the planet from a group that wants to annihilate it. I rated The Last Colony higher than the other two, but I read the first two books ten years ago. Maybe I am a more generous grader of books now (which I would just as soon not do anyway), or maybe I liked the emphasis on people and relationships in this one.

Crime Fiction

The Mulberry Bush (2015) by Charles McCarry

This is the last novel that Charles McCarry published before his death in 2019. It is a standalone spy story about a man whose main focus is getting revenge for his father, a spy for the CIA whose career ended in disgrace. Now the son has succeeded in getting a job with the CIA and is bent on avenging the wrong that Headquarters did to his father. My review here.

Sleep and His Brother (1971) by Peter Dickinson

This is the fourth in a series about Jimmy Pibble. In the first two books, he was a Scotland Yard detective; now he has been forced into retirement. His wife is a volunteer for a charitable institution and asks him to look into a problem they are having. There are vague supernatural elements, which is not surprising since Dickenson was a well-known author of fantasy books. The book is very short, around 200 pages, but very dense, not an easy read at all. I loved the story and the writing.

The Doomsday Carrier (1976) by Victor Canning

This was another short book, under 200 pages, and the fourth book in a loose series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. A chimpanzee has escaped from the facility where it had been infected with plague bacillus, with the goal of creating an infectious carrier of the disease after a three week incubation period. The story follows the chimpanzee as it continues to elude capture, and two people who hope to catch it and return it to the facility before it becomes contagious. Concerns are addressed about the ethics of doing this kind of research and the dishonesty of government officials in trying to keep the truth from the public.

A Man's Head (1931) by Georges Simenon

There are 75 novels featuring Inspector Maigret, and each of those that I have read is different. Maigret often behaves strangely, at least for a policeman of his rank. In this case, Maigret arranges the escape of a condemned murderer from prison. The man, Joseph Heurtin, was convicted of having killed a rich American woman and her French maid. Maigret is sure that Huertin could not have done the crime, even though the proof of his guilt is strong. He plans to have the man followed once he escapes, and see if he will lead the police to the real culprit. Maigret gets very personally involved in this one. An alternate title for this book is A Battle of Nerves, which is definitely an accurate description. The Maigret novels are always good reads, brief, and usually with some humor.

Currently reading

For my Classics List, I am reading I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; I have read about half the book. This book is the starting book for Six Degrees of Separation in October, and is on my Classics List. 

The annual Planned Parenthood Book Sale started on September 15th. We have been to the book sale several times since it started, and will go again on Sunday, the last day of the sale. I have bought way too many books, so maybe I won't find too many more to buy.

The photos at the top of this post are of the Silver-leafed Princess Flower plants in our front flower beds. Last month's photos showed the first purple blooms on the plants. The photos in this post show the plant in full bloom. 

The photo immediately above is a flower on our Butterfly bush. The plant has done very well and gotten taller than we expected.

Photos taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.