Books in January
Happy New Year, and Happy New Books!
Charlie Worthing has applied to and been accepted for a job with the Winter Consuls, that hardy group of people who keep the rest of humanity safe during the annual 16-week long Winter Hibernation. Winter is a brutal season, with temperatures hovering around -50 Celsius for much of the time, so hibernating is essential. But when a dream goes viral among the Consuls and then people start dying, Charlie wonders if he has chosen the right profession after all, and that’s not even taking into account the Villains, the Nightwalkers and the possibly mythical WinterVolk who populate the Winter landscape…. I fell massively in love with Mr. Fforde’s writing back around the turn of this century when he published "The Eyre Affair," still one of the most astounding books I’ve ever read, so I generally pick up his work when I run across it. For some reason, “Early Riser” which was published in 2018, passed me by until now, but I’ve finally gotten to it. Not as insane as the Thursday Next series, but still very satisfying. Mr. Fforde’s sense of the absurd is second to none, and his ability to careen off in new directions while still maintaining a coherent plot and vivid characters always make his work a joy to read. I don’t know if this is a stand-alone novel or the beginning of a new series, though I’m hopeful for the latter; more Charlie Worthing, please! Recommended.
In “Metropolis: A History of the City,” historian Ben Wilson traces some 5,000 years of the invention, development, expansion and innovation to be found in human cities across the globe, starting with Uruk in Mesopotamia (Iraq), which dates from at least 3000 BCE, and ending with speculations about modern “megacities” (vast areas of land covered in sprawling, contiguous cities - think the NYC-Boston region, or large swaths of modern-day China) and the role of cities in mitigating and adapting to the oncoming climate crisis. In between, Wilson discusses the important role of street food (based in the chapter on Bagdad between the 6th and13th Centuries CE), war (Rome, Lubeck in the Middle Ages, Warsaw in WWII), sociability (London in the 15th to 19th Century, Paris off and on, Amsterdam in the 1500s) and the horrors of the Industrial Age (Manchester and Chicago), among many other topics and times. Lest one think this is fairly Euro-American-centric, he includes numerous chapters about cities ranging from Tenochtitlan (Middle Ages, site of what is now Mexico City) to Lagos, Nigeria (the megacity of the future), among many others. Engagingly written, and including a fair number of illustrations in two sections, the tale of how cities have shaped humanity over the millenia is spelled out with both meticulous detail and broad scope, depending on what he wants to highlight in a given moment, and his sources range from the earliest written documents (including “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” which chronicles the real Uruk) to recent hip-hop videos (Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”). Indeed, my only quibble with the book is that the extensive notes section listed at the end of the volume is entirely taken up with citing sources; no fun little asides or comments on controversial interpretations here. But then again, those things can be found in the main text throughout, so recommended!
My husband and I just recently discovered the TV series, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,” and have been enjoying them immensely, so when my sister-in-law said the books are even better, I dashed off to start the series in e-book form. The nice thing about that way of discovering a series is that one might have many, many books to read before getting all caught up; in this case, some 21 are or will be on offer. This first, “Cocaine Blues,” serves mainly to introduce us to our characters: Phryne Fisher, the once-poor but now very, very rich young scion of British aristocracy; her maid Dot; taxi drivers Burt and Cec; Detective Inspector Robinson; the fierce Dr. Elizabeth McMillan, and many more. Set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia, Phryne is a very, *very* modern woman, taking lovers as she pleases while keeping her heart to herself, dressing exquisitely (and described in detail), and in her spare time solving murders and other crimes; delicious! I read this first book in just over one sitting (finished the last half hour the next morning) and have already bought books 2 and 3 in the series. Smashing stuff, and just what’s needed to get through a dreary, curfewed and quarantined Covid winter!
As Phryne is settling into her new house in Melbourne, she is invited to lunch by Mrs. McNaughton, who soon reveals her reason for the invitation: she is worried that her son Bill will kill her husband William over disagreements concerning Bill’s plan to use his aviation school to subsidize an exploratory trip to the Antarctic. It seems both men have a temper and don’t get along, so Phryne resolves to talk to Bill and try to dissuade him from any rash act; a happy chore for her because it means she can get in a plane and fly again, after far too long! Meantime, 6-year-old Candida Meldon wants nothing more than the sweets she has just bought when she finds herself kidnapped! Little did the kidnappers know that they’d be dealing with a very clever and very stubborn little girl, not to mention the fully grown Phryne…. As with the first novel in this series, there are multiple crimes to solve, including murder, but Phryne is certainly up to the tasks. Not to mention the arrival of a new lover, various domestic affairs that need to be arranged in her new household, and the help of Dot, Cec and Burt along with some new-found friends and old acquaintances like Detective Inspector Robinson. I will definitely have to ration this series over the winter as reading the first two (of 21) in 2 days is not the way to savour the experience; then again, it’s like eating a bit of candy or some potato chips - you don’t mean to eat more than one or two, but suddenly the whole bag is empty. Delicious!
Author Alan Conway has been dead for a couple of years, and his former editor Susan Ryeland is living a whole new life as co-owner with long-time boyfriend Andreas of a small hotel on Crete. But she misses her London life and work, and finds little joy in the exhausting work at the hotel, so when an older couple from England, Lawrence and Pauline Treherne, visit the hotel and ask her to investigate the disappearance of their daughter Cecily, for a huge sum of money of course, she is happy to agree. As it happens, the hotel that the Trehernes own was the site some 8 years previously of a grizzly murder, and Alan Conway not only knew the victim but spent some time at the hotel researching his murder - before using that tragedy in one of his detective novels, “Atticus Pund Takes the Case,” a novel Susan edited and the novel Cecily had been reading just before she disappeared. Can Susan piece together this puzzle, before something even worse happens?....I don’t know if one must have read “Magpie Murders” before tackling this, a sort-of sequel (but everyone should read that book anyway because it’s terrific!); in any event, we get to know Susan a lot better, along with many more people, some quite unsavory. Mr. Horowitz loves his wordplay and it’s on full display here, including in the novel “Atticus Pund Takes the Case,” which is printed as a complete volume in the middle of “Moonflower Murders,” so the reader literally gets two books in one! I must admit I didn’t figure it out before the end, but it was an extremely enjoyable ride; very highly recommended!
Phryne Fisher, Dot and all the other first-class passengers on the train to Ballarat are somehow chloroformed; waking early, Phryne manages to kick open windows, stop the train and save the passengers - all but old lady Henderson, who has somehow disappeared. Phryne takes on the old lady’s daughter, who has sustained bad burns from the chloroform, and also a young girl who has no memory, not even of her own name. When the old lady’s body is found along the train tracks, suffocated and apparently stomped on, it is up to Phryne to trace the clues back to the baffling events…. This third book in the Miss Fisher series introduces some other characters who join her household, notably Jane the amnesiac. As is becoming the norm in this series, Phryne finds a new lover and some of the crimes she investigates are sordid indeed; but just because polite people didn’t talk about sexual desire *or* sexual abuse in the 1920s doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen; that’s one of the refreshing things about this series. Even with serious content, the series is still very light and frothy to me, and a joy to read; recommended!
When someone takes a shot at Phryne as she’s driving past the dockyards, shattering her windscreen, she is annoyed; when she comes across a gunshot victim, a young man, and holds him as he lies dying on the docks, she is enraged. Her investigations lead her to a group of Latvian anarchists, who are far more dangerous than her usual foes. As if that’s not enough, a young girl has run away after her father refuses to accept that she has a calling to become a nun, but she is not to be found at the convent where she might be expected to flee….This is the fourth Phyrne Fisher novel and, perhaps just because I read the first three in the four or five days prior to reading this one, it came across as a bit repetitive and formulaic. Not that I didn’t still entirely enjoy Phryne and her companions, but perhaps I shouldn’t read each book back-to-back, especially when each one only takes a couple of hours to read! Still, while a little tired, an enjoyable read.
The Hon. Phryne Fisher loves to dance, but is non-plussed when a fellow dancer drops dead near her feet and her erstwhile partner makes a dash for it claiming to fear the sight of blood, although she is cheered by the soon-to-be close acquaintance with the handsome band leader. Soon her dance partner’s mother has hired Phryne to find the young man, then also to find his older brother, a shell-shock victim who disappeared into the remote mountains years ago. To find the latter, Phryne must once again take to the skies, but flying over mountains proves to be much more difficult than she thought…. After feeling a bit less enthusiastic about this series with the fourth entry, this fifth book has restored my faith in Phryne, both in terms of adventure, novelty (I didn’t know there *were* mountains in Australia!) and general lightness of tone. True, the two most despicable people in the story are gay men, but that is countered by a third, lovely gay man and a lesbian couple who are most welcoming and helpful to Phryne. This was first published in 1993, when depictions of gay characters in fiction were almost non-existent, at least in terms of them being just regular people (as opposed to living agonized, restricted and untruthful lives), so kudos to Ms. Greenwood for that aspect in this series! Looking forward to the next one….
“Fire and Blood” purports to be Volume 1 of the history of the Targaryens in Westeros, from the Conquest of Aegon I to the end of the regency of Aegon III, a period of roughly 135 years or so. As such, it reads as most histories do, concentrating on the high-born, wars and castle intrigues, while including numerous lists of people involved in those activities without much differentiation between most of the names. But as ever, GRRM’s prose is compelling and even its great length (709 pages) isn’t daunting once one gets into the rhythm of the thing. Along the way, we learn some things, such as how it came to be that the Targaryens were the only House that had (and flew) dragons; how and why women were excluded from the succession in most places, and much more. I’ve been reading GRRM since, oh, “A Song for Lya” back in the mid-1970s, and am always happy to read more. This book is just the first half of the history, however, and every day spent on this and on its sequel is a day when the author is not working on “The Winds of Winter.” The first book in A Song of Ice and Fire came out when I moved from California to Canada, and I’ve been here 25 years now! That said, I’m pleased with “Fire and Blood,” and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the world GRRM has created.
Wow, lots of reading in January! Happy Imbolc (as of sunset, January 31) everybody!
Charlie Worthing has applied to and been accepted for a job with the Winter Consuls, that hardy group of people who keep the rest of humanity safe during the annual 16-week long Winter Hibernation. Winter is a brutal season, with temperatures hovering around -50 Celsius for much of the time, so hibernating is essential. But when a dream goes viral among the Consuls and then people start dying, Charlie wonders if he has chosen the right profession after all, and that’s not even taking into account the Villains, the Nightwalkers and the possibly mythical WinterVolk who populate the Winter landscape…. I fell massively in love with Mr. Fforde’s writing back around the turn of this century when he published "The Eyre Affair," still one of the most astounding books I’ve ever read, so I generally pick up his work when I run across it. For some reason, “Early Riser” which was published in 2018, passed me by until now, but I’ve finally gotten to it. Not as insane as the Thursday Next series, but still very satisfying. Mr. Fforde’s sense of the absurd is second to none, and his ability to careen off in new directions while still maintaining a coherent plot and vivid characters always make his work a joy to read. I don’t know if this is a stand-alone novel or the beginning of a new series, though I’m hopeful for the latter; more Charlie Worthing, please! Recommended.
In “Metropolis: A History of the City,” historian Ben Wilson traces some 5,000 years of the invention, development, expansion and innovation to be found in human cities across the globe, starting with Uruk in Mesopotamia (Iraq), which dates from at least 3000 BCE, and ending with speculations about modern “megacities” (vast areas of land covered in sprawling, contiguous cities - think the NYC-Boston region, or large swaths of modern-day China) and the role of cities in mitigating and adapting to the oncoming climate crisis. In between, Wilson discusses the important role of street food (based in the chapter on Bagdad between the 6th and13th Centuries CE), war (Rome, Lubeck in the Middle Ages, Warsaw in WWII), sociability (London in the 15th to 19th Century, Paris off and on, Amsterdam in the 1500s) and the horrors of the Industrial Age (Manchester and Chicago), among many other topics and times. Lest one think this is fairly Euro-American-centric, he includes numerous chapters about cities ranging from Tenochtitlan (Middle Ages, site of what is now Mexico City) to Lagos, Nigeria (the megacity of the future), among many others. Engagingly written, and including a fair number of illustrations in two sections, the tale of how cities have shaped humanity over the millenia is spelled out with both meticulous detail and broad scope, depending on what he wants to highlight in a given moment, and his sources range from the earliest written documents (including “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” which chronicles the real Uruk) to recent hip-hop videos (Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”). Indeed, my only quibble with the book is that the extensive notes section listed at the end of the volume is entirely taken up with citing sources; no fun little asides or comments on controversial interpretations here. But then again, those things can be found in the main text throughout, so recommended!
My husband and I just recently discovered the TV series, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,” and have been enjoying them immensely, so when my sister-in-law said the books are even better, I dashed off to start the series in e-book form. The nice thing about that way of discovering a series is that one might have many, many books to read before getting all caught up; in this case, some 21 are or will be on offer. This first, “Cocaine Blues,” serves mainly to introduce us to our characters: Phryne Fisher, the once-poor but now very, very rich young scion of British aristocracy; her maid Dot; taxi drivers Burt and Cec; Detective Inspector Robinson; the fierce Dr. Elizabeth McMillan, and many more. Set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia, Phryne is a very, *very* modern woman, taking lovers as she pleases while keeping her heart to herself, dressing exquisitely (and described in detail), and in her spare time solving murders and other crimes; delicious! I read this first book in just over one sitting (finished the last half hour the next morning) and have already bought books 2 and 3 in the series. Smashing stuff, and just what’s needed to get through a dreary, curfewed and quarantined Covid winter!
As Phryne is settling into her new house in Melbourne, she is invited to lunch by Mrs. McNaughton, who soon reveals her reason for the invitation: she is worried that her son Bill will kill her husband William over disagreements concerning Bill’s plan to use his aviation school to subsidize an exploratory trip to the Antarctic. It seems both men have a temper and don’t get along, so Phryne resolves to talk to Bill and try to dissuade him from any rash act; a happy chore for her because it means she can get in a plane and fly again, after far too long! Meantime, 6-year-old Candida Meldon wants nothing more than the sweets she has just bought when she finds herself kidnapped! Little did the kidnappers know that they’d be dealing with a very clever and very stubborn little girl, not to mention the fully grown Phryne…. As with the first novel in this series, there are multiple crimes to solve, including murder, but Phryne is certainly up to the tasks. Not to mention the arrival of a new lover, various domestic affairs that need to be arranged in her new household, and the help of Dot, Cec and Burt along with some new-found friends and old acquaintances like Detective Inspector Robinson. I will definitely have to ration this series over the winter as reading the first two (of 21) in 2 days is not the way to savour the experience; then again, it’s like eating a bit of candy or some potato chips - you don’t mean to eat more than one or two, but suddenly the whole bag is empty. Delicious!
Author Alan Conway has been dead for a couple of years, and his former editor Susan Ryeland is living a whole new life as co-owner with long-time boyfriend Andreas of a small hotel on Crete. But she misses her London life and work, and finds little joy in the exhausting work at the hotel, so when an older couple from England, Lawrence and Pauline Treherne, visit the hotel and ask her to investigate the disappearance of their daughter Cecily, for a huge sum of money of course, she is happy to agree. As it happens, the hotel that the Trehernes own was the site some 8 years previously of a grizzly murder, and Alan Conway not only knew the victim but spent some time at the hotel researching his murder - before using that tragedy in one of his detective novels, “Atticus Pund Takes the Case,” a novel Susan edited and the novel Cecily had been reading just before she disappeared. Can Susan piece together this puzzle, before something even worse happens?....I don’t know if one must have read “Magpie Murders” before tackling this, a sort-of sequel (but everyone should read that book anyway because it’s terrific!); in any event, we get to know Susan a lot better, along with many more people, some quite unsavory. Mr. Horowitz loves his wordplay and it’s on full display here, including in the novel “Atticus Pund Takes the Case,” which is printed as a complete volume in the middle of “Moonflower Murders,” so the reader literally gets two books in one! I must admit I didn’t figure it out before the end, but it was an extremely enjoyable ride; very highly recommended!
Phryne Fisher, Dot and all the other first-class passengers on the train to Ballarat are somehow chloroformed; waking early, Phryne manages to kick open windows, stop the train and save the passengers - all but old lady Henderson, who has somehow disappeared. Phryne takes on the old lady’s daughter, who has sustained bad burns from the chloroform, and also a young girl who has no memory, not even of her own name. When the old lady’s body is found along the train tracks, suffocated and apparently stomped on, it is up to Phryne to trace the clues back to the baffling events…. This third book in the Miss Fisher series introduces some other characters who join her household, notably Jane the amnesiac. As is becoming the norm in this series, Phryne finds a new lover and some of the crimes she investigates are sordid indeed; but just because polite people didn’t talk about sexual desire *or* sexual abuse in the 1920s doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen; that’s one of the refreshing things about this series. Even with serious content, the series is still very light and frothy to me, and a joy to read; recommended!
When someone takes a shot at Phryne as she’s driving past the dockyards, shattering her windscreen, she is annoyed; when she comes across a gunshot victim, a young man, and holds him as he lies dying on the docks, she is enraged. Her investigations lead her to a group of Latvian anarchists, who are far more dangerous than her usual foes. As if that’s not enough, a young girl has run away after her father refuses to accept that she has a calling to become a nun, but she is not to be found at the convent where she might be expected to flee….This is the fourth Phyrne Fisher novel and, perhaps just because I read the first three in the four or five days prior to reading this one, it came across as a bit repetitive and formulaic. Not that I didn’t still entirely enjoy Phryne and her companions, but perhaps I shouldn’t read each book back-to-back, especially when each one only takes a couple of hours to read! Still, while a little tired, an enjoyable read.
The Hon. Phryne Fisher loves to dance, but is non-plussed when a fellow dancer drops dead near her feet and her erstwhile partner makes a dash for it claiming to fear the sight of blood, although she is cheered by the soon-to-be close acquaintance with the handsome band leader. Soon her dance partner’s mother has hired Phryne to find the young man, then also to find his older brother, a shell-shock victim who disappeared into the remote mountains years ago. To find the latter, Phryne must once again take to the skies, but flying over mountains proves to be much more difficult than she thought…. After feeling a bit less enthusiastic about this series with the fourth entry, this fifth book has restored my faith in Phryne, both in terms of adventure, novelty (I didn’t know there *were* mountains in Australia!) and general lightness of tone. True, the two most despicable people in the story are gay men, but that is countered by a third, lovely gay man and a lesbian couple who are most welcoming and helpful to Phryne. This was first published in 1993, when depictions of gay characters in fiction were almost non-existent, at least in terms of them being just regular people (as opposed to living agonized, restricted and untruthful lives), so kudos to Ms. Greenwood for that aspect in this series! Looking forward to the next one….
“Fire and Blood” purports to be Volume 1 of the history of the Targaryens in Westeros, from the Conquest of Aegon I to the end of the regency of Aegon III, a period of roughly 135 years or so. As such, it reads as most histories do, concentrating on the high-born, wars and castle intrigues, while including numerous lists of people involved in those activities without much differentiation between most of the names. But as ever, GRRM’s prose is compelling and even its great length (709 pages) isn’t daunting once one gets into the rhythm of the thing. Along the way, we learn some things, such as how it came to be that the Targaryens were the only House that had (and flew) dragons; how and why women were excluded from the succession in most places, and much more. I’ve been reading GRRM since, oh, “A Song for Lya” back in the mid-1970s, and am always happy to read more. This book is just the first half of the history, however, and every day spent on this and on its sequel is a day when the author is not working on “The Winds of Winter.” The first book in A Song of Ice and Fire came out when I moved from California to Canada, and I’ve been here 25 years now! That said, I’m pleased with “Fire and Blood,” and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the world GRRM has created.
Wow, lots of reading in January! Happy Imbolc (as of sunset, January 31) everybody!