As you may have noticed, I’m a bit late in putting this post together. While I’ve done plenty of reading over the last few weeks, I haven’t really had the time to sit down and get my thoughts organized enough to write about anything. (Also, to be honest, I haven’t really felt like doing so - I feel it’s important to admit that.) Today, though, I’ve put on some trousers and a sweater vest and am getting down to business.
In the month of May I finished seven books: three audiobooks, three e-books, and one actual bound-paper book. I’ve found that this particular mix of media seems to work really well for me - audiobooks are great for listening to while sewing, knitting, or spinning, e-books are typically stored on my phone so I can access them whenever I want, and I usually have a physical book next to my bed, for reading at night and first thing in the morning. Previously I tended to be a pretty monogamous reader, sticking with one book until I finished it and then starting another, but recently I’ve had three or even four books in progress at a time, and I rather like this new development. My social media consumption has dropped precipitously over the last few months, and it is likely due to the fact that I constantly have a book available to read, in various formats (although I also feel like Instagram has become extremely boring lately and I feel very little desire to spend time on there).
I also want to clarify that when I say ‘book’, I don’t have any stipulations regarding length. One of the titles on this month’s list is a fairly short novella, but I am still counting it towards my goal of reading fifty books this year.
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What I Read
This was a wonderful book to revisit, as I wrote previously. Since I already discussed this one a few times, I’ll keep my comments here to a minimum - though I will say again, I highly recommend the audio version of this book as the narrator is exceptional. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this one again.
The Paris Novel, by Ruth Reichl
This audiobook is available on Spotify, and I started it on a whim at the beginning of May (mostly influenced by the fact that I myself had an upcoming trip to Paris). For a long time now, Ruth Reichl has been one of my favorite food writers - her memoirs are as close to MFK Fisher as anyone has come, and she has an excellent Substack as well. This novel, while fairly fluffy, was still a lot of fun, and filled with descriptions of amazing meals. Reminiscent of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, I think it would make a fabulous rom-com.
Woman, Eating, by Claire Kohda
A rare example of a US book cover being better than the UK version, I borrowed this from Libby after seeing it on a few bookstagram accounts - I wanted another vampire story after finishing The Historian, and felt that this would be suitably different while remaining in the genre. A complex novel, slow-paced despite it’s short length, I found this one very interesting, but less memorable than I’d thought it might be. A previous version of myself would have found the story very relatable, I think.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers
The first Becky Chambers book I ever read was the first Monk & Robot novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, and I loved it so much that I immediately read all of Chambers’ other novels. This latest story did not disappoint - I listened to the audiobook, which is a brief four hours long, and enjoyed every second. As a person who is not typically a sci-fi fan, I am really happy to have found an author in that genre who I enjoy, and I look forward to the next book from Chambers, whenever it may arrive.
This was, sort of, a re-read for me - as I explained last time, I listened to a BBC Radio 4 production of this story over a decade ago and absolutely loved it, always meant to read the book but didn’t get around to it until this year. I have to say, I’m not quite sure how I felt about the novel. I don’t mean this as a criticism, per se, but it had a bit more of a YA feel than I’d been expecting, and upon reflection I think I feel that way about a lot of Neil Gaiman’s work. I’m still parsing this thought, but I may have more to say on this in the future.
Celia’s House, by D.E. Stevenson
Last summer I discovered D.E. Stevenson and became fairly obsessed with her novels, most of which are set in English country villages in the first half of the 20th century (very much up my alley - and I wrote briefly about Stevenson at the end of this post). This one was new to me and I breezed through it in a couple of afternoons. It looks as though it’s the first in a series, and I have no doubt I’ll be reading the others soon, though troublingly I seem to have worked my way through all of the readily-available novels, and will have to start hunting around for more. I have a deep fondness for deep-backlist contemporary fiction, and Stevenson is a great example of this - her books were widely accessible, everyday fiction when they were published, and provide such an interesting window into an average reader’s life at the time. This is another subject that I’ve been turning over in my mind lately, and I may write more about this in the future.
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
Another re-read, I started this in order to participate in the readalong that Haley Larsen is hosting…but then I got carried away and I finished the book about a week ago. This novel is absolutely brilliant. Wharton is a masterful writer, and I simply can’t get enough of her prose. In fact, I’m keeping an eye out for a secondhand copy of her book Summer, because I can’t imagine not having a Wharton novel on the go. As usual, the second time around with this one was extremely fascinating, and I’m wondering now how I would feel after a third encounter. I could talk about The Age of Innocence for hours, but I’ll restrain myself for now, and just say that I’m planning to watch the Scorsese film adaptation ASAP.
Currently Reading
I have a few books on the go currently - one I’m reading one Libby, one on my Nook, and one on my bedside table.
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
The first time I read this, I was 13 or 14, and I brought it to the beach, which turned out to be a terrible choice because I became so engrossed that I lay in one position for hours and got absolutely fried in the sun. That was actually the worst sunburn I’ve ever gotten. Since then I’ve watched both the 1999 film adaptation and the 2007 TV version, and always meant to revisit the novel. Since I first read all of Austen’s works in my teens, I have found that they are rich veins to return to as an older reader. Thus far, Fanny has been extremely irritating, but Austen’s presentation of Aunt Norris is incredibly sly and truly hilarious. I’m looking forward to doing more research on the novel itself when I’ve finished.
The Flight of the Falcon, by Daphne du Maurier
Yes, I was meant to be reading Jamaica Inn, but I found this on sale at B&N and couldn’t resist downloading it to my Nook. So far, it’s very good, but that Du Maurier dread is starting to really seep into the story and I must admit I’ve gotten slightly nervous about what will happen, which has slowed my progress.
The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman
This is the third book in the Invisible Library series, which I began reading last week on my older sister’s recommendation and have absolutely zoomed through. I will have much more to say on this series when I do my reading list for June, but suffice to say I have enjoyed it tremendously thus far. Extremely entertaining and satisfyingly bookish, this feels somewhat like a grown-up version of Enola Holmes, and I’m loving it.
TBR
There is just one book that I will definitely be reading soon, and it’s a used copy of All Passion Spent that I picked up at Shakespeare & Company when I was in Paris this week. Full of notations (penciled into the margins in both English and French) and with a pleasingly vintage typeface, I’m really looking forward to this one. Other titles I may potentially pick up soon are Wolf Hall, which I found at the Strand bookstore a few weeks ago, and an old copy of The Go-Between that I’ve been hanging on to for a while.
Well, there I shall end my ramblings about the books I’ve been reading recently. I am on the hunt for a new audiobook, so I would welcome any recommendations on that front - in the interest of variety, I think I’d like something contemporary, so if anything comes to mind please do let me know. Otherwise, I wish you a lovely weekend and will be back with another letter next week. Talk to you soon!
Best,
Thank you for this post! I added a few to my own reading queue.
Oh, All Passion Spent is an absolute joy.