Reading Summary for January 2023

 

Looking back on my reading in January, it was a pretty good month. I was glad I pushed myself to finish Anna Karenina. As with some other longer classics I have read, once I got past the halfway mark it got better. Reading the biography of the Mitford sisters, The Six, got me started on a quest to find more books about that family. I read my first graphic novel for the year (a manga!), and I read some very good crime fiction. 

Nonfiction / Biography

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (2015) by Laura Thompson

The Mitford family was in the news a lot in the late 1930s and during World War II primarily because of the behavior of Diana, who married Oswald Mosley, and Unity, who was a big fan of Hitler. The book concentrated on the six sisters, but spent more time on Nancy, Diana, and Unity. I am hungry for more information about the family, so I am now reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell. My review of The Six is here.

Graphic novel

A Man and His Cat, Vol. 1 (2018) by Umi Sakurai (Writer and Artist)

This is a short graphic novel about a widower who lives alone and decides to get a cat for the first time. The story is mostly about him learning to live with and take care of a cat, and it is very sweet. This is a manga and I had to get used to reading the story from back to front and from right to left on the page. I have read volume 2 in the series now, and will be reading more.

Fiction / Classic

Anna Karenina (1878) by Leo Tolstoy

After owning this book for twelve years, I finally read it and I am glad I did. I learned a lot about life in Russia when it was written. But I found a large part of it depressing to read. My review is here.

Crime Fiction

The Graveyard Position (2005) by Robert Barnard

Barnard is one of my favorite authors. He wrote about 50 novels between 1974 and 2012. Some were series books but a large number of his mysteries were standalones. The standalone books have the best plots and subtle humor, but I have read and enjoyed most of his series books. This one is about a man who returns from abroad to Leeds, England after his aunt dies, to the dismay of the rest of the family, who thought he was dead. He will inherit most of his aunt's estate, once he can provide proof of his identity. Some long hidden secrets about the family are uncovered along the way.

The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979) by Lawrence Block

This is the third book in the series starring Bernie Rhodenbarr, who makes his living as a burglar. In this book, he has purchased an antiquarian bookstore, and his lesbian friend Caroline, a dog groomer, is introduced. Bernie is hired to steal a very rare book, and in the process gets involved in another crime. I liked the first two books but I think this one was much better. I like the characters and the writing and will read more books as I locate them.

A Midsummer's Equation (2011) by Keigo Higashino

This book is the 6th book in the "Detective Galileo" series but only the third book translated into English. I like the series very much, and each book is a bit different.  My review is here.

The Sign of Four (1890) by Arthur Conan Doyle

I have been a fan of mystery novels since my teens, but I did not read anything in the Sherlock Holmes series until the last few years. This was the second of the novels that I have read, and I was surprised to find that the novels are a combination of puzzle mystery and exotic adventure. My review is here.

Currently reading

I am reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell and Fender Benders by Bill Fitzhugh, a darkly humorous mystery about the country music scene in Nashville.

Status of challenges

• Both the crime fiction book by Keigo Kigashino and the two manga were read for the Japanese Literature Challenge. And I recently read Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka.
• Several of the books I read in January also fit categories for my Bingo Reading Challenge.
• Six of the books I read in February count for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

The images at the top and bottom of the post were taken on a recent visit to the Woodland Loop at the Natural History Museum, in the Mission Canyon area. It has been years since we walked in this area. Another lovely walk.

My husband took the photos. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

 

This biography by Laura Thompson tells about the lives of the Mitford family with a primary focus on the six daughters. The parents were David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sidney, née Bowles. The daughters were Nancy (b. 1904), Pam (b. 1907), Diana (b. 1910), Unity (b. 1914), Jessica (b. 1917), and Deborah (b. 1920). Tom, the only son, was born in 1909, between Pam and Diana. 

I don't know when I became aware of the Mitford girls, but it was since I started blogging. See this post on the Mitford sisters at Clothes in Books, where Moira also mentions this book. But even when I started the book I did not know much more than that Nancy was an author, Diana married Oswald Mosley, and Unity was obsessed with Hitler.

I was pulled in two directions while reading this book. Laura Thompson's writing is very entertaining and I learned a lot from the book. But towards the end I thought that something was missing and I was not satisfied. 

I will start with the good. To begin with, it was a pleasure reading this book. The first part was fairly straightforward and I was glad the author began with the background of the parents and covered the older children's childhood and David's part in World War I. I definitely came away from the book knowing much more about the Mitfords than I knew before, and also picked up more about events and attitudes in the UK before and during World War II. I had been aware that there was support for Germany and Hitler in that country prior to the war, but did not realize quite how much. 

But in later parts of the book, I noticed Laura Thompson included too much of her own opinions and biases towards the sisters, which affected her coverage of the family.  She pulled a lot from Nancy's novels, which were based on the family but not a true picture of what actually happened. The impression I got from reading this biography were that all of Nancy's novels were based on members of the family, but I am not sure if that is true. She exaggerated and embellished a lot in the fictional portrayals of members of the family. Nancy's novels were referred to so frequently that sometimes it was not clear whether Thompson was writing about the real person or the depiction of that person in a novel. 

A lot of the book is more about the myths about the Mitfords that sprang from Nancy's fiction books based on the family. Since I was looking for facts, that did not work well for me. I suspect that the enjoyment of this book could depend on how much familiarity the reader already has with the Mitfords and that part of history. 

I felt like Laura Thompson's biography emphasized Nancy, Diana, and Unity and did not include much about Pam, Jessica, or Deborah. She also bounced around a lot between the sisters and went back and forth in time which got very confusing. 

To summarize, Laura Thompson's writing is very readable and entertaining, but I felt I missed a lot of the story. I wanted more. I liked this book as much for what I learned about events and behavior in the UK leading up to and during the war as for the story of the sisters. 

I started reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell a few days after I finished The Six. I wanted to see how that biographer approached the story, whether it has more information than the other book, and how the two differed in their take on the sisters. That book was first published in 2001, 14 years earlier than Thompson's biography, and is 200 pages longer.

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Publisher:   Picador, 2017 (orig. publ. 2015)
Length:       388 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Nonfiction, Biography
Source:      Purchased in 2022.

Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life: Laura Thompson

 

I started out loving this biography of Agatha Christie. It is very readable, and the first chapter about her childhood was charming. I did not know that much about Christie's life at all, especially before her marriage to Max Mallowan, so I learned a lot from the earlier chapters about her courtship and marriage to Archie Christie. The author often mentioned Christie's writing and specific mysteries, and I enjoyed that part a lot. 

However, the author depended too much on quotes from Christie's fiction books (mostly the non-mystery books) to demonstrate and support statements about Agatha's relationships with other people, and especially Archie Christie. 

The chapter about the mystery of Christie's disappearance went on too long for me, and since not much is definitely known about that event, she was making guesses on a good bit of it. On the other hand this was the first I had read on the subject, and she had to handle that period of time in some way, so that is a minor complaint. There were interesting facts (and opinions?) about how the investigation was handled.

Overall, I learned a lot of things about Agatha Christie's life that I have never known, and I appreciated learning about what was going on in her life when she wrote some of her books, especially the earlier ones.  Even with the few quibbles I had regarding this book, I found that it was interesting, informative, and well worth reading.

I would like to read other books on Christie's life. I had forgotten that she wrote an autobiography and I will be looking for a copy of that. I will also be seeking out Come, Tell Me How You Live by Christie, which focuses on her experiences on archaeological trips with Max Mallowan, her second husband. I have a copy of Robert Barnard's A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, which is more about her books and her writing, but does include some about her life. I would appreciate other recommendations. 

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Publisher:  Pegasus Books, 2018 (orig. publ. 2007)
Length:      485 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      UK, mostly
Genre:       Biography
Source:      I purchased my copy in June 2022.

My Reading in August 2022

 

This may be the latest I have ever taken to put up a monthly reading summary. August was a good reading month with six books finished. I read two nonfiction books which was unusual. The rest were crime fiction, which is my favorite genre. The majority of the books were published after 2000, which is a change for me. 

Nonfiction / Biography

Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life (2007) by Laura Thompson

I started out loving this biography of Agatha Christie. It is very readable, and the first chapter about her childhood was charming. I had some quibbles with this book, but most of it was interesting, informative, and worth reading.

Nonficton / Nature

Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear (2018) by Lev Parikian 

This is a nonfiction book about a man who decides to return to an old love, birding. He has a goal to find 200 different species in the UK in one year. I love to read about birds and I would have liked to get more about birds and less about his personal journey and the process. But all of it was good, and visiting different parts of the UK was interesting. 

Crime Fiction

The Long Way Home  (2014) by Louise Penny

I am now a big fan of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Except by this book, the tenth in the series, Gamache has retired to Three Pines. I was still very happy with the book, and I look forward to reading the next in the series. See my review here.

The Burglar in the Closet (1978) by Lawrence Block

The Bernie Rhodenbarr series by Lawrence Block now consists of 11 books. The Burglar in the Closet is the second book in the series. Bernie lives in New York City and supports himself by burgling apartments. See my review here.

Vanish (2005) by Tess Gerritsen

This is the 5th book in the Rizzoli and Isles series. It has been eleven years since I read the 4th book in the series, but I caught up with the story easily enough. Jane Rizzoli is a police detective, and she is also pregnant and her baby is overdue. While visiting her doctor at the hospital she gets caught up in a hostage situation. I am not fond of books about sex trafficking and that was a focus here, Also, the book was a bit too thrillerish for me. However, in the end I liked the book a lot because Gerritsen tells the story well, most of the characters are strong and well-defined, and the story has a great twist at the end.

Death Around the Bend (2017) by T.E. Kinsey

This is the third book in the Lady Hardcastle historical mystery series. The books have interesting plots, wonderful characters, and a lot of humor. See this post where I discuss the first three books in the series.

Currently reading

I am currently reading Anna Karenina. I started it on September 12th and am about a third of the way through. 

We have been to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale three times already, and will go again this weekend. It started on September 16th and will end on the 25th. I have bought way too many books, so I hope I won't find too many more on the weekend. 

The photos at the top and bottom of this post are geraniums (actually pelargoniums), my favorite flower. I think it is because there is so much variety in the blossoms for various types of geraniums. Photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.