November 2024 Reading

November was a little depressing in some ways, so I leaned in to reading fiction.  Only five books this month.

Audio first:  I listened to the next two Elizabeth George mysteries on Libby.  (Shameless library plug:  get Libby and Hoopla and listen to audiobooks for free from your library!!!  It’s awesome!)  Well Schooled in Murder was inventive and interesting.  Havers remains my favorite character.  I liked A Suitable Vengeance less.  It goes back in the timeline and I find that I didn’t like almost all the characters.  However, George’s work is literary and fun to listen to while working on my various projects.

 

I enjoy Tana French’s books.  The Hunter, which features the same group of characters as the previous novel, is really well done.  I spent much of my reading time stressed out because characters I liked were acting in ways that were at once totally understandable and extremely likely to lead to bad outcomes.  On the whole, and I don’t think this is a spoiler since much of the point of reading murder mysteries is that they come out all right in the end, everything turned out okay.  The writing is spectacular.

 

Arthur Ransome’s book Peter Duck is a lot of fun.  It’s a kid book and what kid would not like to sail off and find pirate treasure?  The children in question are strong and independent, supervised but not babied by the adults around them.  No helicopter parents and guardians here!  Only drawback is what I think of as the unthinking racism of the times and some unexamined gender roles in some characters.

 

The best book, however, that I read this month was definitely Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn.  This was escapist fiction at its very best.  I have told nearly everyone I know about it and I’m close to stopping strangers in the street to tell them about it because it is clever and funny and empowering.  It’s also violent, but the violence is directed at Bad Guys, so I don’t feel as bad about it as I might otherwise do.  (Yes, my consciousness could do with a bit more raising, but for now, here I am.)  The premise is that four older ladies retire from their careers as assassins for an NGO that eliminates Bad Guys.  They are given a celebratory cruise by the organization and then that same org tries to bump them off.  Chaos ensues.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  Raybourn is also the author of the Veronica Speedwell series that I love.  She is a treasure.

 

November total:  5

Fall to date:  18

2024 to date:  99