March 2025 Reading Report

I finished four books in March, which is a little low, but it is what it is.

Audio first.  I listened to Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.  (One reason, I think, for the low total, is that I am still in line for the next book in Cooper’s series.)  I read it when my kids were younger and it holds up as a good read.  My only quibble is that it seems like every book of a certain age (maybe even new ones, but I don’t know…) has some incidental imperialism/colonialism/racism baked in.  This book’s is relatively minor—the children in exploring the house where they are staying posit that they are British explorers who might meet up with unfriendly natives with no sense of why natives might be unfriendly to colonizing explorers.  Anyway:  good story, rousing Arthurian adventure, fun characters.

 

For the course I am taking at church, I had to read The Four Vision Quests of Jesus by Steven Charleston.  It is a fascinating book about how Charleston, who is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, worked to reconcile his Native American heritage with his Christian faith.  Charleston is a great writer and a wise and generous thinker.  His work expanded my mind.

 

For my own Year of Water, I read James McBride’s memoir The Color of Water.  Aside from the title, it was not very watery, but it was a very good book.  McBride’s mother is a Polish Jew who married a Black man.  He recounts the struggles and triumphs of her life with deep love and compassion and humor.  It’s a lovely, if sometimes heartbreaking, book.

 

Finally, just for fun, I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  I bought it on a whim because really, it has a great title.  It is the interwoven story of an older concierge and a twelve-year-old girl in an apartment building in Paris.  Each is extraordinary in her own way and each keeps her own secret.  When their lives touch each other at last as a result of a new tenant moving into the building, what happens is both wonderful and bittersweet.  No plot spoilers.  Go read the book.

 

March total:  4

Spring total to date:  18.5

2025 total to date:  18.5

February 2025 Reading Report

This month I will start with a caveat.  I did not read all of Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau.  I read the part of the other writings that was A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.  Even that, it turns out, was a selection.  So I am giving myself half a credit for the book.

 

How was it?  It was interesting, if not always good.  Thoreau writes some very long sentences, but his observational skills are unparalleled and his love for his subjects runs deep.  It was, if nothing else, a detailed picture of what those rivers were like in his time.  Even then, he was perceiving the changes that humans were making to river systems and the environment as a whole.  While I like some of his other works better, I did enjoy this one.

 

My other nonfiction read of the month was Peter Gleick’s The Three Ages of Water.  I am talking about it in chunks in my Year of Water postings (more on Thoreau over there, too).  It traces water in science and culture from the beginning of the universe to the present day, dividing the ages as beginning to roughly the Enlightenment, from then until now, and from now into the future.  He outlines the choices that lie before us and the probable consequences of those choices.  Spoiler alert:  if we choose wrong, it’s going to be bad.  Gleick is a knowledgeable and engaging writer and the book was fun to read without sacrificing anything in the thought-provoking department.

 

I listened to one audio book.  I continue through the Elizabeth George mysteries, this time In the Presence of the Enemy.  I like them all and this one is no exception.

 

I have the best kids ever.  As proof, I will offer that my kid was in a bookstore, saw a book I needed, bought it, and sent it to me.  The book in question is A Stroke of the Pen:  The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett.  There is no way better to fix a troublesome day than to spend some time in Pratchett’s imagination.  The stories in this collection were early ones, before the development of the Discworld.  They’re very fun, if not as polished as his later work.  They were mostly published pseudonymously (is that a word?) and were only discovered again due to a happy accident followed by some very hard work.  I am duly grateful.  (I feel like I need to add that there is a foreword by Neil Gaiman, a person who has moved himself to my Do Not Read list, but it is easily skipped.  Your mileage may vary.)

 

In my own ramblings in bookstores, a pleasure I try to limit due to the exorbitant expense, I bought Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss.  It is a beautifully written book about a girl with an abusive father who is obsessed with early English history.  A field trip with students essentially role-playing stone age villagers goes sideways.  Despite the dark subject matter, it was a lovely book.

 

One way I keep down the expense of books is by shopping library book sales.  They are much cheaper and my money supports libraries!  Plus you get to keep the books!  This is how I acquired Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams.  What a great book!  It’s set in Arizona in the 1980s and focuses on two sisters and their newly-diagnosed with Alzheimer’s father.  There’s something for everyone:  Indigenous people, environmental issues, cockfighting, mining, railroads, piñatas, orthopedic shoes, teen pregnancy, and dancing.  It’s hard to describe.  Sometimes it is so sad that I felt my heart breaking.  Other times, it was funny and joyous.  Overall, it satisfied.

 

February total:  5.5

Spring total to date:  14.5

2025 year to date:  14.5 

January 2025 Reading

New year, same reading habits!  I read or listened to nine books in January.  This post will be, perhaps, slightly shorter than usual because all the water-related books are part of my writing for Year of Water (check out my Substack https://janetsalsman.substack.com/  for details).

The three strictly water-based books were Water:  A Visual and Scientific History by Jack Challoner, Water:  A Natural History by Alice Outwater, and Longing for Running Water by Ivone Gebara.  All were interesting and there’s more in my Substack for those interested.

 

Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba also ended up having some tangential relationship to Year of Water, but that was not why I read it.  Hayes and Kaba are longterm organizers working for social justice and general goodness in our world.  This is their book explaining how our care for each other is a radical act in these disconnected and disconnecting times.  We create social change by doing big actions, yes, but also by making sure that everyone in our movements has food and shelter and rent money.  There is a lot to think about in their book and I would recommend it.

 

My church book group is reading Seculosity by David Zahl.  As a group we aren’t done yet, but I always just jump in and get finished.  Zahl’s premise is that in contemporary society we set up lots of things that are not traditional religions as our secular religions, whether that is parenting or love or busyness or food.  We do this, in his view, to try to prove to ourselves that we are enough.  He suggests that eventually all these things will fail us and that we need to revitalize our actual religion instead.  Not for everyone, but definitely a thought-provoking book.  I liked it.

 

Medieval history through a feminist lens?  Sign me right up!  Femina by Janina Ramirez shines light on some pretty amazing women who have been downplayed or erased from history due to being women.  Some of them, like Margery Kempe, were familiar to me, but I learned a lot.  The book is engagingly written and fascinating.  Each chapter begins with an archaeological discovery or a fortuitous look at a manuscript or artifact and then unpacks the life and impact of the woman involved.

 

In audio, I continue to listen to the works of Elizabeth George.  This month, I listened to Playing for the Ashes.  I liked this one better than the last few because I liked more of the characters, but they’re all worth a read/listen.

 

Deanna Raybourn is turning out to be one of my favorite writers.  I have liked every one of her books that I’ve read.  City of Jasmine is no exception.  Set in the 1920s, the book features an aviatrix/adventurer, an archaeological dig, and many shenanigans.  The book is stylish and snappy, the characters fun, funny, and clever, and it’s all good fun.

 

Finally, I read Kristin Cashore’s YA book There is a Door in This Darkness.  It’s a pandemic novel that captures the difficulty of that time and also a novel about grief, friendship, power, and love.  It is just beautiful.

 

January total:  9

Spring to date:  9

Year to date:  9

December 2024 Reading

It’s time for the December reading report.  I read or listened to eight books in December to finish out the year (January will probably have a lot, since I’m partway through a bunch of books right now!)

Audio first.  I continue to listen to Elizabeth George’s books on Libby (for free!  From the library!).  In December, I finished For the Sake of Elena and Missing Joseph.  I enjoyed the latter more than the former, but both are perfectly good murder mysteries.

 

I received two picture books for Christmas and read them instantly.  The first was from Brent, who has a thing for watching repair videos before bed.  He discovered a guy called Mr. Mixer who repairs Kitchen Aid stand mixers.  Mr. Mixer, whose real name is Zach Dinicola, wrote a picture book called Maxwell the Mixer’s Holiday Adventure, in which Maxwell gets repaired.  It’s cute.  The second was from my mom and it is Grumpy Monkey:  Party Time by Suzanne Lang.  It’s absolutely hilarious, especially the part where Grumpy Monkey finds out that there is food at the party.  Two thumbs up.

 

My nonfiction total was also two.  I re-read Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited as part of my Education for Ministry course at church (No, I have no call to be ordained.  I just like some theory to go with my practice of faith in the world in the shape of helping people.).  I really love this book, which is good because I get to read it again over the next six months as I co-facilitate a Sacred Ground group at church.  Thurman believes in the transformative power of love and calls us to a deep integrity in our lives even as we deal with oppressive systems.  He’s not an easy read and his writing is formal and of his time, but so worth digging into.  I also finished James Baldwin’s Collected Essays.  Baldwin is wicked smart and keenly perceptive.  He’s prickly and argumentative and often contrary.  I did not always see eye-to-eye with him, but I found his work provocative in the best of ways.

 

Finally, I read two fiction books.  I know Gail Carriger in person and she’s lovely and generous and funny as a human.  Her latest book, The Dratsie Dilemma, showcases the same virtues.  Gay shifter romance may not be the genre for everyone, but if it is at all your thing, check it out.  I found the beginning slightly stressful, but I think that was about me rather than the book itself.  By the middle, I was hooked.  As always, I finished with a sense of wellbeing and hope for the world.  My older kid continues the tradition of giving me the next Terry Pratchett that I have not yet read for every holiday.  (Someday I will be sad because I will have read them all, but not right now!)  This Christmas, that book was Monstrous Regiment.  It was so much fun.  What’s not to like about a book that makes fun of war, women, men, propaganda, and socks?

 

December total:  8

Fall total:  26

2025 final total:  107

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

October 2024 Reading

It feels like it was a slow month for reading, but I did finish six books.

Finish might be a strong word for the skimming I gave David Novick’s book, A Gastroenterologist’s Guide to Gut Health.  I was interested in the chapter on what to eat, but ended up disappointed because it was basically a bunch of stuff about macronutrients.  My quest for a way to avoid a semi-steady diet of saltines and Sprite continues.  (No advice, please.)

 

My church book group is reading C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.  It is both hilarious and frightening.  Evil is insidious and we are easily seduced.  I think it would be thought-provoking even for people who do not have a religious perspective.  There are certainly places where Lewis reveals that he was, in short, a privileged white guy of his time, but it’s a good read nonetheless.

 

Neal Stephenson’s brand new book Polostan is interesting.  It’s the first of a trilogy and, as such, ends kind of in the middle of the story.  I will wait impatiently for the next books.  I used to have a terrible crush on him based on his author photos from back in the day.  Then I went to hear him read and… it was over.  It turns out that the ability to read aloud well is a crucial element in my fantasy crushes.  That said, he is still a dazzling writer.  His opening section with its description of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge (no plot spoiler, really!) is masterful.  There are other set pieces throughout the book that display his ability to turn exhaustive research into engaging and evocative prose.  I’m not entirely sold on the main character of this particular book, but that may shift as I see where she ends up.

 

I also devoured the new Louise Penny book, The Grey Wolf.  Which means that I am now, again, impatiently waiting for the next one for Reasons that I will not give because of potential plot spoilers.  I love hanging out with Gamache and the folks of Three Pines.  If imaginary people have to die to make that happen, so be it.

 

Which brings me to the audiobooks.  I did not count Penny’s A World of Curiosities in my total because I did not finish listening to it.  (I read it back when it came out.)  The plot of that particular book turned out to be too stressful in audio and the point of listening to books, for me, is to have something soothing going on while I quilt.  (This does not mean it is not a good book.  It just has both a serial killer and sexual abuse of children in it.)  What my did-not-finish meant was that I was out of Penny books to listen to. 

 

So I turned to another of my tried-and-true mystery writers, Elizabeth George.  I listened to her first two books, A Great Deliverance and Payment in Blood.  Both were good.  Her Inspector Linley is clearly an homage to Lord Peter Wimsey and I have no complaints about that, but my favorite of George’s characters is Barbara Havers who provides the social and emotional ballast to Linley’s elegant privilege.  The plots of both books are well-constructed and the characters fun to hang out with.  Good comfort listening.

 

October total:  6

Fall total to date:  13

2024 total to date:  94

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:1 - The Face on the Screen

It was supposed to be just another Zoom call, checking in on her mother and the cats.  Lily didn’t actually give a shit about the cats, Pan and Wendy Darling, but the cats knew in their cat way, so they always swarmed the computer when Lily called.  They wanted her to know who was in charge.

Lily didn’t mind the cats being in charge.  It was better than the other alternatives—Lily herself, or, worse, her mother.  It was worth the fuzzy view for the first minute or so.  Pan nearly disconnected the call in his stroll across the keyboard and Wendy Darling mewed loudly whenever Lily’s mother started to speak.  Then, having demonstrated their power, the lost interest and retired to the windowsill to plot escape and eventual world domination.

 

Now that Lily could see her mother, she found her frail.  For years, she had been cultivating a scatty little old lady persona to induce people to take care of her, but it seemed to have become real.  The chat was a jumbled thing, full of half-recounted trips to the doctor, random details of neighbors, the shocking price of cat food, and the peccadillos of Mrs. Hook the cleaning lady.  All boring and normal.

 

The Pan and Wendy Darling swiveled their heads toward the door.  The doorbell rang.  Lily’s mother went to open it.

 

The face of Lily’s horrible ex-husband filled her screen.  Jack said, after kissing her mom’s cheek, “I’m Johnny, your mom’s boyfriend.  Nice to meet you.  We have plans, so she’ll talk to you later.”

 

The call ended.

 

Lily knew she was supposed to feel panic, but she didn’t.  Those two deserved each other.

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:3 - Elbow Grease

“What’s next, ankle butter?” Noah griped.

 

“They’re old, Noah.  You’re not supposed to understand them,” his brother Ryan said.

 

Noah, scrubbing at the hood of the blue Jetta with a sponge, kept muttering.  “Shoulder salt, knuckle sugar, wrist rub, back bacon…”

 

“Back bacon is a thing already,” Ryan said.

 

Noah did not throw the sponge at him.  “Knee jelly, hip paste, neck ketchup…”

 

“You’re running out of them, I hope,” Ryan said.  “And move.  I have the hose.”

 

Ryan rinsed off the car and began to towel it dry while Noah squeegeed the windows, whispering, “Eye cream, nose mustard, ear garnish.”

 

Whatever it was they used, their grandparents’ car shone at the end.