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. 

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:2 - Elbow Grease

Elbow grease
won’t do it.
There will always
be more laundry,
weeds to pull
out from among
the potatoes,
places
in our hearts
that need more
tenderness than
we can summon
by hard work.
So, even as we shine
with exertion—
elbows, too—
we slide effortlessly
into grace
where we can rest.

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:1 - Elbow Grease

“Mag, how do you find anything in this kitchen?” Cate demanded, looking at the jumble of pots, spoons, jars, and boxes garnished with the occasional spider on the pantry shelves.

“I know where everything is,” Mag replied.

 

Cate doubted it, since Mag had a carrot stuck in her messy bun, but chose not to tell her.

 

“We’re doing this the traditional way,” Mag went on.  “None of this newfangled lab kitchen stuff.”

 

“You’re using a food processor,” Cate said.

 

“I said traditional, not fucking stupid,” Mag snapped.  “I don’t want to spend all day chopping and neither do you.”

 

The two worked in companionable crankiness for a few minutes, Mag at the food processor, Cate at the stove.  The timer beeped and Cate said, “All right, I need your stuff in here.”

 

Mag scanned down the ingredient list, muttering.  “I added the eye of newt and the baby’s tears and the llama hairs and the toad slime.  Oh shit.  I forgot the elbow grease.”

 

The witches looked at each other.  Finally, Cate said, “We’ll tell them it’s the new low-fat version.”

 

Mag smiled.  “That’ll work.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 9:3 - Achilles Heel

The heel wasn’t
the problem.
He came from
a broken home,
his mother easily distracted.
He had so much to prove.
He wore armor anyway,
shining with pride,
chinking with insecurity.
He could not bear
a slight.
And then there was
the grief.
The man had many
places he could be wounded.

October 2024 Flash Lit 9:1 - Achilles Heel

Gil grumbled at everyone and everything.  His back hurt.  His coffee was too hot and then when he waited a bit it was too cold.  The newspaper, in addition to being printed in miniscule type, was full of reports about violence and fear, environmental destruction, and an analysis of a loss by his beloved Forty Niners.

Dee ignored him placidly and spread honey on her toast.  Some got on her fingers, of course, so she licked the sweetness off.  Gil looked up from his paper and said, “How old are you?”

 

Dee knew he meant she was too old to be licking her fingers like a child, but she answered, “Sixty seven, just like you.”  She was a young 67, still trim, her hair mostly brown, but Gil was an old 67, wrinkled from smoking, bent with arthritis, callused by life.

 

He snorted and returned to his paper.

 

“You finish up now,” Dee said.  Peter and Susan are bringing JoJo over soon.”

 

“Do they ever take care of their own child?” Gil groused.

 

Again Dee ignored him.  Time with a two-year-old was the best thing she could think of.  Besides, she knew her son and daughter-in -law enjoyed having Saturday afternoon to remember why they loved each other.

 

Half an hour later, Gil still sat at the kitchen table with his newspaper and a fresh cup of coffee.  JoJo zoomed around the kitchen on the wheeled caterpillar she was rapidly outgrowing making motor sounds.  She crashed into Gil’s foot and he yelped.

 

The little girl jumped off the caterpillar, hugged his shin, planted a kiss on his fleece-lined slipper, and said, “Make it better.”

 

Gil scooped her up and she nestled under his chin.  “Yes,” he said.  “JoJo make it better.”