February 2026 Reading

What a strange month of reading this has been: lots of audiobooks (which is odd for me) and fewer "hard" books.  This was also the month of the Winter Olympics and I found myself engrossed by them. What a nice break from reality; but that left less time for reading. 

The reason for all the audiobooks was that I spent the first week of this month traveling, including a 12 hour car ride to the place I was going and a 12 hour car ride back. So, I downloaded  audiobooks for the drive. We listened to two of them during the drives and I finished the others once I got home. All the audiobooks I finished were memoirs read by their authors. I generally like memoirs read by their authors because is sounds as if the author is telling you, the reader, the story of their life directly. 

These are the books I finished in February. 

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

This is the audiobook I listened to on my way down to the Gulf Coast. It was not what I expected, which is on me and not on the book. A memoir by the actress Mary-Louise Parker told as a series of letters to men (some real, some fictional), it was, interestingly, not much about  her career as an actress. She might mention that she was in NY to do a play but that was about it. It was almost completely about her personal life including her kids, her health and her love life. She has a very dry sense of humor and we chuckled along with some of her stories. On the whole, not the best memoir I've ever read but entertaining enough.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

This was the audiobook I listened to on the way home. This is essentially a diary that Stanley Tucci kept over a year journaling the food he made for himself and/or his family and what he ate (whether made at home or in a restaurant). He includes recipes (you need to like pasta). Along the way he talks about certain projects he was working on beginning with the filming of Conclave. He also talks about the death of his first wife, which is sad. He also talks about the celebrities he had dinner with throughout the year. It took me a long while to figure out that his second wife, Felicity, is the sister of actress Emily Blunt (maybe he said that early on and I just missed it).  He can be very funny and I enjoyed listening although I did get a bit tired of hearing about pasta. And I don't recommend you listen to it if you are hungry. But I think listening to this book made me appreciate the little spots he did for NBC during the Olympics about Italian food in the Milan area. 

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

The third audiobook memoir that I checked out of the library for my trip turned out to be something I didn't want to listen to in the car. Read by the author, it was a very quiet book and I needed something that would keep me awake. But I did listen when I arrived home. Geraldine Brooks (the author of Horse, among other novels) was married for 35 years to Tony Horowitz, a Pulitzer prize-winning author. In 2019, while he was on a book tour, he dropped dead suddenly while he was walking down a street in Washington DC.  This memoir is the story of Brooks' grief journey.  A few years after his death she retreated to Flinders Island in Australia (she is Australian) to consider what happened and work through her grief. The memoir is partly a memoir of her time on the island and partly a memoir of the time immediately following his death. It is not a long book but I found myself very affected at points. (I'm glad I didn't listen to it while driving.) There were also parts where I found myself as angry as the author - for instance when she discovered that the family's health insurance had been canceled the day after Tony's death without any notice to her. Or when she had to apply for all new credit cards because she had never thought to establish credit under her own name prior to his death. And especially when she received the call from the hospital unexpectedly telling her that her husband had died but the doctor was finishing her shift and couldn't take the time to answer questions. I hope the administration at GW Hospital read this and made some changes. 

The Book of I by David Grieg

If you have ever wanted to read a comic novel about slaughter by Vikings then this is the book for you. The island of Iona was often a target of Vikings and the novel begins in the year 825 A.D. with the landing of a Viking hoard and the slaughter of all but two of the residents - a monk who hid in a latrine and the wife of the smith who made such good mead from local honey that she is spared. The Vikings also leave behind one of their own, believing him to be dead. This is the story of the following year in the life of the three on the island. Although this is a very short novel, each of the characters has an arc. It examines issues of faith, love, and loyalty, all the while in language that is humorous. I have no idea if the end of the novel is historically accurate but it was satisfying. 

The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee

The next installment of the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in Calcutta in the 1920's, this novel is set a few years after the end of the last novel. Banerjee has returned from a stint in Europe but does not want to go back into the police force, he is working for Indian independence. Wyndham is still clean from his drug addiction but he drinks too much.  And he has lost the faith of the police force so he hasn't been assigned any good murders to investigate in a long time. The two come together again when Banerjee's cousin disappears at the same time that a rich local man is murdered. I always enjoy this series and you could read this without reading the previous novels, but of course it would be better if you started at the beginning. 

Helm by Sarah Hall

This is an historical novel about the only wind in the British Isles that has a name: Held.  Held is a character in the novel. There are also many other characters who observe Held through the ages.  In my Quick Take I said that if you like short stories you may like this, as this novel is more like a collection of related short stories but not told linearly.  For me, that slowed down the narrative arc of the whole novel. Despite that, I did like this novel and was very impressed by what Hall accomplished in anthropomorphizing Held. 

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

The last of the audiobook memoirs I got from the library. Levy is a staff writer for The New Yorker and she writes with The New Yorker style. You know.  Start the essay with something really personal that will grab the reader, then go into whatever it is you are intending to write about and at the end go back to the personal story. I don't have a problem with this form of essay - I am a subscriber to The New Yorker. But in my opinion this style works better for essays than for books.  And probably works better when read on the page rather than heard in audiobook form. This memoir starts with the description of a horrible moment in Levy's life without any explanation about how she got there and then goes back to the beginning of her life. This memoir did not grab me. It's not that Levy didn't have an interesting life; it was as interesting as any other woman who wants a career and a marital life and a baby.  Her's might even be slightly more interesting because she was in a same sex marriage that had issues with fidelity and heavy drinking. I usually like audiobook memoirs read by the author because it usually sounds as if the author is telling YOU the story personally. I think the problem with this audiobook is that Levy wasn't great at doing the reading and it often sounded like she was angry when I think it would have worked better if she had sounded ironic. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had read a hard copy of the book. 

The Hideaway by Nikki Allen

Full disclosure, Nikki Allen is married to a distant cousin of mine and I met her one time a number of years ago.

This thriller is part of the oevre of "country house murders" where a group of strangers are stranded together in a house where they can't escape and someone is a murderer. But in this novel, the "country house' is a house in Costa Rica and the group of five strangers end up lost in the rain forest. The action of the novel is related in third person omniscient, with the chapters alternating between the points of view of the different characters. (Regular readers will know this is not my favorite structure for a novel, but it didn't bother me too much here.)  Each character has come to the retreat in Costa Rica because they are dealing with personal issues (traumas?) and they want to get their life together and come back changed. In real life Nikki has worked as a therapist and she is very good at representing the various issues that each character is dealing with. In fact, the strength of this novel is the development of the characters. As far as plot, this is of course a thriller/mystery and it's pretty good but I thought it lost a little bit of momentum in the later chapters where there was a lot of narrative and less action (the opposite of what you would expect - although in the old murder mysteries the detective DID do a lot of narrative at the end explaining what happened). I thought it was an enjoyable book, the kind to  take on vacation. As a first novel it was promising and I do look forward to her future books. 

January 2026 Reading

It is always good to start the year with books you enjoy and so in December I decided to save for January a number of books that I wanted to read. It worked. I started the year off on a good reading foot.  

I finished my read of the 2025 Booker Prize short listed novels. I read a book of poetry that I enjoyed (which was a relief after not finding enjoyable poetry last year). Surprisingly I also read three nonfiction books this month, all memoirs. That puts me half way to my goal of reading 6 nonfiction books this year. 

I also carried through on my resolution to write more, individually, about books I read. I didn't do a "Short Take" for each of the books I read but I have provided a link for where I did.  

These are the books I finished in January. 

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz

The last of the 2025 Booker short listed books that I read, I enjoyed this one.  After learning of his wife's affair Tom Layward makes a decision. He will leave her but only after their youngest child leaves for college. Years later the time has come. Tom considers his options as he drives his daughter to college in Pittsburgh. Once in Pittsburgh he decides to continue the drive cross country to Los Angeles to see his son, stopping along the way to visit old friends. He is in ill health, suffering from what his doctor has said was "long COVID". Told in the first person, we are in Tom's head the entire novel. This is a character driven novel that focuses mostly on the one character.  My Short Take is here. Recommended.

My Beloved: A Mitford Novel by Jan Karon

Yes, yes, yes. Jan Karon's Mitford series is kind of hokey but that's ok. Sometimes in dark times you need to read the heartwarming hokey books. How great that she published her 15th Mitford book now. This one takes place at Christmas time and I read it during the 12 days of Christmas. My Short Take is here. Recommended only if you have read and are a fan of the other Mitford novels. 

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley

A memoir of loss, grief, joy and finding calmness through surrounding yourself with beauty. In his twenties Patrick Bringley quit his job at the New Yorker after his brother died and took a job as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he worked for ten years. This memoir is a love letter to the Met but also a story of how he dealt with his grief by surrounding himself with beauty and stillness.  Another book to read during hard times. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.

The Snow Lies Deep by Paula Munier

The latest in Paula Munier's Mercy Carr mystery series, this one takes place at Christmas time and where better to celebrate Christmas than in Vermont's Green Mountains? But someone is killing Santas, which puts a crimp in the local holiday festival. Former Army MP Mercy and her husband, game warden Troy Warner, just want to celebrate their daughter Felicity's first Christmas in peace. Instead they are called on to help solve the mystery with their dogs Elvis, a retired bomb sniffing Malinois, and Susie Bear, a search and rescue Newfoundland. In addition, they have to deal with both sets of grandparents who have their own ideas about how to celebrate the holidays. I really like this series because the author clearly understands dogs and the dogs are integral to solving the mysteries. But the mysteries are also usually good and Munier does a good job developing her characters. And you can't beat the beautiful location. This one had a fairly convoluted plot but it all came together at the end. You can read this as a stand alone mystery but as always I recommend you start at the beginning of the series.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

I know that some people dislike when an Ian McEwan novel has a twist that reminds the reader that s/he is reading fiction. But I don't mind it. This novel is set in a dystopian future in the year 2119, and the humanities are still under siege at the university level. Thomas Metcalfe specializes in the literature of the early years of the 21st century, specifically  the poetry of the poet Francis Bundy (a sort of lesser Seamus Heaney). Bundy is reputed to have written a long poem for his wife Vivien and given the only copy to her. Thomas is determined to find it even though the geography of the world has changed immensely. Through the archive of emails, text messages and social media posts, he traces Vivien's days, especially the date of her birthday when the poem was given to her, and draws what conclusions he can. Through this research he creates a narrative that seems to fit the facts. But does it?  There are always things about people that remain unknown because neither the person nor anyone in the person's life ever refers to it in any kind of writing. The novel is divided into two parts:  the search and Vivien's actual story. Truthfully, I thought the second part, the shorter of the two, dragged a bit. Too much narrative, not enough action. But on the whole I enjoyed this novel.  My Short Take is here.  Recommended with reservations.

Doggerel by Reginald Dwayne Betts

After a disappointing year with poetry in 2025 I was glad to start off 2026 with a collection I enjoyed. I admit I would have understood it better if I had read a bit of the poet's biography before finishing the collection. When he was 16, Betts, otherwise an honors student, committed armed carjacking and was sentenced to 9 years in prison as an adult. While in prison he began to write poetry and after his release and receiving his GED he went to graduate school and received a number of degrees. It would have been very helpful to have known that in prison he received the name Shahid because through the collection he refers to Shahid. This collection examines his life both in prison and after prison using primarily (but not exclusively) his relationship with dogs. Sometimes as a person puts their lives together only their dog is a witness. Sometimes their dog reminds them to live in the here and now. Sometimes other people's dogs allow connection with other humans. This is not necessarily a light hearted collection and, as with most modern poetry, it is very personal and therefore not always understandable to a third person (my major complaint about modern poetry). It is a tribute to man's best friend although in the acknowledgements he thanks "Fiesty, the cat, a rescue, that circles my legs whenever I sit near her, & purrs that doggerel is kind of incomplete without a cat." Recommended.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

This memoir has been on my TBR list since it was released more than 10 years ago. Since there is a feature film of the book being released this month it seemed to be the right time to pick it up. Helen Macdonald tries to deal with her grief over the sudden death of her father by retreating from the world and raising and training a goshawk she names Mabel. Helen was an experienced falconer but goshawks are supposed to be difficult to train. Over the first year with Mabel she learns as much about herself as she learns about Mabel. The memoir is interspersed with memories of her father (who seemed to have been a lovely man). She also becomes somewhat obsessed with a memoir by T.H. White in which he describes how he (badly) tried to train a goshawk. Although filled with information about birds of prey and the woods around Cambridge, this actually reads more like a novel than the usual memoir. Macdonald seamlessly integrates facts into her narrative so that it doesn't feel like a digression but an essential part of the narrative. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.

Honey, Baby, Mine by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd

I listened to this joint memoir on audiobook and I'm really glad I did. The book arose out of a series of walks that Laura Dern forced her mother to do when her mother was diagnosed with a life threatening illness. The doctor said that increasing her lung capacity by walking would be good for Diane. To distract her mom during the walks Laura asked her questions. That led to Diane asking Laura questions. The book is a transcript of the conversations (clearly also edited) but in the audiobook each of Laura and Diane read their own "parts" and, being actresses, that makes the whole book sound like it is taking place in real time. There is a lot of interesting information about working in Hollywood but the personal parts (especially when they disagree over their memories) are equally entertaining.  My Short Take is here. Recommended.

The Last Children of Mill Creek by Vivian Gibson

Six months after she retired, Vivian Gibson joined a creative writing class and began writing about her childhood. That turned into this memoir of her life growing up as a Black child in the 1950's in segregated St. Louis. Vivian lived in a segregated area called the Mill Creek Valley, a section of the city containing over 5,000 buildings and inhabited by 20,000 citizens, 95% of them black. My book group picked it for next month's discussion and the Missouri History Museum currently has an exhibit called Mill Creek: Black Metropolis which runs until July 12.  The Mill Creek Valley neighborhood was demolished in 1959 for "urban renewal". Almost no trace of it remains today.  Vivian remembers the community that lived there and the details of her life. This book was not only informative but nostalgic for me. Even though Vivian is black and I am white and I did not grow up in Mill Creek I remember many of the things she remembers including the Charlotte Peters show on television that my mom watched at noon every day, going to Soulard Market for fresh fruit and vegetables, making cornbread (with my grandma) and being allowed to play in other kids' backyards but being told not to go in their houses. I did not, however, grow up in a house infested with rats. I enjoyed this book. I'm not sure it would have the same effect on someone who wasn't from St. Louis. 

Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville

This was a month long read-along with my usual BlueSky reading group. I think most of the people in the group (at least the ones that were posting the most often) had read it before but I hadn't. You might expect more "action" in a book about a whaling ship searching for and trying to kill the Great White Whale but most of the book is more like a treatise on whales, whaling ships and whalers. Fortunately Melville writes with humor, and his descriptions are vivid and every time I would think that I was bored out of my mind he would pop in with some quip that made me laugh. Also, the sections on whales and whaling included most of the "deep thoughts" that Melville had (or seemed to have). While I'm glad I read this book (finally) and I appreciated the writing, it was my least favorite book that I read this month. I don't need a novel to be plot-heavy (this isn't) but I do like my novels to be character-driven and through most of this novel (really, until the last part) it isn't. Even though the plot (such as it is) is driven by Ahab's obsessive search for the White Whale, Ahab himself isn't really much in the novel until toward the end. I will say that Melville created a good sense of place - being on a whaleship hunting for and processing whales - which is usually a plus for me but I found that I really wasn't that interested in whaling ships and whales.  My Short Take is here.

In some ways it is a shame I chose to read "Moby Dick" and "H is for Hawk" in the same month. "H is for Hawk" could be read as a treatise on hawks and hawking but Macdonald's digressions into hawks and hawking were integrated into the greater narrative and were necessary for her character arc (even though it was a memoir and not a novel). On the other hand Melville, who was ostensibly writing a novel, did not integrate his information about whales and whaling into his narrative but put them into (many) separate chapters. This was, I think, partly because of the age in which the novel was written but also the digressions may have been his way of showing how time slowly passed on a whaling ship where you might have nothing to do but reflect on life. Either way, I have to say that in my opinion those sections went on much too long.  

H is for Hawk

 

The Book: When Helen Macdonald's beloved father unexpectedly dies of a heart attack Helen tries to deal with her grief by raising and training a goshawk that she names Mabel. Helen is an experienced falconer but goshawks are known to be very difficult to train. Helen tells of her successes and failures both in training Mabel and in dealing with her grief. Her memories of her father, who seems to have been a lovely man, are strewn throughout the memoir. She also evaluates previous writings about the training of goshawks especially a memoir by T.H. White (the author of The Sword in the Stone). Unlike Helen, T.H. White had no experience and made a mess of his attempt to train a goshawk but despite that Helen is drawn to the memoir and compares her own experience with White's experience.  By the end of the year Helen has learned much about Mabel and about herself.

The Author: Helen Macdonald

Genre: Non-fiction (memoir)

Length: 387 pp (e-book on my mini ipad)

One good thing:  This beautifully written memoir reads more like a novel than most memoirs.

One not-so-great thing: There really isn't anything not great about this book but I suppose if you are completely uninterested in either birds, woods or T.H. White you might be a bit bored with parts of it. 

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":  Although this is a memoir, it reads like a novel so I feel it is appropriate to discuss this. 

    Story:  Obviously, since this is a memoir, the story is dependent upon reality. And yet there is a story arc as Helen trains Mabel and moves through her own grief.  This is not a page-turner but a book to be read slowly and savored.

    Characters: Because of her grief, for much of the book Helen has mostly withdrawn into a world that is just she and Mabel. But she makes Mabel a character without anthropomorphizing her. I definitely ended the book wanting more of both Helen and Mabel.

    Setting: Most of the book is spent in the woods and fields of England in and around Cambridge.  It's nice to read a book set in this locale that isn't about the university. 

    Writing: This is a beautifully written book. All of the information about birds, especially goshawks, could have been very dry but isn't. And all of the information about White could have been seen as a distraction from the main story but instead is well integrated into Helen's story. 

    

    

December Reading

I'm posting this before the end of December because I know I won't be finishing any more books before the end of the year.  The following are the books I finished in December:

The Night Woods by Paula Munier

The latest in the Mercy Carr mysteries, this one finds Mercy very pregnant with her first child which does not stop her from solving three mysteries with her dog Elvis.  The first mystery involves the murder of an academic who was visiting Mercy's friend Homer in his remote cabin.  When Mercy and Elvis come upon the body, Homer and his dog Argos are missing.  The second involves a missing billionaire from a nearby hunting preserve. Are they connected? The third mystery is a mysterious drawing that is left on Mercy's front door. As usual I loved all the dogs that show up in the Mercy Carr books. This book was heavy on references to Homer's The Oddysey which I didn't mind. 

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Whew. I chose the audio version of this memoir (narrated by Barbra herself) so that I could listen while I was making meals or cleaning my house. At over 48 hours I figured it would take me about a month and 1/2 to finish it. In fact I finished it in less than 30 days and my house was very clean because I always wanted to get to the end of a chapter. Streisand seems to go through every minute of her long life, analyzing herself, her politics, her movies, her TV specials and her music.  She doesn't hold back. I admit that I found the last few chapters a bit of a slog as she got into all of her political activism but maybe that was the result of reading it right after the election. Fortunately for her she kept a journal that she could refer to, although she seems to have very specific memories of every piece of clothing she ever wore. She is very up front that she wants to set the record straight on all the things that people have gotten "wrong" about her throughout her career (including the Streisand Effect). I don't know if she will achieve that but I was entertained. 

Held by Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels is a Canadian poet who also writes novels. This is a beautifully written novel that isn't for everyone. When I first heard it was a multi-generational novel I thought - oh no, this isn't for me. Those are usually huge and involve a lot of drama but may skimp on the character development. But I also heard that it began during WWI and I'm a sucker for WWI novels. So I thought I would give it a try. It's hard to describe the structure of this novel. I won't say it is a series of linked short stories because it isn't - and that was good because I don't really care for short stories anyway. It is more a series of vignettes, or even pictures, of various characters in different time periods who are all linked in some way.  And even within a chapter, the story is often told in little snippets of pictures (photography is a recurring plot element in the novel). As I said, this is not a novel for everyone.  If you like a linear storyline this isn't for you.  If you want to know every detail of a character's back story, this isn't for you. This is a beautifully written study of the effects of trauma, war, and love on individuals across generations.  It is definitely going on my "best of" list for 2024.  I wish there had been time to re-read it immediately but it was due back at the library and there was a long wait list. Although I read it digitally I think it would be best read in hard copy so that the reader can easily flip around figuring out how the characters are related to each other. 

French St. Louis:  Landscapes, Contexts and Legacy edited by Jay Gitlin, Robert Michael Morrissey and Peter J. Kastor

No one who isn't, like me, interested in French colonial North America will need to pick up this book although if you do you will find 10 well written essays about the colonial legacy of St. Louis.  This book arose out of a symposium at the Missouri History Museum in 2014 when the City of St. Louis was celebrating the 250th anniversary of its founding.  I did not attend (and I'm not sure why since I was VERY interested in all the celebrations that year).  It is divided into five parts:  (i) Fashioning a Colonial Place:  (ii) St. Louis between Empire and Frontier; (iii) St. Louis and New Orleans, a Regional Perspective; (iv) Visualizing Place:  New Sources and Resources for Telling the Story of St. Louis; and (v) Maintaining the French Connection of St. Louis.  All were interesting to me.  It was helpful that the essays were not written in too much of an academic style.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

This was a BlueSky read-along for December. I had read some Vonnegut before but not this one. I can see why some people really like it because it is funny (in the usual Vonnegut absurd way) and you can't really disagree with his underlying message (dour though it is, as usual). But it also came off as very dated especially with respect to the characters that were people of color and women. I didn't really care for it but I'm not sorry I read it. 

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

I love Louise Erdrich's writing and I don't think she has written anything that I haven't enjoyed. I purchased this book as soon as it was published but I saved it to read toward the end of the year. (I like to end the year on a high note if possible.) The novel starts after the 2008 financial crisis and has as its main characters three teenagers living in a small farming town near the Red River. At first I admit that I found the story hard to get into because I just wasn't in the mood to read about teenage angst. But as the story developed I found myself engaged, especially with the adults and their problems (including worrying about their teenage kids).  As the story moved into the problems of farming, especially beet farming, with industrial herbicides I (surprisingly) found myself engrossed. There is a section where a character is working in the fracking industry and I found it nerve-wracking because it is so dangerous. If you want great writing, Louise Erdrich is for you. If you want deep character development, Louise Erdrich is for you.  If you need a galloping, page turning plot, she probably isn't for you - but there IS a plot and she does build suspense. Most of her novels take place in the same general vicinity and there are usually Easter Egg references to characters from other novels - she's sort of the Upper Midwest/Native American version of William Faulkner in creating a sense of place that extends through all her novels. This is not my favorite Louise Erdrich novel but as usual I enjoyed it tremendously.  

The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey

This is the fourth in the Perveen Mistry series set in Bombay (Mumbai) in the 1920's. Perveen is the first woman solicitor in Bombay but she is not allowed to act as a barrister (appear in court) because she is a woman. This series is interesting because although it is set in colonial India (and there are so many books that are set during the colonial period) Perveen and her family are not Hindu or Muslim, they are Farsi (Parsi) and live by a different set of rules. I find that background interesting and Massey certainly creates a deep sense of place in these novels. I like Perveen as a character and the mysteries are fine. It isn't my favorite mystery series but I enjoy it and I was pleased to discover this fourth book. 

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Another BlueSky read-along, this ghost story has been filmed so many times that I found myself distracted by remembering film versions of the story and I couldn't even remember if I had ever read the original. When I reached the end I was positive that I had not read it before. The Victorians liked to be told ghost stories at Christmas (think A Christmas Carol) and so I tried to think like a Victorian. But I truly don't get the enjoyment of ghost stories at Christmas unless they involve Christmas. It is an interesting story because James purposely explains nothing and it seemed as if almost every sentence was ambiguous.  And the end came out of nowhere! I listened to the audio book for this reading which may have influenced my reading because I was very aware of just how impressionable the governess was (and also the reader made every sentence out of the little boy's mouth creepy). I enjoyed reading it but I think in the future I will stick to my annual re-reads of A Christmas Carol.

Murder at La Villette by Cara Black

I've always enjoyed Cara Black's Aimee Leduc mysteries. She sets each one in a different arrondissement in Paris, but each takes place about 20 years in the past. She says this is because that is the time period she lived in Paris and remembers well. I've always enjoyed the sense of place in this series. One thing I don't like in a mystery series is when the author apparently runs out of crime ideas and starts having the detective and his/her family be the targets of the crime. It just seems so unlikely to me. And that is the direction this series has been going in for some time. This time Aimee is accused of murder and must find the real murderer in order to clear her name. The part that I found most unlikely is that her close friends wonder if the accusation is true.  This is a short book, about one hundred pages shorter than her usual mysteries and I think it's because there isn't much there. Mostly Aimee runs around Paris noting well known sights.  So, unless you are already invested in this series I don't recommend it. 

PS: 

I am adding a book to this post that I read in August while I was on vacation.  As I was drafting my end-of-year summary of reading I realized that I had neglected to include this book in any blog post. 

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

Set in Trinidad in the 1940's this is the story of cultures existing in a period of change. This story centers on the island's minority Hindu population. Hansraj Saroop lives with his family in the "Barrack", a dilapidated shelter that houses multiple families. His wife wants him to purchase land in the village for a real house and that leads to him taking a job as a night watchman at a local estate where the wealthy husband has disappeared leaving a wife behind. But to me it was the peripheral characters who made this novel come to life. There is a plot but it seems secondary to Hosein, who draws vivid pictures of all the characters in this novel. This novel won the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Fiction and, while it wasn't my favorite historical novel this year, I did enjoy it. 

 

Sister Francis Xavier

I just started reading the fifth (and last) book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.  It's called The Last Olympian and Riordan dedicated it as follows:

To Mrs. Pabst, my eighth grade English teacher, who started me on my journey as a writer

A couple of things struck me about that dedication.  First, that no matter how old you are the taboo against using a teacher's first name is hard to ignore.  I was at a meeting the other night and my 11th grade English teacher was part of the committee.  I usually end up calling her nothing because I can't bring myself to use her first name.  But, second, I thought this was a wonderful dedication and I hoped that Mrs. Pabst was still alive to appreciate it.

It made me think about my eighth grade English teacher, Sr. Francis Xavier, who is no longer alive.  She was a nun, a School Sister of Notre Dame, and she took no prisoners.  She wore a full habit even when the other nuns were moving to the short habits with the half veil.  During mass (which we went to every day) she would stalk up and down the aisles monitoring everyone (not just her class) and if she didn't feel we were singing the hymns loud enough she would hiss "ssssssing!" at us. 

She was also one of the best teachers I've had in my life. 

I had Sister for English from sixth through eighth grade.  Twice a week she would write the beginning of a sentence on the board and our homework assignment was to go home and write "a paragraph" using that as the opening.  For instance, she might write "Today, while I was brushing my teeth ..." and we would have to write something beginning with that phrase.

It wasn't really a paragraph, it was both sides of a sheet of paper (the special "control" paper that was assigned to sixth through eighth graders).  But she always referred to it as "a paragraph".  I think she was trying to make it seem as if it was not that big of a deal to write something.  You didn't have to write a whole story, just a paragraph.

The next day, before we turned in our work, she would look at her class roll and call out a name.  The lucky student would trudge to the front of the classroom, stand behind the podium and read his or her paragraph to the class.  Sister would say thank you and check his or her name off the list.  We would spend the entire class period listening to the work of our peers.  If you weren't called on during that class period you would be called on the next time.  Or the next.  We had forty-two kids in our classroom so you could never tell when you might be up again.   (Yes, forty-two).  And sometimes she'd cheat and call someone early, just to keep us on our toes.

We never earned anything other than a checkmark for our work, but the mere fact that we knew we could be called on to read our work out loud made everyone work hard to be somewhat entertaining.  You could tell if your classmates were impressed.  They nodded or laughed or occasionally gasped.   Usually Sister would just say thank you, but occasionally she would ask a question if the student had written about something factual or, if the student had written about something personal, she might express some appropriate emotion.  But mostly she just listened along with the rest of us.  If, however, the student used improper grammar (which of course happened often) she would stop him or her in mid-sentence and what followed was the equal of the Inquisition.  She didn't rest until everyone understood what was wrong with the sentence and how it was to be corrected.  But she did it all through questions and answers - law professors using the Socratic method could have learned a thing or two from Sister's technique. 

Reading paragraphs was two days out of our week.  Two other days were spent diagramming sentences.  She would write a sentence on the board, we would diagram it ourselves on our papers and then she would look at her class roll and call someone to the board to diagram it on the board.  if the student got lost she would look at the class and we would raise our hands to help out. 

Today, over at So Many Books, Stephanie comments upon an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that a professor at Trinity College is teaching a class on diagramming sentences because the students asked for it. 

They start off with easy sentences and build up to complex ones, their final assignment for the class asks them to diagram 120 lines of their favorite poem. The class also thrives on a little competition. At the end the 30 students are broken up into two teams. Each team has a week or two to write a sentence for the other team. Then on competition day the sentences are exchanged, the stop watch starts ticking and they have something like 40 minutes to diagram the sentence. The teams work at the same time each on their own blackboard. Each team starts off with 100 points and get deductions for errors. The team with the most points after deductions wins.

That sounds like something Sr. Francis Xavier would have liked.  She was a hard taskmaster and the class lived in fear of her but we learned from her.  Oh, did we learn.  The character that Meryl Streep played in the movie Doubt reminded me of her.  But, unlike that character, she was never the principal and I don't think she actually wanted to be the principal.  And it truly would have been a shame to remove her from the classroom.

I don't remember what we did on our fifth day in class.  I don't think there was a set regime, I think she mixed things up a little on those days.  I remember sometimes she would have us read things written by professionals and pull them apart.  Not for meaning but for grammar and structure.  (We had a different teacher, Mrs. Kearns, who taught "Reading" which was really the English literature class.)

Sr. Francis Xavier is long dead.  She taught me at the end of the baby boom when class sizes were enormous and when nuns were expected to "serve" without pay, just a convent to live in and food to eat.  Unlike the priests in the rectory, they cleaned their own homes and did their own grocery shopping and laundry.  And they did that after a long day teaching in classrooms crammed full of elementary school children .  Some of them were not very good teachers.  Some of them were not happy people.  Some of them were, frankly, downright mean.  But others, like Sr. Francis Xavier, were great teachers who were not appreciated nearly enough.  

I don't know if any of her students ever became a professional writer and dedicated anything to her.  But she certainly deserves such a dedication.

Derecho

A Yahoo News headline about the bad weather in the southern states  caught my eye today. It included a link to find out what a 'derecho' is. I didn't need to click it,  but I did  anyway and boy did it bring back memories. 

Derecho: 

"... a widespread and long lived windstorm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms."

Three years ago I didn't know the word derecho.  I knew what a tornado was, of course.  You can't grow up in the midwest and not be familiar with tornados. 

Midwesterners treat the possibility of tornados with an odd combination of deep respect and offhandedness.  A Midwesterner can walk outside and "feel" that its tornado weather.  And when the sky starts turning a particular shade of green, a Midwesterner starts to look for shelter even if no one has told her to.  On the other hand, it is possible for the tornado sirens to be blaring away and for people on the streets to be paying no attention.  A look at the sky, a sniff of the air.  It can tell you that the bad weather isn't near you.

Tornado sirens go off over the entire city, but the city is a big place.  A few times in my life a tornado has touched down in the northern part of the city while we in the southern part enjoyed nothing more than a rain shower.  I recall one day walking into the St. Louis County Administrative building only to be told by the guard that I either needed to leave or go to the basement.  Didn't I hear the tornado warnings, he asked?  Well.  Yeah.  But there was no bad weather within miles.  I could see that and feel that.  St. Louis County, however, treats EVERY tornado warning like the warning it is (which is only right).  So I went to the basement with the county workers, the sheriff's department and a bride and groom who were on their way to the courts to get married.  We hung out for about 20 minutes until the all clear sounded and then moved on about our business.  I don't recall anyone being the least bit nervous.

When I was a kid the tornado sirens were the old World War II air raid sirens. They hung on the telephone polls and when they went off they started off slowly, beginning with a deep bass and whirring slowly to a steady baritone.  There was one about 100 yards from our house and that sucker was LOUD.  You couldn't miss it when it went off.  We always went to the basement - although sometimes if my mom wasn't home we'd stand in the garage with my dad watching the weather get nearer until he'd say "it's time".  Then we'd head downstairs.  It was a real pain when they went off in the night, waking us from a sound sleep.  But better safe than sorry.   Now they have newer sirens but I think they are harder to hear and although I've always woken in the night when they go off I sometimes fear that some night I'll sleep through them.

But the day we experienced the derecho?  We had no warning.  None whatsoever.

It was three years ago.  July 19, 2006. 

It was a hot day.  A really hot day.   A St. Louis heat wave day.  It had been a year of bad weather.  I remember going to the basement in the middle of the night a couple of times that spring and summer.  But that day was sunny and clear but very, very hot. I remember that when I left my office in mid-county I could tell that they were getting some weather to the north of the city, I could see it in my rear view mirror as I drove south.  But overhead it was clear.  

I got home from work about 6:30 and changed and ate something.  Then I went upstairs to my office and was straightening up some things. It was maybe about 7:30 by this time.  It was still quite light out, in July it stays light until almost 9:00. I was thinking I should turn on the radio and listen to the Cardinals game; they were playing the Braves that night.  They were in the new stadium that year. 

My home office windows face south and east.  To the south the view was blue sky and the beginning of a golden evening light.  To the east it was also blue sky.  I don't remember now why I went into my guest bedroom but I did.  It has a window that faces north and I could see really dark clouds far to the north.  I didn't give it much thought.  They were moving fast but they were northeast of me.  Weather here moves from west to east, sometimes from north to south, often from south to north but NEVER from east to west.  These clouds were already moving into the northeast so they were passing us by. 

About ten minutes later I went back into that room for something, looked out the window and did a double take.  Was the storm moving towards me?  That didn't seem possible.  For that to happen, a storm that had been heading east would have to stop, change direction and start to come in from the northeast.  How likely was that?  Not very. But I stood at the window and watched.  It was moving fast, a wall of dark clouds, deep dark gray and some almost black.  And yes it WAS headed my way.  The storm had turned. 

Well, that was weird.

But there were no tornado sirens going off.  I went back to my office, flipped on the TV and flipped around stations, but  I couldn't even find a T-Storm warning.   I headed back to the other room.  Good grief that storm was moving fast.  Really fast.  It was now over the near northern part of the city heading southwest and it was massive.  The wind in front of it was starting to blow a little but the sky was bright blue where I was. 

I stood at my second floor window and watched it roll in, watched the wind start to swirl debris around, watched the wind start to blow the trees in my back yard.  The old flowering crab that was half dead looked like it might fall over.  My wooden fence was starting to sway back and forth.  I began to wonder if it would make it through the storm intact.  The branches on the old soft maple trees were now whipping back and forth and the black clouds were only a mile or so away. 

It's weird that there are no tornado warnings, I thought.  And then suddenly I thought - what the hell are you doing standing in front of this glass window in winds like these (it's the flying glass and debris that will kill you in a tornado).   I walked away and thought, maybe I should go to the basement.  But there were NO tornado sirens going off.  I (stupidly) went back to the window and looked out.  The wind was now, if possible, blowing even harder and I thought to myself, that crab tree is going to be uprooted and the wind is going to bring it right into this house.  Get the HELL away from the window.

The sky wasn't green, there was no tornado "weather" smell and there were no tornado sirens.  But I flew down two flights of stairs to the basement, stopping only to grab my sneakers on the way down (you should always wear shoes during a storm so you don't step on broken glass) and my little portable black and white TV.  My basement isn't the most comfortable place to cower during a storm, there isn't any comfortable furniture down there, but there is a radio and flashlights.  But I wouldn't have been comfortable even if there had been furniture.  

I turned on the little TV and finally (FINALLY) the weather people were on telling everyone to take shelter as fast as possible.  But there was still no tornado warning. 

I had an old-style glass basement window on the north side of the basement and I realized I needed to be as far away from it as possible.   I could hear the wind getting even louder.  How was that possible when THERE WERE NO TORNADO SIRENS?  I finally decided to open the door to my walk-in cedar closet and stand in it.  In a tornado you should always go to an enclosed space with no windows  and that was the best I could do in case the storm blew out the basement windows.  I've never done it before; I've never done it since. I stood in the cedar closet with the door not completely closed, listening to the storm.  I've never been as scared in a storm as I was right then. 

And then it was over.   The wind stopped.  I went upstairs and I could see blue sky peeping out in the north.  I'm not even sure if it rained, all I remember is the wind. 

I still had electricity.  For about 5 more minutes.  And then it was gone.    It was the largest power outage in our history, more than 1,200,000 residents were without power.  Some people didn't get power back for three weeks, all the while the temperature was hovering at about 100 degrees.  They called out the national guard to go door to door helping people.  You couldn't buy ice at any price.  People who had old fashioned phones that plug into the wall and don't need electricity were the only ones with phone service after the cell phone batteries lost their charges. I was lucky, my power was back in four days and my parents never lost power so I had a place to go that had air conditioning.

What the hell was it that went through that day?  It was like nothing we had ever seen before.  The weather people kept insisting it wasn't a tornado. But there had been 80-100 mph winds.  So what was it?

Finally they told us that it was a derecho.   I hope I never see another one in my lifetime.