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quick November book reviews

Well, well, well it’s December 14. We’re ten days out from Christmas and my oven isn’t working, there’s no snow on the ground, and I don’t want to clean my house so welcome to some quality book review time!

The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin

I decided to go down the Edmund Crispin rabbit hole after I read The Moving Toyshop, a hilarious mystery featuring Crispin’s Oxford professor slash detective Gervase Fen. The Case of the Gilded Fly is less laugh out loud funny, and a bit more noir in feeling. It is a mystery where a much hated character is the murder victim so you have that trope running through the story as an actress in an acting troop is found killed. It still includes great scenes of Oxford pubs, which I personally miss being in on a daily basis. So if you find yourself wanting to be in an Oxford pub questioning potential murderers on a daily basis then this is the book and series for you! I quite liked the mystery even though it wasn’t too complex. This is the first Gervase Fen story, and his character is a little less bombastic than in later novels, but still a fun detective you want to hang out with, which is a great quality in cozy mystery series.

A Canticle for Lebowitz by Walter M. Miller

I have been putting off reading this much loved science fiction novel for at least twenty years. I don’t do well with apocalyptic fiction, it never is something I feel like reading, weird—I know! So I’m glad I was forced to finally pick it up with the

Close Reads HQ

podcast.

The story takes place in a post-nuclear world where the only sources of human knowledge, books, have been preserved by monks in the American desert. It is in the desert, in a world that has gone back to the dark ages, that the last remnants of human learning remains, where the Catholic Church survives, and keeps alive what it can. A weird assortment of monks inhabit this story, but weird in the best of ways. Not exactly likeable, but neither are they villains, these monks have their own very human, very imperfect motivations to keeping the faith and the books safe. The world outside the monastery seems much similar to our own; bent on power and continued war. As the story is told over hundreds of years it is so interesting to see the ideas of original sin, the need for redemption, and the intersection of faith and reason play out in post-apocalyptic circumstances.

I was really surprised by how much this book made me think. It was so interesting to think about humanity’s capacity for war, and how no matter the destruction and our cries for peace, our original sin pulls us back. Then the book asks so many questions about what knowledge means; do we feel an obligation and duty for its survival, and is knowledge worth saving if it can always become a conduit for evil? And then there is this foundational faith that the Catholic Church struggles to keep afloat. Is faith needed in a post-apocalyptic world? Will faith ever stop speaking into the darkness and despair of humanity? Where else can we find the answer to needing a redeemer? I love that this story presents these questions seriously in a world that seems terrifying and foreign. And the ending. It is so weird, I’m still thinking about it.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

I don’t think of myself as super plugged in when it comes to book TikTok, but I have seen the hype of Fourth Wing, and I can only take so much missing out when it comes to best selling books that I occasionally break down. The story of a young woman going to dragon-flying school to learn to protect her country but also live up to her family expectations while obviously being part of very intense romance triangle may not sound like high literature, but it is effectively done. I believe Yarros has done well in combining all the key aspects of what millennials love in their fantasy series: the fun of being sorted into houses like Harry Potter, indiscriminate brutal killing of your compatriots via Hunger Games, the power of dragons via Game of Thrones, and let’s not negate the cultural impact of How to Train Your Dragon.

This isn’t great writing. But it is easy and fast to read! You don’t have to worry about being bogged down in a lot of tedious world building either, the author just gets right to the point and drops in important tidbits along the way. And while it is known as a racy novel, I, frankly, was expecting more sex than the book ended up having. (Although I’ve been told by my in-the-know instagram followers that the second book in the series doesn’t make you wait long!) There aren’t open door situations until the end of the book, and they are very easy to skip chapters. You really get the gist with just a couple of very bad lines at the end of the chapter.

Overall I didn’t have a terrible reading experience. There were probably a dozen or so sentences that were so bad that I had to stop and groan out loud, but it maintains a quick pace that keeps you invested. I didn’t really care about the characters, but I also didn’t really hate them either, which is probably the best this book could hope for with me. I think I probably could just do without talking/communicating dragons in my life. And now I know. If you enjoyed this book, I have no problems with you because I see so many likeable fantasy devices the author used to hook you with! And my very limited amount of reading when it comes to fantasy doesn’t put me in a great position to tell you if all these elements are very common in contemporary fantasy right now or not, but it must be have something special because of it’s phenomenal selling power in the past year. Let me know if you read it!

audiobooks and so forth - I didn’t finish any audiobooks last month and I am not sure why. I’m still driving a ton. I’m not out in the garden working as much. And I haven’t found any new podcasts that have changed my life, so I’m not sure where my listening hours went to. I think I just don’t have an audiobook that’s sucked me in recently.

I have started and am halfway through The Once and Future King by T.H. White and I am now reading it a bit more slowly just because I’m getting a bit burnt out on King Arthur, but White makes the legend very readable and is masterful at weaving themes into the story to really make it come alive.

Ok, merry reading everyone! I am firmly in my December comfort reading spot of Muriel Spark and Agatha Christie. I just hit a wall every December where only these authors, maybe some Rosamund Piltcher or Barbara Pym is all I want in these overscheduled days. But it is that time of year when I should start thinking about the best of list for 2023…I’ll try to have it out by January!