book ends

this is the sexy post you're looking for

It’s really not! I believe substack/the internet believes these book reviews to be categorically unsexy, but if there’s anything I want to be known to contribute to the internet it is boring, unsexy posts. I am just leaning into this very unmarketable brand now.

And before I forget, happy thanksgiving to all you Americans who have spent at least the past week completely stressing about a meal, or so instagram portrays. I am always surprised at how stressed Americans get by this meal every year and I just do not understand. We make a similar meal with that many side dishes for our thanksgiving and you can literally not even find a Canadian posting about it in the week leading up to it. But Americans! It’s as if they haven’t cooked anything in the last calendar year! Anyways, I could go on complaining about this but you’re here for the sexy, timely, holiday-ish, book reviews about books I read a month ago.

So it’s a small stack for October because both these books were hefty in the page count!

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

This book is almost 1000 pages long. In any other circumstance I wouldn’t even start a book of that length and expect to finish it within a month, but for JK Rowling I will read 1000 pages without asking any questions. This is the seventh book in her detective series, and all of them are doorstop size and the astonishing thing is you still don’t want her books to end and you can’t wait for the next title to be released!

Cormoran and Robin investigate a cult in this novel, and I think it is definitely one of the most tense and anxiety causing books in the series! I was constantly worried for Robin as she goes undercover in a terrifying cult, but at the same time was pleasantly surprised that Rowling did not write as explicitly as she could have given the circumstances and terrible nature of the crimes that occur in the story. As I say every time I read these books, these are definitely not for anyone who considers themselves a sensitive reader!

Rowling also does a great job giving us more when it comes to Cormoran and Robin’s relationship while at the same time keeping us on tenterhooks with a complete cliffhanger. I actually admire her ability to draw out romantic tension over so many pages and seven books but still have the reader dying to know when and if they will ever get together!

I obviously would recommend these detective novels for Rowling’s trademark engrossing writing, characters who become very real for the reader, and a modern take on the hardboiled detective story.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

I finally read this classic because it was last months pick for the Well-Read Mom book club, and I’m so glad I finally got pushed to read it to completion. It is such an atmospheric gothic story that brings vampires to life in Victorian England while also exploring interesting ideas of good and evil, and the material and supernatural world.

While the prose is very Victorian, I actually found it quite readable, especially because I think Bram really starts out the book well by landing us in Count Dracula’s castle with Jonathan Harker. I was surprised at how genuinely creeped out I was in some scenes, and it’s easy to see how Stoker really was a pioneer in the horror genre.

I appreciated my friend Eleanor Nicholson’s wonderful annotation and introduction to the Ignatius Press edition, she explained some of the weirdly portrayed Catholic stuff expertly, as well as parsing out some weird Victorian-isms that we aren’t familiar with anymore. I do want to ask Eleanor if there was a specific editor who worked on the novel with Stoker, because he has some weird flip flops in vampiric lore as well as such weird pacing. While I enjoy epistolary novels overall, and thought that it was interesting in this book particularly because it built tension nicely to hear one person’s perspective at a time, so much was repeated by every character at times that it drove me a bit bonkers. And the wrap up of the novel happens so quickly all that build up and explaining of the plans felt so out of proportion!

On Audiobook:

October saw a slowdown in my audiobook listening overall and I’m not sure the reason! I drove just as much as previous months! I finished the fourth instalment of the Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman. While I really love this series for a humorous and cozy mystery series, this one was probably the weakest. It just felt less tightly written, and yet another plot point involving euthanasia felt tiresome. I’ve heard Osman is taking a break from the series for the next couple years, so I hope he returns to it with renewed creativity at some point.

I also listened to a very old production of Elizabeth Peter’s Lion in the Valley. An Amelia Peabody mystery that takes place in last nineteenth century Egypt, this book wasn’t quite as gripping as previous mysteries in the series. And I don’t know if I’d recommend the audio version of these books. While the narrator is quite talented, her interpretation of Emerson is so disappointing. She makes him a rather pompous sounding man and really destroys the allure that Peters writes him with. And the voice of their son Ramses leaves a lot to be desired, so read the books first before listening!

Ok, that’s it for me, let me know if you’ve read any of these in the comments!