book ends

January books a whole month later

I was idly thinking yesterday that it’s weird to think that there are people out there who don’t like reading book reviews. I love reading book reviews. I don’t care if I’m never going to read that book, I like knowing about books and I like knowing what people think about them. Is it just fancy nosy-ness?

I was going to pose this question to you on this very post that is no-bones-about-it just book reviews of books that many people are not interested in according to Instagram, but I figured that if you’re here reading, you too may simply enjoy a leisurely stroll through random book opinions…

Let’s get to what I read in January on THE LAST DAY OF FEBRUARY. Thank goodness my high intensity job as a mom doesn’t have too many deadlines…

Venetia by Georgette Heyer

Akin to my reading of my favourite authors in December because of the need for comfort reading at Christmas, I overflowed into a bit of comfort reading to confront the cold hard truth of January. Georgette Heyer has become for me a much needed comfort read that I can always depend upon. Her regency romances are *chefs kiss*. Wonderfully written with normally hilarious dialogue, well-developed human characters, and delightfully preposterous plots, they are so much easier to devour than a Jane Austen. (Not that that’s a bad/good thing! But sometimes you just want something easy and quick and while I can read Austen quickly I feel a bit guilty doing so because she’s worth all of our attention.) Her style sometimes needs a good fifty pages to feel out, but once you’re in, you’re hooked.

Venetia may be my new favourite Heyer because the main character is so wonderfully her own person. She is independent, but not in an obnoxious way. She takes care of the whole large house of her duke elder brother, while raising, in essence, her younger brother. She falls for a known rake of a baron who has reformed his life and appreciates her for the individual she is, and their coming together is a delight to watch happen. I highly recommend these books if you want period drama, romance without smut, and just a highly entertaining story. The perfect comfort read package!

A History of the Island by Eugene Vodolazkin

Wow, this book was hard. I’m happy I read it, but the reading experience of it was a bit of a slog, especially the last half of the book.

I think the difficulty in this novel about the history of a fictional European island country comes in its structure. It is laid out as a history being retold by monks tasked with recording the history of the Island alongside the prince and princess of the island who are approximately 300 years old and have lived through the history, annotating along the way. Yes. You read that right. It’s Vodolazkin-y because 300 year old characters are the main characters.

I understand and like what Vodolazkin is doing with this book. He’s laying out his ideas of what make up civilization, what has led to its downfall, the problems of modernity and politics, and why personal sacrifice is essential in a Christian king or leader. But at the same time, this book was hard. The second half goes off into a weird direction about a movie about the main characters and I just don’t know why he inserted that bit at all, if you have the answer please enlighten me. It probably has something to do with our fascination to be entertained by history rather than make it, but it was a weird direction.

I still greatly appreciate Vodolazkin and think he’s a terrifically interesting writer and worth reading. But hard. But maybe I just need to be smarter?

Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse

From the sublime to the ridiculous I read alongside A History of the Island a PG Wodehouse romp that lightened my load considerably. The first Blandings novel that takes place in Blandings is full of misidentified characters, stolen pigs, and happy romantic endings. It’s really everything you want in Wodehouse. I barely make it a page or two without bursting out laughing, and don’t you wish you could just vacation into one of these novels? Just take a week and live as if that is reality sounds like so much fun!

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

A beautiful depiction of Australia in the late nineteenth century, this story of a family, (and really a whole community) during the search for a boy who goes missing in the outback is a fantastically written book. The narrative is told through the perspective of many different people who make up the tiny community, and McFarlane does an expert job of creating individual characters that stand apart. But the real star of the show here is the setting. A complete immersion into this wild landscape that is at once brutal but also devastatingly beautiful. I love a novel of setting and this one was so well done.

on audiobook:

The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks

I’m so glad I listened to this wonderful memoir. Rebanks does a great job detailing the life of a woman dedicated to her home and family. I was so disappointed by reading people’s reviews on Goodreads. You could tell that they thought the memoir was useless because it was just a woman telling about her life at home. How they could fail to see the importance of such a life I think meant that they likely didn’t finish the book. Rebanks accurately tells of the sacrifice demanded by a life in agriculture, the shared sacrifices she made and makes alongside her husband, but also movingly tells the hardships of the contemporary experience of choosing to stay home with children. But just as she accurately tells how hard and demanding such a life can be, she also details the deep fulfillment and meaning she sees in cooking well, seeing her children flourish in the countryside, and the importance of good agriculture. She also includes recipes that I haven’t tried yet, but which look and sound delicious!

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

This is the second in the Slough House series of semi-spy novels, or novels about spies who got demoted but still end up solving mysteries and doing cool spy things. The first tv series on Apple was so well done, I hope to get Apple again one day to see the second season because the story in this second book was very good. I do think that it suffered on audiobook. I find that audiobook for me works best if it’s not a terrifically difficult fiction book. But Heron jumps from character to character, scene to scene, so quickly that it makes for clunky and difficult listening. I will continue the series but won’t listen again.

And that was it for January. Thank you so much for vicariously reading alongside me, and tell me your favourite new reads!