This is what Lake Erie looked like at the totality of the eclipse. My camera brightened it up a bit, but while the stars were visible and it got cold and felt a bit like night, there was a straight pink-yellow line at the horizon.
Lots of pages turned this month! Like, in a literal sense. not figurative. While seeing the totality of the eclipse was a very cool, likely once-in-a-lifetime experience, it did not inspire in me any great epiphanies. Sorry if that’s what you come here for. I must be quite disappointing. At any rate, the books were not disappointing, so let’s get on with them.
A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales. The most absurd, delightful and honestly hilarious book I’ve read in ages. It’s just a ridiculous mix of Jane Austen, regency era soap opera (think Bridgerton), cozy mystery and Monty Python. I don’t even want to attempt to explain it. Just pick it up, and enjoy.
Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon. For whatever reason (friend recos, algorithm, overall trends in the universe), I’ve been reading a lot of books lately that mine the vein of A/ two people pretending to be a couple for reasons then finding themselves falling in love (and being unable to confess their real feelings) or B/ two people who become physically involved for reasons then finding themselves falling in love (and being unable to confess their real feelings). Either way, they’ve become familiar tropes that are ripe with sexy possibilities. This novel follows the latter path, and I enjoyed it.
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai. It took a little bit for me to get absorbed by this book, but then it really caught me. Several years after graduating from the boarding school where she thought of herself as a mostly miserable outsider, a successful film producer and podcaster returns to teach a course. Being back on campus evokes memories of her dead roommate – and an unsettling belief that maybe she knew more about Thalia’s murder than she had understood at the time. I found myself mulling the nature of memory and power and social pressures, particularly on young women, while also throughly enjoying the read.
Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey. At several points while reading this novel, I eyerolled, hard. The main characters are a woman named Melody and a man named Beat. Yes, indeed, they **are** apparently destined to be be together, why do you ask? I’ve enjoyed this author before, but I think I need a break.
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. This fascinating history seeks to illuminate the lives of five real women who lived in London, England during the early reign of Victoria: Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane. Five individuals with histories and families and hopes and dreams and loves and losses, who are today remembered (if they are even named and mentioned) as the five known victims of Jack the Ripper. This deeply research book uncovers the lives of these women and allows the reader to know them as much more than footnotes in someone else’s story.
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk. You’d think I’d fall head over heels for this novel. But despite the list of ingredients that would seem tailor made for me– a mystery plot, a library setting, a variety of characters – it never really got beyond meh for me. It wants to be literary fiction, somehow elevated from the mystery genre, but it doesn’t quite get there.
The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. The 900+ pages of this novel seemed daunting to me at the outset. It’s a honking long novel, but absolutely engaging. It tells the story of two women, one a pioneering early pilot who vanished while circumnavigating the globe via the North and South Poles, the other an actor hired to play her 80ish years later in a film. There are many threads to the plot, and jumps between threads, so that the novel moves quickly, ultimately weaving together in a very satisfying conclusion.
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. Are there more books now with “elderly” heroines, or am I just more open to them? At any rate, this novel features four assassins, newly retired after forty years working for an extra-governmental agency with the mandate of hunting down and eliminating Nazis, traffickers, pirates and assorted other menaces to society who might otherwise evade justice. The four woman soon realize that they have become targets themselves, and it’s kill or be killed. Along with hot flashes, aching bones and a tag-along pet cat named Kevin. Deelightful.
