A monthly post about what I've been reading, with aspirations but no real hope of reading down a very tall stack of books. Previous posts from this year:
Looks like November was a light month for reading. Part of the that was Thanksgiving and all of the preparations thereunto. Part of it was that I labored over books that I am not enjoying and did not finish (yet). I have a hard time admitting to defeat on a book and affirmatively quitting it (although I'm pretty good at letting it gather dust on my nightstand with a bookmark at the halfway point). Both are books I *really* wanted to love but do not, not even a little bit. And that bums me out. I also am slowly making my way through another longish book that is a little heavy going (in terms of subject matter), so I need to spread it out among a lot of light reading, which is what I've got here.
Fiction
Starting from the bottom of the pile, I read The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits, edited by Mike Ashley, which I only picked up because Elizabeth Peters wrote the introduction and one of the stories. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Most of the stories take place in Ancient Egypt, and I'd liken them to fantasy in terms of building a world so dissimilar to our own. I didn't think I'd be able to suspend my disbelief in Sherlock-Holmes-types carrying out crime investigations in the time of the pharaohs, but I got swept right in from the beginning through 500-odd pages.
My other reads for the month were also mysteries: Deborah Crombie's A Bitter Feast, which takes place at an English country house (one of the best settings for murder and mayhem), in contemporary times with a whole cast of Scotland Yard detectives who are supposed to be on holiday but instead find themselves swept up in the murder of a famous but down-on-his-luck chef. I found it very entertaining. The other was Murder is in the Air by Frances Brody, starring her private investigator from the between-the-wars years, Kate Shackleton. This one takes place in and around a brewery. I've ready one other Brody mystery, and I've enjoyed them both.
Nonfiction
For a project I'm working on I read Alice Arlen's biography of Louise Dickinson Rich, She Took to the Woods. [Full disclosure: I have not *quite* finished reading the excerpts of Rich's writing that appear at the back of the book, b/c I got so interested I purchased several of the (out-of-print) books themselves.] I'll write more about Rich and her writing in the future, but I'll say that this peek behind the scenes is fascinating. I was especially interested in how, in her diary she was forthright about how she and her family were nearly *starving* for much of the time in their early years at Forest Lodge, but her writing in We Took to the Woods turns that desperation into funny anecdotes about how to cook creatively to stretch meager supplies (blamed on the difficulties of getting food into their remote cabin in the spring and fall when the lake was neither frozen nor navigable by boat).
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