Not Quite Dead Enough – Rex Stout, 1944
I adore detective Nero Wolfe and his faithful assistant Archie Goodwin, and have read so many of these in the past year, including three this month. The plotting is very good and the characters are delightful. It’s also just really fun to read about early- and mid-20th century Manhattan, the city that’s still there underneath the NYC we know and love today. There are four of us in my house who are old enough to read and enjoy these, so being able to pass them around the family and compare notes as we read them adds a lot, as well. Not Quite Dead Enough was a top favorite of the series, taking place as it does in the midst of World War II. The volume actually comprises two novellas, Not Quite Dead Enough and Booby Trap. There are surprising developments and new directions for our beloved characters in both of these!
Black Ships Before Troy – Rosemary Sutcliff, 1993
A readaloud with my 2nd– and 4th-graders, this children’s retelling of the Iliad was, I thought, very successful. I’m not really fond in general of retellings of classic stories for children, because they generally seem to foist a (much) inferior version of each story on the reader, whilst spoiling all of the plots. Charles and Mary Lamb’s Shakespeare retellings, for example – I love Charles Lamb’s essays and letters, but the language of the Tales from Shakespeare is incredibly stuffy and clunky in places. Anyway, in this case, I haven’t read the Iliad but I sort of assume that it’s much less accessible than Shakespeare, and that there is some value in reading and becoming familiar with these stories even while still too young to read the original. My kids liked it a lot, and I enjoyed it and found it interesting as well.
And Be a Villain – Rex Stout, 1948
This Nero Wolfe mystery deals with a poisoning death on live radio, which was a great set-up and really brought 1948 to life. I loved the cast of characters and the plot, and would rank this in the top third of the 15 or so Nero Wolfes I’ve read. As with many other cases, Nero Wolfe solves this one without ever leaving his brownstone.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona – William Shakespeare, written ~ 1589-1593
My kids and I read this aloud and it was so wonderful getting to do that. The scenes with Launce and Speed were everyone’s favorites. We had recently listened to a P. G. Wodehouse short story that involved a “crosstalk act” where the two actors imitate Irishmen named Pat and Mike and hit each other over the head with an umbrella (the umbrella parts are indicated in the script by the word “business”) – it seemed like the kids really enjoyed making the connection that Shakespeare was writing crosstalk acts too in a lot of his plays, and that they appreciated how well he did it! I’ve never seen this one performed but would very much like to.
Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic For Life Under Tyrrany – Witold Szablowski, 2018
20 Books of Summer. Half of this book tells the story of actual dancing bears and their owners, in Bulgaria. The other half tells stories from Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and Cuba, about people who, like the dancing bears, miss certain aspects of the life they had before they were liberated. There were certainly some interesting stories and conversations in the second half – in both halves, really – but I wasn’t sure whether it all held together. The chapter titles in the first and second halves were the same, even, but the connections between the chapters with the same titles were either tenuous, or went over my head. Anyway it was very short, and partly for that reason, I don’t regret reading it.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen, 1813
This was a readaloud with my kids (my husband was there for most of it, too), and wow – this book is fantastically fun to read aloud! This was the fourth time I’ve read the book and my favorite reading of it, even more so than the first time ever. Partly with the slower pace of reading out loud and over the course of several weeks, there were so many things I noticed for the first time, or nuances of character that struck me differently. And it was just really a joy to deliver all of Mrs. Bennet’s priceless lines. I also just loved how much my kids appreciated it and how funny they found it!
Rules for Visiting – Jessica Francis Kane, 2019
In this novel a 40-year-old, slightly socially awkward woman, who lives with her father and gardens professionally at a university, takes some time off of work to reconnect with some of her friends from previous life stages who live in various other cities. It was a very quick and easy read, but thought-provoking about friendship, family, isolation, modern life – how social media has affected the way people connect – and all tied together by the main character’s love for plants and gardening. Very good!
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell, 2010
20 Books of Summer. I loved this historical novel set in Japan, despite a rocky start with it, and wrote a full review of it here.
The Genius of Birds – Jennifer Ackerman, 2015
20 Books of Summer. It took me a while to get into this one, but I learned a lot and was really glad I’d read it. I first tried to listen to it and I can’t recommend that. Yes, we’re Americans, we talk right out of our noses, but do we have to pick the most nasal among us to read our audiobooks? Anyway, it was a good book full of descriptions of experiments and observations of bird behavior. My favorite chapter was the one about bowerbirds! Amazing.
Where There’s a Will – Rex Stout, 1940
This was another excellent Nero Wolfe mystery. Mysteries that turn on strange wills are so often good, aren’t they? Here, the dead man has left all of his money to his mistress, nothing to his wife, and to each of his three sisters, a piece of fruit. There were many twists and turns. Nero Wolfe leaves the brownstone in this one! Always exciting.
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius, ~170-175 AD; translated by D. A. Rees, 1992
20 Books of Summer. I started this in January and stalled out, so I was grateful to 20 Books of Summer for giving me a little extra impetus. This is an amazing work that I think anyone would love. It was interesting though, I had always imagined Marcus Aurelius as the ultimate stoic, sailing through the vicissitudes of the life of an emperor of Rome with his cortisol low and steady. But upon actually reading it, I received the strong impression of a man who actually suffered from high anxiety and who wrote these meditations as part of the ongoing process of talking himself through it, trying to get through yet another day of the uncertainty and danger of being mortal, being human. I don’t know if that’s how other people read it. Anyway, it was so good and very readable, especially in small doses, and I absolutely stuffed it full of post-it flags, which is always a good sign.
Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 – Richard Holmes, 1989
20 Books of Summer. This is the best biography I’ve ever read. Coleridge is such a fascinating, endearing, troubled, larger-than-life figure and I absolutely love the way Holmes incorporates the poet’s own words and lets his subject speak through the pages of the book. You can’t help but be caught up in the spirit of the age and in Coleridge’s dreams and struggles. This is the second book I’ve read by Holmes, with the first being Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer – also excellent. I’m really looking forward to reading the second volume on Coleridge, and want to read everything he’s written.