JULY 2023 READING ROUNDUP

West with Giraffes – Lynda Rutledge. The quirky  title hooked me in the first instance and the event filled story in the second.

 Orphaned 1938 Dust-bowl Okie farm-boy survivor, Woody Nickel hitches to his cousin on the east coast, but then along comes a mammoth storm that uproots him all over again. He’s bewitched by the sight of two crated giraffes being unloaded on the dockside, and he follows them, clear across the country, from East to, California, in the fabled West.   I’m not a huge fan of Road Trip novels, but this one had me reading avidly.  Survival, disaster, adventure, romance – it’s all there. Young Woody’s cross-Continental trip is his coming of age odyssey too.

A great read.  I wish I had the book as a hard copy and not an e-book, because it’s a story that merits re-reading.

I’ve already tagged the novel to appear in my Top Five Reads for 2023.

FICTION

West with Giraffes – Lynda Rutledge . E-bk.   A road-trip novel, the title says it all. Literally.  A 5 star read: adventure, drama, history, romance, crime, tragedy, an eco-theme, this novel has it all. A 5* read – try not to miss it.   Book is available in other formats.

The Shepherd’s Crown – Terry Pratchett.  The very last book from the unique, inimitable Sir TP. Perhaps not his best, but a fitting  finale to a plethora of fantasy satire books set on the Discworld. Fans will relish it, and definitely shed a tear.        Recommended.

Shopping with the Enemy – Carmen Reid. E-bk. Fashion – Mothers v.s. Daughters.  Family – evil ex-husbands. Figures –  terrifying spa regime. Fun and fast. Great entertainment

So Shall you Reap – Donna Leon. Her Venetian crime novels, featuring Inspector Guido Brunetti, are one of my firm favourites. I read her books  for the characters and the authentic Venetian setting. I don’t much care Whodunnit, but I am invested in her stock characters, and the daily Venetian life which she so  faithfully portrays. A must for Brunetti/Leon fans.

The Mango Season – Amulya Malladi. E-bk. Oh! the agonies of choice:  Family or Fiancee? Live in India or the USA? Culture v s modern lifestyle? Thank goodness I’m thoroughly Western and don’t have to face such heart breaking choices.  Fans of  Indian novels will enjoy this one. I did.

Mr Monk is Miserable – Lee Goldberg. E-bk. The title says it all. Natalee foolishly bullies Monk into a Paris trip: bodies everywhere, many excursions into subterranean Paris. The highlight of Monk’s trip is being able to clean the Avenue des Champs- Élysées  on an automatic street cleaning machine. Obsessions rule. But hey! This is Mr Monk. Great fun.

Wild Fire – Ann Cleeves. An Inspector Jimmy Perez/Shetland Islands whodunnit.  A nuanced, well written novel. Ann Cleeves has written over 30 critically acclaimed novels, won awards for crime writing.  Life on a remote island is by no means the escape or paradise that people fondly imagine. Dark emotions, gossip,  and jealousy abound.  Crime fans will enjoy.

The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder – Victoria Dowd. E-bk.  A country house setting for a classic whodunnit, taking place in current times.  Some very unpleasant characters try to establish who is  bumping them off, one by one. Well written and plotted, but not for me. Whodunnit fans will enjoy the convoluted plot.

MID-YEAR READING 2023

I meant to write this in June, but hey!  It’s winter and the idea froze in my brain …

What’s happened in my reading world thus far? 

An awful lot of e-books, because I joined Kindle Unlimited and found myself up to my eyebrows in cozy mysteries.  Some were pretty good, most were okay, and a few were dreadful. But they suited my troublesome eyesight.

  So many print books have teen tiny print that defeats me.  That’s the problem with buying books online, frequently they turn out to be  unreadable, due to the print size.  So: no more online purchases for me.

Up until 30 June, I’d read 39 books. I have no reading targets, because  I find them limiting and distracting.  I firmly believe reading is not a competitive sport. This year I didn’t even set a TBR goal. Instead, I’ve cleared out my shelves by donating unread books to a worthy animal charity, so that seriously trimmed the TBR backlog. A few hardy survivors remain.

In January I had a grand plan to cover the entire year.  Every day I would read a few pages from one of these books:

Inspired by my daily reading of Lev Parikian’s charming book Light Rain Sometimes Falls during 2022, a process I enjoyed, I thought : why not continue the process? What a good idea!  Except follow-through somehow became derailed.  I have no idea where Mason Curry’s Daily Rituals   has wandered off to, and I only started reading Mzanzi Zen 2 weeks ago.

A few pages of Anthony Osler’s approach to Zen in daily life is invigorating and restorative. I enjoy anecdotes of life on a remote olive farm in Colesberg, in the Eastern Cape. Osler sprinkles his stories with Zen haikus, Koans, poems, and the black and white photographs speak volumes.

Highlight of the year, thus far, was the Mongolian novel  When I’m gone, Look for me in the East  by Quan Barry.

I’m looking forward to the current Booker Prize winning novel, Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov.

Other than that, a recent discovery that the Mr Monk TV series books are available on Kindle brought a smile to my dial.

I also intend exploring the Large Print section of the Public Library system.  Each Library has a small selection of titles, fingers crossed that they are not all Whodunnits and historicals! I live in hope.