What Am I Reading?

The guide books that made the cut for the Fall 2022 road trip!

 

I have an eclectic taste in books, from though provoking to fluff, fiction and non-fiction, modern and historical. I like reading an actual paper book and listening to audio. I like to collect books and use the library. I hate folded down corners. I love bookmarks. 

Please feel free to make book recommendations!

A River In the Sky, by Elizabeth Peters

This is the 20th, and final volume of the Amelia Peabody series, which I'm listening to on audio. It's a Victorian Era, archeology mystery series, set in Egypt. So, it combines many of my favourite things into one! It was written by Barbara Mertz, who was an archeologist writing under a pen name. I have been reading the series, on and off, for about 15 years. It's fun, quirky and combines historical events and figures into the narrative. It makes me kind of sad to be on the last book, like saying goodbye to an old friend. I've been dragging it out, to not finish too quickly. 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

I'm often hesitant to read the book that everyone is talking about. They often have so much hype, that is difficult to live up to. In this case, most of the recommendations came from people who's literary opinions hold some weight with me. (In other words, we like the same kinds of books!) Where the Crawdads Sing deserves all the attention it has received. I am listening to it on audio (had a 3 hour drive to just get to my day trip destination!) and the reader, Cassandra Campbell, has a voice well suited to the book. This is very important. A reader can make or break a book. 

I'm having a difficult time classifying this book. On the face of it, Where the Crawdads Sing is a murder mystery and a coming of age story. Two timelines, one spanning days the other over a decade, slowly merge together as they draw closer. Early on in the book, Tate's father explains to him, which he then teaches to Kya, that poetry is supposed to make you feel something. Then this novel is poetry. It has imagery, cadence, and evokes emotion at every turn.

It is unlike anything I have read. I know that it has been made into a movie, and I have heard the movie is good. Even from people who have read the book. I have a hard time imagining it as a movie. So much of the power of the book is the inner dialogue of Kya and her observations of and connection to the marsh. I am about halfway through and at the same time I want to know how it ends and I want it to go on forever!

A Lesson in Secrets - Jacqueline Winspear

Book 8 in the Maisie Dobbs Mystery Series

Maisie Dobbs is a series I have been reading for some time. It is set primarily in England between WWI and WWII. Maisie is the daughter of a costermonger's daughter who secured a job as a maid in a "big house" as a teenager. Her employer recognized her intellect and passion for learning and encouraged her education. When the Great War began, it changed class distinctions forever. After, people had opportunities like they never had before. Maisie became a psychologist and detective. In addition to unexplained deaths and missing people, she gets caught up in the world of spies and political intrigue.

A Lesson in Secrets is set in 1932, and is Maisie's first official undercover assignment with the Secret Service, at a private college in Cambridge. She finds out secrets from the past war, and brewing intrigue in the developing tensions that lead to WWII.