A rather light post this week because I spent most of my weekend watching old movies (Three Cheers for the Irish, The Gay Sisters, and Julia Misbehaves, if anyone’s wondering – and what a strange but fun combination that was!). But we’re here for quality, not quantity! (Right?)
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman: It’s not often a book 100% lives up to the hype, but if anything, The Thursday Murder Club is even better than advertised. It’s warm and funny, with beautifully true portrayals of friendship, love, forgiveness, and growing old in a young person’s world. And, of course, murder. Osman’s characters are so vivid and familiar, as well as delightfully entertaining, and exactly the kind of people you want in your corner on good days and bad.
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: I wasn’t sure what to make of this at first – the first-person narrator is one of the more challenging protagonists I’ve encountered in awhile, and not just because he’s clearly unreliable. And is his unreliability intentional or unintentional, and how does the answer to that change our perception of him? Ishiguro raises questions about politics, art, and human frailty without giving any easy answers. I expect I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick (a.k.a. Josephine Leslie): I grew up watching the 1947 adaptation with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, but this was my first time reading the book, and What. A. Delight. Leslie (who wrote under the pseudonym R.A. Dick) hits just the right note between humor and sentimentality, showing a young widow taking control of her life… with the help of her rather unconventional friend, the ghost of a salty sea captain. This is going in my favorites pile for future rereads.
An Extraordinary Union (“The Loyal League” #1) by Alyssa Cole: Beginnings are generally my least favorite part of a book, and Cole is doing a lot of tricky work in the opening of this one: setting up complicated characters, orienting the reader in the Civil War-era South (with all its unpleasantness), and getting the story going. So yes, it took me a little while to get onboard, but by the second half, I was definitely in. Based on what I’ve read of her work thus far, Cole’s strength lies very much in creating compelling, nuanced characters and exploring relationships between people who come from different backgrounds. I’m invested now and will continue with this series… but probably not right away because I need some fluff and coziness between these heavier tales.
–b
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