This book was sort of a historical comfort novel, set mostly in England and Italy. I enjoyed the story – and it was cleverly set up so that I wasn’t expecting how things turned out.

Some of the situations were pretty far-fetched, but most of the comfort and joy of this novel was derived from the simple comforts of taking a break from your usual routine. In the end the story is about love, and how and when it blooms and how important it is not to let it wither.

The book was pretty old, so I got some new vocabulary from it. One surprise was when two characters were described as “making love” but at that time it simply meant they were treating each other in a loving way.

I’m not sure where I got this book recommendation from, but it was an entertaining (and rather short) read.

Next I am reading Babylonia by Costanza Casati.

I seem to really be into prose written by poets – they can make the mundane world sound beautiful. This book was recommended by Oprah for her book club, and so I approached it with a little circumspection. It contains a pretty bleak portrait of American life, at least in this New England town, and the author really nails down some of the flaws in what so many people call “The Greatest Country in the World”.

While reading I sort of inwardly groaned when introduced to a cast of outwardly goofy characters, but for some reason this time they didn’t stray into campy. I think the reason might be that everyone seems so genuine – despite their quirks they are good people trying hard in tough circumstances.

I liked how to book slowly revealed the plot and I also noticed that the pop culture references seemed to be right in my wheelhouse. The book was funny, sad, wise and definitely worth reading.

Next I am reading The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

I have read a few books set in Italy, and this one does a great job of painting a picture of small town in Naples, back in the 1950’s. The book is the first in a series of four, written by a famous Italian author and translated into English. The translation felt natural to me, a little too modern sometimes, but easy enough to read.

The story is focused on the friendship between two girls who grow up together and take different paths through life. Each inspires the other, and we watch them navigate life as best they can while (unknowingly) depending on each other.

In these days women were not expected to go beyond elementary school, and the level of toxic masculinity portrayed in these pages was shocking and hopefully exaggerated fiction. Most of the book was told in the way that gossip is spread from person to person – so I sometimes felt a little dirty reading these stories.

Although the writing was well done and the story was interesting enough, I didn’t feel like I identified with any of the characters – and sometimes was frustrated with the main characters’ self-centered outlook. I know that this is the viewpoint of a young girl/woman but I don’t know if I can stick through another three books to see how it turns out.

Next I am reading The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong.

As usual some good storytelling in this one – the heroes journey is mapped out, there are some compelling characters introduced, and a lot more involving dragons. Nice!

Something was missing here for me – after the delicious lonesomeness of the previous book’s setting and main character, this one felt sort of like a shadow of Lord of the Rings. At the very beginning I felt like the author had telegraphed the whole story – there aren’t any twists along the way.

A lot of the story goes into the development of a new character, and it seemed rushed, oversimplified (and a little preachy). Maybe this book is targeted at younger readers, but I felt like after the second book that it was leaning towards a more mature audience.

One highlight for me was the interlude of the character’s stay with the people living on the open ocean. I would have loved a book concentrated on their migratory story and how they lived their lives in isolation from the rest of Earthsea.

This book is not the end of the series, but I feel like it is a good place for me to stop reading. I’m not saying I’ll never continue it, but I feel like my curiosity has been satisfied.

The next book that I am reading is called My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.

I enjoyed very much this author’s book A Stranger in Olondria – it was written in such a unique style. This newer book is written in much the same style, but it imagines a much deeper history of Olondria, and has the courage to let you figure most things out on your own.

Once again I felt like I was reading the descriptions of a dream. Characters and scenes appear and pass, timelines suddenly jump forward and back, and important background information doesn’t appear until nearly the end of the novel. Side characters become main characters and vice versa – it can be a lot to take in. But the author doesn’t really hold your hand through it – and I’m sure some people will be turned off by this. But the confusion was worth it to me, and this book would especially benefit from a re-read. My guess is that the author is counting on it.

I loved the details in the writing – almost as if each sentence was a drifting image – and it hard to imagine someone sitting down to write a novel of this length and all the effort it would take to maintain this level of quality writing. It was a long book, and a little more judicious editing might have made it less confusing and more impactful to even more readers.

Without giving things away I would say that I liked the level of fantasy in this novel. Just how much magic there is in this world is a carefully guarded secret – while reading we don’t know what might be real, what could be “magic” and what is hearsay and gossip. It was skillfully done and so I can’t really go into it much here.

It was an excellent book and I hope to come back to it down the road for a re-read to see if I get more out of it. Next I am reading The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin.

This book is all about dying – learning about when it might happen, and seeing how that changes your perspective and priorities.

The author was a writer as well as a teacher, and having just retired after teaching for forty years he gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. This book is a way for him to process that, and also a way for other people to understand what he is going through and to learn from his experience.

I thought the information about how he felt and how he processed this abrupt change was useful. Like he said, nobody knows how they will react until it happens to them. But watching him go through stages, make mistakes, and then learn from them made it worth reading the book.

The book felt like it was a message to the family he was leaving behind, and sort of a capstone to his life and experiences. While this is admirable and certainly helpful to him and his relatives, I felt a little like reading someone’s private letters – especially referencing events or histories that I was unfamiliar with.

I think this book will mean a lot to people with cancer and to their loved ones. Hopefully I won’t be coming back to this book as a reference in the future…

Next I am re-reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

This was a completely new topic for me. For some reason I’ve heard a lot about bird watching recently – it seems that now that the number of species has declined people are interested in seeing what is left. Or maybe they just want to feel closer to nature.

Amy Tan has written fiction that has done quite well but I am not so interested in the themes she focuses on (identity, sisterhood, Chinese-American culture) so this was my first time to read anything of hers.

I liked her sense of humor throughout the book – she was writing this through the pandemic and clearly bird watching helped her cope. I was envious of all the free time that she had for this – a beautiful home with a big yard and nothing to do but monitor the birds all day. She also did some beautiful illustrations – after reading the foreword and preface I thought we’d get childish renditions but in fact they were really good. I guess it is a case of underselling in advance to manage expectations.

Having said that, the book didn’t really resonate with me. Probably because I’ve never done this activity, but also because bird watching is a localized activity – birds seen in her backyard will be completely different from my backyard. I was learning the incredibly detailed behavior patterns of birds that I will likely never see for myself. Maybe people living in the Bay Area will get more of this book.

Next I am reading Goodbye to Clocks Ticking by Joseph Monninger.

Hmm, this book was original! I picked it up expecting a book on travel, but while it shared some similarities to the genre it was more about the author and his fraught relationship with his father.

I suppose that traveling alone allows a great deal of time for introspection. Add to that the experience of staying in Venice during the lockdowns of COVID – it makes for a spooky time. The author’s explorations of the city are light on history and more about how he experiences them. He doesn’t really seem to capture the vibe of the city (at least not the Venice that I visited) but I think that was not his intention.

It is a very creative book, especially a passage towards the end that was really well-written and surreal. It was at its best when it was considering deeper issues: identity, guilt and the power of a grudge.

However I felt that author seemed oddly oversensitive to the people around him – he admits to having these issues – and sort of blames it on his upbringing and the uncomfortable position his racial identity places him. Some of his behavior struck me as odd – but not out of the ordinary for someone with an artistic bent.

It was a short, unusual book but I enjoyed the experience of peeking into the mind of a Minotaur. Next I am reading The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan.

This book examines the people at the top of the financial pyramid in the United States, and given the widen gap between them and everyone else I thought it would be a good idea to see what their lifestyle is like. This book isn’t a gushing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous sort of book, but one that looks at how and why this phenomenon is happening.

It is extremely well-reported – the author is a Pulitzer Prize winner twice over – with cultural insights that made me feel (as an American living in another country) like a member of a completely different species. The trends that have happened recently in wealth consolidation are disturbing. We shouldn’t look away.

Over the years my relationship with money has shifted from “get as much as you can” to “have as much as you need” – and I’ve found that I don’t need all that much to have a lifestyle that I am happy with. But reading about some of the people in this book was eye opening – they are living in a completely different world.

My only criticism on this book is that sometimes it felt like the tying together of these separate essays was a little arbitrary, but taken individually it was a pleasure to see a real investigative reporter at work.

Next I am reading The Minotaur at Calle Lanza by Zito Madu.

The second book in this series was slightly different from the first, but exquisitely well-written and benefits from a flipping of perspective for the main characters.

Something about the setting of this one felt like it takes place at the end of the world, and the spooky locations were great – especially the completely dark underground labyrinth. But even the descriptions of the empty plains and mountains really made them come alive for me.

I also liked how the book did not devolve into any kind of romance between the two main characters – it seems like it would be likely to happen in more modern novels.

The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was the length – I finished it in just under two hours. I wanted to read more about this place and setting that the author dreamt up.

Next I am reading The Haves and the Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos.

This is the third book in a series featuring the main character Molly, the maid with a social disorder that seems to always attract trouble. The first two books were excellent, and I also enjoyed this third book, which seems to wrap up the story of Molly and her grandmother, who raised her.

The story is cute – cozy and full of backstory on Molly’s grandmother’s mysterious background. The book is written half as flashbacks as Molly reads her grandmother’s diary, and half as another mystery that Molly needs to solve at the Grand Regency hotel where she works. One of my knocks on this book is that we give over half the book to grandma, so that means half as much of Molly who is one of the main reasons I like the series. More Molly, less Gran!

In the previous book that I read (Tartufo) there are many wacky eccentric characters – so many that it felt like slapstick sometimes. This book also has some slightly off characters played for laughs, but in a much more polished fashion, and the humor is more clever here. There were quite a few times I laughed out loud, which is always a good sign.

The story and the plot are tied up a little too perfectly, which I guess is part of what makes the story cozy. It was a fitting end to the series, but I get the feeling the author may continue it judging by the positive reaction she is getting from Molly.

Next I am reading The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin.

This book tells the story of what the discovery of the world’s largest truffle does to the fortunes of a small village in Italy. The story is cleverly plotted, and I guess if I had to categorize the book it would be a comedy-mystery.

The way the plot develops is really well done – we are wondering what people’s motives really are, and what will happen when and if the truffle changes the situation. Unfortunately the book is full of “eccentric” characters – being absolutely goofy in the service of humor. There were some funny moments but it felt to me like the author was trying a little too hard and many of the situations and jokes fell flat. I think the risk of overdoing these weird eccentric characters is that stereotypes could be emphasized. I guess I prefer things a little more subtle.

The other problem I had was with the writing style of the author. Sentences are clipped. Things sound more significant. But in the end it is harder for me to read. Clearly the author has a lot of love for Italy – at least the romantic one that we find in this book – and it was still an enjoyable story to read.

Next I am reading The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose.