Kuhn’s first book, The Semester of our Discontent, is a cozy set in the English department of a college. Lila MacLean has just been hired and quickly stumbles on a murder. I loved the college setting and appreciated the inside view on departmental politics.
In the Bleak Midwinter. Spencer-Fleming has eight books going in this series. I am always thrilled to come onto a well-established series so I can just keep reading and reading. I liked the clash of worlds between her two main characters, Reverend Clare Fergusson, the new Rector of St Alban’s parish, and Russ Van Alstyne, the Chief of Police. This one kept me turning the pages.
Then I went and read Book 8. Whoops. Thanks to the vagaries of the library’s hold system (and my impatience), I missed five (or more?) years between In the Bleak Midwinter and Through the Evil Days.) This one had me spooked, and I lost a night’s sleep over Clare and Russ.
Don’t ask me why I read book 5 next. Once I realized I had skipped again, it was too late. Obviously, I like Spencer Fleming’s characters, plots and pacing and will keep reading the whole series… just maybe not in the right order. But the characters do grow, and their lives change significantly, so I would recommend learning from my mistake and reading them in the right order.
I picked up Wyatt North’s Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Model for Our Times as a kindle deal a few weeks back. It reads a little bit like a high school research paper, but the subject is such an interesting woman I kept going. I found the chapters on her family especially interesting.
Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood may be my favorite book of all time. Every time I read it, I plumb new depths. This time I sifted through her observations (that I had not paid any attention the first 10 times I read the book) on gender roles for teenagers in 1950. But it’s Dillard’s language that keeps me coming back, time after time. Highly recommended.
My favorite thing about An American Childhood is the way it describes Pittsburgh (where I live)–so accurate based on my experience in the past 25 years yet also explaining what it *used to be like* in the past. If you have never been here, I hope you’ll visit and check out some of the specific locations she mentions, most of which still exist.
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I have never been, but I feel like the topography is part of my memory because it’s so vivid in that book.
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So glad to hear you love An American Childhood! That’s next on my list. I’ve read almost everything else by her.
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I think the only work of hers I love more is Expedition to the Pole.
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Every time there’s a new anthology out, I snatch it up, just because I’m always loaning out my favorites.
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