January Books

 Hi everyone. It's a very cold and windy morning here in New Hampshire. I think I'll hunker down and stay warm by the woodstove. And I don't even mind cold weather, usually. 

Since it is the perfect day for reading, it's time to start another year of book posts.

These are my January books and listens for you. There's not much unusual about that, except that my listening hours were way down compared to my usual number (of listening hours), but my actual book reading was  pretty much par for course if not a little bit better.

This book, Harbor Ice by K.D. Mason,  was my first actual book for 2023. Back in December I was at the local marine boating store picking up my husband's Christmas gift. When I was at the checkout, the cashier mentioned to me that he was an author. We chatted a bit, and he told me he wrote detective stories that were set locally, although he fictionalized the locality. He even gave me a bookmark with a list of all his mysteries on it. That made me curious, so when I got home I went on the computer. With some online detective work, I was able to find an inexpensive used  copy of the first book in the series, so I ordered it. 

Two woman are murdered, one in New Mexico and one in the fictionalized version of Rye, New Hampshire. The woman in New Mexico was killed for her ring, but just before she died, she passed the ring to the other woman with a message to deliver it to her niece in New Hampshire. Rye NH is a small town. A murder in it brings on lots of speculation, but most of that  speculation is from Max, who is the niece who was supposed to receive the ring. When the second murdered woman is first found in Rye  Harbor she is wearing the ring, at least it's there in some photos taken by an amateur photographer. Yet when the police arrive to retrieve the body, the ring has gone missing.

This story is told through the eyes of Max's friend Jack Beale. He jumps in to help find the ring and protect Max so she doesn't become the third victim of the murderer.

This book was an enjoyable read, and I liked it. It reminded me of watching a movie as it was fast paced and not overly detail laden. The writing wasn't bad, and the characters were well done. I became involved with them, and I went on the  hunt for book 2.  I want to know what Max and  Jack are up to next. 

My next book was this non-fiction book first published in 1988  by Sue Hubbell. As you can tell by the title it is centered around honeybees. The second paragraph sets the stage for this book that is part beekeeping information but mostly the story of a woman who kept 300 hives of bees in the Ozark Mountains. As Hubbell says to start this paragraph " I have had bees for 15 years now, and my life is better for it."

Hubbell breaks the book down into 4 sections, one for each season. I must admit when I started reading this it smarted a bit, since I learned right after the very cold spell at Christmas that I had already lost my bees again. (More about that in another post sometime.) However the story was calling me, so even though I had the urge to put this book aside, I didn't. This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for many many years, and I originally read it long before I decided I wanted to have bees myself. As I've ordered 2 new sets of bees for spring, there's still a lot of relevance in this book for me.

This is not a hard read or even a long one. Speaking as a now somewhat (at least a little bit) experienced beekeeper, I can tell that beekeeping has changed in some ways since this book was originally published (one being that there are now Varroa mites to deal with). Speaking as a reader,  the author's love of bees, the environment  and the way she told her story are just lovely. And I still learned some new things too, not just about bees but about the environment too.  I think you only have to be a little curious about bees to enjoy this book, because this isn't a how to manual but more the story of one woman's life while she kept bees.

This next book was my favorite read of the month.

I had hoped to read Silent Parade  by Keigo Higashino in December as I wanted to finish all 4 published Detective Galileo mysteries before 2022 was up. I never got to it, which in the reading world is really not a huge issue since all that means is that this book sat on my nightstand 's to-be-read-pile until January. 

Tokyo based Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi is given a new case which in many ways is actually a continuation of an old case. Bones had been found for a missing girl, and yet the police's main suspect was not found guilty when he went to trial. Now the bones of another young woman have been found in the mother's house of this same suspect. It's time to get Detective Galileo involved. 

Detective Galileo is  the nickname for  Manabu Yukawa, the college friend of Detective Chief Kusanagi. He is a professor of physics and a researcher and is someone with great deduction skills. Kusanagi often asks him to get involved in the case, but in this book he gets himself involved in the case, after having coffee with the chief detective and learning about this new twist on an old suspect.

I really liked this book. I've actually really liked this whole series (to date), but this book's story line  has a lot of depth to it, as well as a lot of unexpected twists and  turns. You think you know who the killer was, and then time after time, you have to throw your expectations out.For some reason this book "felt" a little different to me than the last 2 did, almost as if the author wasn't trying quite so hard to put together a good story.  It just seemed to happen in Silent Parade.  However, all these books (in this series) have been really good mysteries. Plus you get the bonus of being in Japan, as these are set in that country since Keigo Higashino is a Japanese author living in Tokyo.

January's first listen was this book Horse by Geraldine Brooks.  I had this book in my Audible account since last fall, and after Mae recently wrote a review of it, I decided to listen to it sooner rather than later.

Although the title of the book is Horse, you don't have to be a horse person to enjoy  or even love this book. The overarching story involves horses,one in particular named Lexington, but this book is really a story of 5 people all who have some connection to this  horse. This review is a bit long because this is actually a fairly complex story.

First there are the parts of the book set in parts of the southern US in the mid-1800's when the horse Lexington is alive. One character is Jarrett, known  early in the book as Warfield’s  Jarrett and later in the book as Ten Broek’s Jarret and even later in the book as Alexander’s Jarrett. He is the  young black man and slave who is groom to the horse that will becomes a racing champion. In this part of the book there is also an itinerant painter who will paint this horse by the name of Thomas J. Scott, and there are also the  families and their "staff" who Jarrett deals with. As this story continues over several decades, we get to see what happens to Jarrett during a large part of his life.

The story also takes  place in 2019, where you meet 2 people. One is Theo; he discovers the painting of this horse in some rubbish discarded on his neighbor's doorstep. He becomes fascinated with the subject and sets off to learn about the black man who brought this horse celebrated success. The other person is Jess who is a biologist who studies bones and works for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. She finds the bones of this horse in the museum's storage and studies them.  

And finally you are taken back to the 1950's where you meet Martha Jackson who runs an art gallery. She connects  with this same oil painting that Theo discovers tossed out on his neighbor's doorstop.

In the book's epilogue you learn how many of these characters were actual people, so even though this is a work of fiction, it is based on a lot of history. Even the horse Lexington was not a fictional creation of the author. I really liked how the author tied these individual stories together. I learned a lot reading this book.

The chapters jump back and forth between these characters and give you a big story that spans well over 100 years. At first I did find it a bit hard to listen to this book  because I only listen to books while I am doing other things.  Early in this book  you are just learning about each character.  It's important to catch what is going on in each chapter because you may not get back to that chapter's character's storyline  until you are several chapters further into the book. 

 If you happen to miss something in these early chapters, then you might have to go back to this character's earlier chapter for a relisten. I needed to do this a few times. Luckily once I had the characters straight I could follow the story no problem, because although well written, this is not a difficult read.  If you actually read the book versus having it read to you, I think it would be easier to keep things straight  early on because I think it is easier to go back to something in a visual version of a story. 

I very much enjoyed this story.  I think the author did a great job of not only writing about the history of one horse, but showing how events of the past can still affect the present. The author constantly surprised me throughout the story. That kept this story moving along and made it very interesting. 

My other January listen was this light  mystery called Death in Provence by Serena Kent. In this novel we meet Penelope Kite. She is a young retiree who worked for several years as the secretary to a medical examiner. She is also a fairly recent divorcee, and  after always being  available for her grown and unsympathetic children, she decides that it is time to do something for herself. She rents her house south of London, puts her furniture in storage and buys a house that's desperately in need of some TLC in the Luberon area of Provence. 

And  then, when life is supposed to become interesting and adventurous, Penelope finds a dead body  in her swimming pool.

The cast of suspects include many local people including Penelope's real estate agent, the local mayor, several of the tradesmen who randomly stop by to work on her new home,  and someone in a red Ferrari.  This book does a nice job at creating the atmosphere of the little village where Penelope buys her house, as well as lots of yummy food, in particular pastry. It's a decent mystery too, especially if you don't require too much wild action. I enjoyed this book, and I never expected the murderer to be who it was.

My next and last book for the month was by Barbara Pym, whose writing I really enjoy. I have all of her books, and they've all been read at least a few times. This time I read one of her later books, A Few Green Leaves. 

When I packed for Florida I took my ancient paperback copy of this novel with me in my carry on backpack.  My copy needed to have the binding taped to be sure it held together before I left. I figured if I lost it in transit, it was not going to be a big loss due to the condition of my well read paperback. (Luckily it made it, both not being lost and staying together.)

 

A Few Green Leaves is Pym's final published novel before her death in 1980. She had a few other previously written books published posthumously. In this book we are taken to a quaint English Cotswold village where we meet Emma Howick, an anthropologist staying in her mother’s cottage. We meet members of the village including the rector and his Greece loving older sister, a restaurant critic, both of the village doctors, and several older women which Pym refers to as middle aged and elderly women. These include Miss Lee and Miss Grundy who are so elderly that it is hard for most people to refer to them by their first names which are Olive and Flavia.  

Pym reminds me a lot of a modern Jane Austen, discussing village life and how the members of the community interact.  If you’re looking for action and adventure then these might not be the books for you.  But if you like personal interactions and life in the 1970's in a small English village, then this book would be right up your alley. It's a quick read with lots of depth, well developed characters, excellent writing and a bit of humor too.

This is my list for January and how I started my 2023 reading year. As always, I love suggestions, especially any that take me out of my usual reading habits. 

Thanks for visiting.