November's Books

    Hi everyone; happy Thursday. I'm back today with my November book post. It wasn't the biggest reading month, but still a very good reading month. Four of my 6 books were mysteries, and I finally finished a book I started back in late August. 😀   I was really on a reading role much of the month until the Thanksgiving holiday week came along, so the book I had hoped to finish by the end of the month will have to wait until next month's book report. 

  I finally made it back to reading  and then finishing this book, Sarum by Edward Rutherford. You might remember that I had read about half of this very long book back in late August and early September. Then, for several reasons, at about the half way point, I put the book aside. 

   I've been wanting to finish this book because it's a very good story that starts back in the time when the first people arrived in the Salisbury Plain area of England, In fact, the introduction states how Sarum is a misspelling of the area's name. The misspelling goes way back to early hand written manuscripts by local monks. Then this book's story continues over thousands of years, stopping at various pivotal points along the historical timeline. At each stopping point Rutherford creates a story that goes on for a chapter.   

   Although the individual characters don't carry on from chapter to chapter, descendants of certain lineages do. You get to meet the Masons, the Godfreys, the Wilsons, etc. You not only meet the original neolithic peoples who settled the area, but then you meet the Romans, Saxons, and even the invading Vikings. There are stories of Stonehenge and cathedral building,  the bubonic Plague, King Henry VIII and the English reformation, the first Queen Elizabeth, the Stewart kings and Oliver Cromwell, and so not to ramble on too much, there's a lot more too, right up into the 20th Century. 

   I was having a hard time convincing myself to pick up my paperback version of this book to finish it, mainly because  of the size of the print and the size of the book. It's not that I didn't want to finish the story, and it's not that I really minded the length, but my small paperback version was just not all that appealing to read. I fixed that by breaking down and using one of my Audible credits to buy the book. I wish I had done that earlier because I loved listening to the stories in this book.  I loved the stories I read too, but the narrator, Roger Davis, did such a good job of bringing the characters to life that it made the stories much more alive. 

  I highly recommend this novel, but be warned it's a very long book.(About a 54 hour listen/ 1,000 page small print in paperback, and even though I picked it up the Audible listening version with 29 hours to go, it took me all month to listen to it.) However, Edward Rutherford could/can write a historical novel so that you learn new things while you follow the families along. I like how he uses the stories to tell about life at various time periods. I'm going to add more of Rutherford's works to  my reading list; I know I read his book London years ago and I can't say I remember more about it other than the set up. I do need to check the print size though before I start because  maybe I'll listen to them. 😏

   I enjoy these "new" Hercule Poirot stories by Sophie Hannah. This is the sixth one she has written, and although I haven't read all six, you can pick them up and start with any of them, just as you can with Christie's original stories.

   This time it is New Years Eve 1932, and Poirot has asked Edward Catchpool to go with him to Greece for a relaxing break at a  resort on the Aegean sea. Catchpool is a detective at Scotland Yard, a friend of Poriot's, and is the narrator of this story. He's also the narrator in the other titles in this series I have read.

   Of course Catchpool  has only just arrived in Greece when he hears Nash, the owner of this resort, and Poirot talking about the little problem that Poirot has come to solve. Catchpool is not only annoyed that Poirot tricked him into coming, but when another guest tells him he must run the New Years Eve Resolution game and can't participate, Catchpool is quite upset. Poirot talks him into doing it, and that's when someone puts  a resolution in the pile that says they plan to kill one of the other guests.

   And just like the resolution said, someone is killed in the first hours of the 1933.  While the investigation is going on, someone else is killed. 

   Many of the characters in this mystery  have  "issues" in their background, and you learn about those as you read. Poirot and Catchpool have quite a job figuring out the backstories.  OK, Catchpool has quite a job because if you've read any Hercule Poirot books you know it is always (almost annoyingly) easy for him.😉  I enjoyed this book. It is very much a classic Christie, set at an interesting place with a great combination of characters at the resort. I do like these new Sophie Hannah books, and it's fun to have some new Hercule Poirot adventures. These books are authorized by Christie's family too, if that matters to you.

   I wasn’t sure when I picked up the latest Louise Penny book whether I needed to reread the last one she published (The Grey Wolf) in the autumn of 2024. That's  because even though that book wrapped up, this book is a continuation of The Grey Wolf story. I decided to be courageous though and just jump into her newest Inspector Gamache mystery, The Black Wolf.  I think Penny did a decent job of bringing you as the reader in and reminding you what happened. It was a little bit confusing  remembering all the names and the actual events,  but not too bad.  It didn't take too long before the story continued on, and I found that even though at first I might have worried about remembering who was who and what was what, it pulled together nicely.

   This time Gamanche and his team are still trying to  uncover (as started in the last book) what some numbers on a map mean. Plus there's another death; this time it's a mob execution style one. Is the Prime Minister of Canada involved somehow? And is the US government involved?  Plus there's a mob boss in Canada, the deputy Prime Minister is still in a high security jail, fires have raged in Northern Canada sending ash south, and there's talk of Canada becoming the 51st state in the US. 

   If this sounds a bit like the actual news, it's also this book. Penny starts the book by saying she finished writing this book in 2024, and then, was shocked in early 2025 to actually read  news stories that sounded like they came right out of her book. Truth is stranger than fiction for certain. 

   I did feel that this story was a bit dark, and  I am missing the more traditional mysteries Penny wrote earlier in this series. However, I also like how these stories are evolving and not just repeats with different murders.  I think this is a book you will either love or not love quite so much (but definitely not dislike).  If you're looking for a more traditional mystery, then you may be like me and fall into the second choice. I am glad I read it, and I hope after this venture into thriller writing, Penny might go back to her more traditional stories. Saying that, she does write a pretty good thriller. 

   My next book was a quick and interesting mystery called Seven Graves One Winter by Christoffer Petersen. What attracted me was that it is set in Greenland, and I have never read anything set here. 

   This story  moved quickly and introduced me to David Maratse, a newly retired police constable. He was seriously injured which is what led to his retirement, and according to a note at the front of the book, there is a  story or two about this injury, but I found didn't need to know any details to follow and enjoy this mystery. 

   Now that he is retired, Maratse has moved to a small remote fictional community in Greenland called Inussuk, away from the capital Nuuk where he had lived and worked. After his injury he just wants to get away from it all and not deal with the congestion in the island's largest community. There he meets his neighbor who offers to take him fishing. While fishing, he hooks a body of a young woman who was brutally murdered. 

   Greenland is in the grips of a nasty pre-election  period. One candidate is a man who likes to party with young woman, and the other candidate is seeking re-election. This candidate also happens to be the mother of the dead girl.  Although this is a murder mystery, the election plays a role in where the story goes.

   I  enjoyed this book. I liked learning some tidbits about Greenland. The author did a great job of creating realistic characters, and also adding in some action. It may not be the most complex mystery story I have ever read, and the suspect pool is limited, but until the murderer is revealed, there is a suspense in the story. Even after the murderer is revealed, there is suspense too because the book ends with some high stakes action. I plan on reading more of this series.

   

    A  friend recommended this next book, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. This friend has good reading tastes so I decided to give it a try. 

    The interesting thing about this novel is that it is really a set of letters written by a 70 something woman named Sybil Van Antwerp. Sybil is a letter writer. She writes to her brother; she writes to her best friend/former sister-in-law. She writes to a teenage boy who she had bonded with and to a teenage girl who is going to write about Sybil's long and illustrious law career for a school paper. She even writes to some famous authors whose names you might recognize. These letters tell Sybil's story not only of her time in retirement,  but of the high and low points of her life. 

   I found it was hard to put this book down, mainly because of the letters. Most of them didn't have anything drastically important in them, but they showed a fulfilled life, one with happiness and also some tragedy. Sybil's problems were relatable in many ways, and that was appealing. Plus through the letters the author clearly developed Sybil and some of the other characters' personalities, and reading the letters was a good way to get to know them. As she aged (the letters go on for years), you could see Sybil trying to fix the holes in her life. 

    This book was a quick read for me, and I enjoyed it. 

  

    Didn't I just write that I was going to read more of this mystery series from Greenland? 😏 Blood Floe is book 2 in the Greenland Crime series by Christoffer Peterson. After I finished reading The Correspondent I found I was itching to get back to this series. 

     This time the story begins with retired Constable Maratse going off on a dog sled. His adopted dog (who adopted him, not vice versa) Tinka is learning to pull a sled as part of a team. On their journey he comes across a ship frozen into the winter ice pack. Two of the crew have been stabbed to death, and the other crew members are not conscious. Also,  one crew member is missing. Even though he is retired, Maratse is still a good citizen, so he calls in his find. This gets him involved in the case whether he wants to be or not.

    You soon discover what happened to the missing crew member, but the question about the murders still remains. Alfred Wegener (who was an actual famous geologist who introduced the idea of continental drift and who built a cabin on a mountain in Greenland before he died in that country in 1930) also plays a role in this story. Wegener is not a character directly in this story, but his fictional journal along with an also a fictional discovery of his are part of this story.

   There's a lot going on in this book, especially a lot of  action at the end of this book. (And a bit of an Easter egg too.)  I enjoyed it. I also liked learning more about life in Greenland which as I mentioned earlier is something I don't know all that much about. Unfortunately this time it is about narwhal hunting, and it was a bit disturbing. I tried to keep an ethno-anthropological point of view as I read those parts. As of my writing this I believe there are 7 books in this series, so you'll be seeing more. 👍 

     *****

   There you have it. I counted up my finished books so far for 2025, and I'm at 94 for the year to date.  Not that reaching 100 is a necessity, (it's really just the cherry on top as the cliche goes), but I'm still hoping I can get through at least 6 books next month to do that. It's good to have a goal and meet it, right? 😉 However, it's the books themselves that are more important than the number read so what I'm really hoping for is some good reading time during all the holiday fun ahead.  ❤ 🎄🎅

   Wishing you  good reading in December too.