Mystery, Travel, Romance, Engaging Literary Fiction, and a KidLit title — A Mixed Bag for you

 Back again, to share a few more messy pages from my year’s Reading Journal — I see now that for next year’s journal (this one was the first handwritten record after years of tracking my reading in this blog) I should include the entry date. I think I’ll also include publication info and perhaps number of pages as well.

As has been my practice this year, I’m posting the photos as is without transcribing the text. If you need help deciphering a line or two, please let me know in the comments below.

I read John Keahey’s Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Meditteranean aloud to Paul over several weeks as he cooked dinner and when it was his turn to drive during our road trip in August.

Digression: I got sidetracked in putting this post together because I couldn’t find the sketch I made months ago of Keahey’s book. I was sure I’d sketched it in my 5×8 sketchbook, but it wasn’t there. So I looked through all the boxes on the shelves of my new workspace, flipping through pages of whatever I might have drawn and painted on. Some boxes I looked through more than once. More than twice, and maybe even three times. Then I had to take a break because I was on a short road to Frustration and Flipping Out, not a good destination.



Then this evening, I decided to sort through a maximum of three boxes, not necessarily looking for that sketch, but beginning the inventory I obviously needed to take. . . And tucked at the bottom of a decade or two of travel journals, there was the “miscellaneous-use, incomplete, mishmash” watercolour Moleskine with the sketch of Seeking Sicily as its last entry. Whew! That feels better.

Want to see?

And now I can move on through the rest of what I wrote this morning. . . 

I’d been looking forward to Elly Griffiths’ The Stone Circle, but this series featuring archaeologist Ruth Galloway is flagging, and there are too many elements recycled from earlier titles. I hope Griffiths manages to reinvigorate the series, and I’ll certainly give it one more chance, but this one’s disappointing. . . .

Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, though. . . no disappointments here. . . Luckily I have my own print copy of this, because I suspect I’ll want to dip back in. Posted photo and comments on IG

 Ian Rankin’s In a House of Lies. Brilliant series that still works, thanks to characters added through the years. A bit shocking to see how John Rebus has aged. . .

I love reading aloud to my grandkids, and sometimes I get to dig into a chapter book with N (almost 11) although it can take weeks, even months, of occasional visits to complete. Natalie Babbitt’s The Search for Delicious kept us both entertained,. Imaginative adventure with a clever premise. N is better than I at recalling details from earlier chapters. . .

Rae Dunn’s In Pursuit of Inspiration.. . .



Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is a standout. Not a light read at all, but a compelling one, thoroughly engaging, and connected serendipitously for me with my recent reading of Ninth Street Women. IG post here

Mario Giordano’s Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna was a fun way to prepare for some future travel. I posted a photo of it on Instagram, and made a few comments in my journal

And I’ll stop for now with my entry for Jean-Christophe Rufin’s Les Sept Mariages d’Edgar et Ludmilla. I loved this novel, and if you read French I recommend you get your hands on a copy, read it, and then we can chat. Otherwise, I hope that the English translation is available before too long. . .Instagram posts here and here.

Possibly interesting trivia: I did my 7-minute presentation for my French class on this book. . .

This post gets the blog much closer to where I am in my hand-written record — in that journal I’ve just finished entry #60, so I’m only eleven behind here. . . the gap is closing, although not rapidly. Let me know, please, if you’ve read anything here, or if you have any complementary suggestions — and, as always, I love to know what you’re reading and I know other readers do as well. In fact, if I ever should get caught up here, I’d love to post a list of all the suggestions you’ve made between you over the last few years. Probably won’t happen anytime soon, though. In the meantime, you might enjoy browsing your way back through the comments on earlier posts — they’re a treasure trove.

6 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    31 October 2019 / 9:21 pm

    Lately, most of my reading comes from suggestions I found here, either from you or other posters – a treasure trove indeed. I discovered Ian Rankin on my own though, years ago and have enjoyed the Rebus series immensely. I'll have to try and find "Les Sept Mariages…" I just googled it and read a synopsis – sounds good!
    Frances in Sidney

  2. materfamilias
    1 November 2019 / 3:46 am

    I've discovered so many good books through social media as well, and readers here (yourself included with the Keigo Higashino mysteries) have been a big part of those discoveries. I got Les Sept Mariages from the Vancouver Public Library (through a Hold)

  3. Anonymous
    1 November 2019 / 5:42 pm

    So many new books…..!What a wonderful idea about Sicily for a family holidays!
    I've finally read Frederik Backman's Britt-Marie Was Here.I love his books indeed
    Dottoressa

  4. materfamilias
    2 November 2019 / 3:34 pm

    So many new books indeed! How will we ever keep up?! I haven't read any of Backman's books, for example, and if you love them, I probably would as well. . .

  5. Mardel
    12 November 2019 / 11:06 am

    The Blazing World is on my stack, but the other books are new to me. I am intrigued by your reading journal, mostly because I have been going through a period where I kind of eased out of one groove and haven’t yet fully settled into another.

  6. materfamilias
    17 November 2019 / 1:38 am

    Mardel, so much of my reading these days has made its way onto my lists by random and circuitous routes. It's a glorious luxury to indulge that after years of having to keep up in my field. . .

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