I desperately feel the need to post something tonight. After loads of heat and humidity, we're being plunged, quickly, deeply, into fall weather. Tomorrow the temperature will not reach 60 degrees until noontime, and a high of 64 degrees after noon. This is a sharp contrast! And I welcome it wholeheartedly.
I suppose I'll be finishing The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand tomorrow afternoon. I'm so sad to see it end. And I realize that this is essential--I MUST find another comforting read. I have one lined up on audio--and that would be the August-published Royal by Danielle Steel (please don't count her out). But I need more. Where will I land?
I thoroughly enjoyed Rhys Bowen's most recent novel, The Last Mrs. Summers, which was published in early August. Lady Georgiana is at her plucky best, when she is railroaded into a trip to Cornwall by her friend Belinda, to survey Belinda's inheritance of a terribly rickety cottage cliff-side by the sea. Sheer mayhem ensues when this cottage needs so much work it is not habitable! Both ladies end up in the grand estate of Belinda's childhood chum. A very relaxing read, despite the murders and mayhem. A jolly good sleuthing. I should warn you that I am helpless before two things: 1) novels set in Cornwall, and 2) gothicky novels set in creepy English country estates.
I am glad you are finding comforting reads. My most recent relaxing read was Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron. I hope to review that soon. Then I read a spy fiction book from the seventies by Anthony Price (Other Paths to Glory) which is a comfort read for me. And now I am reading a Stuart Kaminsky book from his series set in Moscow, which I also see as a comfort read although the books can have some elements of violence.
ReplyDeleteAs we have discussed before, I want to read something from the Her Royal Spyness series. Either The Twelve Clues of Christmas or start at the beginning.
Hi Tracy,
DeleteI'm so glad you're finding lots of relaxing books. And, yes, I know, beloved authors and series can be relaxing and even comforting, even if there is some violence involved. At least they're not set in "our world."
As you probably know, I thought the Twelve Clues of Christmas was fantastic--one of the best in the series. I have read the first, and it was good--at that time in her life Lady Georgiana had little money and was doing very menial work, which was amusing.
Delighted for you that the weather is cooling down quickly. That must be quite a relief. It's happening here as well, two 'autumn' gales already, Ellen and Francis, which have battered SW England and other areas.
ReplyDeleteI think it's wonderful that you're helpless before novels set in Cornwall. I don't read heaps - oddly - but one I read in June was delightful and that was The Farm at the Edge of the World by Sarah Vaughan. Not my part of Cornwall (Penzance) but further up the coast around Padstow and Bodmin Moor. Loved it. A non-fiction I'm currently reading keeps mentioning Jamaica Inn which I haven't read since I was a teen and wasn't that keen on, wondering if I ought to give that another go 50 years later.
Sending *hugs* and good wishes that you can get through the next few political months and stay sane.
Hi Cath,
DeleteWere you or was your garden battered by those gales? Do people think they're getting worse because of climate change, by any chance?
SARAH VAUGHAN!! I just read a novel by her--Anatomy of a Scandal. So I'm most interested by this one. I'm looking it up. Thank you so much for mentioning it. Gosh--I read Jamaica Inn when I was twenty. It was okay, but not my favorite Du Maurier. But I visited the site of Jamaica Inn when my mother and I were on a three-week tour of Ireland, England, and Scotland. We had a wonderful introduction to Cornwall, and I vowed I would return, which Ken and I did on our honeymoon. Cornwall has remained in my dreams. I want to visit again.
Cath, I so appreciate the hugs (I need them!) and the good wishes. This is a very hard time here indeed and we're very frightened of all that's happening.
I have a Rhys Bowen upstairs I have been meaning to read but I haven't tried the mysteries. I do have a good Katie Fforde to send you if you email me your mailing address. (I had to reread a few to decide which duplicate you should try.)
ReplyDeleteHappy National Dog day! My sister and her family got a puppy several days ago and I am enjoying all the pictures they are sending. It is painful not to be able to jump in my car and drive to New York to see him in person.
Oh, I wonder which Rhys Bowen you have? She has several series going. How do these writers manage writing books for multiple series all at the same time? I don't know Katie Fforde--I'll have to look her up.
DeleteNational Dog Day!! What a great idea. We just celebrated our Sandy's one-year anniversary living with us. What kind of a puppy did they get? Pups are irresistible.
That sounds like a good escape, Judith - a world away from the RNC! I like that line: "let us retreat to all that makes us feel whole." I've never been one to shy away from the news, but some of what's happening today is so challenging to my sense of who we are and what we consider acceptable as a society that I do feel less whole as a result, and reading can help with that. Even a novel set in a distant time and place can seem more familiar to me than many aspects of the real world in 2020.
ReplyDeleteHi Andrew,
DeleteReading, retreating into the world of the imagination, is a positive creative act during these times. As is writing. I agree that the worlds imagined in novels can seem more real than what we're living through. We are living through a dystopian nightmare, as far as I'm concerned.
We are only catching bits and pieces of the RNC lies on the news, I refuse to watch.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading Hilderbrand's, latest: 28 Summers. OMG it is so good; be sure to read it.
Hi Diane,
DeleteSo glad to hear that you loved 28 Summers. I bought it as an e-book in June and haven't read it yet. I loved listening to the audio of The Perfect Couple so much, that I think I will do the audio of 28 Summers very, very soon!
Judith, should the Royal Spyness series be read in order? The Cornwall setting always appeals to me but maybe I shouldn't jump in right at the most recent book. I watch CNN, amazed at all the lies, not that our politicians are any better. I'm also horrified at the US Covid stats.
ReplyDeleteHi Katrina,
DeleteI have read only three of the Royal Spyness mysteries (I think). There is no reason that a person unfamiliar with the series should avoid reading this latest novel. Lady Georgiana's husband Darcy is off on a trip, so he does not figure prominently, and when he does he only slips in at the end. I personally think that this one gives a good feel for the series. I do recommend it as a comfort murder mystery. I really liked the Cornwall landscape and culture bits. It's set in the mid-1930s.
Covid is bad all around, but not in New England and New York State. I think we've been saved this summer by people everywhere obediently wearing masks. In other parts of the country, this is absolutely not the case, especially in the South and the Midwest and parts of the West. Trumpies feel their rights are being taken from them if they wear a mask. We have a few people like this. But fortunately it's fewer than it was in May. People who have thrown huge parties and weddings in the Northeast have had to pay huge fines and penalties for spreading Covid.
And now the concern in the Northeast is about college students. They are back, though in diminished numbers. Already outbreaks are through the roof. Can we expect young "adults" 18-22 NOT to party, party, party? Of course not. And even if they wear masks when they're sober at a party, they'll fling them off after a few drinks.
The Perfect Couple was a perfect escape, wasn't it. After reading Hilderbrand for a couple of years, I'm dreaming of a Nantucket summer myself.
ReplyDeleteGeorgette Heyer and Rosamond Pilcher and Mary Stewart are my comfort reads, or rereads as I've read most their novels by now!
Enjoy the last bit of summer.
Hi Jane,
DeleteI'm so pleased to hear that you too appreciated The Perfect Couple! I've read Mary Stewart's books over and over and have read my favorite Pilcher twice (Winter Solstice), and will read it again and again, I'm sure, it's so good. I haven't ever really managed to get into Heyer. Do you have one that you would especially recommend?