The Flight: A Monthly Book Sampler (November 2019)
Andrea Humphries, our resident bibliophile (and a board member), writes a monthly post about what she’s learned from the books she’s reading. Today, she’s here with what she learned in November:
November was a weird month for me and I compensated by reading a bunch of fun fiction.
After reading all of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell Mysteries, I decided to try out her Lady Julia Grey series. So far I’ve read the first four, as well as the first novella, and I’ll probably binge-read the remainder of the series over the holidays. Silent in the Grave, the first book, begins with a truly fabulous opening line: “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching on the floor.” Lady Julia and Brisbane’s relationship is in turns touching and incredibly frustrating; I mostly love them as characters, but at least a couple times in each book I want to give them a good shake and a reality check. The cast of secondary characters, mostly Lady Julia’s family, round things out nicely. I do prefer the Veronica Speedwell novels - I find the main characters more likeable and their development is more consistent - but I’ve enjoyed the Lady Julia novels and I’ll probably be a little sad when I finish the last book. I’m pretty sure that Raybourn is done with this series, but I’d really love a novella or short story from Brisbane’s perspective.
I’m continuing to listen to the excellent audiobooks of The Chronicles of St. Mary’s, an endeavour that will last well into next year, given the length of the series. This month, I listened to the fifth book, No Time Like the Past, a couple of the novellas, and promptly bought the next several installments. I adore this cast of misfits and their absurd adventures. Inevitably, at least once per book, I end up laughing so hard I’m crying, which is slightly problematic given that I mostly listen while I’m driving. I love the dry humour, the sarcasm, the camaraderie, and, of course, the history. No Time Like the Past includes trips to London in the midst of the Great Fire of 1666 and the Battle of Thermopylae (I may have watched 300 for the umpteenth time as a result), but no one contracts the plague, so you could say it’s a little less eventful than the previous book.
Last month, I promised that I would have more to say about Sarah Bessey’s Miracles and Other Reasonable Things. It’s honest - almost painfully so - and vulnerable and brave and as soon as I finished it, I gave my copy to my mom and told her to read it. Although I now attend an Anglican church, I grew up charismatic, so a lot of what Sarah writes about in this book is very familiar. If you don’t know much about the Pentecostal/charismatic end of the church spectrum, I expect that same amount of what she writes will feel very strange. But she somehow manages to write in a way that welcomes the reader in, regardless of where they find themselves on that spectrum or even whether they’re on it at all. Miracles very much feels like a friend inviting you into her story as she tells you where she’s seen God, where she’s questioned Him, where He’s felt absent, and where she still hopes to meet Him. I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy and see for yourself.
