The Flight: A Monthly Book Sampler (October 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 October:
My October reading was almost exclusively fiction because sometimes you just need cozy mysteries, feisty and flawed female characters, and fantastical adventures.
I read A Curious Beginning, the first Veronica Speedwell book at the beginning of September. I really liked the characters, the mystery was interesting enough, and the conclusion held some promise for future installments. This month, I whizzed through A Perilous Undertaking, A Treacherous Curse, and A Dangerous Collaboration. I have a long-standing problem with getting emotionally attached to fictional characters and I am definitely attached to Veronica (a feisty and flawed woman, well aware of her faults) and Stoker (equally flawed and aware), the two main characters of the series. The mysteries the pair get involved in are entertaining, the character development has been really good, and I adore the Beatrice and Benedick-style bickering that they engage in. The cast of recurring secondary characters is also wonderful. I strongly suggest having A Dangerous Collaboration handy before you finish A Treacherous Curse because the former picks up right where the latter leaves off.
In August’s Flight, I mentioned Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor, the first in her Chronicles of St. Mary’s series. I very briefly described it as “time travel, snark by the bucket, made my inner history nerd very happy”. I’d been vaguely aware of the book for quite a while before I snagged it on Audible. Obviously, I enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve listened to three novellas, books two and three of the series, and I’m about halfway through A Trail Through Time, the fourth book. Max, the main character of the series, and another feisty and flawed female character, is quickly climbing my list of favourite characters from fantasy series. A Symphony of Echoes, the second book, is a much more coherent narrative than the first and very entertaining. I finished the third book, A Second Chance, and immediately listened to the subsequent novella, Roman Holiday. The next morning, I tweeted this:
Last night, I listened to the audiobooks of A Second Chance & Roman Holiday from @joditaylorbooks' #ChroniclesofStMarys & I'd like to thank both her & Zara Ramm, the narrator, for the emotional catharsis. I laughed, cried, & then laughed until I cried. Then I bought the next one.
— Andrea Humphries (@andihumphries) October 23, 2019
I love this cast of characters, their antics, and the crazy twists and turns the plot takes. There are currently eleven books in the series (which Taylor is still writing), about as many novellas which take place between the various full-length novels, and as it stands, I am in for the long haul.
Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie was one of Audible.ca’s daily deals and I snatched it up because it’s narrated by Hugh Fraser, who, over the course of about 25 years and more than 40 appearances, played Hastings alongside David Suchet’s Poirot. Suchet’s is the definitive Poirot for me and Fraser’s Hastings is wonderful. Plus, my mystery-loving grandmother owned a massive number of Agatha Christie’s novels. I am always here for Poirot and Miss Marple. That being said, I found this one a little disappointing because despite technically being an Hercule Poirot novel, there was a tragic shortage of Poirot in it. So while I really enjoyed Fraser’s narration and the mystery itself was interesting, I found it a bit of a let down, overall. And I really want to go off and binge watch Suchet’s Poirot now.
Before I started Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey, I read a lot of posts from women saying that they started crying at the introduction. I didn’t. But Sarah got me at the bottom of pg. 29, with a paragraph that more succinctly says what I was trying to convey in this post. And like every time I’ve heard her talk about Mary Magdalene and the garden, she got me there, too. I haven’t finished it yet, but you can be sure it’ll feature in next month’s Flight.
