November felt like slow month, but with 6 books it’s rather okay really! Apparently I sometimes read more than I think I do. Also, I have hit book 60 in November! HOW DID I DO THIS?? My goal was 52 books this year, one every week. But according to my Goodreads account, I am already at 120%. I wonder what I will end with this year. It will be my best reading year ever!
So what did I read this November?
Russian stories by various writers
First of all, I didn’t read much of this 900+ pages collection of Russian stories. I read from page 677 till 688. I do hope to finish before 2020, but we will see if that happens.
Murder at the vicarage by Agatha Christie
I love Agatha, but from the Miss Marple series I only ever read one story. So I decided to start with the first and will read all of them during the coming year! I read this one and simply can’t believe it was written in 1930. Besides for having butlers and maids, this could have happened last week! And be honest, we actually still have domestic workers today even though they don’t live with us. So maybe it did happen last week?! I always try to find out the “whodunnit” before the end, but the only thing I figured out early was who Mrs Lestrange truly is. All the other plot-twists? Nope! And I’m usually really good at this so… thank you again Agatha!
The night watch by Terry Prachett
Number 6 in the City Watch series, which is part of Discworld. And it was very very good! I liked the whole back-to-the-future theme and the exploration of Sam Vimes psyche was very well written. I can’t exactly put my finger on the why, but next to Men at Arms this might be the best one from the Watchmen-series I have read until now.
A pillar of cloud by Francis Stuart
This is not an average read, something totally different and this novel was a hard one too. Not hard as in difficult to read, but hard as in full of dread, despair and hopelessness. But also very poetic and full of love. It’s hard to describe the feeling this book leaves me with, but it is definitely worth 5 stars. And I will keep it to read it again someday.
My favorite quote from this novel was: “I only believe in one miracle – the miracle of pain. Because it is a miracle that the heart ca bear what it is given to bear. And when it can’t bear it anymore it is a miracle, too, to have a way to escape.”
The butterfly garden by Dot Hutchison
My first response to this novel was that I really liked the way it was written. It was a story being told and lived at the same time, by Inara and the detectives. You often come across this in television shows, but it was the first time I experienced it in writing. And it was good!
This book is advertised as “dark and twisted” and when I was 70% in I was still waiting for that instead of “feeling like reality”… The things happening in this story could have been real, very real. And the way it was told, from Inara’s perspective, it also felt like it was written by someone who truly understands trauma. It wasn’t the promised “dark, twisted and graphic” for me. It was just “something real somewhere”. The last page made me cry too, because I know that is where the story truly begins. To me the part I have read was just an intro.
The murder of Harriet Krohn by Karin Fossum
I have been reading a lot by Karin Fossum this last year, but this 7th one in the series was by far the worst. My first impression was that it was badly translated, it has lot’s of typo’s and some words were constantly wrong. This was quite annoying and distracting. Even so, I kept reading because I like the Konrad Sejer series. In this one though, Karin Fossum used a different technique and wrote the whole book from the murderers perspective. It was an interesting and daring thing to do, but I did miss the mystery and detecting. Therefore it wasn’t the best one I read up until now.
The city of lies by Sam Hawke
I found this a good read, at first not an awesome epic story as some of the reviews on the back make you think. But in the end it actually was. I especially liked the going back and forth following of the two main characters and the fact that this storyline is paced like it is happening right now. There are hardly any time gaps, you follow the happenings on a realistic manner. The “closed city” mystery is therefore slowly discovered which leaves you with a very satisfying feeling. Indeed comparable to Agatha Christie, but with a lot of more words and a whole different stage.
There are a lot of mysteries to be unraveled in The City of Lies, it keeps you wanting to read on to discover them. But the siege on it’s own, without the mysteries about the rebellion, is also very interesting to follow. How does a city that doesn’t know or remember war hold itself against a siege? The evolution of war felt natural enough and I found that really admirable too.
So these were my November reads. Have you read any of these too? What did you think about them? Do you have a recommendation for something similar? Or is there anything you would like to know? Ask me in the comments!