The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
I am so in love with this book. It’s told as a more realistic epistolary than most, in that people actually write the way most people write letters, as opposed to sharing novels with verbatim dialogue and fancy descriptive passages. Even so, the characters are unique, believable, and very memorable. I laughed out loud; I got choked up; I worried; I cheered. In other words, I was completely sucked in to the story. I didn’t want it to end. Highly recommended.
Also posted on BookCrossing.
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (unabridged audiobook read by Ralph Cosham): I’ve read a fair number of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, but this was the first novel-length one I’ve picked up. Holmes is called in to get to the bottom of the death of a man connected to a family legend of a hellhound. Holmes and Watson of course do not believe in the supernatural, and their methodical tying up of all the loose threads is fascinating, particularly considering this was written in a time before fingerprinting and DNA evidence. I suppose there are those who do not enjoy having every single minute detail explained, but to me that’s what delights me most about Holmes stories: he loves to explain how he came to every single one of his seemingly random deductions. I especially like Holmes’s childlike enthusiasm when faced with a challenge: the more difficult it is, the more he enjoys himself. Perhaps the most memorable aspect of this story, however, is how much of it is solved by Watson on his own. Evidently his many years as Holmes’s companion have rubbed off on him. My husband has a huge tome o’ Holmes on our bookshelf; I may have to read more of it.
by Ann Brashares: This is not your typical YA after-school special kind of novel; this is four typical YA after-school specials in one. Four friends who usually spend the summer together (and who have pretty much nothing in common except their moms did aerobics together while pregnant) spend their first summer apart. Lena goes to Greece to visit/meet her grandparents where she has boy issues; Bridget goes to soccer camp where she has boy issues; Carmen goes to South Carolina where she has daddy issues; and Tibby stays home where she befriends a terminally ill kid. Kind of separately and kind of together, they all learn valuable (and predictable) lessons about life and love, while passing around a pair of “magical” jeans. These jeans are only magical in the way they fit all four of these girls so well despite being different sizes and shapes. The pants themselves don’t appear to do anything in particular. None of the girls were especially distinctive, and I kept getting Carmen and Tibby mixed up in particular. This is not to say this was a bad or even necessarily boring book – there were plenty of funny moments. It just wasn’t very memorable. Probably a good beach read for a teenager.
by Dorothy James: Eleanor and Franz Fabian are visiting Franz’s elderly mother at her nursing home in Vienna, Austria. While they are there, an unexpected bit of drama crops up: one of the residents is brutally murdered on Christmas Day. Inspector Georg Büchner arrives on the scene and methodically goes through all the evidence, unweaving the tangle of lies and contradictions and unrelated issues to find the culprit. I enjoyed the musings on aging, the (too brief) discussion of the post-WWII climate in Austria, and the vivid descriptions of the Vienna woods. I also found the subplot of Eleanor’s marital problems and amateur sleuthing enhanced the main story rather than taking away from it. I’m not much of a murder mystery aficionado, and in fact don’t generally seek them out, but this one was really good. I really liked Büchner (though I am not familiar with his namesake) and Eleanor, and I’d be curious to see more of Frau Dr. Lessing in the future. All in all, a fun read. I may even have to start following the Inspector Georg Büchner Mystery series.
