Book Blog: October 2022
It’s full-on fall, even though it was a beautiful and mild October in Seattle until a week or so ago — then, thankfully, the rain returned! We went from a huge layer of smoke to rain and beauty! We also had a chance to make a short weekend trip to Bellingham, which treated us to two beautiful fall days with chilly mornings and partly-cloudy skies.
But don’t worry — reading also happened! Here are the favorites from the 10 books that I read this month!
Fiction
Poirot Investigates (Agatha Christie): I actually read three Christie books this month (I needed some escapism, maybe?) but this one was hands-down my favorite. This is my first short stories collection with Poirot, and I was surprised how much I enjoy the short stories, as I think it’s a much harder format for mysteries. In this set of stories, told from the point of view of Hastings, we see a few familiar characters, like Inspector Japp, but the writing focuses primarily on new cases that land in their laps. It takes real skill to have interesting mysteries in 10–20 pages that aren’t too simple or far too complex, and somehow Christie gives us enough set and setting to make it feel like a much longer story in a short format. I was so very pleasantly surprised!
French Braid (Anne Tyler): Ahhh, Anne Tyler! She strikes such a lovely balance of characters and character conflicts, offering snapshots of four generations of the Garrett family as they move in and out of each other’s orbits. Parents Robin and Mercy are coming together and apart, oldest child Alice and middle child Lily are trading off as the responsible one, and youngest child David is often MIA. It’s one of those books where not much happens other than seeing snippets of regular life, so if you like that sort of book, this is a good example.
This Time Tomorrow (Emma Straub): This was such a sweet story about the best possible version of time travel. Our narrator Alice wakes up the day after her 40th birthday on her 16th birthday. Completely disoriented, she navigates the day as 16-year-old her, yet manages to discover how to move back and forth between these two points in time, desperate to change things — with all of the unintended consequences, of course.
The Ink Black Heart (Comoran Strike #6) (Robert Galbraith): This book was really, REALLY slow to get going, and when 900 pages are in front of you it is a little discouraging. Additionally, as others have mentioned, the e-book formatting is awful for reading the chats, even with the additional options.
I am so glad that I stuck with it because it was a fantastic mystery, though I admit that I skipped over the chat parts. I think some more judicious editing would’ve helped streamline the story, but of course there is plenty of sleuthing, danger, and more Strike and Robin tension, as one would expect.
Non-fiction
The Bomber Mafia (Malcolm Gladwell): Wow, this book was fantastic! I feel like it was short and snappy and quickly pulled together two interesting stories about WWII — the first about bombing runs in Germany, and the second about bombing runs in Japan. While in theory it was a book about war, it actually felt like a book about balancing your convictions with getting the results that you need.
Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead (Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin): It’s not that everything that Garvey Berger writes will get 5-stars, but that everything she writes feels important, applicable, and straightforward. This book focuses on a different side of complexity — not the world out there, but the inner world that also impact how we navigate complexity. Many of the practices are not novel, but how they are framed to connect to other principles you’ve learned in other related books. Like the previous books, I see many reads of this one as I try to incorporate all of the principles!
That’s it for now! November is my birthday month so I’m crossing my fingers for some books from my wish list, and I’m hoping for one more trip to Powells before the end of 2022!
Cheers, S
