Welcome to the April edition of The Reading Report! Although the weather has cooled off significantly from just one week ago when we were having an early taste of 70 degree weather, it is still officially spring. (If nothing else, my allergies are confirming this fact!) I am in denial about the fact that snow is currently in our forecast for this weekend, and choosing to focus on a little spring refresh needed in my reading life! Over the past couple month or so I fell out of the solid reading routine I had going, and I can’t quite say…
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You wouldn’t really think that February being routinely two days shorter than the other months would make that much of a difference, and yet, every year I find myself surprised that it is March already! But since March brings us longer days with more light and just a hint of spring to come, I certainly won’t complain about it getting a bit ahead of me! I will try and keep this month’s reading report short and snappy, in part because I have other things to do today besides sit and write and also because I have a lot of books…
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As I promised in my first post of this new year, I am back this week with an update on my reading life. With all the stress of renovating, selling our house, packing up and moving across the country, and just normal daily life “stuff”, reading became very difficult for me in 2024. I would start books, only to drop them a chapter or two in. I would turn on an audio book only to mentally tune it out while my mind filled with distracted thoughts and to-do lists. In the evenings when I would normally have picked up a…
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If you are looking for some light fiction that is also written in sparkling prose, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell is the book for you. I really cannot say enough good things about this read. It was sheer delight. The book begins with a family of four children and their widowed mother tired of their humdrum average British life. On a whim, they sell their house and move to the island of Corfu and rent a house sight unseen. The story is told from Gerald’s perspective as the youngest brother, describing his family with a loving touch, though…
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Last Sunday I had the great luxury of several hours in which to read entirely for fun, and in that time I finished Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories. This book is a truly enjoyable collection of little self-contained mysteries, each in one chapter, all cleverly solved by the unassuming and unlikely character of Miss Marple. The elderly spinster has a keen mind and a rather uncanny ability to relate seemingly mundane happenings in her small village to crimes on a larger scale. This combination of sleuthing super-powers never fails to take those around her by surprise, given…