Let's Talk About Books!

In Which I Share My Reading Journal Notes for February, and Invite You to Join the BookChat

I’m trying something new here today — which is also something years-old on my blog. If you’re curious, you can read a bit of that book-blogging history over here, but briefly, I have been mentioning and discussing books in my blog since 2007, with annual reading lists since a few years after that. Several years ago I began keeping a written Reading Journal with quick notes to remind myself of what I’d read, and then I shared those notes in a monthly blogpost. Readers’ comments helped these monthly posts evolve into a wonderful conversation about books and a rich resource of books to add to all our ToBeRead lists.

And because I was loath to muck that up when I started the Substack newsletter, I maintained those monthly bookposts “over there.”

But on Tuesday morning, I posted this:

Please note that I will likely be cancelling the email subscription service for this blog in the near future. So far I’ve been paying a monthly fee for this, on top of the fairly hefty fees I pay for website hosting, blog security, etc., and the blog is not monetized (although you are welcome to “Buy Me a Coffee,” should you choose ;-). I will continue to post these here for as long as I can afford the web-hosting fees (I really don’t want to lose access to my 17-year archive!), and you’ll be able to follow links to the book posts from my Substack account. I know some readers would prefer I’d simply kept the blog going as it was, but that’s simply not sustainable for me indefinitely. Hope you understand.

And today, here in my weekly Substack newsletter, I’m posting that “February Books Read” in its entirety rather than just offering the link for you to click on. I’m doing so because I’d like to gauge how much interest among readers (followers, subscribers) there is for me to continue this format here. As much as it’s not sustainable for me to continue funding the blog indefinitely (see paragraph above), it’s also unsustainable to post both a Monthly Reading Post and a weekly newsletter in the same week.

I do see an option, which is that I could integrate references to my reading in regular weekly newsletters or even in a mid-week Note. This might be preferable, especially for those who favour short-form reading and are not as interested in books. On the other hand, I’ve really loved having that monthly book conversation, and I would be sad not to be fostering space for a reading community. Especially since that kind of space seems to be less and less available, at a time when many of us feel more and more need for it.

So I hope you’ll read through the rest of this newsletter — which is, starting directly below, taken directly from Tuesday’s blogpost. Skim it, if you’re not as keen on book content, but enough that you might leave me some feedback, please. And if you get to the bottom, I’ve included a teeny bit of the content that many of you seem to appreciate, even if it always makes me feel more vulnerable (Hint: OOTDs ;-)

Here’s that bookpost:

A view of a local, Indigenous-owned bookstore, whose shelves boast both new and used books, looking down from the mezzanine

As I mentioned in my most recent Substack newsletter, I’ve been culling books again, and as many of you will know, it can be a painstaking (and time-stealing!) process. My method for letting go involves jotting down names and titles of each one I surrender — and then I have a box for those a second-hand bookshop might take (no ink markings at all, generally), and those that will go straight to a thrift shop or a Little Free Library.

You’ve probably guessed that I’m going to use this process as a partial excuse for why my February Books Read post is only appearing in the last week of March. Yep! I’d love to say I’ll do much better in March.

As usual, the numbering in this post comes from my annual handwritten reading journal, and the italicized text below is directly transcribed from that journal’s pages (once upon a time, I simply included photographs of those pages, but too many of you found my handwriting tough to decipher, especially in the photographed format). Notes to myself, that is, so that I can remember a book and remember my response to it, rather than any attempt at a more polished, edited review.

I’ve used regular font for any additions to my journal notes. As well, I’ve included links to any posts on my Instagram reading account (to which, by the way, I’m trying to post a bit more regularly — but also considering abandoning. We’ll see. . . )

9. A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck. Sophie Elmhirst. Creative non-fiction; Marriage; Sailing; Survival/Adventure; Biography.

Elmhirst tells the gripping story of Maurice and Marlyn Bailey, building her narrative from interviews, newspaper reports, the Baileys’ journals, and the best-selling book they wrote, 117 Days Adrift (1974), about their survival for 117 days in an inflatable raft in the Pacific Ocean after a whale sunk their yacht. Of course, their adventure and astonishing survival story is the book’s central focus, but Elmirst’s focus on the couple’s marriage makes it so much more.

Maurice’s childhood, his social awkwardness and isolation — which resulted in him storing up knowledge, becoming an adept climber and sailor. And somehow thus attracting confident outgoing Maralyn, who gave them the goal of acquiring a sailboat and setting sail on their adventure.

The details of preparation and then the tense, page-after-page recording of those days on a life raft were propulsive — but just as impressive was Elmhirst’s insistence on tracing the couple’s lives after the public had mostly forgotten them. She builds a poignant yet somehow still amusing image of Maurice as a widower, in cranky old age — with surprisingly tolerant, loyal, and generous friends.

This one was recommended to me by the sales clerk at Murchie’s, with whom I often chat about books while she measures out my tea order. And now I’ll pass along the recommendation to any readers gathered here. Warning to anyone who lives with you: There are likely to be passages read aloud (but you will find them fascinating as well!).

10. Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It. Cory Doctorow. Non-fiction; Economics; Technology; Billionaire class; US Economic/Political history.

B. gave me this for Christmas, a few weeks after I’d heard a friend use the term as something she’d noted was gaining currency and which applied to so much of what we’ve all noticed happening in so many areas of our lives — ways in which so many of the benefits technology was supposedly bringing us have seemed to sour over the past decade or so. Doctorow, writing about the ways this use of technology / computerization / algorithms to make so many aspects of our lives “smarter,” is writing in the US, specifically about the way the politico-legal system has changed over the last half-century to allow monopolization by ever larger entities, thus drastically reducing consumer choice and, consequently, power.

It’s a fascinating, cogent analysis and, honestly, depressing as hell. But knowledge is power, so they say, and Doctorow ends his book with a substantive section offering hope through strategies we can all use to push for broader collective change via legislation. It’s Americans he’s exhorting to push for this legislative change, but he gives examples of similar strategies that other countries, Canada included, have tried or are trying. With varying success, yes, but he points out that some useful models are emerging. He also offers suggestions for what we can do as consumers; many of these suggestions work regardless of our individual citizenship.

So much of this book — published late last year — aligns with increasing attention to the corrosive role billionaires are playing in the current US political situation and validates the ongoing activism aimed at this aspect of the market. Important, recommended reading.

11. The Brutal Telling. Louise Penny. Mystery; Police Procedural; Chief Inspector Gamache/Three Pines Series; Eastern Townships, Quebec setting.

In this fifth book in the Gamache series, Penny has hit a darker, richer vein with a near-mythic framing. A cabin deep in the woods, in the dark of night where a harrowing story is being told — to whom? by whom? — of a terrible force, a combination of “chaos, the furies, Disease, Famine, Despair” threatening to destroy one last tiny, remaining village in an unnamed, far-off land in search of “the thing that was stolen.”

Oliver, a friendly and welcoming innkeeper whom we’ve come to know in earlier volumes, is transfixed by the story as he sits in that cabin with the Hermit. Then almost loses his way on the dark path back home after midnight.

And the next morning a body is found in Oliver’s inn and Gamache must once again confront an evil that has revealed itself in Three Pines, the idyllic village in the Eastern Townships.

A big book, one to sink onto. Also one that has me looking forward to the next volume (and wondering why I resisted the series for so long).

12. The Rooftoppers. Katherine Rundell. Children’s novel (8-12?); Historical (Victorian) fantasy; quest adventure; orphan; music; London; Paris.

An inviting nook in that same local bookstore — Massy Books– filled with children’s books and decorated with a charming woodland vibe. I really need to get a grandkid or two down here!

I read a review of this Children’s/YA novel somewhere online and then recommended it to a granddaughter and her Mom. “Yeah, yeah, sounds good,” — but meanwhile I thought I’d check out the e-book and see if it’s as good as the review suggested. I loved the rich respite of well-written prose, a lyrical fantasy that takes readers to the rooftops of Paris where a young girl (raised by the wonderfully eccentric and understanding guardian — a fellow passenger on the shipwreck that left a baby alive, floating in a cello case) — searches for her mother, generally assumed to have perished in that wreck. The power of belief, the value of the improbable — as guardian Charles says, “You should never ignore a possible.”

I’d recommend for a precocious 8 or perhaps a 13 looking for a relaxing book through which they might enter a fantasy, an escape that nonetheless addresses life’s challenges, if obliquely. And also for you, if you’re wanting the simple pleasure of a good story in the company of a few likeable, non-corming characters. Put me in mind of some ofJess Kidd’s books for adults.

The Darkest Evening. Ann Cleeves. Mystery; Police Procedural; Vera Stanhope series; Northumberland setting.

What can I say in my defence? While moving between Il Barone Rampante and Louise Aronson’s Elderhood and also dipping in and out of a fascinating book about the cultural history of notebooks, I craved some escapist reading and, after all, I did need to catch up with Vera Stanhope. Only two more left for me in this series, and I’m curious to read them as this volume continues the trend of making Vera more vulnerable, more willing to move through that vulnerability to reach out socially in small ways and larger.

We find out that she has some extended family living by — in a manor house! True, the current owners are struggling with the upkeep of their estate, and Vera sees them as belonging to a much different class from hers, but we get a new perspective on her childhood, adolescence, and particularly on her determination as a young adult to move away from the harm those earlier years did to her.

She unbends considerably towards Holly, the young female detective whose need for approval grates on her, and she even envisions herself as a kind of great-aunt or godmother figure to the infant boy she rescues. (She still plays havoc with her protegé Joe’s family life though!). Recommended, but you really should start with the first in the series.

14. Il Barone Rampante. Italo Calvino. Read in Italian, but available in English as The Baron in the Trees (1959, translation by Archibald Colquhoun; 2019 translation by Ann Goldstein). Literary fiction; Historical fiction/fantasy; Eco-literature; Set in 18th-century Liguria; philosophical; comic; picaresque.

I found this SO much easier to read this time round (I posted about my first reading back in 2022. Apparently those additional 3+ years of Saturday-morning Italian class made a big difference! Yay! And I loved it even more second time ’round. . . sorry I can’t find/make time to say more about why. Maybe when I read it again, a few years from now 😉

15. Katabasis. R.F. Kuang. Fantasy; Literary fiction; Academic fantasy; Katabasis (Journey to the underworld); Romance.

I was “last week years old” when I learned that a katabasis is a genre recounting a journey to the underworld, and I didn’t learn this when reading this novel. I learned it when texting with a granddaughter who told me about a book she’s reading (the Italian sub-title is, roughly, Descent into Hell) and when I looked it up I learned that it was a c/katabasis. And that was when I retrospectively connected her reading — and this new-to-me genre term — to the book her mother had recommended to me months earlier.

Dante’s Inferno would be the most immediate example (unless there’s a whole swathe of horror films I’m not familiar with, actually a likely possibility). Kuang alludes to that classic and also to many others, from a wide survey of cultural / religious traditions. And she makes the Dante allusion very clear in her last lines: “Alice climbed up, Peter close behind her. And together they emerged, to rebehold the stars.“ (my emphasis: pop those words into your browser and you’ll find yourself pointed towards Dante’s lines across a variety of websites). Also, whoops, sorry about the spoiler!

Not for everyone, this is a 541-page novel (I’m very skeptical of this Guardian reviewer’s claim to have read it one sitting!) full of literary and cultural allusions and set in an alternative academic world, one in which two doctoral candidates in Magick are subject to the same hierarchical and bureaucratic struggles as what many of us experienced in our sojourn in those hallowed halls. I will admit to skimming, but also to revelling in the novel’s description of academic’s weird, sticky, perfidious classism and the power structures that make sexist behaviour and sexual exploitation inevitable. The damage done.

As well, while some might find Kuang’s display of erudition tedious, perhaps pretentious, I either geeked out recognizing some of her allusions or, more often, had fun looking them up. As well, I was fascinated by the landscape of the underworld she imagines, pulled from a variety of traditions rather than the Classical, Eurocentric one. And as my daughter (a big fan of Kuang) pointed out in a WhatsApp exchange with her Mom, “It’s so quotable,” and she shared a link she’d found with a collection of quotations from the novel: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/209877287-katabasis

I’ve written about two of Kuang’s earlier books, Babel and Yellowface. Links will take you to those posts, if you’re interested.

That’s it for my February Reading. I hope you’ll find something here that you might want to add to your own TBR list — and I’m always happy to read your comments. What have you read lately that you’d recommend to other readers here? What were you less enthusiastic about? Thrown any books across the room lately? Do tell, if you can pull yourself away from whatever you’re reading at the moment.

Okay, that’s it, we’re back to my Saturday newsletter now, and I’d really appreciate you letting me know your response to the Monthly Reading Post, as represented by February 2026. So that you can get an idea of the kind of rich conversation these posts have evoked in the past, here are comments left on my February Reading post by two long-time correspondents:

Maria:

I’ve added A Marriage at Sea to my To be Read list. I read and enjoyed The Darkest Evening a few years ago during the pandemic. It’s my favourite of the Vera Stanhope novels that I’ve read. Your reviews of Enshittification and Katabasia were fascinating and thought provoking. While I’m tempted by both, and admire your ability to read them, I think the times are too dark for me to go there. I may, however, look into Doctorow’s suggestions for what consumers can do in these difficult times.

I’m currently reading The Space Between Our Stars by Australian broadcaster Indira Naidoo about the death by suicide of her beloved younger sister. It is devastatingly sad but also uplifting and, at times, even funny.

I’m also reading Her Sunburnt Country: the Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar by Deborah Fitzgerald. Mackellar, a poet and novelist, wrote My Country, an iconic poem about Australia that everyone of my generation studied at school. It was still taught when my daughter was in primary school some 20 years ago and is probably still taught today. Mackellar, who was born in 1885 into a wealthy family, lived until 1968 and never married. The book was a gift and, though it’s early days, I’m enjoying it very much.

and

Dottoressa:

I’ve read A. Cleeves and L. Penny’s books from your February list. I was very curious why both you and Sue didn’t read Penny’s books so far
It is interesting how books,authors and themes seem to be intertwined (at least in my case)
I’ve finished Lily King’s Heart the Lover,about the campus-set messy love triangle of two boys and a girl,later (after wives,husbands,children… in between) reunited in a hospital. Would like to read her Writers and Lovers as well
Jennie Godfrey’s The Barbecue at No.9, another little nostalgic gem of a book about Eighties,Live Aid Concert and a street full of residents with sincere stories and some secrets. Loved it
I’ve read A.A. Milne’s Winnie The Book again and enjoyed every sentence
If anyone else but young, successful and beautiful R.F. Kuang wanted to write a publishing industry critique,cancel culture and social media influence on authors,following intelectual theft done by June Hayward,white author who steels the manuscript from her deceased,highly productive and successful Asian colleague,beautiful Athena Liu,Yellowface would be completely different book. There are many controversies about the novel,but reading it and reading reviews about it….the book has a clever beginning and a lot of interesting traps to fall in . I’ve read your review again yesterday and agree with you
Serendipity or not,I’ve read biographies of two stand-up comics I like to watch-first one was Sarah Millican’s How To Be Champion and Zarna Garg’s This American Woman- A One In a Billion Memoir. How often there are sad things in the background…
I’m reading now (so it’ll be on my March or even April list :)) The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai and can’t help but see some things through the lens of Garg’s autobiography
Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast is a lovely thriller and I have the second one in the series on the waiting list already
Loreth Anne White’s The Unquiet Bones and The Swimmer were both ready to read at the same time,so I did it,prefer more the first one
Dottoressa

And because I keep my promises, and I’m grateful to you for reading all the way to the bottom, here are a few What I Wore posts in which you might notice the Winter Gear gradually giving way to the possibility of Spring . . .

Not sure what I’ll manage to post next weekend. If all goes well with the first two, my dentist will go on to extract all four of my wisdom teeth next week. I imagine there will be some convalescence required. (I’m quite nervous overall, but have great confidence in my dentist — if you have horror stories about wisdom teeth extraction, please hold them until I report back to you that all has gone well! Luckily, mine have been fully emerged for many decades, nothing is impacted.) Cross your fingers for me. Meanwhile, I’ll be reading and thinking about your comments. And I’ll have your thoughtful Hearts Clicked to encourage me.

xo,

f