Looking for a good book? Nonfiction? I’m eyeball deep for the second time in The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, by Peter Wohlleben. If you’ve not read it, do. It will introduce you to a world of wonder.

I read this little tome about three months back, bookmarked about 40 of its 250 pages, and returned it to the library only reluctantly, after I reached the renewal limit. I honestly thought I was done with it at that point (having removed all of my bookmarks). But today I thought of something I learned from it, and I wanted to know I had the right details, so I headed back to the library and checked it out again.

I planned to just look up the one detail I wondered about, but I find myself instead re-reading from page 1. I might just wind up buying the book.

This is something I love about books: I never know when one is going to take me by surprise and send me skittering down a rabbit hole to discover a new world. It’s intoxicating.

Re-reading, rewriting

So intoxicating that it sometimes inspires me. When I first read this book, I pulled out pencil and paper and started drawing; that’s something that happens only rarely. The reason I needed the book again today is because a fact from it started to make its way into a poem I was writing. I kept writing—if you’re me, you don’t risk interrupting a creative process, even for something the creation needs—and flagged the questionable detail to check later.

So here I am, ready to fact check, and instead I’ve fallen back into the wonderland of this book.

At some point, I’m confident I’ll come across the detail I need. I only hope that by then I remember why I need it.

Mystery books are a guilty pleasure of mine. On television, I confess that I’ll watch almost any mystery or police procedural, and my relationship with audiobooks is similar—I just need a plot-driven mystery to focus my attention so I don’t hate all the other drivers on my highway. But I’m a bit more discerning about what I read in print.

Post-war intrigue

I’ve just discovered a new-to-me series that I’m quite enjoying, written by Anna Lee Huber with a heroine named Verity Kent. There are three of these published so far, and I’ve devoured the first two (albeit in reverse order) since the start of 2020. They’re set in the period just after World War I, and our heroine is a former Secret Service agent cut loose from her public service to make way for men returning from the war. She’s smart, gutsy, and doesn’t take herself too seriously, and the books are full of rich historical detail and post-war political intrigue.

I’ve seen the series described in some places as historical romance, and alternatively as “cozy mystery,” and I don’t think either term is fair (and yes, you correctly detect my bias against both). These definitely are not romance novels; there are some romantic entanglements, but they’re neither the focus nor driving element of the books; they’re maybe a decoration. As for “cozy mystery,” these fit some elements of the definition—female, amateur heroine, not a lot of violence—but they’re more intense and have more depth than most of that sub-genre. (Also, I’ll admit that I just can’t accept putting these books into the same sub-genre as the television series “Murder, She Wrote.”)

We can quibble over the genre or sub-genre, but I’ll keep reading, regardless how they’re categorized.

A hangman’s daughter

Just today I finished The Play of Death, by Oliver Potzsch, which is an altogether different sort of mystery, although again historical, part of a series, and including at least one amateur female heroine. Set in 1670 in the German area near Oberammergau, it actually offers a family of reluctant detectives: a hangman, his two daughters, and the husband of one doctor.

Again, we have a very twisting plot with lots of surprises, in this case connected with the early years of the Oberammergau Passion play, which is still performed every decade. Unlike the Verity Kent series, this is a long book—almost 500 pages in the paperback English edition—but it reads quickly.

I liked this one partly because it deals with social themes that are relevant today: class-based inequities, for one, and xenophobia, for another. The author addresses this in the afterword:

A historical novel also doesn’t exist in a political vacuum. This book was written at a time of controlled right-wing demonstrations everywhere in Germany, and later during the conflict over the increasing number of refugees arriving before our very doors here in Europe. I’ve seen some dreadful comments on Facebook by people who have been indoctrinated by right-wing hate groups. … Perhaps interest in my novel will provide not just excitement and entertainment but an opportunity to rethink some of this.

We can hope.

I‘m a sucker for mystery reading, and I’ve just posted a new review at Escape Into Life of a Cuban mystery called Grab a Snake by the Tail. It’s set in Havana’s Chinatown district, which I didn’t even know existed, and it’s full of enough seedy atmosphere and surprising Cuban-Chinese culture to make me wish for a real-life peak at the neighborhood. It’s a strange book, and I had some love-hate issues with the detective protagonist (I’d call it Cuban noir, and our hero is definitely flawed), but it was fun. If you like mysteries, give it a try.

Want to stick closer to home? Pick up Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. This one is set in Texas, and the writing is rich and textured and an absolute joy. Our hero is an African-American Texas ranger sent to investigate a pair of murders in a tiny rural community, and the plot is shot through with social and racial issues. It’s gritty and real and swimming in blues music and rural Texas. I just learned that a sequel is coming out in September. I don’t want to wait. Continue reading →