Other Women's Stories: What I'm reading this week (7/8/19)

Last week I finished:

I had kind of a rough readcation last week. I didn't feel well for much of it, plus there was a lot of family drama going on, which sapped my energy and joy. I didn't get to a couple of organizing projects I was hoping to begin. Still, I did finish three books, so I guess I did accomplish something.

There is almost nothing I love more than sitting down with a Flavia de Luce mystery. I only have two more to go until I'm caught up, and I'm not exactly looking forward to the day that I do. But, at that point, you can be assured that I'll just begin the series again. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd is the eighth in the series. In this installment, 12-year-old Flavia has just returned to Buckshaw from her short-lived stay at a girls school in Canada to find that her father is in the hospital with pneumonia. Never at a loss for things to do or ways to comfort herself, she agrees to deliver a letter to the local woodworker for the vicar's wife, when she happens upon his lifeless body strung up on the back of his bedroom door. Thus begins a journey to discover what happened and who done it. The murder in this one and the meandering search for clues isn't my favorite of the Flavia plotlines, but the actual murder cases have almost become secondary to me at this point. I think I like each book in the series more than the last. Flavia is always the same, but I grow to love her more with each book. This one ends with a bang, which I anticipated but which shook me up nonetheless. I can't wait to read the next book to find out what happens next. I recommend this series with all my heart. Just don't ever tell me if you don't love it, too. I would feel too bad. My rating: 5 stars.

To be honest, I bought Gretchen Rubin's Outer Order, Inner Calm because I buy all of Rubin's books, but I had low expectations. I have not enjoyed her last couple of books, and I find her overbearing approach more and more annoying. Still, I will read any decluttering book you put in front of me. And frankly, if my home can look as beautiful as Rubin's, I'll put up with a little annoyance by way of delivery. Well, I have to say, this ended up becoming one of my favorite of her books. It's a somewhat new approach to the genre. Instead of insisting the person overrun by clutter and disorganization follow a prescribed A to Z method of handling and clearing it, she knows folks aren't the same, and a one-size-fits-all approach won't work. Instead, she gives dozens and dozens of practical ideas from which you can take what works for you and your particular clutter issues. Each idea has its own page, and the book practically reads itself. It may be coincidence, but while reading this book I was finally able to jettison a stack of boxes and large items that had been taking up an entire corner of our basement for over a year (a project begun with Decluttering at the Speed of Life). I found the entire book helpful, and I didn't have the usual negative reaction to her bossiness that I have with her more recent work. I found this one very useful, and I can see myself returning to it. My rating: 4 stars.

Years and years ago, before I got so disgusted with contemporary fiction that I decided to stop reading fiction forever, the last book I read that impressed me was Alice McDermott's Charming Billy. The book won the National Book Award in 1998, and little did I know it was my introduction to what would become a favorite author upon my return to fiction decades later. I remembered next to nothing about the story when I picked it up last month, so I essentially got to read it again for the first time and decide if my fondness for it was deserved. This is the story of charming Irish-Catholic Billy Lynch who has just died. The action of the story takes place all in one day--the day of Billy's funeral. There is a lot of looking back, of course, to the days when Billy wasn't yet an alcoholic, before he married his wife of 30 years, Maeve, and when he was working to save money to bring his Irish girlfriend back to America to marry him. As all of McDermott's stories, this one is quiet. The characters are folks you could have known all your life (especially if you lived in a New York City borough in the 1950s and were Irish-Catholic). Her plots never seem to wander very far from Irish characters in New York City in the 1900s (of course, I haven't read them all...). I love that about her work. I liked this book, but I did find it a little slow and draggy in parts. Her books seldom have much by way of plot, excelling instead in characterization. This one just felt a little long to me. But I still think my younger self was on to something, and stopping her search for good fiction after this one wasn't a bad move, although I'm very glad to have found her The Ninth Hour and Someone upon my return to fiction. My rating: 3.5 stars.

This week I'll be reading: