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Once a Castle by Sarah Arthur

Feb17

I found this second book in the Carrick Hall series hard going at first, but perhaps I just started when I was tired and not in the mood. When I finally got several chapters in, I began enjoy this story, sequel to Once a Queen, which I reviewed here.

In this book, Frankie the gardener boy’s younger siblings–Jack, Tilly, Elspeth, and Georgie Addison– take center stage, along with the mysterious and silent Arash Tasbari, an immigrant/refugee from Iran whose Shakespeare-quoting grandfather owns a bookshop in the village. More characters join the cast: Charlie and Aurora Heapworth, Tilly’s crush and Elspeth’s best friend respectively; Paxton and Mrs. Fealston, the family servants or perhaps guardians; and from Ternival, a fisherman and his granddaughter, Zahra. Indeed, there are so many characters and so much movement from scene to scene and setting to setting, that I almost got lost several times as I struggled to remember who was who and where they all were and who knew what and when.

And I wasn’t the only one in a muddle. The characters themselves lose each other and find each other an amazing number of times before the story is resolved. The only stable (but actually unstable and crazy) character is the evil enchantress, Mindra, who always shows up where she is least wanted with the singular purpose of reclaiming the crown and the gems of Ternival along with her power in order to make a mess of everything, I suppose. (What else do archvillains want power for?) Even Mindra travels back and forth between worlds a few times, but wherever the crown and the gems are, there she is, too.

A map and a list of characters at the beginning of the book help the reader to make sense of it all, and it is a grand adventure. Talking animals, dryads, giants, dwarfs, centaurs, and a whistle-pig fill out the cast of characters. And the plot moves along at a fast pace. I would recommend reading the first book in the series before tackling this one, but Once a Castle can stand alone. I know because I couldn’t remember much of anything from the first book when I sat down to read this one, and I managed to enjoy this rather rollicking fairy tale fantasy anyway. There is to be a third book, titled Once a Crown, and I look forward to reading and enjoying that one, too. It’s not The Lord of the Rings, but it will do.

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

Oct21

This three-volume, more than 700 page novel is one of the best of Trollope’s works that I have read so far. Thankfully, I have many more Trollope novels yet to read, since he wrote and published over fifty. I think I’ve read about ten. And I have yet to finish The Palliser novels, which series includes The Eustace Diamonds.

The Eustace Diamonds, especially the character of Lizzie Greystock Eustace, owes something to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and to Becky Sharp. Lizzie is Becky Sharp, with money to spare and not quite as much sharp intelligence. The money comes from Lizzie’s conveniently deceased first husband, and her lack of foresight and basic intellectual capacity shows itself as the story progresses after the death of her husband, Sir Florian Eustace. Lizzie certainly has beauty and charm, but she gets herself into a tangled mess over the Eustace family diamonds, a mess that Becky Sharp could surely have avoided had she been blessed with as much money and station as Lizzie.

According to the introduction to my edition of The Eustace Diamonds, Trollope’s novel was also influenced by Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. Both books are named for their MacGuffin, a jewel or set of jewels, and the jewels become a symbol of the ridiculous materialism and greed that drive most of the characters in the book. The very expensive Eustace diamonds, worth more than 10,000 pounds, are hidden, displayed, argued over, stolen, hidden again and stolen again in the course of this story, but now that I’ve finished the book I can hardly remember what actually happened to them in the end.

What I do remember is what happens to Lizzie and to her various friends, enemies, and suitors. I suppose that’s what is meant by a “character-driven novel.” I didn’t like Lizzie, and most of the other characters in the book were not sympathetic either, but I did find them to be very intriguing. What happens when a community of people get themselves into a web of lies and deceit and play-acting and and gossip and broken promises and mercenary motives and actions? Well, The Eustace Diamonds happens.

I’m surprised that more people haven’t mined Trollope for dramatic purposes. There are TV mini-series of Doctor Thorne and The Way We Live Now, as well as one called The Pallisers and another called The Barchester Chronicles. I suppose the latter two try to smush all of the books in those series of half a dozen novels into one TV mini-series? Methinks it would take a lot of smushing and crushing.

Anyway, I recommend The Eustace Diamonds as a book, either along with the series of Palliser novels or as a stand alone read. Unfortunately, I found a bit of myself in Lizzie, and I was motivated to take that part of myself that tries to justify and cover up my sins and subject it to a bit of repentance. You may not find a moral reckoning for yourself in The Eustace Diamonds, but I do believe you will be entertained and reminded of some home truths, such as “The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil,” or perhaps, “What a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive.“

Time and Time Again by James Hilton

Oct1

James Hilton was the author of the best-selling novels Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Random Harvest. These three were his 1930’s pre-WW2 novels and his most successful. Time and Time Again was published in 1953 when Hilton was 52 years old, and it was his final published novel. The story takes place in the time in which it was published, the early 1950’s, and its protagonist, Charles Anderson, is 52 years old, looking back on his life and diplomatic career with a very British outlook that combines measured judgment, some regret, and overall contentment.

It would seem that Charles Anderson is James Hilton to some extent, but the differences are as obvious as the similarities. James Hilton was married and divorced twice and childless. Charles Anderson has a college romance with a lower class Cockney office worker, and later marries and has a son. If the book has a theme or a set of ideas, it’s about those two kinds of relationships: upper middle class and lower class, and fathers and sons. Even though Hilton moved to California, became a screenwriter in Hollywood and an American citizen, the concerns in Time and Time Again are very British.

Anderson is never very sure of his place in society, in the diplomatic corps, and even in his own family. The entire story is told from Charles’ perspective, so we’re never entirely sure whether his insights and evaluations are completely accurate. In fact, Charles, although he knows his own worth and intelligence, is never sure whether his view of life, his own life in particular, is accurate or not, which ends up making him a very endearing character.

I tried to think, while I was reading, of other writers that this book reminded me of. The only one that came to mind is Nevil Shute, who is also very British, with books set in the 1940’s and 50’s. Hilton’s novel has the same sort of gentle, unhurried exploration of British society and British mores and the changes that manifested themselves in the first half of the twentieth century that Shute writes about. Someone wrote that Hilton gives readers an idealistic, unrealistic picture of Britain in his books, and maybe he does in other books. However, Time and Time Again seems realistic in its portrayal of an ordinary, average upper middle class man and how he comes to terms with his own capacities and limitations.

It’s not an exciting read, more contemplative and somewhat thought-provoking. Like the man Charles Anderson, it’s a modest story about a modest Englishman and his interaction with the events and changing culture of the first half of the twentieth century.

Chronicles of Wonder: The Story-Formed Life of C.S. Lewis by Leah Boden

Jun23

This juvenile biography of C.S. Lewis by Leah Boden, aka the Modern Miss Mason, serves as a good introduction for children ages nine to thirteen to the life and work of Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis. The book begins with a brief introduction entitled “Meet Jack.” Then, Ms. Boden goes on to tell readers about Jack’s childhood at Little Lea in Belfast, his schooldays in England, education at Oxford, his service as a soldier in World War I, and his Christian conversion story. The book continues through the rest of Lewis’s life; it’s not just a childhood biography. Lewis’s friends, Tolkien and the other Inklings, come into the story, and there’s a special focus on his close relationship with his brother Warnie. The book also has a chapter about Lewis’s marriage late in his life, to the American Joy Davidson, and finally her death and then Lewis’s own illness and death.

This biography, appropriate for children, doesn’t dwell on, in fact barely mentions, some of the more difficult events and personal relationships in Lewis’s life. Difficulties in Jack’s relationships with his father and with “Minto”, his deceased friend’s mother for whom he took responsibility for many years, are gently alluded to but not described with any real negativity at all. The famous break in Lewis’s friendship with Tolkien is never mentioned at all. Nor is Warnie’s struggle with alcoholism. It’s a “sanitized” version of Lewis’s life, if you will, but perfectly fit for children who are Narnia fans and who want to know about the creator and author of the Narnia tales.

I enjoyed reading about Lewis in a narrative story style. The dialog in the book is mostly taken from Lewis’s actual writings and from people who knew him and wrote down what he said at the time. So the book is as true as a story-formed tale can be. Author Leah Boden certainly achieved her aim in this biography—that children “be inspired by the writer filled with wonder.”

This biography is one of a series of such biographies called “Tales of Boldness and Faith”. The first book in the series, The Angel Orphan: Charlotte Mason Finds Her Way Home, is already available for purchase. Another book in the series is due out in August, 2025: Brave Princess Aina: The Courageous Heart of Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Patrons of Meriadoc Homeschool Library can check out Chronicles of Wonder or The Angel Orphan from the library now.

Valley of Dragons by Christina Baehr

Apr24

The series, The Secrets of Ormdale by Christina Baehr:

  • Wormwood Abbey, Book #1
  • Drake Hall, Book #2
  • Castle of the Winds, Book #3
  • City of Serpents, Book #4
  • Valley of Dragons, Book #5

I already reviewed the first book in this series, and now that I’ve finished all five books in The Secrets of Ormdale saga, I’m going to give you my thoughts on the entire series, rather than review each book individually. My immediate reaction is: excellent fantasy and romance fiction! Set in Victorian London and Yorkshire, these books are appropriately Victorian, with a nod to “new ideas” (at the time) such as women’s suffrage and equality of the sexes and classes. Each book tells a separate contained story, and yet each one leads on to the next. The themes and characters are obviously influenced by Christian and Charlotte Mason ideas and principles, but with a light touch, not at all didactic. There is some exploration of the status and plight of Jewish people in England during the time period when many Ashkenazi Jews were fleeing Eastern Europe to come to British shores. And the central character and narrator, Edith Worms, is a part of a delightful and deeply Christian family who live their commitment to Christ and his teachings rather than grounding their Christianity in Victorian cultural morality.

So, that’s the overview. As for Book #5 in the series, Valley of Dragons, it is much longer than the other four books in the series, clocking in at 499 pages. But the author needed all of those pages to finish her story. As the story commences in Book #5, there are yet many secrets to be revealed, prisoners to be released, enemies to be defeated, and dragons to be tamed.

About those dragons, these stories do feature reptiles, many kinds of serpents, salamanders, cockatrices, basilisks, sea monsters, wyverns, and lizards–even a Quetzalcoatl–all collectively termed as dragons in this alternate world. Indeed, Britain harbors at least four families of dragon keepers who have kept their many species of dragons safe and secret for centuries.

Some literary experts insist that dragons and serpents must always only be shown in literature as “bad guys”, archetypal monsters and symbols of satanic influence, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Anyone who writes about a “good dragon” or a dragon ally or pet is inverting the symbols and distorting the fundamental meaning of the literary tradition, and maybe even Scripture itself. However, Edith Worms and her father, a clergyman, and I beg to differ:

“‘You said once that the church had been a comfort to you when you were young, Father, because it mentioned dragons. But aren’t they always a symbol of evil in the scriptures?’

‘A symbol, yes. To say evil is like a dragon is to say evil is deadly and long-lived. . . . But not all of the dragons in the scriptures are evil. What of Job’s leviathan? You will not find a passage more full of wonder than that. Everything was good when it was created. . . .’

‘When I look at the dragons, I see something beautiful–something worth protecting,” I said. . . . “But the people of Dale, they see something fearful. Something only an archangel can save them from.’

‘God made both people and dragons, my dear. What we must find is a way for us to live together peacefully–as He intended. . . ,’ Father said encouragingly.”

Dragons can certainly signify evil and danger and monstrosity with in the literary tradition, but they can also simply stand for power and peril and wonder within that same tradition. Stories are not bound by such petty rules of literary nitpicking. Nor is Scripture. The serpent on a pole that Mose was instructed to elevate before the Israelites in the wilderness was a symbol and vehicle of healing (Numbers 21:4-9). The dragons in The Secrets of Ormdale are certainly dangerous, like lions and tigers are dangerous, but they are subject to men (and women) to whom God gave the job of tending His creation, including all kinds of reptiles, even dragons.

Dragons aside for the moment, these books are all about secrets, especially family secrets, and how they can destroy relationships and even block love itself. The books do involve romance as Edith learns to “open her heart” and accept the pain and loss that loving someone can entail. The romantic scenes themselves are completely chaste, with only a few kisses described, but there are allusions to the perversion of sexual attraction as one character recalls being sexually assaulted and another is kidnapped and almost forced into an unwilling marriage.

I thought these books with their emphasis on freedom and openness and the free choices of responsible men and women to care for each other in mutual, self-sacrificial and loving relationship were a perfect antidote to the typical Gothic romance with its brooding atmosphere of secrets and seduction. In The Secrets of Ormdale, all secrets are eventually brought out into the open, and the happily-ever-after is built on a firm foundation of mutual respect and truth.

The entire series, The Secrets of Ormdale, is available for check out from Meriadoc Homeschool Library for adults and young adult who are prepared for romantic themes, practical young heroines, and of course, beautiful and perilous dragons.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Apr18

Brower, Beth. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volumes 1-4. Rysdon Press, 2019-2021.

I saw these books recommended here and there on the internet, and the synopses and reviews sounded interesting, so I decided to try the first volume of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. (I assume that “unselected” means “unedited”.) Miss Lion’s journal in its first volume was a brief read, only 107 pages, but it was indeed enticing enough to make me immediately order a copy of Volume 2. Which led to Volumes 3 and 4, and I am hooked.

In Volume 1 we meet Miss Emma M. Lion as she arrives at Lapis Lazuli House in the neighborhood of St. Crispian’s, London on March 5, 1883. Miss Lion’s journal entries are filled with intriguing and mysterious references to various incidents and persons such as “The Great Burning of 1882” and “The Incident which led to The Scar” and “the monkey’s head Maxwell sent me” and “the Roman centurion (ghost) at Jacob’s Well” and more. Some of these are explained as one reads on; others are left to the imagination and most probably to later volumes. This first volume of the journals really just introduces Emma Lion and a cast of characters who include a nefarious uncle, a formidable aunt, a few friends and cousins, and various inhabitants of the slightly magical, eccentric neighborhood of St. Crispian’s.

In Volume 2, Emma, determined to remain in her home, Lapis Lazuli House, despite financial and social difficulties, begins to enter into multiple adventures and schemes and to add a bit a romance to her life. Even though Emma is not particularly interested in romantic entanglements or marriage, and even though she is not particularly eligible, having little or no money, she does have an awful lot of young men in her orbit: the photographer to whom she rents a room, her childhood nemesis turned into a handsome bachelor, the duke who lives in the neighborhood, a poetic and somewhat eccentric Church of England curate, and a charming scoundrel named Jack, to name a few. Emma navigates all of these with grace and wit, while also doing the bidding of her autocratic Aunt Eugenia, somewhat reluctantly, and managing at least a stand off with her arch-enemy Cousin Archibald.

At this point and into volumes 3 and 4, the story begins to remind one of a TV series (like Downton Abbey or All Creatures Great and Small) with lots of characters, some lovely dialog, little stories embedded into a larger story, and hints and revelations that pique the curiosity and keep one coming back for more. So far the romance is chaste and Victorian, and the language is tame, although there are a very few instances in which characters use God’s name in vain, which I wish were not present. Since I’ve only read Volumes 1-4 so far, I can’t guarantee that Emma remains a paragon of virtue, by twenty-first century standards. By Victorian standards, she’s already lost paragon status by the end of Volume 2. However, her adventures are not really shocking for anyone who is not Aunt Eugenia or of her ilk, and Emma is a church-going, Scripture reading, young lady in all I have read so far.

I love these books, and I foresee spending a great deal of time reading Emma’s journals. Author Beth Brower has promised:  “the plan is to write four years of Emma’s life, give or take. And as every volume covers two months of Emma’s life, that is, indeed, six volumes each year.” So, twenty-four or more volumes. (Volume 2 and succeeding volumes are much longer than Volume 1; 191 pages for Volume 4.) At about $12.00 apiece in paperback, I also foresee spending a great deal of money collecting all of Miss Lion’s journals. If you read books in ebook form, you will have a much less expensive journey, should you decide to read your way through the Unselected Journals. If you can get them from the library, even better; however Rysdon Press seems to be Ms. Brower’s personal imprint, and many libraries do not purchase self-published books as a matter of policy. (Oh, I think Kindle Unlimited may have them for free.)

Still, here I go to order Volumes 5 and 6. At least, you will be able to check out Volumes 1-6 from Meriadoc Homeschool Library in the future. As I said, I am hooked.

The Wager by David Grann

Feb10

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. Doubleday, 2023.

Not a tale for the faint-hearted. The Wager is the name of the ship that wrecked in this harrowing story of hunger, violence, and rebellion, not an actual gambling wager. However, these sailors of the mid-18th century were wagering their very lives when they went to sea as part of the British Navy, and many of them lost the wager, so to speak.

As part of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires that was really about naval superiority and about which country would rule the seas, The Wager set sail in 1740 as one of the ships in a fleet with a mission from His Majesty’s government: to engage and capture Spanish galleons “weakening Spanish holdings from the Pacific coast of South America to the Philippines.” To fulfill this mission, the Navy convoy of five warships would need to cross the Atlantic and round Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

Ay, there’s the rub. Cape Horn is notoriously dangerous, stormy, and difficult to navigate. The Wager and its crew became victims of that stormy and tumultuous passage, shipwrecked on a small, inhospitable island off the Pacific coast of Chile (Patagonia). And then, all h–l broke loose.

The main thing I learned from this true story is that I never want to sail around Cape Horn in any kind of sailing ship, even a modern one, and I hope to never be in a situation in which I and my companions are stranded on a desert island and starving. Apparently, hunger can make men into monsters–as can the lack of “spirits” for 18th century British sailors. Again, I repeat, while well-written and filled with intriguing details, this is not a story for the faint of heart. It is rather a tale of murder and mayhem, violence and degradation. And there are conflicting stories about what really happened on the island and on the way home for the thirty-three survivors (out of approximately 250 original crewmen and officers) who made it back to England. And to top it all off, the Navy convenes a court-martial when the emaciated survivors return to their native land, and all thirty-three men are in danger of being hung for their ordeal.

This incident in the history of the British navy predates Mutiny on the Bounty by about 50 years, and I had never heard of The Wager and its tragic fate. There’s a reason for that, in author David Grann’s estimation, as the reader will discover. If you are interested in sea stories, the novels of Patrick O’Brian and Herman Melville, and other tale spinners of the ocean, this narrative history will add to your ocean-going knowledge and lead you to more of the same. The book has extensive footnotes and a “Selected Bibliography” in the back as well much information about sailing, and navies, and war, and history of the 1700’s.

Did you know?

“To ‘toe the line’ derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To ‘pipe down’ was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and ‘piping hot’ was his call for meals. A ‘scuttlebutt’ was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was ‘three sheets to the wind’ when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To ‘turn a blind eye’ became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.”

Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope

Jan21

Trollope is fast making a bid to become my favorite of the British Victorian novelists. I love the story of how he worked as a civil servant in the post office for twenty years while writing novels on the side. “He trained himself to produce a given number of words an hour in the early morning before going off to his post office duties.” By this means, he eventually wrote and published 47 novels and 16 other books and became well known in the Victorian book world, especially for his series of six novels about clerical life in the made up county of Barsetshire.

I also like the novels themselves. Trollope lands somewhere between Dickens and Thackeray in tone. His novels are less sentimental and heart-rending than those of Dickens. The reader does begin to care about Trollope’s characters, but we see the flaws in each of them as well as the pathos, and we’re never too surprised or struck down when their lives are a jumble of good and bad as a result of poor and not-so-poor decisions and eventualities. I’ve not yet been moved to tears or deep emotion by any of Trollope’s novels.

Trollope’s heroes and heroines are human and flawed, but Trollope is not so cynical and world-weary as Thackeray on the opposite side. (Vanity, but enjoyable vanity.)Trollope’s books have a lot to say about marriage and romantic relationships, both prudent and imprudent, mercenary and idealistic. But his characters are generally multi-dimensional, not completely out to marry for love or for money or for social position, instead maybe for some combination of the three.

Anyway, I read all the Barsetshire Chronicles last year and the year before, and then I decided to continue on with Trollope’s political series of novels, The Palliser Novels. The Barsetshire novels take place mostly outside London among people who are country people even though they may rich and aspiring to be “citified.” The Palliser books are set in and around Parliament, and there is a great deal of talk about British politics and political maneuvering. It’s all very confusing for an American reader, and maybe even for a current day British reader. But I could just read through all of the political mumbo-jumbo and set it aside to get at the meat of the story, a tale in this second Palliser Novel of a young Irishman, Phineas Finn, who is flattered and cajoled into running for office in the British House of Commons and wins a seat therein. Then the rest of the book is about Phineas’s romantic adventures and entanglements with some parliamentary wrangling and angling thrown into the mix.

Phineas Fin is young and innocent and Irish when he comes to London to take his seat in the House of Commons. And by the end of the book three years later, he has become romantically involved with no less four different women, and yet managed to remain rather innocent, even if he is somewhat older and and wiser.

Phineas is a frustrating and endearing character, a “gentleman” working hard to maintain his own integrity and honor while swimming along in a sea of political intrigue and compromise and conflicting rules and societal norms. He becomes an outsider, then an insider, then an outsider again, all in the space of three busy years. And his romantic and monetary fortunes rise and fall just as quickly. He falls in and out of love several times, considers marrying for the sake of money or position, resolves to give up all money and position for the sake of the woman he loves, and finally ends up with the best of the four women he has been courting. But I wasn’t sure that in the end he would remain happy with the marital bargain he made.

It was a good story. One of the things it made me think about, on this day after the inauguration of our 47th president, was the responsibility that we have to pray for our politicians and elected officials. It’s not any easier now than it was in the nineteenth century to maintain one’s integrity and do the work of government in Washington, D.C. or London or even Austin, TX. I thought about praying especially for Vice-President Vance and for other younger men and women who have been elected to office for the first time. It really is something of a swamp up there, and it’s not easy to know when to compromise and when to stand firm and how to stay out of trouble and how to still keep the courage of one’s convictions.

So, Phineas Finn is the second of the Palliser Novels, and the third one is called The Eustace Diamonds, which I believe has nothing to do with Phineas Finn. Then comes a book entitled Phineas Redux, which I assume is all about our man Phineas Finn again. Will he return to Parliament? Will he become some other sort of public servant? Will his marriage work out? Will the other ladies that he didn’t marry reappear in his life? Stay tuned, as they say on TV.

Evidence! by Deborah Hopkinson

Jan13

Evidence! How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera by Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Nik Henderson. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

I read an adult nonfiction book called Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about Dr. John Snow and the 19th century London cholera outbreak associated with the Broad Street water pump. So, I knew the basic outlines of this picture book story by noted author Deborah Hopkinson. Still, it was good to be reminded that the solution of medical mysteries has always required dogged work and investigation to find evidence that will pinpoint the source of diseases and lead to treatments and a cure.

When cholera came to Broad Street and surrounding areas in London in 1854, the prevailing theory was that the disease was caused and spread by “bad air.” Dr. Snow, who had already been researching the disease of cholera for some time, believed that cholera was spread by sewage-contaminated water. This book tells the story of exactly how Dr. Snow proves his hypothesis and stops the Broad Street cholera epidemic from continuing to kill London’s tenement dwellers..

The text of this story is simple but detailed enough to make the story clear to young readers. Step-by-step, Ms. Hopkinson leads us through the thought processes of Dr. Snow as he asks questions and interviews people to test his hypothesis and to eventually show the people of the Broad Street neighborhood what they must do to stop the cholera outbreak.

The illustrations in the book by Nik Henderson are adequate, depicting a foggy, Dickensian London with Dr. Snow moving quickly and confidently through each picture on a quest to find the answers to the cholera problem. The appendices include a brief restating of “the case against the Broad Street pump”, a short biographical sketch of Dr. Snow, a list of major infectious diseases and their causes, and a list of books and internet resources for adults and children about cholera and other infectious disease epidemics.

This post here at Semicolon, called Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague and Disease in Children’s Books, could be helpful for those who want to pursue the subject further.

The Best Adult and Young Adult Fiction I Read in 2024

Jan7

If it’s good for young adults (older teens) it’s probably good for adults, too, and vice-versa. So, these are the adult fiction books I really enjoyed in 2024. (Links are to reviews here at Semicolon)

  • Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse. I read this one for Cindy Rollins’ summer course. Wodehouse is always good and funny and just all-around delightful.
  • Flambards, The Edge of the Cloud, and Flambards in Summer by K.M. Peyton. I’ve wanted to re-read these British young adult romance/horse books for a long time, and I finally found copies this year and read them. Just about as good as I remembered them to be.
  • The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope. I read a lot of Trollope in 2024, and I’m reading another book by Trollope now in the first days of 2025. Almost as good as Dickens and Thackeray.
  • Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope.
  • Stateless by Elizabeth Wein. Pair this book about the early days of aviation with the Flambards trilogy. They are all good.
  • The Swedish Nightingale: Jenny Lind by Elisabeth Kyle. A lightly fictionalized biography of the famous singer.
  • Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle. Another fictionalized biography, but mostly factual. And clean. And not iconoclastic or deconstructionist.
  • Pastures of the Blue Crane by H.F. Brinsmead. An Australian classic.

That’s it. I read a lot of thrillers by Ruth Ware and by Susan Hill (Simon Serraillier series) and by Ann Cleves and by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series), but I can’t really recommend any of them. They were all to some extent gritty with bad language and horrific crimes and bad language. I think it’s time I gave up on that genre.