I mentioned in the April post that we bought a house. Yay! Finally! Well in May, we moved into the house. Which is great! But also a lot of work. We moved just before Memorial weekend. And then we had plans for the weekend. And then I had to travel for work. So we're still living out of boxes but we're slowly getting things unpacked and soon enough (I hope!) we'll even begin decorating and have pictures up on the walls and things like that. Stuff to make it feel like it's really our house. Of course we had drama on move in day involved a hot water heater pouring water on the basement floor. (It's funny now because nothing was really damaged and my father-in-law is GREAT and fixed everything the next day).
Let's get into the stats and also see if I can get images to upload or not. (Hey look, I did it! Now to go back and update the past ones)
Total books read
4
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr
A cozy little mystery story. Clayton was found on the steps of a home for The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers when he was a baby. It's a bit of a commune for people who make puzzles. Mazes and jigsaws and crosswords and trivia. He's raised by all the members of the house, but primarily by Pippa, the founder of the fellowship. When she passes away, she leaves Clayton a series of clues to help him discover his past and where he came from. The story jumps between present day, as Clayton tries to figure out Pippa's clues, and the past, when Pippa was first forming the fellowship. It's a sweet story, with apparently some puzzles you can solve as you go but which I did not because I mostly listened to it but that sounds like it could have been a good time if that's your thing.
Rating: 3.75 stars
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
I loved Reid's earlier book, Such a Fun Age, so when library hold timing finally lined up with my real-world timing, I was excited to check this out. It's a story with multiple narrators: RA Millie, visiting professor Agatha and student Kennedy. The story is more about characters than any plot, because it takes a long time for any sort of plot to happen. On the one hand, this could be fine depending on the character. On the other hand, there was a lot about RAs and RA life and honestly, it wasn't all that interesting. There are also character reactions that seem entirely overblown. But once I did get over an initial hump, plot or no, I was interested enough to keep listening. That said, maybe check out Such a Fun Age
Rating: 3.5 stars
The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz
The library always seems to have a copy of these Hawthorne and Horowitz books available and it is pretty great that Horowitz makes his literary counterpart kind of a dumb dumb, so I am all in on this series. This time Hawthorne has to solve a murder of a critic and Horowitz is the lead suspect. I mean, this critic did give a pretty scathing review of Horowitz's play, putting much of the blame on Horowitz's writing. But could he really have done it? Hawthorne agrees to help or rather, agrees to solve the case, wherever the truth may take him. Very fun murder mystery series with a protagonist who is just a little bit pathetic.
Rating 3.6 stars
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
After multiple attempts to get this book (including downloading a library copy to my Kindle and promptly losing my Kindle in the move) I managed to read this book for my book club. Fantasy from Clarke and while fantasy isn't my favorite genre, I loved Strange & Norrell so Clarke gets the benefit of the doubt. Which is good because this book throws you right into a world / labyrinthine of marble rooms filled with statues and you have to just kind of go with it. We meet the narrator, who is called Piranesi by The Other, the only other living person (there are a few skeletons Piranesi attends to). Piranesi sees himself as a scientist, filling journals with what he is doing, observes, as he survives in this House. Some rooms regularly flood (providing him the opportunity to fish), some rooms that are filled with clouds that bring rain, and some middle rooms that birds have made home. But slowly there seems to be another world and we're learning about everything alongside Piranesi. The book grabbed me and I finished all but 30 pages in one sitting (having a flight helped).
Rating: 4 stars
Total pages read
1,413
Fiction
100%
Female authors
50%
BIPOC authors
25%
US authors
25% (the others were all UK)
Book club reads
25%
Format
audiobook: 75%
ebook: 25%
Where'd I get the book?
library: 100%
Decade published
2020s: 100%
Resolution books
100%
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, The Twist of the Knife, and Piranesi are all by UK authors
Come and Get It is by a Black author
