Category Archives: Montgomery, Lucy Maud

The weather has been hit and miss in the PNW for the last week, but I’ve been able to get outside and do some weed eradication with my trusty string trimmer. Our very mild winter made the weeds go absolutely bonkers.

I finished 5 books this week.

Murder in Married Life by Anne Morice: this is book 2 in the Tessa Crichton series, published in 1971. Dean Street Press has reprinted 23 entries in the series, through Fatal Charm, published in 1989. I’ve enjoyed both of the installments that I’ve read, and plan to – eventually – buy and read them all. Tessa, a moderately successful actress, meets the man who becomes her husband, Robin, in the first book. In this one, they are newly married.

Robin is a detective for Scotland Yard, and Tessa has a tendency to become embroiled in mysteries, so they are quite a match. This book reminds me a bit of the Mr. and Mrs. North mysteries because Tessa, like Pam North, is a firecracker. The next mystery in the series is called Death of a Gay Dog, and I will get to it. Sooner or later.

Hmmm, interesting. I guess my unwitting theme for this week was “newly married in London,” because that is the entire plot of Greenery Street. Ian and Felicity Foster are newly engaged at the beginning of the book, and are looking for a house in which to commence their married life. Greenery Street itself turns out to be a bit of a character in the book, with Mackail giving it a voice of its own at times, as the place where newly married London couples begin their marriages, only to be forced to move out once the babies start coming.

There is a naivete here that is really charming – Ian and Felicity seem quite a lot like children playing house because in many ways, they are children playing house. Ian has a job, and Felicity manages their finances, but neither of them are remotely jaded, world weary or cynical. They love each other, they love being married, and they are absolutely loyal to each other. They are innocent without being stupid, fun-loving without being reckless, and sweet without being saccharine. This one reminded me a lot of A Fortnight in September, a book about the smallest of things, but utterly riveting nonetheless.

I have been reading the Inspector Henry Tibbet’s series for many years now. I remember picking up the first one, Dead Men Don’t Ski, at the UBS at least two decades ago. I really liked it, and started picking up PB copies when I would find them. I have been vaguely trying to read in order, although at the end of the day, order doesn’t really matter here. Henry, and his wife Emmy (who plays a pretty substantial role in the books) don’t really seem to age. This is the 8th book in the series. Luckily, at this point, Amazon has entries 7 (except for book 9, weirdly) through 17 in the KU library, so I’m going to try to get them read before they disappear. Next up is Who Saw Her Die, which isn’t available through KU, but my library had a digital copy available so I grabbed it.

The plots are always clever, and they usually involve Henry and Emmy getting out of London, where they live, and going to different places. This one was no different – the first chunk of the book was set in London, where Henry is investigating a pretty garden variety murder of a low-grade con artist in the bathroom of a bar called the Pink Parrot. Eventually, though, that investigation merges with some international intrigue concerning a couple of fake African countries, and Henry and Emmy end up in Holland, where there is danger and they meet some murderous foes.

Along with some readerly friends, I am doing a read and reread of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s works for the next couple of years, and we started with the Anne Shirley books in January. We are meant to be doing one a month, but I got behind, so although May is the 5th month, Anne of Windy Poplars is the 4th book in the series, sitting between Anne of the Island and Anne’s House of Dreams. It was written well after those two books – Anne of the Island was published in 1915 and Anne’s House of Dreams was published in 1917, while Anne of Windy Poplars wasn’t published until 1936.

The first time I read Windy Poplars, I was decidedly unimpressed. It’s still not my favorite – I think that Anne of the Island will always hold that honor in my heart. But in subsequent rereads, it has definitely grown on me. I enjoy Rebecca Dew and the Aunts, the Pringles crack me up, I wish that we could have had a book about Katherine Brooke and her life as secretary to a MP, and the Little Fellow makes me cry every damn time. Next up is Anne’s House of Dreams, which covers Anne and Gilbert as young marrieds. I’m hoping to finish that one next week, so I’ll be caught up with my fellow readers.

My last book this week was the third in Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series, Engaging the Enemy. I’ve previously read Trading in Danger and Marque and Reprisal and I’m really enjoying the series. There are two more in this cycle, and then two books in a different cycle, Vatta’s Peace, that were published much later.

These are really space opera, which is a genre that I don’t read a lot, but get into the mood for from time to time. There is something about it that I really enjoy, when it hits just right. This is a satisfying series and has all of the elements of good space opera: lots of space ship action, different planetary cultures, a tight knit crew, and much suspense and intrigue.

I had never read anything by Elizabeth Moon, and I’m impressed, actually. Her fantasy series that begisn with The Sheep Farmer’s Daughter, The Deed of Paksenarrion, has been on my radar for a while, so once I finish with Kylara Vatta, I’ll probably check that one out. Vatta’s War was published between 2003 and 2008, and the first book in the Paksenarrion series was published in 1988.

In fact, in addition to my “newly married in London” theme from early in the week, all of my books this week, strangely (I just noticed this when I was adding categories) were written by authors whose last name started with the letter M (I swear that this was a coincidence, albeit a really weird one), and all of them were backlist titles. The newest of them, Engaging the Enemy, was published the early 2000’s. One good thing about reading old books – absolute certainty that AI had no part in their creation. I prefer my art human powered, thank you very much. Not to put too fine a point on it, but fuck the tech bros.

Also, in spite of my use of the em-dash, I never use AI to write my posts. I have loved the em-dash since before Chat GPT was a gleam in it’s evil overlord’s eye, and I refuse to give it up.

Currently reading:

• American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird – still. This one will sit on this list for a while, because it is 721 pages. I’m at 25%.
• Information Received by E.R. Punshon – the first Bobby Owen mystery published in 1933;
• Green Rider by Kristen Brittain – reread.