December 2024 Reads

December seems so long ago, already, but here's what I read last month.

Nonfiction:
I finished The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl, which I'd started in December 2023, reading one essay per week over the course of a year (this is how the book is organized--seasonally). The essays are lovely contemplations of the natural world around Renkl's home in Nashville and about the larger issues facing that world--climate change, habitat loss, pesticides, etc. It's a soothing, sad, and hopeful book all at once, and beautifully illustrated with her brother's collages. 

As my family can attest, I've been obsessed with cults lately, an obsession that began with listening to Amanda Montell's podcast Sounds Like a Cult (which mostly pokes fun at the cultish aspects of everyday elements of pop culture, but sometimes delves into more sinister cult land) and was soon followed by regular watching of docuseries about cults (have you watched The Vow yet?). So of course I had to read Montell's book, which is an engaging, accessible, and fascinating analysis of the way language is used by cult leaders to create in-groups, coerce members, and stifle questioning and dissent (a great phrase I learned is "thought-terminating cliche." I wish I had this term in my lexicon back when I worked in the 9-5 world).

Fiction
I recently picked up a copy of Albert Camus's The Stranger, because I remembered it having a big impact on me when I read it in high school, but I couldn't remember why (all I remembered about it, in fact, was a sense of blinding, hot sun on a Tunisian beach). Reading it again now, I still don't know why it seemed so life changing at the time. It is beautifully written (although this is a different translation than the book I read 30-odd years ago)--in simple, spare language that nevertheless evokes vivid images and carries the reader through pages where, other than the one significant event of the story, not much happens. I think perhaps it made an in impression because it was so unlike anything I'd ever read before, and because the narrator was so direct and unapologetic in his disbelief in god, which I might have found a little shocking then, a year or two into recovery from a childhood in Catholicism. I don't know if I should say I enjoyed reading it--because it's kind of a bleak, unhappy story--but I do feel drawn to read more Camus.

On the lighter side, I picked up Still as Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor at a used book store. I've been meaning to check out her work, and this is one of her earlier books (the third, I believe). I was excited because the main character is an art historian, and because there's a gold mummy case on the cover. "Could this be my new Elizabeth Peters?" I thought. Alas, it was not. The book lacked Ms. Peters's sense of humor and her madcap plots. It was, in fact, rather slow, and the moment of crisis not terribly exciting (not once did I think he protagonist was going to be murdered herself), with a lot of side characters who each get their own chapters (to establish potential motives for murder, I guess), which is not my favorite. I haven't given up, though--I will try a more recent book by the author. 

Because Still as Death was moving so slowly (I mean, we were like 100 pages in before anyone even gets murdered!), I grabbed another mystery with an art historian protagonist off the shelf--Borrower of the Night, by Elizabeth Peters (natch), the first Vicky Bliss book, to try to analyze what I enjoy so much about EP's writing (snappy dialogue, doesn't waste time giving every character's resume or moving them around in space, great historical storyline intersecting with the novel's storyline, but the historical info woven in seamlessly, scary old castle, seances, absurd antics), and I ended up reading it straight through. (To be fair, the only murders in this book took place hundreds of years in the past, so maybe it's not the dead body that generates tension, but action and reaction, sinister characters, and creepy goings-on.)

Finally, I had The Mistletoe Murder, a book of short stories by PD James, in my stack of seasonal reads, and during a rare lull in the holiday preparations, I picked it up to read again, and discovered I'd only read the first story in the past, so I finished up the remaining three or four stories--and they were all tight, clever, and compelling. I didn't read it in an analytical frame of mind, so I'm not sure what exactly made James a master, but she truly was.

Also, in the holiday spirit, I reread "Santaland Diaries" by David Sedaris, like I do every Christmas, which is one of my favorite traditions.