June 2026 Monthly Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

June 2026 Monthly Wrap Up

What book surprised you in June? For me, the answer is The Calamity Club, which completely pulled me in from the get go. See my earlier review post.

Here's the list of the book I read in June. See any favorites?

• Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie. I love AC but often forget to read her books. I'd like to read at least one a month but need to concentrate to make that work. This was an overly complicated but still fun Hercule Poirot case set in France.  

• Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling. Schoolboy stories are not my usual cup of tea. These are as good as they get, and I appreciate them as a classic, but didn't really engage with them.

• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett. I got a review copy of this one from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I was determined to get it read and reviewed, but was daunted by the page count -- it's a doorstop! So I switched to the audiobook from my library and was so happy i did. The two readers did an amazing job and really made the characters come alive. 

• The Bible of British Taste: Stories of Home, People and Place by Ruth Guilding. This coffee table book was fascinating. I expected glossy layouts of fancy houses. But it is more about how real people live in architecturally significant houses in whatever state those houses may be in. It is about preserving, not necessarily restoring or renovating. I was unfamiliar with Guilding's former blog of the same name, so this world was all new to me. 

• Simisola by Ruth Rendell is the 16th book in her Inspector Wexford series and explores issues of immigration, racism, and exploitation. It was a good one. 

• Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography by Muriel Spark. Spark is one of my favorite authors. Her autobiography covers her childhood in Edinburgh, disastrous first marriage to a mentally unstable man she followed to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), work for the British Secret Service during WWII, and early success as an author. It's fascinating to read her story in her own words. 

• The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books by Robertson Davies. This was a delight from beginning to end. Davies is another favorite fiction writer of mine. This is a collection of speeches he gave later in life, mostly about reading and writing. I loved every page. 

• Diamond Solitaire by Peter Lovesey is the second mystery in his Peter Diamond series. I have most of the book in cool Soho Crime editions and am excited dive in. Diamond is the kind of schleppy, overweight, own-worse-enemy sort of crime solver I love, sort of an English version of Ian McEwan's John Rebus. 

• Slightly Foxed No. 87 (Summer 2025). This literary quarterly is so interesting it is worth the risk of overloading my TBR shelves. 

NOT PICTURED

• The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. This was my first Shafak book and might be my last. I read it for book club and we all agreed that the premise was good but the execution left us cold because she lectures a lot. A lot. 

• Road Rage by Ruth Rendell. This 20th Wexford mystery involves environmental activists protesting the construction of a new byway near "Kingsmarkham," Wexford's fictional town in Sussex.

• The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman. I love the Thursday Murder Club books and this new one, the fifth, lived up to me expectations. 

• Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser. This was another book club pick and I did not finish it. I don't include it on my book count for the year, but I include it here because I wrote about it here. 

The Kipling, Spark, and Davies books were from my TBR 26 in '26 stack, leaving me with nine to go.

May 2026 Monthly Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

February 2026 Monthly Wrap Up

When it comes to vacation books, I’m Team Fluffy all the way. When I go out of town, like I did in May, I pack hen lit, comfort reads, and mysteries. Many of the books I read in May are not in this picture because I left them behind when I finished.* Do you do that?

Here's a list of the books I read in May. See any favorites?

• The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey, set in Bath, England, where I started my vacation. This is the first of his Peter Diamond mysteries and I thought it was terrific. I have most of the series in Soho Crime editions and look forward to reading all of it. 

• The Art of Making Memories by Meik Wiking, author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living, which has so much more going for it. He followed Hygge with The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World’s Happiest People. This is the weakest of the three. It was interesting enough, but felt like he overworked scant material. 

• Regeneration by Pat Barker, the first book in her Regeneration Trilogy about psychological injuries caused by, and closeted gay life during, WWI.

• The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker, the second book in the trilogy.

• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker, the last book and the 1995 winner of the Booker Prize. 

• The Trees by Conrad Richter, the first novel of his Awakening Land trilogy about American pioneers in the late 1700s.

LEFT BEHIND

• The Royal Secret by Lucinda Riley. I greatly enjoyed this thriller involving a “fictional” royal family, even through its highly improbably spots. 

• Fellowship of Fear by Aaron Elkins, his first Gideon Oliver mystery. I read a later book from this series last summer and loved it, so wanted to start at the beginning. This one didn't do much for me. The plot just never made sense. But I will continue because I try to not judge a series from its first book and I know from the other one I read that these get better. 

• The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier. This one was just my cup of tea. It's a campus novel featuring a woman of a certain age who moves from New York City to to be a professor at Amhurst, where she renovates a big old house and tries her luck at romance.  

• They Did It with Love by Kate Morgenroth is a domestic thriller set in ritzy Greenwich, Connecticut. It was very clever, but (without giving anything away), I didn't like the ending. 

• Bookish People by Susa Coll, a cute story set in a Washington, D.C. bookshop. This one came full circle for me because I bought it while on vacation in Alaska a couple of years ago and read it on vacation this year. 

AUDIOBOOKS

• What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts) by Stanley Tucci. Entertaining, but not as good as Taste: My Life Through Food. It's easy to understand why. Taste was the story of his whole life, so he had a lot of material to draw on. It was also charmingly self-deprecating and he played down his life as a famous movie star. This one is limited to one year, so he had to make a little go a long way. As a result, it's mostly about his life as a movie star and there's a lot of name dropping.  

• The Engine House by Rhys Dylan, the first in a mystery series set in Wales, where I went on vacation after Bath. One of my book club friends recommended the series to me when I told her I like to read books set in the places where I travel. I plan to continue with the series because this first one was quite good and most (all?) are available as audiobooks from my library. 

* I love a "take one/leave one" shelf in a hotel. I love searching for some gem that will then be a souvenir of my trip. And I'm more than happy to leave behind any books I finish. But I never leave a book in an airplane seatback if I finish it on the plane. I think those just get thrown away, either immediately, when the plane is being cleaned, or later, after a long internment in a lost and found closet. What do you think happens to them?

Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwilliams van de Wettering -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS

Outsider In Amsterdam by Janwilliams van de Wettering

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The Volkswagen was parked on the wide sidewalk of the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, opposite number 5, and it was parked the way it shouldn't be parked.

-- from Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwilliams van de Wettering.  I love Soho Press's "Soho Crimes" imprint because they specialize in mystery series set in different countries. I also love the candy colored spines. Whenever I find any at library friends shops or the like, I snap them up, especially if, like this one, they are the first book in a series. My dream is to one day read all the Soho Crime books I collected, straight through. 

This book is the first in the Grijpstra & DeGier series, also known as the Amsterdam Cops series, probably because no one can spell or pronounce Grijpstra.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Outsider in Amsterdam:

The accountant sucked pensively on his cigar and began to cough. He looked ferocious and the saggy cigar stub was killed with savage power.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, the founder of a new religious society/commune—a group that calls itself “Hindist” and mixes elements of various “Eastern” traditions—is found hanging from a ceiling beam. Detective-Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to investigate what looks like a simple suicide, but they are immediately suspicious of the circumstances.

This now-classic novel, first published in 1975, introduces Janwillem van de Wetering’s lovable Amsterdam cop duo of portly, worldly-wise Gripstra and handsome, contemplative de Gier.

I have no idea why the names are spelled differently in the description than they are on the cover of the book! Other than they are spelled in a more difficult way on the cover. Perhaps the publisher simplified them in a later edition.

 

Friends of the Library -- MAILBOX HOLIDAY MONDAY

 

MAILBOX MONDAY

Thanks to a client meeting south of Portland, I had a chance to swing by two of my new favorite Friends shops. I don't get out to the exurbs often and when I do, I like to hit the library shops. I came home with a nice little book haul. 

See any in this batch of new-to-me books that catches your fancy? (Links here so you can read more about them. See gobbledygook section here.)

• The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper by Dominick Dunne. I love coffee table books and books about mid-century American "society," so this looks like fun!

• Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison is a favorite book of mine but I couldn't remember if I had a copy. I do, so I'll give this one away. Happens!

• Lark Rise to Candleford is Flora Thompson's lightly fictionalized memoir describing English life in a hamlet, a village, and a country town in the 1880s. I read about this trilogy in Foxed Quarterly and it sounds delightful! While I’d love to get my hands on a fancy Slightly Foxed edition, I’ll settle for good over perfect for now.

• Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane. I've read a couple of books in his Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro series and liked them, so want to read more.

• Devil's Breath by G. M. Malliet is another book in her Max Tudor series. I read the first book in the series and want to get back to it. 

• The Pope's Daughter: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by Dario Fo sounds terrific and I love the Europa edition!

• Middlemarch by George Eliot is one I recently reread, but I couldn't resist the Signet Classic edition from the 10¢ box.

• The Golden Calf by Helene Tursten is a Swedish mystery I picked up because I'm gathering Soho Crime editions. I love the books' color block spines and the stories' (usually) foreign locations. 

• Death at the Alma Mater by G. H. Malliet is from her St. Just series, which I haven't tried, but it looks so good I wanted to read start.

• The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West. I was drawn to the striking Modern Library cover. 

• Set This House on Fire by William Styron. I like Styron's books but have never heard of this one.  

• Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell is from her Inspector Wexford series which I've started and want to keep reading. It turns out I also have a copy of this one already. That's the good thing about Friends of the Library shops. I don't feel guilty about spending $1 on a duplicate copy I can pass on to a friend, especially knowing the dollar went to the library. 

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught Our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf graciously host Mailbox Monday. They are looking for a helper. If you are interested, see the website for details. 

Sleuthing Out Books with My Private Eye -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

I was having lunch with my private eye the other day . . .

That really has nothing to do with anything, but saying it always makes me laugh. And I really do have a private eye. She's amazing! She helps me and my law partner with our sex abuse cases because they usually involve child abuse that happened decades ago. Most often, our clients were molested in the 1980s or 1990s, but we have cases involving abuse as far back as the 1960s. Our private eye finds witnesses and documents to help us prove our cases. 

But what does that have to do with this stack of books? That is a mystery! The solution is that we met for lunch in a suburb of Portland that has a Friends of the Library store I had never explored. It was a really good one. I came home with an overflowing tote bag of books.

See anything here you’d like to investigate?

• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I read this as an audiobook years ago, loved it, and wanted a book book on my shelves.

• Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather, which I want to read because I love Cather.

• The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two plays by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, on which the operas by Rossini and Mozart are based. 

• The Spoils of Poynton is a Henry James book I've never heard of.

• The Major Plays of Chekhov is a Signet Classic edition of a book I already have but haven't read. I'm enchanted by Signet Classic covers these days. 

• The Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad is another Signet Classics edition. I got this one because I haven't read The Secret Sharer.

• The Egoist is a tragicomical novel by George Meredith published in 1879. I've never heard of it, but might read it for Victober.

• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. This is another one I read years ago but wanted to add a Modern Library edition to my collection.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson is a book I know nothing about, But I've never found a Persephone edition at library store so nabbed it. 

• Jane Austen's "juvenilia," because I haven't read any of these and liked the Penguin Classics edition. 

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Again, I read it a long time ago and have a fancy edition. But I wanted a paperback if I want to reread it. 

• The Long Day Waned is Anthony Burgess's "Malayan Trilogy" and all three novels sound really good. 

• Tales of Old Inns by Richard Keverne is a vintage travel guide to England's historic inns and hotels. Pure charm!

• Faith Fox by Jane Gardam I got because I read her Old Filth trilogy last year and now want to read everything she wrote. 

The last books are five Soho Crime books. I realized about a month ago that I had a nice little collection started of Soho Crime mystery books published by Soho Press. Since then, I've looked for more at library stores and found another dozen or so. I like the collection because the color block spines look so cool together. But I like the books because Soho Crime's theme is publishing mystery series set all around the world. For example, Qiu Xiaolong's series is set in China and Eliot Pattison's is set in Tibet.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.