What are you reading in 2025?

[hana]

Currently reading the Home front Sleuths series by Anna Elliott and Charles Veley, set in a quaint English village in 1940. Evelyn Harris is having a bad time even by London in during the blitz standard. Her RAF pilot husband of a few months is killed in action, her beloved nana dies, and she loses her job as an Air Raid Warden when she's badly injured when her apartment is bombed with her still in it. She inherited a tea shop from her nana, and moves to the village of Cofton Green with a change of clothing and a vague idea of what happens next.

Her return becomes major news in the village with some welcoming her with open arms and remembering her last visit in 1913, to the village constable who thinks she a German spy. That is until the next morning when the Air Raid Warden, a not very popular lifelong resident, is found murdered in the Church ground.

Members of the village team up to help her solve mysteries

It's a fun cosy read, mostly stand alone with a longer arc that builds in later books. Just started book 6 of 7.

[Tradd]

1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin about the Wall Street Crash. He also wrote Too Big Too Fail about the Great Recession.

[pinkytoe]

A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko. A memoir by the author of his grueling journey with a friend through the Grand Canyon. Really interesting so far.

[rosarugosa]

My October reading list:

• All the Broken Places by John Boyne - this was actually quite good, although perhaps not a page-turner. I would recommend reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas first, since this is a sequel, and I think the reader would lose some context if not familiar with the events in the first novel. Both books are about Nazi Germany in WW2, but the sequel focuses on a minor character from the first book and her life after the war, with themes of guilt, culpability, atonement, forgiveness and redemption.
• Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller - this was a good read, addressing some heavy subjects in a very approachable way leavened with humor.
• Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy (NF) - an excellent book that addresses the current threats to the natural world, and how we can all play our own small part in improving the situation. "Homegrown National Park" is his vision of a solution, if each of us did what we could to support nature in our own backyards or even balconies or window boxes.
• The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (recommended by Kay) - this was a good read about a native American child kidnapped and adopted by a white family. It was narrated by her brother near the end of his life as he is dying of cancer. The whole time I was reading it, I could not help but think of how much the narrator reminded me of TMS, having his affairs in order and appearing to face death with calm acceptance.
• A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci - definitely a page-turner, this was the story of an innocent black man being framed for the murders of a elderly white couple in Virginia in the sixties. The main character is the small-town southern lawyer that defends him, and his quest for justice. It reminded me of Just Mercy and The Sun Does Shine, although this one was fiction.

[iris lilies]

My internet was down for a day so I had to read a book.

Searching for Sylvie Lee is by Jean Kwok who wrote Girl in translation, the latter a solid novel of an immigrant’s experience in the U.S.

But Searching for Sylvie Lee just made me mad. It was great at telling about various experiences of the characters in settling in New York and Amsterdam, but it descended into melodrama with character interactions.

[littlebittybobby]

okay---i am following the Royals. Not the KC ball club, but the ones over in England. Yup. It's like a tv series, to an extent. But yeah---i'd liketa read a book that gives an overview of the monarchy, to put things in perspective. So anyway---i did not know that QE2 had four offspring. I figured just the two that made all the tabloids. Makes me feel ignorant, which I'm not. But anyway---any book suggestions?

[littlebittybobby]

okay----here's a guy who wrote a famous play, called "Death of a Salesesman".(see photo) It was also made into a movie. The guy married a mooo-vveeeee star---blond, too. But, I seriously doubt if he could get a job as a lirrrraraaaian; he only had a BA in journalism or whatever from University of Michigan. Yup.

2025-11-06 (4).jpg

[iris lilies]

okay---i am following the Royals. Not the KC ball club, but the ones over in England. Yup. It's like a tv series, to an extent. But yeah---i'd liketa read a book that gives an overview of the monarchy, to put things in perspective. So anyway---i did not know that QE2 had four offspring. I figured just the two that made all the tabloids. Makes me feel ignorant, which I'm not. But anyway---any book suggestions?

Bobby, I am somewhat into the current British royal family and their woes. The formerly-known-as-Prince Andrew debacle is quite bad for them.

You only know about Queen Elizabeth's two children, the King and Andrew, because they are the ones making the news.

The Princess Royal, Anne, is a very hard working woman who completes 500 engagements a year. She is the daughter of Queen Elizabeth. She is the one the British citizens have the most quiet respect for, after the Queen. Anne pretty much stays out of the tabloids; her own children have refused the royal titles they are entitled to, Prince and Princess.

The Queen's youngest son, Edward, is solidly married with children and has never ruffled feathers of society. He and his wife also quietly do the work of royals which is representing the crown by making many public appearances opening hospitals, leading charities, that sort of thing.

There are a bazillion books about them so I don't know of just one to recommend. I am currently reading the newly released biography of Andrew and his former wife Sarah Ferguson called Entitled: the rise and fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie.

but here is a list of books to consider

.https://www.townandcountrymag.com/le...hoCbhEQAvD_BwE

[Rogar]

The Hunter by Tana French. A murder mystery set in Ireland. Good so far. I'm knocking off a chapter occasionally in the book Insect Epiphany, which is fascinating. It is mostly about how humans have used insects to produce some of our consumer goods through history. The chapter on silk was interesting. Napoleon had a pair of socks made from spider's silk. I'm on the chapter on color now. Cochineal bugs.

[rosarugosa]

Rogar: I liked The Hunter. I think French's work really stands out in the mystery genre as being of higher literary quality than most.

The insect book sounds interesting, but I'm currently at my limit with non-fiction.