Books read: March 2020

Not gonna lie, the rate of reading dropped off a bit this month, I’m knitting a lot right now, which means reading is getting less time. I almost finished a sixth book, but not quite, so it’ll be on next month’s round up. Hope you are well friends, stay safe and well during these times.

Ms. Marvel Volume 9: Teenage Wasteland

This is an interesting volume of Ms. Marvel because she hardly appears in it and it’s mostly about how her loss affects her friends. I didn’t love it, but it showed a different side to the community in which Ms. Marvel lives and that’s not a bad thing. As the friends attempt to replace her, they’re all wondering where she is and why she’s left.

The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

Judith Shulevitz dives into the world of the sabbath and how it’s been practiced and asks if we can still practice it and what that means in today’s world. You may think this is all about religion, but I found it to be more about how we take a pause or disconnect ourselves from the world on a regular basis. It pairs nicely with How to do Nothing in some ways. And Shulevitz doesn’t end with anything profound, but I found the walk through history and thinking about the rhythms of my week really helpful.

Agent Running in the Field

John Le Carré’s latest book was very much in the tradition of his spy books with one twist, I’m fairly certain that several of the longer pieces of dialogue rampaging about the state of the world right now were really stand ins for how he himself feels. It’s an interesting story, with an older agent who’s come back to England and is given a job of not much importance. He’s befriended by a younger man and they play badminton together, from there we learn a lot about both the agent, how his life affected his family, and how this young man may not quite be who we think he is. If you like Le Carré’s work, this is worth it for the fantastic diatribes about both the English and US governments.

Lovely War

For the life of me I can’t remember how I heard about this book, but however it was it made me recommend to my library to get the digital rights and then it showed up in my holds. It’s a love story about two couples during World War I, as told by Aphrodite to her brothers and a few other Greek Gods. It’s a bit sappy at times, corny at times, but the history is quite good and after I finished it and read the notes from the author, realizing how much research was done and how much was based on real things, it became a better book.