No re-reads this month – that’s a little unusual but welcome!
- The Vocation Lectures – Max Weber, 1917-1919 (tr. Rodney Livingstone). My first Catherine Project seminar – I hope to do more. Quotes TBD.
- The Hallmarked Man – Robert Galbraith, 2025. Needed a real editor so badly! But apparently I keep checking these out, even though some of the past ones were so unmemorable that I completely forgot I already read them.
- Orbital – Samantha Harvey, 2023. Second Monday; quotes TBD.
- Raising Hare: A Memoir – Chloe Dalton, 2025. Nature/Enviro; quotes TBD.
- Piranesi – Susanna Clarke, 2020. Massachusetts Center for the Book reading challenge, “A book outside your usual genres or spin the genre wheel.” I wrote “The genre spinner gave me Fantasy, so I finally read this book that’s been on my to-read pile since it came out. I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and this didn’t disappoint – truly delightful and absorbing. I regret waiting so long!”
- Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory – Deena Kastor, 2018. The speaker at the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club annual meeting mentioned this book several times, so I checked it out ASAP. I have mixed feelings about reading memoirs of super-fast people, since I’m so slow, but the mindset aspect was pretty good. My favorite part was Kastor following her coach’s advice for getting ready for an evening run: “Sometimes I was so giddy about it that when I climbed into bed for a nap I shouted out loud, ‘This is my job!’ and fell back into a deep slumber.”
- The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene, 1940. Great Books selection; quotes TBD.
- Book Lovers – Emily Henry, 2022. An Ask a Manager commentariat recommendation; I found it quite charming and enjoyed the mocking of the Hallmark small-town tropes. The setting wasn’t very plausible – only one restaurant but a three-story library with automatic doors and multiple meeting rooms – but I was happy to suspend my disbelief.
- Theo of Golden – Allen Levi, 2023. I heard about this huge bestseller in the Washington Post and was intrigued. Not great writing but I found it much more compelling than I expected, despite its flaws.
Short story
“Don’t Look Now” – Daphne Du Maurier, 1971. Far Out Film watched the Nicolas Roeg adaptation, which generated a great discussion. The story is good too but I prefer the film.