I’ve had my yearly down time, I read a few books in March, but not much in April or May. I think this was largely because my focus has shifted to gardening. I’ve been excitedly planting seeds and transplanting seedlings, and outside weeding and preparing the garden as much as I could. I’m excited to see what the garden looks like this summer – every year I’m hoping it gets a bit more organized and filled out. I’m working on turning a sparse edge of the lawn into a new flower bed, and hoping that will be a better use of that space. Here’s what I did manage to read though!
March
The Great Unexpected by Dan Mooney
Pageboy by Elliot Page
The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff
I really enjoyed all four of these. Toksvig’s memoir was funny, informative and gave me insight into her life I didn’t have before. She’s an interesting and very smart woman, and I always enjoy spending time with her. Mooney’s novel is a heartwarming story of unlikely friendship and shows that personal growth is possible at any age. Pageboy was a difficult read in places, but ultimately a testament to the power of becoming who you are meant to be, and I’m so glad that Page decided to share his story with the world. The Fortnight in September was my first Persephone Classic, and it was a great place to start. It’s such a humble story, of a family’s summer holiday to the seaside, and yet it contains so many layers that show the time, and foreshadow what we (but not the author or characters) know is right around the corner. Well worth reading.
April
I watched a film about Townsend’s life, and it reminded me how much I’d enjoyed her books as a kid and young adult. I haven’t read any of her books in ages, and the premise of this interested me. It’s about what might happen if the royal family were, overnight, ousted from their castles and given lodgings in a housing estate and put on the dole. It imagines how each member of the family would face this event, and the surprising ways in with they either move forward or don’t. I loved the premise, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the execution.
May
My kid and I both love watching Alys Fowler’s series, The Edible Garden, about the year she tried to grow all her own vegetables in her modest back yard. It’s a fascinating and inspiring look at what’s possible and the joys and pitfalls of depending on the weather and natural processes to bring you your bounty. It’s calming and a show we’ve returned to again and again either at bedtime to calm our minds, or when we’re having a bit of a quiet time. I wanted to try reading her memoir so I could spend a little more time with her. The memoir is good – it deals with her discovery that she is “gay, or maybe bisexual” and her subsequent divorce. It’s a traumatic experience that loses her her husband and best friend, sense of her place in the world, and costs her dearly. This book shares how she navigated this difficult time, and the things that helped her do so.
That was it for my Spring reading! What about you guys? Did you manage to read more than I did during this time? Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think?