I don’t belong to a book club or an online book discussion group. I don’t even keep a lot of books around, at this stage of my life. When someone talks proudly about a home that is jammed with books, my nose starts to tickle and I go look for my inhaler, because old cheap books are allergen reservoirs. Also, I am not the Library of Alexandria. 

I do love to read, though. 

I had thought I wasn’t reading much lately, but I was wrong. Here’s a list of what I read, in reverse chronological order, over the last month:

I only know I have read all of those books because I enter them on a book-tracking website, The StoryGraph; I do that so (a) I won’t buy books I’ve already read and (b) if I decide to read them again, I can see if I liked them or not. 

• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (fantasy/mystery, second in a trilogy)
• The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (fantasy/mystery, first in a trilogy)
• Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (she selected them before she died, and the book is in reverse chronological order from latest to earliest. I found three poems I really liked.)
• The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (yes, a re-read; my son-in-law is reading it to the grandson, and it’s the best of the Tiffany Aching books. Pratchett was wonderful)
• Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World, by Edward Delinick (A little incoherent, but interesting)
• No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, by Gardner Harris (well, damn, that was disappointing to see all in one place, but what the heck, capitalism)
• A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps, by John Elledge (If you want to be cheered up about the present day, just read about how awful people have been in the past. Illuminating about Israel/Palestine)
• On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America, by Kim Christensen (well, damn, that was disappointing, but I’m not surprised. Why people persistently send their children off with a single man to camp for the weekend, I don’t know)
• Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (A consistently readable author with amusing protagonists)
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales Twenty Stories, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (for the illustrations, and for the reminder that fairy tales are not Disney)
• Cat Poems (I bought it and realized I knew all the poems already)
• One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson (DNF) (I worried too much about the protagonist in the beginning, so I gave up. Will try again later)
• Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson (second Jackson Brodie book, quite good)
• Hello Tiny World: An Enchanting Journey into the World of Creating Terrariums, by Ben Newell (pretty photos and I made two terraria, but it didn’t have a whole lot of information in it I could use.)
• The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective, by Steven Johnson (an excellent book, and a reminder that political assassinations are a common feature of society; I had forgotten about anarchists).
• The Magician of Tiger Castle, by Louis Sachar (an enjoyable fantasy by a competent author)
• Extraordinary Insects, by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson (a snack book of sorts. I was hoping for something more encyclopedic about insects, but it was short chapters about individual weird insects)
• The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown (a delightful children’s book about a marooned robot and how she coped)

I notice that yes, I like mysteries, fantasies, books for young readers, well-written exposés, history, and how-tos. What I ask of a book is that it be readable from the first page, coherently organized, and that it not try to upset me unnecessarily.