Why yes, this post is very late. No, I don’t mind you asking. It’s been a very busy time of late, with a small job change and the bustle of the academic semester getting underway. I’m behind on a lot of things, really. I’ve been reading a lot, though, and as I wrote this post I really enjoyed getting to look back on what I started the year with. In the middle of an odd winter, one with not enough snow and far too much warmth, I enjoyed getting to escape into my books. They have treated me wonderfully.

There has been a platform change for the blog, which I hope has gone smoothly on the reader’s side as well. I’m on Micro.blog now, which isn’t perfect (it’s a little fussy around the edges), but isn’t (unlike Wordpress) going to sell all of my data to AI companies. I know, I know, I know. My writing has probably already been scraped. That battle has almost certainly been lost. However! That doesn’t mean I have to actively participate in selling my work on. I just want to write and have a good time with the words I put down. Opting into something smaller is exactly what will let me do that. So welcome. A Turn of the Page lives here now, off in its own little space. I like it and I plan to stick around.

Want to see what I’m up to? This part hasn’t changed. I’m on The Storygraph, wandering around on Mastodon, or you can send me an email. Pick your poison and say hello!

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

This is a great example of a book that I didn’t get at all in college but loved with a second reading. Flaubert’s writing is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and I felt much worse for poor Madame Bovary this time around. She’s trapped, both by society and her own expectations, and I think it’s fair to say I didn’t really understand that the first time I encountered the novel.

French Provincial Cooking, by Elizabeth David

Ostensibly a cookbook, David’s guide to French food is really a very opinionated look at what French cuisine was and was becoming at the time of the book’s publication in 1960. Some of what she says is wild — not every hole-in-the-wall restaurant is a wonder waiting to be discovered — but David does a wonderful job conjuring up a vision of a French cuisine worth encountering in the home kitchen, not just on a night out.

The Waste Land and Other Writings, by T.S. Eliot

I will fess up here and admit that I don’t love T.S. Eliot. The introduction to this collection of his writings argues for The Waste Land as poetry that is wonderful even if a reader doesn’t catch all of the references. I can’t say that I agree, but I acknowledge that not everything has to be for me. I’m glad I read the collection! I just don’t know that I see a huge need to return to Eliot very often in the future.

Christopher and His Kind: A Memoir, 1929-1939, by Christopher Isherwood

A beautiful memoir by the novelist, though also one of the strangest books I’ve read. Isherwood, author of the novels that became the musical Cabaret, refers to himself in the third person, as if the past “Christopher” living in Berlin is some other person, a character like the characters in his novels. The perspective takes some getting used to, but look past that and Christopher and His Kind is a beautifully and unapologetically queer memoir from one of the great authors of English-language fiction in the 20th century.

Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks

A short meditation on death, dying, and what it means to have lived life well. Oliver Sacks was dealing with cancer as he wrote the four essays in this book. I spaced the essays out over a few days rather than reading straight through. I’m glad I did. Each one deserves a little time to breathe.

The Life and Death of King John, by William Shakespeare

Not Shakespeare’s best, but some of the language is still beautiful. You can read more of my thoughts on the play in my earlier post.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher

Much like Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is a middle-grade novel with some seriously heavy goings-on. Murder, the deaths of children, and discrimination all feature prominently. The baking-based magic takes some of that away, though, and I absolutely adored the way the book captures some of the nuance of moments when good people are unable to stop bad things from happening. Well worth picking up for the right child, Defensive Baking manages to treat its intended readers like people able to process the good, the bad, and the malevolent sourdough starter in the basement that might just devour intruders.

Coral Browne: ‘This Effing Lady’, by Rose Collis

If you only read one biography of an English-Australian theater actress with a penchant for foul-mouthed one-liners, make it this one. Rose Collis does a tremendous job giving Coral Browne all the vigor she had in life.

The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

Yes, Zadie Smith is still amazing. Her newest, a vast and Dickensian depiction of a 19th century fraud trial (who could have guessed?), is beautiful. None of the characters are perfect, none of them are entirely awful. They’re all just frauds, every single one of them in their own ways. Not my favorite of Smith’s novels (that honor goes to On Beauty), but still a stunner.

Edward III, by William Shakespeare

Have you ever wanted a bunch of dudes to stand around and describe what a bunch of other dudes are doing somewhere else? No? Okay. Cool. This is not the play for you! Only relatively recently accredited to Shakespeare, Edward III is pretty bad. Absolutely my least favorite of the Shakespeare I’ve read this year. He did a lot of this better elsewhere.

Richard II, by William Shakespeare

On the other end of the Shakespeare spectrum, Richard II is probably my favorite of the history plays. Richard isn’t a good king, but he wants to be. He should not die, but he does. Richard’s imperfections, his catastrophizing and cowardice, make him a captivating character. Henry Bolingbroke, Richard’s rival, will be a better king, but the play is rightly titled after Richard, whose humbling and destruction are in the end devastating to watch.

The Dragonbone Chair, by Tad Williams

I picked up The Dragonbone Chair because I wanted a hefty fantasy world to dive into. This book absolutely gave me that! I enjoyed the very The Once and Future King spin on grand fantasy that Williams spins up here. There’s magic! Strange goings-on under the moon! A young hero to save the day! That’s all well and good! What I did not enjoy was the very, very, very fantasy thing where Williams has decided to rename the months. I found it so, so, so distracting whenever a character announced that the month was Novander or Decander. Sometimes a world comes alive not because everything is different from our own but because some things are the same.

My Murder, by Katie Williams

Would it be weird to be resurrected and investigate your own murder? Probably! And this book only gets odder from there. So good, so something I won’t spoil for you. Read and enjoy.

Henry IV, Part 1, by William Shakespeare

Falstaff! This was very fun, with that oaf of a knight turning up to lend more life to a play that would otherwise be deadly serious. The sequel turns darker, but I found myself in love throughout with the mess of Falstaff, Prince Hal, and their compatriots. In my Shakespeare read so far, Henry IV, Part 1 is just behind Richard II on my list of favorites. The balance of history and humor makes for a tremendously good time.

Henry IV, Part 2, by William Shakespeare

In Henry IV, Part 2, Prince Hal puts away childish things. These include Falstaff and the companions he and Hal had so much fun with in the first play. Watching Hal become King Henry V is an amazing thing, as the ridiculous boy transforms into the serious and thoughtful leader he was raised to be. I found this play less out and out fun than its predecessor, but just as affecting.