#(also re: tam lin: love molly! the bio major who loves shakespeare and accepts the weird fairy goings-on w few questions)

[e-b-reads]

Books of the Month(s): Nov + Dec 2023

Books from the end of last year! Only one of these is from November, which is part of why I just waited to do one post for both months. Here are my books of the month(s):

Tam Lin (Pamela Dean): I liked this one a lot. It reminded me some of Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, which, duh, they're both based on the ballad Tam Lin - but also because with both books, I only realized afterwards how well some of the images and themes from the works inspiring the books were incorporated. Also I kind of wish I read this book while I was in college, because despite being set in the 1970s and in the Midwest, it somehow still is a spot-on depiction of my experience of what it is to go to a little liberal arts school with kooky traditions that everyone knows by osmosis.

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper): A classic and a reread. I have reread this one more often than the others in the series (it's technically #2, but it was the first one I ever read and I think it can stand alone). I guess the eternal struggle of Light vs. Dark isn't a particularly novel plot, but the specifics of this story, and especially the images and feelings of it, I think are strong. As I wrote elsewhere, I liked it when I was a kid in a simpler "fun adventure!" kind of way, but I still like it now.

A Killer in King's Cove (Iona Whishaw): This is first in a mystery series (I read 6 of them in December). Set in Canada post-WWII, main character is an ex-British spy woman who moved there to escape her post-war life. They aren't as ~fun~ as some cozy and/or historical mysteries, because they're a little darker and more thoughtful, but I have decided that I like that. I also decided that the reader is supposed to figure out the murderer before the characters do (via short chapters from varying POVs), so once I got used to that I didn't mind. And finally, the main character makes a habit of very competently saving herself from perilous situations shortly before her love interest detective shows up with the cavalry, so I like that part too.