First Quarter 2026 - Books, Movies, Goals

[fauxklore]

Books:
I read 11 books this quarter, which is not quite the pace I need to reach my goal of 80 for the year.

1. Herman Melville, Moby Dick (reread). I’m not sure if this counts, since I’ve read it several times. I went to my third Moby Dick marathon (my second in New Bedford; the other was in San Francisco.) It’s an amazing book, with a mix of adventure, social commentary, and humor. If you haven’t read it, you should in order to understand why so many people consider this THE Great American Novel.
   
   
2. Sujata Massey, Girl in a Box. The title refers to a young woman who is overly protected, mostly by her family, Re Shimura is undercover at a Japanese department store, investigating financial malfeasance. The issues she stumble upon involve the yakuza, money laundering, and, unfortunately, murder. There are a lot of interesting details regarding Japanese culture, e.g. a funeral for old sewing needles. While the ending is abrupt and implausible, I still enjoyed this for the most part.
   
   
3. Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship. Buckley has long been the master of humor about Washington, D.C. and this is no exception. The story has to do with a TV judge who gets appointed to the Supreme Court, largely as revenge against the Senate Judiciary Committee, after they reject two perfect candidates. She’s hardly an intellectual, but she’s plain spoken and able to use her common sense. The things that happen are wild - and wildly funny. Overall, this is a delightful romp.
   
   
4. Jasper Fforde, Red Side Story. This is the sequel to Shades of Grey. It started out rather slowly , but picked up as soon as Eddie and Jane set out on a mission to search for spoons in Crimsonalia. The world building is superb and the ending is extremely satisfying. Lots of fun.
   
   
5. J. J. Marric, Gideon’s Power. Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard is dealing with a strong of power outages that appear to be sabotage. And there have also been cases of children kidnapped, molested, and murdered. I didn’t find all of it particularly plausible, but I think it was a reasonably good read as procedurals go.
   
   
6. Terry Pratchett, Making Money. I’ve always found Pratchett to be amusing, but inconsistent, and this book is no exception. Moist van Lipwick (whose name I find very off-putting) was a crook who was saved from hanging and put in charge of the post office, which he made successful. Now he’s put in charge of the bank and the mint. But all the gold has vanished. There’s some funny stuff, but, overall, I didn’t find this book very satisfying.
   
   
7. Boris Kester, The Long Road to Cullaville. I read this for the Travelers’ Century Club Book Club. Kester is one of many people who has been to every UN country. His stories cover some of his travels, including places like Yemen, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea. The roughest story involves a near-fatal auto accident in South Africa. The writing (which was his own translation of the original Dutch) wasn’t brilliant, but it was still reasonably interesting.
   
   
8. Susan Branch, The Summer Book. I was given several of Branch’s books by one of my mother’s neighbors. This is a mix of household tips, recipes, and such. It’s hard to read because of the fonts, which are meant to resemble handwriting. While I did save a few recipes, overall, I found this (and other books by her) eminently skippable.
   
   
9. Rona Jaffe, Family Secrets. This lengthy novel traces three generations of a Jewish family. The patriarch builds a real estate empire. His children marry, have careers and children, and live in a large compound he’s built. One granddaughter is clearly based on Jaffe herself, who went to Radcliffe and had a successful writing career, starting with her first novel. An okay read, but dated.
   
   
10. Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts. I read this for Crones and Tomes and enjoyed it a lot more than I’d expected to. It’s the story of a road trip taken by an alcoholic older man, who has never recovered from the death of his older daughter, his younger daughter (who does the driving), and the two children of his estranged older brother, who he has become the guardian of There’s also a cat, who frequently steals the show. The premise sounds depressing, but there is surprising charm and humor throughout. Highly recommended.
    
    
11. Graham Greene, Journey Without Maps. This was another TCC Book Club selection. In the late 1930’s, Greene set out to cross Liberia on foot. Because maps were not available he consistently got conflicting information about the distances to towns along the way. He didn’t really know much about the people and, in general, didn’t seem to like them. There were also weird digressions, e.g. one abut an Estonian woman in Riga and another about his youthful episodes of depression. I thought, overall, it was fairly interesting, but a bit of a slog to get through. I wish it had been edited by someone neutral.
    

Movies:
I only saw one movie this quarter.

1. The Choral: This movie is set in 1916 and involves the choral society in a small community in Yorkshire. They’re putting on a production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius but, because of World War I, there are not enough men available, so they make some changes in the story. Ralph Fiennes puts on an excellent performance as the chorus master. The stories involve the various members of the choral society, and touch on several topics, including sexual relationships. The music throughout is exquisite. Recommended.
   

Goals:

• I’ve got solid plans for one long distance train trip. In May. In Australia. The Ghan. I have an idea about another one.
  
• I’ve got tentative plans for 2 minor league baseball games.
  
• I’ve got solid plans for 2 new to me TCC countries / territories.
  
• I have ideas about national parks, but haven’t acted on them.
  
• I don’t feel like I am making much progress on reading Hangul.
  
• I am way behind on shredding household paperwork.
  
• I’ve read 12 books so far this year (the 11 discussed above plus one more in April) and should finish at least 2 more this month. So I am behind where I should be.
  
• Finished one crafts project (a needle felted penguin.) I am getting close to finishing my Tunisian crochet afghan.
  
• I have done nothing about getting rid of LP records.
  
• I have been keeping up with the Stafford Challenge.
  

In short, I am doing reasonably well on goals so far this year.