Technically, the week started last Wednesday but it's easier to track on Sundays and makes for a nice week opening ritual. I finished off two books since New Year's day:
Celtic Tales: Fairy Tales and Stories of Enchantment from Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and Wales was a Christmas gift this year from my father. It's a nice little overview of Celtic folk tales. Everything in here is in other readily available tomes but the selection and organization gave an excellent introduction of theme and type. There are four basic thematic sections: Tricksters, The Sea, Quests, and Romance. Each section has a variety of stories in it, and apart from one, none are stories I've read before. I particularly loved "The Brownie of Fern Glen" in the quests section for the reversal of protagonist who is the brownie and not some noble human champion. I also liked "The Soul Cages" and "The Seal Catcher and the Selkies" because the relationship between fairy and human was more complicated than antagonistic.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King has been sitting on my "to read" shelf for the better part of a decade. I have no idea where I originally found it except that I'm pretty sure I picked it up used somewhere in New England. I like Sherlock Holmes and the related spin-off adaptations in literature and film, so when I tripped across this, I picked it up for that reason alone. I'd never heard of Laurie R. King before even though she is quite the established mystery writer. Most mysteries are plot driven and the characters, interesting as they may be, are in service to the events around them. This is a character driven book about a young woman. Mary Russell is 15 when she first meets the aging Sherlock Holmes who has retired to the Sussex Downs. Mary is an interesting, intelligent girl. She quickly finds a rapport with Holmes who begins to train and educate her in the art of detection. It's a somewhat ridiculous premise that works on the strength of King's character work with Mary Russell. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It works because I grew to love Mary Russell and not because the mysteries were particularly intriguing. Little did I know when I started my read that this is the opening to a 16 or 17 book series. I'm not sure that King will be able to maintain the character-driven nature of the plots but it should be fun to find out.
Next week is bound to be busy, but here's what I'm looking at:
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (Finished 1/10/2020)- Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer
A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King (book 2 in the Mary Russell Series) (Finished 1/7/2020)- Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi*
- The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater*
*books that meet Book Challenge Requirements
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