Just two weeks ago it was so cold here (subzero for the high temperature for several days!) you could barely poke your head out the door to throw recyclables into the bin on your back porch. Today? I wore a light spring jacket on my walk and it was still almost too warm. Midwest weather! But I am happy to see geese overhead in perfect formations flying north. It makes me hopeful for spring.
Welcome March, so happy you have arrived. A new month and a new prompt. January's 'courtroom' read, The German House by Annette Hess, was an off the beaten path WWII (post-war actually) that I really enjoyed. I am still working on February's 'garden/maze' theme read and I decided mid-month to change course. I'm still planning on finishing Stephanie Barron's The White Garden, but to be honest I got a little bogged down by the story within a story. I don't mind a story embdedded within the larger story, but it sort of depends. In this case the main character finds a journal with writings that might have been penned by Virginia Woolf. It just got a little distracting, so I picked up Barbara Michaels's The Dancing Floor, which I read many, many years ago. I have zero recollection of the story, but BM is always reliably good for me and I was in need of some good escapism.
So, not quite finished with last month's choices, but I am ready to press on with a new month. I've decided on 'academia', so a book set in a school or on a college campus. Here's what I came up with from my stacks:
A Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie -- "Late one night, two teachers investigate a mysterious flashing light in the sports pavilion while the rest of the school sleeps. There, among the lacrosse sticks, they stumble upon the body of an unpopular games mistress--shot through the heart point-blank. The school is thrown into chaos when the "cat" strikes again. Unfortunately, schoolgirl Julia Upjohn knows too much. In particular, she knows that without Hercule Poirot's help, she will be the next victim...."
The Following Girls by Louise Levene -- "Amanda Baker is sixteen and sick of her lot as she moves miserably between lessons, her only solace her fifth form gang - the four Mandies - and a low-calorie diet of king-sized cigarettes. That is, until she teams up with Julia Smith, games captain and consummate game player. And so begins a passionate friendship that will threaten her future, menace her sanity and risk the betrayal of everything and everyone she holds dear."
Dare Me by Megan Abbott -- "The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as 'total authority and an almost desperate intensity,' provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl."
At Freddies by Penelope Fitzgerald -- "It is the 1960s, in London's West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma - a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who is anyone must know Freddie."
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah -- (I kind of want to try and read this before I watch the Netflix adaptation--is it worth reading first or should I just dive into the series?). "Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives."
The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams -- "At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in nineteenth-century New England.When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. But it's not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls' parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations--based on a shocking historic treatment--horrify Caroline. As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls' experience, Caroline's own body begins to betray her. To save herself and her young charges, she will have to defy every rule that has governed her life, her mind, her body, and her world."
Yes, too many good choices. A dilemma, of course, but I think I am torn between two. Maybe I can slip in an extra prompt this month (always the optimist when it comes to reading).