Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for March, 2015…

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel – WOW, I really loved this.  Station Eleven is a chilling, yet uplifting, dystopia telling the story of a small band of musicians and actors traveling between settlements of survivors after a massive flu pandemic has wiped out 99.99% of the world’s population.  The novel alternates between several points in time to tell the stories of a few different characters – famed actor Arthur Leander, who collapses and dies onstage during a performance of King Lear on the night the flu first hits North America; Jeevan Chaudhary, ex-paparazzo turned paramedic who tries to save Leander’s life, and Kirsten Raymonde, a child actress who witnesses Arthur’s death, survives the flu, and becomes part of the band of traveling performers trying to keep art and culture alive in the cruel post-flu world.  I don’t want to say much more about this one, because I don’t want to spoil anything.  It’s a chilling, outstanding, heartwarming book – highly recommended.

Miss Buncle’s Book (Miss Buncle #1), by D.E. Stevenson – Barbara Buncle needs money.  She can’t think of any other way to earn it, so she decides to write a book and try to have it published.  The trouble is, Miss Buncle isn’t particularly creative.  She’s fairly dull – believed stupid by her neighbors – and decidedly lacking in imagination.  So she writes a book based on her town, Silverstream, in which her friends and acquaintances are barely disguised.  Miss Buncle is delighted when the book is picked up for publication – she can finally get a new hat! – and shocked when it becomes a runaway bestseller.  But it doesn’t take long before the residents of Silverstream realize that they’ve been immortalized in fiction – some of them, to rather ill effect – and they’re determined to smoke out the anonymous author hiding in their midst.  This was a gentle, fun, whimsical read – perfect for the first days with a newborn.

Queen of Hearts (Her Royal Spyness #8), by Rhys Bowen – Lady Georgianna Rannoch, thirty-fifth in line to the throne of England, is off on her farthest-flung adventure yet when her mother, the famed actress and “bolter” Claire Daniels, invites her along as company on a journey to America.  Claire is headed for Reno to get a quickie divorce from her current husband so that she can marry her German paramour.  Having nothing better to do, Georgie delightedly tags along and finds herself mixed up in a mystifying jewel heist and the murder of a Hollywood producer.  Light, silly and fun, as always.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, by Erik Larson – I’ve only read one of Larson’s books before this one (In the Garden of Beasts, which I really enjoyed) but I knew as soon as I read the description of this one that I was going to have to read it.  I’ve never known much about the Lusitania disaster, and Larson promised a bigger story than the one we learned in history class (Germany torpedoed it, and caused the U.S. to join World War I as a result).  I was fascinated by Larson’s narrative of the disaster, and I learned a ton.  (For example, the Lusitania alone didn’t really get the U.S. into the war – it took another two years of affronts to the U.S. neutrality policy before we joined in.)  It’s history, but not dry in the least – compulsively readable, fascinating, and addictive.  Recommended to history buffs and fans of narrative non-fiction.

The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit – I’d downloaded this sweet story of three children whose family has fallen on hard times, and their love of the railroad near their new home, months ago and had been reading it in five minute snatches ever since.  I should know better than to read that way, because I never enjoy the story as much as it deserves until I really sink into it, which I finally did this month.  Bobbie, Peter and Phil are charming companions, and their adventures playing near the railroad are sweet and a pleasure to read.  Now I’m looking forward to reading more of E. Nesbit’s work.

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro – The new Ishiguro novel – his first in ten years! – is in some ways a departure from his previous work and in other ways, right in the same wheelhouse.  The Buried Giant follows the journey of a pair of elderly Britons, Axl and Beatrice, who are living in sixth-century Britain.  A supernatural mist clouds the land and robs its inhabitants of their memories, and Axl and Beatrice struggle to recall shared moments in their relationship as they travel to visit a son they barely remember.  Along the way their paths cross with several other travelers, all of whom have their own closely-guarded secrets.  I enjoyed The Buried Giant, and its themes of remembrance and forgetfulness (classic Ishiguro themes), although not as much as I enjoyed Never Let Me Go or especially The Remains of the Day (one of my all-time favorite books).  Still, I’d recommend it to Ishiguro fans or fans of the fantasy genre (which The Buried Giant is, nominally, although the fantasy elements of the story are not as important as the larger Ishiguro-esque themes).

That was a decent month of reading, if I say so myself!  Six books – less than I was doing in a month last year, but more than I’ve managed in any month since last October – and I enjoyed each one.  Dead Wake was probably the highlight; I couldn’t put it down.  Station Eleven was a close second.  But a little D.E. Stevenson, a little Georgie, and the new Ishiguro to round out the list make it a very good month indeed.  Here’s hoping the trend continues into April!