August 2025: What I Read

I started a new job in August. Starting a new job always had its challenges and this new role is definitely not an exception to that rule. One of the side effects of the new job has been far less time for reading. 

Some of this is undoutedly due to stress. The usual stress of starting a new role, but in this case additional stress because of office politics that I have walked into that have surprised me and are challenging me. My ability to concentrate is definitely suffering while I manage the stress and try to keep my intrusive thoughts under control.

On a more practical note, I no longer catch the train to and from work which has reduced the amount of reading time that I have available to me. I plan to handle this by getting this into audiobooks. Already.I have listended to a few and these will start popping up in my monthly overviews and my reviews. I've never really reviewed audiobooks before. I feel like the review will be about the story and also about the listening experience. I will make a point of reading some audiobook reviews to get some tips. 

Like that month, I've done a fair bit of re-reading and a lot less exploring of new works. 

New reads

Whose Body by Dorothy L Sayers, narrated by Robert Bathurst

I can't believe that I am admitting this, but I had never read anything by Dorothy L Sayers. I am a huge Agatha Christie fan, and read many cosy detective novels inspired by that genre, some of which refernece Sayers books (as in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series). So I dived into Whose Body, on audiobook. Whose Body is the first novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, in which he investigates the mysterious appearance of a corpse in a London bathtub, complete with pince-nez but no clothes. I really enjoyed it, but I found the mystery much harder to unravel than in an Agatha Christie novel.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I finally read an Ann Patchett book after one of my colleagues speaking so highly of her novels. Bel Canto is set at a birthday party in South America that suddenly turns into a hostage situation, but instead of being all tension and drama, it becomes this strange unfolding of developing connection between people who shouldn’t have anything in common. 

Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Novel About My Wife is told by Tom, who looks back on his marriage to Ann and slowly reveals how their seemingly ordinary life in London starts to unravel. I read this for my book club, Litery Wives Club, and a few of us reviewed the nove. You can read the full review here but in short I reacted strongly to this book, but not in a good way. So much was left unresolved and unexplained that it took away from any enjoyment for me, and I finished it feeling more frustrated than intrigued.

Re-Reads

Books that I read in the month of August, but had read previously, were Murder on a Midsummer Night by Kerry Greenwood, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling. 

Review: The Quiet Grave by Dervla Tiernan, dependable but unremarkable

I picked up The Quiet Grave during a busy patch in July when work and life were pulling me in all directions. More specifically job applications, interviews, and all the noise that goes with them. I was struggling to choose a book and then struggling to stick with it. In those times, cosy detective novels or crime procedurals are my fallback because they keep me reading without demanding too much mental energy.

The Quiet Grave continues Dervla McTiernan’s series, following Detective Cormac Reilly and his colleagues as another case unfolds. The story digs into a decades-old disappearance, and as usual for these novels, it's the kind of cold case that threatens to unearth more than anyone wants revealed. As usual, there’s the mix of procedural detail, personal drama, and the push-and-pull between police politics and real justice.

I’ve found myself enjoying this series more with each instalment, (see my review of The Scholar (2) and The Good Turn (3)) so I came into The Quiet Grave with some optimism. But this one didn’t land for me in the same way. The pacing reminded me of the first novel in the series. The resolution to the crime arrives so abruptly that it left me unsatisfied. I’ve also grown to appreciate Peter Fisher as a character, thinking he might take on a stronger role moving forward, but the events surrounding him in The Quiet Grave felt out of character and unlikely. I want to be immersed in the story but the way in which his story came to end took me out of the story and reminded me that I was just reading something that someone had made up. 

That said, McTiernan still delivers a reliable, standard sort of crime novel of the type that is good to have on hand when I just want to keep the pages turning without taxing my mind too much. I’ll keep reading the series when I need that kind of book, but this one reminded me that they’re not particularly special, even if they are dependable.