This was a month of comfort reading. I finally finished The Comfort Book by Matt Haig which has been my bedside table book for over eight months. It was perfect if I just wanted to read a few pages of something when I couldn’t quite fall asleep. It was a wonderful nighttime ritual and I’m not sure how I’ll replace it.

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz finally arrived! I pre-ordered it months and months ago (as soon as she announced it on her podcast Noble Blood). I sat down on a Friday night with it and finished it by Saturday at lunch. It’s an engaging, kind of gory, romantic tale but the highlight for me was the villain – he’s capable of great brutality, but also one of the few characters to appreciate the skill and dedication of our main character.

Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong was an enjoyable trip into some pop culture history. The stories about the set and writing room were fun but Armstrong also explores how entertainment lives in public memory, changes in the television industry, and how the show impacted not just the audience but the creators and the networks.

For a Sunday afternoon murder mystery, Tana French didn’t fail me with In the Woods. After enjoying her standalones, The Witch Elm and The Searcher I’ve gone back to the beginning with her debut novel in the Dublin Murder Squad series and it shows how she’s always been a stellar storyteller. The ending is foggy with a hint of folklore, but French still leaves you satisfied.

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss was a happy surprise. Liss builds an interesting magical variation of Eighteenth Century England with a great portrayal of Byron in all of his selfishness and cruelty and attractiveness, but the surprise was his main character – a young woman facing hardship with dedication, humor, and resiliency. I’m often skeptical of male writers and their female characters (for good reason) but Liss manages well here. Although I understand his other books are vastly different (and according to his online reviews many of his fans didn’t enjoy this departure from his norm) but because this was my first novel of his I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams was another surprise. The novel is more thoughtful, serious, and a little sad than the cover and blurb prepared me for a more lighthearted tale but the main characters are engaging and the wordplay remarkable so I certainly wasn’t disappointed. In fact my only complaint was the ending – I wanted a little more time and detail about the fates of our characters which shows how invested I was with them by the end.   

And finally, when my husband left for a business trip, I happened to stumble across How to Be Alone by Lane Moore. After two years of COVID lockdowns and working from home I haven’t actually spent much time alone recently, so I picked it up. It ended up being a much more emotional journey than anticipated (and more about being emotionally alone than literally alone in your house) but I’m glad I’ve found Moore and her work (especially on social media). I can imagine her work has helped many readers feel less alone and a book that can do that is a wonderful thing.

Overall it was a varied month – whose words did you start off with in the new year?