Booknotes 4.9

In Search of Lost Time volume 4: Cities of the Plain, by Marcel Proust (translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff), published 1922 (translated 1927), fiction. Several toxic relationships, and the aristocrats are getting a bit tiresome, but this volume was still anthropologically interesting. It’s also interlaced with grief from what happened in a previous volume. Only three volumes to go!

Foxglove Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch, published 2014, fantasy. Book 5 of the Rivers of London police procedural series. It’s a bit earthy/gritty as usual, and this one is a missing children case (which is usually past my threshold and not something I want to read about), but the London slang is fun. Not sure if I’ll continue the series, though.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder, published 2017, nonfiction. Much more applicable now than when it was published, sadly. Recommended.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot, published 1872, fiction. I bounced off it the first three times I tried it, including just last summer, but I was a fool. It’s so good. Loved it. Great writing, great characters, easy to read. No wonder it’s popular right now.