Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in October 2024. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on MORE TO COME. Enjoy.

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Follow the Flock: How Sheep Shaped Human Civilization (2021) by Sally Coulthard weaves the rich and fascinating story of sheep into a vivid and colorful tapestry. Being an ideal animal to domesticate, sheep have been with us almost since farming began to the point that there are now around a billion on the planet. While there are at least a thousand breeds and crossbreeds, Coulthard makes the point that these unique animals have changed us as much as we have changed them.

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To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer’s Memoir (2022) by Alice Feiring is a self-described “love letter to wine and a lifelong coming of age story.” Feiring believes that the best wine writing is about life, and in a series of eleven personal essays she explores her own life’s story while sharing her love of natural wine. She doesn’t want to be seen as a wine critic, but instead wants readers to share her fascination for wine’s spiritual underpinnings.

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The Greek Way (originally published 1930, reprinted in 2017) by Edith Hamilton is a well-known survey of Greek literature and art that is definitely a product of its time. “Probably no other single person has had such an impact in shaping the perceptions of classical literature and mythology in the United States for almost a century” writes Emily Wilson in The Nation. Hamilton was a powerhouse of her age, with influences that still exist. There is much to admire in this slim work, but also much is required to place this book and Hamilton’s worldview into its proper context.

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Magpie Murders (2016) by Anthony Horowitz is the talented writer’s tale of intrigue involving editor Susan Ryeland, her crime-writing author Alan Conway, and Conway’s detective, Atticus Pünd, “who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages.” As someone who follows the path of those classic mystery writers, Conway has been very successful, even as he has alienated family, friends, and, yes, his editor. Yet Ryeland knows she must put up with his troubling behavior in order to keep the successful works flowing. An international bestseller upon its release and then the subject of a Masterpiece Mystery series on PBS, Magpie Murders is a delightful whodunit within a whodunit.

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Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2016, originally published in 2004), by Rebecca Solnit begins with a discussion around the demands of hope. They are real, but she pivots to note that joy is an especially good way to support the work which hope demands. This political season seems as good a time as any to consider Solnit’s thoughts on hope and joy in the face of despair, and to take the long view which she favors.

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What’s on the nightstand for November (subject to change at the whims of the reader)

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
• Avant-Garde in the Cornfields, Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino, Editors
• In the Beginning Was the Spirit by Diarmuid O’Murchu
• A Better Man by Louise Penny

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

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NOTE: Click to see the books I read in September of 2024 and to see the books I read in 2023. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

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Photo by Ben Smith on Unsplash.