Sydney Reads and Reads: September

With the seasons beginning to change was feeling a little unsettled throughout September, and that definitely shows in my reading. There's a travel memoir, an Agatha Christie style mystery, and a childhood adventure tale.  Let's dig in!

A while back I sent an email to Ann Bogel of What Should I Read Next asking for book suggestions for my Iceland trip, and boy did her Instagram followers come through!

Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland follows author Sara Moss and her family as they pick up their lives in England and spend a year living in Reykjavik, Iceland. With the comfort of their English life far behind them, and the value of Sara's salary cut in half by the Icelandic economic crash the Moss family is forced to slow their life down to an Icelandic pace, appreciating the effort of life there, how the people get by, and the ease that comes with letting go of a lifestyle dictated by mass consumption.

Sara's descriptions of the otherworldly landscapes, the boiling mud, exploding volcanos, the endless days, the endless nights, put me right there with her family and in no small way excited me for my own upcoming trip. I also appreciated her outsider's perspective on Icelandic cuisine, the adapting, and improvising her family did to nourish themselves amidst the harsh climate.  Needless to say, I've had a constant supply of Skyrr in my fridge ever since, and I'm more intrigued than ever for my Reykjavik food tour.

I also connected with Sara's interest in Icelandic history.  How did this homogeneous country come to exist? Why do they choose to stay in a land that can be so volatile? Sara meets no shortage of characters in her year of exploration, each as unexpected as the next. A chef bringing life back to the excentricities of Icelandic cuisine, a poet who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland during 1943, and a woman who talks to elves and fairies. And knitting, we can't forget knitting.

Reading about the Moss's year abroad brought me back to my early days in New York when I knew few people and everything felt foreign and difficult to me, each small victory putting me on top of the world. Names for the Sea isn't your typical travel memoir, but I sure did enjoy it, and I think you will too.

Finding myself itching for a bit of pre-October spookiness I grabbed Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware, off of my Book of the Month TBR and it fit the bill perfectly. Like so many good mysteries, Turn of the Key plops us down at the end of the story and then circles back to the beginning as we try and piece together how our narrator came to such a tragic end.

Our narrator, in this case, is Rowan Caine a childcare professional who happens upon a live-in nanny job on an estate in the Scottish Highlands with full benefits and generous salary to boot. However, as often happens, neither the family, the smart house they live in nor Rowan herself are what they seem. As our story opens we find one of the children dead and Rowan in prison trying to lay out the facts to her lawyer.

I'll admit, as tantalizing as this book sounds, it was a four-star read for me at best. Though I usually love a novel written in a correspondence style between characters, in this case, it gave the story a false start, making it difficult for me to really give myself over to the story and the characters.  Though by the 100-page mark I felt like the narrative had found its rhythm and by the final twist, my jaw was on the floor.

I won't be reaching for Turn of the Key again any time soon, but it would certainly make a good travel or airport read!

Looking for a modern Huck Fin adventure to help you escape this fall? Do I have a book for you! Beginning in 1932 Minnesota, This Tender Land, by William Kent Kreuger, follows Odie O'Banion, his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and their sweet friend Emmy as they flee their life at The Lincoln Training School, a place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their tribes, families, and culture are sent to be educated. How Odie and Albert ended up there was just bad luck.

When our ragtag gang of heroes is forced to flee the Lincoln School we follow them downriver as they meet struggling farmers, discover Hoovervilles, and make friends with a faith healer, all in the name of finding the truth of their pasts and a place to call home.

Childhood adventure stories are exciting, but they stress me out.  I'm always worried about the characters and what trouble they'll get into next so I tend to rush through the details of the story.  What a shame that is for This Tender Land, who's descriptions of life at The Lincoln Training School and floating along the Giliad and Mississippi Rivers are so evocative. Something that lowered my blood pressure while reading this story was the trustworthy adult characters who gently watched over Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy.  Mr. Volz at the Lincoln School, Gertie along the Mississippi, Sister Eve the faith healer. It's a sad fact that many children were orphaned and forced to fend for themselves during the height of The Great Depression, a fact these adults realized.  So rather than punishing or trying to send them back north, they lend advice and assistance in ways that empowered our heroes to provide for themselves.

I'm sure I will return to this story in years to come, hopefully with more patience. :)

Did anyone read any spooky books in October? Mine were rather hit and miss, but the ones that hit really hit! Stay tuned to find out what they were! - xo Sydney