I would love to see you write about Piranesi. I enjoyed the book, but I didn't love it like so many people do. I knew as I was reading it that I was missing out due to not having read enough old books. I had read the Narnia series, so I made some connections there, but that was it. I feel like I miss a lot when I read fiction. Do you have any recommendations for making me a better reader? I aspire to write criticism as you do! Yesterday I ordered Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why.
I also didn't love I Cheerfully Refuse, but I did love Peace Like a River. I liked it, and I'm glad I read it, but I didn't really ENJOY it. Sigh... Maybe it's that the world is already dark enough for me at present. I don't like to think about it getting worse.
I read and enjoyed Wintering, and I have Electricity, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Now, I want to read it soon! :)
I am definitely sensing an audience for my thoughts on Piranesi. I want everyone to love it as much as I do.
I think the most important thing to be a good reader is to read a lot. Then, read in community with people who are good readers. I'm always a much better reader when I'm reading with others than when I'm reading solo. Also, take time to make notes and ask questions. I underline and highlight and make notes in my books and I often will stop at the end of a chapter to write out questions and notes. (Not on the first reading usually, when I'm rushing to get through the plot and to find out what happens, but if I'm re-reading to try to understand a book more deeply.) It really helps me to write up these regular summaries and thoughts about the books I'm reading. I usually open a new document at the beginning of the month and write notes about books as I'm reading them. At the end of the month, I clean it up and make it my monthly reading notes post, but I try to update as I go and to think about what I'm going to say about a book as I read.
One of the tricks I use most often is that the passages that are the most confusing or puzzling or hard to figure out... those are the places that often yield the best insights if you go back and read closely and ask questions and talk about it with other people. Some of my most fruitful readings of books often come when I'm reading with other people and someone asks a question about a thing I maybe hadn't even noticed or thought about and I start poking around trying to figure out the answer, and not being satisfied with the first thoughts, but digging into the text and looking closely at the wording. But also it helps to pick one scene in a book that grabs my attention. Either because it's confusing or because it's very attractive or because it reminds me of another book. If I sit down to write about that one scene and try to figure out why that's the scene that is grabbing my attention, then often that helps to unlock the whole book for me.
In Piranesi the scene about the albatross feels very important. And I keep coming back to the image of the woman with the beehive and wondering what it is about her that seems meaningful. I finally realized that one of the most significant features of the woman with the beehive is that there's a bee crawling on her eyelid. And my daughter pointed out that beekeepers often have a very trusting relationship with their bees. They're not afraid of them, they don't worry about being stung. The woman with the beehive trusts her bees and loves them. She's not afraid of nature and not trying to dominate the bees, but living in relationship with them. And that's how Piranesi is with the House. He trusts it, he loves it, he's not afraid of it even when there are dangers.
I guess I think good readers care about the details and pay attention to the small things. I try to assume that everything in a book is intentional and tells you something about the author and about the meaning.
I Cheerfully Refuse is a pretty dark book. I tend to be drawn to that kind of book and I'm not quite sure why. I like postapocalyptic novels and stories about people enduring in a world that is falling to pieces. Maybe it's soothing to my anxiety to see things falling apart in the extreme? A kind of exposure therapy? I don't know. I know I spent the first few months of the pandemic mentally taking notes: Oh, so this is what it's like to actually live through a pandemic! Oh this is the kind of pandemic we are in. Having lived in many dark narratives I was able to see resemblances and also to see: hey this isn't nearly as scary as the pandemics in Station Eleven or World War Z. Or: we aren't in nearly as scary a world as the situation in Dies the Fire! But I think it's also perfectly reasonable to not like that kind of story.
Thank you, Melanie! You are so generous in your comments and responses! I read a lot, but I don't read much in community, and I certainly haven't engaged with books as you do. I appreciate your suggestions, and I will simply have to change my habits. I tend to consume books rather than engage with them. Graduate school helped my nonfiction engagement, but fiction is another story. (Ha!) It seems must treat books, especially the great books, more as art rather than as entertainment.
I have an innate tendency to consume books as well. Especially when I'm tired or stressed. I was a bookworm as a child and I gobbled them without really thinking much and without remembering much. But I was lucky to have teachers in high school who challenged me to read more deeply and whose assignments stretched me quite a bit. And then I majored in English in college and then got my MA in Irish literature. So the years of academic training did help to push me in the direction of thinking more deeply about what I read and my focus was always literature.
In college, I still often gobbled books when reading for pleasure, but reading for classes means you have to show up with something to say. And if you try to fly under the radar, you'll eventually be caught. And then we had to write so many essays and I learned to go back to re-read the parts of books that mattered for my argument. And then I went from grad school to teaching and then to blogging about books because once I wasn't in the classroom I still wanted to read closely and argue about books and the next best thing was writing criticism and self publishing it online. I finished my MA in 2002 and I started my first blog in 2005. So I guess I've been writing about books for a solid twenty five years.
Blogging about books really did help me shift from only thinking closely when reading in an academic setting to starting to think more closely about my pleasure reading. I tell myself I have to at least write a brief summary for my monthly book posts. When I fall out of the habit of doing a monthly post, then I do tend to slide back to consuming books instead of thinking about them. Though my family also tend to get an earful about whatever I'm currently reading. My husband is used to me giving him plot summaries while we're making dinner and if he's not around then I end up telling my kids about my books.
I understand reading to survive! This whole first half of the year for me has been all planned books: book club reads or books for writing projects. I need a few weeks just to read spontaneously.
I listened through the first two Close Reads episodes on it but haven't finished them up. I usually have a mixed response to their discussion, and even without having finished listening, I think I'll probably err on the side of your take.
Have you written a list of your favorite poetry collections? It's always my goal to fit more poetry into my life, but where I feel pretty confident choosing on my own with fiction, I feel less certain with poetry. Have you read Tomas Tranströmer? He's a poet I've been meaning to get to.
Thanks so much for the link to Ellen's essay. It's so good I'm taking extensive notes. I'm always interested in reading other people's takes and it's especially delightful when they are so thoughtful and insightful. And I love that she's drawing on That Hideous Strength as well as The Magician's Nephew. I wouldn't have made that connection, but then again it's probably been twenty years since I read the Space Trilogy.
Oh that's a good idea: I should write about poetry collections and poetry reading habits in general. Though I confess that I'm probably not actually a very good reader of poetry. I have a poor attention span and get easily distracted. I own many poetry books, I've read only the smallest fraction of them cover to cover. My friend Zina is much more dogged and systematic in her reading of poetry. Maybe because she came to it later in life? I tend to be lazy and have a hard time forcing myself to do the hard work of slowing down and paying attention. And I'm chronically short on sleep so often when I do try to read poetry I end up dozing. You have to be sharp witted to read poems, much more so than prose.
I would love to read whatever you write on Piranesi. I don’t have my copy with me right now as we are on the road again, but I also disagreed with the hosts about several points. I think it is a book that invites disagreement. Since we have been packing, moving, repacking, moving, and finally unpacking I didn’t respond much to the episodes.
Spoilers:
I feel pretty strongly that Piranesi/Sorenson is more consistent than they suggested. He begins with a search to find the missing people and while not part of the cult he is overly fascinated by divergent thinkers. When he gets to the house he forgets his past, his quest but the best of him remains: his curiosity, his meticulous journaling, and his care for others (I love the scenes where he cares for the dead- the same people he was searching for). It seems like so many of the characters were falling for gnostic heresies and the house strips them of that knowledge leaving Piranesi open to receive Providence. I don’t see the House as solidly Good or Bad, but I do see it as the place where he can see himself as the Child of the House which I see as a Child of God. He couldn’t feel or see that in the world. When he returns, he helps Ritter (I may be getting the name wrong) and he helps Rafael too. At the end he seems to have carried that sense of Providence with him into the world. I view the ending as hopeful.
I agree that he's consistent. I think the house has a purgatorial function and that his time spent there is purifying but doesn't change who he essentially is. He becomes pure of heart, one who is able to see God.
I'm baffled at their dismissal of seeing Christian themes in the novel, to me it feels like a misreading rather than a difference of interpretation. It's like they could acknowledge the individual elements but refused to put the pieces together to form a coherent picture because they'd decided a priori that a Christian reading of the book wasn't interesting to them. And some of their rejection felt like maybe it's unconsciously an Eastern Orthodox rejection of more Western forms of Christianity. Like Sean seeing statues and marble columns as necessarily pagan, where to my Roman Catholic sensibility they do not feel foreign to Christianity at all.
My particular frustration, though, was that it didn't feel like they were reading closely at all. Many of the points they were wrong on can easily be corrected by a close reading of the text. I keep getting the feeling that they're taking on too many projects and reading too many books at once and drifting away from the "close reading" that is their mission, at least according to the name of the podcast.
I like the idea of the house being Purgatorial. It reinforces that he can’t really live there permanently, but that it serves an important function and as his life is not yet over, he continues to need it. Arguably the other inhabitants of the house are not able to survive there because they were not open to the providence of the house.
I just borrowed "The Last Murder at the End of the World" thanks to your recommendation. Thank you! An old friend recommended "Piranesi" years ago and I still haven't read it, but you're making me curious again. I've read all of Katherine May's books and I think they're all wonderful.
I'm about a quarter way through "Dear Writer" by Maggie Smith and really enjoying it. She reads it herself and it always feels like a gift when a writer does that; they know *exactly* how to read the words.
And oh please do read Piranesi. The friend who recommended it to me said it was a restful book and I agree, even when there is plot tension, somehow I still feel a deep sense of peace.
And the Maggie Smith sounds perfect. I'll see if my library has it.
I have several pages of rough draft and notes about Piranesi. I need to make it into an essay and not a rant. I'm pretty sure it will happen, but I need to figure out what shape it's supposed to be if it's not just a point by point rebuttal of everything that annoyed me about Heidi and Sean's analysis. Sigh.
Going to the library immediately after work to pick up Last Murder. Thanks for the recommendation.
In this particular season of my life I am having a particularly hard time reading at all. Which seems odd to me since reading has always been an escape. Maybe this post apocalyptic murder will do the trick! Let's hope so!
I am one of the ones who *liked* Piranesi but didn't *love* it. I haven't listened to the Close Reads take on it, but it does strike me as slightly out of character for them to be so dismissive of a Christian interpretation.
I always love to read your thoughts on books, especially ones that I don't necessarily see the same way you do (Jane Eyre, I'm looking at you!). So yes, please. WRITE!
It's so hard when you can't read. It seems grief can do funny things to a reading life. You're not the first person I've talked to who finds reading hard after a major loss. But I'm sure you'll find your groove again.
It does seem out of character for them to be dismissive of seeing Christian themes in fiction and I think that's why I'm so baffled. I can't figure out why they're dismissive.
I wish you were local, Terry, so that I could be in a book club with you and sit around in person, with tasty beverages and snacks, chatting about our different interpretations of our favorite books.
I love your monthly "books I read" posts. I either have also read and been impacted by the books you share (Piranesi, Electricity of Every Living Thing) or am ready to add new ones to my to-read list (I immediately downloaded Last Murder at the End of the World to my Kindle!). I agree about CloseReads and Piranesi. It was enjoyable to listen to their critique, but they didn't land where I did.
I loved Piranesi. So much so, that I have been reluctant to re-read it in case it hits different second time around. I read both Wintering and Enchantment by Katherine May earlier this year - I'll add The Electricity of Every Living Thing to my TBR list. I am happily working my way through Murderbot, with book 5 up next, and enjoying some historical fiction. I loved A Gentleman in Moscow, and my current read is The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks, which puts flesh onto the bones of Chaucer's tale-teller. Up next? More Murderbot, some more light sci-fi and fantasy, and The Nightingale Gallery by Paul Doherty (medieval murder mystery).
Murderbot is such fun. I think I've read them twice now-- and listened to the audiobooks. We started watching the show on Netflix and it's not a bad adaptation, but it doesn't have the voice, which is what makes the books so good. A Gentleman in Moscow is one of those books that I can't even explain why I love it. It's got a kind of fairytale quality and is just so charming. I liked Rules of Civility too, but not as much as Gentleman.
The Good Wife of Bath and Nightingale Gallery both sound interesting. I'm definitely feeling this will be a summer of light sci-fi and fantasy and murder mysteries. I probably won't be diving into anything heavy until things settle down a bit.
I would love to see you write about Piranesi. I enjoyed the book, but I didn't love it like so many people do. I knew as I was reading it that I was missing out due to not having read enough old books. I had read the Narnia series, so I made some connections there, but that was it. I feel like I miss a lot when I read fiction. Do you have any recommendations for making me a better reader? I aspire to write criticism as you do! Yesterday I ordered Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why.
I also didn't love I Cheerfully Refuse, but I did love Peace Like a River. I liked it, and I'm glad I read it, but I didn't really ENJOY it. Sigh... Maybe it's that the world is already dark enough for me at present. I don't like to think about it getting worse.
I read and enjoyed Wintering, and I have Electricity, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Now, I want to read it soon! :)
I am definitely sensing an audience for my thoughts on Piranesi. I want everyone to love it as much as I do.
I think the most important thing to be a good reader is to read a lot. Then, read in community with people who are good readers. I'm always a much better reader when I'm reading with others than when I'm reading solo. Also, take time to make notes and ask questions. I underline and highlight and make notes in my books and I often will stop at the end of a chapter to write out questions and notes. (Not on the first reading usually, when I'm rushing to get through the plot and to find out what happens, but if I'm re-reading to try to understand a book more deeply.) It really helps me to write up these regular summaries and thoughts about the books I'm reading. I usually open a new document at the beginning of the month and write notes about books as I'm reading them. At the end of the month, I clean it up and make it my monthly reading notes post, but I try to update as I go and to think about what I'm going to say about a book as I read.
One of the tricks I use most often is that the passages that are the most confusing or puzzling or hard to figure out... those are the places that often yield the best insights if you go back and read closely and ask questions and talk about it with other people. Some of my most fruitful readings of books often come when I'm reading with other people and someone asks a question about a thing I maybe hadn't even noticed or thought about and I start poking around trying to figure out the answer, and not being satisfied with the first thoughts, but digging into the text and looking closely at the wording. But also it helps to pick one scene in a book that grabs my attention. Either because it's confusing or because it's very attractive or because it reminds me of another book. If I sit down to write about that one scene and try to figure out why that's the scene that is grabbing my attention, then often that helps to unlock the whole book for me.
In Piranesi the scene about the albatross feels very important. And I keep coming back to the image of the woman with the beehive and wondering what it is about her that seems meaningful. I finally realized that one of the most significant features of the woman with the beehive is that there's a bee crawling on her eyelid. And my daughter pointed out that beekeepers often have a very trusting relationship with their bees. They're not afraid of them, they don't worry about being stung. The woman with the beehive trusts her bees and loves them. She's not afraid of nature and not trying to dominate the bees, but living in relationship with them. And that's how Piranesi is with the House. He trusts it, he loves it, he's not afraid of it even when there are dangers.
I guess I think good readers care about the details and pay attention to the small things. I try to assume that everything in a book is intentional and tells you something about the author and about the meaning.
I Cheerfully Refuse is a pretty dark book. I tend to be drawn to that kind of book and I'm not quite sure why. I like postapocalyptic novels and stories about people enduring in a world that is falling to pieces. Maybe it's soothing to my anxiety to see things falling apart in the extreme? A kind of exposure therapy? I don't know. I know I spent the first few months of the pandemic mentally taking notes: Oh, so this is what it's like to actually live through a pandemic! Oh this is the kind of pandemic we are in. Having lived in many dark narratives I was able to see resemblances and also to see: hey this isn't nearly as scary as the pandemics in Station Eleven or World War Z. Or: we aren't in nearly as scary a world as the situation in Dies the Fire! But I think it's also perfectly reasonable to not like that kind of story.
Thank you, Melanie! You are so generous in your comments and responses! I read a lot, but I don't read much in community, and I certainly haven't engaged with books as you do. I appreciate your suggestions, and I will simply have to change my habits. I tend to consume books rather than engage with them. Graduate school helped my nonfiction engagement, but fiction is another story. (Ha!) It seems must treat books, especially the great books, more as art rather than as entertainment.
I have an innate tendency to consume books as well. Especially when I'm tired or stressed. I was a bookworm as a child and I gobbled them without really thinking much and without remembering much. But I was lucky to have teachers in high school who challenged me to read more deeply and whose assignments stretched me quite a bit. And then I majored in English in college and then got my MA in Irish literature. So the years of academic training did help to push me in the direction of thinking more deeply about what I read and my focus was always literature.
In college, I still often gobbled books when reading for pleasure, but reading for classes means you have to show up with something to say. And if you try to fly under the radar, you'll eventually be caught. And then we had to write so many essays and I learned to go back to re-read the parts of books that mattered for my argument. And then I went from grad school to teaching and then to blogging about books because once I wasn't in the classroom I still wanted to read closely and argue about books and the next best thing was writing criticism and self publishing it online. I finished my MA in 2002 and I started my first blog in 2005. So I guess I've been writing about books for a solid twenty five years.
Blogging about books really did help me shift from only thinking closely when reading in an academic setting to starting to think more closely about my pleasure reading. I tell myself I have to at least write a brief summary for my monthly book posts. When I fall out of the habit of doing a monthly post, then I do tend to slide back to consuming books instead of thinking about them. Though my family also tend to get an earful about whatever I'm currently reading. My husband is used to me giving him plot summaries while we're making dinner and if he's not around then I end up telling my kids about my books.
Irish literature! How interesting! I would love to hear more about that sometime.
No wonder you are so talented! Your education and experience are extensive. Thank you for sharing this with me. :)
I understand reading to survive! This whole first half of the year for me has been all planned books: book club reads or books for writing projects. I need a few weeks just to read spontaneously.
I would also love to see you write an essay on Piranesi. I can't get enough of others' thoughts on it. Ellen from The Better Reader just wrote a really beautiful one: https://thebetterreader.substack.com/p/on-piranesi-and-cs-lewis
I listened through the first two Close Reads episodes on it but haven't finished them up. I usually have a mixed response to their discussion, and even without having finished listening, I think I'll probably err on the side of your take.
Have you written a list of your favorite poetry collections? It's always my goal to fit more poetry into my life, but where I feel pretty confident choosing on my own with fiction, I feel less certain with poetry. Have you read Tomas Tranströmer? He's a poet I've been meaning to get to.
Thanks so much for the link to Ellen's essay. It's so good I'm taking extensive notes. I'm always interested in reading other people's takes and it's especially delightful when they are so thoughtful and insightful. And I love that she's drawing on That Hideous Strength as well as The Magician's Nephew. I wouldn't have made that connection, but then again it's probably been twenty years since I read the Space Trilogy.
Oh that's a good idea: I should write about poetry collections and poetry reading habits in general. Though I confess that I'm probably not actually a very good reader of poetry. I have a poor attention span and get easily distracted. I own many poetry books, I've read only the smallest fraction of them cover to cover. My friend Zina is much more dogged and systematic in her reading of poetry. Maybe because she came to it later in life? I tend to be lazy and have a hard time forcing myself to do the hard work of slowing down and paying attention. And I'm chronically short on sleep so often when I do try to read poetry I end up dozing. You have to be sharp witted to read poems, much more so than prose.
I would love to read whatever you write on Piranesi. I don’t have my copy with me right now as we are on the road again, but I also disagreed with the hosts about several points. I think it is a book that invites disagreement. Since we have been packing, moving, repacking, moving, and finally unpacking I didn’t respond much to the episodes.
Spoilers:
I feel pretty strongly that Piranesi/Sorenson is more consistent than they suggested. He begins with a search to find the missing people and while not part of the cult he is overly fascinated by divergent thinkers. When he gets to the house he forgets his past, his quest but the best of him remains: his curiosity, his meticulous journaling, and his care for others (I love the scenes where he cares for the dead- the same people he was searching for). It seems like so many of the characters were falling for gnostic heresies and the house strips them of that knowledge leaving Piranesi open to receive Providence. I don’t see the House as solidly Good or Bad, but I do see it as the place where he can see himself as the Child of the House which I see as a Child of God. He couldn’t feel or see that in the world. When he returns, he helps Ritter (I may be getting the name wrong) and he helps Rafael too. At the end he seems to have carried that sense of Providence with him into the world. I view the ending as hopeful.
I agree that he's consistent. I think the house has a purgatorial function and that his time spent there is purifying but doesn't change who he essentially is. He becomes pure of heart, one who is able to see God.
I'm baffled at their dismissal of seeing Christian themes in the novel, to me it feels like a misreading rather than a difference of interpretation. It's like they could acknowledge the individual elements but refused to put the pieces together to form a coherent picture because they'd decided a priori that a Christian reading of the book wasn't interesting to them. And some of their rejection felt like maybe it's unconsciously an Eastern Orthodox rejection of more Western forms of Christianity. Like Sean seeing statues and marble columns as necessarily pagan, where to my Roman Catholic sensibility they do not feel foreign to Christianity at all.
My particular frustration, though, was that it didn't feel like they were reading closely at all. Many of the points they were wrong on can easily be corrected by a close reading of the text. I keep getting the feeling that they're taking on too many projects and reading too many books at once and drifting away from the "close reading" that is their mission, at least according to the name of the podcast.
I like the idea of the house being Purgatorial. It reinforces that he can’t really live there permanently, but that it serves an important function and as his life is not yet over, he continues to need it. Arguably the other inhabitants of the house are not able to survive there because they were not open to the providence of the house.
I just borrowed "The Last Murder at the End of the World" thanks to your recommendation. Thank you! An old friend recommended "Piranesi" years ago and I still haven't read it, but you're making me curious again. I've read all of Katherine May's books and I think they're all wonderful.
I'm about a quarter way through "Dear Writer" by Maggie Smith and really enjoying it. She reads it herself and it always feels like a gift when a writer does that; they know *exactly* how to read the words.
Tell me what you think of Last Murder.
And oh please do read Piranesi. The friend who recommended it to me said it was a restful book and I agree, even when there is plot tension, somehow I still feel a deep sense of peace.
And the Maggie Smith sounds perfect. I'll see if my library has it.
I do hope you write a Piranesi essay. After doing it with CR, I am going to read it with a friend.
P.S. The Betrothed does not end like Kristin (which is still my heart book and ever shall be, world without end, amen.)
I have several pages of rough draft and notes about Piranesi. I need to make it into an essay and not a rant. I'm pretty sure it will happen, but I need to figure out what shape it's supposed to be if it's not just a point by point rebuttal of everything that annoyed me about Heidi and Sean's analysis. Sigh.
Just put The Last Murder at the End of the World on hold at my library - it sounds intriguing!
I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think.
I'll try to remember. God bless your day!
Going to the library immediately after work to pick up Last Murder. Thanks for the recommendation.
In this particular season of my life I am having a particularly hard time reading at all. Which seems odd to me since reading has always been an escape. Maybe this post apocalyptic murder will do the trick! Let's hope so!
I am one of the ones who *liked* Piranesi but didn't *love* it. I haven't listened to the Close Reads take on it, but it does strike me as slightly out of character for them to be so dismissive of a Christian interpretation.
I always love to read your thoughts on books, especially ones that I don't necessarily see the same way you do (Jane Eyre, I'm looking at you!). So yes, please. WRITE!
It's so hard when you can't read. It seems grief can do funny things to a reading life. You're not the first person I've talked to who finds reading hard after a major loss. But I'm sure you'll find your groove again.
It does seem out of character for them to be dismissive of seeing Christian themes in fiction and I think that's why I'm so baffled. I can't figure out why they're dismissive.
I wish you were local, Terry, so that I could be in a book club with you and sit around in person, with tasty beverages and snacks, chatting about our different interpretations of our favorite books.
I love your monthly "books I read" posts. I either have also read and been impacted by the books you share (Piranesi, Electricity of Every Living Thing) or am ready to add new ones to my to-read list (I immediately downloaded Last Murder at the End of the World to my Kindle!). I agree about CloseReads and Piranesi. It was enjoyable to listen to their critique, but they didn't land where I did.
Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so grateful to you for reading and commenting and I'm glad my book posts strike a chord.
I'm fascinated that people are taking up Last Murder at the End of the World on the basis of my review.
I loved Piranesi. So much so, that I have been reluctant to re-read it in case it hits different second time around. I read both Wintering and Enchantment by Katherine May earlier this year - I'll add The Electricity of Every Living Thing to my TBR list. I am happily working my way through Murderbot, with book 5 up next, and enjoying some historical fiction. I loved A Gentleman in Moscow, and my current read is The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks, which puts flesh onto the bones of Chaucer's tale-teller. Up next? More Murderbot, some more light sci-fi and fantasy, and The Nightingale Gallery by Paul Doherty (medieval murder mystery).
Murderbot is such fun. I think I've read them twice now-- and listened to the audiobooks. We started watching the show on Netflix and it's not a bad adaptation, but it doesn't have the voice, which is what makes the books so good. A Gentleman in Moscow is one of those books that I can't even explain why I love it. It's got a kind of fairytale quality and is just so charming. I liked Rules of Civility too, but not as much as Gentleman.
The Good Wife of Bath and Nightingale Gallery both sound interesting. I'm definitely feeling this will be a summer of light sci-fi and fantasy and murder mysteries. I probably won't be diving into anything heavy until things settle down a bit.