“Everybody in Amsterdam Speaks English.” Not.

It was our 25^th anniversary trip – a week in Amsterdam and then a week in Paris. My wife had been to Amsterdam some years before on a business trip; I’d been to neither city. 

We arrived early one May morning. It turned out to be Ascension Day, a public holiday in the Netherlands. We’d reserved seats for a shuttle bus, but as we neared the city center, everything looked like an early Sunday morning. Many shops were closed; little traffic was moving on the streets. Our shuttle driver dropped us off across the canal from the hotel; he decided the street wasn’t wide enough to accommodate his (very small) bus.

 

We had a lot of luggage. I mean, a lot of luggage. Even then, we didn’t really travel; we migrated.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: The Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam, via Unsplash.

Some Thursday Readings

 

A Genuine Petrarchan Note on William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets – poem by Tom Riley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“The Moons” by Grevel Lindop – Malcolm Guite.

 

Burdens – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

A king goes out to cheer his men on the night before battle – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Top 10 Dip into Poetry – Tweetspeak Poetry.

Books I’m Not Recommending This Christmas

It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.  

Poetry

 

The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. 

 

Three books about poetry that I enjoyed are Dante’s Divine Comedy by Joseph Luzzi; An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant; and Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, & Poetry by Benjamin Myers. 

 

Fiction

 

I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels. 

 

Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.

 

Art and Architecture

 

Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.

 

I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)

 

Civil War

 

Last December, my historical novel Brookhaven was published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)

 

Mystery

 

Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)

 

I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.

 

And that’s the list for 2025.

Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

At the Savoy Chapel – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Oh I could raise the darken’d veil,” poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dropped without Joy – Alexander Fayne on the poet R.S. Thomas.

Poets and Poems: Hedy Habra and “Under Brushstrokes”

Sometimes I find myself backing into a poet’s work – starting with the most recent work and then working my way backwards to earlier works. Such is the case with Hedy Habra, whose Or Did You Ever See the Other Side? (2023) I considered here last year. 

Then I read her first collection, Tea in Heliopolis (2013). I realized she has been writing about art – paintings, sculpture, music, architecture, and history from the beginning. Her background suggests this is not by accident; she’s been exploring the cultural heritage of her family through poetry from the beginning. 

 

Under Brushstrokes was published in 2015. As the title suggests, may, or most, of the poems are about art. Habra is going to take us on something of a tour, with our informed tour guide showing us what is and isn’t obvious.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

mist\’mist\ n. 1,3,4 – poem by M.L. Brown at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Christmas Carol,” poem by G.K. Chesterton – Kelly Keller at On the Common.

 

“Winter Wakeneth al my Care” – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Quarrel with the World: Milosz’s complicated Second World War – Alan Jacobs at The Hedgehog Review.

 

A Review of The Teller’s Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies by John Philip Drury – Carla Sarett at New Verse Review.

I Bid Farewell to Chief Inspector Gamache

I’ve been a fan of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache mystery novels for years. I was fascinated by the village of Three Pines in Quebec, so small and out of the way that it can’t be found on most maps. The Villages residents – Olivier and Gabri at the Bistro, the off-the-wall poet Ruth Zardo, artist Clara Morrow, Myrna the bookstore owner, all had their stories on how they came to live there.  

I felt t home with Gamache’s family – his wife Reine-Marie and his grown children. His daughter Annie marries Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Gamache’s second-in-command at the Quebec Surete. And his police team. 

 

From novel to novel, and there are now 20 of them, I’ve followed the characters through personal crises, upheavals, near-death experiences, entanglements in crime, and overall well-done stories. But with No. 18, A World of Curiosities, Penny wallowed personal politics to color the story. I was encouraged with No. 19, The Grey Wolf, because she seemed to be returning to her narrative storyline. 

 

Then came No. 20, the sequel to The Grey Wolf. It’s entitled The Black Wolf. 

 

I have two problems with it. 

 

First, a considerable portion of what was conveyed in The Grey Wolf gets rewritten. What we knew then is not what we find out now. Appearances were deceiving. This happened in a significant way once before in on of Penny’s stories, when a village resident gets caught up in a crime and goes to prison after trial and conviction. In the next novel, what we knew turned out to be untrue, the character is redeemed, and all is well in Three Pines, after all. It happens again with The Black Wolf. It might work as an individual story, but it weakens the overall series. You begin to ask yourself, what else is going to get rewritten? 

 

My more serious problem is that Penny is once again slipping personal politics into the story. She includes the occasional mini-lecture, and the wise characters speak to what’s really right and true. But the heart of the story is the larger part of the problem. Those evil people south of the Canadian border are always up to no good.

 

Louise Penny

What happens is that personal politics overtakes the story. I stopped reading about page 200, just over halfway through. Maybe the story gets better. Maybe the politics goes away. But I decided I didn’t want to find out.

 

The fact is that I’m tired of politics overtaking everything, and that’s especially true for books I buy expecting to read a good story. I did not pay good money to read Louis Penny displaying her wisdom – or her version of wisdom – on current events and issues.  She’s taking pot shots and passing them off as deep insights from her characters. Conservatives are bad. Christians are bad. No one believes in church any more, except perhaps as a place to meet informants (because no one would ever think of going there for any other reason).

 

If you are of a progressive or leftist persuasion, you might think this is fine. I’m not; neither am I of a far-right persuasion. And I don’t think it’s fine. If you as a mystery writer are going to do this, then you need to slap a warning label on the cover.

 

So, I bid farewell to Chief Inspector Gamache. I will miss all the pastries and breads dripping in butter at Olivier and Gabri’s bistro. I won’t be reading about crazy Ruth Zardo the poet and her equally crazy duck Rosa. No more support and words of wisdom from Reine-Maries Gamache. 

 

No more anything from characters I’ve thought of as something like friends. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

 

My review of A World of Curiosities.

 

My review of The Grey Wolf.

Some Monday Readings

 

Your phone is a fake house – Adam Aleksic at The Etymology Nerd.

 

Our Days Are Short – Terry Whalin at the Writing Life.

 

An Autumn View Over London from Westminster Cathedral – A London Inheritance.

 

How to Ask Timeless Questions – Joseph Epstein at The Free Press.

 

Thoughts on Ethan Frome – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.