What I read this month

The Abandoned by Paul Gallico – Reading the MeowThe Ghost of Frédéric Chopin by Eric Faye Bodyfulness by Christine CaldwellThe Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke – RereadMansfield Park by Jane Austen – Reread, Reading Austen 2025 The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko OgawaThe Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh AzarMansfield Park Revisited by Joan Aiken – Reread Modern Love , edited by Daniel Jones

Three books about love – not necessarily romance

The Housekeeper and the Professor was a brief, poignant portrait of a lovely non-romantic relationship between a brilliant man who’s lost his memory and a woman who finds new meaning (and mathematical wisdom) through caring for him.

The Abandoned (aka Jennie) took an imaginative leap into what it might be like to have to learn how to be a cat, again including poignant life lessons and a special friendship mixed in with all the adventure.

Modern Love was compulsively readable, with its many angles on all the joys and challenges of human intimacy, conveyed through brief, punchy essays drawn from the column in The New York Times. This would be my kind of beach reading, if I were going to the beach this summer.

Frederic Chopin, Polonaise in F Minor, Op. 71, no. 3. From Gilmore Music Library, Yale UniversityA disappointment

The Ghost of Frédéric Chopin sounded so intriguing, but though it did manage to convey something of the unsettled atmosphere of post-Cold-War Prague, the story about a woman who claims to be channeling new compositions by Chopin just fizzled out at the end.

Currently reading

I’ve been loving reading through the novels of Jane Austen in publication order; it’s fascinating to see how her writing developed. I’m now a few chapters into Emma, where all the elements are coming together brilliantly. So sad that there are only two more to go!

Preparatory sketch by Niroot Puttapipat for Folio Society edition – Emma and Mr EltonOn the blogThe Men of Mansfield ParkSix Years in Switzerland

What’s on your shelf this month?

Linked at The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, and the Monthly Wrap-up Round-up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction