Welcome to Litsy!

The last book I'll finish in 2024 was Simenon's tale of a marriage marred by family interference, bourgeois suspicions, emotional betrayals and psychological abuse.
Set in the claustrophobic environs of a seagoing freighter, dogged by bad luck and paranoid tensions, it's a bit like the film "The War of the Roses" at sea. The story builds to a climactic sea rescue with inevitable tragic consequences.
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I *might* have time to squeeze in a final book before 2024 is over.
This is a non-Maigret Simenon about a boat captain whose wife insists on accompanying him on the maiden voyage of his new vessel. Marital tensions build and fracture, though to what end I'll have to read to discover! 💔🌊💔

#12booksof2024
#May
Tagged book, Maigret and the Yellow Dog

Starting my 1st Simenon ever, The Madman of Bergerac, as part of my 2024 Dordogne challenge. And since today (Nov, 29) is the day of juniper in the French revolutionary calendar, I am having juniper tea. I don't know why this berry is so underused these days: it's lovely and so fragrant!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Autu...

Here‘s my November TBR along with my goals for the month. My TBR will not be as ambitious as it was last month. Last month, I had 67 books on my TBR. I only read 9 of them and mood read for the rest of the month after my dog passed away on Oct 25. 67 books was too much. Oct was rough for me. I know I have a lot of ARCs to read right now but I really need to mood read for a while. I‘m hoping Nov will be better for me.

#novembertbr

Simenon's psychological portrait of a serial killer is compelling and creepy, with the things unsaid somehow worse than the things he shows - less is definitely more!
The Strangler is garotting older women, the hapless police have no clue, an anxious tailor suspects his neighbour but with no substantial evidence cannot claim the reward for information, and a young reporter's theorising incites the killer to write that he is not insane, that his ⬇️

"He would buy books in the salerooms...choosing them at random. They were invariably books with yellowed pages, about which there clung a special smell, and he would find in them sometimes a pressed flower, at others a squashed fly. Occasionally, he would come across a letter in faded ink which had served as a marker, and it was seldom that there was not some name inscribed on the front page, or the purple stamp of a public library." ?

My first #BookHaul of the day was from Crook Hall Gardens, a National Trust property a few minutes walk from Durham town centre. It's a beautiful, tranquil oasis, with a reasonable selection of secondhand books in the Jacobian Room. I assume the statue is of Pomona, as she's holding a fruit & facing a small orchard.
Books are: a probably somewhat dated text book on working with post-traumatic stress experience, a 1942 Faber collection of Eliot, ⬇️

Maigret is called to Delfzijl, a Dutch port town, to assist a French citizen entangled in a murder, his investigation hampered by his inability to speak Dutch, while only some of the suspects speak French.
The townsfolk are stuffily provincial & would rather the crime go unsolved than an embarrassing scandal be exposed, so Maigret's relentless prodding at the truth is most unwelcome.
Most of the characters are unsympathetic in a claustrophobic ⬇️

"When Detective Chief Inspector Maigret arrived in Delfzijl, one afternoon in May, he had only the sketchiest notions about the case taking him to this small town located in the northernmost corner of Holland."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl