These cold days are a wonderful time to curl up with a good book. I’ve been enjoying several.  As a former reading teacher, I had several suggestions for my students. Anything you read counts as reading—comic books, graphic novels, the back of the cereal box. In fact, I did some of my most enjoyable reading at the breakfast table reading the news from Checkerboard Square, a feature of Chex cereal boxes.

But I also let students know that it was okay to abandon books—perhaps the book was too difficult to understand or was boring or just didn’t seem worth the time to finish. I also let them know that everyone had their own taste in books—what you loved might be a definite “no” from your friends.

Having said all that, here are some of the books I’ve read these cold days:

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. I tried, really I did, to finish this book, but Stuart, I regret to say that I couldn’t bring myself to read all the way to the end.  It’s a murder mystery set in an English country house (right up my alley), combined with a sci-fi time-turning element that sees our protagonist inhabiting different bodies during the course of a day that gets repeated (à la Groundhog Day) so that he can stop the murder of Miss Hardcastle.  I got about two-thirds through it before I surrendered, so give me an A for Effort. It’s a big cast of characters that I struggled to keep straight. But that’s just me. If you like sci-fi and murder mysteries, this highly acclaimed book is for you.

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. This book tells the story of Christopher Knight who lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years until his arrest in 2013. Finkel does a masterful job of examining the psychological aspects of Knight’s escape from the world as well as the physical challenges he faced while surviving 27 Maine winters (our recent Arctic temperatures give us some idea of what he faced—outdoors—without a fire, which he felt would attract too much attention).  Finkel was able to have extensive interviews with Knight and spent time at his campsite and the result is a compelling examination of this man’s mystifying life. Highly recommend.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. Yes, you caught me. I liked Finkel’s other book so much that I discovered The Art Thief. It is the incredible tale of a young man who spent nearly eight years stealing over 200 art objects from museums all over Europe before he was finally caught. Stèphane Breitwieser and his girlfriend worked together to steal paintings, silver pieces, and other objets d’arte not to fence them, but to display them in their attic bedroom.  His is a most curious case and Finkel takes us inside one man’s addiction to art thievery.

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann is next on my list. It is a novel based on the life of film director G.W. Pabst, the man who discovered Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. Pabst tried to escape Nazi Germany but did not succeed. Pabst found himself swept up in the Nazi machine. How does one fight fascism when you become part of the regime? A timely question.

A note to readers: More of my political writing can be found on my free Substack at Lifelines for America www.substack.com/@lifeliner2/posts.