March 2024 Books

I managed to finish six books in March; three were quick reads and three had more heft, both in page count and subject matter.

Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism by Joanne Limburg. I really savored this strange book. Limburg, an autistic writer and mother, structures her book as letters addressed to “weird” women in the past, while acknowledging that they we can’t know if they were autistic, but as an exercise in radical empathy and excavation. Virginia Woolf if the most famous, but it was the chapter on Kepler’s mom, whom he had to defend against charges of witchcraft, that I found most compelling.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, again. Each time I read this book I am more astonished that anyone can read it as a romance. It impresses me with its sweep of human nature and emotion, and is full of passages of powerful prose, but romance, small r? Nope.

Clouds of Witness (Lord Peter Wimsey #2) by Dorothy L. Sayers. I’m reading the Wimsey mysteries in publication order with a group of friends as I try to figure out how to recommend them to new readers. It was my second read, and even though I now have great affection for many of the characters, it was still quite a slog at the beginning and the end. That glorious middle, though! The visit to a socialist club, a chase through London’s streets, and a harrowing episode in a country bog were vivid and memorable. As a whole, though, it doesn’t quite hang together. But as one in a series, and reading the series as one long work, I’m glad to have read it and will read it again. Also, imagine my delight when Peter Wimsey goes exploring the countryside and finds a farmhouse up on the hill with a raging, jealous husband and his beautiful dark-haired bride! It was as if Wuthering Heights had been conjured and reimagined.

Those three, I’m afraid, were the cream of the crop. The Human Target graphic novels volumes 1 and 2, by Tom King and Greg Smallwood have beautiful art, and some fun interactions with members of the Justice League International–except for Guy Gardner, who is supposed to be an oaf, but is such a boor that even scenes played for laughs or sympathy didn’t land. But what started as a promising beginning, with Christopher Chance The Human Target investigating who poisoned him, becomes more of a Mad Men homage, sexism and all, even as I could tell they tried to avoid it. Not for me. Tellingly, I don’t think it even passed the Bechdel test. C’mon. It’s such a low, low bar, dudes.

And finally, I re-read Fletch by George McDonald, because a later book in the series has a passing connection with the Wimsey books. I remember reading and liking this book when I was a teen and in my twenties, and thinking it and the Chevy Chase movie were both good on their own merits, if different. It hasn’t aged well. I can make allowances for books written in different times, but a 26yo Fletch sleeping with a 15yo junkie? That just made my skin crawl. Which is unfortunate. Because there are some good things in it, and the plot goes like a house on fire. I really enjoyed the conversations between Fletch and Alan Stanwyck’s dad, which weren’t in the movie.

How was your March? What did you read and enjoy? What disappointed you?