Bookish Nostalgia - September 2015

So how do you feel about September?  Personally, I like it.  It's not the beginning of school in my part of the country anymore, but it does contain my birthday (and no, I won't tell you when) and it was the month that my darling daughter was born.  As it also holds my husband's mother's birthday, he feels that September is always a very expensive month!  But, we were talking about reading, right?  Let me share the books that I remember best from past Septembers - 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010.  Here we go:

September 1995 - Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher - This is a really, really long book.  It comes in at almost 1,000 pages.  And it took me most of the month of September 1995 to read it.  About 3 weeks.  I remember loving Coming Home.  Set in the years before and after WWII, it's the story of Judith Dunbar and her life.  It's a real family saga.  If you've never read a book by Rosamunde Pilcher, you should.  Lovely books.  I think there was a TV adaptation of this one, but I've not seen it.  If you have, tell us about it.

September 2000 - Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton - This is the first book in the Aunt Dimity series, which is now up to 20 books.  Wow.  It was published in 1992, but I didn't get around to it until 2000.  Have you read anything about Aunt Dimity?  Well, Lori Shepherd learns that she has inherited a large estate from Miss Dimity Westwood.  Lori is shocked.  She knows Aunt Dimity, but she thought Dimity was a fictional character that her mother created for bedtime stories.  As Lori follows the instructions she receives, she finds that Aunt Dimity was real and she also finds that Aunt Dimity is now a ghost.  Communications are received in a very special way, which I'll leave you to discover for yourself.  This is a fun book - part mystery, part ghost story, part fairy tale.  Highly recommended.

September 2005 - To Davy Jones Below by Carola Dunn - Last month's Bookish Nostalgia contained the first book in the Daisy Dalrymple series, Death At Wentwater Court.  I shared at that time that I read all the books available one right after the other.  Well, September of 2005 contained exactly one author, Carola Dunn.  To Davy Jones Below is the 9th book in the series.  I read 11 Daisy books that month.  I remember this one so well as Daisy is on her honeymoon and it takes place on a ship.  I love mysteries set on ocean voyages.  Myself, never been on one, get seasick on a boat tied up at the dock.  Sort of like Daisy's new husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher.  If you haven't read a Daisy Dalrymple book, what are you waiting for??

September 2010 - Fragile by Lisa Unger - I had a bit of hard time picking a favorite for this month.  I read I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman - loved it.  I read South of Broad by Pat Conroy and discussed it with a book group.  I read Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel - set on the stilt houses in Florida.  Finally, I decided that really, I loved Fragile best.  This is the first book in her very loosely connected (as in the setting and a few characters) series.  The location is The Hollows, a town in upstate New York.  Maggie Cooper is a psychiatrist and her husband, Jones, is a policeman.  When their son Rick's girlfriend goes missing, it brings all sort of feelings to the surface and reminds everyone of another missing girl, 20 years ago.  Just the name of the town, The Hollows, sounds creepy to me.  Right?  Lots of secrets in the woods.

Well, that's it for this month.  Join me again in October when I take a look back at my reading journals.

*****And I will be back in October.  Promise.*****