Although I enjoyed Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke) and The Book of Goose (Yiyun Li), my favourite was The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. Here's my review of The Whalebone Theatre. What was your favourite book you read in May?

Okay, I'll be honest. I picked this one up thinking I knew exactly what I was getting into. Another WWII novel. I'd read plenty. I thought I had it figured out. I did not have it figured out. The Ragged Edge of Night by Olivia Hawker is quietly devastating in the best possible way. Set in a small German town from 1942 to 1945, it follows Anton... a friar who loses his religious order when the Nazis shut it down. With everything crumbling around him, he answers a widow's newspaper ad. Elisabeth needs security for her children. He needs purpose. Their marriage starts as a transaction… and becomes something neither of them planned on. The writing? Oh my goodness. You can feel the cold of a German winter. The heaviness sitting over every meal, every conversation. And underneath it, the fragile warmth of a home where love is trying, carefully, to take root. What got me most was Anton's interior life. He's not a soldier. Not a hero in the conventional sense. He's a man haunted by guilt, wrestling with his faith, doing small faithful things in the dark. When a local priest pulls him into carrying resistance messages, he doesn't say yes for money or glory. He says yes because it feels like a calling. That distinction matters. It's the whole book, really. By the end, I saw him clearly as a quiet man, full of doubt, who chose hope anyway. And used that hope to fuel his courage, one small act at a time. And then I found out it's a true story. Olivia Hawker wrote about her husband's grandfather. The story had been told at family gatherings for many years. In her case, she heard it at a Thanksgiving dinner. "Opa and the bells," they called it. When the family learned she was a writer who specialized in historical fiction, they said: write it. She did her research. Found most of it was true. Changed very little. Her Author's Notes at the back of the book lay it all out — what was real, what she kept, and why. Actually, there's so much there I hope she writes about him again!

I just finished reading a re-imagining of a very famous novel (sorry, but I can't identify it because I'm reviewing it for the Historical Novel Society and the review hasn't been published yet) and it got me thinking about what attracts readers to these types of novels. There's the obvious marketing hook: if you loved book X, you'll love book Y. But if we adore the classic novel enough to think it's perfect as it is, what makes us willing to take a chance on a re-telling, knowing how unlikely it is that it will be as satisfying as the classic version? I suppose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a good example (and unrelated to the book I just read). Why do you think the thousands (millions?) of spin-offs of this story in both book and film/TV forms are so successful? Do people love P&P so much that they'll watch/read anything even tangentially related to it? I'd love to know what keeps you coming back to retellings of your favourite classic novel (or what keeps you away)!

"For a decade, codebreakers have tried—and failed—to solve the case of two crumpled papers that were found stuffed in a secret pocket under the bustle and inside the seams of a silk dress from the 1880s. Over the years, the mystery even earned its own moniker: The Silk Dress Cryptogram... Questions lingered over what “Bismark omit leafage buck bank,” “Calgary Cuba unguard confute duck fagan,” and “Spring wilderness lining one reading novice” could have possibly meant." Have a guess what the code might mean before you read the article. The answer is a tidbit of history I learned this week. A Crumpled Note Hidden in a Dress Became One of the World’s Most Elusive Codes. Then a Tiny Clue Solved It. What about you? Learned any historical tidbits lately?

Vote for your favourite name for our cat mascot! 🐈‍⬛ Polls in here are very basic. There can be only 10 options and you can vote for only one option. So, vote for your first choice. If you have a strong second choice, mention it in the comments. I'll give 2 points to the names voted in the poll and 1 point to names in the comments. If there's a tie, I'll cast the deciding vote. I'll announce the winner tomorrow (26th May). If you want to see the explanations behind the names, see this post: What should we name our cat mascot?