A Good Book & a Cup of Tea - September 2026 link party

Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!
This link up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).

Each link party will be open for a month.
My co-hosts for this event are Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
You can link up with any of us.

Here are my favorite posts from the August party.

Lydia writes about the books she read on her travels in July (set in the countries she went to).

Veronica started her "Battle of the First Lines, 2026". Which book will have the best first line?

Erin tells us about bookish places she visited.

Marsha is a knitter and reviewed the book "The Friday Night Knitting Club" by Kate Jacobs.


These are the guidelines:

1. For bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

My August books

This is an overview of the books I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and those I have read to Gundel (marked with 😸).
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book or how I found it and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm usually not going to add real reviews or ratings (Gundel also refuses to give ratings). Should you want a little more information on a book you're interested in, though, just let me know.

"Hildur - Die Toten am Meer" = "The Secrets from the Deep" by Satu Rämö, first published in 2024
(Hildur 4)

Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police officer on the west coast of Iceland.
Four skeletons are found on the farm of Hildur's late parents. A badly hurt kitchen worker escapes off a cruise ship. And a close friend of Hildur's mother dies unexpectedly in her nursing home.
Are these cases connected?

I skipped the third book in the series because it was about animal abuse, but wasn't too enthusiastic about this one, either.

"Zwei Sommer mit Christiane" (contains the books "Recht nette Mädchen" and "100 Tage mit Christiane") by Barbara Hug, first published in 1954 and 1957

The first book tells the story of the four Andresen daughters Andrea, Martina, Petra, and Christiane who live in a small town in Southwest Germany with their mother.
The second book, set a few years later, tells the story of Christiane taking care of Martina's son while she and her husband are in Italy for work.

In this heat, I needed a nice and quick read (one of many re-reads over the years in this case) and I have loved these two books since childhood. They are not as fluffy as they may sound as they also touch on the topics of displaced persons after the war, poverty, community, and thinking about the future.

"The Third Man" by Graham Greene, first published in 1950

Rollo Martins is invited to post-war Vienna - still divided among the Allied powers - by his old friend Harry Lime. When he arrives, however, he learns that Harry has died in a traffic accident. Rollo meets Major Calloway who tells him that Harry was involved in a racket with diluted penicillin, but Rollo doesn't believe him and starts investigating on his own.

I re-watched the movie for a random Saturday blog post and then read the novella which was just a treatment for the movie originally and differs a little from it in some details.

"Miss Buncle Married" by D. E. Stevenson, first published in 1936

Miss Buncle, now married to her publisher Mr Abbott, has found a new house at Wandlebury and has just as much interest in her new neighbors as she had in those in Silverstream, but will she write a book about them?

I really enjoyed the first "Miss Buncle" book, but think I liked this one even better because it's calmer. I didn't laugh as much, but I grew fonder of the people, especially Barbara and Arthur as a couple.
"The garden — as a garden — did not interest Arthur very much, but the garden and Barbara combined interested him enormously. Barbara was enchanting in the garden, so eager and pleased and happy, so surprised to find the things that she had planted — or caused to be planted — in the Autumn were really coming up. Barbara was more Barbara-ish than ever when she was in her garden, and Arthur could never have enough of the blend."

"Lulu in Hollywood" by Louise Brooks, first published in 1982

The book contains seven autobiographical essays by dancer and silent movie star Louise Brooks, for example her view on Bogart, on Gish and Garbo or on her experience on filming in Berlin. There's also a later edition with an eighth essay.

I had heard about Louise Brooks before, but haven't seen a movie with her yet. The most interesting essay for me was the last one on her filming "Pandora's Box" in Berlin (pet peeve alert - in the filmography it says "Die Buchse der Pandora" which gave me another eye roll because it's "Büchse", a "Buchse" is a socket!).

"The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints" by M. V. Carey (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1971 😸
(The Three Investigators 15)

Why has the eccentric man called The Potter disappeared just when he's expecting his daughter and grandson? Who are the men watching Mrs. Dobson and Tom and why do they do it.
Once again, the Three Investigators get confronted with the secrets of a small European country.

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it.

"The Red House Mystery" by Alan Alexander Milne, first published in 1922

Antony Gillingham just wanted to visit his friend Bill Beverley who's staying at the Red House, but instead he and Matthew Cayley - the cousin of the house owner Mark Ablett - find a body in the office!
Gillingham becomes a veritable "Holmes" and makes Bill his "Watson".

I hadn't known that Milne wrote a mystery - just this one - before seeing it in a book post by Jeanie from "The Marmelade Gypsy". Thank you, Jeanie, I enjoyed this one a lot! What a pity that Gillingham stayed a one hit wonder.

"Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters" by Laura Thompson, first published in 2015 (also as "The Six")

You would think this is just a biography of the six Mitford sisters Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah (there was also a brother Tom) who are known for their very different positions on life and politics in their time (communism, anti-semitism, fascism to name just a few keywords).

It's not that easy, though.
It was interesting if you already know something about the family - I had seen documentaries - but you are better prepared for a lot of names (and nicknames!) and time jumps, and you really should have read Nancy's novels first because they get referenced a lot as well as names that were never explained.
In short, this is not really what I expect from a biography.
I was never in danger of DNFing, but I felt there was some fangirling/whitewashing - I can't excuse fascism even for a bit just because someone has a strong personality, intelligence, a gorgeous face and elegance, and that's just one example.
Maybe it's too difficult to explain the Mitford "phenomenon" in just one single book.

"Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull" = "Confessions of Felix Krull" by Thomas Mann, first published in 1922 (the first fragment)

The unfinished novel (written from 1910 to 1913 and late 1950 to 1954) tells the story of Felix Krull who, after the suicide of his father, a bankrupt maker of sparkling wine, goes to Paris to work in a hotel and then substitutes for the Marquis de Venosta on a trip around the world paid for by the Marquis's parents who try to tear their son away from a French singer (and if you think that was a long sentence, you should see the book).
The narrative ends with Krull being in Lisbon, the first destination of the trip.

According to Wikipedia, - I honestly didn't feel like checking more sources - the novel is supposed to be a parody on Goethe's autobiography "Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Poetry and Truth). Remind me not to read that one because I seriously struggled through this one (and I don't care how autographical parts of it are).
It's practically a miracle and a sign of my dedication to this project (reading at least one German classic a month) that I didn't DNF it. There were big parts which bored me almost to tears.
I say narrative, but nothing really happens in hundreds of pages! The protagonist is a smug little punk, and the pompous rambling - which I guess is the parody part - made me happy for not having to put up with this kind of speech in daily life.

"Tennis Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild, first published in 1937
(Shoes 2)

Dr. Heath and his father had been good tennis players, but the father is too old now and Dr. Heath suffered a leg injury in World War I.
What about the children, though - the twins Jim and Susan, the younger Nicky, and David? Have they got what they need to become successful tennis players?

This is the second book in the "shoe series" although the only connection are the shoes in the title.
I never played tennis, I don't watch tennis, but I needed some light after Felix Krull and the book worked perfectly - although I have to admit that I wasn't a fan of Dr. Heath's methods of motivating and educating his children.

"Go Gentle" by Maria Semple, first published in 2026

Adora Hazzard, former comedy writer turned philosopher who tutors the twins of a rich couple, lives in New York and has started a "coven" in her building of single women who have each others' back - then she happens to meet a man and her life is not what it was before.

I'm not sure what this book wants to be. I liked the idea of the coven, I enjoyed the philosophical quotes, but then we get flashbacks (trigger warning sexual assault), art crimes, and a romance all of which seemed very muddled to me. Spoiler:

Spoiler: Adora is the heroine of the day in the end. With huge happy ending and a super rich man.

At about 60 % I was very close to DNFing. Maybe I should have.

"Death on the Cherwell" by Mavis Doriel Hay, first published in 1935

Four undergraduates of the Persephone College in Oxford meet on the roof of the boathouse to form a secret society when a canoe comes floating in which they find the body of their bursar Myra Denning.
The young ladies wonder how a drowned woman can get back into her canoe ...

I have a soft spot for vintage crimes at Cambridge and Oxford (time to read "Gaudy Night" for the umpteenth time, I think), probably because I work at a university made up of a lot of concrete.
I really liked this one.

"Goodbye, Mr. Chips" by James Hilton, first published in 1933 (in the Christmas edition of "British Weekly") and in 1934 (as a book)

Mr. Chipping was the Latin master of Brookfield School - a public boarding school - for decades and has helped out even after his retirement.
Now he remembers his life in and for the school.

A re-read (in English this time, I own the German translation) for a future blog post about the novella and adaptations.

A fun little P.S. This is listed as a translation of the book into Urdu. Obviously I can't read Urdu and can't tell you if that's true ... and I have absolutely no idea how that cover is supposed to make any sense if it is!

"To You Mr. Chips!" by James Hilton, first published in 1938

In this book, Hilton talks a little about his own school experiences and tells some more Mr. Chips stories.

When I re-read "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", I happened to find out about this book which I didn't know before.

"Bright Young Things: Lives in the Roaring 20s" by Alison Maloney, first published in 2012

The book gives you short glimpses into the life of the "smart set" mostly in the London of the 1920s.
It includes chapters about jazz, cocktails, scandals, debutantes, and more.
A quick read with quotes and short biographies, a nice appetizer to start you off if you are interested in that time.

"Victorian Fairy Painting" by Jeremy Maas et al., first published in 1997

The book was published on the occasion of the exhibition "Victorian Fairy Painting" which travelled from London to Iowa City, Toronto, and New York.
It includes a catalog with short biographies and comments and essays on fairy painting, writing, music, and illustration, but also the connection to the stage, especially Shakespeare.

I stumbled upon this one after finding the sketchbook by Charles Altamont Doyle which I listed in my July roundup.

"Japanese Gothic" by Kylie Lee Baker, first published in 2026

After murdering his roommate in college, Lee flees to the house in Japan that his father has moved to. However, something is strange about this house that used to belong to samurais. Who is the girl looking in from another world and time?

Every, now and then I think I should read a book outside my comfort zone. This shouldn't have been one of them.


DNF

"The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale, first published in 2008

The non-fiction book tells the story of a child murdered in Victorian England and of Jack Whicher who was one of the original eight members of London's new "Detective Branch" at Scotland Yard.

I watched the TV show whose first episode is about this case and wanted to read the book more because of Whicher than the case, but I gave up quite early as it was so boring to read. 



By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I co-host with  Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. You can find out more about it here or directly click through to the current party via the image in the right hand column.

A Good Book & a Cup of Tea - August 2026 link party

Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!
This link up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).

Each link party will be open for a month.
My co-hosts for this event are Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
You can link up with any of us.

Here are my favorite posts from the July party (English/Dutch).

Joanne tells us about the books she read in June.

Olivia has started a personal classics challenge, here's the list of books she plans to read.

Lisa talks us about "Miss Buncle's Book" by D. E. Stevenson.

Nicole has decided to take a break from Freida McFadden.


These are the guidelines:

1. For bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My July books

This is an overview of the books I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and those I have read to Gundel (marked with 😸).
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book or how I found it and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm usually not going to add real reviews or ratings (Gundel also refuses to give ratings). Should you want a little more information on a book you're interested in, though, just let me know.

As you can tell, this was a much better reading month for me than the last one. There was such a variety that I even got to the limit of my tags, I hadn't even known there was one!

"Silent Murders" by Mary Miley, first published in 2014
(Roaring Twenties Mystery 2)

Leah, the young vaudeville actress, has become Jessie Beckett and is starting a new life in Hollywood's silent film industry as a script girl for the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios.
When a famous director is shot, Jessie starts investigating.

I read about one of Miley's books on Fritzi Kramer's silent movie blog and started with the first one in the series in February.
I tend to struggle with amateur detectives who are smarter than the police and everyone else, but I enjoyed this book more than the first one thanks to the setting, familiar names, and recognizing which parts were based on historical facts without reading the "historical note" at the end. The first murder, for example, was based on the murder of William Desmond Taylor about which I also read before.

"Carl Sandburg at the Movies: A Poet in the Silent Era 1920 - 1927" by Carl Sandburg, first published in 1985

Carl Sandburg was a poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He was also the cinema expert for the "Daily News". For this book, Dale and Doug Featherling selected some of Sandburg's best movie columns and added a short introduction for each year and footnotes on people mentioned.

You will undoubtedly encounter a quote from this here every, now and then. What I didn't like about the book was that it whetted my appetite for one or the other film which I then sadly found to be a lost one.

"Schloss Gripsholm : eine Sommergeschichte" = "Gripsholm Palace: a summer story" by Kurt Tucholsky, first published in 1931

This is the story of two lovers spending a summer vacation in Sweden, at Gripsholms slott. Not everything is fun and love, though, when they encounter a little girl from the nearby children's home run by a sadistic German matron.

Since school I hadn't read any German classics and decided to try and read one a month now. No idea how this project is going to go.
I love the cover with an illustration by George Barbier from 1925. It reminds me of the wall paintings by Oskar Schlemmer in the "bath house" of the Märklin villa in our town.

"Ballet Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild, first published in 1936 😸
(Shoes 1)

The book tells the story of three girls adopted by paleontologist Grand-Uncle-Matthew, called Gum, on his travels. When Gum goes traveling again, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy stay with his niece Sylvia and her childhood nanny, called Nana.
When they run out of money and Gum isn't home yet after years, they have to take in boarders and the girls join the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training which eventually allows them to work on stage and thus support the household.

I hadn't known about Noel Streatfeild - some of her books have been translated into German only rather recently - before Erin from "Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs" mentioned reading one of her books.
Her "Shoes" series for children is popular and I already got the next one on my list.

"J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys: The Love Story that Gave Birth to Peter Pan" by Andrew Birkin, first published in 1931

While starting with his childhood, the book really concentrates on the relationship of Barrie with the five Llewelyn Davies sons George, John, Peter, Michael, and Nicholas.

I have seen "Finding Neverland" which was inspired by this book (but is very "Hollywood"), but I actually got more interested in Barrie after watching and reading "Peter Pan".
The book is not a biography you can just breeze through.  There are a lot of names, a lot of photos, a lot of quotes from plays, novels, and letters, and a lot of (sometimes confusing) excerpts from Barrie's notebooks. I still found it very interesting and enjoyed reading it although I - like others - am not sure what it says about Barrie and the boys in the end (there are two camps of "pedophile/asexual"), but will we ever even know for sure?

"Das gelbe Haus" = "Sisters in Yellow" by Mieko Kawakami, first published in 2023

Three young women try to survive in 90s Japan.
The story is told from the point of view of Hana who has left her mother and moves in with a new mother figure, Kimiko, later Ran and Momoko join them. In order to make a living, they feel forced to join criminal circles.
When Hana learns during Covid that Kimiko has been arrested, she remembers the time living with her.

The book was a duplicate gift to a family member who asked me if I wanted a copy (which I'm not going to keep as I doubt I will want to read it again simply because of the genre).

"The Lady Vanishes" by Ethel Lina White, first published as "The Wheel Spins" in 1936

Two Englishwomen meet on a continental train, Iris and Miss Froy. Then Miss Froy suddenly disappears and no one wants to believe Iris she even exists. Was it just a dream or is Miss Froy in danger?

I recently watched Hitchcock's movie for the first time (don't ask why it took me so long), and after a friend mentioned that it was based on a book I had to read it of course.
I actually prefer the movie this time, though.

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker, first published in 1897

I doubt I have to tell anyone what the book is about - the vampire Dracula traveling from his home in Transylvania to London to spread the evil of the undead.

The book had been on my list forever. The narrative is mostly conveyed through letters and diary entries (from several of the protagonists) some of which are quite long-winded and probably not everyone's cup of tea (even I struggled a bit every, now and then). I'm not surprised, however, that the novel sparked people's imagination.

"Dunkles Glas und Fisch in der Lampe" by Ingeborg Engelhardt, first published in 1963

A young glassmaker has to flee from the Greek Aquileia to the Roman colony of Germania inferior.

A re-read for a blog post.

"Death - das Kabinett des Dr. Leng" = "The Cabinet of Dr. Leng" by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, first published in 2023
(Pendergast 21)

Agent Pendergast's protegee Constance Greene goes back to 1880 to save her sister from being killed by the serial killer Dr. Enoch Leng.

If you didn't think the Pendergast books could get any crazier - they can.

"Billard um halb zehn" = "Billiards at Half-Past Nine" by Heinrich Böll, first published in 1959

The book takes place on September 6, 1958 and tells the history of the architect family Fähmel between 1907 and that day - in stories, flashbacks, memories.

Since school I hadn't read any German classics and decided to try and read one a month now (maybe even more like this month, but without pressure). No idea how this project is going to go.
I wasn't a fan of the style. Whole pages of dumped thoughts or images in half sentences separated by semicolons were quite exhausting to read.

"Death of a Busybody" by George Bellairs, first published in 1942
(Inspector Littlejohn 3)

After an older lady who's a little too keen on making the sinners of her village repent is found dead in the vicarage's cesspool, Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate.

I had never heard of George Bellairs before, but saw him mentioned as an underrated writer.
The book was a nice little palate cleanser and a quick read. I'll keep the name in mind.

"Stone Blind" by Natalie Haynes, first published in 2023

This is a retelling of the Greek Medusa myth aspiring to give Medusa her voice back.

If you don't mind a lot of different point of views and enjoy ancient myths, this might be a book for you. I did expect more Medusa and less of all the other gods/goddesses (half or full) and mortals who crossed their path and I didn't like it as much as "Pandora's Jar", but enjoyed it nonetheless.

"The Doyle Diary : the last great Conan Doyle mystery; with a Holmesian investigation into the strange and curious case of Charles Altamont Doyle by Michael Baker" by Charles Altamont Doyle, first published in 1978

Charles Altamont Doyle, the father of Arthur Conan Doyle, was an artist - like three of his older brothers, but not as successful - and civil servant.
Doyle suffered from depression and alcoholism. This sketchbook was created between March and July 1889 during his stay at Sunnyside, Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum.

I happened to catch the short-lived show "Houdini and Doyle" on TV and learned about Doyle's father which made me curious.
The book has an introduction to Doyle's life and a transcription of the texts and notes, luckily because I wasn't able to read all of them easily. I really like the illustrations and can only recommend having a look yourself.

"Kitten Caboodle : a collection of feline fiction" edited by Barbara Silverberg, first published in 1969 😸

Silverberg has collected cat stories and poems from all kinds of genres here - humor, ghost stories, legends and fairy tales, even science fiction.

I stumbled upon the book because it is illustrated with cat drawings by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen whose "Le Chat Noir" poster I included among my favorite cats a few weeks ago.

"The Cornish Coast Murder" by John Bude, first published in 1935

If a man gets killed who isn't liked by anyone, you have a lot of suspects. In connection with having only confusing clues this makes for a difficult investigation. How lucky that the local reverend loves mystery books.

I always like discovering a vintage crime author who's new to me. This whodunit was off to a good start, but then it sloooowed down before an ending that didn't so much surprise as annoy me.
This was the author's first book, though, so I think I'm going to give him another chance eventually.

"The Inimitable Jeeves" by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, first published in 1923
(Wooster and Jeeves 1)

Bertie Wooster is an English gentleman, one of the idle rich, and Jeeves is his valet whose intelligence saves Bertie and his friends from one or the other pickle, in this case mostly Bertie's friend Bingo Little who keeps falling in love.

I read some Wodehouse books ages ago, but don't remember if this one was among them.

"Hildur - Das Grab im Eis" = "The Grave in the Ice" by Satu Rämö, first published in 2023
(Hildur 2)

Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police officer on the west coast of Iceland. Still haunted by her two sisters disappearing 25 years before, she specializes in missed children cases.
This time a local politician is shot during skiing. Hildur finds out that the murder is connected with the crash of a private plane some time ago.

I read the first book in the series last month and liked this one better.

"Love Insurance" by Earl Derr Biggers, first published in 1914

Lord Harrowby turns to Lloyd's of London with a request. He will get married to an American heiress, Cynthia Meyrick, soon and wants to take out insurance against her changing her mind.
Lloyd's sends assistant Dick Minot to Florida with him to make sure the wedding goes through. On the train ride there, however, Dick happens to meet Cynthia and falls in love with her. Now he's torn between his employers' trust and his love to her ... and that's not the only twist.

I wanted to watch another silent movie with Reginald Denny and when I saw that the book it was based on was written by Earl Derr Biggers of Charlie Chan fame, I was curious.

"Mephisto" by Klaus Mann, first published in 1936

The novel tells the rise of Hendrik Höfgen from a provincial stage actor to the manager of the State Theater in Berlin as he opportunistically arranges himself with the new Nazi regime.
Höfgen is based on Gustaf Gründgens, former friend and brother-in-law of Mann.

Since school I hadn't read any German classics and decided to try and read one a month now (maybe even more like this month, but without pressure). No idea how this project is going to go.
The book started slow, but once the Nazis come into power, it got quite powerful. Needless to say that they are not many likeable or admirable characters in the book. It's amazing that this was written even before the war.

"The Case of the Jumbo Sandwich" by Christopher Bush, first published in 1965
(Ludovic Travers 60)

A friend asks private detective Ludovic Travers for advice after getting swindled out of a substantial sum.
At that point Travers has no idea yet how complicated this fraud case is going to become ...

I started reading Bush after Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home had reviewed one of his books for a 1952 challenge.



By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I co-host with  Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. You can find out more about it here or directly click through to the current party via the image in the right hand column.

The need for speed?

Do you have an idea how many pages are out there offering reading speed tests or tips and techniques (7, 8, 12, 15, even 20) for increasing your reading speed and comprehension?
On the other hand, there are just as many pages about slow reading.
I browsed through a few and all of them listed benefits and downsides of the respective reading speed.

Picture via pxhere

There's no need to repeat them here as well. As usual, these are just my personal thoughts on the topic.

I read quite fast without ever having worked on any techniques, so I can't tell you if there are maybe things I do automatically. Although I have never timed my reading, it's definitely not speed reading and that's fine.
I can understand that someone who has to read a lot for research, studies or work would want to get through books or documents quickly. It has been a long time that I had to do that myself under the pressure of a deadline, though.
Personally, I don't think books that are read for pleasure need to be sped through. If you already are a speed reader, fine, but I don't need to become one just for them.

Actually, I thought I should rather look into slow reading instead. Change the pace every, now and then.
So I looked at a few tips after all.

Make a ritual of your reading by creating the perfect space and surroundings.
My perfect space is my bed, my favorite time is the night. With age, I have become much more intolerant to noises from the outside. Not the birds I can hear right now, but car doors slamming, sometimes cars in general, power tools, but also people talking loudly. I don't know if my street has really become louder or if it just feels like that to my brain.
Something to drink next to me is a must, cold or hot depending on the temperatures.

Ban the cell phone from the room / avoid multitasking.
My problem is not a smartphone as I don't have one, but the notebook if I use it to read, but if I notice feeling the urge of changing to a different page, that's usually the sign for me to stop reading for now, anyway. I'm not saying it never distracts me at all, though. Personal emails have indeed been answered during reading sessions before. 

Set small goals.
I don't set goals at all. I just read on as long as I feel like it and have time. So maybe that would be worth a try. Make myself stop and take a break every, now and then to allow the content to settle in my brain even more deeply.
It probably depends on the content, though. I can tell which books take me longer - biographies or classics, for example - while it's harder to take a break from my vintage crime books. Come on, I have to know who murdered Lord Holstonebrook in the folly and why they left an initialled baby blanket, don't I??

Take notes or mark something you really like.
Aah, I mentioned before that I'm not the journaling type at all. That hasn't changed so far, no matter how much I like a sentence or passage.

Reading goes well with selfcare - tea, a bath, soft music or aromatherapy.
I'm fine with the tea, but the others are not for me. I can't do longer tub sessions anymore, I don't do aromatherapy (not taking chances with an allergic cat), and even soft music is not my thing when reading. I only like background noise of any kind for crafting.

Discuss books with others.
Meeting people in a book club is out of the question for me for different reasons. I would prefer one to one discussions and by that I don't mean just reacting to a comment on an app or a blog post.
Also, part of the problem are probably the books I read or those I don't read.

So - is reading the way I do it just my kind of slow reading? I'll have to think about that.
However, I'm missing one thing in this list and that's reading loud. Even if it's not a book I read to Gundel, I read sentences or passages out loud to savor the beauty of a sentence or grasp the meaning of something better.

How do you feel about speed or slow reading and what do you prefer?

This post was inspired by a friend participating in a blog hop about how fast people read.


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.

From my children's book cabinet (and my DVD shelf) - The Eerie, Indiana series

"My name is Marshall Teller. Not too long ago, I was living in New Jersey, just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted, and full of crime. I loved it. But my parents wanted a better life for my sister and me. So we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky clean, so ordinary that you could only find it on TV: Eerie, Indiana."

That's from the prologue of the first book in a series which is based on the 90s TV show for kids "Eerie, Indiana". That means I can't talk about the book series leaving out the show.
As there are 19 episodes, though, and 17 books, I picked just the first one of each for this post.

The book is called "Return to Foreverware", a nod to the first episode of the TV show called "Forever Ware". It's by Mike Ford who wrote nine of the books.

Let's begin with the TV show. How to describe "Eerie, Indiana" ...
"Statistically speaking, it's the most normal place in the entire country. Statistics lie."
Actually, the town is exactly what its name promises. "The King" lives on Marshall's paper route, people move strangely synchronized, a straitjacket hangs on a laundry line, and that's just the intro.
Marshall's mother works as a party planner, but being a busy lady she's not so good with her own groceries. How lucky when her neighbor Betty Wilson and her twins Ernie and Bert turn up with a solution. Mrs. Wilson's late husband has designed a series of vacuum sealed containers called Tu.... erm, Forever Ware.

As a little gift she leaves a bologna sandwich in a container, as fresh as it was when it was made. In 1974!
It's even more suspicious when one of the twins slips Marshall a note saying "Yearbook 1964" as the family leaves.
Marshall and his friend Simon check the yearbooks and find a picture of Ernie and Bert looking the same as now, so they decide to snoop around a bit.
They don't expect to see this, though ...

... Mrs. Wilson tucking the twins in, but these are not beds, they are giant Forever Ware containers!
I'm not going to spoil the ending (spoil, see what I did there?).

The book sees Marshall and Simon looking for a weekend job.
They answer to the ad of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart - James and Martha! - who seem to be stuck in the 70s, not only with their clothes, but also their furniture. They get asked to declutter the attic.
What's weird is that Mrs. Stewart seems to have an extra soft spot for Simon. The boys learn that the Stewarts had a son who died years ago - Rod(ney) - and Marshall can't shake the feeling that they'd like to replace him with Simon. But is he the first? Why do they find pictures from a birthday party that always looks the same, but it's a different boy every time. What happened to Rodney? And what's in the basement?
Then Simon suddenly disappears and the Stewarts deny having seen him although his bike is in their garage.
Will Marshall be able to save him and can someone help him doing it (spoiler: Ernie and Bert will)?

Omri Katz as Marshall (whom you probably know
from Hocus Pocus) and Justin Shenkarow as Simon

"Eerie, Indiana" first aired on NBC. Joe Dante of "Gremlins" fame directed several episodes and was a creative consultant.
From the start, the writers Karl Schaefer and José Rivera intended for the show to be more than merely for kids. I wasn't a kid when I first saw it although I can't remember when and where that was, and the mix of humor, spookiness, horror, science fiction, and innuendos drew me in very quickly.
In reviews it was noted that the show reminded of "Twin Peaks", "Edward Scissorhands", "Twilight Zone" - a seemingly "normal" town where there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than you would expect.

It certainly wasn't all fun and play. The second episode in which a boy finds that his retainer gives him the powers to read the minds of dogs who want to overthrow the humans is downright creepy to me, so much so that I often skip it, but I have also been traumatized by "Lady and the Tramp" (as an adult) or "Bambi".

Anyhow, as it's said in a lot of videos and articles, the show was ahead of its time. It was cancelled after 18 episodes were aired between 1991 and 1992 ending on an episode in which Marshall finds out by way of a script that his reality is in fact a TV show. Only in the re-run in 1993, the last episode was aired as well.
In 1997, the show was bought up and broadcast again and got popular enough again to not only inspire a spin-off produced in Canada (just as short-lived, but not as good), but also the book series. In fact, it gained kind of a cult following as you can also see from the many comments of people who had seen it as kids and still bemoan its short life.

Mike Ford writes on his homepage: "One day my editor called me and said, "We're doing these books based on this TV show, but none of the writers we know have ever heard of it." When she told me what it was, they probably heard me scream in space. I loved the show. And that's how I got the job."
I remember getting the books from the USA (at a time when postage was still affordable) and being called into the customs office. The lady asked me to show her the invoice and to her surprise, the whole stack of books had been so cheap that I didn't even get to the limit for having to pay tax.

"Eerie, Indiana" inspired other shows like it (the "Stranger Things" connection is mentioned a lot and Alex Hirsch said that his "Gravity Falls" (another one I'm a fan of) was "a blatant rip off of Eerie, Indiana") and still has its fans today, that's not a bad legacy.
You may recognize one or the other actor, by the way, for example "Gomez Addams" John Astin as the owner of the "World O' Stuff" store, a soul collecting René Auberjonois or young Tobey Maguire as a ghost.

How many people actually ever knew about the books or still do is difficult for me to say, I can't even say how I learned about them. Unsurprisingly, they are no longer in print, though.


Further reading:

1. Gwen Ihnat: Eerie, Indiana was a few dimensions ahead of its time. On: AV Club, October 30, 2017
2. Justin Young: Eerie, Indiana Paved the Way for Supernatural's Success. On: CBR, February 28, 2026


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.