I need to start recording where I first read about the books that are on my Reading List. Books stay on there for quite some time, and I’d like to be able to go back to the source for more recommendations. Or to avoid it, if I don’t like the book they’ve suggested.

Anywho …

Here are a few I’ve read recently.

“Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” by Ayelet Waldman has been on my list since shortly after Poppy was born. That’s right around two years, for those keeping count. I hadn’t read it before now because I couldn’t find a library that carried it (and I don’t often buy books). I don’t know what possessed me to read it now, though; it’s about a woman dealing with the death of her newborn. Stupid me. I wasn’t bowled over by it, but that could have been because I had to turn off the sentimental part of my brain to get through it.

Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Brief History of the Dead: A Novel” had an intriguing premise — it’s about what happens to souls after death, and it’s set at the brink of human extinction — but, again, I was underwhelmed. This one had also been on the list for a long time. I wonder if I don’t expect more from a book that I’ve been waiting to read for awhile. Am I putting too much pressure on them?

“The Careful Use of Compliments,” by Rockfordander McCall Smith, actually wasn’t on my list at all. I picked it up off the library shelf because I’d read a few of his other books, from the “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series. They weren’t bad, but they didn’t really capture me. I know there are a lot of people who love Smith, but I don’t think I’m one of them. I didn’t find Isabel, the protagonist in “Compliments,” particularly compelling or even very convincingly written. And the story’s “mystery” was dull, with a pretty obvious solution. I did find it somewhat notable that this was the second book I’ve read in the last few months to prominently feature the Corryvreckan whirpool in Scotland.