Lots of reading this month, with a mix of fiction and non-fiction. Although about half were also made into movies, I made a point to watch only three.

The foolishly banned Maus came in two volumes, and left me especially grieving for the author’s loss of his mother and her journals.

Lots of trigger warnings for this month’s batch of books, as Maus – along with any Holocaust story – is deeply disturbing. There’s also language in books written in the first half of the twentieth century that will make any decent person cringe.

Starting this month, I’ll just list the books by number, rather than by weeks.

Book 1: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

This detective novel – Tey’s final work – comes with an interesting twist, in that the mystery involves history – not present time. And it fits modern culture perfectly, as it studies what we’re taught in school about historical happenings and whether we’re learning the truth or a legend.

An injured Scotland Yard inspector who is bored out of his mind in his hospital bed keeps his mind active with a search for the facts regarding King Richard the Third and his two nephews, who just may have been murdered by him.

A bonus to this mystery novel is that now I want to dig in and read Shakespeare’s Richard II and Richard III plus The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir. For starters, anyway.

Books 2 & 3: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and Cards on the Table

Two classic Agatha Christie mysteries to blow the cobwebs out of your brain. Maybe someday I’ll find a book about Ms. Christie and how she created all these stories so masterfully – each is incredibly clever.

Here’s a satisfying follow up to these books, if you find it hard to move on after that last page – podcasts! This one in particular, All About Agatha, is excellent.

Book 4: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

This is a light, fluffy bit of Jazz Age silliness as Lorelei Lee takes off for Europe with full intent to return to (or with) a wealthy husband. This was originally serialized for Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

This gold digger is not my kind of gal, but as long as you don’t take her too seriously, Lorelei’s “intimate diary of a professional woman” is as bubbly as a glass of champagne.

The movie is also a fun period piece, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.

Book 5: Accidental Icon by Norman Scott

A few years ago, I watched the limited series A Very English Scandal and read the book it was based on soon after. The “Jeremy Thorpe Affair” was so much more than a gay tryst back when “buggery” was illegal in Britain.

Jeremy Thorpe was a member of Parliament in the ’60s and was quite possibly on his way to becoming Prime Minister. But his predatory actions grooming young Norman Scott and then casting him out without a way to support himself was just the beginning.

The subtitle of Scott’s new memoir says it all: How I Dodged a Bullet, Spoke Truth to Power and Lived to Tell the Tale.

After escaping a murder plot, surviving an ever-so-public trial and its aftermath, Norman Scott’s life is peaceful at last. I’m glad he shared his side of the tale.

Book 6: The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett

This is a rare occasion in which I learned about a book by first watching the movie.

Because, well … Maggie Smith.

Hard as it is to believe, this is the true story of an eccentric elderly woman who lives in a van – eventually, in the author’s driveway. For years!

Alan Bennett is a magnificent writer. The three additional short stories in this Folio Society volume are also winners.

Book 7: Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Private detective Phillip Marlowe is back with a whole new mystery and cast of often-crusty but always colorful characters.

I’ll have to pace myself reading this set, as it would be easy to zip right through it. Although, as you can see in the above photo, Holmes and Watson are waiting.

Books 8 & 9: Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman

Only vaguely familiar with this Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel up until a few months ago, the news about a Tennessee school board voting unanimously to remove it from their middle school’s curriculum set my sights on it.

My blood boils thinking how school board members objected to “unnecessary use of profanity and nudity” in the books. How about the unnecessary use of profanity and nudity at the death camps? The shallowness of their decision is criminal.

Something tells me the school board members didn’t bother to read Maus, but yielded to a constituent who clutched her pearls at the sight of mice marching naked to their deaths.

Never a big fan of comic books, I found this genre very easy to read and follow. I sincerely hope all those eighth graders in Tennessee follow the lead of generations of 14-year-olds and sneak a look at forbidden books, learning so much more than their parents ever did.

Book 10: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Ah, another banned book! Vonnegut poses the chilling question of what if the creator of the atomic bomb didn’t stop there …

Did you know Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indiana? He makes good use of this with a character in this delicious work of satire.

This year is Vonnegut’s centennial, which makes me want to go looking for a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, the only other of his books that he self-graded with an A+.

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