Classics: Both Old and New

What I read in April

Spring has sprung and I spent several sunny (but still chilly!) days working on reading projects and saying goodbye to a favorite series.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

One of my reading projects for 2025 was the Wolf Crawl hosted by Simon Haisell at footnotes & tangents. Over the year, we will read Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Trilogy and have officially finished the first novel, her Man Book Prize-winning Wolf Hall.

I read this book several years ago and rushed through it, figuring I was in it for the historical plot. What a mistake. Mark Rylance's incredible performance in the 2015 TV adaptation made me realize I'd missed out, and Haisell's expert guidance has helped me realize how much.

In particular, I initially struggled with the narrative perspective. The story is told from Cromwell's perspective (as Simon says, we know nothing he doesn't know) but switches between first, second, and third person. It reminds me of something I recently read about Jane Austen's innovative use of free indirect speech, where a character's voice is mediated by the narrator, allowing a more in-depth understanding of the character. It's incredible to me that Mantel does the opposite. She strictly limits herself to the character's voice, and still, I feel an enormous depth of understanding living inside Cromwell's head this way for months. And I felt like I was in his head, not Mantel's. It is truly an incredible feat of writing.

I can't wait for Bring Up the Bodies.

Tell Me Everything: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

Didn’t anyone ever have anything interesting to say? They talked of movies they were all watching, of series on Netflix, they spoke about their children, but always carefully and in terms meant to hide their private disappointments, and they talked about one another. Of course.

Elizabeth Strout is my favorite living writer. I first read My Name is Lucy Barton and thought, “I will read everything this woman ever writes.” Tell Me Everything is the fifth and final book in her Amgash series that began with My Name is Lucy Barton and weaves several characters’ stories together masterfully over a series of years.

When I was younger, I read a collection of short stories called Tinyburg Tales that used the interlocking lives of the citizens of a fictional town called Tinyburg. I loved that book and still think about it all the time. Growing up and now living in a small town, having small, ordinary lives turned into beautiful fiction is profoundly affecting. It feels real, honest, and respectful.

Tell Me Everything is like if a Pulitzer Prize winner wrote Tinyburg Tales. In Strout’s adroit hands, quiet days filled with average heartbreaks or even extraordinary strength get the respect they deserve. I’ll miss Lucy, William, and most of all Olive, but I can’t wait to see what Strout does next.

If you are a true crime fanatic, don’t miss the next installment of The First Books Book Club, where we are tackling crime BEHEMOTH James Patterson, as well as reading a modern crime debut May the Wolf Die by Elizabeth Heider! You can get the book box from Lisa (which comes with a treat!) or become a paid subscriber here at By Plane or By Page - both types of subscribers get full access to our book club discussions and an Along Came A Spider Watch-Along I’m planning for next month!

Intermezzo: A Novel by Sally Rooney

And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction – which even makes sense from the evolutionary perspective – is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.

Apparently, I require one Irish novel a month. Who knew? I’ve only read one other work by Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends. I remember being puzzled by everyone’s fawning reviews, but now I understand. I loved Intermezzo. I thought it was a touching reflection on grief, brotherhood, and aging. Her characters are so lovingly written, and it comes across in every word.

I won’t say my reading is without critique. The relationship between Peter Naomi and Sylvia was the most realistic I’ve ever read. Still, it also lacked believability because I think Sylvia’s injury and resulting pain were lacking in depth and detail. I wonder how long-term Rooney readers feel she is evolving as a writer or - as is my suspicion - she is depending more and more on a specific formula. (A red flag, as we’ve learned from the First Books Book Club, is that her name is now a larger font than the title of the book!) Either way, I enjoyed this novel tremendously.

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SO excited to announce I’m going to be on Substack Live with Ochuko Akpovbovbo of as seen on to talk about a question we both get ALL the time… “How do you read so much!?!” Join us live on Tuesday, June 6 at 9:30 CST to hear us complete nerd out on reading!

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Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi with Reflections on a Father’s Love by Franco Nembrini

As Collodi puts it: “Pinocchio continued to sleep and to snore as if his feet belonged to someone else.” Which is something we all of us do: we lose our lives without even realizing it, as if we were sleeping.

The monthly selection for Well-Read Mom, I was excited to read a classic of children’s literature for the first time. I’ve seen the (bizarre) Disney adaptation but have never read Collodi’s original, and - not surprisingly - it is very different from the film.

Collodi wrote Pinocchio as a serial for a children’s magazine. The adaption we read for Well-Read Mom intersperses the individual adventures of Pinocchio with reflections from modern Italian theologian Franco Nembrini. I liked having the story broken up this way so that I could get a sense of its serialized origin and take each story on its own. Whatever Collodi’s personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof), Nembrini argues the story reflects Italy’s deeply Catholic culture and interprets the tale’s imagery and symbolism through that lens.

I’m not sure I agree with all of Nembrini’s interpretations, but I don’t think that matters. I loved engaging so deeply with this classic tale that has been interpreted and reinterpreted by so many for hundreds of years.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I do think Mrs. Long is as good a creature as ever lived -- and her nieces are very pretty behaved girls, and not at all handsome: I like them prodigiously.

Who is your favorite character in Pride and Prejudice, and why is it Mrs. Bennet? Kidding! Sort of.

I took another trip through this classic via the Audrey App in preparation for my pilgrimage to Derbyshire in September. (PS There are two spots left, and if you are still on the fence, I recently realized that THIS IS TEN MINUTES AWAY. I screamed.)

No matter how many times I read this book, it is Mr. and Mrs. Bennet who always make me cackle out loud. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and am now their age - not Lizzie or Darcy’s - but I find them so perfectly flawed and wondrously matched (for comedy, if not marriage) that I fall a little more in love with them each time.

Of course, I fall more in love with every character because I notice something new and surprising with every re-read—Bingley’s bombastic blindness. Charlotte Lucas’s sadness hidden beneath her pragmatism. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s loneliness.

I cannot wait to dig into all this and more in September.

What did you read in April?

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