What have you been reading these days? A Distant View of Everything

A Distant View of Everything was another novel released in 2017, which was bought and read in 2018.  This novel is the 11^th in the Isabel Dalhousie mysteries or The Sunday Philosophy Club series by Alexander McCall-Smith, another hugely popular series.  I found out about this series while I looking for more about Alexander McCall-Smith.  I saw that he had another 'mystery' series – the Isabel Dalhousie mysteries.  Though I was intrigued by the ‘mysteries’ attached to one of the names given the series, I was intimated by the ‘philosophy club’ in the other name.  I felt it would be heavy reading, all that philosophy and stuff.  But ‘mystery’ won over ‘philosophy,’ and I started the first, The Sunday Philosophy Club, from which the series gets its name.  The novels are about Isabel Dalhousie and her life in Edinburgh.  She is a philosopher, not a practicing one, but one by training and thinking; and she is the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics.  There are a number of people around her that makes her life interesting and there is lots of art and music, and of course, Edinburgh is a huge presence in these novels.  As far as ‘mystery’ is concerned, it is more of Isabel getting involved in the lives of others, and solving their issues and problems; but the problems are interesting.  There is a lot of gentleness and thoughtfulness that have gone into these novels, just like the author’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels.  I read the first one and found myself liking Isabel and all those people and what was happening in their lives.  Since I started late, I had to catch up till 2012, by which time 10 novels had already appeared in the series.  For some reason, a gap of three years intervened between the 10^th and the 11^th novel in the series.  By the time, the 11^th arrived in 2015, I was ready and eagerly waiting. 

A Distant View of Everything came out in 2017, but again I waited till the paperback was released and the prices came down a bit.  I bought it when both conditions were sufficiently met.  What about the book itself?  A second son is born to Isabel and her musician husband, Jamie; there are sibling issues here; a possibility of a misunderstanding between Isabel and Jamie is projected and averted; she gets involved in a problem concerning a friend of a friend and does some investigations of her own; and everything ends well.  Lots of philosophy, actually ethics; and then some art, and music, and lots of Edinburgh.