🪄🎄🎅🐸📚🗡️🐉🌨️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Not the Best Week--Book Wise

Every book this week was part of a series. This was not a great reading week. Two of the books were barely meh, but one was terrific. That one first:

    Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret: A Festive Mystery by Benjamin Stevenson is the third in a series of clever mysteries. Ernest Cunningham has a knack for solving murders. This is useful because he ends up in the vicinity of several murders. Ernie talks directly to the reader, telling them they have all the clues they need to solve the murder alongside him. He is like a magician. I know there is sleight of hand and misdirection, but I don't spot it. When he explains it all at the end, it makes sense. Stevenson does a good job of writing a twisty plot. Benjamin Stevenson is one of my current favorite mystery writers. 

Reviews of previous books in the series: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Stevenson

🪄🎄🎅

 

    Love's a Witch by Tricia O'Malley is a romantasy — lots of magic and magical creatures. Three sisters return to their childhood village home. Their home was not a happy one, and it has left its mark on the three adult women. Sloane, the oldest sister and main character, is fiercely protective of her two younger sisters. More than they would like. O'Malley uses the enemies-to-lovers trope effectively. This book is the start of a series with an overarching problem of a family curse that keeps the three sisters from staying in one place for long because strange, disastrous things start to happen. This book didn't knock my socks off. The shift from enemies to lovers was too quick to feel authentic. It was cozy, and wacky things happened with magic going haywire.

🐉🌨️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

    Adversary to a Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer is the fourth in the series. I thought the first book was fun, inventive, and quite clever. The subsequent books have to try much harder to capture the whimsy of the first one. It didn't happen. The author's solution to the plot slowing down is a sex scene. I find too much sex and not enough plot and character development boring. 

🐸📚🗡️

🪜🎭👺🦴⌛️Katabasis! 🤯

    I have someone in my life who, when they recommend a book, it will be  1) really good, 2) super weird, and 3) possible in the horror category. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang was recommended to me by this person, and it was all three, plus an intellectual plunge about power and purpose in the form of a novel. The word I would use to sum up the novel is "layered." The book is entertaining as dark fantasy. There are many references and nods to other literature on descent: Alice in Wonderland, the Divine Comedy, The Odyssey, and patheons of Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese Myth. She references Freud, Foucault, Toni Morrison, and many others. There is a lot going on, more than I could absorb in one reading. Kuang has accomplished something extraordinary; a reader could read it once and enjoy it, or read it several times and find new insights each time. 

🪜🎭👺🦴⌛️

    Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman is not Dungeon Crawler Carl, but there are many similarities between them. They are both litRPG. The protagonist is reluctant, brave, and clever, aided by a sassy pet-like sidekick. The humor is irreverent. Corporations are evil, money-grubbers, and the people/players that pay to indulge in their games are psychopaths. The plot is surprising and twisty. My biggest complaint is that it isn't Carl and Donut. I like how Dinniman makes a wild, crazy novel feel relevant to our current political situation. I think he may be subversively subversive.

🤖🎮🐔🐷👨‍🌾

    I like a well-done romance, and Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane is well done. It operates on the enemies-to-lovers trope, where they also have to pretend to be dating. The main characters, Bel and Connor, are both journalists in a tiny office in Manchester. The opportunity to break an important story requires undercover work—not those covers! Will the two coworkers eventually come to appreciate each other's strengths and learn to work together? Worth the journey to see it happen.

 📰 💖 🗞️

    I am currently rereading some of my favorite books. I have finished all of Jane Austin,  The Murderbot Diaries, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Let me say: I love them all.

⚔️🤖🦁

👑👸⚔️🤴👑 Perhaps Too Much Fantasy?

 

        I am getting wrapped up in Romantasy, and I regret reading Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry because it is the first of a trilogy. The second one won't be released until spring 2026. 

😝

I found the book captivating with a dynamic plot and an evolving, strong female protagonist. A neglected, disregarded princess is chosen over her promised sister to be a Sparrow Bride. The kingdoms on the continent force peace among prone-to-war kingdoms by exchanging a king's daughter to be the next queen and produce an heir. This sets up an enemies-to-lovers situation, but Perry slyly keeps her readers guessing. It is told in the first person by Princess Odessa and gives an urgency and tension. I liked the book and look forward to reading the sequels; however, this book won't challenge any conceptions about life or the patriarchy. It is formulaic, but it uses the formula well. 

👑👸⚔️🤴👑

    Robert Jackson Bennett writes science fiction that is both entertaining and thinky-thinky. He has won the Edgar Award, and I hope he also receives a Hugo, because he deserves it. He reminds me of Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of the Children of Time series. A Drop of Corruption continues the adventures of Ana and Din, a detective duo akin to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The series is a high fantasy, well-crafted, believable world facing enormous challenges from invading leviathans and internal corruption. The world is a layered empire that is gritty, messy, and brilliant as it wrestles with petty bureaucrats, the vengeful oppressed, arrogant rulers, and those trying to make sense of it.

💧🌿💧🌿💧

   Contains spoilers! Not my first time reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, but each time I get pulled into the story. I can't wait to find out if, once again, Marianne will recover from the dreadful blow dealt her by Willoughby, if Elinor can bear the weight of losing her true love, and if the Dashwood women will survive in their reduced circumstances. I don't ever remember reading the scene where Willoughby comes, drunk, because he hears Marianne is dying, and gives Elinor his excuses for his behavior. What a selfish cad! 

💔❤️‍🩹❤️

📰🗞️💌🤖 Lots of Romance and a MURDERBOT!

 

    Diving Rivals and Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment #1 and #2) by Rebecca Ross are the two books of a YA fantasy romance duology. Ross has created a fantasy world similar in time and technology to World War I, where a light sprinkling of magic is present. The protagonists, Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt, both have magic typewriters that create a communication link between them. They are aspiring journalists competing for the same position as a columnist for the prestigious Oath Gazette. Familiar tropes like the Rick Boy, Poor Girl caught in the maelstrom of war, who grow to love one another, raise the stakes for their survival. However, a twist is that this war is fought in service to the gods Dacre and Enva, who are at odds with each other. This adds another layer of problems that need to be solved for the books to have a satisfactory ending. The concluding book, Ruthless Vows, has the lovers fighting against the God of the Underworld, Dacre. They experience perilous adventures and receive help from others who believe in their cause. 

    Prepare for a mini rant. I don't know why this wasn't one long book. I suspect it was to make more money, and, yes, publishing is difficult, but it is still aggravating. Thank you for your patience. 

📰🗞️💌

   The Friend Zone, by Abby Jimenez, is the first one I've read by this popular author. Her characters are vibrant and sassy. Her plots, like those of every romance, are predictable, but she brings the fun and twists. Jimenez doesn't spare talking about difficult things like fibroid uterine tumors, infertility, and loss. I did find the ending, given the tone of the book, unearned. Also, the main female character felt a bit psycho with her: I love you, but I can't be with you, and if I told you, you wouldn't want to be with me, so go away after you kiss me. So much of the book wouldn't have happened if she had a forthright conversation with her love interest. I looked at some reviews on Goodreads, and there are strong feelings about how the book ended. Overall, I enjoyed it and looked forward to reading other books by Jimenez.

🐾👨‍🚒🚑

    I continue my re-reading journey through The Murderbot Diaries with #4 Exit Strategy. Murderbot is wrestling with feelings. As a SecUnit, he doesn't usually have those feelings, but he finds that he cares about Mensa's well-being and, through analysis, knows she has been kidnapped. Mensa is a mother figure to Murderbot, and it both freaks him out and appeals to him. It's tough to be Murderbot.

🤖🤖🤖    

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Martha+Wells

🍰🐇🍷😭 Contemperary Dark Humor, Not a Single Dragon

    Through a strange quirk of fate, I have read two books about two possible suicides back to back. Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett is narrated by eleven-year-old Elvis Babbit, who shares a birthday with Elvis Presley, so her mother named her after him. Elvis is a science nerd trying to survive the grief of losing her mother. Elvis' mother drowned while sleepwalking. Her 15-year-old older sister, Lizzie, is also a sleepwalker. Grief causes some to fold in on themselves, while others explode out, and others freeze in place. Rabbit Cake portrays these sides of loss. The book is darkly humorous and genuine. A counselor tells Elvis that it takes about 18 months to move through the distress of the death of a parent. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I like the idea of there being a timeline. Despite its somber premise, I found Rabbit Cake a hopeful read because it helped me see that a loved one's death can bring about change, leading to new paths and a deeper understanding.

🎂🍰🐇🐰

    There Are No Rules for This by J.J. Elliott was recommended to me at a St. Patrick's Day party by the person who had been Elliott's nanny after her mother died of suicide. At first, I thought the book was a memoir, but it is actually a work of fiction written in the first person. There is a tight group of four friends, and one of them commits suicide. The surviving three are left to comprehend how their amazing friend could choose to leave her family and friends behind. The plot unfolds from the moment Ali is told by the remaining friends, Max and Liddy, of their friend Finney's suicide. As they suffocate in sadness for their beloved, funny, amazing friend, they seek to understand why. Elliott does a stellar job of showing how complex and unfathomable the path to suicide. The death of Finney moves the friends to celebrate life in darkly humorous ways. The book has an authentic quality in that there aren't rules for how to respond to someone's suicide, but crying and wine help the process.

🍷🧀🍇😭

    Limelight by Amy Poeppel is like an enemies-to-lovers romance story, only between a teenager and a mom-like mentor.  Allison Brinkley is getting her dream of living in New York City. Her husband's job necessitates a move to Manhattan. She has carefully planned to move her job and their three children and has a job, apartment, and schools lined up. Then it all falls apart. Her kids are unhappy, the apartment is so small, and her long-term sub high school English teacher falls through. She finds herself a personal assistant to a wildly famous 18-year-old pop music celebrity. They both learn a lot. The characters find themselves in foolhardy, laughable predicaments. I found myself invested in what was going to happen. Poeppel writes a tight, suspenseful, likeable story.

Here is a link to another Amy Poeppel book I reviewed:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/05/reading-about-atom-bomb-cello-music-and.html

🌟👯👨‍🎤

🧬🧝‍♀️ Science/Fantasy💐👒Recovery and🎄Christmas Mystery/Rom-Com--A Week of Mash-Ups!

 

    This week, I continue my obsession with Adrian Tchaikovsky, reading his novella Elder Race. It is told from two different points of view: Lynesse and Elder Nyr. Earth sends a group of humans to terraform a planet, making it suitable and familiar for habitation. A group of colonists and a scientific outpost remain behind, tasked with observing the events and reporting back to Earth. Lynesse is the distant descendant of those colonists and Nyr, a second-class anthropologist who occasionally emerges from stasis to check on what is happening. This brief novella explores the idea that science can appear magical to the uninitiated. So, is this book of fantasy or science fiction? This is a fascinating story, with terrific characters.

🔭🧬🧫🧝‍♀️😈

    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman is a tragedy-to-triumph story. Young CeeCee's mother is mentally ill and not the fun, adorable kind. As her mother falls further into her delusions, CeeCee's traveling salesman father, unable to cope, leaves CeeCee to take care of her mother. Trapped CeeCee does all she can for herself and her mother, but bad things happen. CeeCee goes live with her mother's long-lost aunt in Savannah, Georgia. CeeCee moved from Ohio to life in the south in 1967. Her heart and mind have been battered and bruised, and she needs love and healing. The theme of this book is transformation from despair to hope with the help of her new neighbors and friends. 

    I love a happy ending, but this one was almost too happy, which is barely a complaint. I found the book compassionate about mental illness and the plight of those who live with it.

🌹🪻💐👒🌻👗

    I would put The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter in the mystery/rom-com category. It was an exciting romp, featuring many mystery tropes, including a locked-room mystery, an old English country mansion, and the usual suspects: greedy relatives, Christmas time, and tragic backstories. On the Rom-Com side, we have a feisty friends-to-lovers storyline. I love a good mash-up! The book was fast-paced and stocked with interesting characters. I didn't guess the killer, but worked out other red herrings. 

I have previously read another Ally Carter book called The Blonde Identity. Also, super fun. Here is the link to that review:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Ally+Carter

❤️‍🔥🔎🎄🔍❤️‍🔥

🔮🪐🌟🐸🦹‍♂️🐉Childhood Classic, Fantasy, Dystopian Future, and Historical Fiction

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle was the March pick for my book club. We are having a great time reading Newberry Award Winners. Not everyone is a fan of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, so I wanted to know how this book would land with some of the others. It is over 50 years old! It has held up well. I appreciate how genuine the characters are portrayed: an angry fifteen-year-old girl, a popular athlete with a tough home life, and, of course, the beings from outer space. L'Engle has universal themes about the pain of growing up, being caught between good and evil, and the importance of love. What makes the book endure is that these topics are not dealt with tritely but sincerely and with great compassion. It's a winner.

🔮🪐🌟

 

    Apprentice to a Villain is the second in a series by Hannah Nicole  Maehrer. Fun fact: The series grew out of TikToks Maehrer, which was made around the idea of what it would be like to be an assistant to a villain whose job involves torture and general evilness. Here is a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDoN6GpjTb8&t=187s

    The second book continues the story with some problems solved and others cropping up. Maehrer developed her characters, which grew and changed. There are many nascent romances. She leans heavily on the frenemies-to-lovers trope. I found it annoying that the main characters, The Villain and Evie, his former assistant and now apprentice, refuse to admit they love each other, but I'm also amused at the ways the author finds for them to "have to" kiss.

I'm looking forward to the next book.

🐸🦹‍♂️🐉

    I have seen several ads for the movie The Wild Robot and decided to read the book before watching it. It is YA fiction. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown is about a robot from a shipment stranded on an unpopulated island. The Robot, Ros, is anthropomorphized, having feelings and forming relationships. I listened to the audiobook but understood the physical book has fantastic illustrations by Peter Brown. There are more books in the series. I would file this book under heartwarming.

🤖🪿🐿️🦫🦌🌳

    A friend recommended The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff. It is historical fiction about British female spies who aided the French Resistance in World War II. They trained for functions but primarily worked as covert radio operators. I am somewhat burnt out on World War II books, but I tried it. The story is told by three different women: two women in 1944 and a war widow in 1946. The story of the women clumsily fit around the story of actual events and felt forced, but it was still enjoyable and compelling. I'm glad I read it. 

🕵️‍♀️🔘🌇

Six Very Different Books.📚❓❣️🌱🐉⏳ What A Week!

 

    Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (As Told to Me) Story by Bess Kalb is a quirky memoir of Bess Kalb's grandmother, Bobby Bell. They had an amazing grandmother/granddaughter relationship as depicted by this book. Kalb speaks with her grandmother's voice. It is like she's playing dress-up using her grandmother's thoughts. Kalb has her grandmother's literal voicemails on her phone. I had the feeling Kalb was processing her loss through her writing, much like Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking. I enjoyed seeing the impact that a grandmother can have. 

🩷👶🏻🌟

    I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai is filed in the mystery category because it is a gripping mystery. However, this book is more than a whodunit. Bodie Kane is a successful podcaster and film professor living in Los Angeles. She is invited to do a winter mini-mester at her old New Hampshire boarding school. The story zigzags back and forth in time as Bodie reconsiders the death of her roommate that occurred senior year. This book covers a lot of meaty topics like racial injustice, casual misogynistic abuse, and the curious fascination with the deaths of young, pretty white girls, but at its heart, it is a suspenseful mystery. 

❄️⛷️🏫🎞️💀

    Emily Henry is great at writing witty, pithy romance books. People We Meet On Vacation was the perfect read while traveling by airplane. It made the miles fly by. This book follows a friends-to-lovers path. Poppy and Alex meet in college when he gives her a ride home for summer break. They both live in the same small town. They are opposites. Poppy's sole desire is travel; Alex's is to build a stable life. So, they agreed to be best friends who would take a week-long vacation together once a year. But one year, something happens, and they stop. Poppy makes one last desperate attempt to get her best friend back.

 😉❣️✈️

    The main focus of The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman is the romance of gardening. As someone who gets poison ivy whenever I try to pull weeds and considers houseplants a bouquet that lasts slightly longer than average, I was charmed by this lovely book and the problem-free garden. Lillian Girvan has been a widow for three years. She is drawn in and compacted--much like a seed in hard ground--when she signs up for gardening class, where she transforms, with the help of others, into something unexpected. Interspersed between the chapters are short, witty essays on how to prepare and grow a garden.

👩‍🌾🌻🌼🪻🥕🍅🥦

    I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle doesn't strictly follow the traditional fantasy tropes. The story's hero is a lowly dragon exterminator who hates his job. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, his friends call him Robert, has inherited the job of ridding hovels to castles of dragons. When the princess of Robert's kingdom falls hard for the neighboring kingdom's handsome prince, Robert is called for a long overdue castle dragon cleansing; however, everything doesn't go as planned. Beagle's writing style is humourous while also telling a rollicking tale.

🐉 🏰👸🐲

    The Ministry of Time by Kaleane Bradley is a debut novel. Her concept is clever. Time travel is possible, but instead of sending someone from this timeline, the government chooses to secretly pull people from the past who would have died if they hadn't been rescued. Then, study the physical and mental effects on these unwilling participants. A small group of Expats from several centuries are gathered in a future where the climate crisis is becoming overwhelming. The book's narrator is the bridge helper/keeper of a British officer who would have died in an Arctic expedition in 1847. She must help him acclimate to the current timeline and regularly report to the ministry about him. She is both his friend and his foe. Time travel makes things weird. I like weird. The genre is humorous sci-fi romance with a conscience.

⏳☀️🥵❤️ 

Every Book a Winner or Came Close!

 

    North Woods by Daniel Mason is a fantastic book. It is filed under historical fiction but contains a ribbon of magical realism that gradually becomes apparent. The book starts with two Puritan lovers who run away to Western Massachusetts and proceeds through history until the present day, changing narrators with each chapter. It took a while to understand what was going on, I think, intentionally. As the filaments of stories coalesced into whole cloth, I was captured. I like a mind-bending story, and North Woods is that.

🌲🏚️👻🌳

 Good, Sad, Hopeful

    James McBride's award-winning book, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, is worth every minute spent reading it. The book opens with the discovery of a body in a well with a Mezuzah. The police go to the only Jewish person left on Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, to find answers. The rest of the book, jumps back to the 1920s to explain the mystery. McBride vividly paints each character in his large cast, often giving their origin story. The reader comes to know Chona, Dodo, Nate, and others richly and is invested in their struggles. Because it is the 1920s and the characters are primarily black and Jewish, they face many hardships. McBride paints a painful picture of intricate relationships fueled by kindness, power, and the struggle to flourish.

🎶🕎🕍🎺

    I've been laid low this week with a stomach bug and sought comfort in fantasy. A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross was a great choice. It was nominated as Goodread's best fantasy novel of 2022. Ross builds an intricate web of a world. Jack Tamerlaine is summoned home by his Laird from his training as a musician on the mainland. Young girls are being stolen from the Eastern side of the divided island where the spirits of the water, earth and wind are both kind and cruel. Magic surrounds the inhabitants, but there is a steep cost to using it. River Enchanted meets all the requirements of a fantasy series: reluctant hero, strong heroine, love, rivalry, danger and mystery. It is also part of series, so I now I'm waiting for the next book to become available.

😕

🎶🧝‍♀️🌬️🌱🌊🔥

Murder Mystery with Edgar Allan Poe 🐦‍⬛ and a Blah Romance 💔

 

    This week I read another excellent recommendation from a daughter, The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard. It is a historical murder mystery centering around West Point in 1831. Retired New York constable Gus Landor has relocated to the Highlands for his failing health. He is called upon to solve a gruesome murder at West Point Academy, but he needs help from an insider. One presents himself--Cadet Poe, that would be Edgar Allen Poe. I gave this book five stars on  Goodreads because it is a masterful mystery. It captures the language and metaphors of the time. When Poe speaks or writes, it is with florid expressions and exactingly careful word choices that feel like his writing. I haven't read anything else by Bayard, but I'm curious if this is his imitation of Poe's voice or an extension of his own. Did he say to chatGPT, create a mystery in the voice of Edgar Allen Poe narrated by a grizzled former police officer set in 1831? I don't think so because it has an original voice and plot. It is dark, suspenseful, and gothically creepy. I admire what Bayard has crafted. I'm not alone. This novel won the Edgar Award in 2007. 

I think the book revolves around themes of death, revenge, poetry, and melodrama. It can be weighted down by its own words at times, but it has a rousing finish. 

🖌️📚🔵👀🔍

    Emily Hendry's newest story Happy Place sounded appealing. I had read one of her previous books, Book Lovers (https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Book+Lovers), and enjoyed it. Happy Place was disappointing. I found the characters uninspired. It starts with three college roommates, Harriet, Sidney, and Samatha, who bonded over their childhood hurts. From this inner circle, it grows to include their significant others who vacation yearly at a beach house in Maine. The house is being sold. They have spent a decade vacationing together, but this is their final summer. Everyone has secrets they're not telling, especially Harriet and her ex-financé, Wyn. They haven't told their best friends they've broken up. To make this final week perfect for everyone--but them--they decide to keep their split a secret and "act" like they're still together. Henry works hard on the atmosphere of Knott's Harbor, Maine, but the characters never animate, and the premise falls flat. There are some steamy encounters between Harriet and Wyn, but it feels gratuitous without the connection to back it up. 

☀️🌊⛱️ 💔❤️‍🩹❤️

I Didn't Like the Books at First, but then I Did 🙃

 

    The two books I read this week had this in common; I didn't like them at first. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón was an overgrown, claustrophobic garden on a moonless night with the wind whipping dark trees in a frantic, anxious dance above forsaken lovers searching hopelessly for knowledge of what is true and what is an illusion as the hot breath of fate sizzles their necks. Only more so. It helped me understand the book when I read a sentence review from Stephen King.

Stephen King wrote, "If you thought the true gothic novel died with the 19th century, this will change your mind. Shadow is the real deal."

    Oh, a Gothic novel like my least favorite Jane Austen novel, Northanger Abbey. 

    Genre aside, I found the characters good or not so great; only a few middle-of-the-road ones. The Bechdel Test is a test that asks if two named female characters talk to each other about something other than a man. (what-is-the-bechdel-test) I find the women in Shadow of the Wind only exist in relation to men or as a convenient device to move the plot forward. They don't stand on their own merit. And it irked me. Maybe this is how Gothic Novels work?

    I almost abandoned the book, but its twisted plot captured me, and I had to finish. Zaphón skillfully shows the theme of fathers and sons in many different iterations, and it reminded me of all the father/son duos in Hamlet. There were many themes:themes It is a complex book to wade through. Zaphón is a good writer, but not one I enjoyed.

💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

    The Measure by Nikki Erlick has an intriguing premise. One day everyone in the world over the age of twenty-two found a box outside their front door. In the box is a string that was the measure of their life. Everyone could know how long they would live by opening their box and measuring their string. It throws the world into turmoil. This book passed the Bechdel Test, but its many characters felt flat. However, the plot was braided together with constant surprises. I enjoyed Erlick's sleight of hand in using every character. Everyone has a purpose. I don't want to give anything away, but the ending was hopeful and encouraging. I asked myself if I would open the box to find out how long I would live? The answer is yes. I couldn't stand not knowing! 

🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵

New Series and End of Year Round Up

    I started reading the Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The Cold Dish and Death Without Company are the first two. I'm really enjoying them. Craig Johnson writes a tight mystery- always enjoyable- but I'm most captivated by the dry humor and the supporting cast. The protagonist is mildly depressed, and it would be a much darker book if it weren't for the strong women surrounding him and his faithful best friend. If he can keep this up throughout the series, it will be a fun year for me reading through his catalog. Book 19 is due to come out in 2023. In a future post, I'll compare the book series with the Netflix version. 

🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠

    I have done the GoodReads reading challenge for several years. I have settled on aiming for 100 books and usually pass it, but I'm reluctant to up the number. 100 is a satisfying number, and 125 or 150 just isn't. 

I see some trends in the latest books I read. One is the multiverse and, perhaps related, time travel within your life. Another is same-sex relationships. If it's not the centerpiece relationship, there is one somewhere in the book.

I read several terrific books this year, and a few I wish I hadn't.

📚📚📚📚📚

Most Helpful: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Favorite Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Most brutal to Read, but Worth It: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Favorite Sci-Fi: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Most Disappointing:  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Most Comforting: The Penderwick Series by Jeanne Birdsall

Favorite Fantasy: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Most Interesting Relationship: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Memoir: Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Most Surprising: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Made Me Think: Hell of a Book Jason Mott and The Sentence by Louis Eldrich

Most Disturbing: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

My Favorite Book of 2022 is:

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2022 READING 
CHALLENGE

Participants	6,758,337
Books Pledged	334,703,276
Avg. Books Pledged	49
Time Left	3 days, 17 hours

You have read 134 of 100 books in 2022.

YOUR 2022 BOOKS

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•