December 2023 - Reader's Choice

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Our last topic of the year is a wide open category that you can fill in many different ways. Some people like to read a seasonal historical book at this time of year, while others look back at the year and choose to read another book on one of our previous subjects. Some like to simply pick a random book that has caught their eye.

What ever you decide to read, let us know about it here. Perhaps you could also take a moment and think about hosting one of the four months we have left for 2024. Enjoy your reads!

I am going to be reading a book that I have had on my TBR shelf for far too long. I am looking forward to finally reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

>2 DeltaQueen50: I hope you like it. It was a 5-star read for me!

I think Im going to read something on my TBR not sure what yet

I usually pick something from one of our earlier themes in the year, but I might just choose a historical nonfiction book on some other topic. I'll see what's on my tbr.

I am going to read Doc by Mary Doria Russell and Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis. Doc is the fictionalized account of Doc Holiday's time in Dodge City, KS. Iron Hand is book 4 in the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series by Lindsey Davis. Both of these will be pre-holiday reading. Doc is the December selection for one of my real life book discussion groups and Iron Hand is for my LT mystery series fiction group.

I'm going to try to do some catch-up reading for this year's RTT Quarterly challenges (WWI, between the wars, WWII & post-WWII), and will report here as well.

It is my hope to finish Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster that will count for this challenge as well as the Quarter 4 challenge (post WWII)

>7 kac522: I am planning to do the same. I have started reading The Help which has long been on my TBR list. I will look to see what else I have that I would like to complete this month.

I have completed my read of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. This was a 5 star read for me. I held off reading the book as I didn't think it could live up to it's hype but it does!

>10 DeltaQueen50: 5 star read for me, also!

>11 Tess_W: Since most of the "hype" I refer to came from LibraryThing, I need to start listening to it as LibraryThingers are usually not wrong. I am looking forward to getting my hands on Circe now.

>12 DeltaQueen50: Actually, I've read or attempted to read books which received rave reviews here, the NYT, and elsewhere, but they simply didn't work for me. Reviews are only a guidepost, so don't beat up on yourself if your reads take you down 'the road less traveled.' Being in constant pain since back surgery 3 months ago has really skewed my reading from the norm even more so than usual.

>13 cfk: Oh, I do hope that the pain subsides soon. I have been battling some health issues myself and it's a struggle not to get really down about one's lessened abilities!

>14 DeltaQueen50: Especially on a drizzly and dark day we're having today and tomorrow. I've switched over mostly to fantasy and very light fiction. Can't wait for "Can This Be Christmas" to come in--I have it on hold because it's one I read every Christmas. I hope the bright lights of the holiday lifts your days spirit and fills your days!

A friend did hang a Christmas swag on my mantle to brighten my living room. Right now that's the only decorating I can do because my house has been torn up with repairs due to a leak for 3+ months, which gets really old.

>15 cfk: That sounds like a real nightmare!

I just decided to read a random book that also fulfilled another one of challenges, so I read The Odd Women by George Gissing. This is a Victorian setting and the women in the title refer to the "left over" women, meaning women who did not marry. Gissing is not a Hardy or a Trollope and I was left wanting.

>17 Tess_W: I was left angry when I read The Odd Women in October, mostly at Gissing. 😏

>18 kac522: I can certainly understand that!

>17 Tess_W:



There's a Virago Modern Classics edition of The Odd Women – interestingly, it may be the only VMC written by a man (at least it's the only that I'm aware of).

Personally, I prefer the similarly themed Miss Miles by Mary Taylor, who, along with Ellen Nussey, was one of Charlotte Brontë's two BFFs from their school days, but that may just be my Brontëan bias.

>20 CurrerBell: I know of one other male-authored Virago:



and it happens to have the same "New Woman" idea as in Gissing's book, although Shaw's novel is from 1884.

>21 kac522: Thanks! Didn't realize Shaw had written a novel (but then, I'm not really all that familiar with Shaw despite having read a number of the plays).

>22 CurrerBell: He wrote a few novels and then gave up. I think The Unsocial Socialist was his last novel. It's a Virago I happen to own.

I have finished a historical mystery set in Hollywood at 1921 and has a part-time private eye getting involved with the Arbuckle scandal: Der Mann, der nicht mitspielt. Lots of real people in this.

>16 MissWatson: Yes, and I am more than ready to be done with it!

>18 kac522: It became even worse in England and Europe following WW I & II due to the loss of so many young men. Granted it wasn't about the Victorian attitude then, but there was still a marked attitude toward them--I think they were call 'surplus women' or some such.

got confused by last years thread! I thought Id read some science fiction
I love time travel, and so I read one day this will all be yourswhich is a great story with lots of humor as well Also need to finally read the city we madeby nk jemisin

Follow up of November's Indigenous Peoples with Albert Wendt's Sons for the Return Home 3½***. Wendt's first published book, I believe, and not bad for a first effort but not comparable to The Banyan or to the better stories of the Miracle Man anthology. Coming-of-age story of a Samoan young man in a relationship with a European New Zealander young woman and fairly conventional on the interracial romance.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England / Ian Mortimer
3.5 stars

This book takes the reader back in time to Elizabethan England, the time during which Elizabeth I reigned, from 1558 to 1603. The author describes society in general so the reader/time traveller knows what to expect/how to behave.

These are interesting, but this one didn’t have the same appeal as the first in the series, Medieval England. Not sure if that was because I’ve read more set during Elizabethan times, so there wasn’t as much new to me (but plenty still was), or if it’s because I was often reading while distracted; I expect it’s more the latter.

I read The Windeby Puzzle which was about the discovery of a bog body found in Windeby in 1952. The author also took the story further imagining the life of the young person who had been sacrificed in such a way.

Bleed, Blister, Puke, and Purge / J. M. Younker
3.5 stars

This is a history of medicine in the United States. Of course, before modern medicine, people (doctors included) really didn’t know much about science or how the human body works. Prevailing cures for many things was to “bleed, blister, puke, and purge”. Many of us who read history or historical fiction certainly have read about “bleeding” people to cure various ailments. There was also a section on women in medicine. This was interesting, but also quite short. So for anyone who wants a quick overview of the topic, this is a good place to start. It also has a catchy title.

164. The Only Plane in the Sky: an Oral History of 9/11 / Garrett M. Graff
4.5 stars
513 pages

This is an oral history of 9/11 by people from all perspectives. These are quotes from people who were “there” in some capacity, whether that be on a plane, in one of the towers, at the Pentagon, on the ground, a first responder, part of the president’s staff, the family of someone who was there, or in some other way involved. The book goes primarily over the day of, but continues to the next day and some of the events (funerals, etc) following.

I listened to the audio, and I feel like this was the way to go with this one (I am giving it 4.25 stars, with an extra ¼ star for the audio).

No surprise: this was pretty powerful. It also included actual speeches by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as some recordings of air traffic controllers and flight attendants on the planes. I will admit that I did lose interest a bit during some of the political stuff and the air force people tasked with bringing down any possible planes that may be a threat, and this is why I didn’t rate it higher… but it’s still likely to make my favourites this year.

Finished a reread of Melina Merchetta's Jellicoe Road 4**** as a follow up to September's School Days. I read this Austrailian novel some five years ago but didn't entirely remember what it was about until I was a good way through and stuff started coming back to me. A very worthwhile reread, because the book can be quite confusing in its first quarter to half with flashbacks that introduce a number of characters we don't know anything about. The reread helped straighten things out in my mind, and this is definitely a high-quality YA novel, in fact a Printz Award winner.

Finished this up on Thursday the 28th but I'm only now just posting because on Friday morning I wound up in the emergency room with a serious exacerbation of my longtime COPD and was just discharged around 2pm on New Year's Day. I was also diagnosed with COVID in the emergency room, having had hospitalized COVID diagnoses in August and October; but this time around the infectious disease specialist told me not to worry, that this time it was just a very sensitive test that picked up residual virus from before and that I was never in any way contagious over the holiday period.

>33 CurrerBell: Very glad to read that you are back home now. Take care of yourself!

>33 CurrerBell: Escaping the hospital on New Year's Day has to count as a good start to a new year! Take care.