Arrianarose's 2024 reads

Welcome and happy 2024! I'm Shari, a New Englander who loves books (obviously!), cats, travel (both armchair and real life, when I can), and the outdoors. I've been on LT since 2006, and in the 50 Book Challenge since 2011. I'm changing it up this year to join the 75 group, though I'm mainly a sporadic lurker, rather than a frequent chatter, so we'll see how it goes. Here's to a year filled with good books! Happy reading!

Where has my reading taken me this year?



I had so much fun last year with my random, Scattergories inspired, letter traveling, I've rolled myself new letters for 2024. I'll be attempting to visit as many places that begin with B, G & H as I can. All's fair in self-designed reading challenges, so any city, country, river, province, national park, etc. is fair game.

Africa
Egypt (and the UK): The Collector's Daughter

Asia
India (and Nepal): A Houseboat on the Ganges & A Room in Kathmandu
Japan (and US, and Russia): How High We Go in the Dark
(and the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand: The Great Fire

Europe
The Third Horseman
Belarus Voices from Chernobyl
Belgium (and France): The Lady and the Unicorn
Ireland: The Wonder
Georgia Ali and Nino
Germany: Elizabeth and her German Garden
Gibraltar (and the UK): A Delicate Truth
The Holy See: The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia

North America
Bimini, The Bahamas (and Cuba): Islands in the Stream
Canada: The River
Demerara (now Guyana) (plus Barbados, Grenada, Montserrat, Dominica & UK): Island Queen
Grenada: Sugar Money
Panama: Do Not Become Alarmed
USA:
(misc.) The Family Next Door
Alabama - Take My Hand
California- By the Book
Blank
Hawaii - Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Georgia - Shift
Boston, Massachusetts - Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
(also at sea and Beverly, MA) - A True Account
New York - The Lions of Fifth Avenue
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
(and Alabama) By Her Own Design
Wyoming - Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Here, there and everywhere
The Great Railway Bazaar
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

Imaginary locale
Once Upon a Broken Heart
The Lions of Al-Rassan
Wool

Welcome, Shari, happy reading in 2024!

Welcome, Shari! Glad to have you with us this year.

Thanks! :)

Happy reading in 2024!

1. Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber
2. Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz by Gail Crowther

Starting off the year with a book chosen by my twelve year old niece. She's suddenly deep into books again (yay!), and loves YA fantasy romance. It's definitely aimed at teens, and rather silly, but better than I expected. I think there are one or two more, I'll read them so we can chat about them.

I actually thought Three Martini Afternoons was one of those fictionalized novels, like The Paris Wife I read last year, so was surprised to find out it was nonfiction. I've read Plath's The Bell Jar, but I don't think I've ever read any of her poetry, and I'm not sure if I've read Anne Sexton's or not (maybe in college?), so I was a bit over my head for the literary discussions of their work.

3. Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
4. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

I've read and enjoyed Theroux in the past, yet don't recall him being racist or rather unlikeable, as I did here. The book itself and the journey were interesting, and I didn't dislike it overall, but given that this seems to be his most prolifically read book, I expected better.

5. The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

Wow, loved this completely. It definitely makes up for the less than stellar start to the year, book-wise. I just finished it today, and cried for the heartbreakingly realistic ending to that bright spark of hope that there could be a chance for a better, more perfect world where friendship and tolerance could push past fear and repression.

6. Sugar Money by Jane Harris
7. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Letters, letters, so many letters. I've traveled to Boston, Hawaii, and now Grenada and Belgium.

8. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
9. The Third Horseman by William Rosen
10. Wool by Hugh Howey (re-read)

Reading Sugar Money and Take My Hand at the same time was quite a depressing combination. Slavery and continued inhumanity and racial injustice, yay. :( The Williams sisters' story was so heartbreaking, but I also felt deeply annoyed by Civil's high-handed treatment of the entire Williams family, and her attitude in general. She finds out all these things - that depo provera could potentially cause cancer, that India hasn't started her period yet, that neither of the young girls is at all sexually active, etc. and then takes it upon herself to make decisions for them without ever having any conversations with them or their father or grandmother. I know this is fiction, but it really bothered me that it never seems to have occurred to her to bring her concerns to them. Although grief, depression and poverty had them in a terrible state, she soon saw them as intelligent and caring, yet still never had the decency to let them know of her concerns, or her actions. Then she seems to have decided to punish herself for the rest of her life for not having known about and prevented their involuntary sterilizations.

You'd think I'd move to something cheerier after that, but apparently that's now how I work. Instead, I decided on a history of the great European famine of the 1300s, and to re-read a post-apocalyptic dystopia in preparation for continuing the series.

>11 arrianarose: Shari, that is what we call being a glutton for punishment!

Welcome to the group and have a great weekend.

>12 PaulCranswick: I know, right? My friend Renae says I should have someone approve my book choices before starting them, to keep me in line. :)

Thanks! Looks like it'll be a quiet, at-home weekend. I wanted to stop by the library to grab some (hopefully cheerier) new books, but they had some water damage recently, and are only partially open during the repairs. I'll have to think about what I want, and put some books on hold, since I can't just browse.

Hello Shari, my name is Owl or Lily. Its nice to meet you.

>14 Owltherian: Hi, Owl! Good to meet you as well. Sorry for the delay in responding, I'm a sporadic poster here, though I know this group is typically super chatty. :)

11. A Delicate Truth by John le Carre
12. Houseboat on the Ganges & A Room in Kathmandu by Marilyn Stablein
13. By the Book by Julia Sonneborn
14. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
15. The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
16. Shift by Hugh Howey
17. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim
18. The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C. W. Gortner
19. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Whoops, here I go again vanishing, then dropping a slew of books down all at once. A whole gamut of things this time around. I've got a few of my letter travels going on - Gibraltar, Germany, Georgia (US), the Holy See - plus some prompts from my and my friends' book challenge - takes place in the 1910s or 1920s and takes place in a week or less.

No particular standouts of amazingness here. A Delicate Truth did nothing for me. Rather confusing to follow at times, I wasn't sure why I should particularly care about most of the characters (I liked Jeb the most, poor guy), and nothing was ever resolved in the end. No, thanks.

I couldn't remember at first why I had flagged By the Book, but quickly realized that it was a Persuasion retelling. Unfortunately, I feel like I always end up being disappointed by the majority of Austin retellings, as I ended up being with this one. It was okay, but Anne annoyed me with her lack of self esteem and general attitude. Austin heroines tend to be happy with themselves and their capabilities, it's just circumstances and the world that cause them trouble. This Anne can't even be bothered to think her own book is interesting.

I'm a big fan of dystopias and post-apocolyptic fiction, so I was interested to see what How High We Go in the Dark came up with. Turns out, it came up with an overly long collection of stories about death. I liked how it started, but then it then switched to so many characters and story lines, not all of which as engaging as others. I felt that there was a natural ending point when the ship found a new world, but it just kept going. I also wasn't a fan of the actual ending. Was it supposed to feel like coming full circle? I felt like we just lost all agency, instead. On the same genre note, I can't decide yet how I feel about Shift. It was more of a slog to get through - the switching timelines didn't flow as well as the 1st book did, and the pacing in general wasn't as lively. It was interesting to learn the back story, though, and I'm interested to see how the two will converge for the final book of the trilogy.

Two NYC-centric books here - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist was a cute YA day in the life of romance. The Lions of Fifth Avenue was mainly of interest to me due to the interesting fact of someone literally living in a library. The historical parts were more interesting than the various theft/mystery plot lines. The characters also seemed to behave a bit erratically, to me, in not quite believable ways.

I wasn't paying enough attention when I grabbed The Vatican Princess, and thought it was nonfiction - the opposite of my mistake with Three Martini Afternoons. I hope for Lucrezia's sake that some of the most unpleasant bits of speculative fiction were untrue - even without them, she had quite a tumultuous life.

20. Island Queen by Vanessa Riley

Excellent book about a location and time I know little about. I did not know there had been so many revolts across the Caribbean, nor that there were women of color who lived such amazing and successful lives - which, as the author says, is a crime in an of itself, that these stories have not been told. This is a fictionalized account of a real person, Mrs. Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, who was from all accounts an amazing businesswoman, determined to free herself and her family from slavery and who built multiple successful businesses in the Caribbean.

21. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
22. The Collector's Daughter by Gill Paul

An old-fashioned style of book about post-WWII lives and relationships. Okay enough, but it didn't seem like an award winner to me, though it won the National Book Award.

In the second, I was most intrigues by Eve's experiences as a young woman wanting to be an archeologist and her later life experiences dealing with the effects of multiple strokes. The curse story line and the modern day Egyptian archaeologist's story did less for me. I could have done without the curse entirely, and I just didn't like the way Ana's story was portrayed.

23. The Family Next Door by John Glatt
24. The River by Peter Heller
25. A True Account by Katherine Howe

One of our book prompts is to read a survival story, so I decided to pick up The Family Next Door, as I recalled the news story several years ago about the Turpin children's escape/rescue from their parents. As awful as the reality clearly was for this family, I feel that Glatt did not lend much of an investigative eye on their story, but was written solely to profit off of their tragic lives, without much effort exerted on his part.

I liked the immersive feeling of The River, the sense of setting was really well done. I was less won over by Jack's reactions to events, and his psychology, I guess. I didn't really buy it, it didn't feel entirely believable, at least for the character that had been created for him prior to events taking a turn.

I'm trying to think back in my reading history, to determine when it became so common, almost de rigueur, for historical fiction novels to have a double timeline plot, one in the far past, and a second in either the current day, or in the less distant past. It's not that I dislike this construction, I just don't feel that it is needed nearly as often as it is being written. Oftentimes, one of the timelines suffers, either in plot, characterization, interest level, etc. or a combination. This, unfortunately, was one of those times. The "pyrate" story was fun and mostly unserious, despite the heavy subjects. The college timeline was rather boring and uninspired, with lackluster characters.

26. Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
27. By Her Own Design by Piper Huguley
28. Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

More traveling by letters around the world - Georgia and Belarus! The description I read for Ali and Nino compared it to Romeo and Juliet, which is partly a good description - love across religions, war, and tragedy have a similar feel. However, the passion and emotion of the story are mainly for homeland and lifestyle, both of which were under assault from without and within, and celebrated and mourned all at once. The format of Voices from Chernobyl - transcribed, unscripted conversations - makes this tragedy about the people and the place in a way that a more detached book couldn't do. Sad and surreal.

29. What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman
30. Letters of A Woman Homesteader by Elinor Pruitt Stewart
31. Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
32. Blank by Zibby Owens

One more letter with Islands in the Stream, Bimini in The Bahamas! Really good and well written, though unexpectedly heartbreaking and melancholy after the 1/3 mark. I've only ever read A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway before - are all of his books depressing like this?

Blank was over the top ridiculous, which was just what I needed after so many heavy and sad book choices so far this year.

33. Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
34. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Silly me, I wasn't expecting Do Not Become Alarmed to be so full of tragedy. I was misled by the blurb into thinking the kids were somehow lost in the woods/jungle alone to fend for themselves, which was only few for a few moments of the story. I should have known better, given my track record this year in books.

Wonder certainly took a turn into the unexpected at the end. Not was I was anticipating, that's for sure.