JudiY's reading in 2018

1. 1/1 Started the year off with fluff. Read Pleating for Mercy, a mildly fun mystery/ghost story. Set in Texas, a fashion designer with a "talent" for designing the right clothes for people solves a murder in her own front yard. Believable characters, interesting setting but just a time-filler for this bitter cold.

2. 1/3 Read On Tyranny, a chilling look at where a good part of the Western world is now. And some ideas how we can stop what seems to be happening. Should be required reading for everyone that votes, at least, and all the children that will have to live with the decisions we've made.

3. 1/4 Finished The Signal and the Noise, reasonably interesting look at the good and bad sides of predictions, and why most of them either shouldn't be taken too seriously or at least checked on. Also make the point that as a species, we are very bad at making predictions! "plan plans, not results" is still true, I guess.

4. 1/9 Finished Chaos. Very understandable book about Chaos Theory - it's evolution and how it's being applied. One of the more interesting books I've read lately.

5. 2/1 Goodness - better find some more fluff if I'm going to make 100 again. Finished The Quantum Universe. A book to be studied, rather than just read, I think - like his other book. Almost understandable to a non-mathematician.

6. 2/3 Got Hymn from the library. There's a waiting list, so read it quickly. Must admit I'd forgotten quite a bit of the story, so didn't enjoy it as much as the others, which I read closer together. Time for a series re-read, I think.

7. 2/9 Not the sort of book I'd normally read, but since the prez wanted publication stopped! got Fire and Fury from the library. Pretty much supports what I thought of the man from the start, only worse. The title from a book I've never read keeps running through my head - "Cry, the Beloved Country". I wonder if Tyson's "Make America Smart Again" idea ever got off the ground.

8. 2/15 Finished Saving Capitalism. Hard book to read since I kept getting so angry at the pols from the last 40 years or so. He connected a lot of dots for me, anyway, since I believe gov't should work for everyone, not just corporations and the uber-wealthy. Offers some hope at the end, since Jackson and Roosevelt corrected the course of the economy before, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

9. 2/18 Finished The Stone Sky. Had a hard time with it a first, since I didn't really remember the first and second books well, but all the loose ends I remember seem to have been tied up. Very imaginative series - worth re-reading at some point, I think.

10. 2/20 Read Many a Twist today - first one to get the library copy, I think. :) Maura's life is getting more complicated - her mother shows up, she seems to be starting a relationship - and of course, there's a body. Not really a murder, but she solves it anyway. Good story, and Connelly needs to write faster!

11. 2/24 Finished Code Girls, another library book. Fascinating book on many levels - a glimpse of what life was like here during the war, a glimpse of how our intelligence services evolved and a very interesting look at what has and hasn't changed for women.

12. 2/25 Read Pale Rider. I knew the influenza in 1918 was bad - primarily from Downton Abby and Charles Todd, but didn't know how bad, especially in the East. Interesting story, and a look at how far (or not) medicine has come since then.

13. 2/27 So of course I had to follow with The Black Death, a book I read many many years ago. I was especially struck by how little medicine changed between 1348 and 1918, but the horror of living through it must have been similar.

14. 2/28 Read Death in the Stars for a little fictional mayhem. Set around a 1922 eclipse in England and just before movies replaced live entertainment, Kate & Co. solve an odd string of murders and help a family savaged by the war. As always, a fun book to read.

15. 3/1 Read Death in St. Petersburg, the next Lady Emily. Great descriptions of the city and of the ballet. Emily outdoes herself by not only solving the murder, but saving the Tsar. Fun read.

16. 3/6 Finally finished The Information A History A Theory A Flood Can't say I enjoyed it as much as his other books, but some interesting facts.

17. 3/10 Read The Murder Stone, since it was by Charles Todd. Had a hard time getting into it, since I really wonder if people act the way they did at the beginning of the book. But of course, it ends as well as a book set in the middle of WWI can.

18. 3/11 Re-read Teach Me To Machine Quilt after watching a couple of her videos. She still says "practice, practice, practice" :)

19. 3/12 Finished Edinburgh Twilight. Reasonably good characterization and a somewhat thin plot - lots of murders and a subplot involving different sets of brothers.

20. 3/12 Long waiting list, so I sat right down to read The Gate Keeper. Another surprise ending, and one of the better ones so far - starts with the seemingly random murders of a book shop owner and a farmer, throws in a mother from hell and stays confusing until the last chapter. Very good.

21. 3/17 Finished reading Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. At last I know what a meme is. Interesting explanation of why evolution, too.

22. 3/22 Finished Calculating the Cosmos. Requested this from the library because I thought it strange that the geologist Ian Stewart wrote a book about mathematics. Turns out it's a different Ian Stewart and one of the most entertaining math books I've ever read. And understandable to a non-mathematician! He described how math, physics and astronomy combine to prove, suggest , disprove or call into question the various theories we've proposed to explain the universe. I may buy this one. :)

23. 3/24 Finally finished American Colossus. I found parts of it very difficult to read - hard to believe we - "we" being whites - treated everything so badly. And allowed so much misery. Although looking at the world today, not sure why I'm surprised. I suppose other western nations - and probably the East, too - were just as bad.

24. 3/25 Read The Summer Before the War - pretty much stock characters, now that I think about it, but beautifully written.

25. 3/29 Finished The Gnostics, a book I've had for a long time. Don't really think I know any more about what it is, but a fair amount about the history.

26. 3/30 Finished Richard Fortey's Fossils The History of Life. I don't think he can write a book that isn't interesting. This one's more about what they are, why they are important and what we can learn from them.

27. 4/1 Read the latest Charles Finch, The Woman in the Water, Charles Lenox's first case. Interesting mystery, and a peek at where some of the later situations in his personal life came from.

28. 4/4 Reread Brian Greene's Hidden Reality, not realizing I'd read it years ago. Apparently, nothing stuck the first time because it didn't seem familiar at all. Discussions of the many ways parallel universes might exist. I like Tyson's remark - 'nothing in the universe comes in ones" but I have enough trouble with this universe to wonder about any others. :)

29 4/5 So retreated into A Fitting End. Not sure why I enjoy these - as a mystery, they aren't all that good, I'm not overly fond of Texans and the history seems a bit muddled. But enjoy them I do.

30. 4/6 With this extended winter, I'm just not in the mood for anything edifying. So read Deadly Patterns to see how the romances are faring. It's Christmas, there's a golden eagle involved, and of course, she solves it at the last minute - and finds the coin!

31. 4/6 Still hasn't warmed up, so read A Custom-Fit Crime. Maybe because the heroin also sews? Anyway, the world of high fashion - in Texas at least - is filled with mayhem and murder. But Harlow's roommate from New York finds romance, her mother finally gets remarried, and of course, she and Will solve the crime.

32. 4/7 Why stop now? Read A Killing Notion. Bigamy in a small Texas town? And a teen with a double identity? Chaos at the Prom, and the case is solved.

33. 4/8 So finished up the series with A Seamless Murder. I think this will be the last, since they're finally getting married. Anyway, Harlow stumbles across the body of her next door neighbor, and, of course, solves the murder. Lots of loose ends in this one though.

34. 4/12 Finally read Gods, Graves and Scholars, a book that's been in my TBR pile for maybe 50 years. Interesting look at the very earliest days of archaeology, and also interesting to see how much more we know now, some 60+ years after it was written. A little surprised to see it was translated from German.

35. 4/14 Finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. One of the best depictions of inter-specie relations I've ever read. And a good story, besides.

36. 4/21 Read Sew Any Fabric Well, the fabrics I'm likely to use, anyway. But I did read all the appendices about needles, threads, interfacings, etc. It will be handy, so I ordered a copy of my own!

37. Finished Simon Winchester's Atlantic Interesting stories about how the ocean has influenced the West. Depressing last part though, about how we've abused it. Can't say I enjoyed it as much as some of his other books.

38. Finished reading The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind. An explanation of how we got to what we think we know about black holes. Started by Hawking's declaration that information is lost in a black hole, which apparently violates one of the fundamental laws of physics, and the efforts of Susskind and others to prove him wrong. Which they did. A tad condescending to Hawking towards the end, I thought, but interesting. Not at all sure I believe him when he says everything is a hologram though.

39. 4/28 Read Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time Title's just about as long as the book As someone firmly rooted in the land, I only vaguely realized the difficulties of knowing where you are at sea, or the importance of knowing the correct time out there. Now I know. The more history I read, especially in the sciences, the more I think when we succeed in something, it's in spite of ourselves, not because of how bright we are.

40. 4/29 Read To Die But Once, the next Masie Dobbs. Not the best mystery, perhaps, but one of the better stories. A neighbor's son disappears at the beginning of WW II, and Masie & Billy set out to find out what happened to him. Really highlights how hard that war was for parents still suffering from the effects of the first World War. Good story.

41. 4/30 Read If Walls Could Talk. The parts about the construction and renovations were interesting, and the mystery wasn't bad.

42. 5/1 Finished Factfulness. Lots to think about from this. Peg finds this extremely hopeful, but then she's always been an optimist. I'm not.

43. 5/3 Just not in the mood for anything heavy - maybe because we seem to have skipped Spring and gone directly to Summer. So read Dead Bolt. This time, the ghosts weren't benign but dangerous. But Mel seems to have become a ghost-buster, so the house is now safe, the murder solved and she doesn't seem to be wallowing in quite so much self-pity. I guess I like cozies, because I just checked the next two out. :)

44. 5/4 Had to skip to #4, but Home for the Haunting was the best plot so far. While trying to help an organization that rehabs homes in need, a body is discovered - and a fraud. The descriptions of working with volunteers is hilarious, we meet her sister and get a different perspective and a 25-year old murder is solved.

45. 5/5 So went on to read Keeper of the Castle Trying to build an imported Scottish monastery for a retreat in California, Mel finds out it isn't the one that it's supposed to be, that ghosts can follow a building even moved across the sea, Graham is attacked and she finally figures out she loves him. And of course, solves the murder.

46. 5/5 Some people binge watch TV, I binge read. :) Read Give Up the Ghost, a rather convoluted story about a really dysfunctional family, a renovation that was really gutting a lovely old home and reunites a couple of ghosts. And meets a new man, finds out her friend's secret and cons a landlady that's been ripping off students for years, while sending yet another unhappy ghost free. Quite a lady!

47. 5/7 So went on to read A Ghostly Light. At least this one had a more-or-less happy ending - the little boy didn't die, but lived to have grandchildren, the murdered confessed, which neatly got rid of a very nasty mad and freed a nice woman from an abuser, there's a little matchmaking and she's moving into her grandparents home - with Landon!

48 5/13 Finally finished A Higher Loyalty. I think I understand a little better now why he did some of the things he did, but I'm even more convinced he wasn't really fit to lead the FBI. Even so, no one deserves to be treated the way Trump treated him.

49. 5/13 Also finished Secondhand Spirits. Since I liked the other series she wrote, read the first book in this series. A witch in San Francisco rids the town of a child-stealing demon. Not nearly as interesting as the home renovator so doubt I'll go on.

50. 5/15 Read Chasing Heisenberg, and interesting account of the US development of the Atom Bomb. Nicely ties a lot of things together.

51. 5/16 Finished Murder on the House. Finally found out how she got the haunted B&B job. Nasty murder, but nice ghosts.

52. 5/16 Read Before the Big Bang. An explanation of Inflation that I can almost understand! Worth re-reading.

53. 5/19 So I re-read Before the Big Bang, then went on to read Stuff Matters. Interesting, and made me think about things I take for granted. Although, a lot of what he covered I've seen in programs on Curiosity Stream and Netflix.

54. 5/25 Finished The Dry: a novel. Hard to believe this is her first book, it's so well-written. Set in Australia, a Federal investigator returns reluctantly to his home town - where he was believed guilty of a murder 20 years ago. The story unravels through flash-backs and the real killer - in both cases - is revealed at the very exciting ending. I may buy this one, just to support the author!

55. 5/26 Library finally got Cave of Bones to me. More Bernie than Chee or Leaphorn in this one, which starts with Bernie's trip to a troubled girls camp to give a talk and morphs into a search for a missing guide, a crooked cop and stealing ancient relics. Good, though, as always, and a lot about her family.

56. 5/28 Read Revealing the Dead Now she finds she can reach some autistic children! And in the process, figures out a sad story from the past in Ned's house an brings together a family that didn't know they were connected. I don't really like this series as well as her others, but I do like the characters so I keep reading them. :)

57. 5/30 Read Twenty-one Days the new Anne Perry series. Daniel's now an attorney, and through a series of coincidences he works on a case important to his employer, for some reason for an extremely unpleasant client. Lots of nifty twists in the plot, and he's as much detective as he is lawyer. Charlotte & Thomas make brief appearances, Jemimia's the mother of two in New York, and the story ends reasonably happily.

58. 5/31 Read enough of Guidebook to Murder and The Arnifour Affair to know neither one was well-written or interesting. Waste of time, but I'll count them since I read about half of each.

59. 5/31 So instead read Cast-Off Coven since I'm simply not in the mood for anything heavy. Not sure why I like this series - witchcraft is not among my interests - but I do like the writing.

60. 6/2 Read A Brush With Shadows, the best Lady Darby so far. This one has the story of Sebastian's highly dysfunctional family, but all turns out reasonably well at the end. I like this series.

61. 6/4 Finished Gilead. Not sure why I read it - probably because it was highly recommended and won a Pulitzer. An old minister writing a letter to leave for his young son, and wrestles with his humanity in relation to his beliefs. Maybe once I reflect on it, it will make more sense to me. Nicely written, though - I could see the town and the people.

62. 6/5 Finished The Tuscan Child Can't say I enjoyed this one much - I didn't really care for the back and forth, though I don't know how else it could have been told.

63. 6/9 Finished The Square and the Tower. The first part was interesting, if a bit difficult to read, but once he got to the effect the Internet has on society, it became fascinating.

64. 6/11 Finished Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! He certainly did a lot of different things besides physics.

65. 6/12 Read A Late Frost. I like the way the series is going - not murders, but horrible accidents that are just as hard to figure out.

66. 6/15 Looks like I didn't cancel the reserve on Many a Twist because after a few pages realized I'd already read it. But read it again, this time paying attention to the plot and the characterization. Now I know why I like her books! :)

67. 6/16 Read Hexes and Hemlines. Not sure why, but I rather like her writing style.

68. 6/18 Liked his other book, so read The Ascent of Money, a rather interesting history of money, credit and general financial dealings throughout history.

69. 6/22 Finally finished reading Children of Earth and Sky, which I'd started back in 2016. How odd I never finished it. Anyway, I think it's a continuation of the story arc started with The Lions of Al-Rassan, so I may have to re-read the whole series. Not hard to do with his writing.

70. 6/29 Read Women & Power: a Manifesto interesting take on where the resistance to woman gaining power comes from.

71. 7/1 Read Sewing Knits From Fit to Finish to see if I want to buy it. Probably will, there's a good section on the fabrics, and some tips & ideas I wasn't aware of.

72. 7/4 Finished 1,000 Clever Sewing Shortcuts and Tips from a service I just found - Ebooks Minnesota. I'll probably buy this one too, since I never seem to read a sewing book I don't want, but it was full of good ideas, and had a couple of projects I'd like to try.

73. 7/6 Finished To End a Presidency. Extremely interesting review of the powers, processes and dangers of impeaching a President. Given the authors slant - not evident in the book - I was a little surprised at their restraint. Should be required reading for anyone of - or soon to be of - voting age. Excellent.

74. 7/6 Read In A Witch's Wardrobe because I simply can't bear thinking about politics - or my tree - any longer. Not sure why I like these books, but I do. I feel like I've known the characters.

75. 7/8 Re-read The Lions of Al-Rassan, which I'd read many years ago. The beautiful writing and story though, couldn't distract from the thought that the human species seems to delight in destruction and stupidity.

76. 7/9 Read Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Interesting, and I think fairly up-ro-date, but really an abridgment of some of his other books.

77. 7/16 Read The Potting-Shed Papers, an utterly delightful collection of essays - apparently English columns. Anyway, a transplanted American writes about gardens, garden history and trying to garden American-style in Wales.

78. 7/17 Read most of Fantastic Crimes The first story was interesting, and it went downhill from there. Odd, considering the authors.

79. 7/19 Re-read Death By Black Hole. Just as interesting as the first time through.

80. 7/20 Library had The Gap in the Hedge - just as delightful as the Potting Shed Papers.

81. 7/22 Library's slow in getting me any more fluff, so re-read When Life Nearly Died, the story of how we came to recognize mass extinctions and what probably caused the "Great Dying" 255 million years ago.

82. 7/23 So followed up by re-reading The Worst of Times How Life on Earth Survived Eighty Million Years of Extinctions which covers the rest of the Panagean extinctions and a few more besides, His take seems to be that Supercontinents are bad things for life, and the huge volcanic flood basalts were the prime culprits. Not an easy read, but interesting.

83. 7/24 So to follow up, read Erwin's Extinction How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago. Rather exhaustive covering of all possible causes and no real conclusion. Written in 2006, with a 2015 preface, I suppose that's not surprising. Raises some questions about Wignall's conclusions.

84. 7/26 Found Crocodile on the Sandbank at the hairdressers - an Amelia Peabody I hadn't read! Looking at the list of her books here, I see I started somewhere in the middle. Anyway - this is how Walter met Evelyn and Amelia met Emerson, and a pretty good story to boot.

85. 7/27 Still in the mood for fluff, read Tarnished and Torn. Apparently, we still live in a world lit only by fire, and populated with demons galore. At least in San Francisco. Not as much about the promised meeting with her father as I expected, but at least Sailor's back. Fun story, if a tad gruesome.

86. 7/27 On to A Vision in Velvet - this one took her back to the witch-hunting days on the East Coast, a frantic search for Oscar, and of course, she triumphs in the end - with the help of Mother Nature. And she finds out who her guiding spirit is.

87. 7/27 Since I wanted to stay in San Francisco, went on to Spellcasting in Silk. This one's sort of sad - starts with a suicide that's really a murder, a young girl who could become a powerful witch but needs training and a wanna-be witch who misunderstands the whole thing in a very human way.

88. 7/28 Long waiting list, so I took a break from witchcraft to read Island of the Mad, the latest Mary Russell. Fun story set in Venice at the beginning of the fascist rise, involving a really nasty English peer, his sister and his comeuppance - engineered by Holmes & Russell, of course. Interesting how King's writing makes everything come alive.

89. 7/29 Back to the witches - this time it's a power play in the magical community as the backdrop for some very human crime in A Toxic Trousseau. Bad times coming are offset by the upcoming marriage of Sailor & Lily! Not sure why I'm reading these - I like the characters and it keeps me from thinking about the tree.

90. 7/31 Read Murder at the Mansion, Sheila Connolly's new series. I finally figured out why I like her books - her female protagonists are all strong women, but show lots of very human doubts and fears - very realistic! So back to New England, and small-town girl gets asked home to dream up a way to save the town. And not only does, but solves the murder too. As a plus, Nell Pratt and James appear from her other series - a twist I totally enjoy.

91. 8/3 Read Yes, We Still Can, first political book that gives me some hope we'll weather this awful time.

92. 8/5 Read A Magical Match Fun story. The cupcake lady isn't the real villain - it's her dogsbody! And Lily gets Sailor out of jail, the mystery is solved, and she makes up with her mother, finds out from her grandmother she may have a sibling... Gotta love these series.

93 8/7 Re-read Why Does E = mc2 Understood it a little better than the first time through, but still...

94. 8/8 Read Spying on Whales. Interesting - a bit more about whales that I really wanted to know, but nicely written. It's a younger species that I would have thought, and the giants are recent. He's not overly optimistic about their future, given the way we're destroying their habitat.

95. 8/9 Looks like I read A Brush with Shadows back in February but didn't record it. So I read it again, mostly because I like the characters and don't recall the ending. Nope, see I did record it in June. I still read it again.

96. 8/9 Also read This Side of Murder, Huber's new series. Started with an interesting premise and nicely plotted, though reminded me of both Agatha Christie and Francis Dougherty. Surprising ending and it's sort of hard to see how this becomes a series.

97. 8/12 Finished The Ends of the World about all the prior mass extinctions and the probable future. Even more depressing than I already thought.

98. 8/16 Read Strange Practice - a really fun and interesting take on ghosties and gouhlies and things that go bump in the night! :)

99. 8/25 Read Pandora's Boy, another excellent one from Lindsey Davis. Tiberius disappears after a visit from his ex-wife, and Flavia accepts a case looking into the death of a young girl and a feuding family - finds Tiberius, who seems to be recovering from the lightening strike, uncovers lots of unseemly behavior among the elites and gets mixed up with organized crime. Good story, as always.

100. 8/27 Finished The Perfectionists. Simon Winchester can make any subject interesting, I think. This one was about how engineers discovered, then used, the ability to measure components in finer and finer detail, how the idea of interchangeable parts changed so many things, where we are and a very brief look at what that does to society.

101. 8/28 Finished Unquiet Bones a fairly good first book for the author. Story was interesting enough to keep reading, but the place descriptions were really quite good. Apparently not all nobles in the 13th century were wicked and uncaring, and Hugh stumbles to the real solution. Liked it well enough to buy the second book, since the library doesn't have it.

102. 9/1 Read Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding. Georgiana's former step-father invites her to move to his estate, since she'll inherit it later, which solves a lot of problems for her. However - of course - turns out a gang of robbers have moved in. She figures out what's going on with the help of her mother and grandfather and it ends with what must have been a spectacular wedding! In the meantime, her mother's German fiance calls off the wedding after his father's death, her grandfather's fiancee dies unexpectedly, and her step-father's mother and the butler have both been murdered. Fun story.

103. 9/2 Finished Force of Nature This one was as much about relationships as a mystery. Set in the bush, what's supposed to be a team-building exercise turns into a nightmare. Didn't enjoy this one quite as much, since I've worked with people like that. But well-written.

104. 9/5 Finished A Corpse at St. Andrew's Chapel. Nicely inept 'tec, and quite good descriptions of the life and times in medieval England.

105. 9/8 Finished The Heiress of Linn Hagh. Moderately good mystery, and I like the characters.

106. 9/10 Finished The Cavanaugh House. Interesting plot, but pretty stereotyped characters. Maybe they were all just too young for me. :)

107. 9/12 Finished The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. I may buy this one, just to encourage the author. Excellent book! Traces their evolution through time, explains how birds evolved - although not how they survived the asteroid, and just a whole lot I've never seen put together before.

108. 9/15 Finished A Trail of Ink. Goodness, those were violent times. A rather confused ending, with a monk orchestrating the theft and the murders - and he gets sent on a pilgrimage? But the banns are read, the books are found so the wedding will probably take place in the next book. And I did buy #107.

109. 9/15 Read Ghostly Paws. I'm perfectly willing to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but this one stretched the limit.

110. 9/18 Read Death in the Stacks, a Library Lovers I missed when it first came out. I'm really glad the murder came early, the victim was so unpleasant!

111. 9/20 Finished Fear It's worse even than I thought.

112. 9/20 Finished Leadership: In Turbulent Times as an antidote to Woodward's book. Good reminder that at least at times we've had people in power that knew what democracy's supposed to be about.

113. 9/22 Read Unhallowed Ground. I like these stories - I get a clear idea of what life might have been like, there's less violence than I'd expect of the times, and for this one at least, justice is tempered with mercy.

114. 9/26 Finished The Magpie Murders. First one of Horowitz' books I've read - he does write well. Interesting idea - a mystery within a mystery. The ending surprised me - both times. :)

115. 9/30 Finally finished The President is Missing. Not the type of book I generally read, and I kept imagining the current one in the same situation, to the country's detriment. Easy to tell what parts Clinton wrote. :)

116. 10/4 Finished The Order of Time. Well written, though I'm not entirely sure what he's trying to say. Time isn't absolute - OK. Time is personal - yeah, OK. Time only exists because humans think it does? Hmmm....

117. 10/7 For some reason, I'd requested Hell Bay from the library, which I'd read last year. Re-read it, since I like this series. Intricate plot and a somewhat surprising ending.

118. 10/8 Finished Doherty's Nightshade, an interesting tale of revenge stemming from the fall of Acre. I'd forgotten how much I like his books. Wonder what a "war belt" is - couldn't find much on Google.

119. 10/10 So read The Mysterium. Goodness, what a convoluted story. But Corbett finally figures out that the current murders stem from 20 years in the past and even deduces the correct villain. Wonder if he really quit? I'll have to get the next one to find out. :)

120. 10/18 Library had Elizabeth Peters' second Amelia Peabody book, The Curse of the Pharaohs so I didn't have to go searching for it! Ramses is already walking and they're bored stiff trying to be respectable Victorian parents, so when opportunity knocks, they head back to Egypt. Of course, they find a string of murders, one memorably unpleasant woman and solve the mystery. Fun read.

121. 10/18 Read The Sans Pareil Mystery a cleverly plotted one. The victim isn't who she seems to be, and in trying to figure it out, Lavender and Ned uncover an espionage operation. And Lavender "gets the girl" in the end.

122. 10/19 So went on to The Sculthorpe Murder I do hope she keeps this series going. Interesting plot and quite a tangle - Ned meets a brother he thought was dead, Lavender solves a whole bunch of mysteries - bigamy, child swapping, a defrocked priest - goodness for the anti-Catholic sentiment!

123. 10/20 Back to the Middle Ages in Rest Not in Peace. A visiting knight, then one of his retainers are murdered. I'll accept that the valet did in the first one, but the second victim? And I think the wife was involved...

124. 10/21 Still in the Middle Ages with The Abbot's Agreement. Doesn't sound like a much better time than now. For a Bible, Hugh investigates the murder of a novice, works with a lovely Abbot who unfortunately's been fatally injured by his Prior. He & Arthur uncover heresy and finally nab the murderer.

125. 10/25 Read Dreadful Company. On a trip to Paris to present a paper at a conference! Greta's kidnapped by a group of rogue vampires with a grudge against Ruthven. Heaven & Hell are run by bureaucracies! Delightful series.

126. 10/26 Finally slogged my way through The Truth About Social Security. Quite a bit about the original intentions, which included health care! Explained the funding, which is sound. The thing I still don't know is why the GOP wants to kill it.

127. 10/28 Read A Cold Day for a Murder. I'm afraid Alaska sounds like South Dakota with mountains, and didn't care a lot for the characters.

128. 10/30 Read The Ghost Writer. I liked the way he writes, though the characters left me rather cold. Odd stories within stories - that seems to be popular - and the ending left me quite confused as to what actually happened...

129. 11/2 Finished Dark Tide Rising. Odd story - Monk gets drawn in by a really clever murderer and spends most of the book trying to prove the wrong man did it. Completely missing the obvious solution. Only gets solved on the last page!

130. 11/5 So then read Dark Serpent. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this one seemed more violent than others in the same series. But they solve it in the end, and Corbett foils another French plot. Of course.

131. 11/6 Read A Picture of Murder. Very odd story of early movies - murders that aren't murders after all but a fairly clever publicity stunt. Emily & Florence's early history is revealed, though, and the sequel hinted at. Glad I had an interesting story to read on Election Night - I do enjoy this series.

132. 11/8 Finished The Third Hotel and have no idea what it was about. Nice descriptions of Havana though.

133. 11/8 Plowed my way through most of Hope Never Dies. Badly plotted, badly written and not at all anything resembling a good story.

134. 11/9 Read the next Verity Kemp, Treacherous is the Night. Very good story about a deranged man seeking revenge after WWI although the whole mystery is about finding out that's what's going on, and much about the difficulties of repairing a marriage after both parties survive the war. Very good book.

135. 11/10 Read A Forgotten Place. This one's almost all Bess, travelling to Wales to check on some former patients, she gets trapped in a small village with a secret they're willing to go to any lengths to conceal and not one but two murderers on the loose! Simon appears to save the day, Bess, of course does some very dumb things but it all turns out as well as can be in the end. Not one of the better ones, though it does really point out the plight of wounded men returning from war.

136. 11/12 Read The Mary Russell Companion Sort of a biography of Mary Russell, and quite interesting.

137. 11/13 Read The Mummy Case. Emerson is really something of a bore and a bully in this one, and Ramses is impossible, but it's a fun story anyway.

138. 11/15 Read Lion in the Valley. All of the above is still true, and I would have enjoyed it a bit more, I think, if I hadn't remembered who Sethos is. Shouldn't read this series too close together, I guess.

139. 11/17 Finished The Riddle of the Labyrinth Knew a little about the work of understanding how to read Linear B, but this book covers how it was finally done it detail. Well written, and especially nice that Alice Kober finally gets credit for all her work. Michael Ventris wasn't quite as cocky as I thought he was, and Arthur Evans and other Brits were really stinkers at heart - very bad at sharing. :)

140. 11/21 Finished Accessory to War a quite sobering look at military usage of astrophysics and space. America seems pretty badly out of step with Europe, at least, and there's very little optimism on the part of the authors. Or maybe I'm just reading my own views into it

141. 11/21 Also finished Hitting the Books, the latest Library Lovers. Interesting - the obvious villain wasn't and a tangled family web finally gets unraveled at the end. And Lindsey & Sully are engaged - finally. :)

142. 11/23 Goodness - halfway through next year! Anyway, read Blood is Blood the latest Barker & Llewellyn. Starts off with a literal bang, as the office is dynamited. Barker's fairly badly hurt, so it's all up to Thomas - complicated by Barker's brother who appears unexpectedly. Seems like it was more violent than earlier books, and someone's not only after Barker, but Thomas and both their womenfolk too. But the bad guy loses in the end and Rebecca and Thomas end up married at last.

143. 11/25 Finished How to Think. Interesting ideas, some of which I'll try, and some of which I've done most of my life.

144. 12/09 Finished The Tangled Tree, although while reading it I also read my four new Instant Pot cookbooks. Anyway - really interesting explanation of the role molecular biology plays in deciphering evolution. So we're really descended from bacteria? Hmm - makes a certain amount of sense.

145. 12/13 Finished Lost Books and Old Bones. Not sure why I'm reading this series. Outside of occasional glimpses of Edinburgh, it's not much different from any other cozy. This one involves the medical school, and harks back to the Burke and Hart scandal.

146. 12/17 Finished A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. Interesting, especially after having just finished The Tangled Tree. Seems to boil down to everyone is everyone's ancestor. At least genetically.

147. 12/23 Finished The Library a Catalogue of Wonders. Not the book I thought it was, but a fairly interesting tour of libraries old and somewhat new, their histories and their importance.

Welcome to the group! January is a great time to read fluff.