What are you reading the week of December 24, 2022?

I'm about three quarters of the way through Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War, by Mychailo Wynnyckyj. Wynnyckyj is a sociologist who was living in Kyiv during the 2013-2014 Maidan protests. The first half of the book is a recounting of the events in Ukraine during this time. The second half is an analysis of the societal changes that grew from the protests and Russia's subsequent invasion. A very good book.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Final Report of the January 6 Committee.

>2 lilithcat:

ditto!

Back to Space Odyssey, and will wind up the month with Until the Last of Me and Chaucer: A European Life.

I'm still reading The Change by Kirsten Miller, but I put a good dent in it this week.

Happy Hanukkah! Happy Jolabokaflod! Merry Christmas!

Currently reading:
SF/F
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2022
The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie
Sword-Bearer by Jennifer Roberson
Other
Trigonometry for Dummies by Mary Jane Sterling

Happy Christmas Eve/Christmas to those of you who celebrate. I think it's the 7th/8th night of Hannukah, so Chag Sameach to those of you who celebrate that. I may have spelled my greeting incorrectly.

I've had Covid this week for the third time. On this occasion I managed to pass it to my brother and my nephew, so Christmas has had to be re-arranged. I spent my Covid episode on the living room sofa, sleeping and re-watching the entire series of Schitt's Creek. I've listened to one audiobook - The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke. I will admit that Burke writes beautifully, and his story was strong, but there was far too much violence for me, too many drugs, too much of a rough edge. I won't be reading more of the Dave Robichaud series.

>7 ahef1963: Thanks for the thought!

The Christmas Cookie Collection – Lori Wilde
Digital audiobook read by C J Critt.
2**

From the book jacket: There’s a legend in Twilight, Texas. It says that if on Christmas you sleep with kismet cookies under your pillow and dream of your one true love, he will be your destiny. Carrie, Raylene, Christine, and Flynn are all members of the Christmas Cookie Club. Each has a story to tell, and each discovers the miracles of the season the power of love.

My reactions
I knew going into it that this collection of novellas (originally published separately) would be a schmaltzy romance. I’ve read another work by Wilde previously and liked it; I found this one charming for its genre, though unremarkable. Despite the book jacket blurb, I found the chief refrain to be the legend of the town fountain – throw a penny into the fountain and you’ll be reunited with your high school sweetheart. Whatever.

It was a fast read, but I’ve basically forgotten the characters and their stories already.

C J Critt does a good job of reading the audiobook. She set a good pace, and had clear diction.

I just finished Snow Country by I.J. Parker, the third entry in Parker's Sugawara Akitada Mysteries series. Akitada is a low-level nobleman in 11th-century Japan who's become known, in the series' first two books, for his ability to solve murders and annoy his superiors. Now he's been sent to be the governor of a far northern province where the emperor's authority is but barely acknowledged and a powerful warlord holds sway instead. Akitada's job is to get this situation in hand. He is accompanied by his wife and by his two loyal lieutenants, Tora and Hitomara. Soon, as will happen in murder mysteries, there is a murder. Then the bodies begin accumulating. Plus there is the problem for Akitada of asserting his imperial authority. These books have been fun all along, and I will say that in this third book the quality of the writing has gone up a notch, both in terms of the sentence-level work (many fewer cliches, for one thing) and the the plotting.

I've now begun The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, C.L.R. James' classic history of the Haitian Revolution.

This was a rough month so it has taken me over a week to finish a quick Agatha Christie, Dead Man's Folly. Clever though not my favorite. I'm not sure what I'm in the mood for next.

Happy holidays to all!

Soulless by Gail Carriger

Happy and Merry Solstice and Bright Nights of Hanukkah and Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day!

Staying in the bright spirit of the season by catching up on LT. After today, though, it's back to Mercy Blade by Faith Hunter and Empire of Pain since they're a bit, um, dark.

>13 threadnsong: Thanks for the bright thoughts but I fear 2023 will be darker than 2022...

Merry Christmas everyone!

Finished: Godmersham Park by Gill Hornby
Novel about Anne Sharp who was governess to Fanny Austen for 2 years.

Current read: Holding the Line by Jennifer Delamere
Finale and #3 in the "Love Along the Wires" trilogy

I’m currently reading Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.

Reading Titurel by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a gift I received for Christmas. I’ve been wanting to re-read this Middle High German text for years.

Not finding Chaucer: A European Life that compelling at the moment, so I'm going to conclude the year with Slugfest.

Finished Sword-Bearer by Jennifer Roberson. Enjoyed it. Added Hide by Tracy Clark to my rotation.

Started: A Thousand Heartbeats by Kiera Cass (YA)

I started Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit. Interesting topic and wonderful writing.

Currently trying to plow through an 800+ pager, The Journeyer by Gary Jennings. It's the historical fiction account of Marco Polo from birth. He's now a teen and him and his father and grandfather are returning to the east and are currently in the Levant. Great book, but the font is so dang small that I can only read about 20 minutes at a time. It's not on Kindle or Audio.

Bumping this to make it more noticeable.

Finished Michael Connelly’s The Fifth Witness and am continuing my seasonal reads with a British Library Crime Classic, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. They’re fun!

Couldn't finish The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2022 edited by Sheree Renée Thomas. Not what I was in the mood for.

My last book for 2022 was The Grandissimes which was a fun and well rendered tale of New Orleans in 1803-4, Creoles, Blacks, Quadroons, and Whites amongst the fascinating cast of characters. Sometimes the number of characters and the speech in dialect left me confused but it all fell together by the end.

The year's reading had fewer books than normal. I've got excuses: several large hard going books, a move, some travel etc. Despite the meager number of 45 books, it was a good reading year. Sometime in the next few days, I'll get around to picking my favorites for the year.

I finished the amazing history, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James, written in 1938 and republished in 1971. An extremely well-written and multi-layered history of a tragic, bloody, fascinating series events populated by some truly larger than life figures, especially Toussaint L'Ouverture himself. I've posted a much longer review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be a short book called Watch Czechoslovakia!, written in 1937 about the dangers that Nazi Germany and the Czech/German conflicts within Czechoslovakia cleared posed to the Czech nation. The book was written by Richard Freund, whom I've seen described as an Anglicized Austrian journalist (there's very little info on him online, at least that I've been able to find so far. From descriptions of the book itself that I've found, Freund seemed to be able to imagine all sorts of possible outcomes other than the one that actually came about: the Munich Agreement.

The new thread is up over here. It's topic number 347000, which is a nice round number to finish the year on.

End of Watch – Stephen King
Book on CD performed by Dick Hill
4****

Book three in the Bill Hodges Trilogy has the retired detective (now a private investigator) and his partner, Holly Gibney, intrigued by the recent murder / suicide involving a survivor the original Mercedes Killer rampage. Then another person connected to the original case attempts suicide. This has all the hallmarks of Brady Hartfield and his fascination with suicide, but he’s in a traumatic brain injury ward and mostly catatonic. He couldn’t possibly be involved … or could he?

A fast-paced, intricate plot, complex characters, a little humor here and there to lighten the mood, a cautionary word about the hypnotic effects of extended screen time, and a fascinating exploration into brain activity and the possibilities all put together by a master of the genre. I really like Bill Hodges, but I love Holly, and she really shines in this episode.

Dick Hill does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. I was listening on a long driving trip and the miles flew past as I was gripped in the narrative. I particularly like how he interprets Holly.

>27 rocketjk: Interesting choices! How did you come up with these books?

I read a few short books this week to finish a challenge before the end of the year:
Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory
Serenity 2: Better Days by Brett Matthews & Joss Whedon
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman

>30 Shrike58: "Interesting choices! How did you come up with these books?"

Thanks for asking!

The Black Jacobins I read because it is on a list that a friend of mine passed around back during the early days of Black Lives Matter of important/helpful books about African American history and the history/current state of racism in America in general. I've been reading through this list gradually, every third or fourth book I read, and have even been adding to it with books of my own choosing.

Watch Czechoslovakia! I read because, well, because it's been sitting on my shelves for a long, long time, and I every so often just like to pull down one of those books that's been in my house forever and actually read it! Plus, I have an interest in European and World War 2 history. Plus I love to read histories and other sorts of analysis written in other eras than our own.