December, 2023 Reads & Year in Review

 

 

 

Goal: 100 books and 1500 hours
YTD: 263 Books Read & 2196 Hours Spent  (a new personal best for books read)
December: 25 Books Read & 186 Hours Spent

 

Thank you all for the many fine reads I found this year on your bookshelves and by your recommendations! I blame all of the duds on myself. All in all, it was another fine reading year. I can't believe how many 4 and 5 star books I found this past year -- and, in comparison, how few disappointments. Library membership and SRR continue to enrich my days.

In May, after a few months of playing around with various formats and ideas for how I want to review books going forward, I started writing a weekly round-up along with comments about life in general, theater/concert reviews and whatever else seemed to fit. Here we are eight months later and I'm still writing it. If nothing else, I hope at least a few people have stumbled into something new and different to read -- or not read, as the case may be.

As for the coming year, I have no plans per se. I will continue the monthly appointments with the Agatha Christie Centenary Read. In fact, I kicked off the year with this month's Agatha. I have a huge TBR in my Audible library that needs to be cleared and that will be a topic for its own post, wherein I share "the plan."

 

THE -EST OF THE -EST FOR 2023

BEST FICTION OF THE YEAR:

Everything I marked 4 stars or more. With so many good books to choose from, I can't choose one single book to choose as best of the bunch. I can't even narrow it down to 5.

Double Indemnity (5*), The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown and Other Stories (4.5*), The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray (4.5*), The Devotion of Suspect X (4.5*), Longshot (4.5*), The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (4.5*), Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (4.5*), A Few Right Thinking Men (4.25*), The Loved One (4*), The Long Fall (4*) Proof of Guilt (4*) The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (4*), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (4*), Reader I Buried Them & Other Stories (4*), The Western Star (4*), Interpreter of Maladies (4*), The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (4*), How to Kill Your Family (4*), Sea of Tranquillity (4*), The Housekeeper and the Professor (4*), The Black Ascot (4*), Salvation of a Saint (4*), Unaccustomed Earth (4*), The Road to Roswell (4*), The House Sitter (4*), Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (4*), It's A Wonderful Woof (4*), The Right Mistake (4*), When We We Orphans (4*),

BEST NON-FICTION OF THE YEAR: The Master of the Senate (5*), The Revolutionary (4.75*), Chasing History (4*), Empress of the Nile (4*), The Quartet (4*) --  and oddly enough, they are all history+bio

WORST OF THE YEAR: (didn't even qualify as "necessary roughage"): Finlay Donovan is Killing It (and its sequel, which is even worse), Agatha Christie (too sensationalized), The Floating Feldmans (trite garbage), The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (poorly written, poorly edited), Thieves'Gambit (no moral compass) and Three Kisses, One Midnight (no pizzazz)

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF THE YEAR: (as in not as good as it should have been): Miss Pym Disposes, The Museum of Ordinary People, The Mathematician's Shiva, Bibliomysteries Volume 3 & Volume 4, Agatha Christie (by Lucy Worsley), The Detective Wore Silk, The Best American Short Stories 2019, The World of Curiosities

BIGGEST SURPRISES OF THE YEAR: (as in, wow, this is so much better than I expected it would be): Crazy Rich Asians, Now Is Not the Time to Panic, The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, After She Wrote Him, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store, The Agathas, Sea of Tranquillity, My Murder, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

BEST NEW-TO-ME AUTHORS: Jhumpa Lahiri, Simon Brett, Sangu Mandanna

MOST MORALLY CHALLENGED: Finlay Donovan, Thieves Gambit (what is this thing I have about morality???)

BEST FINAL SCENE: Mr. Jelly's Business

BEST MIDLIFE CRISIS: When the Thrill Is Gone (and the rest of the Leonid McGill series)

BEST OLD FART FICTION: The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray, Socrates Fortlow series, Leonid McGill series, An Elderly Lady series

SCHMALTZIEST OF THE YEAR: Remarkably Bright Creatures

DIDN'T DO IT FOR ME: The Last Unicorn, Trains and Lovers,

TIME TO CALL IT QUITS: Alexander McCall Smith, Inspector Gamache (jumped the shark), Inspector Ian Rutledge (before it jumps the shark)

BEST SHORT STORIES: The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown and Other Stories, Reader I Buried Them & Other Stories,

TOTAL DNF: 12 (that is less than 5% of total)

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR (COZY) HALLOWEEN BINGO: After She Wrote Him (Psych, Down Under), The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store (Magical Realism? Fantasy?), Sea of Tranquillity (outerspace, speculative), The Devotion of Suspect X (detective fiction, amateur sleuth, psych), How to Kill Your Family (family, psych, serial killer), Remarkably Bright Creatures (there has got to be room for a talking squid somewhere)

 

QUOTES OF THE YEAR:

 

"[High] moral ground is like that, slippery at the edges."

Trains and Lovers, Alexander McCall Smith

"The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives and the law is skinny with hunger for us."

Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson

"his hair had the color and rigidity of onyx"

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

 

 

DECEMBER, 2023 READS

 

BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
WORST BOOKS OF THE MONTH: Murder by Milk Bottle
BIGGEST SURPRISES OF THE MONTH: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone
NOTABLE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF THE MONTH: Gentlemen of the Road, The Spare Man
MOST FUN: The Busy Body

 

 

WAITING AT THE LIBRARY

Delivered in December:
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, placed August 23.
• Thieves' Gambit, placed Oct 25 (17 weeks). 

 
Still Waiting:
• Lessons in Chemistry, placed Aug 23.
• The Last Devil to Die, placed Sept 6
• My Name is Barbra, placed Nov 11. No, I am not going to read whole thing; don't think I can handle 48 hours of celebrity ego.

 

THE BOOKS
Click here for the list of books for December

 

 

84, Charing Cross Road -- Helene Hanff -- NEW214
Crooked House -- Agatha Christie -- NEW215
The Spare Man -- Mary Robinette Kowal -- NEW216
Mystery in White -- J. Jefferson Farjeon -- NEW217
The Right Mistake -- Walter Mosely -- NEW218
Murder in the Mill-Race -- ECR Lorac -- NEW219
The Riddle of the Labyrinth -- Margalit Fox -- NEW220
Murder by the Book -- Martin Edwards -- NEW221
It's a Wonderful Woof -- Spencer Quinn -- NEW222
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone -- Benjamin Stevenson -- NEW223
Eternity Rings -- Patricia Wentworth -- NEW224
The Yellow Dog -- Georges Simenon -- NEW225
Death on the Downs -- Simon Brett -- NEW226
Murder by Milk Bottle -- Lynne Truss -- NEW227
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store -- James McBride -- NEW228
The Hollow Man -- John Dickson Carr -- NEW229
Some Tame Gazelle -- Barbara Pym -- DNF
Thieves Gambit -- Kayvion Lewis -- NEW230
The Busy Body -- Donald E. Westlake -- NEW231
Gentlemen of the Road -- Michael Chabon -- NEW232
Kaiju Preservation Society -- John Scalzi -- NEW233
Cotton Comes to Harlem -- Chester Himes -- NEW234
Seven Dead -- J. Jefferson Farjeon -- NEW235
Hogfather -- Terry Pratchett -- Re-read
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen -- PG Wodehouse -- NEW236