2022 wrap-up, and looking forward to 2023

I’m not even going to pretend that I’m going to blog regularly in 2023. I am struggling enough just trying to keep up with everyday life, much less aspirational life. My list of “things I want to do” is growing exponentially, and I am overwhelmed every day just trying to keep up with what I have to do. As I tell my kids – we do what we need to do first, and then what we want to do. 

But I did manage to read in 2022. 90 books on my Kindle. A few on Scribd. A few actual physical books! and some from my non-Kindle e-book collection. Some re-reads, mostly new. Some with the boys. Here’s the rundown (of the ones that I kept track of, either via kindle or via blog drafts): 

• My Famous Frenemy, by Piper Rayne 
• How to Lose an Earl in Ten Weeks, by Jenni Fletcher 
• After Hello, by Mhairi McFarlane(1) 
• Dom’s Dragon (bedtime book) 
• The Astronaut and the Star, by Jen Comfort 
• My Body Sends a Signal, by Natalia Maguire (bedtime book)(2) 
• Pirate School (bedtime book) 
• Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown, by J.F. Andrews 
• Forgotten Royal Women: The King and I, by Erin Lawless 
• Rosie the Dragon and Charlie Make Waves, by Lauren H. Kerstein(3) 
• Sadie Sprocket Builds a Rocket, by Sue Fliess 
• The Egg Tree, by Katherine Milhous 
• The Untold Story, by Genevieve Cogman (4) 
• Ten Things I Love About You, by Julia Quinn 
• Death of a Sorcerer, by Jeannie Lin 
• A Greene Family Vacation, by Piper Rayne 
• The Magic Porridge Pot, by Vera Southgate (bedtime book) 
• I Am Able to Shine, by Korey Watari (bedtime book) 
• Red Roses: Blanche of Gaunt to Margaret Beaufort, by Amy Licence 
• Beauty and the Baller, by Ilsa Madden-Mills 
• Robin Hood: The First Arrow, by David Pilling 
• The Cat in the Hat, by Dr Seuss (bedtime book) 
• Mad About You, by Mhairi McFarlane (1) 
• Secluded with the Cowboy, by Cassie Miles 
• A Splash of Vanilla, by Bethany Lopez 
• When Stars Collide, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 
• Red Blossom in Snow, by Jeannie Lin 
• Driven to Date, by Susan Hatler 
• The Serenity House Trilogy, by Kathryn Shay 
• The Piano Tutor, by Anthea Lawson 
• The Gallaghers of Morning Star [books 1-3], by Jean Brashear 
• Bellingwood Boxed Set [books 4-6], by Diane Greenwood Muir 
• Bellingwood Boxed Set [books 7-9], by Diane Greenwood Muir 
• Last Night, by Mhairi McFarlane 
• Meant for Love, by Christine Kingsley 
• My Grandma’s Photos, by Ozge Bahar Sunar (bedtime book) 
• Bellingwood books 10-38, by Diane Greenwood Muir 
• Monster Knows Numbers, by Lori Capote (bedtime book) 
• I Can Eat a Rainbow, by Olena Rose (bedtime book) 
• Because of Miss Bridgerton, by Julia Quinn 
• Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz (5) 
• Elementary: The Periodic Table Explained, by James M. Russell 
• Doctor Who: The Wonderful Doctor of Oz, by Jacqueline Rayner 
• The Great Fire of London, by Hawys Morgan (bedtime book) 
• The Dark Queens, by Shelley Puhak(6) 
• Space Science, by Ciaran Murtagh (bedtime book) 
• Finding Love, by Serenity Woods 
• Montana SEAL, by Elle James 
• Montana Brides Boxed Set (books 1-3), by Leeanna Morgan 
• Material Witness, by Lisa Mondello 
• A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins 
• Come Out Mr Poo, by Janelle McGuinness (bedtime book) 
• The Rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson (7) 
• Death of a Dapper Snowman, by Angela Pepper 
• Lamb to the Slaughter, by Karen Ann Hopkins 
• From Chewing to Pooing, by Lauren and Natalie Gehringer (bedtime book) 
• The Martian, by Andy Weir 
• Death in a Summer Colony, by Aaron Stander 
• A Murder of No Account, by Julia Underwood 
• Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid 
• All the BIrds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders 
• Murder on the Page, by Kennedy Chase 
• The Reunion Series, by Karen Kingsbury 
• The Boy on the Bridge, by M.R. Carey 
• Love Without End: A Story of Heloise and Abelard, by Melvyn Bragg 
• The Forgotten Fields, by Geoffrey Beevers 
• Problem at Pollensa Bay, by Agatha Christie 
• Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, by Agatha Christie 
• Sparkling Cyanide, by Agatha Christie 
• The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal 
• The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman 
• Agatha Christie reading challenge: 
• The Man in the Brown Suit 
• Death on the Nile 
• After the Funeral 
• Why Didn’t They Ask Evans 
• Murder on the Links 
• Murder in Mesopotamia 
• At Bertram’s Hotel 
• Destination Unknown 
• They Came to Baghdad 
• Death in the Clouds 
• 4:50 from Paddington 
• Hercule Poirot’s Christmas 

1 – I highly, highly recommend Mhairi McFarlane to anyone who likes romance! Wish fulfillment in the best possible way. Also she lives in Nottingham. 

2 – Decent for identifying physical links to emotions! 

3 – I wish there were more to this series! 

4 – I am going to miss this series so very much 

5 – A must-read for anyone interested in archaeology, anthropology, or history in general. 

6 – I cannot overemphasize how much I enjoyed this book. French history / Early Middle Ages history is next on my “to become obsessed with” list, primarily because of this. 

7 – He’s seriously not going to get back to this until he finishes Cosmere? *shakes fist* 

——— 

So what’s on deck for 2023? Well, I’m going to do #readchristie again for one thing. There will probably be a few more Ladybird / Big Cat Collins books, and hopefully some more from my “read with the kids” collection. And I would like to get through at least one big “classic” – I’ve started Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott, but I think I want to try Dante or Milton during Lent, and I keep poking at the idea of adapting Canterbury Tales (but to do that I need to read / re-read all of them!) (I think Don Quixote is never going to happen for me, though.) Also there are a few authors from my 2022 list that I want to read everything they’ve ever written – Taylor Jenkins Reid is fast becoming a favourite, I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to get to both The Relentless Moon and The Martian, and hopefully Mhairi McFarlane or Julia Quinn or Jeannie Lin will have a new book out this year. I’ve also subscribed to Uncanny Magazine on Patreon, so I am going to try to keep up with reading that too. I also subscribed to Uncanny Magazine on Patreon, so I’m going to try to keep up with reading that. I won’t officially attempt any other reading challenges, but we’ll see what happens!

2021 wrap-up and 2022 challenge

Well, 2021 is approaching its end, and there were highs and lows.

Highs:

• I was a lot more conscious of my reading
• I tried to take advantage of books I already had access to
• I found some absolutely excellent new reads – books that I still think about even though I read them months ago.
• I made some progress in organising my UK-Kindle library. I’m down to 649 “uncollected” books.

Lows:

• I failed entirely at blogging about pretty much anything. I have 21 drafts saved but this is less than half of what I read just on the Kindle. And most of those drafts are titles only.
  • To be fair quite a lot of my UK-Kindle reading was at bedtime. But still.
• I bought more books on a whim than I should have.
• I spent more time on Reddit and facebook than I should have.
• I don’t think I finished my challenge – I’ll try to do a full review in the next few days but I’m pretty sure I missed “A book published in the 1980s” at least. I definitely failed at my mini-projects.

In 2022, my reading challenge is going to be much more low-key. I plan to (finally) read Don Quixote, via a sort of online book club, reading a chapter every few days throughout the year. I have also signed up for the Agatha Christie book club – reading one book a month, starting with The Man in the Brown Suit, which I honestly can’t remember if I’ve read before. Everything else I’ll take as it comes. I’m going to try to keep reading things other than Reddit (on Kindle, or Scribd, or Calibre) and I’m going to try to keep working through my various backlogs. Maybe I’ll also finish some of these 21 draft blog posts. Here’s hoping.

National Trust Book of Crumbles, by Sarah Clelland

When I put together my 2021 Reading Challenge, I didn’t plan out exactly which books I wanted to read for each category. I had some ideas: I have a lengthy list of books I’ve been given that I haven’t gotten around to yet, for example, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll easily find entries for the “I’ve been meaning to read” categories. But there was one that I probably should have thought about more carefully: “A book in a different-to-me genre”.

Well. When I showed my husband my list he just laughed and said “Good luck with that.” I read pretty widely, and although there are genres I don’t read as much in, there are very few genres that I won’t read.

(Also, just so that we are clear, I don’t consider format or length to be genre descriptions. “Graphic novel” is not a genre, it’s a format. “Short story” is not a genre, it’s length. I also don’t have any restrictions on those, but they are not what we are talking about here.)

The closest we thought of for “genres I don’t read often” (which is the closest I’m going to get) are celebrity memoirs, misery memoirs, and horror. (Although horror is less accurate; I’ve read my fair share of Stephen King and definitely went through an R. L. Stine / Christopher Pike phase as a child/teenager. I may not have read any Clive Barker, but I’m not unversed in horror.)

And then a friend asked whether cookbooks counted. And I thought “oh, thank goodness, a different genre.” It’s not that I’ve never read cookbooks before, but I’ve gotten a couple of cookbooks in the last few years that have had more narrative sections than you might expect. I got two for Christmas, in fact: The Book Lover’s Cookbook, which is filled with recipes linked to or referenced in works of fiction – along with relevant excerpts – and the National Trust Book of Scones.

The National Trust Book of Scones has 50 scone recipes in it. There are sweet scones, with sultanas or cranberries. There are traditional plain scones and cheese scones. There are other savoury scones, with blue cheese or different herbs. There’s even a scone that uses leftover Christmas pudding. (Or, you know, an extra one, if you’re my mother.) And while the recipes are great, and I want to make almost all of them, they’re not the reason that I’m counting this as one of my challenge books.

On every facing page, there is a writeup of a different National Trust property, with stories that the author (collector?) either experienced herself or was told of during her scones quest. The properties are scattered all over the country, and it’s only about 10% of the total properties the Trust has. There are stories about the houses, stories about the previous owners, stories about the volunteers, and stories about Sarah Clelland herself.

One of my goals for 2020 was to get my UK driving license, in part so that we could start taking the children to National Trust houses. I didn’t, obviously. But this cookbook is the next best thing, and has massively increased my list of places we’ll visit once we can again.

2021 Reading Challenge

Things have gotten a little crazy in the world, and in my life. I haven’t blogged in six years, I haven’t written a review in over a year, and I don’t read quite as much as I used to. I partially blame 2020 – but only because it’s the year that I had an infant and a 3 year old. It’s not even so much that my attention span is shot, but my available time is. I spend hours on reddit and Facebook, but in 2-minute chunks. It’s hard to read and write anything of thought when you barely have time or energy to formulate a thought.

I’m hoping that changes in 2021! Younger child is 1 now, older child is playing independently, and maybe – just maybe – I’ll be able to get some reading and writing back in my life. I’m going to attempt a reading challenge!

I don’t remember where I first heard of Modern Mrs. Darcy, but it’s been a few years since I did. For the last seven years, she’s provided a set of reading challenge prompts. This year, it’s a kind of DIY reading challenge – choose or come up with 12 prompts based on what you want to get out of the year.

My main goal is to decrease my backlog. I have stacks of books that I have been given, or even bought, that I have never even opened. Because youngest child was born on Christmas, I still have my Christmas Eve book from 2019 sitting on my nightstand, untouched. I have some of my Mr B’s books that I haven’t gotten to yet. And I have a TBR list that’s about 4000 items long.

In that spirit, here are my challenges:

• A book that was a gift
• A book by a “diverse” author (non-White, not cis, not heterosexual, etc.)
• A book about a subject I love
• A book I own but haven’t read
• A book in an unusual (for me) genre
• A book published before 1981
• A Pulitzer or National Book Award winner
• A Newbery Award or Honor book
• A classic I’ve been meaning to read
• A non-classic I’ve been meaning to read
• A book about books and/or reading
• A book published in the 1980s

I expect that a lot of my challenge books will tick several of these categories. My other criteria are that, wherever possible, a challenge book is one I already have access to, and that I haven’t read it before. I have thoughts already about which ones I’ll do!

I’ve also set myself three mini-projects: to consolidate my TBR lists, to catalog my physical books, and to blog about each of my challenges. (I hope to blog about more than just those books, but we’ll start with one post a month as the goal.)

Um, I think I know the answer to this already…..

So I got linked to this today

And it just so happens that this is the weekend that my best friend moved, so we had a brief conversation about having to move books. And then I unpacked what I think might be the last box of books in our house (but I can’t guarantee this), cataloguing them as I go, because that’s what I do now, as I’ve got a pretty decent app on my phone that lets you enter or scan ISBNs (or SBNs, even, have had more than a few of those) and checks them on Amazon and Goodreads to get all the information. (You can also enter the details manually for any book that is pre-SBN-days. Got some of those too…..) Anyway, long story long, 1082 is the current count of print books we have in this house. I don’t know exactly how many are on my UK Kindle account, or how many are on my shared US Kindle account (hi, Mom!) or how many I’ve got randomly on my computer from Project Gutenberg or Publishers Weekly or whatever other ebook sources I’ve found over the years. Or how many print books are still back in the US (hi, Mom!).

For the record, my book nerd score is 43.

The Soul of Discretion, by Susan Hill

So, I had an interesting experience while reading this book, and the seven that come before it, during a binge-reading episode during November and December, in that I read it at the same time that I caught up on the Peter Grant/Rivers of London/The Folly series by Ben Aaronovitch. They’re two such very different series – not just in that one is urban fantasy and one is realist crime (although that’s not even a remotely complete description), but also that the writing styles are so radically different that it took me quite a while to bring my brain from one to the other. When I read the Aaronovitch series, I came away with the feeling that this would make a fantastic modern episodic television show (in fact, it has been optioned not that that’s any sort of a guarantee of anything), with its continuity and plot arcs as well as character arcs; when I read the Hill series, I came away with the feeling that this would in no way make a good arced television show, but would make a great character development mystery show, with the focus on character development instead of plot continuity.

 

It’s not that Hill lacks plot, I hasten to add.  There is definitely plot. But it’s less of the storyboard, this happens so then this happens kind of plot, and more of the things happen and this is what they tell us kind of plot. You can pick up any one of the Simon Serrailler books and not be lost – what happens with the mystery in one book doesn’t necessarily carry over to another (with one exception). What does carry over are the character events – children, marriages, promotions, moves, deaths. And because the timeframe of the books – both within each book and between the books in the series, months and years pass – it’s like catching up with friends that you don’t see very often (and who aren’t on Facebook).

 

What really sets Susan Hill’s series apart from other series that I’ve read is her focus on thematic continuity within each book, rather than plot progression. Each book features any number of point-of-view characters, not just Simon Serrailler, and some of them may not ever even interact with Simon or play a part in the central crime that’s being investigated. But every single section, every single POV character, reflects whatever the central theme of the book is.  It’s actually a bit jarring if you’re used to more traditionally structured series, at least until you get used to it.

 

The Soul of Discretion is the most recent novel in the Simon Serrailler series. The theme of this one is sex, particularly problematic sex. Simon’s assigned to a dangerous undercover operation, sent to infiltrate a pedophile ring that features the great and the not-so-good – MPs and Lords and other public figures. His girlfriend has just moved in with him, the first woman who’s ever had such a permanent presence in his apartment, and he’s having a harder time than expected dealing with the fact that his sanctuary is being shared. (Simon’s history with and treatment of women is a running concern of his triplet Cat, and in this book she works with Rachel to help her establish a life outside of Simon.) Cat herself, a constant in these books, is still struggling with her idealism toward the medical profession as it conflicts with the reality of the bureaucracy of the NHS – but it’s their father Richard, who’s been physically abusive toward his second wife in previous volumes, who demonstrates the theme when he rapes a fellow Mason’s wife at a party, shining an incredibly harsh spotlight on the treatment of women in rape cases (spoiler: she’s not treated well, by Richard (obviously), her own husband, or the system).

 

It’s a troubling book overall, because the theme is so troubling (the details of the pedophile ring are somewhat glossed over, but their extent and nature isn’t, and the rape certainly isn’t), but it is mesmerising. I don’t think I like Susan Hill very much as a person, but she can definitely write.

 

New Year’s Resolutions

So last year was kind of a big year for me. My partner and I went to the US to visit my family (first time for him; I hadn’t been back in over three years), we bought a house, I got promoted twice, and we got engaged. That’s in chronological order, by the way. March to early November.

So that didn’t leave a whole lot of time for, you know, other stuff. Like my blogs. Or writing that’s not for Publisher’s Weekly. (And not a lot of reading that’s not for Publisher’s Weekly – I won’t read a new book until I’ve finished a review, for fear of getting things mixed up in my head.) Or anything that wasn’t just collapsing on the couch or staring at a different kind of screen (….we may have also played a lot of Crusader Kings 2 and Final Fantasy).

But this year is going to be different! And one of the ways that it’s going to be different is that we’re now saving for a trip to my sister in California in 2015 and two weddings in 2016 (ah, the joys of a multi-nationality relationship), so I’m going to be buying a lot fewer of the “oh they’re only 99p” Kindle deals, and the Buy-One-Get-One-Half-Off temptations at Smiths and Waterstones. By which I mean none. No spending on books. (Free books are still okay.) Which means a lot more of reading what I already have, what is on my shared-with-my-mom-and-sister Kindle account, and what is public domain.

In other words, reading a lot more of the type of thing that I then want to write about. I have nothing against Mills and Boon, obviously, I want to write for them someday – but I don’t usually feel inspired to analyse, critique, or sing the praises of each individual book in the Desire or Blaze lines. (Mills and Boon in general though….)

I’m also keeping a reading log again, in Google Drive for easy access. Since Christmas Day, I’ve finished six books and started three others, at least one of which I won’t read all of – I skipped to the end, and the other two I’m debating about – they’re not really grabbing me at the moment. I’m also in the middle of several “big” books – a few non-fiction ones on the Kindle – a history of the Mediterranean that I started possibly over a year ago, a biography of Oswald of Northumbria that’s entitled “King of the North” to get the Game of Thrones fans in – Lorna Doone, and Don Quixote. Pretty sure I’ll have things to say about all of those, once I’m done with them.

Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch

This is the fourth in the Rivers of London/Peter Grant/The Folly series. Now you may remember that I really enjoyed the first book and, in fact, suggested that it might make a good episodic television show. Nothing in the second, third, or fourth books has changed my mind about that. If anything, my feeling that this would be a good television series has been reinforced, both by reading this series and by reading the Simon Serrailler series by Susan Hill.

 

Each of Aaronovitch’s books is an episode, with an individual plot that is resolved by the end of that book, but which also gives more hints and progression about the overarching story. Broken Homes focuses on a council estate/apartment block which has been specifically designed to accentuate magic. We’ve got some new characters, and new focuses. There’s the now-deceased architect who was a secret practitioner and the dryad who inhabits the council estate’s garden (although it’s spring, so she’s a bit….distracted), for example. Characters from previous books are here as well – the Rivers, and Lesley, and of course Nightingale; there are hints throughout that lead up to the Faceless Man (although the ending comes as a surprise even so), leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that not only lead Peter and Lesley through to the revelations about the council estate, but also lead to the latest piece in the Faceless Man mystery.

 

I don’t know if Ben Aaronovitch has a set number of books that he’s intending to write in this series; I can easily see the first six or so being the battle against the Faceless Man (I haven’t read Foxglove Summer yet, but I can’t picture it being the last one – it doesn’t feel quite ramped up enough yet – but then I could be entirely wrong about that) and then moving on to another arc and another backstory. I sincerely hope he does – I’ve gotten to really care about Peter and Lesley and Nightingale and Molly, and I want to see what further quirks this magical sub-culture throws up toward urban London life.

 

Catching up

Non-work things read in the last few weeks:

A bunch of books I can’t talk about because they haven’t actually been published yet.

Loads of Reddit posts and links

Darwin’s Ghosts, by Rebecca Stott

all the Hugo nominees for Best Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, plus skimming the graphic novel and Editor: Short Form category

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, by Simon Singh

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

quite a few first bits of books that were free from Amazon or Google Play – enough to get the sense of them and decide that I didn’t actually care about finishing them. A few that were promising, if rough, up until I noticed that they were only 50% finished on the ereader at which point I went, “….meh, pretty sure I know how this ends”.

mortgage papers

The Queen’s Dwarf, by Ella March Chase

Disclaimer: Ella March Chase is one of my favourite people on the planet. I call her my writer mom. Her daughter is one of my best friends and her grandchildren are my honorary nephews.

 

I don’t normally like the 17th and 18th century in English history. I’m not interested in the Stuarts or the Hanoverians.  I find the politicking tedious and annoying, and I find most of the major personalities involved self-absorbed to the point of evil. The literature of the time is verbose, preachy,  and over-reliant on contemporary references. The religious infighting makes me feel sick – I really hate the attitude of “I’m right because God says I’m right and if you don’t agree with me you must be destroyed” no matter who it’s coming from.

So, despite my adoration of the author, I was a bit hesitant about this particular book. Her earlier two books were a lot closer to my preferred time period (both set in the Tudor era, which is just at the edge of my particular interests). But this book sucked me in. I got interested in Charles I and Henrietta Maria, and in the interplay between France, England, and Spain during the first half of the 17th century. I got interested in the women at court, especially the Duchess of Buckingham (she was a Manners, so relatively local to where I am now) and Lucy Hay. I even got a bit interested in the rise of the Puritans.

The main character is Jeffrey Hudson, a small person (not technically a dwarf by today’s medical standards) who’s only about 18 inches tall. He’s from a family on the estates of the Duke of Buckingham, and is placed by the Duke into the menagerie of Queen Henrietta Maria. Buckingham intends Jeffrey as a spy against the queen  and her French court. Jeffrey’s mostly just trying to survive. He’s around and influential for quite a few major events – the queen’s pilgrimage to Tyburn, for example, which directly led to the banishment of her French ladies-in-waiting.

Chase weaves the history in with the story pretty seamlessly – so seamlessly that I would occasionally check Wikipedia to find out more of the background. (Which then, of course, led to the Wikipedia warren – I ultimately spent almost as much time reading about Henry of Navarre and Marie de Medici as I did about Jeffrey Hudson. ) She definitely did her research, and it shows.