First snow of the year. Happy Winter Solstice!

🙄 December 😆

Who doesn't love a Venn diagram?

Once again I will pretend that i am going to read some of these books. #BookSpinBingo

As always, I am stuck in the past...

But it's fun to see if I recognize any of NYT's "100 Notable Books of 2024".

"During the afternoon there had been a christening."

#FirstLineFridays

Just about to start this collection of stories.

#WhereAreYouMonday

Multi-generational story beginning outside Ipoh, Malaysia. I am waiting to return to the storyline of the daughter that sees ghosts.

I have two books on the go -- the pictured book is my evening read, when I'm not too tired, and the tagged book is my on-the-go book.

Not making very quick progress in either these days.

Mini haul from the Brooklyn Book Festival. It was a miserable rainy day and many vendors couldn't display their books. I was better this year about checking to see what was available at the library and mostly only buying harder to find books (or the ones with good deals). I always buy from Gaudy Boy, a very small press that publishes SE Asia authors and other harder to find areas. Tagged book is an anthology of Burmese writers.

Anyone else see this tour and spend most of it trying to read the book titles? Just me?

I'm okay with that.

August #BookSpinBingo! #Spin is also my choice for #Jamaica for #FoodandLit, so that's convenient.

Just a few books to finish July.

Published in 2020 and probably written earlier, some political/policy details have changed, but the overarching stories of exploitation and abuse depressingly remain the same. The author, DACA recipient and Harvard grad, reports on the non-inspirational immigrant stories: day laborers, restaurant workers, delivery people, elderly. Weaving her story of the stress and illness of being undocumented into the stories of their unrelenting challenges.

The best part of these type of lists is getting excited all over again for the books you have but haven't read yet.

A fun list, kind of weird given how it was created. Really didn't like the number one book.

Opening with NYE in 1979 London, Liz and her closest friends from university, Alix and Esther now entering their 50s, weather the changes of the early eighties. From a divorce after 25 years of a "modern" marriage to disillusion with the socialist left, to leaving London and the UK altogether.

Written without chapters, the narrative flows from one character to the next, incorporating dozens of narrators to provide a full picture of the times.

A perfect plane book. The first black sheriff in a small Virginia town discovers a gruesome serial killer. The ensuing deaths are not dwelt upon and there's not too much plodding details, but some social commentary, and its just suspenseful enough, without making one''s heart race.

@TheAromaofBooks Feeling pretty good about July's #BookSpinBingo.

“I'm equally sure, however, that I won't walk into a lamp-post while reading {literature}, like I did with {a legal thriller} all those years ago; you don't walk into lamp-posts when you're reading literary novels, do you?“

#wondrouswednesday
@eggs

I haven't been able to settle into a read for a while. The top stack is on pause. The fat book is Wilhelm Meister.

So I picked up a more standard, modern story (tagged) and a short story collection (Where the Wild Ladies Are).

TSotLC is fine, plodding, but I will finish it.

The Things They Curried

“They curried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles...“

@SlateGreySkies

#BridgertonMe

Well, that was .... interesting.

How could I not stop at this Philly brewpub once I learned of its existence?

Admittedly this was never going to be for me. Sure, I could make the meat dishes without or substitute vegetarian options, but her recipes have really good flavor combinations, so it'd defeat the purpose. I like the ingredients listed by category.

I made seven vegetable dishes three of which were very good and one that was awful. She tends to use way more oil than I like, but if she ever publishes a vegetable side cookbook I would buy it!

While I really like the layout and the cute graphic for nutrition information, this is not a cookbook for me. Low-carb in this case means using chick pea flour for all breads, cauliflower rice instead of regular rice and vegetables instead of pasta.

I only wanted to make about 10-12 of the 75 recipes. But the ones I made were all good and one was amazing. I now follow her on social media, hoping to collect the handful of amazing recipes.

For the last two hours, I've been asleep, sitting on a fashionable novel. It's the only part of the body you can read it with.

#catsoflitsy #Bert

#BookSpinBingo for May. i haven't gotten a bingo in a while, but work is less busy, so who knows?

@TheAromaofBooks

Weekly Report

Wilhelm Meister is going slowly, I can't seem to get into it. SaGN is rather wordy and dense in a different way, but fun. And the short stories are a nice late night read.

Oh, oh, oh! I know the answer to this one!

#SundayFunDay @BookmarkTavern

Weekly Report

I've finished 2666. What an experience.

I'm nearly done with Zama and waiting to see which books BookSpinBingo will tell me to prioritize.

Weekly Report

I almost DNF Confessions of a Mask, but the second half improved enough to press onwards. Meanwhile I started the different books as my subway book: Bluebeard's First Wife, Winter in the Blood, and The Bitter Glass. Still reading 2666.

I'm bored with my cookbooks, and I might have gone overboard with library requests...

A collection of very short stories, all in some way inspired by “marciano“ a word that can either mean popsicle or Martian. In each the characters have extra-ordinary reactions to ordinary happenings. It is impressive how the author can evoke an entire story, completely unsettling the reader, in a few pages, but there is also a slight distance, such that any impressions left quickly melted away.

3.5⭐ #Peru

I have been reading this month, although not commenting/reviewing much.

I even got a Bingo!

Weekly Report

I've finished the utterly strange Life of Insects. I've also read the emotional Aue. After an odd ebook set back, I am continuing 2666 at home and King Lear of the Steppes is my subway read.

A novel based on real events, written in a non-fictional manner. It begins as a journalist‘s research notes from a visit to a newly surfaced archive of secret police records. But as the narrator digs deeper into the files, his access is denied and it becomes a journal of his continued investigations, leading to the discovery related to a traumatic event suffered by his mother. I didn‘t get the revelation, because I didn‘t pay attention the names.

#weirdwords #weirdwordwednesday @CBee

Pulchritude: beauty

“How rare pulchritude is among the Irish, I said to myself; therefore what a trouble is made when it does appear...“

Weekly Report

I've finished the tagged book. It was well-written, but not as devastating as the introduction promised.

Still reading 2666 and I've also picked up Human Matters.

Here's February's #BookSpin Bingo board!

@TheAromaofBooks

A typical coming-of-age story with an atypical narrator. A bisexual Palestinian-American, she is unable to please her mother. An outsider both in America and during summers spent in the Middle East, she sabotages mundane relationships by pursuing idealistic, impossible ones. A breakup sends her into treatment, which doesn‘t solve her “love-addition” but interrupts her behavior enough to (eventually) make choices rather than following compulsions.

Weekly Report:

I'm still slowly reading 2666. Death in Rome continues to interest, hope to finish soon. You Exist Too Much is a fine coming of age story from a lesser heard viewpoint, but perhaps not memorable. System Collapse was needed, but with not enough memory of the previous installments, I was confused.

For my #bookerdozen, the first six were easy to choose -- the 5⭐ and 4.5⭐ books (Ducks through How Late). The other six I chose from the many four-star reads that I was slightly more enthusiastic about and didn't seem to have been mentioned already.

@vivastory

Thank goodness my hold came through on this latest Murderbot installment when it did*. Another escapist read with the ever delightful and sarcastic construct as it tries to (once again) rescue its humans from destruction, but this time with less confidence.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a good enough memory of the previous two books to follow along this time. I recommend retaining Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry first

Beka reflects on the tumultuous past few months, beginning with her failure to pass the term, on her penchant for lying, the stories of “befo time” and political unrest, her great-gran‘s death and wake, a hurricane, and most troubling, the gulf widening between them as Troycie‘s inability to cope with ruinous events causes a breakdown. Beka‘s intelligence and contrariness see her (and the reader) through what could have been just a miserable tale.

Despite the fact that I have a Midwestern palate and can barely tolerate jalapeno, I did find some #Ghana recipes I could enjoy.

Tatale (plantain pancakes), Three Bean Salad, Cocoyam and Sweet Potato Curry, Coconut Rice, Honey and Plantain Ginger Cake, and Spiced Cashews.

#FoodandLit @Texreader @Catsandbooks

#WeeklyReport

Starting the year off a little slowly, only reading these two books. And I haven't finished anything recently.

The first time that Jean-Claude Pelletier read Benno von Archimboldi was Christmas 1980, in Paris, when he was nineteen years old and studying German literature.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Not told in a “standard” western style, it is a story of women‘s relationships, centered on Esi Sekyi – her first marriage to smothering husband Oko, her second polygamous marriage to Ali, and her lifelong friendship with Opokuya. The theme of changes is augmented with glimpses of Opokuya‘s and Ali‘s marriages. Each relationship blends tradition and modernity, none entirely successfully. But it portrays the possibilities for modern African women.

Okay this took far too long to put together -- both planning the books and experimenting with a different photo grid maker. But I'm finally ready to begin my 2024 reading.

#BookSpin = Changes #FoodandLit2024 #Ghana
#DoubleSpin = Fado Alexandrino #1001Books, #Reading1001

@thearomaofbooks

#12Booksof2023

I did not get much reading done in September, but this probably would have been the best book of the month regardless. All the feels.

@Andrew65