A friend wrote a post about what she has read this year using the NYT picks for book of the year. I have read nothing on that list. I have, however, read as voraciously as ever and GoodReads has reminded me what some of them were. Since I have been inconsistent about logging and have also had a hard time choosing something that looked interesting lately, I have been rereading old favorites a lot for the last part of the year and the GR list looks like I have not done as much reading as usual.

For example, right now, I’m rereading Thud! It is one of my favorite DiscWorld books and I’m finding it very soothing. I wish I liked Pratchett’s Long Earth series as well. But, I don’t. I do think his stand alone fantasy stories, Nation and Dodger, are both highly entertaining.

Other rereads this year have been Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series and its companion Ink And Sigil trilogy. The last book was coming out and I wanted to get back up to speed. I reread Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Alex Bledsoe’s vampire books and Becky Chambers’ Robot and Monk duology. There have been some other rereads. These are what come to mind first.

I am a fan of Nghi Vo and love her Singing Hills Cycle series of novellas. I started reading them when the first one came out in 2020 and in early November I discovered I had missed a couple. And, apparently, the ones I had read were through the library the first time because they weren’t in my Kindle. So, I bought them all and had a little festival.

They are stories about a wandering cleric from a mountain monastery who travels around collecting stories. They have a friend/nag/helper who is a spiritual creature in the shape of a bird. She remembers everything and helps make sure stories are written correctly. They don’t always travel together for various reasons. and the two of them periodically go back to check in at the monastery. The novellas are not chronological. So, reading them as it suits you is fine. This series makes me laugh out loud and has made me cry.

According to GoodReads, the shortest book I read this year was one of hers. The Fox Roads is not part of the Singing Hills Cycle and, at 38 pages with 3 significant characters, is more short story than novella.

Chuck and I both read Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Chuck read it first and recommended it. It is David Copperfield in Appalachia. specifically southwest Virginia. I remember the original Dickens story just enough to recognize some of the story elements. But, not enough to interfere with finding this version new and engaging. I like Kingsolver’s writing and will be inclined to read more of her books.

I enjoyed Louise Erdrich’s LaRose and her Future Home of the Living God. Erdrich writes about Native Americans and the White people who live along side them. Her settings are usually in northern America and/or southern Canada, sometime in the last 100 years. Her stories are of individuals living their lives in their particular place and time. I have never put one of her books down, unfinished.

John Grisham’s Sooley is about a young man playing UNC basketball. It’s a good story set in my area, which is always pretty cool. You don’t have to understand basketball to get it. The ending was a little simplified. I felt like Grisham either ran out of steam or ran out of time.

Dweller on the Threshold by Skyla Dawn Cameron was a great ghost story. I had to put the book down to catch my breath, one night. It did NOT go where I anticipated for the ending and I really liked how it turned out.

I binged Ben Aaronovich’s Rivers of London/Peter Grant series. It’s another one I’d gotten behind on and I turned my kid on to them. So, we kind of read them together. They do need to be read in chronological order. There are some graphic short stories that go along side the novels. They aren’t necessary. But, they were fun. I bought all 3 collections of graphic novels. I gave them to Cannon after I had my turn with them.

A new friend on Threads (another damn Meta social media site) turned me on to Sarah Painter’s Crow Investigations Series. It’s another contemporary fantasy series I binged.

Shelley Noble’s The Tiffany Girls is an historical fiction look at how Louis Comfort Tiffany’s company made the glass that made him famous. I like well researched historical fiction and I like art glass. So, this was right up my street.

I put down a couple of books. The Violence by Delilah Dawson seemed to be a revenge fantasy for DV survivors. I thought Going Through the Change by Samantha Bryant was a really bizarre take on perimenopause. It’s advertised as a “menopausal, superhero novel.” I guess the changes were supposed to be extremes of actual perimenopause symptoms. But, they were so extreme that only occurs to me in retrospect and the superhero part took longer to develop than I had patience for. I was not the intended audience for either of these.