March Reading Wrap-Up+

Ah March. Generally a month I enjoy, what with it being the month of both my and Tom's birthdays. Celebrations felt fairly muted this year BUT I'm not dealing with a kidney stone, so all in all an improvement from last year. 

I did a fair amount of reading this month. But also had some time where I was having trouble getting into a book so did a lot more podcast listening (shoutout to Scamfluencers which I am slowly but surely making my way through the back catalogue). Let's just take a look at those stats. 

Number of books read

6

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe

It's Elementary by Elise Bryant

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe

I hadn't read this book by Randall Monroe (aka creator of the xkcd comics, aka those stick figure comics about science) in a while. Not since 2016, per Goodreads anyway. Once again, I was looking for something I could read to Matthew while he's falling asleep that wouldn't be scarring should he pay attention, but also wouldn't be so interesting (to him) that it would keep him from falling asleep. This one worked pretty nicely. Basically, Munroe opened up his website (or maybe it was always set up like this) where people could ask hypothetical science questions like "How high up would you need to be that if you dropped a steak, it would be cooked by the time it hit the ground?" and "What would happen if everyone on Earth stood really close to each other and jumped, landing at the ground at the same instant?" Silly questions, given serious, scientific thought to. The book is funny and I'm going to have to assume informative though I am not checking any of his math (because I wouldn't even have the first clue how to do that, though he provides formulas). 

Rating: 4.25 stars

It's Elementary by Elise Bryant

A cozy little mystery* where mom Mavis has a lot going on already (single parent, living with her father in her home town, underpaid work at a non-profit), that does she really need to add PTA to her load? But when honestly terrifying Type-A PTA president Mom Trisha tasks Mavis with heading the DEI committee (Mavis is one of the few POC parents in this very white town), she doesn't have a chance to back out. But at the very first meeting, when the PTA president and brand-new principal get into a bit of a disagreement, and then that night Mavis sees Trisha dragging something out of the school late at night (along with yellow rubber gloves, CSI booties, and cleaning supplies), AND THEN the principal goes missing, well, something is going on and maybe Mavis needs to add detective to her To Do list. Very fun, light read that kept me reading. Something very much appreciated during these...current times.

Rating: 4 stars

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Another re-read! This one, I hadn't read since 2011, which is pre-me tracking stuff in spreadsheets and not long after I started this blog in the first place. I always do a doubletake when I see this book categorized as True Crime even though it very much is. There is a crime at the center, that of the shooting death of Danny Hansford at the hands of Jim Williams. Was it premeditated murder, a crime of passion or an act of self-defense? But really, the book is about the city of Savannah and the eccentric cast of characters. If anything, the crime was a distraction from my favorite part of the book, him just introducing the various people he met when he lived part-time in Savannah. The book is so funny and every character is so charming in their own way, regardless of the various crimes they may or may not be committing. And of course there's drag queen, the Lady Chablis (who played herself in the movie version), who steals pretty much every chapter she's in. 

Rating: 4 stars

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Yet another re-read. This one I last read in 2015 and didn't remember much about. But once I finished What If? I needed another read-to-the-boy book and he saw the cover of this and asked for this one. I figured it is YA, and Fforde is pretty trustworthy so I should be fine reading this one to him. The only downside was he liked it a bit too much and was far more engaged in this than say Pride & Prejudice. Which I guess just means I'll have to make sure he has a chance to read it when he's a bit older. Fantasy version of the UK where magic is real but has been drying up. Jennifer Strange is a foundling who is serving out some indentured servitude (this makes it sound darker than the story is) at Kazam Mystical Arts Management, where she manages wizards who can complete jobs like replumbing a house in a few hours without tearing apart the walls. But one day a precog predicts the death of the last dragon, and Strange is swept up in matters of land ownership, Big Magic, corporate sponsorships and national war. Because oh, did I mention, she is The Last Dragonslayer (and she very much would like to not have to kill a dragon). Listen, if you know Fforde, you know he's great. One of my favorites. His books are funny and touching and the problems build and build upon themselves until you think there is NO WAY out of this and yet, somehow, you get a satisfying (if sometimes unexpected) ending.

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

Claudia Lin loves mysteries and detective stories, so when she gets a job working for Veracity, a super secret company that helps people verifier that their online matches in dating sites are really who they say they are, she's thrilled. (Why does this job need to be so secret? Honestly, no idea. I just went with it cos the story said it was Very Important.) Sure she can't tell her family that she left the job her brother got her for this, but she keeps things from them all the time, like the fact that she's a lesbian (or at least her mother doesn't know, still trying to set her up with a "nice Chinese boy"). But when a client disappears, Claudia gets sucked into an investigation to figure out who is this client really, what was she really trying to verify, and what happened to her? Another fun mystery for These Times.

Rating: 3.75 stars

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

It's a little hard to rate a memoir especially one like this that deals with terrible trauma a person went through. But here we are. Shari Franke, the daughter of family vlogger Ruby Franke, writes about the abuses she suffered both from within and without her home. In the end, I had 2 main issues with the book. First, is on me, because this isn't really what I thought it would be. I heard about this book through a Reel about how the first of the children of mommy bloggers was writing what it was like. I should have known this was perhaps not the best source for info (even though she was a journalist who interviewed Franke for Rolling Stone) because she never once said the name of the book. Because the thing is, the book is hardly about the negatives of family vlogging. It's mentioned, of course, but the abuse started long before the vlog started and continued long after. The vlog only makes up about 3-4 chapters out of over 40. Second, it's just not that well written. There are some metaphors that introduce some odd tone shifts. I also wish maybe there was some more time to look back on what she had gone through. And maybe some examination the role of the LDS church had in enabling some of the abuse going on. But it was a quick listen.

Rating: 3 stars

Special callout for Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix which I started this month but had some trouble getting into it, not because it was bad (it wasn't! Hendrix, please continue to write female-lead horror stories) but because of The Horrors in the real world, I don't know that this is the right book for me right now. So it automatically got returned to my library when I was about halfway through and I would have been back at the end of the line on the waitlist. So I just bought a copy but I acknowledge now is not the time for this. I look forward to it in the future though.

Total pages read

2,047

Fiction

50%

Female authors

50%

BIPOC authors

33%

US authors

67%

Rereads

50%

Book club pick

17%

Format

audiobook: 50%

ebook: 33%

paperback: 17%

Where'd I get the book

Library: 50%

Kindle/Audible: 33%

Indie: 17%

Decade published

1990s: 17%

2010s: 33%

2020s: 50%

Resolution books

67%

It's Elementary is by a Black author

The Last Dragonslayer is by a UK (Welsh) author

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was published before 2000

The Verifiers is by an Asian author (originally from Singapore, lives in the US)

*TBF, I am still trying to figure out exactly what makes something a cozy mystery, absent things like tea rooms or extended food scenes. So forgive me if I've misused the term

February Reading Wrap Up+

This was another eventful reading month. Except it mostly just looks like that, because 2 of the books are ones that I started in January and just didn't finish until Feb. Now there's often a book or so that will cross months, but both of these are books I started pretty early in the month. Agnes Sharp was a Christmas gift that I started in early Jan but because it is a paperback, took me much longer to get through than an audiobook that I can pickup when I'm doing other things. And Sherlock Holmes took a while because it's relatively long and I was mostly just reading it to my son while he fell asleep, which meant just a few pages a night

Number of books read

6

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I hadn't read this in a long time but I wasn't quite into one of my other reads this month (5B) and was looking for something that I would enjoy and also that was currently available from the library (often a determining factor in what I read). It had been many years since I read this one, but luckily I enjoyed it just as much this time around, which is always a worry with books you read and enjoyed a long time ago. I listened to the audiobook and think Stephen Fry does a great job reading, though I think this book probably works better being read because I feel you can really enjoy classic lines like "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." 

Rating: 4.75 stars

The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

The book I was reading when I thought "I'm not enjoying this" and picked up Hitchhiker. But I didn't return it to the library right away (no one was waiting for it) so I decided to give it another try. I got into to to an extent though not without some issues.* A young artistic couple (she's a writer, he's an actor) live in a crappy apt in NYC but inherit a beautiful building from the husband's late uncle, who they had been taking care of in his old age. But the wife Rosie feels like something is off from day one. Her husband seemed to already know they'd be getting the apartment (despite a battle with his cousin over the will), the doorman seems to know a little too much and why are there cameras and intercoms everywhere? But Rosie is writing about the building so living there seems like a good way to get material. It's creepy at times but there seems to be a lot thrown at the wall, some of which sticks, some of which not so much. And while I don't need the protagonists to be genius who can see every twist coming or behave totally rationally in intense circumstances, I'd like some degree of awareness. 

Rating: 2.8 stars

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Another book I read to the little monster at night to put him to sleep. He was less into this one than A Christmas Carol, probably because he already knows that story), but it achieved the goal of helping get him to sleep. I partially picked it cos I thought he'd appreciate a mystery (he's seen almost every variation of Scooby-Doo) and also because I had recently re-watched some episodes of the BBC Sherlock. I've read original Sherlock Holmes stories before but reading it now really brought home how dissimilar the BBC Sherlock and the OG Sherlock are. BBC Sherlock is a dick who yells at people (including children) who bring him mysteries that he deems boring. OG Sherlock tells a person who comes to see him with a seemingly simple mystery that no problem is too small and Watson comments how he always knows the right tone to take with a person. OG all the way, even if, tbh, some of the mysteries are...less mysterious but that could be more an issue with the times (they are a-changin'). This collection included stories like "A Scandal in Bohemia" (aka Irene Adler's story), "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".

Rating: 4 stars

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann

A Christmas gift from Tom who was looking for books that are like Thursday Murder Club. Agnes has turned her family home into a place where fellow seniors can live as an alternative to an old folks home, where they take care of each other and don't have to worry about dying without dignity. A dead body is discovered next door, a murder, perhaps a home invasion gone wrong. But this could be good for them because perhaps they could use this murder next door to help cover up the dead body they're currently dealing with. The household, who each bring their own pasts and their own unique skills, to solving this murder. Of course, they all bring their own faults too, many age related. Getting around, remembering things, isn't quite so easy as the years creep on. While it's not quite TMC it is a fun (and sometimes funny) mystery that doesn't wrap up quite as cleanly as I would have liked but I'll still seek out others from this author

Rating: 4.25 stars

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

So here's the thing. I liked this book. I liked listening to it. I thought the topics she talked about were interesting (Stan culture! TikTok therapists!). But I am having trouble telling you what exactly this book is about. It's more memoir than her other books (Cultish is a fav of mine) and each chapter reads more like its own stand alone piece that never really builds to an overarching point.
Each chapter talks about different bias/effect/psych 101 term like the IKEA effect, overconfidence bias, sunk cost fallacy, taking examples from her personal life, from the news, and from interviews with experts to talk about what they are and why we fall into them. Each topic did feel a little light on the research side and as I said, more memoir than I expected, but I still enjoyed.

Rating: 3.75

Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes

First thing first. I was filling out my book spreadsheet, as one does, and I was looking up info about the author. Goodreads just tells me some other stuff he's written, that he's originally from the UK. Great. But I notice the name and think to myself "huh, that's funny. Same name as the guy who wrote the Pina Colada song. Weird coincidence." Then I go to lookup the Pina Colada guy to make sure I got the name right and what do you know. It's the same person! This has 0 bearing on the book, but I thought about it constantly. Plus it made me think of this scene from Always Sunny.

Anyway, I loved this. What if there was a school that taught you how to murder, sorry, I mean "delete" someone? You have to have a good reason sure. You have to show that the world would be better without this person, no one would mourn them, that no one else would get hurt. But get past that and then it's lessons about how to off someone in, admittedly, very convoluted manners but isn't that the fun part? Cliff Iverson finds himself on the mystery campus at the behest of an unknown Sponsor (murder school isn't cheap) after unsuccessfully trying to kill his boss. He finds himself at a school where he could very easily be the target of another student and he has to learn how to plan the perfect murder. The story is about half boarding school story, taking place at the McMasters school, while the second half follows three students as they go about trying to finish their graduate thesis (aka, murder). It was a lot of fun and I would happily read about other students at this school and see their final theses.

Rating: 5 stars

Total pages read

2,169

Fiction

83%

Female authors

50%

BIPOC authors

0%

US authors

33%

Rereads

17%

Translation

17%

Format

audiobook: 67%

ebook: 17%

paperback: 17%

Where'd I get the book

gift: 17%

library: 83%

Decade published

1890s: 17%

1970s: 17%

2020s: 67%

Resolution books

67%

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is written by a UK author and published pre-2000 (1979)

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp is written by a German writer and while she does live in the UK and set her book there it is also translated from German

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is written by a UK author and published pre-2000 (1892)

Murder Your Employer is written by a UK author

*In case you didn't want any spoilers or didn't want to ruin the flow above, here's one of my main issues with the book. The couple quickly realize they really can't afford the maintenance fees on this apartment and if they did move in they could only afford to be there for ~6mo. Which should have been the end but they decide to move in. For awhile I thought there'd be something about how they'd figure out how to make it work long-term, but it comes out later in a bit of a throwaway line that they're sort of planning on moving out when they run out of money. Seems like a waste of time to me but fine. You deal with NYC real estate multiple times in one year. Enjoy. BUT while they're there, all of the creepy stuff is happening and it turns out it's because the neighbors want their apartment (or at least some of the creepy stuff. Again, a lot thrown at the wall). Their apartment that they're going to have to move out of in a couple months. Something they've discussed in their apartment that has been bugged so those neighbors can hear. And yet the neighbors still go to all this trouble when they could have...waited 12 weeks. A lot of the book is like this, where it feels like the author set up something and then just forgot about it. Or wanted the creepiness to be due to multiple things, to which I wanted to yell "Pick a lane!"

January Reading Wrap-Up+

New Year, same me? I certainly started the year with a repeat read. I'm not huge on resolutions so I haven't really made any, other than in general try to get more exercise because if I don't move around and stretch, my body gets mad, so it seems like a good thing to do more of. I even started a bullet journal for moving around (I mostly just like tracking things and colors) but I digress. Let's get into reading. Which I did a fair amount of this year because, you know, the horrors.  

I do have a 2024 Fav Reads post that has been written since early Jan. However, one of the books on there is a repeated re-read and fav of mine, The Graveyard Book. And given everything that has come out with Gaiman, I'm still processing/deciding what that means for me. Thus that post, which includes that book, hasn't gone up yet.

But hey, that was sort of depressing and I'm sorry, I am trying to keep things light and happy as much as possible cos there is enough stress just everywhere else. Let's look at some books.

Total books read

6

How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Mike Schur

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki

How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Mike Schur

This is the third time I've read this book and it feels like a good way to start the year, with the hope, with the goal of being a little better than the year before. Does it work? Who knows. But a fairly easy-to-get-into refresher on moral philosophy, read by Shur and the cast of The Good Place isn't a terrible way to try. And some does seem to be seeping in, such as when an in-law was explaining to someone times when maybe you don't tell the whole truth and I was thinking "Kant wouldn't approve of this". I didn't say it out loud because I'm not that insufferable (at least, not that way), but it could be in my future.

Rating: 5 stars

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

What is there to say about this? It's a classic, it's funny, it's just as readable today. This was another get-the-boy-to-sleep reading choice* and unfortunately, I don't think this resonated with the little monster quite as much as A Christmas Carol but it did help put him to sleep so it did its part. Lizzie and Darcy, love it.

Rating: 5 stars

The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller

Arthur Crockleford (A+ English name) has been found dead in his antique shop under what his friend feels are mysterious circumstances. She enlists the help of her niece Freya, who used to look to Arthur as a mentor until an estrangement happened 20 years prior, causing the two to never speak again. Freya is initially presented as a sort of quiet figure, dealing with a messy divorce and seemingly lacking a backbone. Which means, relatively early on when she says something to the effect of "I wasn't afraid in the dark alley because I know Krav Maga," I out loud to myself said "No you fucking don't," and that was the energy both the book and I brought to the rest of the story. Anyway, mystery whodunit and what was Arthur's antique business wrapped up in and will Freya and her aunt find out at this weekend at a secluded English mansion/castle?

Rating: 2.75 stars

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin

Murder at a fancy cooking school with a motley crew of staff/students/suspects. Out of work chef Paul Delamare is filling in for a friend (and TV chef) Christian as a teacher for a week-long cooking course. But someone turns up dead, and Paul is a key suspect, so what is he to do? The tagline describes it as "The Maid meets Knives Out with a dash of Top Chef" and at some point, I will stop getting taken in by things described as "like Knives Out" because you are just saying that regardless of truth. But maybe that is harsh because while this is not really like Knives Out it was entertaining, there were plenty of good suspects, though some pacing made it hard (for me) to try to follow the clues.

Rating: 3.75 stars

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

Historical fiction about Belle da Costa Greene, personal librarian to J.P. Morgan and his fancy Pierpont Morgan Library with its impressive collection of renaissance books at art. But Belle has a secret. She's actually Belle Marion Greener and she's not actually of Portuguese descent, despite what she tells people to explain her darker complexion. Her farther was the first Black graduate of Harvard and a fighter for equal rights. But this is American in the 1900s. I liked the idea of the story and overall I liked Belle but I had a few issues. There is a lot of telling rather than showing, which is especially frustrating in a first-person book. She will mentions "rumors of her race going around" but we hardly ever see her actually dealing with it first hand. She also seems amazing from the get-go at blending into high society and navigating the world of fine arts auctions, so the work she must do to "blend in" seem pretty easy for her. Once I got into it, I liked it enough but did yell at it in frustration a few times.

Rating: 3.25 stars

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki

Talking cats read astrological charts for people. I'm not sure what prompted me to put this on my to-read list. I really should keep track of it. It wasn't what I was expecting but to be fair to it, it is pretty clear in the description that's what it's about, so that's on me. A café appears to people seemingly in their dreams, staffed by talking cats who explain to people why things aren't going right in their lives via astrological readings. I'm not big on astrology so this might have been more of a hit for me otherwise. Also I bet if a talking cat serving me tasty drinks and snacks was teaching me astrology I'd be more into it. Maybe not for me, but it felt successful it what it was trying to do and it is a quick read so if astrology is your thing, this is a cozy read.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Total pages read

1,838

Fiction

83%

Female authors

67%

BIPOC authors

33%

US authors

33%

Rereads

33%

Translation

17%

Book club book

17%

Format

audiobook: 83%

ebook: 17%

Where'd I get the book

library: 67%

gift: 17%

Kindle/Audible: 17%

Decade published

1810s: 17%

2020s: 83%

Resolution books

83%

Pride & Prejudice is published a bit before 2000 and by a UK author

The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder and Knife Skills for Beginners are both by UK authors

One of the 2 authors for The Personal Librarian is Black (which I'm not splitting the % of how it counts towards total because that is too much work)

The Full Moon Coffee Shop is by a Japanese author and is a translation

*I've been reading random, boring-to-a-six-year-old books to help my son get to sleep after reading his usual bedtime stories.

2024 Year End Stats

2024 was another busy year. I said in my last wrap up post how we'd moved (and then moved again) because the housing market is crazy in this neck of the woods. It's no less crazy now but the good news is that we were able to somehow find something in our preferred neighborhood, not far from the place we were renting which meant there was no need to worry about pulling Matthew out of school because we were still in the district. We moved in May but are still in the process of unpacking (it feels like a never ending task) but the books are unpacked! All 980 of them! 

Work has also been something. Again, in my post last year I mentioned I started a new job because my old one sold the brands I was working on. I'm still at that (not so) new job, BUT this company has announced that they are selling off the brand I work on so again, things are a bit up in the air. Good news is I'm a bit more relaxed about it all because what are you gonna do? 

And then my reading for the year was surprisingly strong. Moreso than I would have thought though I couldn't really say why other than reading is great and audiobooks make it at all possible to read while having to get everything else done (cooking! cleaning! commuting!) Again. ididn't make any cool graphics which I'm sure I should have because it would definitely make this more visually interesting to look at but is just not going to happen. Instead please enjoy this list of stats compared to my historic average (2013 - 2023)

What will 2025 hold? Who knows? I 'm just going to try not to make any sudden moves or spook it in any way and we'll just see what happens. 

Total books read

63

Last year was the most books I had read in a year over the past 10 years.

This year, I exceeded that. I dunno why. Meaning I didn't go out of my way to try to read more than last year and indeed, I didn't actually realize that was the case until writing this just now. 

Historic average: 54

Year with the most books: 2024 / Year with the fewest books: 2016 & 2018 (48 books)

Total pages read

20,365

Historic average: 17,758

Year with the most pages: 2013 (21,681) / Year with the fewest pages: 2018 (13,525)

Months with the most / fewest books

November (9 books) / Feb, May, Jun, Sep (4 books)

Historic average: as I said last year, every month is either 4 or 5 books on average with the exception of July which for whatever reason is a light year and the average is 3

Months with the most / fewest pages

November (3,135) / June (1,170)

Historic average: Sept (1,699) / May & July (each with an average of 1,243)

Fiction

74%

Historic average: 60.7%

BIPOC authors

15%

Historic average: 18.7%

Female authors

56%

Historic average: 57.8%

Author's nationality

US: 52% (Historic average: 67.4%)

UK: 29% (Historic average: 20.4%)

Canada: 5% (Historic average: 1.7%)

Australia: 3% (Historic average: 2.0%)

Japan: 3% (Historic average: 1.5%)

Sweden: 3% (Historic average: 0.8%)

Malaysia: 2% (Historic average: 0.2%)

New Zealand: 2% (Historic average: 0.2%)

South Korea: 2% (New country!)

Translation

8%

Historic average: 3%

Rereads

24%

Historic average: 19%

Book format

audiobook: 85% (Historic average: 45.1%)

ebook: 10% (Historic average: 27.4%)

hardback: 5% (Historic average: 3.9%)

Where'd I get the book

library: 69% (Historic average: 29.2%)

Kindle/Audible: 19% these weren't new books but rather me finding rereads (Historic average: 34.1%)

gift: 10% (Historic average: 9.0%)

indie bookstore: 2% (Historic average: 15.6%) though a few of the gifts came from indies

Decade published

1840s: 2% (New Decade Unlocked)

1970s: 2% (Historic average: 1.4%)

2000s: 3% (Historic average: 14.9%)

2010s: 23% (Historic average: 55.7%)

2020s: 71% (Historic average: 15.3%)

Top Genres

Mystery: 33% (Historic average: 10.2%)

Adult fiction: 10% (I didn't have this genre previously and I dunno even know if it's entirely right now but whatever)

Fantasy: 7% (Historic average: 5.2%)

Humor: 7% (Historic average: 7.3%)

Literary Fiction: 7% (Historic average: 9.8%)

Resolution books

55%

Historic average: 49%

December Reading Wrap-Up

December is always such a crazy month. It's a fun month. We had fun this month. But there's just so much going on it feels like there's stuff every weekend, and even multiple times during the week. And yes there's stress because there's so much to do and get done but Christmas was a success! We decorated gingerbread houses! We saw a symphony perform the music of A Muppet Christmas Carol (the best Xmas movie, IMO) while watching the movie so the monster's first trip to the movies could be a fancy one. We had family over for Christmas Eve. We spent Christmas Day in the city. We took a quick trip to D.C.

It was also, surprisingly, a month with a lot of reading again. As I mentioned in a previous post, some of this is because I've been reading to Matthew at night (beyond his normal routine of kids books) so that's contributing. Then there's the fact that I'm trying to replace some social media scrolling with something better (sometimes that's reading, sometimes it's MarioKart). Let's see how January goes.

Total books read

6

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Have you ever wondered about the science of actually getting people up into space? And did you know that the early space missions were way grosser than I might have initially considered? (Did you know it takes about 5-7 days before your body quits producing so much body oil, because that's about how long it takes clothes to reach a saturation point, because bathing in space is a challenge!) This was a book I read to Matthew as he was sleeping, with a fair amount of skipping bits that were let's say not six-year-old appropriate. Interesting and makes me appreciate all of the details that go into something like this.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

It's really more like Grandmother, Mother, Daughter since in this case Lana, a high-powered realtor in LA finds herself staying with her daughter Beth and granddaughter Jack in a small northern CA town as she battles cancer, missing her old life. But murder night is right in the name so you know something is gonna happen and in this case it's that Jack comes across a dead body and when the cops start looking into Jack, Lana decides she needs to figure out what's going on and clear her granddaughter. 

This was described as Gilmore Girls but with murder and I have seen maybe 2-3 episodes of Gilmore Girls but the tone of this seemed pretty far from what I remember of that show, so keep that in mind if that's a big selling point.

Rating: 3.8 stars

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Martha has had something of an unconventional upbringing, with a sculptor mother and an aspiring poet father. Beyond that, something has been wrong with her since she was a teen, where she would spend days in bed. It's a story of mental health and Martha's relationships, especially that with her husband Patrick. The story is far more Sorrow than Bliss (there's a La Croix of bliss). But it's mostly Martha self-sabatoging over and over again, knowing she doesn't want to be like this but seemingly unable to help herself.  I liked the style of writing and some turn of phrases but perhaps the weeks following the election were not the right time for a book with so much sorrow.

Rating: 3.65 stars

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I've basically read it every year around this time and I love it each time. Even knowing it's going to make be bawl repeatedly.

Rating: 5 stars

The Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

The second in the Diviners series. I read the first a few years ago and I don't have a particular reason for waiting so long between books but it was enough time to forget most of what happened. Luckily this gave me enough to remember the important beats while not giving a full recap of The Diviners. We're still in 1920s NYC, following Evie (reads objects), Sam (great pitpocket and something of a conman), Theta (Ziegfield girl with a past), Henry (New Orleans musician who can lucid dream), Memphis (healer), and the others we met in the first book as they navigate a world of speakeasies, occult museums and now dreams with the aid of a new character Ling who can contact the dead through dreams. But there's a sleeping sickness sweeping through the city and is it more than a virus. There are a lot of plates spinning with this book and a lot of characters to keep track of, with various levels of success. But the story kept me engaged and interested and I'm sure I'll read the next book in the series. Maybe this time I won't even wait 2 years to pick it up.

Rating: 4 stars

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Come on, you know this one. Good for the season and apparently entertaining enough for my six-year-old that even though I didn't think he was paying attention, once we finished the book he asked if we could read it again.

Rating: 4.75 stars

Total pages read

2,056

Fiction

83%

Female authors

67%

BIPOC authors

0%

US authors

50%

Rereads

50%

Book club

17%

Format

audiobook: 50%

ebook: 33%

hardback: 17%

Where'd I get the book

Kindle/Audible: 50%

Library: 50%

Decade published

1840s: 17%

2000s: 17%

2010s: 33%

2020s: 33%

Resolution books

50%

Sorrow & Bliss is by a New Zealand author

The Graveyard Book by a UK author

A Christmas Carol is also by a UK author and oh also, originally published a bit before 2000

A new bed time reading routine

As probably isn't a huge surprise, bedtime routines in this household involve a fair amount of reading. For the small one, this means reading a handful of books before going to bed. This has evolved from simple stories (I can probably still recite Goodnight, Moon, Time for Bed, and DinoSnores by heart) to a series of different picture books and lately with some graphic novels and chapter books thrown in. 

The most recent choices have been Calvin and Hobbes (where he definitely identifies with Calvin), sometimes Dogman as well as various chapter books, notably The Magic Tree House series, Wayside School and most recently some A to Z Mysteries. 

But just because we turn the lights out, doesn't mean stories stop. Because then it's time for Bedtime Meditations for Kids which sounds like a series of stories but really it's one about going to a forest and finding a tree guy and learning to talk to the trees (hence why we just call it "The Tree Story"). This is a story that has played at least once (and some nights multiple times) every night for the past 3 years. Another story I can recite by heart.

Earlier this month, we've made another story addition. One night, he couldn't sleep and we were already starting our third performance of the The Tree Story. Sometimes when he's up late at night because he's sick, and I'm trying to get his mind off how he's feeling, I'll read him another story. But since he was feeling fine (just couldn't settle) and I didn't want to turn on the lights, I offered to read aloud the book I was reading on my phone, which happened to be Bill Bryson's At Home. Now, to be clear, I was reading this because I enjoyed it. I've read it before, I wanted something I already owned and that I knew I liked. So I say this next part with love but I figured a history of a home and how it got there would not be the most exciting thing to a six-year-old and hoped to bore him to sleep.

Good news! It worked and he fell asleep fairly quickly. AND he enjoyed it. I had already started looking through my ebook library for another child-appropriate books so I was ready for him the next night when he asked that I read him something (while The Tree Story played in the background). Thus did we begin Mary Roach's Packing for Mars. Which, TBH, involved a lot more bits that I had to skip over while reading (not that masturbating chimps isn't funny). Luckily since he's mostly falling asleep he doesn't seem to notice this jumps.

Following Packing for Mars, we decided to go for something seasonally appropriate and read A Christmas Carol. So far, this method seems to be working. And I'm going to need to pick out some more books-for-me-but-also-ones-that-I-can-read-aloud-to-him. Perhaps Pride and Prejudice as our next choice.