The Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum #Ozathon24

Title: The Land of Oz
Author: L. Frank Baum
Illustrator: John R. Neill
Publication: Reilly & Lee Co., hardcover, 1904
Genre: Juvenile fantasy/series

Description: In this sequel to The Wizard of Oz, Baum returns to the magical realm to describe what happened to Dorothy’s companions, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, as well as introducing several new characters. The most important is Tip, a boy brought up by old Mombi, a witch.

Hazardous Spirits by Anbara Salam - historical fiction set in 1920s Edinburgh

Title: Hazardous Spirits
Author: Anbara Salam
Publication: Tin House Books, trade paperback, 2023
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 1920s Scotland

Description: Although Evelyn’s family experienced difficult times when she was younger, she has now been comfortably married for five years to Robert Hazard, a respectable and reasonably prosperous accountant in Edinburgh. Everything changes when he tells her he can communicate with spirits.

The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper

Title: The Couple in the Photo
Author: Helen Cooper
Publication: Putnam, trade paper, 2023
Genre: Psychological suspense
Setting: Present-day Britain

Description: When Lucy married Adam, his two best friends from university, Cora and Scott, also became her closest companions. The two couples live just minutes apart in Leicester, their four children are inseparable, and they even bought a weekend cottage together and spend all their free time rehabbing it. But one day when Lucy casually glances at a coworker’s honeymoon photos, she sees one of Scott with another woman in the Maldives when he was supposed to be in Tokyo.

A Spoonful of Time by Flora Ahn - a culinary time travel

Title: A Spoonful of Time
Author: Flora Ahn
Illustrator: Jenny Park
Publication: Quirk Books, hardcover, 2023
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Setting: Present-day California

Description: Maya lives with her widowed mother, who works at a law firm, and her grandmother, Halmunee, who moved in with them recently and may be suffering from dementia. Although Halmunee’s memory is erratic, she remembers the traditional cooking she learned as a girl in Korea and is determined to share this with Maya.

Charlotte Fairlie by D.E. Stevenson

Charlotte is the relatively new headmistress at St. Elizabeth’s, a well-regarded girls’ boarding school she attended before Oxford - she wore a dowdy hat at her interview so her male interviewers wouldn’t think she was too young. She takes pride in her work and in knowing the girls but she is lonely because befriending the staff would create jealousy. New girl Tessa MacRynne breaks through Charlotte's reserve when her parents get divorced and she tries to run away back to Scotland.  Charlotte identifies with Tessa, having gone through a

My December 2023 Reads

Holiday shopping and planning prevented me from as many December reviews as I had planned but I read some good books, although none that made my top ten for the year.  The two best were The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena and Babbacombe's by Noel Streatfeild, writing as Susan Scarlett:

Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Title: Love in the Library
Author: Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Illustrator: Yas Imamura
Publication: Candlewick, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Picture book, historical fiction
Setting: Idaho, 20th century

Description: Tama, a young woman who would normally be in college, works at the library at the Minidoka internment camp, where she and more than 13,000 other Japanese Americans were imprisoned during WWII.

Historical Fiction Round-up Post for 2023

Look how much historical fiction I read last year!  Thank you to Marg from The Intrepid Reader for her Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.  Historical fiction is one of my favorite things to read and, as you can see, it comes in various subgenres.  There is a link if I reviewed the book in 2023, with those I liked best in red. 

WWW Wednesday – January 10

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, a gothic fantasy

Title: A Study in Drowning
Author: Ava Reid
Publication: HarperCollins, hardcover, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy

Description: All her life, Effy Sayre has been obsessed with her country’s epic work, Angharad, written by the recently deceased Emrys Myrrden about an intrepid heroine who falls in love with the Fairy King and then destroys him.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow to Death of a Harvard Freshman

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022),  about friends who create a gaming company while at Harvard and MIT.  I really enjoyed this book (although found it very sad) and for about a month after I read it, I kept urging it on other people.

Favorite Reads of 2023

Although I have not yet summarized my December reading, it is the time of year when it is fun to contemplate the entire year and my top ten. Unusually for me, many were recent pubs and four were audiobooks. I think the latter is just a coincidence – sometimes I put both the hardcover and audiobook on reserve at the same time so read whichever is available first and sometimes I will opt for an available audiobook that I expect to enjoy. Seven of these ten were historical fiction, which is definitely one of my preferred genres but my favorites are generally more evenly distributed. I read a lot of books in 2023 but a number of these were rereads or children’s books, which obviously take less time to read.