December 2021 Reads

This is a little late - I got distracted by choosing my end-of-year favorites.  The first two below were the books I liked best this month. December unexpectedly yielded lots of books about sisters, some missing, some suspenseful, and some just amusing.

Fiction

The Fair Miss Fortune by D.E. Stevenson – This is one of Stevenson’s lesser-known titles, happily brought back into print in January 2022! It’s about Jane, who moves to a small town with her old nurse, planning to operate a tea shop, and all the adventures that happen to her instead.  Review to come.

November 2021 Reads

November was a great month of reading. I especially enjoyed A Single Thread, set between the wars in England; The Secret River, a historical novel about a convict rebuilding his life in Australia; State of Terror, a thriller by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny; and my reread of The Parfit Knight by Stella Riley, a regency with a blind heroine.  Also, amazingly, this is my 1000th blog post!

Bookshelf Traveling - June 20, 2020

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which is being hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.  Yes, I have hundreds of unread books in this house but hearing some of my library holds were ready made me do a little jig!

 

I was so excited to drive to Newton for Library-to-go curbside pickup yesterday!  In addition, as I drove past a small library in a nearby town, I saw a rack of books they had put outside, presumably as discards to compensate for not having their curbside pickup up and running. Naturally, I stopped to investigate! I helped myself to copies of An Old-Fashioned Girl (one of my favorite Alcotts) and an entertaining YA I read several years ago called The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You (a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing) which I think my nieces would enjoy.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Alice to The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month the book is Alice in Wonderland.  I have very pleasant memories, not only of reading it but my grandmother gave me LP versions of Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass which I listened to often as a child on my own little record player.  At one point, I could quote long passages.  Prior to this gift, I will admit I'd thought the book was called Allison Wonderland. 

Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, and Aloysius
(copyright Granada Television)

Alice made me think of my first book which begins in Oxford: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. When I visited Oxford, reminders of both books were everywhere!  Brideshead is one of the few books of which I consider the miniseries as good or better.  It really captivated viewers when it first came out, including me.  Oh, Anthony Andrews, I could watch you in anything!   In fact, I loved you in a movie of my second book:

Christmas on the Island (Book Review)

Title: Christmas on the Island

Author: Jenny Colgan

Publication: William Morrow, trade paperback, October 2018

Genre: Fiction

Plot: On the remote Scottish island of Mure, winter is stark, windy, and icy—yet the Christmas season is warm and festive . . .

It’s a time for getting cozy in front of a fire and spending time in the one pub on the island with the people you love—unless, of course, you’ve accidentally gotten pregnant by your ex-boss, and don’t know how to tell him. In the season for peace and good cheer, will Flora find the nerve to reveal the truth to her nearest and dearest? Will handsome but troubled future-father Joel think she’s the bearer of glad tidings—or is this Christmas going to be as bleak as the Highlands in midwinter?