December was a crazy month of reading for me! I read 17 books!!! But I was on vacation for 5 days, we had 2 4+ hour flights, and we had 2 3+ hour round trip drives to my parents to drop off/pick up the boys. I read a ton on vacation and for a good chunk of those drives/flights so it all adds up! Plus work was very quiet the week between Christmas and New Years so I read when I had downtime, too. And I am just generally a fast reader, I think. But I do plan to talk about how I fit reading in when I post about my 2022 reading stats later this month.
Best of the Best
These 6 books were my favorites. We All Want Impossible Things made me cry and that's saying something because I rarely cry when reading books. It's about a woman dying in hospice so I knew it was going to be sad going into it, but I loved it. This Time Tomorrow featured time travel which is something I usually don't love in a novel, but it was done very well. In this book the protagonist's father is in the hospital in critical condition, but the protagonist is able to travel back in time and gets more time with her father. The Swimmers was a beautiful, slim novel about dementia. All That's Left Unsaid was one of my top reads of 2022 - it's about a murder in an immigrant community in Sydney. Catastrophic Happiness is a non-fiction book about raising kids. I was nodding my head along as she talked about toddlers. Lastly, Tranquility by Tuesday is a great book about time management. There are 9 rules to follow - like "Effortful before Effortless" and "Three Times a Week is a Habit." I love Laura!
Great to Pretty Good
This next chunk of books were 3-4 star reads. Flight takes place during the first Christmas after a family has lost their matriarch. The author has to have experienced siblings drama because the sibling drama she writes about it so very accurate. Funny You Should Ask is a very light romance that was a good break from lots of heavy, sad reads. Weather Girl was a romance that I wanted to love as it featured a protagonist that struggled with depression, but I did not find the conflict believable. The Brilliant Life of Eudora Welty has Man Called Ove vibes and is very heart-warming! Remarkably Bright Creatures was good but was way too over-hyped by the time I read it so was kind of destined to disappoint. One Hundred Saturdays is a non-fiction book about a holocaust survivor. The author spends nearly every Saturday with her over the course of 4+ years, hearing her life story.
The Complicities is loosely based on the Bernie Madoff situation and explores culpability. I wanted to like
Our Missing Hearts more than I did as I loved Ng's first 2 novels. The last 1/3 is a wonderful but I really struggled to get into this book.
Cover Story is a story of a fraudster that gives you Inventing Anna vibes. I was so annoyed by the younger 20-something character in this book so that dropped my rating.
Good morning, monster was really good and almost made the best of the best list. It's the story of 5 patients a therapist worked with during her career. Their stories are absolutely heart breaking so trigger warnings abound.
The book I basically hated
Well, this book won the Goodreads award for Best Science Fiction - but I kind of hated it. I should have abandoned it but it was just over 200 pages and got such rave reviews so I stuck with it. Science fiction rarely works for me, but I wanted to like another St. John Mandel book since I loved Station Eleven so much. But this put the final nail in the coffin for this author for me and I won't read any more of her work. It's not her - it's me, though as everyone else seems to love her recent work.
The boys' books
The boys got lots of Christmas/winter books as part of their Advent calendar. But they were not as excited about these books as they were about last year's books. We didn't re-read many of the books. I enjoyed reading new Christmas books so it wasn't all bad. But I need to come up with something different next year. And we really do not need more books in our house, especially Christmas-themed ones!
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| First book of December! |
The best update I have is that Will is finally getting into books! Paul was interested in books from a very young age and had a very long attention span for them, but Will has been completely different and I feared that I messed up and didn't read enough to him - even though we read to him at bedtime and naptime and he got a ton of "second hand" reading when I would read to Paul while he played with toys. But now Will brings books to us and seems to enjoy them more than he did in the past. Of course his favorites are anything having to do with trucks!
Did you read anything great in December?
14 comments:
I'm so happy you liked Catherine Newman, as you know, she is one of my favourites.
Okay, interesting about Our Missing Hearts. I got that for Christmas, and I am so excited to read it because I loved Ng's other two books and it's been so long since she's published. I SHALL REPORT BACK.
Mmm, I liked This Time Tomorrow and I generally do not like time travel! I am a practical girl and I just can't get behind the concept.
I just added about 6 new books to my holds at the library due to all of your recommendations! I am so excited! I don't really read a lot of book blogs or articles so it is always nice to have a place to find good books. Having said that, I just finished Bright Creatures and I find it quite endearing. Who doesn't love a cheeky but sweet octopus / old lady friendship!? However, I live under a rock and did not read any reviews about this book; I just picked it because it had a bright and cheery cover!
As you know, I did not love Sea of Tranquility or Glass Hotel, which is too bad, as I also did like Station Eleven. That could be just another story of a three book deal gone bad... The other author that many like but I feel is not for me is Colleen Hoover. I could not finish November 9; it was SO BAD. I also don't mind a light romance from time to time, but find them quite pithy sometimes (People You Meet on Vacation - retch). I know I am not in the majority here, but c'est la vie.
Oh, good Lord. I have just added SO many of these to my wish list!!!
What an impressive reading month! How awesome :)
I haven't read that Emily St. John Mandel book. I DO like science fiction, but she doesn't usually write sci-fi. Station Eleven is dystopian (I guess you could call it sci-fi, but it's a stretch) and The Glass Hotel is a contemporary story. I just read through her other book descriptions and most of them sound like contemporary mystery/thriller types. If you don't like her writing, that's fine, but I think she's a very versatile writer in genre!
Fair point! She is a versatile writer. This latest book was firmly sci-fi but her other books weren’t. I have only read her last 3 and the last 2 were big misses for me. But I shouldn’t classify her as a sci-fi writer.
I also wanted to like weather girl and just could not even. I gave up midway through. I love Catherine Newman and forgot she had a new novel-- putting it on hold right away-- thanks!
I do not like science fiction type stuff either. Or much in the way of fantasy or dystopian. Although, I never say never, because I have read a few books over the years in my "non-preferred genres" and have ended up finding books that I really loved!! So you never know. I will say, you sure read a bunch of books with pretty covers! They make the most well coordinated collages. haha! Did you do that on purpose? ;) The only one I've read is Tranqulity by Tuesday. But that's normal.... I'm never a trend setter in books! I like knowing I can always refer back to your book posts though when I need a good fiction recommendation.
And p.s. The boys are loving their Kindles! Thanks again for the tips. Ethan especially seems fascinated by being able to access a book with just a quick click. There is always something so charming to me about a REAL book, so I have felt a few twinges of sadness, hoping they don't completely abandon paper books... but overall, I definitely think they were a great gift idea!!
I heard a lot of people hated Sea of Tranquility, so you're not alone. Boy, your little guys are cute. I love that they books so much! Well done, Lisa!
I have yet to read Sea of Tranquility or Our Missing Hearts, but now I am really curious to see if I will have opposite reactions to each of them! Maybe you and I are book opposites! (Which can be just as helpful as having a book twin.)
Your kiddos are such cutie pies. Love that you always do a "what WE read" post instead of just what you read.
Let’s see if I can comment on your blogger blog via my iPad. :)
I listened to a book that I liked, One Italian Summer, by Rebecca Serle. It’s a time travel book. I’m not generally a big time travel fan, but I did enjoy this one.
You read 17 BOOKS in December??? I don't want to confess how many (few) I read last month. I have to say that most of your favorites sound kind of sad. I do want to read Tranquility by Tuesday though- thanks for the reminder!
Our Christmas children's books only come out during December, so there is some anticipation and joy about re-discovering them. This has worked for us over the years, though my kids have almost outgrown kids' books anyway. I'm also known for ruthlessly getting rid of any but the best Christmas/winter books, so at the moment our collection is maybe 20+ books.
how did you manage to read so many books??? please share your schedules as I want to up my reading game in 2023.
I loved good morning monsters... so disturbing.
17 books! That's impressive. I always feel like I plan to read so much on vacation but then it never pans out the way I expect it to. I'm trying to be okay with having a slower reading pace these days (which is still a much higher reading pace than most!), and it's an identity shift for sure.
I loved Weather Girl, but I think I just wholly identified with the main character and I loved that the hero was fat. We don't get many of those in romances these days!
I haven't tried anything else from Emily St. John Mandel. I liked but did not love Station Eleven and her other books just don't appeal to me.
I'm really iffy on whether or not I'm going to read Our Missing Hearts. Ng's other two books have been 5-star reads, but I am just NOT hearing great things about this book, which makes me very hesitant.
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