My reactions to this novel cycled through, 1) "Oh, this is good," 2) "Um, ew?" 3) "Wait...what?" 4) "Why is this guy fighting so much?" Overall, it's a unique look at how family secrets and dysfunctional habits can surface in the face of grief. It presents the reordering of a family as a sort of forced metamorphosis, especially the part where the caterpillar becomes, like, soup before becoming a butterfly. Soft pick. #castthedie #tob25 longlist

This is a lovely assortment of creepy holiday stories, sort of like the seasonal ghost story version of a Whitman's Sampler (which used to capture my imagination as a child, with its little map and exotic-sounding candy names). I feel like there's a little bit for everyone here. My favorites at the moment are the stories by Christopher Golden and Kaaron Warren, but each story in the collection holds its own. (No icky orange creams.)

I wouldn't say I'm *ready* for January (or 2025), but having my #bookspin and #castthedie list ready puts me a little farther along the preparedness path. I've got my #roll100 titles on there, my gift books (some of which I've not received yet), and a lot of #tob25 shortlist titles that I may or may not be able to procure before the end of the month.

@TheAromaofBooks @PuddleJumper

I felt well enough yesterday to lead my offspring in finally constructing and decorating gingerbread houses. We still don't know what I have (not covid, not pneumonia), but there's incremental improvement each day. It's really messing up all of our fancy plans for the holiday break. At least I have energy for some low-key fun stuff...and reading!

Camille is working hard to help me continue recovering from this illness that's still holding on rather more tightly than I'd prefer it to. She stays by me all night, even with all of my coughing and tossing and turning. I'm feeling incrementally better each day. It's slow, but it's progress. At least I have lots to read---and kitty snuggles, of course.

Check out the gorgeous book covers my spouse got me for Christmas! He wrapped them around library books he got from deep in my TBR list, as is our tradition (the library books...the book covers are a new thing). I'm told there are a bunch more coming in, but so far, I have the tagged, plus Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams and Haven by Emma Donoghue. Perfect for #ReadOutTheOld!

This is my third by Chapman, and it might be my favorite. It's got some small tense issues and a timeline or two that don't match up (if someone has three kids in quick succession, those kids will no longer be children after 40 years pass), but perhaps these are intentional, given the narrator. It's an interesting look at grief and vengeance. So, perfect for reading on Christmas? (No, I need some Frank Capra now.)

The timeline in this one is confusing, and the lead-up is long and deliberate while the reveal is almost peremptory. I like the Chicago history, and I like what it says about the past sticking with us, but as a ghost story/fairytale retelling/police procedural, it doesn't really work for me.

Camille says that my fever makes me perfect biscuit-making temperature, but she would prefer if I stopped coughing so much (she and I both!).

Took a break from reading the tagged (and trying to relax my way out of whatever non-covid illness it is that I have) to enjoy the lights at the botanic garden with my family. Each display was paired with music. It was very cool!

Went to town making cookies this year! Chocolate gingerbread and Finnish cardamom (thanks to @Bookwormjillk !) modified to be GF and dairy-free, sugar & spice, snickerdoodles, and no-bakes modified from my great-grandma's recipes to be GF and dairy-free, and sugar cutouts filled with gluten and butter at a decorating station (not pictured).

I liked this one a lot to start with, but by the time we got to the story from Ellen's perspective, I was fatigued and stopped feeling invested in the story and the future that Ko imagines. I don't really get the connection between these three characters, and the 40-year leap is jarring.

Camille said I should finish this book in print instead of audio so we could spend some snuggle time together. She pointed out that this is also a great chance to enjoy my morning decaf and put the heating pad on my sore back before the day gets busy. How did I get such a wise cat?

Ooh! I like this one a lot! In some ways, it reminds me of Martha Wells's Murderbot in that the main character is a (partial) outsider whose perspective on Earth and our species and Americans even more specifically is more poignant because she lacks an expectation of shared humanity with those she observes. It asks the reader, who on the planet *isn't* a visitor here? This is one I want to mull for a while and perhaps gift to a couple of people.

This novel is longer than it seems. It unfolds in a similar way to many Japanese novels I've read, peopled by characters with rich internal lives and busy but somewhat held-back lives. It makes me think of the pressure that builds up when playing a double-reed instrument. The main character is recognizing this pressure through the article she's writing and trying to identify ways to opt out of some of the pressure. I enjoyed it.

I'm trying something a little new on my blog. I've posted an article with an in-depth reaction to the tagged book along with audio of me reading the post, for those who'd like a podcast or audiobook effect (it's about the pace of a podcast but with just one voice like most audiobooks):
http://imperfecthappiness.org/2024/12/10/on-mastery/

If you visit the article, please let me know what you think!

Like many books in this genre, this could be a lot shorter, and the quote selection is sloppy (there is one hilariously misattributed to Mark Twain), but chapters 15 and onward on mastery and scheduling to support mastery are quite helpful. Nothing groundbreaking, but the concepts are ordered in such a way that they click for me. Very man-oriented, very geared towards a specific kind of career, but I think it's translatable to my situation.

Birthday bathroom selfie. In typical grown-up fashion, it's pretty much a regular day, but I'm experienced enough that I've structured my regular days with playing and singing, so it's pretty okay. And since I have a December birthday, I've been saying I'm my new age for 6 months, so that part's not a surprise, either! (Or at least not a huge surprise.) Almost done with the tagged book, which I'm finding pretty helpful after a rocky start.

Silo likes when my quest to live a purposeful life intersects with his life's purpose. He's pretty sure I should be blocking out more time for cozy lap snuggles.

I start Tuesday as a weekly volunteer reading picture books aloud to two UTK classes. This morning I'm prepping: practicing my voices, coming up with questions to engage the students, reviewing strategies for working with wiggly 4-year-olds. I'm pretty excited!

I like the girls school setting of this novel, but I think it would be more interesting without the political intrigue. Poirot also feels like a gratuitous addition here.

No pigeons in this photo, but we have the cat.

Audiocooking while trying to help Poirot figure out whodunnit. After dinner, the second of four concerts this week. December is a busy month when you have musicians in the family.

Three favorites (I couldn't choose between the many Claymation classics from my childhood, which all get honorable mentions):

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
2. It's a Wonderful Life
3. The Holdovers (newer, and we'll see if it keeps its spot on my favorites list as the years progress)

#ThreeListThursday @dabbe

1. Making pumpkin pie at least twice (Thanksgiving and my birthday), lasagna for Christmas dinner, tidepooling, seeing light displays (professional and amateur).

2. Tagged, but really all of them. I'm just looking forward to reading!

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

I didn't love this one, but it's an enjoyable read. The characters are a little simplistic, and the creatures' mythology is a little complicated for my taste, but the plot is interesting, and I like how Compton blends vampire tales from many regions and times. There are a couple of places where characters are just like, "Yes, this totally outlandish thing makes perfect sense," which I find a little jarring.

This is almost a record: Only two days into the month, and I've published my “what I read last month“ post (along with a few paragraphs about the challenges I have planning solo travel): https://imperfecthappiness.org/2024/12/02/bookends-november-2024/

Ready for December! #bookspin is Kill Your Darling, #doublespin is Butter, and #castthedie include Kill Creek, Home Truths, Black Sheep, and Brat. This month will be busy, but hopefully I'll find some time to read, too.

@TheAromaofBooks @PuddleJumper

My completed November #bookspinbingo card. No bingos, but I completed my #bookspin and #doublespin titles.

@TheAromaofBooks

I should have bailed on this one. The science is bad, but I could have dealt with that if the story were better. It's excruciatingly slow, and so much of it makes little sense. The characters are inconsistent and extreme. Cutter seems to be making a "this is teenagers" argument, but all the characters are like this regardless of age (and it's a reductive way to view teenagers, anyway).

My December #bookspin and #castthedie list (21-24/25 are free choice for both). A lot of these are physical books that I already have on hand, which will be a challenge for me as I've grown accustomed to doing most of my reading by audiobook.

@TheAromaofBooks @PuddleJumper

https://wapo.st/4fMyQHG

Significant overlap with the #ToB25 longlist. I've only read two of these (so far), and one of those was a DNF. What are your thoughts? Would you include different titles in a Best of 2024 list?

I have mixed feelings about this title from the #ToB25 longlist. In many ways, I love this novel. I love the uncertainty about the narrator's reliability and what it says about trauma and family and internalizing/blaming oneself for bad things that happen and how predators use this to their advantage. But the path it takes is through some terrain reminiscent of the 1980s pulp novels I read from my mom's bookshelf, which takes away from the effect.

I got a little excited while visiting our brand new library branch (now we have two branches within two miles of our house!) and checked out four titles from the #ToB25 longlist (plus one more just for fun). Now to tell my secretary to clear my schedule so I have time to read them.

But I guess that means I first need to get a secretary.

I made the most of last night's insomnia by putting together my #roll100 list for 2025! I dug pretty deep into my TBR for a lot of these, and I remembered why I've been procrastinating reading many of them. I'm planning to be lenient with myself about DNFing if my brain isn't up to the task with some of these.

@PuddleJumper

Reminiscent of Atwood, this novel is a chilling portrayal of the way that government can use (and does use) the threat of child removal to enforce compliance from subsets of a population. It's also a great reminder of what privilege looks like, especially in times of crisis. This novel helps me reframe my potential role under an autocratic government, given my race, gender, age, marital status, and economic situation. And it's also a great story.

I'm reading too much or too fast this past week and as a result, things are steeped in unreality and the emotional ambience of each novel is seeping into my daily life, which is unsettling, especially since I'm reading a lot of dystopian fiction and books in which people act poorly, repeatedly and after they really should know better.

So, time to touch base with the real world. Pelicans always remind me of little pteranodons.

Another down from the #ToB25 longlist. The characters in this novel are realistic and complex, which means they're also maddening. They make stupid choices and jump to conclusions and repeat the same patterns of behavior over and over. But I liked reading this novel. The flow of the story feels right to me, and even my frustration with George and his total self-involvement is satisfying, in a way.

Many thanks to @BarbaraBB for sharing the link to the #ToB25 longlist...I'm supposed to be on their mailing list, but the longlist was surprisingly challenging to locate.

I've interacted with 8 of the longlist titles (finished 6, DNFed 2). There are several I'm excited about, but mostly I feel like, didn't we JUST do #ToB24???

I enjoyed this one a lot (despite it dragging a bit towards the end). Walker is so spot-on about public reactions to the discovery and spread of a novel virus, I could hardly believe that this was published in 2019. With one kid at college near the mountains east of LA and another who goes to camp every year in the mountains there, I had a lot of stored imagery to apply to the setting of this novel (but I think I would have liked it anyway).

Audiowalk while waiting for my kiddo at the community college. I keep looking at the publication date; I'm amazed this novel was written before the pandemic. Walker must have had major déjà vu in 2020.

Camille says, "You might wonder why I've asked you all here today."

I don't wonder, though; I know it's because we're readers, and she knows that if she sits here long enough, one of us (probably me) will join her with a book (possibly the tagged book), and then her plan will be complete.

I'm giving this one a so-so rating. The characters are interesting, but I live in the part of the country where this story is set, and some inconsistencies bother me (the assertion that hawks don't live in the suburbs when they so do, the common existence of daily school buses in a place where bus service is rare). Also, I don't really get why plants can't grow because there's not enough light when there are still equal amounts of light and dark.

I enjoyed this collection of pandemic stories, even though---like the days during lockdown---the stories tend to blend into one another. In these stories, Doyle explores with sensitivity issues of connection, estrangement, vulnerability, mental illness, substance abuse, and grief. I know a lot of people still don't like revisiting that time, but I find it intriguing and therapeutic to look back at those years that have influenced so much.

My history-loving son has walking pneumonia, so I suggested we spend some time watching this book-adjacent series together while he waits for the antibiotics to do their work. He said, "Mom, that looks like the kind of show a middle-aged woman would watch."

I argued that, while I am, in fact, a middle-aged woman, that doesn't mean teenaged history buffs wouldn't like the show, too.

And then I left him to his Discord and his D&D YouTube videos.

While this novel was maybe a little on the nose in a few spots (and the implied future love interest is NOT the person I expected it to be), I enjoyed reading it. The characters are interesting, and I look forward to reading more about them and what they get themselves into. Based on this installment, I think it's quite likely that Marsons's writing will become more skillful as the series progresses.

This one starts out quite creepy with the story unfolding in a gradual, satisfying way, but then it takes a fork in the road that doesn't quite work for me. There's a plot point that seems central but then kind of gets sidelined, and the logic behind the haunting kind of breaks down. Still a good read, even though it loses steam in the second half.

Back during the big pandemic years, I bought this book and Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom. After I finished the Snyder, I needed some time to recover, so I let this one sit on the shelf. Now seems like a good time to get to it. I especially want to read the "how to save it" part.

Although the plot is different, the tone of this novel reminds me of Six of Crows. Wells's skill at worldbuilding and creating three-dimensional characters is evident. Occasionally I found the action difficult to follow, especially with some of the more out-there locations, but overall it was an engrossing read.

More gross than spooky for me. It makes some interesting statements about addiction, but it kind of goes off the rails in a way that doesn't quite work for me. I'm not sure what's inspiring so much of the fungus horror these days. Maybe candida overgrowth controlling our actions?

My October Bookends post is up!

https://imperfecthappiness.org/2024/11/09/bookends-october-2024/

I'm writing it late at night after a long day, so I hope it's coherent.