Set in a rural farm area amongst a devout religious community it is a searing portrait of grief and the many unhealthy ways it manifests in a family when left alone. Other circumstances conspire to make an unbearable situation even worse, culminating in a final action, final sentence that is a punch in the gut. OOoft.

3.5⭐, #FoodandLit, #Netherlands, #LGBTQIA2025 #SurpriseEnding

This became available Dec 27th just as I wanted something light to read.

It's wartime England and the Redpath's invited their elderly, eccentric rich uncle to spend the holiday in their village, hoping he'll enjoy himself and favor them in his will. Instead he turns up dead the morning after their party. Most of the plot is a mess of confusion as the police try to determine how he died and every Redpath's story is contradictory.

It was fine.

Reading too many books at once so nothing gets finished quickly!

I'm enjoying The Idiot, but the ebook was taken back by the library so now I have to read the paperback, which'll take longer. I'm about halfway through HF for #RiseUpReads I finished TDoE for #Netherlands #FoodandLit. Ooft, what a book, what a surprise ending. I'm working through TSoAwM and forsee a Met Museum hunt in my future. Tagged book was for a global reading goal. #Bolivia

I read quite a few books in December and it's hard to pick. In the end, the tagged was the most most emotionally involving (and harrowing!). The first half is rather slow with so.much.description of poverty and (TW) dog fighting . But the depiction of living through Hurricane Katrina was masterful.

#12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

A collection of short stories by a 19th Century German author. The title story is sort of a ghost story, with much digression into the backstory. It was interesting to see the framing techniques used so that the author could present the end of the tale before proceeding to have a character relate a linear narrative.

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Set this aside to read to year‘s end/the new year, it should have been the perfect, contemplative book full of descriptions. As mentioned often in the text, the experience of space is both mundane and magnificent and this slim book attempts to convey both. Vignette-style there are glimpses of the six space station astronauts, their thoughts, and even flashes of earth-bound incidents. Best read with a meditative mindset, which I could not obtain.

Virginia Woolf also wrote “normal“ narratives. #12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

The tagged conveniently became available just now a week or so after Christmas...

Hopefully I'll read at least some of the books pictured for #Bookspinbingo.

With over 600 pages of short stories, this was almost the only thing I read in September. Even if I had read more books, this might still be a pick. So many great stories by European & North American authors known (thanks to the 1001-Books list!) and quite a few new to me as well.

#12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

Well that was a several-day pain in the .....

I will never make these ribbon cookies again. The only good thing is several of them were, by default, too ugly to gift so I ate enough of them to feel a little sick.

A tradition that I started in covid times is to spend the afternoon of my birthday visiting Brooklyn bookstores and buying a book or two at each. This year was a little different - I only visited three stores, but still managed to buy almost too many to carry!

This was a two month read, began during my July vacation and finished in August. Written in three sections, some was more interesting than others, but overall an engrossing read. #1001Books

#12booksof2024 @andrew65

July was vacation month and I read a lot of books. There may have been some I gobbled up faster, but this was an excellent read. Just a grounded, very well written story of a family and society in transformation.

#12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

June was not a great reading month, so this is the best of the bunch. Another book I would not have discovered without the #1001books list.

This book was a fascinating, digressive wild ride. If you're able to accept the male chauvinist redneck attitudes, it is quite the slow-moving train wreck.

#12booksof2024 @Andrew65

I only read three books in April and this is the one I enjoyed the most.

#12booksof2024
@Andrew65

A good straightforward story and March seems a good month to choose a book set in Ireland.

#12booksof2024
@Andrew65

It's not too late to begin holiday baking is it?

Maybe my best book of the year -- a perfect novella.

#12booksof2024 @Andrew65

While “Death in Rome“ might arguably be a “better“ book, thought-provoking and well-written, few books are as much fun as the Murderbot series.

#12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

Well, I can't say this was on my radar. I was expecting one of the books about Mary Toft that were all the rage a while back.

I usually have a busy Christmas Eve with family in MN, so I don't participate in Jolabokaflod. By the time I realized I wasn't traveling this year, I had missed the sign up. So, I decided to substitute the Strandbooks "blind date with a book". And, of course, I also bought some backups in case it didn't work out.

First snow of the year. Happy Winter Solstice!

🙄 December 😆

Who doesn't love a Venn diagram?

Once again I will pretend that i am going to read some of these books. #BookSpinBingo

As always, I am stuck in the past...

But it's fun to see if I recognize any of NYT's "100 Notable Books of 2024".

"During the afternoon there had been a christening."

#FirstLineFridays

Just about to start this collection of stories.

#WhereAreYouMonday

Multi-generational story beginning outside Ipoh, Malaysia. I am waiting to return to the storyline of the daughter that sees ghosts.

I have two books on the go -- the pictured book is my evening read, when I'm not too tired, and the tagged book is my on-the-go book.

Not making very quick progress in either these days.

Mini haul from the Brooklyn Book Festival. It was a miserable rainy day and many vendors couldn't display their books. I was better this year about checking to see what was available at the library and mostly only buying harder to find books (or the ones with good deals). I always buy from Gaudy Boy, a very small press that publishes SE Asia authors and other harder to find areas. Tagged book is an anthology of Burmese writers.

Anyone else see this tour and spend most of it trying to read the book titles? Just me?

I'm okay with that.

August #BookSpinBingo! #Spin is also my choice for #Jamaica for #FoodandLit, so that's convenient.

Just a few books to finish July.

Published in 2020 and probably written earlier, some political/policy details have changed, but the overarching stories of exploitation and abuse depressingly remain the same. The author, DACA recipient and Harvard grad, reports on the non-inspirational immigrant stories: day laborers, restaurant workers, delivery people, elderly. Weaving her story of the stress and illness of being undocumented into the stories of their unrelenting challenges.

The best part of these type of lists is getting excited all over again for the books you have but haven't read yet.

A fun list, kind of weird given how it was created. Really didn't like the number one book.

Opening with NYE in 1979 London, Liz and her closest friends from university, Alix and Esther now entering their 50s, weather the changes of the early eighties. From a divorce after 25 years of a "modern" marriage to disillusion with the socialist left, to leaving London and the UK altogether.

Written without chapters, the narrative flows from one character to the next, incorporating dozens of narrators to provide a full picture of the times.

A perfect plane book. The first black sheriff in a small Virginia town discovers a gruesome serial killer. The ensuing deaths are not dwelt upon and there's not too much plodding details, but some social commentary, and its just suspenseful enough, without making one''s heart race.

@TheAromaofBooks Feeling pretty good about July's #BookSpinBingo.

“I'm equally sure, however, that I won't walk into a lamp-post while reading {literature}, like I did with {a legal thriller} all those years ago; you don't walk into lamp-posts when you're reading literary novels, do you?“

#wondrouswednesday
@eggs

I haven't been able to settle into a read for a while. The top stack is on pause. The fat book is Wilhelm Meister.

So I picked up a more standard, modern story (tagged) and a short story collection (Where the Wild Ladies Are).

TSotLC is fine, plodding, but I will finish it.

The Things They Curried

“They curried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles...“

@SlateGreySkies

#BridgertonMe

Well, that was .... interesting.

How could I not stop at this Philly brewpub once I learned of its existence?

Admittedly this was never going to be for me. Sure, I could make the meat dishes without or substitute vegetarian options, but her recipes have really good flavor combinations, so it'd defeat the purpose. I like the ingredients listed by category.

I made seven vegetable dishes three of which were very good and one that was awful. She tends to use way more oil than I like, but if she ever publishes a vegetable side cookbook I would buy it!

While I really like the layout and the cute graphic for nutrition information, this is not a cookbook for me. Low-carb in this case means using chick pea flour for all breads, cauliflower rice instead of regular rice and vegetables instead of pasta.

I only wanted to make about 10-12 of the 75 recipes. But the ones I made were all good and one was amazing. I now follow her on social media, hoping to collect the handful of amazing recipes.

For the last two hours, I've been asleep, sitting on a fashionable novel. It's the only part of the body you can read it with.

#catsoflitsy #Bert

#BookSpinBingo for May. i haven't gotten a bingo in a while, but work is less busy, so who knows?

@TheAromaofBooks

Weekly Report

Wilhelm Meister is going slowly, I can't seem to get into it. SaGN is rather wordy and dense in a different way, but fun. And the short stories are a nice late night read.