|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0DVDQ3MXP
| unknown
| 4.15
| 1,494
| 2024
| 2024
|
Note, Feb. 6, 2025: I've just altered the stats for my personal "Read Foreign Authors" challenge, to reflect a slight change I just made in the scope
Note, Feb. 6, 2025: I've just altered the stats for my personal "Read Foreign Authors" challenge, to reflect a slight change I just made in the scope of the challenge. This year was the first one in which I officially set a reading goal, 30 books; and with 38 books read, I more than made it. My Year in Books (https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... ) gives the figure of 40, but that's counting two short stories as “books.” (But both of those were five-star reads. Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Rappaccini's Daughter,” was a reread of a favorite tale from my youth, which I wanted to interact with again and compare to the dramatic adaptation; “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote, was a seasonal read and my first introduction to his work.) In a milestone of sorts, Goodreads now credits me with having read a lifetime total (so far) of 1,500 books. For various reasons, that figure isn't exact; but it still gives a sense of accomplishment! As was the case last year, only two of the 38 books rated as low as two stars. About a third of the total, 13, earned five stars, and another 15 got four. The remaining eight earned three stars, meaning they were liked. (That high level of satisfaction is typical every year.) Three were read in electronic format, and all the rest as paper books. Review copies accounted for half a dozen books; another six I read as common reads, in five different groups. Those figures were pretty normal. But Barb and I read a new record of eight books together, and both the nine short story collections and the ten books reread were also record figures or tied records. (As I'm getting older, I'm rereading books more, being conscious that there are a number of titles read long in the past that need to be reread before they can be fairly reviewed.) On these annual summaries, I've only been recording the number of books I read that counted for the Litwit Lounge group's annual classics challenge since 2021, but this year's total of 13 is the highest so far. (The six that I read for the Action Heroine Fans group's annual challenge is a more typical number, and one over my goal of five.) And for my personal Read Foreign Authors challenge, I added five new books to the lifetime total of reads there by non-Anglo/American writers, bringing it up to 67 so far, as well as adding one newly-represented country to that list (New Zealand). Prose nonfiction made up six of my reads this year. All but one of these, the fascinating collection Irish Fairy and Folk Tales translated and compiled by the famed Irish writer and folklorist James Stephens, were by Christian authors. One of the latter, Dr. Andrew's Curious and Quirky Compendium: Hints, Helps, Perils, Pitfalls, Constructive Comments and (Hopefully) Awesome Advice for Aspiring Authors (by Andrew Seddon), is a helpful guide to the fiction writer's craft. The high ratings (four or five stars, which are rare from me for nonfiction) in this group went to The Normal Christian Church Life by 20th-century Chinese theologian Watchman Nee and Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, both rereads, and to a 2024 book, The Purposeful Love of God: Seeing God's Love from His Perspective, by an independent scholar from New Zealand, William J. Laurence. (Nee's book was the five-star; I'd originally read it in the early-to-mid 70s, but had long listed it incorrectly on my shelves as his better-known work, The Normal Christian Life.) Both rereads provided rewarding insights both new and newly-remembered, and the Laurence book was enlightening and even perspective-altering, especially in conjunction with my reading, earlier this year, of the 1918 article "The Terminology of Love in the New Testament," by B. B. Warfield, an article cited by Laurence in the book –though I partially skimmed the denser portions of the article. James Mathew Wilson, the author of the single book of poetry I read this year, Some Permanent Things, is also a Christian (of the Roman Catholic denomination). Though I didn't enjoy his work the way I do that of Donald T. Williams, I appreciated the book enough to give it three stars, and definitely consider the author a serious and significant (though not critically-recognized!) poet. With 31 novels or story collections read this year, fiction formed the biggest part of my year's reading, as it always does. 16 of these reads were descriptive fiction (and three collections straddle the descriptive-speculative divide). Within that group, the breakdown was six books of general fiction, four mysteries, three tales of action adventure/espionage, two books of historical fiction, and a single Western. So as has been usual in the last decade or so, these reads still preponderated. But with 12 novels or collections read which were speculative fiction, the dominance wasn't nearly as one sided as usual; the speculative side of the spectrum enjoyed something of a rebound this year. Supernatural fiction accounted for five books; another four were fantasy, two were science fiction, and one collection was a mixture of SF and more supernatural stories. Only a half dozen of the 28 fiction books that had single authors were by new-to-me authors; as usual, the great majority were from writers whose work I'd encountered before, though often only in a single or a few short stories. Given the sheer amount of short fiction I've read in my life, I've already encountered a LOT of authors, especially older ones, at least once. Then too, this year eight of my fiction books were rereads. Two of those were Modern Library story collections by classic writers, The Best Short Stories of Bret Harte and The Best Short Stories of O. Henry, both of which I read for the third time this year, and which not surprisingly got high ratings from me. (The former was my favorite read this year.) My five-star ratings for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (which was my favorite novel read this year!) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre' did surprise me, because I didn't care much for either in my long-ago readings as a kid or youth; but I proved to be much better able to appreciate them now. Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd was another five-star reread, especially appreciated because the wonderful discussions in the Goodreads group Works of Thomas Hardy led me to an altered and better understanding of Hardy's basic philosophical stance. Barb and I reread three fantasy novels I'd liked when we read them back in the 90s: Through the Ice by Piers Anthony and Robert Kornwise, Castle of Deception by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman, and Caught in Crystal by a favorite of ours in that genre, Patricia C. Wrede; but the reread raised all three in my estimation, and they all got high ratings from me. Among the new reads in this group, Their Eyes Were Watching God was my first read of Zora Neale Hurston's long fiction; and I now consider her one of greatest 20th-century U.S. authors. Bram Stoker surprised me with The Jewel of Seven Stars; while I'd expected to like it, I didn't think it would be the five-star read it proved to be. My first experience with Robert Heinlein's long fiction, Starship Troopers, also exceeded expectations, and both it and my other SF read this year, Victoria Unveiled by Canadian author Shane Joseph, earned four stars. Nicholas Nickleby was a wonderful read, and crosses yet another Charles Dickens novel off my bucket list. In series reading, I completed Liane Zane's excellent Unsanctioned Guardians trilogy this year, and made progress with both Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series (which I'm reading with Barb) and The Clerk of Copmanhurst's Tales by G. K. Werner. All of the books in the Avenging Angels series, which Barb and I now follow, are by different writers (A. W. Hart is a house pen name), so Peter Brandvold was a new writer to us, but though it got three stars from me, his Avenging Angels: Vengeance Trail fell short of expectations. The standout reads from new-to-me authors this year were The Hacienda by Mexican-born author Isabel Canas (which made it into my list of the year's five top reads, and was my favorite book on the speculative side) and The Mark of Zorro by pulp era writer Johnston McCulley, both earning five stars. All of the remaining three in this group, like Brandvold's, were underwhelming, though a couple also managed to get three stars. (Miss Knight and the Night in Lagos by Vered Ehsani was one of the year's two stars, worth mentioning only because it let me add Nigeria to my list of countries in the Travel the World in Books challenge I'm doing in a couple of groups.) Robert W. Chambers' work in The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories was the major disappointment of the year, since I'd expected a four or five-star read there. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jan 01, 2025
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTY7TMS1
| unknown
| 3.83
| 99
| 2013
| 2013
|
In her review of 2023 on Goodreads, my Goodreads friend Cecily commented that these annual summaries have been a Goodreads tradition “since 2013.” Tha
In her review of 2023 on Goodreads, my Goodreads friend Cecily commented that these annual summaries have been a Goodreads tradition “since 2013.” That greatly surprised me, since I'd always assumed that the “20__ on Goodreads feature” came into being in 2014, the year I stumbled onto it. But investigation revealed that Goodreads DID introduce the feature in 2013; they just never bothered to announce it. My first reaction was to feel gypped by their failure to communicate, since I really enjoy doing these summaries! But it occurred to me that this discovery affords the opportunity to do a look back to my reading of ten years ago, from the vantage point of the present, and see what's changed or remained the same in my reading patterns. Probably this isn't of much interest to anyone else; but for myself, I thought the trip back in time might be some nostalgic fun, if nothing else. So, here's my long-delayed review of 2013 on Goodreads! My total number of books read that year was in the usual range, at least 30 (34, in this case). My Year in Books (here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... ) credits me with 41. But six of those were short e-stories; and there's also some confusion over the numbering of The Deed of Paksenarrion. The latter, which was perhaps my favorite read of the year, is an omnibus volume containing an entire epic fantasy trilogy by Elizabeth Moon, and weighing in at 1,090 pages. I ultimately reviewed it as a unit (the story arc of the second book does not stand on its own very well) and counted it as one book in my own tally. But I'd previously reviewed the first novel of the three, Sheepfarmer's Daughter, separately, so Goodreads counted that one as a book in its own right. (Due to its great length, this was also the only book Barb and I actually finished reading together that year.) Measured by reading satisfaction, 2013 was an unusually good year. A single book earned a one-star rating; but all the others were at least rated at three, with nine receiving four and a whopping majority of 20 commanding no less than five. As an adult reader, I've tended not to reread books very often (I did that more when I was a kid); true to form, all of my 2013 reads were new to me. Also as usual, most of my reading was in paper format; only six books were read as e-books. For me, this is actually a higher figure than usual; that fact is related to the also above-average number of review copies and beta reads that year. A dozen books were of that type, and five of them came to me in electronic format. But group reads were relatively sparse compared to those in recent years; I took part in just four, in as many groups. The figure of ten short story collections read that year set a record I've never equaled in any year since (though 2015 would come close). Back then, I didn't take part in any challenges. If the Action Heroine Fans group had started its annual challenge that year, though (rather than later, in 2016) 14 of my 2013 books would have counted for it. (Since then, I've only equaled that figure once.) Both of these high figures stemmed from the same two causes: several books in both groups were part of the relatively large number of review copies, and several others came from the weekly flea market that was then still held in this area but, sadly, no longer is. (Two of the regular vendors were used book dealers, whose stalls were the first ones I'd go to. :-) ) It wouldn't be until a few years later that I started making a point of including poetry in my reading; but I did read one prose nonfiction book that year. Although I almost never read memoirs, the reviews in the library trade journals for Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan caught my attention when it was first published, and I was glad that 2013 was the year I finally read it. It earned five stars from me, and I'd recommend it highly. Although, for the last several years, my fiction reading has skewed more heavily towards descriptive rather than speculative fiction, for a couple of decades and more it was the other way around. That was still the case in 2013; of 33 fiction books read, 19 were solidly in the speculative genres and only 11 in the descriptive realm. (Three of the anthologies included stories of both types.) Supernatural fiction dominated the first group; I read a dozen books in that category. Another six reads were evenly split between fantasy and science fiction. Though it's certainly speculative, the remaining book of the 19, The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis (which was a group read) was hard to classify genre-wise. The second group was more scattered in that respect; the mystery genre was the most represented with four titles, and action-adventure/espionage a close second with three. A couple of more books fell into the Western genre, and I also read one book each of general fiction and historical fiction. Generally, my fiction reading choices mainly stick to authors whose work I've read before, with just a sprinkling of new-to-me authors. But that pattern was totally reversed in 2013; out of 26 fiction books that had single authors, just a half dozen were by writers already familiar to me. Besides Lewis, these included Agatha Christie and Robert E. Howard, whose Murder on the Orient Express and The Sword Woman both got high ratings from me. Both of these books, and the Lewis book, were also the only ones I read that year with content all of which was definitely old enough to be considered classic (I generally use 1950 as my rough cut-off date for that). My Goodreads friend Krisi Keley was the only contemporary author in this group; I'd previously read some vampire fiction by her, and in 2013 read her duology (so far; her health hasn't allowed her to write more for a number of years) The Friar Tobe Fairy Tale Mystery Files, which are occult detective yarns with plots suggested by traditional fairy/folk tales. (I gave both of these books five stars; like many books by independent authors, they're not nearly as well known as they deserve to be.) A number of books by new-to-me authors were read as review copies. Among these, the two standouts were the story collection Paradise Revisited by Canadian Goodreads author Shane Joseph, set in his native Sri Lanka, and The Last Stratiote by LeAnn Neal Reilly. The title character of the latter took me way outside my comfort zone; but ultimately I gave both books five stars, and went on to greatly like several more books by both authors, who became and remain valued Goodreads friends. Other new writers (including Elizabeth Moon, mentioned above; her book was a flea market find, and I was more wiling to take a chance on new authors when I could buy their books very cheaply in that venue!) I discovered on my own –sometimes aided by recommendations from friends. At the time, I was going through a phase of exploring urban fantasy, a subgenre in which I'd read only very little before, so I read four series openers in that field: Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock) by Faith Hunter, Storm Front (the Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher, The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood and Co.) by Jonathan Stroud, and Magic Bites (Kate Daniels) by “Ilona Andrews.” All of these got high ratings from me, though I didn't pursue any of the series very far (or in most cases at all). Though not urban fantasy, another series I started that year was Susan Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, of which I read and greatly liked the first two books. (I felt she dropped the ball badly with the last book, but I didn't read that one until a subsequent year.) Although it got four stars, I'd hoped to give The Lady in the Loch by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (which features Sir Walter Scott as an occult detective of sorts) the full five; though the premise was potentially very good, I felt that the execution didn't live up to it as well as it could have. But the one real disappointment was the one-star read, Granny is a Werewolf by an author I won't embarrass by naming. I “won” this in a Goodreads giveaway; but I wouldn't call it a prize, and that has nothing to do with it's being written for kids. (Intelligent, well-written children's books can be great reads for adults. This isn't one of them, and I'd have considered it a poor read even when I was a kid.) Of the anthologies without a single author, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century here. Any mystery fan will find a lot of selections to like there! Filling in this gap in my reading record has been a great trip down memory lane, and I'm glad I discovered I could make that excursion. :-) (Thanks, Cecily!) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 31, 2023
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DVBB95S5
| unknown
| 4.10
| 1,466
| 2023
| 2023
|
With 35 books read in 2023, I achieved my (strictly informal and unofficial --but I've finally decided that I might just as well make it official next
With 35 books read in 2023, I achieved my (strictly informal and unofficial --but I've finally decided that I might just as well make it official next year! :-) ) goal of reading at least 30. (At my Year in Books, here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... , Goodreads credits me with 39; but three of those were just short stories, and one was a picture book for small kids, read to my youngest grandson.) As usual, my satisfaction with my reading this year was pretty high. Only two books of the total earned less than a positive three stars (and those got an "okay" two; there were no one star reads). I gave 10 books four stars, and 13 more got five. All but two were read in paper format. Also as usual, most of these books were new reads, with only two rereads in the whole bunch. Just two of my reads this year were review copies; and only four books that I finished were read as common reads (spread over three groups), the least number in any year since I began counting them. But Barb and I matched our record number (set last year) of books read together, seven. Short story collections accounted for seven books of the total, over twice as many as last year. Nine of my reads counted towards this year's Classics Challenge in the Litwit Lounge group, and another six counted for the annual Action Heroine Fans group challenge. I was able to add two countries --Iceland and Mexico-- to my personal "Read Foreign Authors" challenge, and also to add Mexico to the Travel the World in Books challenge I participate in in two of my groups. In 2021, after giving The Song of Hiawatha just two stars, I resolved to give Longfellow's long poetry another chance. That was a felicitous decision; this year, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie got five stars from me! Where prose nonfiction is concerned, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America by Lawrence W. Levine and Snorri Sturluson's masterpiece of medieval Icelandic literature, The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology were both rewarding and intellectually stimulating (in different ways) reads. But my favorite read in that category this year (and one of my top five reads of 2023!) was 20th-century British dramatist Robert Bolt's great play, A Man for All Seasons. I don't often read play scripts, and I'd already seen this one performed (with Charlton Heston in the lead role); but even if you have seen a performance, this repays a read. As it has every year, fiction accounted for the lion's share of my reading, with 31 books this year. Descriptive fiction dominated again, accounting for 24 books (or nearly four-fifths) out of the total. Mysteries made up the largest bloc of these, with seven books. (And although I counted Wilkie Collins' classic novel The Moonstone as one of the six general fiction books, it also has a substantial mystery component, and could be classified in that genre.) I classified five more as "action-adventure/espionage." Historical fiction (four books) and two books in the Western genre made up the rest. (One of the latter was an anthology, Shadow of the Lariat: A Treasury of the Frontier; this proved to be a five-star read, and one of the surprise treasures of the year!) Of the five purely speculative fiction books (two story collections straddle the descriptive/speculative divide), three were science fiction and two supernatural fiction. (Fantasy turned out to be completely neglected this year, though it won't be in 2024!) Also true to form, most of this year's fiction reads were by authors whose work I'd read before (though in some cases, like that of Collins, only to the extent of a couple of short stories). Of the 28 fiction books with single or paired authors, 19 fall into this group. Bram Stoker's The Lady of the Shroud (which is not vampire fiction, though the title might suggest that it is!) was the most disappointing of those reads; even though I didn't go into it with misguided genre expectations, I still wasn't able to rate it above two stars. All of the rest, though, were at least liked. Girls of Silver Spur Ranch (1913), by the writing team of Grace MacGowan Cooke and Anne McQueen, was a half-forgotten book I read as a child and shared with Barb this year; this time around, we both liked it. My other re-read, Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, Kindred by Octavia Butler, and Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star were all five-star standouts. Series books formed a big component of this group. Barb and I read the first five books of Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series together (and I also read House Blend, a sample novella for the series, in e-book format). To Calm a Storm and The Draka & The Giant were strong conclusions to the Tavland Vikings duology, by Gilbert and Jen Cudmore, and The Elioud Legacy trilogy by Liane Zane, respectively, and Pride's Children: Netherworld an effective continuation of the Pride's Children trilogy by Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt. All three of these books earned five stars as well, and that had nothing to do with the fact that Gilbert, Zane and Ehrhardt are Goodreads friends of mine (though I'm honored by their friendship!) As yet, Zane's Unsanctioned Guardians is only a projected trilogy (a prequel to The Elioud Legacy); but The Covert Guardian, the series opener, got four stars from me and I'll be following the sequels. This was also the year in which I got caught up on reading all the books of K. W. Jeter's Kim Oh series that are currently available in paper format. I "met" (through their books) nine new-to-me authors this year. (Two of the nine books in this group were by the same author, G. K. Werner; but Assassin's Vow: An Espionage Thriller Novella was written by a two-man team, David Bruns and J. R. Olson. "A. W. Hart" is only nominally a writer I've read before; it's a house pen name, and the real author of Avenging Angels: Sinners' Gold is Wayne D. Dundee.) Pride of place among these goes to Alan Paton for Cry, The Beloved Country, which was far and away my favorite read this year. But Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) and Francine Rivers (Redeeming Love) also deserve special mention. Their books both earned five stars, and Rivers in particular is a writer I want to read more of. G. K.'s series, The Clerk of Copmanhurst's Tales, is a Robin Hood retelling I'm now going to continue to follow, as is Brackett's The Book of Skaith. (With my decision that, while I still want to read more of the Modesty Blaise series and the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, those books don't have to be read in order as a complete series, that means I now have three "open" series that I'm officially following as series.) My other "okay" read was the series opener of the Nancy Drew books, The Secret of the Old Clock; but despite the disappointing quality of this one, I'm glad I finally tried the series. So as always, 2023 was another great reading year. I'm already excited about the reading planned for 2024, and I'm sure there will be surprises along the way! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 29, 2023
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DV2HD2R3
| unknown
| 4.08
| 1,313
| 2022
| 2022
|
With 35 books read in 2022, my annual total is back in its usual range! (At my Year in Books feature, here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... ,
With 35 books read in 2022, my annual total is back in its usual range! (At my Year in Books feature, here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... , Goodreads credits me with 38, but three of those are single short stories) As usual, my pleasure in my reading was pretty high. Of the 34 books I rated, only two got less-than-positive ratings (though I didn't care much for the one I didn't rate, either), and just one of them got a single star. But 13 books earned five stars, and nine more received four, with the remaining ten getting three. All but two of the total were read in paper format. Barb and I read seven books together this year, which is a record. Four of my reads were of review copies; and I finished six common reads, in five groups. Only three of the books I read were short story collections. Altogether, eight books counted for the Action Heroine Fans group's annual challenge, and ten counted toward the annual Classics Challenge in the Litwit Lounge group. Because of my concentration in recent years on the Series Completion challenge, I seldom make much progress on the other ongoing group or personal challenges I participate in. But this year, as noted below, I did add to some of these. My last completed read for the year was Stars Through the Clouds: The Collected Poetry of Donald T. Williams. While I don't often read plays, I did read an outstanding one this year: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Even if you've previously seen this one performed (as I had), it repays an actual reading! Both of these were among my top favorite reads for the year. Two other books of prose nonfiction were both works of Christian theology, The Trinity by Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall and The Church Of God As Revealed In Scripture by Arlo F. Newell. While I wasn't able to give the latter more than an “okay” two stars, basically because I found it too superficial, the former was an intellectually rewarding read. As usual, most of my reads were fiction (31 books). Descriptive fiction dominated as it has for the last several years, with 25 books falling into those categories. Eight were historical novels, and three more were Westerns. Six books were general fiction, while five were mystery/crime fiction, and I classifird the remaining three as “action adventure”/espionage. Only six books were speculative fiction, three of them supernatural fiction and two fantasy; despite its title, The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories, the other book in this group, includes stories in both of those genres, and even some (soft) science fiction. But the latter genre got the short end of the stick from me this year, with no whole SF books read. I usually divide my fiction reads for the year into those by authors whose work I've encountered before, vs. those wholly new to me. This year, one book bridges that divide. To Love a Viking, which got five stars from me, is jointly written by Heather Day Gilbert, whose name has frequently appeared in these annual summaries, and a writer whom I'd never previously heard of, Jen Cudmore. (When the sequel is published, I'll definitely read it too!) Of the 28 fiction books with single authors, as usual most (19) were by authors I was already acquainted with, though in a couple of cases only through one or two short stories. Four books were rereads, one of which, Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, I read in 2022 for the third time. (That was a highly satisfactory read, which has allowed me to feel that I finally understood what the author was aiming for in this novella.) The other rereads were of Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit, and the Civil War novel Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt. All three of these were written for young readers, and each of them got four stars from me. I'd read the first two back in the 90s, and shared both reads with Barb this year (we'd also read the Le Guin book together the first time, but had forgotten many specifics of the plot); the Hunt book was even more of a “blast from the past,” since I'd read it in the 60s. (Until this year, I'd never reviewed any of the reread books, and felt I needed a refresher before I could truly do justice to any of them.) This year, I completed Kelley Armstrong's original Nadia Stafford trilogy and Heather Day Gilbert's A Murder in the Mountains, as well as reading additional titles in a couple of more series. With my decision that I'm not invested enough in David Weber's Honor Harrington series or Cliff Schimmels' Wheatheart Chronicles to continue either of them, this year's reading would have reduced my current “dangling” series to four. However, the second book in my Goodreads friend Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt's Pride's Children trilogy is now published, and Barb and I have started on the first book in Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe mystery series, so that keeps the total at six. But progress with those will belong to next year's summary! It was very hard to pick a single favorite read this year, but if I had to it would be another title crossed off of my (still long) Charles Dickens bucket list, Bleak House. Ever since the early 70s, I've wanted to read more of Willa Cather's and Dorothy Sayers' work, and this year I finally did, completing Shadows on the Rock, O Pioneers!, and Sayers' Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories, the last two of these getting five stars. Two additional top-rated books in this grouping that it would be remiss not to mention were Empire in the Sand, by Shane Joseph, and Avenging Angels: The Wine of Violence by “A. W. Hart,” which is a house pen name used by Wolfpack Publishing for all the authors of this (and some of its other) series. The actual author of this volume of the Avenging Angels series is my Goodreads friend Charles Gramlich. (Barb and I don't plan to follow the series, but I wanted to read this installment because he wrote it. Each of the titular protagonists' adventures are self-contained enough to be read as stand-alones.) Reading A Warm Rainy Day in Tokyo by still another Goodreads friend, Kana Wu, and Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry allowed me to add a country (Japan) to my Travel the World in Books challenge, and a state (Vermont) to my Across the U.S. in Books challenge. Nine books –a fairly high annual total, for me-- were by new-to-me authors. The standouts in this group were Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (which allowed me to add a country, Poland, to my personal “Read Foreign Authors” challenge), and Precious Bane by Mary Webb. These are classic works which had long been on my mental list of “must-reads,” and were among my top favorite reads of the year. Another top-rated read (and my favorite of the four books that were published this year) was Claiming Her Legacy by evangelical author Linda Goodnight, which Barb greatly liked too. What turned out to be the biggest surprise of the year was another Western, The U.P. Trail by Zane Grey. I had memories (garbled and misleading, as it turned out) of having “read” this as a tween kid, at which time I didn't like it; but I felt I needed a refresher read before I could review it. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that I'd evidently just skimmed it the first time, remembered it incorrectly in a couple of key respects, and that when I read it with an adult consciousness I really liked it! At the other end of the spectrum, I really disliked The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, which in my estimation is totally ruined by its ending. While The Stairway to Forever by Robert Adams managed to score three stars, I was underwhelmed with it, and Barb and I both felt that the sequel (which we didn't finish) really went off the rails. I'm not interested in reading any more of either author's work. It wouldn't be correct to say that Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending was "disappointing," since my expectations weren't high, and I read it only because it was a group read. But it did inspire me to plan to read Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America by Lawrence Levine, so that I can intelligently review literary fiction in its context. This summary doesn't individually mention every book I read in 2022, but it hits the most memorable ones. Looking forward to another great year of reading in 2023! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 31, 2022
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DV2659LS
| unknown
| 4.16
| 1,405
| 2021
| 2021
|
For the first time since Goodreads created these annual summations, this past year I read less than 30 books; 26, to be exact. (My Year in Books featu
For the first time since Goodreads created these annual summations, this past year I read less than 30 books; 26, to be exact. (My Year in Books feature, here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... , credits me with 30, but one of those is a short story and three were very slender kid's books read to a grandchild.) However, there was no “reading slump;” I spent about as much time reading, and read about as much actual text, in 2021 as in any other year (though I don't pay any attention to Goodreads' annual page counts, because too many factors distort them); I read on a fixed schedule, so circumstantial annual fluctuations are very slight. This time, though, instead of being spread across several books, a large part of that text was concentrated into two VERY thick Victorian novels (see below). Then too, all of my reads were paper books, so there wasn't even slight supplementation with e-books; and while Barb and I took more road trips in 2021 than in 2020, we didn't take as many as usual, and so read fewer “car books” together than usual –just four, compared to five in 2019. (At 438 pages, one of those was also rather thick.) 11 books were read as common reads, in five different groups. Short story collections accounted for four books. Just two were review copies (though another one had been kindly donated to the BU library by an author friend). I counted five towards the Action Heroine Fans group's annual challenge, and contributed six titles towards the annual classics challenge in the Litwit Lounge group. (This is the first year I've counted those for this summary, though I've taken part every year that the group has been doing that.) My satisfaction with my reads was, as usual, pretty high; I didn't actually dislike any of them, and only one book earned less than three stars (which on Goodreads scale is a positive rating meaning I liked it) from me. Five-star ratings went to six books, while ten more got four. As I've been doing in recent years, I made a point of reading one book of poetry. This year, it was The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to rate that one higher than an “okay” two stars, mostly because I felt it doesn't succeed well as an epic. Nonetheless, I do think Longfellow is a very accomplished poet technically, and I want to read more of his work eventually. Both of my prose nonfiction reads, the 1899 history tome Norway by Sigvart Sorensen and The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment by Edward Fudge, were counted as rereads (the Sorensen book being a real blast from my past, having originally read it in my teens), but the Fudge book was actually a newer edition than the one I read back in the early 90s. The latter was the more rewarding of the two; I gave it four stars, and I rarely rate nonfiction books that highly. Fiction made up the other 23 books, with a dozen of them being descriptive fiction, a preponderance that's also become usual in recent years. These break down into five works of general fiction, four mysteries, two historical novels, and a Western. On the speculative fiction side, I read eight books, five of them supernatural fiction, two fantasy, and just one science fiction. (Three of the short story collections straddle the descriptive/speculative divide.) Of the 21 fiction books with single authors, 16 were by authors some of whose work I'd read before, though in some cases not very much; before reading The Castle of Otranto (a work I've long deemed a must-read!) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers this year, my only acquaintance with Horace Walpole was through his nonfiction, and I'd read only a single short story by Jack Finney. That preponderance was typical; it was perhaps more marked than usual this year because of the unusually very high number of rereads: five fiction books, besides the two nonfiction. These included both the Victorian classics I mentioned above, by two of my favorite authors, Middlemarch by George Eliot and Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, the former of which I read back in the 90s and the latter around 1970. (Both of these demanded a significant commitment of time, but I don't regret it for an instant; they were my top favorite reads of the year, and I got much more out of them than I did in my earlier readings.) I also made a serious effort to complete or progress on some of my “dangling” series. Girl of Nightmares brought Kendare Blake's Anna duology to a satisfying conclusion, and The Flower & The Blackbird caught me up with Liane Zane's Elioud Legacy series. Barb and I finished the Montana Marriages trilogy by one of our favorite authors, Mary Connealy, and the Operation Ultimate series by Poul Anderson. (Goodreads lists other books in the latter series, but they deal with completely different characters in a different world, and appear to be only vaguely thematically related.) With my decision that I'm not invested enough in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series to pursue it, this reduces the number of my ongoing series (not completed, caught up, or abandoned) to six. Other favorite authors whose work I turned to this year included Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle,and Andrew Seddon. (For me, “favorite” authors are those who've written at least four books I've read and liked, so that they've been “go to” authors over a period of time. Having winnowed my list, here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/903390... to delete a few who aren't go-to authors any more, because I've moved on or my tastes have changed, I now have 44.) Just five books I read this year were by completely new-to-me authors. Pride of place in this small group goes to two five-star reads which made it into my top five favorite books of the year, Passing by Samaria by Sharon Ewell Foster (the first, and so far only, African-American author to win a Christy Award, for this book) and Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin. Both of these are historical novels by evangelical Christian writers, focusing on racial relations in American history; both are also extremely powerful (and sometimes harrowing) reads with continuing relevance. On the other hand, The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley, proved to be something of a disappointment; it did pull three stars, but not the four or five I'd hoped for, and I'm not motivated to seek out more of Wheatley's work. One other novel in this group, No Romance Allowed by my Goodreads friend, Asian-American writer Kana Wu, deserves mention, because it prompted an epiphany similar to the one I had in reading The House of Dies Drear last year. This was literally the first novel I've read by an Asian American. That's another reminder that my reading tends to be way too parochial, and I am going to consciously seek to rectify that neglect as well. Now, I'm looking forward to another great year on Goodreads! Happy reading to all! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 31, 2021
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTZX4P2H
| unknown
| 4.05
| 1,577
| 2020
| 2020
|
For a complete visual record of my 2020 “Year in Books,” see: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... . (Goodreads has corrected the problems that us
For a complete visual record of my 2020 “Year in Books,” see: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... . (Goodreads has corrected the problems that used to be be encountered with these links, for which credit is due!) 2020 proved to be a strange and very grim year, in ways none of us could have imagined when it began. But despite the dislocations of the pandemic, a 19-day visit from family in early March during which I didn't read at all, and a few false starts, it proved to be a successful reading year for me! By my count, I read 35 books. (Goodreads credits me with 40, but three of those are short e-stories and two were slender child's picture books, read aloud to a grandkid, which I didn't rate or review.) All of these got positive ratings from me, with 12 earning five stars, 16 earning four, and the remaining seven getting three. Just four were read in electronic format; and because the pandemic greatly reduced the amount of time Barb and I spent traveling in the car (no road trips this year!), I read only two “car books” aloud to her. Review copies accounted for four reads this year, and I took part in a whopping 11 common reads in four different groups. (Unusually, seven of the latter reads were all in one group, Reading for Pleasure. That came about because I was asked to take charge of the group's Terror Tribe Buddy Reads –which will be a permanent thing-- and because I joined in a few of the group's ongoing buddy reads of Agatha Christie's Poirot novels in order, which will likely continue for the next year or two.) Eight books counted for the Action Heroine Fans group's annual reading challenge, and seven (20% of the total) were short story collections. (Can you tell that I appreciate short fiction? :-) ) A record six were re-reads (counting one new edition of a book I first read in the original edition). Although I was introduced to excerpts from Beowulf (in Spaeth's translation) in high school, it took me until this year to finally read the entire poem. (My choice of translation this time was the 1923 one by William Ellery Leonard, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation For Fireside And Class Room.) This proved to be a fascinating read, as much for what I learned about the historical and literary background and textual history of the poem as for the work itself. I read three prose nonfiction books this year: Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition by Wendell Berry, The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis, and The French Revolution: A Concise History by Norman Hampson. The last one was background for my read later in the year of The Scarlet Pimpernel (see below), and served that purpose admirably. Of the three, the most rewarding was the Berry book; this was my third time reading it, and I really want eventually to read more books by this author. Of the 31 fiction reads, descriptive fiction accounted for 18 books, or more than half. The largest group in this bloc were mysteries/crime fiction, with seven books. Four were historical fiction and three general fiction, with another two that were Westerns; and I classified two as action-adventure. As was the case for the last several years, speculative fiction books were in the minority, with 12 books of that sort read. (One story collection straddled that divide.) Two thirds of that total were supernatural fiction, with just a couple of science fiction books and one fantasy novel supplementing them. Another collection straddled the latter divide, but was more heavily weighted towards SF. The great majority of my 29 fiction reads that had a single author (two story collections didn't), a full 23 books, were by authors whose work I'd read before, though in some cases never before at whole-book length. Besides Christie and Lewis, favorite authors I turned to this year included older ones like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft, and newer ones Andrew Seddon and Heather Day Gilbert. Doyle's The White Company was a five-star standout –and tied off a bit of a loose end in my reading; I'd started reading it from the school library in junior high school, but graduated with most of it unread, and never got around to getting back to it until this year! This year marked a couple more bittersweet reading milestones: I've now read both the entire original Sherlock Holmes canon (His Last Bow was a two-person buddy read with my Goodreads friend Steve Haywood) and the whole corpus of fiction that HPL ever wrote. As with the Austen canon (which I finished reading last year) there are no more of the original works to discover for the first time, and I'll have to fall back on pastiches and spin-offs. (But again, there are fortunately a lot of those!) Author of Christian Western romances Mary Connealy earned official favorite status with me this year, on the strength of her Montana Marriages trilogy; Barb and I are reading this in reverse order (long story!), and hope to finish it next year. Appalachian author Jesse Stuart is a writer I've long wanted to read more of; Daughter of the Legend was my first introduction to his long fiction, and exceeded my expectations to earn a full five stars. Both The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde and The Werewolf by Clemence Housman were supernatural fiction novellas originally read in paper format, but reread electronically this year with Goodreads groups, and both got high ratings from me, especially the latter. (I'd forgotten just how good it actually is, so that reread was particularly felicitous!) Only six of this year's fiction books were by new-to-me writers. However, most of them got very high ratings from me. My far-and-away favorite read of the year was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy was in the top five. Both of these were landmark novels that I'd long regarded as must-reads, and which I only regret that I didn't read much sooner. Another five-star book, but in this case a surprise in how outstanding it proved to be, was Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts by Catherine Maria Sedgwick. That book had been on my to-read shelf forever, and I was aware that Sedgwick's writing had won praise from Hawthorne; but I can definitely say now that she deserves to be much better known than she is, and I'd be open to reading more of her work. Another book that exceeded my expectations, winding up in four-star territory, was The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (which won the British Library Association's Carnegie Medal) by Penelope Lively. A final special mention has to go to another of these six books (and a winner of the Edgar Award), The House of Dies Drear by African-American author Virginia Hamilton. Ever since watching the movie years ago, I'd wanted to read the book (as is typical when I watch movie adaptations of books I haven't read!), and this one got four stars from me. But its special significance in my reading this year derived from an epiphany it provided. I'm 68 years old, and have read, by Goodread's count, some 1,364 books in my reading life. Of these, before this past year, exactly two --Roots by Alex Haley and A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (who is from Kenya)-- were, for certain, entirely written by a black author; and only one of those deals with the black experience in America. (Same Kind of Different as Me was co-written by a black and a white author, and I've never been able to obtain any information on the ethnicity of Bryan Fulks, who wrote Black Struggle: A History of the Negro in America.) This garish neglect hasn't been the result of deliberate intention; I have quite a few books by African-American authors on my to-read shelf (and have read a fair number of individual short stories and poems by African Americans.) Rather, it's been the result of inertia, a settling in a comfortable rut of the relatively familiar, from which I always honestly mean to branch out and broaden my horizons (sometime), but just never get around to actually doing so. But the consequence has been the same: a reading experience that's drastically parochial, and that's deprived me of many rewarding and intellectually stimulating reads. Going forward, I plan to be more seriously intentional about including the African-American experience in my future reading. This has nothing to do with any kind of temporary cultural or media-driven fad that emerged later in the year; I read the Hamilton book, and formed my resolve, back in February. It's a choice I made on my own, for my own improvement, and one I plan to pursue whether it's “trendy” or not. (Hopefully, time will demonstrate that the similar resolutions of many white readers this year are equally inner-directed and lasting!) As usual, I've already formed some reading plans for 2021, while allowing plenty of room for surprises! I'm looking forward to another year of rewarding engagement with books and authors. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jan 01, 2021
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTZZV2T9
| unknown
| 4.18
| 1,213
| 2019
| 2019
|
2019 proved to be a fruitful reading year for me; I read 36 books, of which I reviewed and rated 34. (Theoretically, I could count 38, since Gwen Bris
2019 proved to be a fruitful reading year for me; I read 36 books, of which I reviewed and rated 34. (Theoretically, I could count 38, since Gwen Bristow's Plantation Trilogy: Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, and This Side of Glory was an omnibus volume of three novels; but I read and reviewed it as a single work.) All of those 34 earned positive ratings from me, with 10 books getting four stars and 15 more getting five. Four were rereads, the highest figure for these that I've had in the years since I started doing these summaries. (All of these were books I'd read back in the 60s or early 70s.) Review copies accounted for six of the 36, and five were read in electronic format. I took part in five common reads (one was a double, that is, a read of two books back-to-back) in four different groups, and Barb and I read five books together. Nine books out of this year's total counted for the Action Heroine Fans group's annual challenge, and seven volumes of the total were story collections (one of these included some nonfiction pieces as well). As usual, my reading was mostly of fiction this year. However, I took part in the Christian Goodreaders group's common read of two theological works by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (inspired by last year's common read of Eric Metaxas' Bonhoeffer biography), The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community, both of which got four stars from me (most nonfiction books I like only get three). I also reread H. V. Morton's travelogue In Search of Scotland, a book I'd read in the 60s but forgotten author/title information for until another Goodreader's review helped me track it down. (On the whole, I don't read travelogues; that one convinced me, as a kid, that I'm not particularly excited about that genre, even though on this read it did deserve three stars.) Of the fiction reads, a whopping 25 were descriptive fiction; that continues the trend started in 2016, and is actually the highest total yet. (Two collections straddled the descriptive/speculative divide.) With seven books apiece, the largest blocs in this group were general fiction and mystery/crime fiction. The high total for the former group was driven by the fact that I read four Jane Austen novels; I'd resolved to make this (and did make it) the year I finally read all of her work that I hadn't finished before. All of these books got high star ratings, but the completion of the canon was bittersweet --there are no more new, completed Austen novels to look forward to, though I still want to reread Sanditon sometime. (But there are still pastiches and spin-offs, and a Georgette Heyer novel in my TBR piles....) Historical novels made up five books of the total, with three Westerns and three action-adventure books filling out the list. On the speculative fiction side, four books were supernatural fiction, one was a fantasy, and one story collection blended supernatural and science fiction. Out of the 30 fiction (or mostly fiction) books that had single authors, 21 were by writers whose work I'd read before, more than 2/3 of the total. (Three were rereads, one of which, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, I count as my top favorite read of the year.) Dependable favorite writers were well represented in the list; besides Austen, I read works by Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, C. S. Lewis, and Andrew Seddon. My Goodreads friend Shane Joseph also earned favorite status this year. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, which I read as a common read, was a standout title in this group; despite liking the author's work overall, this novel had never been on my to-read list, but it surpassed my expectations to earn five stars, as did Bristow's trilogy. (The latter was another reread from the early 70s --long story!-- but I'd forgotten, or didn't fully appreciate the first time, how good it is.) On the other hand, installments of two series, J. B. Lynn's Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hit Woman and Seeley James' Sabel Security (that one I didn't finish, so it's not counted in the 30), proved disappointing, more because of personal issues I had with aspects of the character development, not because of bad writing. I decided not to continue with those series, and also that I'm not invested enough with Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood and Co. or Thorarinn Gunnarsson's Mystara: The Dragonlord Chronicles to continue those, either. As some series are abandoned, though, new ones take their place. Among the seven new-to-me authors I "met" (via their books) for the first time this year, evangelical writer Mary Connealy is one Barb and I both are excited about. We've now read all three novels of her Sophie's Daughters trilogy, focusing on three young women making their way in the late 19th-century American West (and started on her related Montana Marriages trilogy, but that will be for next year's summary). Rites of Autumn, the series opener for the Wheatheart Chronicles by the late Cliff Schimmels, was a surprise five-star read that unexpectedly claimed a place among my top reads of the year. I'll definitely be continuing with that series, and also want to follow up with the sequel to Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood. Though it got three stars from me, Kelley Armstrong's follow-up novella to her Nadia Stafford trilogy, Double Play, wasn't as well-crafted as I'd hoped; but I still want to read the original trilogy (and the other sequel novella). Mention also has to be made of another outstanding five-star book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare! My reading for 2020 has already started, and I have much of it planned; but I expect surprises along the way as well. One new feature I intend to implement, starting this new year, is to read at least one book of poetry every year. (I've tended to neglect the genre in favor of fiction; but I like quality poetry, and I'm determined to redress a bit of that neglect.) I'm looking forward to another rewarding year with books, and wish my fellow Goodreaders the same! Here's the link to my visual Year in Books feature for 2019: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... . ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jan 01, 2020
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTXG6412
| unknown
| 4.15
| 1,277
| 2018
| 2018
|
Note, Jan. 10, 2019: I just edited this review to correct the link (again!) to my Year in Books feature. This time, I should have it right! Despite a m Note, Jan. 10, 2019: I just edited this review to correct the link (again!) to my Year in Books feature. This time, I should have it right! Despite a move to a new house in November that took up a lot of my free time for reading (I was able to make up most of it in December, but not all), as well as reading some really thick books and some false starts with books I didn't finish, I was able to read 31 books in 2018. (That met my unofficial goal of at least 30, which I've managed every year since Goodreads started this feature.) My "Year in Books" feature (https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... ) credits me with 36, but they also count two slender children's picture books that I read aloud to my granddaughter, and three short e-stories I read or reread. (The standout among the latter was Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party," with a five-star rating.) Only two of the 31 were rereads (I seldom reread books). As usual, the great majority of the 31 were read in paper format, with just four read as e-books. Four were review copies, and while my Goodreads friend Alicia Butcher Erhardt's projected trilogy opener Pride's Children: Purgatory (which turned out to be one of my top five favorite reads of the year!) wasn't a review copy as such, it was a kind gift from the author to the BC library. I took part in seven common reads in six groups (I'm counting both official group reads and the multi-person "buddy reads" sponsored in some groups as common reads), and read eight books for the annual challenge in the Action Heroine Fans group. Barb and I read six books together. Reflecting my liking for short fiction, three were short story collections (though that's actually the lowest figure for those of any since I started doing these annual reviews in 2014). Also as usual, my satisfaction with what I read was pretty high. Just one book that I actually finished got a mediocre two stars from me. A dozen earned five, while seven more got four, leaving 11 that got a more moderate but still positive three. Every year, I try to read at least one nonfiction book. This year, I read three: Who's Got Dibs on Your Kids? by Betty Pfeiffer (which was a review book); Shane Leslie's Ghost Book, which was a gift from my friend Andrew Seddon; and the biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas, the common read for 2018 in the Christian Goodreaders group. All of these got positive ratings from me, but the last one was the standout: it earned five stars (a rarity from me for a nonfiction book), and a place in my top five favorite reads of the year. I found the witness of Bonhoeffer's life really challenging on a personal level, and it's inspired me to plan to read some of his own writing in 2019! Continuing a trend that started in 2016, my fiction reads this year were mostly of descriptive fiction, with 20 books in that category, and just seven on the speculative fiction side of the divide. (For roughly two decades before that, speculative fiction had tended to predominate; but I've been consciously trying to redress that balance.) In the former category, I classified six books as historical fiction, with another three Westerns. Mysteries/crime fiction and action-adventure/espionage fiction each accounted for four books, while three books were general fiction. On the speculative side, supernatural fiction and fantasy were evenly divided with three books each, and I read just one science fiction novel. (One short fiction anthology straddled the descriptive vs. speculative divide.) Louis L'Amour and Robert E. Howard are two dependable favorite authors of mine who never fail me, and whom I turned to again this year for some of my reading. Two other authors very different from each other, but both much appreciated, finally joined my "favorites" list this year: James Fenimore Cooper and my Goodreads friend, Christian author Heather Day Gilbert. Altogether, 14 books I read this year (or nearly half) were by authors whose work I'd read before. That's partly because I continued to make an effort to finish or make progress with "dangling" series that I've started but not completed. This year, I finally finished Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales (which I discovered back in grade school with The Last of the Mohicans!), and that's given me a much higher appreciation for Cooper's literary art; The Deerslayer was my favorite read of the year. Barb and I also finished Susan Page Davis' excellent Ladies Shooting Club trilogy, and are now caught up with Gilbert's A Murder in the Mountains mystery series set in modern Appalachia. (But we also decided, after rereading pseudonymous author Thorarinn Gunnarsson's Dragonlord of Mystara, which we'd first read back in the early 90s, to go ahead and complete his Mystara: The Dragonlord Chronicles series.) New-to-me authors accounted for 13 of my single-author fiction reads (and all of the nonfiction ones). Four of these 13 were Goodreads authors, Ehrhardt (see above) being the standout in that group. Three more --Lois Lowry ( Number the Stars), Celia Rees (Pirates!, and Gail Rock (The House Without a Christmas Tree)-- were authors whose books are usually marketed to younger readers. That I gave all three of these books either four or five stars indicates the fact that I don't consider that marketing strategy any indicator of lack of literary quality (and am supremely indifferent to the opinion of those who do!). An author I'd not read before who genuinely surprised me (in a good way) was Anthony Hope; I liked his The Prisoner of Zenda much more than I expected to! On the other hand, John Saul proved to be perhaps my biggest disappointment of the year. His Black Creek Crossing managed to pull three stars from me (though I could have gone lower), mainly because I considered it mostly ruined by its ending rather than by the main body of the book; but I'm not interested in investigating any more of his work, no matter how hyped he is. I'm already hoping for another great year of reading in 2019! In particular, I'm planning to make it the year I finally read all the rest of Jane Austen's corpus that I haven't gotten around to yet; so we'll see if I succeed in that endeavor. :-) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jan 01, 2019
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTWVR4BY
| unknown
| 4.23
| 1,184
| 2017
| 2017
|
Note, Jan. 10, 2019: I've just edited this review to correct the link (again!) to my Year in Books feature. This time, I should have it right! Ever sin Note, Jan. 10, 2019: I've just edited this review to correct the link (again!) to my Year in Books feature. This time, I should have it right! Ever since 2014, when Goodreads started allowing us to do these annual summaries, I've read more than 30 books each year; and I kept that track record this year, with 33 books read. As usual, Goodreads credits me with more than that –41, this time-- mostly because they count short e-stories as books. (They also count the second volume of Louis L'Amour's collected Western fiction as a book, but again I'm not counting this one until I've read all three. But that's offset by the fact that I beta read a book, Farhope by my friend Andrew M. Seddon, which Goodreads doesn't count because it's not yet published.) This year, though, it was, as the Brits would say, “a close-run thing,” because a perfect storm of circumstances combined to pull down my total. Besides having three surgeries that took away from my reading time, Barb and I spent nearly four weeks in Australia, and while there I didn't read much. Of course, I took along a 500+ page book to read on the plane flights to and from Down Under; but that proved to be a book I ultimately gave up on, after sinking a lot of time into it. All told, I started and failed to finish four books this year, which I think was a record. Three books that I did finish were also very long reads, of well over 500 pages each. Because I used a lot of my vacation time for the Australia trip, we didn't take as many road trips here in Virginia as usual, which meant that I didn't read as much of our “car books,” nor read as much in the public library up at Harrisonburg. My ratings of what I read, however, were mostly positive. 14 of the 31 books I actually reviewed, or nearly half, got five stars from me (Farhope would also have earned five, if I'd been able to rate it), and six more got four. Eight, or a fourth of the total, received three. I gave out just a couple of two-star ratings, and only a single book was stigmatized with one star. In keeping with my resolve of recent years, I read one nonfiction book this year, Supernatural Horror in Literature, by one of my favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft. Of the fiction books, continuing a trend that started last year, descriptive fiction reads again greatly outnumbered speculative fiction, 20 to 11. (One short story anthology was a mix of the two.) The balance has usually been the other way since the 90s, but I've been trying to redress that. The descriptive fiction group included eight mysteries/crime fictions, four historical works and two Westerns, four volumes of general fiction, and two novels of espionage or action adventure. In the speculative fiction group, science fiction titles predominated, with six; four were all or mostly supernatural fiction, and I counted just one as fantasy. Again, I read almost entirely in paper format, with just three books read electronically. Barb and I read six books together. I took part in five common reads, in five different groups. The Action Heroine Fans group decided to make last year's challenge an annual event, so I took part in that again this year, ultimately setting and meeting a goal of reading eight books with an action heroine. Of the 33 books I read, eight were review copies, and two more were books donated by the authors to the Bluefield College library (where I work) in lieu of sending review copies. Short story collections accounted for six books of the total. Again, not many of my books this year were re-reads, just two, both by favorite authors of mine. One, The Town House by Norah Lofts (which was one of the group reads), was a real blast from my past, since I'd previously read it as a pre-teen kid back in the 60s. The other, Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past by Sharyn McCrumb, was one I read by myself last year, but shared with Barb this year as a seasonal read. Of the 30 fiction books I read that had a single author, 18 were by authors whose work I'd encountered before. Favorite authors were well represented; besides the ones already mentioned, I read work by old favorites Jack London, Conan Doyle, and Ray Bradbury, and newer favorite Suzanne Arruda. (She accounted for three of the books in this group by herself, and Andrew Seddon for another three.) This year, Barb and I finished reading Arruda's excellent Jade del Cameron historical mystery series; we greatly enjoyed the reads, but the accomplishment was bittersweet, since it means saying goodbye to one of our favorite fictional heroines! London's Martin Eden proved to be one of the happiest reading surprises of the year. Though I'd read most of his novels, and usually found them dependable three-star reads, I'd never had my interest piqued in that particular one. I only read it because it was recommended to me by a lady (to whom I'm very grateful, because I really liked it!) in the Reading for Pleasure group. Now, I regard it as very probably London's masterpiece. On the other hand, two books by authors some of whose work I'd really liked before proved to be my biggest disappointments this year, at least of the books I actually finished: Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Michael Crichton's posthumously published Pirate Latitudes. Both books got three stars from me, so weren't total losses; but I'd rated some other books by these authors significantly higher in the past. (There's a reason, IMO, why Crichton didn't choose to publish the latter novel in his lifetime; and it's arguable that Bradbury's strength as a writer lay much more in short than in long fiction.) Harry Turtledove and Robert Hugh Benson were both counted as writers whose work I'd read before; but I'd previously encountered both writers only through the medium of one or two short stories. Their long fiction was entirely new territory to me. The Guns of the South and Lord of the World were each very long-awaited reads that I finally made time for this year; and they proved to be my two top favorite reads of 2017. A dozen single-author books were by writers totally new to me. Two of my discoveries in this group I owe entirely to my then eleven (now twelve) year-old grandson and fellow avid reader Philip, whom I mentioned last year as well. This year, he introduced me to From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, a book that I'd missed back in the day, and gave me another book for my birthday, which he picked up cheap at a library sale though he wasn't familiar with either the book or the author, A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag. Both books earned positive ratings from me, and the second one was a particularly happy serendipity --I'd seen Hoag's books for sale many times, and with my usual prejudice against best sellers and hyped "thrillers," dismissed them as probably trash. This one got five stars from me, and turned out to be my favorite descriptive fiction read of the year! As usual, some writers new to me were Goodreads authors whose work I was trying out; these were a mixed bag, but my top favorite book in this group was the debut novel A Sheltering Wilderness by my Goodreads friend Chandler Brett. In most of my nine years on Goodreads, I shared at least one book as a "buddy read" with my Goodreads friend Jackie Guarini --sometimes more than one, if the books were part of a series we were reading together. Sadly, we won't be able to share any more buddy reads together; she passed away last January. :-( R.I.P., Jackie; your friends miss you! For anyone interested in a complete pictorial record of my 2017 reading, check out this link to my "Year in Books": https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i... . I personally think this is a pretty cool Goodreads feature!) My reading plans for 2018 are already formulated (and I've begun reading what will be my first book of the new year). I'm hoping to read some more long-awaited titles, and finish or get caught up on a couple of the many series I've started. But I'm also prepared for surprises along the way, and ready to "expect the unexpected." In any case, I'm looking forward to the adventure! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Aug 29, 2017
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTWY6PY7
| unknown
| 4.23
| 1,173
| 2016
| 2016
|
This year, I read 38 books, the highest total of any of the three years I've reviewed. Goodreads credits me with 42, but three of those were just shor
This year, I read 38 books, the highest total of any of the three years I've reviewed. Goodreads credits me with 42, but three of those were just short e-stories (not all of which I reviewed). The other one was the first volume of the three-volume set of Louis L'Amour's collected Western short fiction; Goodreads lists all three volumes as separate books, but I'm counting them as one book, the reading of which is still in progress. Unusually for me, I read much more (almost twice as much) descriptive fiction than speculative this year --23 books, compared to 12. (The other three were nonfiction, though one of those was nonfiction literary criticism of a supernatural fiction novel.) Six of the former group were historical novels (and two more books were in the Westerns category, which is a special kind of historical fiction) and six were in the mystery genre. Action adventure reads accounted for five more, and the remaining three were general fiction. My speculative fiction books were pretty evenly divided among the three genres: four apiece supernatural and science fiction, three fantasy, and one story collection that included all three. Short fiction anthologies accounted for four books in the 38 total. I read four review books this year, and took part in six common reads in five different groups. Also unusually for me, three of this year's books were rereads. Only two books were read in electronic format. Barb and I read five books of the total together. None of the books I read got less than two stars this year; four got only two, and five got three. All of the remaining 29 got at least four stars, and a dozen scored five, so my satisfaction level with my reading was pretty high. Although I'd never taken part in a reading challenge before, I did one this year, in the Action Heroine Fans group. That one was simply to read a self-set number of books with an action heroine; I set my goal at 10, but wound up reading 14. I discovered that the program only allows you to increase your goal if you haven't actually already met it; we plan to do the same challenge next year, so I'll plan to increase my goal earlier if I see that I can achieve a higher figure. (But I don't expect to match this year's total in 2017, or anything close to it.) Another feature of my reading that was a first this year was doing some Christmas-themed reading in December. I'm planning to do the same thing next year. This time, both of those books were relatively short; this was true of several others I read during the year as well, which helped to raise my book total. For nonfiction books, three stars tends to be my default rating; I usually (though not always) choose fiction books when I'm reading for pleasure, whereas the nonfiction reads often primarily serve some other purpose. But this year, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, a joint memoir that I decided to read only to get a better handle on how to catalog it for the library where I work, wound up getting five stars from me, and was one of my top favorite reads of the year. Another nonfiction title, Jacques Ellul's The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, got four stars from me. This was my first introduction to Ellul's work, but the book had been on my to-read shelf a long time; and I now hope to read more of his writing. My favorite book this year was evangelical Christian author Heather Day Gilbert's historical novel Forest Child, which was also one of only two books I read this year that were actually first published in 2016. That one completes her Vikings of the New World Saga; one way or another, I also brought some kind of closure to two other series I was reading, and made progress with four more. I also started another long-awaited series with Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise (a common read in one of my groups); I'd previously read his "A Better Day to Die" in a magazine as a kid, but that was the only part of the Modesty canon I'd actually been able to read to completion. (Years ago, I'd also read a couple of chapters of Last Day in Limbo while killing time in a library, but had to leave before I could read more.) Altogether, 17 of the 31 novels I read this year were by authors I'd read before (though in the case of Paula Cappa, only in the short fiction format). Several of these were old favorites: Robert Louis Stevenson, Norah Lofts, Jules Verne (though his The Castle of the Carpathians was a disappointment --I learned to avoid the heavily-abridged "Fitzroy editions"!), Sharyn McCrumb, and Don Coldsmith. The other 14 novels were by new-to-me authors. Three of these got five stars from me: Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck (a pleasure I owe to my Goodreads friend Jackie, who passed along her copy --thanks, Jackie!) and Frederic S. Durbin's too-little-known 1999 fantasy gem Dragonfly, both of which made my list of top favorite books read for the first time this year, and Black Amazon of Mars, my long-awaited introduction to the work of SF great Leigh Brackett. A few other freshly-discovered writers who call for special mention are Jean Webster (1876-1916), whom I'd never heard of until her Daddy-Long-Legs was chosen as a common read in my Vintage Tales group; Bran Gustafson and Taylor Stevens, authors, respectively, of Coyote and The Informationist, both featuring kick-butt heroine types; the late John Reynolds Gardiner, whose Stone Fox is a kid's chapter book, but appreciable by adults as well --and recommended to me by my oldest grandson, so special to me because it's one we were able to share; and Josephine Tey, whose The Daughter of Time I really liked. Reading plans for 2017 are already taking shape. I'm committed to read one debut novel by one of my Goodreads friends, and have my eye on at least one more; a couple of review copies are in hand; and I've gotten books for Christmas, which factor into my reading plans. Barb and I should finish the Jade del Cameron historical mystery series next year, if all goes according to schedule; and I'm expecting to participate in at least four common reads. I've got some nonfiction reading in mind, and I'm really hoping to get in a couple of long-awaited books on my mental must-read list. We'll see how the journey shapes up; but I fully expect to thoroughly enjoy the ride, in any case! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 09, 2016
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTWDVNDC
| unknown
| 4.23
| 768
| 2015
| 2015
|
Goodreads credits me with reading 38 "books" in 2015. Three of these were actually just short e-stories, of which I only reviewed one, Charles Gramlic
Goodreads credits me with reading 38 "books" in 2015. Three of these were actually just short e-stories, of which I only reviewed one, Charles Gramlich's Harvest of War. (That one was a five-star read.) Another was the summer 2015 issue of a magazine of fiction/poetry, Fungi, Summer 2015, while another one was the first volume of a two-volume story collection, The Complete Adventures Of Senorita Scorpion Volume 1. Since Goodreads doesn't have a combined record for both volumes as a unit, I had to review and rate Vol. 1 separately (it got five stars from me, as did the Summer 2015 issue of Fungi); but I plan to count both volumes as one, and with my 2016 reading. Another book that they counted towards 2015, Andrew Seddon's Wreaths of Empire (another five-star read), I didn't count because, though I reviewed it this year, I actually beta read it earlier. (But I counted one book that they didn't, because although I read the second of two versions in 2015, the two aren't distinguished at all in the Goodreads database.) By my own count, I read 33 actual books last year, of which nine were review copies, and ten (including several of the aforementioned nine) were written entirely by Goodreads friends. Of these 33, I reviewed all but one. (There were three other books I started but chose not to finish.) I finished three common reads in two different groups, and took part in one buddy read. As usual, my reading was mostly fiction; only two books out of the 33 were nonfiction. Again, short story collections were a significant component of the total; I read nine of these. Speculative fiction books again outnumber descriptive fiction, 17 to 12. (Two short story anthologies straddle this divide.) Within these two main groupings, the genre divisions were fairly close: I read six books each in the supernatural and fantasy genres, along with five science fiction books, while for descriptive fiction the breakdown of the twelve books was four each in action-adventure and general fiction, and two each in historical fiction and mysteries. (Both mysteries were historical mysteries; so that would make four historicals if I counted books in more than one category!). Barb and I read four of the fiction books together as our "car book" during the year. My level of satisfaction with what I read was pretty high; of the books I rated, 17 got five stars, and eight more got four. (Four books got three stars; only a couple of books rated two, and I gave a single one-star rating.) 26 of the books I read had a single author; 13 of these (accounting for 14 books) were authors whose work I'd read before, including a few of my favorites, Andrew Seddon, Nora Lofts, and Piers Anthony. One book, Wayland Drew's Willow, was a reread, and in a couple of those cases, the book I read this year was actually a different version of one I'd read by the author before, including one of my top favorite reads of the year, Rumer Godden's The Dark Horse; I'd read the Reader's Digest condensed version years before. (It's very rare for me to go back and read the complete novel, but I'm glad I did in this instance!) The book I liked best of all this year, Operation Chaos, was my second exposure to Poul Anderson's long fiction, and was a happy surprise; I'd expected to like it, but not as much as I did. Other books I especially liked were by Goodreads friends whose work I'd already come to appreciate, Shane Joseph (In the Shadow of the Conquistador) and LeAnn Neal Reilly (Saint Sebastian's Head). I made a conscious effort this year to pursue series I'd started in the past; so I finished up Loft's Gad's Hall sequence, my friend Jackie and I finished our buddy read of Stephen Lawhead's Bright Empires series, and I read new (to me) installments in several more ongoing series. Of the fiction authors I was newly introduced to this year, those whose work earned five stars from me were Lance Charnes, whose Doha 12 was my top favorite descriptive fiction book of the year; David Wittlinger (The Strong One; Heather Day Gilbert, whose outstanding historical novel of the Viking explorations in the New World, God's Daughter), I was lucky enough to win in a Goodreads giveaway (all three of these authors are Goodreads friends of mine); and E. J. Fisch (Dakiti. I also liked Deborah Cannon's YA time-traveling adventure yarn, The Pirate Vortex. Dave Duncan's series opener The Gilded Chain got four stars from me, and Barb liked it as well; but we weren't enthralled enough with it to continue the series. However, the books by Cannon and Fisch are both series openers, so it seems that as a couple of doors close, a couple more open.... (The Wittlinger and Gilbert books are also intended as series openers; but in those cases the series is so far only projected.) Overall, my fiction reads this year included 11 books featuring a kick-butt heroine, so I got my action heroine fix. :-) Both of my nonfiction reads were also by authors new to me, Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God, and Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation). My usual rating for nonfiction books I like is three stars; the Copan book was intellectually stimulating and interesting enough to get four. Harris' New Atheist tract only got one, but this wasn't a disappointment; I didn't expect to like it. I read it because I was challenged to, and I don't regret the read; I actually learned a lot from the collateral studying I did to review it and comment on the review, and that's a good thing! Indeed, I've actually resolved to try to read one nonfiction book a year in the future. Since I've gotten away from college teaching, I've read much more fiction than nonfiction; but I think that there's a value to educating yourself about serious subjects, as a citizen and a well-rounded person, no matter how old you are, and that it's also important to read the books that are part of Western civilization's Great Conversation, in order to benefit from and contribute to that conversation. Some of my other reading resolutions for 2016 and beyond include to try to read and review at least a couple of books each year by Goodreads friends who are independent or small-press authors (as a small-press author myself, I know how hard it is to get reviews; I've been gratified when friends and others have read my work, and I've come to feel that it's only right to extend the same consideration to others, where I can honestly give a good review) and to pursue my goal of getting more caught up on the many series I've started and left hanging. I'm sure the year in reading will bring some surprises too; I'm excitedly looking forward to it, and have already reviewed my first book of 2016! Note: According to my records, since I joined Goodreads in Feb. 2008, I've now read 193 "regular" books (that is, books I've read at home, to myself). 109 of those are speculative fiction (51 supernatural, 36 science fiction, and 22 fantasy), 61 have been descriptive fiction (20 historical fiction, 15 action-adventure, 12 mystery, eight general fiction, and six Westerns), and the remaining 23 are nonfiction, including two plays and two books of poetry. When I do another tabulation some years down the road, I hope to have beefed up some of the weaker categories. :-) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 14, 2015
|
Unknown Binding
| ||||||||||||||||
| B0DTVLM2VL
| unknown
| 4.04
| 218
| 2014
| 2014
|
As the Goodreads description indicates, this isn't an actual book as such, but rather an invitation to other Goodreaders to describe their reading exp
As the Goodreads description indicates, this isn't an actual book as such, but rather an invitation to other Goodreaders to describe their reading experience in the year just past, and a creative way of giving them a forum in which to do it. I like the concept, and am glad to accept the invitation! By Goodreads' count, in 2014 I read 36 books, of which one was a lightweight child's picture book I read to my youngest grandson. Four more were really just short e-stories, all of them freebies. These were a mixed bag; I gave D. B. Jackson's "A Spell of Vengeance" four stars and Wil Wheaton's "Hunter" five, but Martyn V. Halm's "Locked Room" only got one, and another Wheaton story I didn't rate. (I didn't personally like it, but I thought it would appeal to fans with different taste.) That leaves 31 actual grown-up books that I read for myself (or read out loud for both my wife and I). Of these, I rated 30 (the other one was a review copy, and I thought giving the author my feedback would be more helpful than a review). Those 30 were almost unanimously liked; only one got less than three stars. (Eleven of them earned five stars and nine more got four; so 2/3 were really liked or better!) Most were fiction; genre-wise, they break down into 17 speculative fiction titles (six science fiction, five supernatural, four fantasy, and two more that are hard to classify) and seven descriptive fiction: four historical, one action-adventure, and one crime fiction. (One more, Robert E. Howard's The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, straddles the descriptive/speculative divide; some stories are one, some the other). A Shakespeare play, a poetry chapbook, and three other nonfiction books round out the total. My liking for action heroines is reflected in the fact that 11 books (in various fictional genres) featured protagonists of this type; and I'm a fan of short fiction, so six collections of stories, by one author or several, made the list. (These also span various genres.) Unusually for me, I read five books (and rated four) as e-books this year, all of them free or review copies. My friend Jackie and I usually do a buddy read every year; this past year, we continued our read of Stephen Lawhead's Bright Empires series with The Shadow Lamp, the fourth installment. I took part in eight group common reads in six groups; one of these proved to be my favorite book of the year, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. 2014 also saw me reading an unusual number of review copies from Goodreads or author/friend giveaways (eight that I actually reviewed). Some of my top favorite books of the year were by familiar favorite authors of mine: Robert E. Howard, Manly Wade Wellman, Norah Lofts, and Andrew Seddon. (Another favorite writer, J. R. R. Tolkien, got four stars from me for The Silmarillion, as did C. S. Lewis for The Four Loves.) Other five-star reads introduced me to authors new to me, with series openers for series that I'll be following: David Weber (On Basilisk Station), Suzanne Arruda (Mark of the Lion, and K. W. Jeter (Real Dangerous Girl --at least, I'll follow Jeter's Kim Oh series if he brings it back into print in paperback! Some other happy discoveries this year were freshman author Juliene Lloyd's Operation Angelica (five stars) and Melanie Frances' Anatomy of a Love Affair (three stars --and I don't usually like contemporary poetry). Through a common read in the classics group I belong to, I finally got to read a long-awaited classic, Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor (four stars). Rosemary Edghill's The Empty Crown, an omnibus volume of the first three novels in her Twelve Treasures series, made it into my list of five top favorite reads of the year, and it was a real disappointment to learn that the publisher won't continue the series. :-( My major disappointment was with the final volume in Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay. I'm one of the many fans who feel the author dropped the ball in that volume, although I still gave it two stars to reflect the fact that I liked it almost up to the end. Two other books, Son of the Morning by Linda Howard (which was a Christmas gift from my wife) and Wayne Reinagle's Pulp Heroes - Khan Dynasty also disappointed, in that I thought that with different execution the potential of the book could have been much better realized; but I still gave them three stars. Looking ahead to 2015, Jackie and I plan to wrap up our read of the Bright Empires series with the final volume, The Fatal Tree. I'm finishing up my queue of review books, planning to take part in at least three group common reads, and I have some serious nonfiction reading in mind that I feel I need to do. Over and above that, I have a couple more series openers I want to read, and I really need (and want!) to make some effort to read further in some series that I've already started. But I'm always open to any happy surprise that may present itself! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jan 04, 2015
|
Unknown Binding
|
Loading...
12 of 12 loaded
