Annie's 2024 diary - Part 1

And about time to start my thread - I even managed to finish a book already :)

I am Annie and after living in Bulgaria for my first almost 30 years, I moved to USA in late 2010. These days I live in Phoenix, Arizona and even if the summers can get very very hot, I still like it.

I read pretty much anything - I am much more likely to read a genre story than a mainstream one (although sometimes the boundary seems to be blurring but you never know what I may decide to read next). I like comics and graphic novels, magazines (and journals and other -zines), short stories and plays. My non-fiction reading seems to go through phases so who knows what will happen this year. I also read poetry although I rarely understand, let alone like, modern poetry (most of the poets I seem to like tend to write in what can be considered older and more conventional styles). I am also a serial series reader so a lot of what I read is series.

I am really bad at planning - or better to say - I am great at planning, I am really really bad at executing the plans. So I had mostly given up on even making plans - I read what catches my eye and occasionally end up reading something logical. With this being said, I am hosting the Author of the month group and the Read Globally Annual challenge and Read Globally II 2024 challenge so maybe I can get less distracted than usual. If you had never visited one or more of these groups, come see us :)

Last year I finally returned to live theater (and opera and ballet and so on) after a hiatus that started before COVID (so I cannot even blame it for it). I am still not sure how much I will talk about my non-reading activities - theater, music, various online courses and what's not but for the eagle-eyed, my thread lost the word "reading" from its title for a reason.

I read in 3 languages (English, Bulgarian and Russian) and I am still entertaining the thought that I will recover my German enough to be able to use it again - at least for reading. I also like languages in general so I am prone to just starting on a course for a language (and usually getting nowhere) but maybe this is the year when I finally get somewhere in one of them.

Books, Magazines and so on - anything published on its own counts here (Kindle Singles for example are also books in my counts)

=== JANUARY ===
1. Stand-in Companion by Kazufumi Shiraishi, translated from Japanese by Raj Mahtani
2. The Sixth Day and Other Tales by Primo Levi, translated from Italian by Raymond Rosenthal
3. Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
4. Shadows Reel by C. J. Box -- Joe Pickett (22)
5. Storm Watch by C. J. Box -- Joe Pickett (23)
6. Great Work of Time by John Crowley
7. Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo -- The Singing Hills Cycle (4)
8. The Translator by Leila Aboulela
9. Suicide Kings by Stephen Blackmoore -- Eric Carter (7)
10. Hate Machine by Stephen Blackmoore -- Eric Carter (8)
11. Cult Classic by Stephen Blackmoore -- Eric Carter (9)
12. The Figaro Trilogy: The Barber of Seville / The Marriage of Figaro / The Guilty Mother by Beaumarchais, translated from French by David Coward

=== FEBRUARY===
13. Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews -- Kate Daniels (6)
14. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January-February 2024, edited by Janet Hutchings
15. Payback in Death by J. D. Robb -- In Death (57)
16. Ultima by Stephen Baxter -- Proxima (2)
17. Berta Isla by Javier Marías, translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
18. Mystery Magazine, January 2024, edited by Kerry Carter

=== MARCH===
19. Guilt Strikes at Granger's Store by Terry Shames -- Samuel Craddock Mysteries (10)
20. Asimov's Science Fiction, January/February 2024, edited by Sheila Williams
21. Robert B. Parker's Broken Trust by Mike Lupica -- Spenser (51)
22. Folklore Studies by Mikage Sawamura, translated from Japanese by Katelyn Smith -- Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki's Conjecture (1)
23. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig
24. Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías, translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
25. Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
26. Random in Death by J. D. Robb -- In Death (58)

=== APRIL===
27. You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
28. The Book of Havana: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Orsola Casagrande
29. Reykjavík: A Crime Story by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
30. How It Unfolds by James S. A. Corey -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (1)
31. Void by Veronica Roth -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (2)
32. Falling Bodies by Rebecca Roanhorse -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (3)
33. The Long Game by Ann Leckie -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (4)
34. Just Out of Jupiter's Reach by Nnedi Okorafor -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (5)
35. Slow Time Between the Stars by John Scalzi -- Amazon Original Stories - The Far Reaches Collection (6)
36. West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal
37. Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
38. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells -- The Murderbot Diaries (2)
39. Evil in Emerald by A. M. Stuart -- Harriet Gordon (3)

=== MAY===
40. The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023, edited by Lisa Unger

The orphan stories and articles - any story I read that is not part of a book above - most of them will be online ones but some may be from random anthologies I read a single story from. I won't be listing all articles I read - just the ones I want to talk/add notes about.

=== JANUARY ===
1.

The rest of it - live theater, concerts, audio-plays, podcasts, TV, movies, courses - if it is not reading, it goes here. Audiobooks go up in the books list unless they are plays or courses.

=== JANUARY ===
1. (2024-01-06) The Wiz (ASU Gammage, directed by Schele Williams)
2. (2024-01-27) The Lehman Trilogy (The Phoenix Theatre Company, Written by Stefano Massini, Adapted by Ben Power, Directed by Rod Kaats)
3. (2024-01-28) The Barber of Seville (Arizona Opera)

=== FEBRUARY ===

Series and writers I am waiting a new book from - aka the "Go write something!" lists (plus the ones whose work I am working through - with the goal of them jumping into the top lists).

*Under Construction - need to track down titles and numbers and what's not so check again later*

===AUTHORS===
Steve Hamilton
Daniel Silva
Edward St. Aubyn

===SERIES===
Commissario Brunetti - #33 A Refiner’s Fire (July 9, 2024)
Gabriel Allon - #24 not announced yet
In Death - #57 Payback in Death (September 5, 2023 - waiting on a library hold); #58 Random in Death (January 23, 2024)
Slough House - #9 not announced

===Catching up Series ===
Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order: Next: #25 of 33 Flood Tide. #34 Alliance Unbound (October 15, 2024)
Foreigner: Next: #7 of 22 Destroyer.
Joe Pickett: Next #23 of 23: Storm Watch. #24 Three-Inch Teeth (February 27, 2024).

===Catching up Authors ===
C. J. Box: Remaining novels: Storm Watch
C. J. Cherryh: Remaining novels: too many to list...

Reading Globally trip around the world:

I visited 0 countries of the United Nations (0%) out of 193.
Create your own travel map .

1.

More details here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356311

The Reading Globally II challenge:

1.

More details here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356312

The publishers - we shall see if I manage to keep this up this year. I like following publishers whose books I enjoy and part of being able to do that is tracking what I do read/enjoy so we shall see how that goes.

1. G. P. Putnam's Sons (part of Penguin Group)
      Shadows Reel by C. J. Box
2. Red Circle: Red Circle Authors Limited, London, UK:
      Stand-in Companion by Kazufumi Shiraishi, translated from Japanese by Raj Mahtani
3. Summit Books (Simon and Schuster trademark so an imprint I suspect)
      The Sixth Day and Other Tales by Primo Levi, translated from Italian by Raymond Rosenthal
4. Tin House
      Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith

The translators - the often unsung, even more often maligned miracle workers who make it possible for everyone to enjoy stories written in languages they do not speak.

1. Raj Mahtani (Japanese -> English)
      Stand-in Companion by Kazufumi Shiraishi
2. Raymond Rosenthal (Italian -> English)
      The Sixth Day and Other Tales by Primo Levi

And with that, my thread is officially open. I managed to finish my last 2023 book minutes before midnight (and then to promptly NOT read the book I planned to start the year with the next morning...). But that means that I started the year with a clean slate - which is very unusual.

Happy new year everyone - and welcome to my thread for yet another year.

Hi Annie. Happy New year and fresh slate.

So... here I was on January 1, with my cup of tea (I am in a tea mood these days for some reason), walking towards my sofa to pick up the book that I had put on the table the previous night as my first 2024 book... And another book called to me from a shelf I was passing by. Always happens that way when I bother to make any plans...


1. Stand-in Companion by Kazufumi Shiraishi, translated from Japanese by Raj Mahtani

Type: Short Story, 6k words (43 pages)
Original Language: Japanese
Original Publication: 2018 (this edition: see below for explanation)
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction
Format: (a very small (178 x108 mm), the size of a tall mass market paperback) paperback
Publisher: Red Circle, Red Circle Minis series
Reading dates: 1 January 2024 - 1 January 2024

Some time in the near future, a report about the Earth population had forced most of the world to implement a ban on almost any reproductive and fertility treatments - no IVF, no surgical or non-surgical treatments even for curable cases. And in this future Japan, the government had gone a few steps further - not only a pregnancy has a higher priority to a marriage (so if you get pregnant by someone else, your divorce is almost automatic) but a pregnancy outside of a marriage is terminated by law. But as families are important in Japan, there are also the companions - androids who get the memories and bodies of a spouse (or a child, or a parent) who had died or moved on and which allow the bereaved (or left behind) person to spend another 10 years with their loved one.

Hayato and Yutori have their own issues which would make a baby unlikely. And yet they try. The story is told in two viewpoints - hers and his and before long, things just stop adding up. By the middle of the second chapter, it becomes clear that each of the them is actually telling us a different story - that the common story they appeared to narrate diverged somewhere along the lines and it is not just an unreliable narrator (or 2) that causes the incompatibilities. As the companions are introduced early on, the explanation is obvious - although it takes awhile for everything to snap into a single picture and the story even manages to surprise a reader here and there.

Despite its setting, the story is really a meditation on what family means and what is important in a relationship. It works better than I expected despite its somewhat convoluted structure and I enjoyed piecing the story together. And while some more depth may have added to the story, I found it touching and powerful even at this length.

Not a bad start of my reading year :)

===
From the back of the book and the published site: "Red Circle Minis is a series of short captivating books by Japan’s finest contemporary writers that brings the narratives and voices of Japan together as never before. Each book is a first edition written specifically for the series and is being published in English first.". Apparently I got it some time in 2019, not quite sure how I even found it... As is often the case with this kind of boutique books, they are expensive - both as ebooks and as paper books - they cost as much as a full-sized novels essentially. Which is the only reason I am not picking up the rest of them at the moment - although I am tempted by a few. There had not been a new one since 2021 so the publisher may have not survived the pandemic but we shall see...

===
Next: The Sixth Day and Other Tales by Primo Levi. Which is not the book on my table either... that one came out from a box I was trying to sort through in my restarted quest to getting my books organized. I did want to go back to the plan. But for some reason I ended up reading the acknowledgements first (while looking for the last page - I like knowing which is the last page of the novel itself when I start reading so I know when it is about to end) and the author called it "not a continuation but a companion novel" to one of his earlier novels. And as that other novel also sounds interesting, I decided to order it from the library and read it before I get to this one. So stay tuned...

PS: The book on the table is Tomás Nevinson. The book it is a companion to is Berta Isla. Anyone read any of them? Or anything by Javier Marías?

>11 dchaikin: Ha, I got visitors already :)
Hi Dan :) I almost called on you up in my introduction when I was talking about planning - our approach to reading cannot be more different. I am slowly starting to go through everyone's threads so I will stop by to see what you are up to shortly - maybe there will be something I can join in :)

>1 AnnieMod: Happy New Year!

>12 AnnieMod: I didn't have this on my radar. I think I'll need to add it to the ever growing list of Japanese books I hope to get to one day.

>14 stretch: Well, it is very short :) Apparently the author have other books translated into English as well...

Happy new year, Annie!

I read a few by Marías (the novel Todas las Almas, criticism Vidas escritas), but not those two. He's very readable. I think thorold read more by him.

>16 LolaWalser: Thanks. I started reading the first chapter before deciding to read the other novel first and his style in these early pages reminds me a bit of Javier Cercas - who I really like (note to self - pick up the rest of his books!). My first thought was the translator style bleeding through a bit but they do not share one (although they both have a female translator into English). If the rest is close to it, I will be a very happy person...

>12 AnnieMod: Sometime in the last month or so I read The Infatuations by Javier Marias. I could tell it was well-written, but somehow it didn't grab me and I was a bit impatient to get through it and perhaps didn't give it its due. I have 2 or 3 of his other books, though, and intend to read them, and people commented on my thread that he takes getting used to. It was probably just my state of mind when I read it.

>12 AnnieMod: very interesting

” walking towards my sofa to pick up the book that I had put on the table the previous night as my first 2024 book... And another book called to me from a shelf I was passing by. Always happens that way when I bother to make any plans...” - sounds like a extra value of plans, all the other stuff you read instead!

>13 AnnieMod: we vary, but i enjoy your thread.

Hi Annie, happy new year!

I've read 4-5 books by Marias and one book by Cercas. I think Cercad read as more intellectual/philosophical and to me Marias feels more fictional/magical. His Your Face Tomorrow series was such a fantastic premise and mostly enjoyable to read.

>18 arubabookwoman: Thanks! I am fine with slow building and somewhat wordy texts (well, most of the time) so we shall see.

>19 dchaikin: At one point I was semi-joking that the best way to know what I won't be reading is to ask me what I plan to read...

Ditto for your thread. :)

>20 ELiz_M: Thanks. :) We shall see how it goes in a few weeks. Cercas is very different between his books (some are less intellectual than others) and I am not sure why it hit me as similar - but then I read 3 pages or thereabouts. So who knows.

Happy New Year. Will pop by from time to time/

A belated welcome and happy new year, Annie! I look forward to hearing about your book and nonbook adventures. Thanks for taking the time to write about the Red Circle Minis. I wonder why they are being published in English first?

>20 ELiz_M: A Heart So White was my favorite. I think I’ve read all Javier Marias’s books. I miss watching out for his next novel.

>23 labfs39: I am not sure. Stories are hard to place in visible places so getting popular writers to write stories for a different market is not unheard of. My guess is that the publisher reached out and solicited directly to launch their series (and publisher).

I tend to look for publishers like that :)

>12 AnnieMod: My local library has got a copy of Berta Isla. With 653pp I would have to read it during vacation.

Happy reading 2024 😃📖

>26 Ameise1: My library says Berta Isla is 479 in the edition they have while Tomás Nevinson is 640. Kobo has Berta at 165k words and Tomás at 200k (which puts them combined just under the length of David Copperfield (for example). So yeah - some long books. So we shall see how it goes when the missing one makes it home with me. :)

👍

>27 AnnieMod: it’s apparently over 15 hours reading time in audio. It’s the only Javier Marias I haven’t read. I will be listening to it though as he is a favorite of mine. So sad he is no longer with us.

A short not of thanks for encouraging me to continue with Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch. I did enjoy the book and agree with you about the middle part lagging a bit. But it’s a fine piece of writing. Reviewd on my thread.

>30 kjuliff: :) Glad you liked it. I find the weak middles to be almost endemic to modern novels - the beginnings tend to get a lot of scrutiny and good novels tend to end strong but the middles just rarely hold up. I've learned to work through them to see if they get to a strong ending... :)

Greetings! I'm glad your first book of 2024, detour from planned reading as it was, was a good one. Looking forward to following along with your reading, as always. Cheers!

>32 rocketjk: You should know by now that planning and reading never seem to go in the same sentence for me... so not much surprise there.

Now back to the scheduled programme...

With work being a bit crazy the first week of January (I am transitioning into a new role which always causes interesting moments), I did not get to finish my second 2024 book before the weekend so in the meantime, I was back to the theater on Saturday - in this case for "The Wiz" in ASU Gammage, directed by Schele Williams: https://wizmusical.com/ - pre-Broadway National tour of a an updated Oz musical.

Very Gospel-inspired (not sure if the original version was also so Gospel-heavy musically), very colorful, lyrically modernized with a lot of powerful voices (especially the witches -- Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West -- but also the main cast).

I had not watched the original movie in a very long time (the last time was probably in my mid-teens and that was in another century...) so I cannot compare it to it or to an earlier version of the musical. I've read the book and I like it a lot. I enjoyed the musical this weekend as well although some elements were a bit rushed (the death of the Wicked Witch for example). But I liked the humor and the modern references and the overall effect was of magic and color - which is what all Oz is all about after all.

If you like Oz and Gospel/R&B, I really recommend it. It is not my usual style of music but even like that, it was fun.

Losing track of which threads I have / haven't visited yet, but don't think I've dropped my star off here yet. Done! Always enjoy your reviews and commentary.

2. The Sixth Day and Other Tales by Primo Levi, translated from Italian by Raymond Rosenthal

Type: Collection, 23 stories (222 pages)
Original Language: Italian
Original Publication: 1966 and 1971 in Italian (this edition is a selection from two separate collections in Italian: Storie naturali and Vizio di forma; the copyright page gives the Italian copyright as 1966 and 1977); 1990 in English (this edition and translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Summit Books (Simon and Schuster trademark)
Reading dates: 1 January 2024 - 6 January 2024

With this title, not much of a surprise that I finished the book on the 6th I guess... :)

Science fiction is not what one would think of first when the name Primo Levi comes up. A trained chemist, he wrote mostly non-fiction - both in his professional space and memoirs as a Holocaust survivor. It is the latter that introduced me to his writing - his recollections are vivid and terrible and powerful. Which makes this collection even more surprising. I knew it is fiction (although the publisher called it fantasy for some reason) and I knew it is very different from everything else I had read by him but it still managed to surprise me.

If you are looking for beautiful writing and/or thrilling stories, look elsewhere. The collection contains 23 sparse stories - the longest is 17 pages and most of them are much shorter than that. 2 of them are what would be called 10-minutes play these days; the rest are prose ones. Most of them talk of a future Italy - with scientific advances showing the timeline (although as most SF of the 60s and 70s, some of them sound outdated now - while others are almost prophetic). The rest are set in different places and times - from Levi's version of the story of the Golem of Prague, through the title story set at the 6th day of Earth's creation according to the Bible) to an indefinite future where most of humanity seems to require assistance in surviving (the pair of stories dealing with that show the same event from two different perspectives which adds to the depth of the story but it all sounded a bit off for some reason - especially the viewpoint of the pilots). These two stories are not the only ones that are linked - there are also 6 stories which follow a narrator (with a habit of getting in trouble) and a salesman from a futuristic corporation that creates gadgets (some sounding like things we do have now, some... not so much) through their working relationship. They are not printed one after the other but dispersed throughout the first part of the book. I wonder if the Italian edition had them split like that.

The book as a whole is in an old-fashioned style of science fiction which I tend to enjoy - even if not all stories worked for me as well as others (mainly because some felt like a vignette or a partial idea and less as a complete story), the collection was worth reading - it is quiet and almost meditative in places and surprisingly fresh for its age.

There seems to be another collection of Levi's science fiction stories in English and I think I will read that one as well at one point. He is still not a name I would think of when thinking about science fiction but he is readable.

===
Next: A short book that caught my eye in the library in the last days of last year: Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith.

>35 AnnieMod: how interesting. I’m curious from what it might tell us about him as a writer.

>36 dchaikin: I find most Italian writers to be somewhat sparse and almost simplistic in their writing compared to some other languages (or so they get rendered into both English and Bulgarian in my experience). So I was not surprised in the writing here (and it matches his style elsewhere). The type of stories got me a bit - they are almost the opposite of his Holocaust writings (although there is a tragic line running through most of them that kinda matches). But I was looking for it. I do wonder what someone who does not like classical SF and does not know his writing from his other works will make of them (and have a bad suspicion that they really may not like the collection at all).

>34 AlisonY: Waiving back and welcome :) I am yet to get to everyone's thread this year as well - work and life being what they are.

3. Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith

Type: Novella, 24k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2012 (2023 for this edition)
Series: N/A
Genre: contemporary
Format: small paperback
Publisher: Tin House
Reading dates: 7 January 2024 - 7 January 2024

Officially considered a novel for some reason (too short for that in my book so I will call it a novella instead), the story takes place in a single day - or the main story does anyway.

Isabel lives in Portland, Oregon as a librarian and is responsible for repairing damaged books. She spent her childhood in Alaska, lived through her parents' divorce and ended up with a taste for old things. The story follows her through a day in her life - a special day where a lot of things happen - from a love interest finally responding (just to have to leave), through finding the perfect dress for a party to the party itself. But somewhere in there, in between the mundane actions of everyday life, there are stories - Isabel's and other people's. In a novella that does not contain a lot of story on its own, we get a lot of people telling their stories - most of them sad but all of them human. And in between the stories people tell are also the stories Isabel makes up - based on a postcard, based on an old dress.

I wish the author had made this novella longer - I want to know what happens after this day. As it is, it is a slice in the life of Isabel - we get to know her past and her dreams but we don't know what happens after that. The novel ends with a yearning for a place she had never been - which reads almost like a replacement to a love that may or may not be. But then this is how life works - you do not know what happens next.

The writing is nice enough and in some places shines. The glaciers of the title tie to Isabel's memories and there is probably a deeper connection somewhere in there between the disappearing glaciers and her love for things from the past but it is almost invisible in the text - there if you look for it but too weak to actually manage to make a point. It was a nice enough novella but did not make me want to read more by the author. And I am really not fond of the modern trend for contemporary novels to leave treads dangling at their ends - while some of it may be a powerful way to end a novel, it usually ends up feeling like a cheat and if the author really had no clue how to connect them all properly.

===
And now back to attempting to catch up with my series: to Wyoming with Shadows Reel by C. J. Box - the 22nd Joe Pickett novel (the 24th is coming out in February so I actually have a chance to be current by the time it comes out) :)

>38 AnnieMod: doesn’t Tin House, the publisher, also have a magazine?

I enjoyed your review. I’m intrigued and suspect I wouldn’t mind reading this. The cover is interesting.

>39 dchaikin: They used to :( In 2019, they wrapped up the magazine with their 20th year anniversary issue to concentrate solely on books instead. I have most (if not all?) of their issues and had been planning to work through them for ages - I had been reading random things in them but almost never finishing a complete issue. Maybe 2024 will be the time...

It's an interesting little novel/novella that should work for most of the literary readers around here - maybe even work better than it did for me.

>38 AnnieMod: I like Glaciers back when I read it in... 2013, according to my review. A little slip of a book, and I noted that it had a lovely description of having a crush.

>40 AnnieMod: that’s too bad about the magazine. Thanks for the info.

>41 lisapeet: Oh yes, agree completely on the crush - but that is also exactly the part that made me scream in my head - I wanted to know what happens next. But even with that, I liked it enough - and I also know that had I tried reading it in 2013, it probably would have not gone as well - my literary reading had expanded lately... :)

>42 dchaikin: https://tinhouse.com/on-the-closing-of-tin-house-magazine/ - from the editors' mouths and so on. Unfortunately too many of these happen these days - magazines just do not sell apparently...

4. Shadows Reel by C. J. Box

Type: Novel, 83k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Series: Joe Pickett (22)
Genre: modern western, crime
Format: hardcover
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Reading dates: 7 January 2024 - 11 January 2024

Starting just a month after the end of the previous book in the series, we find Joe still not fully recovered from his injuries (but back to work already) and Nate on the road, chasing the man who stole his birds and terrorized his family. It is the Thanksgiving week and all 3 Pickett girls are coming home for the holiday. But before the family can get to its celebration, reality crashes the party - a man is found dead, a Nazi album is left at the library and before long, a second person dies. Which if you have been reading the series sounds just like a normal week for the Picketts. Add the bad guys' viewpoints (both the ones in Saddlestring and across the country in Nate's trip) and the novel quickly finds its pace. Except that it does not feel like a Joe Pickett novel.

Long series will often have a novel or 3 that simply seem forced into the series. I tend to consider them part of the experience of reading long series. But even like that, this one felt off - the series strength is in the wildlife and nature scenes and these are entirely missing. The new sheriff's inability to do his job is played up to almost a comic effect, the part of the novel that deals with Nate veers into current US politics (not that the series had never had that but it seems to get there a lot more than it used to) and even though the girls are back in town, they felt more like caricatures of themselves.

With this being said, the story in Saddlestring actually works - albeit being a bit predictable. Joe even manages to wreck another truck (which did feel like a Pickett novel and made me laugh). Nate's part of the story on the other hand was resolved by a character overhearing a bad guy who just then decided to spill his guts to his friend. Which is so much of a cliche in the genre that almost no author will go there anymore. And with Geronimo Jones coming back to Wyoming (at least for a bit), I suspect that the series is going to lean into the politics a lot more than it had before. I hope it will also returns to the nature and wildlife part of the novels.

===
Next: I am staying with the series to finish the last of the published ones (the 2023 Storm Watch) before moving to other things. #24 comes out in February (which I already have a hold on in the library (#36 of 41 on 8 copies) as of this morning) so I will be reading it soonish after it comes out. So far the "read your own series" plan for the year seems to be working.

I read the 1st volume of this series in 2014 and no more after that. It was good, but I haven't read any more books from this series. Maybe also because I couldn't find any in the library.

>45 Ameise1: They are not high literature and they have annoying parts but I enjoy them for a lighter read. Plus the library here had had all of them which made it easier to stick with the series (not that I won't buy books when they do not).

In case someone is wondering where I disappeared to again, I am around and I am fine - just not in the mood to talk or write about books. I read a bit and will be back at some point talking about what I read but just now just the idea of writing about books gets on my nerves.

>46 AnnieMod: I know you are a nomadic participant, Annie. I enjoy when you are here and feel fairly confident you'll return when you wander away. I hope all is well, and I'll look forward to catching up on your reading when you are back.

Oh.!..I came over here to see if you had any comments on what's going on politically over there what with that 1864 law....

>48 avaland: "They are idiots" about covers it in a polite way.

See, Arizona may have been in the news in the last years for voting blue but that was more a backlash against the previous president going after the local senator than a real shift in politics. The state is conservative - always had been, always will be most likely. I've made my peace with it. So I was not really surprised :( Plus coming from Bulgaria, being upset by local politics is a bit like the kettle and the pot saying. :) Do I wish it was different? Sure. But..

I am around - I am actually in a better place mentally and physically than I had been in decades but my "I want to talk about books" mood had not returned yet. I read (not as much as usual but I read - https://www.librarything.com/catalog/AnnieMod/readin2024 is uptodate) and I try to follow people's threads (a bit) but I rarely post lately. I was thinking of trying to restart in Q2 and I still had not given up on the idea but it is almost the middle of the month and here we are :)

Glad you’re in a good place and nice to have an update on you.

>50 AnnieMod: "I was thinking of trying to restart in Q2 "

Don't forget me over in Reading Globally II! Looks like I'm the only one following through on that challenge you started! :)

>50 AnnieMod:

Good to hear you're doing so well!

>51 dchaikin: Waving back.

>52 rocketjk: I haven't forgotten - I even have updates :) Things take time :)

>53 LolaWalser: Right? Now let's try not to jinx it.

I spent most of last week in Denver for a company event (which ended with the very bizarre feeling of getting on a plane while it was snowing outside and landing in Phoenix 90 minutes later while the temperature outside was 91 degrees (~33C for the ones who use the proper scale). The result is that most of my planning kinda did not work out again - not that I expected to be able to do anything in Denver but at least I thought I will have time around it. I did some light reading though. Oh well.

Meanwhile, and because I need to start somewhere if I plan to come back, the opera season closed in Arizona with Don Giovanni https://azopera.org/performances/don-giovanni on Sunday. I had forgotten just how funny that specific opera is - I listen to part of its music often (Mozart is Mozart) but I had not seen it staged for more than a decade (and never live). I managed to get to all 4 operas this season and I really enjoyed all of them. Considering that about a year ago the number of live opera performances I had attended was stuck at 0 (due mainly to lack of access and/or opportunity), and now it is up to 5 (The Magic Flute, Gregg Kallor's Frankenstein, The Barber of Seville, Gounod's Roméo & Juliette and Don Giovanni), I am very pleased with the results. Of course, it had also made me look around and see if it may be feasible to go somewhere around the country next season (especially as the just declared 2024/2025 season will only have 3 operas: La Bohème, Aida and Zorro (in their new operas series). Anyone have any recommendations local to them?

Now back to reading (uhm... I mean working and then reading).

I was reminded of your love of the performing arts the other day when listening to a podcast (Strong Sense of Place). They have a promo code for Marquee TV (streaming service for operas, ballets, plays) -- 3 months for $0.99:

https://marquee.tv/

Code: (I think) SSoP

>54 AnnieMod: "Anyone have any recommendations local to them?"

I am not an opera guy myself, but the LA Opera has a solid reputation. Their 24/25 season is a bit more warhorse-y than usual for them -- Madame Butterfly, Cosi Fan Tutte, Rigoletto, and the Gounod R&J that you've already seen -- with one newer work, Osvaldo Golijov's 2003 Ainadamar, about the romance between playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and actress Margarita Xirgu.

>55 ELiz_M: I've forgotten that these guys existed so thanks for the reminder. With the classical season winding down (done for the Opera, the rest has a couple of performances left) and the promo was actually on their site as well, I just subscribed and we shall see if I will keep it after the 3 months :)

>56 KeithChaffee: And LA is an easy place to make a weekend of it if the dates line up. I was looking at Seattle (partially because I end up there way too often anyway) but LA is also a good idea. Thanks!

And back to books - let's see if I can get all caught up in the next weeks.


5. Storm Watch by C. J. Box

Type: Novel, 83k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2023
Series: Joe Pickett (23)
Genre: modern western, crime
Format: hardcover
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Reading dates: 12 January 2024 - 13 January 2024

That late into a series, you either like the setting and characters or you had bailed out (or you somehow picked a very late novel in a series and proceed to get lost in old references and unexplained connections). This one was a lot better than the previous one - mainly because Box stepped back from the tangent he had been going into (more politics than nature) and came back to a more balanced entry. Politics had always been a part of this series and I do not expect that to change but when they take the front seat (as in the previous installment), things just do not work as well - not for a book about Joe anyway.

Joe Pickett is out chasing an wounded elk and to exactly noone's surprise, he manages to stumble onto a body - of the human variety. With a heavy storm closing in and everyone seemingly wanting to ignore and forget the dead man (whose body also somehow disappears at one point), it comes down to our game warden to somehow stumble into the truth. Meanwhile, Nate's pursuit of the man who stole his falcons and wounded his wife continues. Before long the stories will of course end up meeting - and with a heavy dose of familiar characters showing up again, the novel fits into the series. Maybe don't read it when it is cold outside though - the whole novel relies on the cold and the snow to make things even more oppressive. Which works - but leaves a very oppressive aftertaste.

===
And that got me uptodate not just with this series but ALL novels written by Box. A fact that had since changed - there is a new novel in this series which I keep pushing behind on my library request (too many other books at home). But at least this year is not going as bad as usual for me and series reading. :)

6. Great Work of Time by John Crowley

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1989
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction, fantasy, time travel, alternate history
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Reading dates: 13 January 2024 - 14 January 2024
Note: World Fantasy Award (novella, 1990)

The best "What if?" stories out there are the ones which take a certain action (or character) and change it a little bit - and then allow the story to unfold with that change in place. Sometimes, that allows weirder things to be added, sometimes it is just a story as it may have happened.

Crowley went for the first option - he started with a small change but wrapped it into a secret society and time travel. And yet, the novella works because its internal logic makes sense inside of its own framework.

Cecil Rhodes's real life reads as a story even without embellishments. His will established the Rhodes Scholarship - which is probably the first thing a modern reader think of when they hear his name. His story in Africa may be colorful and his name may be living in a lot of local names (past and current) but I'd admit that I knew very little about him before I met him in this novella (and then went to check how much of what was in the text was true - the answer ended up being "a lot").

It all started really innocently - a young man invented a time machine and went back in time to get a rare stamp. Things did not go exactly as expected and before long the reality he started from seemed to have changed - the British Empire never fell, a time traveling society had been meddling and ensuring that the Empire will stand forever and history as we know it had become a bit less stable. So where does Rhodes come into play you wonder? Well, he had the money and he had the right upbringing and mindset - setting up a scholarship while making sense before his death did not really match his thoughts earlier in his life. So what if he never managed to get to the later stage of his life and never got disillusioned with the Empire?

For most of the novella, the reader needs to pick up from sometimes very subtle clues what kind of reality the text is talking about - ours, the one where Rhodes dies even younger than in ours or something totally different. It could have been frustrating but it ends up fascinating - Crowley's handling of the real history works flawlessly in its merging of the story of a young man, Winterset, who is asked to go back in time and undo a change which brought what he thinks of the real history. There are some places where the text could have stalled but somehow it never happens - the necessary confusion for the story to work ends up being the strength of the novella. And by the end of it, by the time when the reader knows a lot more about that world than any of the characters, it all gets tied together - all the way back to where we started with that rare stamp.

This story is exactly what science fiction (and fantasy) is really good at - looking at real life issues with a different lens. In this case, it is colonialism and the British Colonial Service - the format allows the exploration not only of what had been but of what could have been (both good and bad). The ending may feel unresolved - the story is closed but there is enough of an opening for everyone, including the reader and Winterset, to realize that this may not be the end.

I am not surprised the novella won the World Fantasy Award (even if it is nominally a science fiction story, there are some elements to push it to the border between the two genres or even over into fantasy) - if anything, I am surprised it did not win more awards. I am glad to have finally found it.

7. Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

Type: Novella, 28K words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2023
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle (4)
Genre: fantasy
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 14 January 2024 - 15 January 2024

After 3 installments which saw Chih and Almost Brilliant collecting stories on the road, they finally head home. Except that things are never easy around those two and before long they end up dealing with a dead teacher, the granddaughters of the said teacher really wanting to get their beloved grandparent's body back and as the title implies, some mammoths.

The story could have been written in a much lighter manner, matching the tone of the series so far. Instead it leaned on the grief angle - both human and neixin (we already knew that these birds are special) - and the backstory of Chih and their friends. It is an exploration of families (both the ones you are born in and the ones you choose to be a part of) and loss. There are some bright moments so the story is not all dark and depressing and Chih shines without even trying - in the middle of personal grief, they somehow end up needing to safe the monastery and its way of life.

Almost Brilliant (and its baby!) provide the usual entertainment but even that is subdued. And of course there are the stories - for all in this world revolves around then so we get to see more of it.

The end may not have been surprising but it still manages to sound as if it may have been - there was really no other way to close that story without undoing all that was done and yet it feels like it only happened due to the stories who made it into people's heart and finally made them understand the others.

As with the rest of the series, it is a story of acceptance and of finding the way to understand the other. It probably won't work as a standalone (or it will lose a lot of its power without the rest of the series) but as a part of the cycle, it fits. And even if I appreciate the change of tone, I hope that we will be back on the road and in happier tales going forward.

===
Reviews of the previous three installments if anyone is interested:
1. The Empress of Salt and Fortune: https://www.librarything.com/work/23557012/reviews/198990034
2. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain: https://www.librarything.com/work/24761015/reviews/199530220
3. Into the Riverlands: https://www.librarything.com/work/26860851/reviews/235749164

>59 AnnieMod: This looks very good. I've added it to my list of books to acquire someday.

Welcome back, Annie. I always enjoy your performance updates. Thanks for including them.

>61 janoorani24: It is also in quite a few anthologies and collections so it may be easier to find it that way than this separate edition (which is gorgeous but...) :) https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1844 has the list of all known reprints (if any are missing they can be added) in case you may have one of them somewhere on a shelf :)

>62 labfs39: Waving back. I've been busy on that front as well (part of why I do not read as much on weekends as I used to) but I think I will be updating these when done with the books for a month until I catch up...

8. The Translator by Leila Aboulela

Type: Novel, 62k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1999
Series: N/A
Genre: contemporary?
Format: ebook
Publisher: Polygon
Reading dates: 15 January 2024 - 16 January 2024

After the untimely death of her husband, Sammar sent her infant boy back to her family in Sudan and stayed in Aberdeen, Scotland, trying to knit her life back together while grieving and working as a translator. One of the professors she often works with is Rae, an Islamic scholar who understand her religion and the way she thinks. It is almost inevitable that the two of them will try to find a way towards each other. Except that for Sammar, Islam is her life - she is born to be a wife and she is Muslim first and anything else after that. Rae on the other hand studies and understands it - but does not believe and does not want to convert (and have a lot of valid reasons besides the fact that he simply does not believe).

That could have been the setup for a wonderful slow burn of a novel. Using the two different settings for the two parts of the novel (the cold Aberdeen and the sunny Sudan) add even more to the feeling of separation. Sammar and Rae do not seem to have anything in common and yet, their connection is there - even when they both deny it. Except that Sammar is unwilling to change and consider anything but what she thinks is right - even if that means never seeing Rae again.

And herein lies the problem. Had the roles been reversed, with the man insisting on his faith and his way and the woman being expected to submit to it and change, the novel would have probably never been published. Writing the novel this way, with Sammar essentially filling that cliched male role of past romance novels, diminishes the power of the novel considerably. It could have been an exploration of faith and religion (not even remotely the same except in Sammar's thinking) and of finding a way to bridge the differences between cultures. Instead it ended up a reversed romance cliche more than anything.

The writing is good and there are a lot of well-written and well-thought sequences in the book. It probably draws on the author's life in places and these insights into her thinking do make up for the strained main story. I just wish she had not tried to mold it so close to the standard stories (with the genders reversed).

>64 AnnieMod: I wonder how much of this novel is based on the author’s own life? I was excited when I started to read your review, thinking I’d found a new writer. So many writers have done so well with themes revolving around Muslin (especially northern African) versus Western cultures. But it seems from a little research that Leila Aboulela isn’t offering anything new?

>65 kjuliff: I am not sure - there were no notes about it or about how much is based on real life (hers or someone else's). It is her debut novel and it showed in some places so I plan to give her another chance - I liked the style (when not pushing too hard to show just how different it is (spoiler alert: it is not)). I am not sorry I read it - it may have ended up almost into banality but before that there was enough to keep me reading and interested. So there is that. I am also glad I knew who the author is (I do not always check before reading novels) or I may have seen some of the text as almost an insult or a parody...

And I will cheat a bit here because I actually did read the 3 of them back to back so is it even cheating?

So why did I have 3 novels in a series I really really like unread? After the 6th book, DAW decided to change from mass market paperback to a trade paperback. I am not sure if there was also a change in distributor but the end result was that my library never stocked books 7 and 8 - either on paper or as an ebook (they had only 1 and 2 on ebook as it is). I was giving them some time (sometimes they do catch up with series) before buying them (I really like the series) and then they got the 9th (on paper only). It is not the kind of series where you can skip 2 books... so not sure what their plan is but mine ended up being buying the two missing ones and reading all 3 of them back to back (they still do not have books 7 and 8...).

If you wonder what this series is all about - urban fantasy noir - think of Alex Verus and The Dresden Files but a lot more violent and set in Los Angeles and south of that.


9. Suicide Kings by Stephen Blackmoore
10. Hate Machine by Stephen Blackmoore
11. Cult Classic by Stephen Blackmoore

Type: Novels, 87k, 79K and 86K words respectively
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022, 2022, 2023
Series: Eric Carter (7, 8 and 9)
Genre: fantasy
Format: ebook, ebook, paperback
Publisher: DAW
Reading dates: 16 January 2024 - 19 January 2024, 19 January 2024 - 21 January 2024, 21 January 2024 - 23 January 2024

Everyone's favorite necromancer is back in LA for good and after the previous novel is finally and completely separated from Mictlantecuhtli (well, mostly anyway). He is not very happy with Gabriela because of that last part (or the part where she pulled him back into the land of the living) but at least noone is burning half of LA this time around. Not yet anyway - with Eric you never know - after all there is still that part of the city that is under a magical cloud. Getting people to not notice all the magic is getting more and more entertaining.

Except that this is not what this novel is all about - instead Eric somehow ends up in the middle of a family feud (not his own) with everyone seemingly trying to kill him (so what is new?) and everyone else in the said family while working around a family curse which will kill them if they kill one of their relatives. Except that someone does die and the curse does not activate and it seems like all the rules are fluid again.

Magical LA is always fascinating in these books and this one is not an exception and we get quite a lot of backstory of the world as a whole. It is a very fast moving novel with a lot of fights, death and things that should be dead showing up out of nowhere and it fits in the series as a glove and then at the end, it sets the stage for the next novel.

"Hate Machine" opens more or less where the previous one closed - with Eric being forced to go to Las Vegas because something he did 30 years ago is about to finally come back and bite him. It does not help that someone is holding Garbiela's soul as hostage (Eric may still be pissed off because of the whole getting him back from the dead thing but he still cares about her... a lot). As it turns out, someone is trying to play with time - not just with the future but with the past as well and that can lead to a lot of... interesting moments. Not that Eric cares much about the world at this point (his moral compass is anything but straight forward) but he really does not like having his chain yanked by something he made.

Moving the novel from LA to Vegas allows the novel to explore chance and time magic (which we had not seen much of) and to tie some old threads from earlier novels back in. By the end of it Eric is back to LA although the world may be slightly different from what one remembers - as usual, the consequences of some choices are not what one expects...

"Cult Classic" deals with the aftermath of the previous novel - Eric is chasing the Oracle, time is having its own ideas and certain pasts bleed into the present causing all kinds of mayhem. The police (especially the cleanup crew which hides magic) has their hands full - it is not that easy to explain an early 20th century car showing up in the middle of a modern car... And just when you think that nothing can surprise anyone anymore, one of the doomsday cults of the early 20th century ends up being a lot more than anyone thought it was and now, 100 years later), it is about to finally gets its ending. The result is the expected mix of action, a bit of love (because why not?) and the very real possibility that this time it won't be just LA that will burn (and if anything, we know that unlike other series, this one may go there).

If this is the first book from this series you had seen, please put it down and go read the previous ones first. It does not work on its own - it is not supposed to. If you had been reading the series so far - don't plan on doing much else before you finish it.

The story seems wrapped up and with the re-introduction of a certain character (no spoilers!), if we see another book, it may be different. I cannot wait to see what happens next but even if this is the last in the series, it was all worth it.

And from magical LA (which was a lot of fun) to 18th century France because that's just how my reading goes some days.


12. The Figaro Trilogy: The Barber of Seville / The Marriage of Figaro / The Guilty Mother by Beaumarchais, translated from French by David Coward

Type: 3 Plays
Original Language: French
Original Publication: 1775, 1778 and 1792
Series: Figaro (1-3)
Genre: drama
Format: paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford World's Classics series
Reading dates: 23 January 2024 - 26 January 2024

Before they became the well known operas by Rossini and Mozart, the two Figaro stories were plays (and had a third companion to close the story line). As Arizona Opera was staging "The Barber of Seville" this season, I figured it is time to look at the original stories.

The first two plays were exactly what I expected, having seen the operas before - they are funny (they are actually even funnier in places than the later operas) and they lean hard into the comical. The third one, despite continuing the same storyline, is anything but comic - it is a rework of the Tartuffe story and is a drama with almost no comical elements and without the sparkle of the first two. Taken together they chronicle the story of the French citizens of the time - both the aristocracy and their servants in the later years of the ancien régime.

In the edition I read (the Oxford World's Classics one), David Coward provides not only the translation (which I cannot judge as I do not read French) but also an Introduction (which is very good and full of spoilers so better to be read after the plays although there are parts in it which make the reading of the plays better and easier) and Notes (both on the translation and on certain elements of the times and common knowledge at the time which are now obscure). The plays do not sounds too dated - their subject is of course but they still work.

I did not expect the sad tone of the last play - even if the first 2 contain some not so comical elements, they follow the proper pattern for a comedy and you know they will end well. Not so much for the third - it is not designed or created as a comedy piece so there is no assurance of a happy ending.

If you like the operas, these plays add another layer to their stories. If you do not like opera, read them as what they are - part of the history of French (and world) drama.

===
And that was it for my January reading. I did manage to squeeze one more live performance (the opera that made me read this book: https://azopera.org/performances/barber-seville which was hilarious as expected. If only some audience members will remember that there are live performers out there and stop talking and moving and being late and what's not (my current pet peeve with the state of the arts in Arizona - people seem to find it normal to be late for live performances and to expect the people who are there on time to get up so they can get to their seats WHILE the performance is already going... and then to proceed to talk while the play/performance is going on (and not always about what we are watching))... Does anyone find this normal? I know they paid for their tickets and so on but if you are late, why should everyone else suffer for your tardiness? And don't get me started on the talking (I really really did not want to hear about last night's sexual experience of the woman sitting behind me during this opera...)

Oh well - onto February tomorrow. :)

Actually before February (and on the day before I went to the opera), I went to see "The Lehman Trilogy" at The Phoenix Theatre Company: https://phoenixtheatre.com/the-season/lehman-trilogy

163 years of history in 3 hours (or thereabouts) with the story of USA and finance mixed into the story of a family.

That was one of the plays I was least excited for this season and somehow it ended up one of my favorites - the staging and the story itself melt together in such a nice way that even if it is mostly narration and only 3 actors are on the stage, it still manages to get the story across. It is very long but it seems too short - it is absorbing and the actors did a wonderful job. Strongly recommended (and a play I may decide to go again to if another local theater decides to try its hand with)...

Now really - onto February.

>59 AnnieMod: Noting this one, I love a good time travel story. Though I'm currently finishing up the last story of a huge time travel anthology so I might need a break from them for a while.

>60 AnnieMod: You've made me want to give this series another go. I read Empress of Salt and Fortune in 2022, but my brain state at that time means I remember literally nothing about it, to the point I'd forgotten I'd even read it before going through my lists earlier this year, so I'll need to start from the beginning again.

>68 AnnieMod: It never even occurred to me that these were plays before they were operas. I'm curious about them, especially as I don't actually know the stories. (I'm assuming the Bugs Bunny cartoon wasn't a faithful rendition.)

>68 AnnieMod: I'm surprised latecomers were even let in the theater after the performance started. Back in the day, that was a big no-no. If you were late you had to wait for a break in the performance. Is this a new (undesirable) trend?

>64 AnnieMod: I've only read a short story by Leila Aboulela, "The Museum" which won the Caine Prize. It had similar themes to The Translator. I liked her writing, so I may look for this one, even if it didn't fully deliver for you.

>70 valkyrdeath: I did not know about the Figaro plays either - the Opera has a book club which I am very bad at attending (as in never) but I try to keep an eye on what they are reading and they were doing the corresponding play - so I figured I will just grab the whole trilogy.

Try The Singing Hills Cycle again - it had been gathering acclaim so I won't say that it is under-appreciated but it kinda flies a bit under the radar despite all the awards and nominations. I know a lot of people consider the first to be the strongest but I think that it actually got stronger/better when the second came out - the first is nice and all and could have stood on its own but addition of the second is what sold me on the series - not the book alone but the two of them now together.

>71 labfs39: All tickets and instructions they send talk about late seating being either never happening (aka wait the intermission) or at the discretion of the ushers. And herein lies the issue I think - the ushers are trained/asked/told to let anyone in - no matter what time and how disturbing it is. And as the hall is already dark at this point, you have an exit door opening and lightning all up and then an usher with a pen light and talking(!) people walking to their specific seat - which almost always are in the middle of a row. It had happened across different venues and types of performances (Broadway plays at the ASU Gammage, the Opera, the local theaters) so it does look like the current trend in Arizona. The ones who seem to be holding the line a bit stronger seem to be the Ballet people (using the same venue as the Opera) but even there, there had been late seating in the first minutes.

And then this Sunday, the conductor at the Symphony turned around during the small pause between parts 3 and 4 of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 and asked people to please silence their phones (there had been an exceedingly large number of phones ringing during part 3 for some reason). Ringing happens occasionally but it had never been that bad this season. It is possible that part of the reason was the length of the program - it was longer than 2 hours (the usual length) and the ringing started a few minutes after the 2 hours mark but what kind of an idiot does not silence their phone in a theater/live performance venue (sorry, won't even attempt to say sorry for calling these people idiots). Sorry - rant over. I am just... annoyed.

>59 AnnieMod: This novella is on my list of Greatest Time Travel Stories of All, Um, Time. Reread it recently. Amazing how Crowley can write something unlike anything else.

>73 dukedom_enough: Yep.

Not much of an update book-wise I am afraid (I may get to it in Q4 when things get calmer around here). If someone is interested what I am reading, my Read in 2024 collection is up-to-date but I am not writing reviews at the moment.

Meanwhile, my Mom is visiting me for the first time - her first time in the States ever so we are doing things - off to Hawaii this week, Vegas in 3 weeks, the Canyon later. But between her here and work, my reading time is a bit... less :) And my time for anything else is even less.

>74 AnnieMod: Have a great time with your mother, Annie!

>74 AnnieMod: How exciting to have your mom visiting and getting to travel with her! An interesting blend of reading (genres, countries, etc) as usual, Annie.

>68 AnnieMod: I'm another of those who didn't realize this was a series of plays first. Interesting, and based on your comments of the third one, I may have to dig into it more. Great cover too.

I would find that disruption by late comers really rude, as are the phones in >72 AnnieMod:

>74 AnnieMod: That will be a really interesting visit - to see the US through fresh eyes once again after you've become somewhat acclimatized. Hope you get in some good home cooking!

>75 kidzdoc: Thanks! We already are. She had been here for 10 days already - acclimatizing in Arizona (well, yes, it is hot). :)

>76 labfs39: Yep - I am alternating working and traveling while she is here - that way she has some time to rest and I do not need to take off work for a month and a half in a row :)

>77 SassyLassy: That's the idea. She wanted to see Vegas (because TV...) and she loves the beach (thus Hawaii) and I cannot not get her up to Sedona and the Canyon while she is here for 6 weeks. So we shall see how she likes it.

I've been doing most of the cooking so far - not that she does not want to but she needs a break and a vacation as well so I had been just going about the usual routine. :)

We shall see how she likes the long flight over to Honolulu (she was just fine on the Frankfurt-Denver one so... there is hope).

Enjoy your time with your mom.

After dropping Mom back home at the start of October, I had the best of intentions to actually revive the thread. Except I came back with the worst virus (apparently not COVID or so my tests claim) and spent the next 3 weeks mostly recovering while working (and not reading too much). Then travel for work happened and before I knew it, here we are in November.

Mom's visit was very nice - I had not spent so much time with her since I was a baby probably and it went smoother than I expected. Hawaii, Vegas and the Grand Canyon helped I guess :)

I am reading less this year than in previous ones - I just seem to have other things to do (which is good I guess). Be it as it may, I still read so if someone wants to see what I had been up to while I was missing, https://www.librarything.com/catalog/AnnieMod/readin2024 is up to date. One of the side effects of not reading as much is that I have a lot of series which I follow that had books in the last year or two which I had not gotten to. So a lot of my reading in the next 2 months will be catching up with authors and series I enjoy. I am not yet sure if I will post about the books I read in the interim - will see how I feel about it.

===

Talking about November, it actually started not with a book but it a play - "Dial M for Murder" at Arizona Theatre Company: https://atc.org/show/dial-m-for-murder/ As it turned out, this play has two versions - the original by Frederick Knott and the updated version by Jeffrey Hatcher. They used the latter so after the performance (which was very well done), I kept wondering how different it is from the original -- so when I came home I decided it is time to want the old Hitchcock movie by the same name (which is probably the easiest to find version of the original play). Turned out, the update kept really close to the original (with one gender change) - adding some more details at the start and making it more exciting towards the end but surprisingly, some of the things I thought were just from the update turned out to be in the original as well (including a reference to "influencing someone" which brought the theater to laughter and I was sure was in the new play only just to hear it in the original as well). I am glad I saw the play first though - the actors did a marvelous job and ruining some of the surprises because you know they are coming would have taken away from it. If you had never watched the movie or the play, I recommend either version.

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And back to books, I actually finished my first November book - catching up on the long running Roy Grace series with its 19th installment (from 2023): Stop Them Dead. Peter James had been steadily going through the different crime types and this one hits on animal-related crime (dogs in particular) and the illegal trade in them. But it all starts with a murder of course -- otherwise the team will not be called - the laws in UK really do not treat animal-related crime as seriously as they should (or so is the case in the fictional world of the series although a quick check online shows that it is close to the reality). The story is a bit predictable - we know that a solution will be found and midway through the book both the team and the reader know who the killers are - and we see more and more of their crimes as the series progresses.

I don't mind the predictability in this series - stories still work because as with most long running series, half of the enjoyment is in meeting the characters again and again. But this is where this novel did not manage to pull it off - from stilted dialogs early on (using as info dump for what happened since the last novel) to just sketching the rest of the team (which works if you had read the previous novels but makes them all sound almost like types than as real people), something was off through most of the text. Not sure if the story is losing its steam or it is a one-off but I could not stop thinking that this could have been a novel with pretty much any detective... which is never a good sign for a series.

Overall not a bad installment for a long running series - but I hope that James tightens up the style for the the novel after the next one (the next one (the 2024) is going back in time to tell Sandy's story from her perspective - it will need to have a different style so we shall see).
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Next: the latest translation of a Ragnar Jónasson book: Death at the Sanatorium

105. Death at the Sanatorium by Ragnar Jónasson, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (Original: Hvítidauði (2019), Translation 2024)

In 1983, two people die in an old sanatorium building - one murdered, the other by an apparent suicide. In 2012, Helgi Reykdal takes a fresh look at the case as the base for his MA dissertation in criminology. That's the bare bones summary of the novel - and what you get is exactly what you expect. Old secrets coming to life, a 3-timelines story (2012, 1983 and a few chapters in the 1950s which only make sense when all the dots get connected towards the end), multiple viewpoints (more than one per year) and a few twists with different levels of predictability make that a solid read if you are in the mood for this kind of story.

While technically a standalone novel, a few characters you may have met before show up (Hulda and her last boss from the Hidden Iceland series). You do not need to have read the series although it would help understanding some of the dynamics that led both to the 1983 resolution and to the events of this novel. In addition to the multiple timelines Jónasson added a subplot about domestic violence (possibly to set the stage for more novels with Helgi?) and gave the budding criminologist a hobby that is close to his own heart - Golden Age mysteries (which can be seen as a nod to the Pronzini's Nameless Detective series - or I am just reading too much into it - Jónasson had made it clear more than once, including at the afterword of this book, that he likes the old stories).

What I was missing in this novel was the Icelandic setting. Yes, the novel is set in Iceland but it could have been set almost anywhere. And this is surprising for Jónasson's writing - usually Iceland and its nature are a big part of his novels.

Next: Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher

I'm glad you had a nice visit with your Mom. You visited some beautiful spots. So sorry you came back with a nasty virus. My niece gave me something in September that didn't effect her more than a few days, but knocked me down for much longer. Good to have you back.

Nice to see some new posts and reviews. Glad you’re past that virus.

Wow, that sounds like a great trip you made.
I hope this stupid virus is cured, it can be so nerdy.
Congratulations on your reading year, there are some exciting books among them.
I'm also a series junkie. I've started far too many series and I keep adding new ones 😂.

>82 labfs39: >83 dchaikin: Thanks for stopping by :)

>84 Ameise1: It was a series of trips centered in Phoenix where I live - she came for 6 weeks, we spend a week in Vegas and 10 days in Hawaii.

As for the series - I find the https://www.librarything.com/stats/MEMBERNAME/series list very useful -- as you can filter by year of reading and I record these, it makes it easy to look at the series I read last year but had not picked the 2024 book yet and things like that. :)

106. Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher (2024)

Alice had developed a nose for finding curiosities while visiting different marketplaces and planets. So when she sees a container that looks familiar, she manages to convince the seller that it is worthless and get it for cheap. Another easy win, right? Until people start shooting at her anyway - apparently she is not the only one who realized what that tube really is - an ancient weapon.

Elaine Gallagher creates a universe where different species live together, interconnected with star gates and commerce, with data and knowledge being part of a viable economy in more than one way. Humanity does not get to mess up everything this time around - we had managed to annihilate ourselves and Alice is the last remaining human anywhere. That becomes important towards the end of the novella because her understanding of human wars and thinking allows her to grasp the truth and help Gunn - the man who is trapped inside of the weapon everyone is after (or who is the weapon itself if you so prefer). I wasn't very happy with where the story was going at the end - it was too sugary sweet until it wasn't and the author pulled that off without the need for a gimmick or a surprise ending.

It is a story of a chase across the stars - with Alice trying to outrace and out-think more than one group of people who really want that weapon (and are not shy about it). But that run is used to show us glimpses of a lot of different worlds (more than 10 for sure, less than 100 - if I ever reread this novella, I probably should count them), different species and even a love story and a family story tied together. What could have been run of the mill chase story ends up being a lot more about belonging and finding your place in the universe. While I was reading, I could see the influences - some of them in the places we got a glimpse at, some of them in the action itself. But somehow it never sounded cliched or worse - it managed to work together. My biggest issue was that I wanted it to last longer - but on the other hand its length was perfect for the story it really wanted to tell and left the doors open for other stories in the same universe. And thinking back, I think that was a better choice than going for a more complete novel - because usually stories have backstories and backgrounds and you are not meant to know them all (or need to) in order to enjoy a story.

Overall a very nice surprise from a newish author (she has a few stories and poems, this is the first longer work) and I plan to keep an eye on what she publishes next. It may had had some rough spots but it was very enjoyable.

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And I am off to Venice to check on Commissario Brunetti with A Refiner’s Fire.

>85 AnnieMod: Many thanks for the link. I have 517 series 🙈 and have only finished reading a few. Ok, I don't think this life is enough to finish reading them all 🤣.

>87 Ameise1: Well, some of them probably need combining and some are just reordered series or not series at all or superseries so I suspect you are closer to 400 than 500 but yeah. Mine shows 565 series so we are in the same boat (and NOT sinking!). Plus I am ready to bet you that both you and I will start at least a few more series in 2025 anyway (or even during the rest of 2024). At least we always have something fun to return to, right? :)

The weekend (as most weekends this time of the year) saw me back in the theater - this time for "Waitress" with Phoenix Theatre Company: https://phoenixtheatre.com/events/waitress/ . I had not watched the movie (and I do not plan to) but the play was very well done and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. And the cast, especially the other two waitresses were talented and hilarious at the best possible way. And then I went home to do some reading during the long weekend.


107. A Refiner’s Fire by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (33)(2024)

The baby gangs had been ramping up their violence in Venice - and while noone had died yet, it starts to look a lot more serious than just some young men letting off some steam. So Brunetti and Griffoni decide to dig a bit deeper and try to get to the bottom of it all - at least partially because someone actively tries to make them stop (in a somewhat laughable way) and partially because one of their own seems to be targeted by a gang. As is often the case, this investigation somehow manages to drag another one into their path - the 2003 Nasiriyah tragedy where multiple Carabinieri were killed or severely injured. The 2003 tragedy is real; the story that Leon wrapped around it is fiction.

The novel is following the path of the later entries in the series - as Brunetti gets older, the tales get darker and more ambiguous - the early novels where the moral compass of our Commissario often clashed with the orthodoxy in his job had been replaced with a much more cunning ways to getting to where he needs to go. It is a logical progression but I hope to see at least a few more novels like the early ones.

Meanwhile, the usual supporting cast is mostly missing - Signorina Elettra shows up almost like a Deus ex machina to assist when needed, Patta is unusually helpful and Bochesse ends up in the middle of the story (in a very similar way in how Elettra ended up a main character in A Sea of Troubles earlier in the series) but that is about it (not counting Griffoni who at this point should be getting a co-star billing).

The end of the novel is a lot darker than usual although it again follows the pattern of the later novels. This may not be a good novel for introducing someone to the series - it is very much a series novel.

108. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson -- (1992 for this selection)

After failing to locate my copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (just watch it show up as soon as I look for something else...), I got this collection from the library.

Nicholas Rance's Introduction is as spoilery as most introductions of classical works are (and in this case, not just for the main story in the collection). So while informative, it really should be read at the end.

"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886) opens the volume. The last time I read this story was in my mid-teens and back then I knew nothing about it - I've just read Treasure Island, it felt a lot more adult and wordy (although figuring out what Mr. Hyde is as opposed to going into the story knowing it was probably something not too many people can do these days). I remember liking the story but not really liking the writing (too wordy) so I don't think I ever touched another text by Stevenson since then. This time, the writing did not surprise me - it is similar to other Victorian authors and I am fond of them these days. The one thing that actually registered is that his London is not very similar to the London of his contemporaries - and the introduction clears that up nicely - it is more Edinburgh than London in its descriptions. And there are so many parts of the story that I either missed or just did not appreciate before - it is a gory story in more than one way. And while my memories allowed me to think of it as an allegory, this reading makes it almost impossible - maybe if you squint really hard and ignore a lot of the text... and even then just maybe. Which probably robs some of its power as a Literature text but oh well.

"The Body-Snatcher" (Pall Mall Christmas "Extra" 13 (Dec 1884)) works a lot better as an allegory - it is a story about the way medical students found corpses to dissect with a touch of supernatural ending which can be read as is or interpreted as the hallucinations of a guilty conscience. Both ways are equally valid and both work well - and what one sees probably depends on what they expect from the story.

"A Lodging for the Night" (Temple Bar, October 1877) takes us back to a night in November 1456 when François Villon (Francis Villon in the book) witnesses a murder and end up in a stranger's house for the night where the two men have a discussion about right, wrong and fate. The story fits with the collection but is a bit too... tame on its own.

"Markheim" (1885) is in some ways similar to the previous story - we have another criminal discussion his actions and choices. Except this time the criminal actually does the murder and his companion is the devil himself. It an interesting twist, the story ends on a bright note - if you look at these two stories together, you almost can see one of them as a negative of the other.

"Thrawn Janet" (1881) was an absolute nightmare to read despite being the shortest story. Told mostly in a Scottish dialect (which I often had to sound out to get the gist of), it tells the story of a woman who gets accused of being a witch and a minister who tries to help her. Things go downhill from there but what really remains in one's memory is how easily the villagers turned on Janet...

"The Misadventures of John Nicholson" (1887) closes the volumes with a bit of tragicomedy. The titular character is a bright lad who ends up in all kinds of weird situations because he cannot get his priority straight (and because if there is a way for things to get messed up, they will when he is involved). He always has the best of intentions and yet, he somehow always ends up in trouble. And once he gets into trouble, he seems to always make the worst possible choice to get out of it - which makes things even worse. I'd love to see this on stage -- because it is exactly the kind of misunderstandings that can make a great play. As it is, it almost feels like it does not belong to this collection - it is too bright and too naive compared to the rest but at the same time, it is again about one's choices and decisions so it does fit in some ways.

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Next: On paper: Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #48 - the newest issue of a zine I had been reading for ages (read pre- my move to the States)

On Kindle (off for a quick business trip so needed something on the Kindle): The Creak on the Stairs - back to Icelandic noir with a new author (and series...) for me.

And I disappeared again... definitely not a good year for keeping my thread up to date (and when I fall behind, I feel like I need to catch up which makes me not want to come back and... oh well).

Anyway, in late November, I was looking at all types of Advent calendars (because why not!) and trying to put some books in order. Somehow the two things connected in my brain when I realized that I have more than 24 from Seth's Ghost stories books ( https://www.librarything.com/nseries/271451/Seths-Christmas-Ghost-Stories ). So I put them on a shelf and had been reading 1 per evening for the last 16 days (and with 8 days left, I don't think even I can screw that up so I figured it is time to share :) Most of the stories are public domain and/or easily found in other books so technically you do not need the Seth books to read the stories (but they are sturdy small books -- and if you like Seth, the art is his usual - which is why I have them). If you want to see what I had read: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/AnnieMod?tag=advent2024&collection=-1 is the list - adding a new one daily.

I may or may not be back with reviews later this year but in all cases: happy holidays to everyone and see you in the 2025 group (or earlier in here).

>90 AnnieMod: A wonderful review - and you've inspired me to go back and re-read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde next year.

>92 rv1988: Me too.

I wish you and your loved ones a happy and blessed festive season.