Arrianarose's 2024 reads

Welcome and happy 2024! I'm Shari, a New Englander who loves books (obviously!), cats, travel (both armchair and real life, when I can), and the outdoors. I've been on LT since 2006, and in the 50 Book Challenge since 2011. I'm changing it up this year to join the 75 group, though I'm mainly a sporadic lurker, rather than a frequent chatter, so we'll see how it goes. Here's to a year filled with good books! Happy reading!

Where has my reading taken me this year?



I had so much fun last year with my random, Scattergories inspired, letter traveling, I've rolled myself new letters for 2024. I'll be attempting to visit as many places that begin with B, G & H as I can. All's fair in self-designed reading challenges, so any city, country, river, province, national park, etc. is fair game.

Africa
Botswana: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Egypt (and the UK): The Collector's Daughter
Nigeria: The Death of Vivek Oji

Asia
China: Women of Good Fortune
India (and Nepal): A Houseboat on the Ganges & A Room in Kathmandu
(and Australia): A Long Way Home
Israel: On Her Own: A Novel
Japan (and the US, and Russia): How High We Go in the Dark
(and the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand): The Great Fire
Taiwan: Loveboat, Taipei
Ho Chi Minh City, Hue & Hoi An, Viet Nam (and the US): Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour

Europe
The Third Horseman
Belarus Voices from Chernobyl
Belgium (and France): The Lady and the Unicorn
Bessapara (fictional country) (plus US, UK and others): The Power
France: The Lost Manuscript
Gost, Croatia: The Hired Man
Georgia Ali and Nino
Germany: Elizabeth and her German Garden
(and the UK): Three Men on the Bummel
Gibraltar (and the UK): A Delicate Truth
Greece: The Penelopiad
The Holy See: The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia
Ireland: The Wonder
Actress
Off the Map
Haarlem, The Netherlands: Three Ordinary Girls
Russia: Anna Karenina
UK: Longbourn
The Dictionary of Lost Words
(and France): The Swan's Nest

North America
Bimini, The Bahamas (and Cuba): Islands in the Stream
Canada: The River
Demerara (now Guyana) (plus Barbados, Grenada, Montserrat, Dominica & UK): Island Queen
Grenada: Sugar Money
Haiti (and the US): Breath, Eyes, Memory
Panama: Do Not Become Alarmed
USA:
(misc.) The Family Next Door
The Lincoln Highway
Second First Impressions
Beginner's Luck
Alabama - Take My Hand
California- By the Book
Blank
Hawaii - Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Hanalei Bay If I Loved You Less
Georgia - Shift
Dust
Louisiana - Glory Be
Maine - (also Nova Scotia and Boston, MA): The Berry Pickers
Boston, Massachusetts - Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
The Lioness of Boston
(also at sea and Beverly, MA) - A True Account
New York - The Lions of Fifth Avenue
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
Just Kids
Between Two Kingdoms
Harlem The Fire Next Time
(and Alabama) By Her Own Design
(and California) Goldenseal
(and France) Lovely War
Wyoming - Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Oceania
Australia: The Road from Coorain
Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Light Between Oceans
Red River Road
New Zealand: Greta and Valdin

South America
Brazil: Ways to Disappear

Here, there and everywhere
The Great Railway Bazaar
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding
We Should not be Friends
Project Hail Mary
Rudy's Rules for Travel
(including The Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Grenada): Float Plan
The Charm Offensive

Imaginary locale
Once Upon a Broken Heart
The Lions of Al-Rassan
Wool
The Stone Sky
The Morningside
The Daughters of Izdihar
Tooth and Claw
Gujaareh: The Killing Moon
The Shadowed Sun
A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent

Welcome, Shari, happy reading in 2024!

Welcome, Shari! Glad to have you with us this year.

Thanks! :)

Happy reading in 2024!

1. Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber
2. Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz by Gail Crowther

Starting off the year with a book chosen by my twelve year old niece. She's suddenly deep into books again (yay!), and loves YA fantasy romance. It's definitely aimed at teens, and rather silly, but better than I expected. I think there are one or two more, I'll read them so we can chat about them.

I actually thought Three Martini Afternoons was one of those fictionalized novels, like The Paris Wife I read last year, so was surprised to find out it was nonfiction. I've read Plath's The Bell Jar, but I don't think I've ever read any of her poetry, and I'm not sure if I've read Anne Sexton's or not (maybe in college?), so I was a bit over my head for the literary discussions of their work.

3. Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
4. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

I've read and enjoyed Theroux in the past, yet don't recall him being racist or rather unlikeable, as I did here. The book itself and the journey were interesting, and I didn't dislike it overall, but given that this seems to be his most prolifically read book, I expected better.

5. The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

Wow, loved this completely. It definitely makes up for the less than stellar start to the year, book-wise. I just finished it today, and cried for the heartbreakingly realistic ending to that bright spark of hope that there could be a chance for a better, more perfect world where friendship and tolerance could push past fear and repression.

6. Sugar Money by Jane Harris
7. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Letters, letters, so many letters. I've traveled to Boston, Hawaii, and now Grenada and Belgium.

8. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
9. The Third Horseman by William Rosen
10. Wool by Hugh Howey (re-read)

Reading Sugar Money and Take My Hand at the same time was quite a depressing combination. Slavery and continued inhumanity and racial injustice, yay. :( The Williams sisters' story was so heartbreaking, but I also felt deeply annoyed by Civil's high-handed treatment of the entire Williams family, and her attitude in general. She finds out all these things - that depo provera could potentially cause cancer, that India hasn't started her period yet, that neither of the young girls is at all sexually active, etc. and then takes it upon herself to make decisions for them without ever having any conversations with them or their father or grandmother. I know this is fiction, but it really bothered me that it never seems to have occurred to her to bring her concerns to them. Although grief, depression and poverty had them in a terrible state, she soon saw them as intelligent and caring, yet still never had the decency to let them know of her concerns, or her actions. Then she seems to have decided to punish herself for the rest of her life for not having known about and prevented their involuntary sterilizations.

You'd think I'd move to something cheerier after that, but apparently that's now how I work. Instead, I decided on a history of the great European famine of the 1300s, and to re-read a post-apocalyptic dystopia in preparation for continuing the series.

>11 arrianarose: Shari, that is what we call being a glutton for punishment!

Welcome to the group and have a great weekend.

>12 PaulCranswick: I know, right? My friend Renae says I should have someone approve my book choices before starting them, to keep me in line. :)

Thanks! Looks like it'll be a quiet, at-home weekend. I wanted to stop by the library to grab some (hopefully cheerier) new books, but they had some water damage recently, and are only partially open during the repairs. I'll have to think about what I want, and put some books on hold, since I can't just browse.

Hello Shari, my name is Owl or Lily. Its nice to meet you.

>14 Owltherian: Hi, Owl! Good to meet you as well. Sorry for the delay in responding, I'm a sporadic poster here, though I know this group is typically super chatty. :)

11. A Delicate Truth by John le Carre
12. Houseboat on the Ganges & A Room in Kathmandu by Marilyn Stablein
13. By the Book by Julia Sonneborn
14. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
15. The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
16. Shift by Hugh Howey
17. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim
18. The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C. W. Gortner
19. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Whoops, here I go again vanishing, then dropping a slew of books down all at once. A whole gamut of things this time around. I've got a few of my letter travels going on - Gibraltar, Germany, Georgia (US), the Holy See - plus some prompts from my and my friends' book challenge - takes place in the 1910s or 1920s and takes place in a week or less.

No particular standouts of amazingness here. A Delicate Truth did nothing for me. Rather confusing to follow at times, I wasn't sure why I should particularly care about most of the characters (I liked Jeb the most, poor guy), and nothing was ever resolved in the end. No, thanks.

I couldn't remember at first why I had flagged By the Book, but quickly realized that it was a Persuasion retelling. Unfortunately, I feel like I always end up being disappointed by the majority of Austin retellings, as I ended up being with this one. It was okay, but Anne annoyed me with her lack of self esteem and general attitude. Austin heroines tend to be happy with themselves and their capabilities, it's just circumstances and the world that cause them trouble. This Anne can't even be bothered to think her own book is interesting.

I'm a big fan of dystopias and post-apocolyptic fiction, so I was interested to see what How High We Go in the Dark came up with. Turns out, it came up with an overly long collection of stories about death. I liked how it started, but then it then switched to so many characters and story lines, not all of which as engaging as others. I felt that there was a natural ending point when the ship found a new world, but it just kept going. I also wasn't a fan of the actual ending. Was it supposed to feel like coming full circle? I felt like we just lost all agency, instead. On the same genre note, I can't decide yet how I feel about Shift. It was more of a slog to get through - the switching timelines didn't flow as well as the 1st book did, and the pacing in general wasn't as lively. It was interesting to learn the back story, though, and I'm interested to see how the two will converge for the final book of the trilogy.

Two NYC-centric books here - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist was a cute YA day in the life of romance. The Lions of Fifth Avenue was mainly of interest to me due to the interesting fact of someone literally living in a library. The historical parts were more interesting than the various theft/mystery plot lines. The characters also seemed to behave a bit erratically, to me, in not quite believable ways.

I wasn't paying enough attention when I grabbed The Vatican Princess, and thought it was nonfiction - the opposite of my mistake with Three Martini Afternoons. I hope for Lucrezia's sake that some of the most unpleasant bits of speculative fiction were untrue - even without them, she had quite a tumultuous life.

20. Island Queen by Vanessa Riley

Excellent book about a location and time I know little about. I did not know there had been so many revolts across the Caribbean, nor that there were women of color who lived such amazing and successful lives - which, as the author says, is a crime in an of itself, that these stories have not been told. This is a fictionalized account of a real person, Mrs. Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, who was from all accounts an amazing businesswoman, determined to free herself and her family from slavery and who built multiple successful businesses in the Caribbean.

21. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
22. The Collector's Daughter by Gill Paul

An old-fashioned style of book about post-WWII lives and relationships. Okay enough, but it didn't seem like an award winner to me, though it won the National Book Award.

In the second, I was most intrigues by Eve's experiences as a young woman wanting to be an archeologist and her later life experiences dealing with the effects of multiple strokes. The curse story line and the modern day Egyptian archaeologist's story did less for me. I could have done without the curse entirely, and I just didn't like the way Ana's story was portrayed.

23. The Family Next Door by John Glatt
24. The River by Peter Heller
25. A True Account by Katherine Howe

One of our book prompts is to read a survival story, so I decided to pick up The Family Next Door, as I recalled the news story several years ago about the Turpin children's escape/rescue from their parents. As awful as the reality clearly was for this family, I feel that Glatt did not lend much of an investigative eye on their story, but was written solely to profit off of their tragic lives, without much effort exerted on his part.

I liked the immersive feeling of The River, the sense of setting was really well done. I was less won over by Jack's reactions to events, and his psychology, I guess. I didn't really buy it, it didn't feel entirely believable, at least for the character that had been created for him prior to events taking a turn.

I'm trying to think back in my reading history, to determine when it became so common, almost de rigueur, for historical fiction novels to have a double timeline plot, one in the far past, and a second in either the current day, or in the less distant past. It's not that I dislike this construction, I just don't feel that it is needed nearly as often as it is being written. Oftentimes, one of the timelines suffers, either in plot, characterization, interest level, etc. or a combination. This, unfortunately, was one of those times. The "pyrate" story was fun and mostly unserious, despite the heavy subjects. The college timeline was rather boring and uninspired, with lackluster characters.

26. Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
27. By Her Own Design by Piper Huguley
28. Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

More traveling by letters around the world - Georgia and Belarus! The description I read for Ali and Nino compared it to Romeo and Juliet, which is partly a good description - love across religions, war, and tragedy have a similar feel. However, the passion and emotion of the story are mainly for homeland and lifestyle, both of which were under assault from without and within, and celebrated and mourned all at once. The format of Voices from Chernobyl - transcribed, unscripted conversations - makes this tragedy about the people and the place in a way that a more detached book couldn't do. Sad and surreal.

29. What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman
30. Letters of A Woman Homesteader by Elinor Pruitt Stewart
31. Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
32. Blank by Zibby Owens

One more letter with Islands in the Stream, Bimini in The Bahamas! Really good and well written, though unexpectedly heartbreaking and melancholy after the 1/3 mark. I've only ever read A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway before - are all of his books depressing like this?

Blank was over the top ridiculous, which was just what I needed after so many heavy and sad book choices so far this year.

33. Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
34. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Silly me, I wasn't expecting Do Not Become Alarmed to be so full of tragedy. I was misled by the blurb into thinking the kids were somehow lost in the woods/jungle alone to fend for themselves, which was only few for a few moments of the story. I should have known better, given my track record this year in books.

Wonder certainly took a turn into the unexpected at the end. Not was I was anticipating, that's for sure.

35. Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly
36. Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady
37. The Swan's Nest by Laura McNeal
38. Actress by Anne Enright
39. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna
40. Dust by Hugh Howey

I really enjoyed Greta and Valdin, though I had no idea what the two were going on about most of the time. It was very much like being inside their stream of consciousness thoughts, just rambling, messy, disjointed, and realistic because of that.

The Hired Man slowly, slowly let you into more of the backstory of Duro and the people of Gost, their lives, interactions, traumas, loves, and how war lasts much longer in its aftereffects that can be seen upon first glance.

I've finally finished the Silo Series, and I'm left with some lingering questions. A few plot items came up, but then weren't followed up with, and I also have scientific/practical questions causing me some head scratching. It felt shorter, more rushed than I think was needed, with strangely too much drama/conflict in some spots, and too easy of resolutions in others. I'm not unhappy with it, I just think it needed a bit more.

41. We Should not be Friends by Will Schwalbe
42. Goldenseal by Maria Hummel

Mediocre for both. While it's great to hear about a group of people who meet and then stay friends all their lives, it's not as though the two stayed close the whole time. They only really connected for real decades later.

I liked the premise of Goldenseal, and it started off well, but veered off into an odd, performative, monologueing, fairy tale bizarreness. I get that they were both carrying around stories in their heads about themselves, each other, and what happened, and that's fine, we all do that. But why did they feel that their lives and motivations had to follow some fairy tale rubric? Since when are fairy tales realistic depictions of actual, ordinary life?

43. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Loved this! It pulled you right into the lives of these boys, and this madcap escapade, I think Billy or Duchess called it, that they threw themselves into. I'm not sure of my thoughts on the ending yet. I wasn't sure how the situation was going to resolve for all of them, and did not expect some of the outcomes.

44. The Power by Naomi Alderman
45. Here For It: The Good, the Bad and the Queso by Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston
46. Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan
47. The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin
48. The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
49. The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan
50. The Morningside by Tea Obreht

I think I may have resisted reading The Power, as the premise seemed silly to me initially. What I didn't realize is that it is essentially a faux alternate history and social commentary on gender expectations and societal structures, rolled up into a scifi-ish novel. Really interesting.

I'm so sad to be a the end of Jemisin's Broken Earth series. I've really loved these, and have really enjoyed the narration by Robin Miles, who is also awesome. I'll need to check out more works by Jemisin, now.

The Lost Manuscript was a fun book caper, and the full cast audio recording really helped nail the right tone of the correspondence between everyone.

51. The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai
52. On Her Own: A Novel by Lihi Lapid
53. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
54. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

Do I deliberately choose books with uncheerful themes, or is it just that unpleasant occurrences are better grit with which to build a novel around? Either way, I definitely seem to have decidedly more unhappy than happy books this year. Maybe it's like songwriting. I feel like they say heartbreak leads to the most creativity, and sad songs generally have more emotional resonance than happy ones.

55. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
56. Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey
57. Glory Be by Danielle Arceneaux
58. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
59. Rudy's Rules for Travel by Mary K. Jensen
60. Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
61. Longbourn by Jo Baker
62. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
63. Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne
64. Float Plan by Trish Doller
65. Off the Map by Trish Doller
66. The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
67. Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn

So much going on in real life lately, I've had no time or thought for keeping track of my reading here. My dad's health has been very bad lately, though hopefully under control, as best it can be, for the moment. I also traveled to California for my cousin's wedding, so an abundance of easy, fluff romances were consumed via Kindle during my trip.

Where to even start? Mysteries really don't seem to be my thing, Glory Be was for my BC book club, and it wasn't bad, but I also wasn't really into it. The plot - danger! spaceships! imminent peril! - was fine on Project Hail Mary, but I the main character annoyed me, and didn't seem very believable. Definitely a difficult time to be reading Between Two Kingdoms, given my dad's health situation, but it was a good memoir about illness and its impact on one's whole life, and their loved ones' lives. I really enjoyed Longbourn, I liked its behind the scenes take on working class lives in the time of Jane Austen. I had started Anna Karenina a few years back, but only got halfway through. I decided this year to pick it up again, but on audiobook, starting again from the beginning. This worked better for me, as it gave me a reading schedule and a slower pace to get through it all. I can't say as I was impressed, though. I definitely feel that I need background information about Russia and the aristocracy of the time, as well as what Tolstoy intended a reader to feel about these characters. If I was supposed to be irritated and fed up with their self-absorbed manner, selfishness and vapidity, and to want to give them all a dose of working class life to shock them out of their rich people problems, then he succeeded. I was under the impression beforehand that I was supposed to like Anna. However, I didn't much like any of them. Kitty was so young that she mostly gets a pass on her silliness, but the rest of them are absurd and so over the top melodramatic that I could hardly take it. I'm going to read up on it when I have a chance. After that, I went the complete opposite direction for my travel reading - fluff all the way. Float Plan was definitely the best of the bunch, having much more in the way of plot, character development and more realistic story line. The others were fine, just more predictable, tropy and/or unrealistic.

68. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
69. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
70. Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
71. Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
72. The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman
73. The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin
74. The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin
75. The Shadowed Sun by N. K. Jemisin
76. Just Kids by Patti Smith
77. Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
78. A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley
79. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
80. Red River Road by Anna Downes
81. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
82. The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

Whew! I didn't realize it had been so long, or that I had read so many books between my last post and now. Unintentionally, several of the books here focus on adoption (sort of - two involve kidnapping/child theft) and the traumas of miscarriages, still births and other child losses.

It was nice to delve into a new fantasy world with Jemisin - she does such great world building, and really immerses you into her characters' lives.

Congrats on blowing way past the goal!

>29 arrianarose: Well done on passing 75 books already, Shari. Some great books on that last list too!

Congratulations on surpassing 75!

>30 drneutron: >31 PaulCranswick: >32 elorin: Thanks x 3!!! :) Always a good feeling, passing milestone numbers, especially with good books!

83. If I Loved You Less by Tamsen Parker
84. A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
85. Lovely War by Julie Berry
86. Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour by Nora Nguyen

Good news today! My dad is officially on the liver transplant list! He's been working hard the past few months to get all of his tests done and benchmarks passed, and getting his strength back up, after several scares and hospital stays earlier this year. It's been a crap year all around, for my family, with two of my aunts passing away, so positive things are much appreciated.

I'm getting through Covid right now, and haven't had much energy for books the past week, so not too many new books completed (or started, for that matter, lol). I'm not sure why I thought an Emma re-telling was a good idea - Emma is annoying, and Theo, her modern counterpart in If I Loved You Less was even more unlikable. I was unimpressed with the whole thing, in general. The other romance, Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour, was better, but nothing to get too excited about. It felt like a riff off of that popular wedding one, with the movie, I can't remember the name of it, which I also found meh. Just looked it up - Crazy Rich Asians. Different story line, but similar premise (life experiences of Asians vs. Asian-Americans, wealthy families vs. regular people, parental pressures, marriage issues, etc.).

On the good side was another dragon book, A Natural History of Dragons. I've been missing fantasy lately, so looked up recommendations for good dragon books. Granted, the two I chose are neither of them super fantasy-y, but who can complain when wings and scales and fire breathing are involved? I was also pleased with Lovely War. When do you ever get to hear a WWI war and romance story, told to you by a cast of Greek gods, living during WWII? It sounds like it would absolutely absurd, but worked much better than I would have guessed.

For a silly, fun dragon book try I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons.
I'm putting Lovely War on my wishlist.

>35 elorin: Thanks, I'll have to add that to my list! It sounds like a fun one. Lovely War has a full cast on audio, with a bit of music as well, and was really good in that format, if you enjoy audiobooks. I love when they can add a little bit extra to your enjoyment of a story with things like that.

87. Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend by MJ Wassmer
88. Portrait of an Unknown Lady by Maria Gainza
89. The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore
90. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
91. The Banned Books Club by Brenda Novak

I swear, I try to read some happy books, but this year, even when I deliberately try, I end up with depressing subject matter, even in books that seem like they would be fluff. I need told my friends that I need an intervention, lol. No particular standouts here - it's unfortunately been a crap year for my family and friends, and a meh year for standout books. I'll have to do better with my selection process next year, since that can be controlled, while what life chooses to bring in 2025 I have very little control over.