It's Monday 12/30! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

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Life

Wow, how can it be the end of the year already?  The last few months have been a bit of a time warp for me, with a bad relapse of my chronic illness. I am ready for a new year!

I felt pretty awful on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, though I wore a smile (and a mask) and tried to make the best of things. And I did enjoy being with my family, especially our sons. It was all quite exhausting and overwhelming, but we were smart this year and had Christmas dinner catered! My husband picked up an entire turkey dinner the day before. We still had to reheat everything, set the table, etc. but we had some help, and it was definitely easier than making everything from scratch. And it was delicious! We exchanged piles of wonderful presents–you can check out all of the books we gave and received–and celebrated my mom’s husband’s birthday.

Our younger son, my husband, and I on Christmas morning

Me with our older son and his girlfriend

All of us around the table

The day after Christmas, we had our annual cookie/Grinch party with our oldest friends, a 25-year tradition! Luckily, it was their turn to host this year, and we shared leftovers for dinner to keep things easy. We started this when our own sons were just 2 and 5 (and their girls were 6 and 8). The “kids” are mostly in their 30′s now, but we still enjoy getting together, decorating cookies, and watching the Grinch (the original, of course).

Some of the kids (and a few friends) in 2000!

Once everyone left and the holiday fun was over, I was able to stay on the couch and rest, and I am doing a bit better the past few days. I took a break from one of my immune medications (they tend to stop working if you stay on them), and just restarted it last night, and I’m feeling quite good today, with only mild aches. I’m hoping this is the start of a better trend, so I can start the new year feeling better and able to return to my “normal” life!

Here’s to a happy & healthy 2025 for all of us!

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I will have some extra end-of-year blog posts coming up in the next two weeks! First,

Books We Gave and Got for Christmas

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The Christmas Music Tag – this fun video, inspired by the titles of holiday songs, gave me the chance to talk about some of my favorite books that are lesser-known.

Friday Reads 12-27-24: My Last Books of the Year! – a brief discussion of the books I am currently reading & listening to, my last books of 2024.

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I am almost finished reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which has been on my to-read list for over a decade! It won the Pulitzer Prize, is still being listed on all kinds of Best Books lists, and garnered rave reviews. Each chapter is a separate but interrelated story about a group of characters who are connected to each other in different ways. Bennie, the center of the novel, is an aging music producer who still has the heart of a punk rocker. Sasha was his assistant for twelve years and is now struggling to control her kleptomania. One chapter went back to Bennie’s teens, another focused on a character he interacted with back then. Some chapters are about various periods in Bennie’s or Sasha’s lives, while others focus on other characters who one or both of them interacted with. One chapter at the end even ventures into the future (ours and theirs). The novel gradually builds an intricate web of stories that define these people and their lives. It’s all about connections, and it’s an absolute delight to find and see those–sometimes seemingly tenuous–connections between the characters and how each person touched so many other lives. I love the writing style and the sense of humor. This will definitely be on my Top Ten Novels of the year list! (and this is why I don’t make my Best Of lists earlier).

On audio, I am listening to The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken, a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award in Fiction. In a small town on Cape Cod in 1950, librarian Peggy meets an unusual eleven-year-old boy. James is already 6’5″ by age twelve, and he keeps growing until he reaches eight feet tall. Both of them feel like outsiders in the small town, and they form a friendship, beginning with Peggy finding a wide assortment of books for the avid reader. As he continues to grow, health problems develop, and Peggy gradually gets to know James’ family, too. It’s a love story, which seems a little ick at first (she’s 26 and he’s 11), but it begins with friendship and there’s really nothing sordid here. The story includes tragedy and sorrow but also joy, as the two of them form a unique bond and support each other. I’m enjoying it, and the audio, narrated by Vivienne Leheny, is very good.

My husband, Ken, is reading The Searcher by Tana French, a birthday gift from me, though he is still spending more time watching football than reading (he’s a big fan of college football and an Oklahoma State alum)! We are both huge fans of Tana French and have loved her Dublin Murder Squad series, including In the Woods, The Likeness (my favorite), Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor. This is the start of a new series, featuring a retired American police detective now living in Ireland.

I finally had a chance to catch up with our son’s (30) reading, and I was way off! ha ha The book I thought he was reading at Thanksgiving, he still hasn’t started yet. So, here’s the run-down. He wanted to read When Wizards Follow Fools by Andrew Rowe, book 5 (the final book) of the Arcane Ascension series, but as he is wont to do, he first reread book 3, The Torchlight That Ignites the Stars, and book 4, The Silence of Unworthy Gods. Now, he is rereading Marshal Arcane, book 15 of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour so that he can read book 16, Preceptor … which is what I thought he’d been reading this past month! Glad we got to catch up.