December 2023 Wrap Up Pt. 2

You might want to get a snack and a drink and settle in for this one. I'm getting one just to write the thing.

Since my Part 1 wrap up, I read 8 more books in December. It helped that I was sick and stuck at home for 2 weeks. I was pretty sick, but not so miserable that I couldn't concentrate on a book. And one of the fun symptoms of my illness was that I would wake up coughing at 5:00 am and not be able to go back to sleep. So I spent some early morning hours reading.

Enough chatter. Let's get to the books.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey - This was funny, and weird, and entertaining. A young woman stows away on the wagon of the Librarians as they leave town. She's running away from a marriage to a man who looks at her like she's food. In this alternate Wild West, the country is run by an oligarchy who works very hard to protect it's power. The Librarians traffic incendiary literature and messages in the underground network of spies attempting to bring down the bad guys. The librarians are all queer in some way. And our stowaway also finds herself attracted to women. It's a very short book, but it packed a lot of plot and excitement into it's pages.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - Wow. This one went a lot of places. Feyre (FAY-ruh) kills a wolf in the words near her home to supply her family with food. Soon a beast comes and kidnaps her to the fairy land as punishment for killing one of their kind. The treaty states she must go live in the fairy kingdom for the rest of her life. The beast that takes her turns into a very handsome man who happens to be the High King of the Spring Court. She still hates him, though. Until she doesn't. Then there is a whole story about a plague that is killing fairies and they have managed to avoid it, but it's coming. This is literally just the first third of the book. A whole lot happens afterward that consists of Feyre being an absolute badass to protect those she loves. I am looking forward to reading the rest in the series.

Persuasion by Jane Austen - I read this with a group from a patreon group I'm part of. Well, I started it with them. I quickly had to give it up to finish some other priorities, but I did come back to it and finished it. It is a re-read for me and this is my second favorite Jane Austen novel.

Happy Place by Emily Henry - I finally finished it. I think I started it in July. I really had a hard time caring about these people. A couple who had been engaged broke up, but didn't tell their friends. Now their friends have all gathered together for one last trip to the beach house they spent summers at. The couple has to pretend they are still together to keep from ruining their last fun trip. The reason they broke up is stupid and they continue to assume what the other is feeling instead having one important conversation. Dumb.

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree - This is the prequel to Legends and Lattes that I read in Denver. I liked this one better. The plot made more sense and some of the characters were amazing. That little dog there on the cover with the feathers? That's Potroast. He's hilarious. Not pictured is a skeleton that behaves very much like a butler. It's a lot of fun.

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova - What a ride. This poor girl goes to Bulgaria to teach in the English language school. Somehow she manages to get a bag from a family and it turns out to have the cremains of someone. She is determined to get it back to the family and she enlists the help of a taxi driver to help her. Thus begins a rather madcap traipsing all over the country trying to get this urn back to its family and dodge what appears to be a killer. The taxi driver is fantastic. All the older women are fantastic. The setting was fabulous. I enjoyed this a lot.

Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed - Here's another one I absolutely loved. Reed and I are the same age. We share several memories of childhood reading and I had a great time reading about how she feels about reading. She's a literature professor, so I was interested in her take on some things, like vampires. She's afraid of them. Ha! It was entertaining.

Office Gods by Catharina Octorina - Last one. Hang in there. This is a manga-type novel, but it's not set up backward like a manga novel. This human girl lands a coveted job at Olympus which is where the Gods run their company. It's a 1000 story high rise. When she gets there she's treated pretty badly as the only human in a company of gods and demigods. Except a few of the male gods appear to be fighting over her. I enjoyed this. It was light and fun and and excellent last book of the year.

I read a ridiculous 14 books in December. I liked most of them. I don't expect to get that many read in a month again for the foreseeable future. It was nice while it lasted and I got all my goals reached. Hooray!