Reading Goals Behind and Ahead

I had a few goals for my reading life in 2023.  The same sort I usually have, like clear off my TBR shelves some more, read some classics, read diversely, and so on.  Here's how I did with my 2023 reading goals:

Overall Goal

I aimed to read 55 books in 2023.  I read 96.  Yay!

Classics Club

I wanted to read at least twelve books from my fourth Classics Club list.  I read fourteen!  You'll find all their reviews on that page or right here.

Diverse Reading

I wanted to read at least twelve books by or about people who are different from me in some significant way.  I read fifteen!  You can find reviews for most of them right here.

#TheUnreadShelfProject2023

I had twin goals of reading at least 50 books from my TBR shelves AND whittling down the number of unread books on my shelves to 450.  I read 61 books from the to-be-read books I own, but I only got the number of unread books on my shelves down to 491.  Well, that's still better, anyway.

My Years with the Sacketts

I set myself the goal of reading all nineteen Sackett books by Louis L'Amour over the course of 2023 and 2024.  I have read the first nine, so I am confident I can finish them all by the end of 2024.

Now for my 2024 reading goals!

Overall Goal

I like the number 55.  I'm keeping that for my goal.

Classics Club

Twelve seems like a good number here.  But I'll give myself some wiggle room in my bullet journal, just in case.

Diverse Reading

I also like aiming for twelve for this goal.  But, as you can see, I'm also giving myself room for more than that in my bullet journal.  Just in case!

Mount TBR

Because the Unread Shelf Challenge has come to an end, I am once again joining the Mount TBR Challenge from My Reader's Block.  I am aiming for the Mount Ararat level, which means reading 48 books from my TBR shelves -- but only books I already own by January 1, 2024, will count.  This makes it much more challenging, so we'll see how that goes!  I'm going to continue keeping track of how many books I buy and how many I take off my shelves, too, even though those aren't part of the Mount TBR challenge.

Disney Origins Bookclub

This fun reading challenge has returned to Bookstagram!  I want to read the four fairy tales that are scheduled, plus at least three of the books.  To learn more, and/or join, click here.

Jane Austen Deep Dive 2024

This is another Bookstagram reading group challenge -- we're going to read all six of Jane Austen's major works together, but very slowly.  I aim to read all of them, specifically the annotated editions.  To learn more about that, and/or join, click here.

My Years with the Sacketts

I have ten Sackett books by Louis L'Amour left to read for this personal challenge!  My teen son has been reading them as I finish them, which has been such a great experience for us both, giving us lots of wonderful heroes and heroines to talk about.

That's all for this year!  How about you?  Do you set reading goals?  Participate in challenges, or make your own?  Do tell!

"The Hart of Christmas" by Latisha Sexton

I started reading The Hart of Christmas before Christmas and set it aside because I just wasn't in the mood for a romantic comedy.  Picked it up again (well, pulled it up again, as I was reading the ebook version on my phone) a couple of days after Christmas and finished it off in two days.  Mood reading do be that way sometimes, heh.

This is a cute Christmas romance set in the mountains of Tennessee (so just a hop, skip, and jump away from where I grew up in the foothills of North Carolina).  Millie Jane's music career hasn't taken off, and her best friend back home has offered her house to Millie for Christmas because said best friend and her husband will be out of town.  But when Millie Jane gets there, she discovers that her best friend's stepbrother is also staying at that house, laid up with a broken leg.

That stepbrother is a hotshot hockey player named Dex... who happens to have been Millie Jane's dream guy in high school until he broke her heart.  Dex asked to stay there right after Millie's best friend offered the place to her, and they figured Millie would go stay with her grandma instead, except a blizzard hits before she can leave, which means Forced Proximity Romance, here we come.

I actually don't like forced proximity romance much, which is part of why I set this book aside for a while.  If done juuuuuuuuuust specifically right, I will be okay with it, but if the "forced" part feels like the characters could really get out of it if they wanted to, I will back off.  The blizzard makes it work, because I have driven the Blue Ridge Mountains in the winter and you do NOT mess around on winter mountain roads.  Unplowed roads can equal death.  Frozen roads can equal death.  So, I accepted that this really was an inescapable situation, but kind of grudgingly.

Once I decided to accept that, I liked the book a lot.  Millie Jane was really sweet, and she did a LOT of great character growth over the course of the book.  This was aided by flashback chapters showing how she and Dex met and almost kinda sorta had a high school romance, and what went wrong between them years ago.  

But I never did like Dex.  Cocky and arrogant guys with a high opinion of their own worth tend to grate on me, and Dex very much was all of that and then some.  Dude could not stop smirking.  Worse yet, he teased Millie All The Time.  I don't like people who tease constantly.  Even worse, he called her by a nickname she hated, and he knew she hated it, and so I was annoyed with him every time he used it.  (Just by the way, I hate the nickname 'Rach' when used by anyone except my Grandma Haack [who is dead], one friend from high school, and my German professor from college.  If you are not one of those three select people, do not call me Rach.  Call me Rachel or Hamlette or Ray, okay?)  

It is okay to have a book romance where I don't actually love both halves of the couple, as long as they genuinely work together in and of themselves.  Which Millie and Dex do.  So I can be cool with their romance, but if I knew them in real life, they would be one of those couples where I just hang out with the wife and we don't invite them to our house as a couple because I'm going to be on edge all the time.  (Actually, I don't know any couples like that right now, but I did in college.)  So... was this a fun Christmasy romance?  Yup.  Is it one I will reread routinely?  Probably not.  However, if you are a fan of clean, Christian contemporary romance books, you will probably dig this a lot!  But it's a genre I only dip into a few times a year.

Particularly Good Bits:

But the sad, lifeless trees bear a startling resemblance to my own empty heart.

I've never understood the whole follow your heart thing.  My heart doesn't know what it wants half the time.  How am I supposed to follow it?  Not to mention that the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things.

"Millie, we live in a fallen world.  No one is perfect.  We will hurt one another.  The important thing is that we come clean when we do and that we learn to forgive one another."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of a man admiring a woman and trying not to imagine her in her bathing suit, mild and flirtatious innuendo in dialog, and quite a bit of kissing.  Nothing I felt uncomfortable reading myself, but not something I would let my tween daughter read, either.  No cussing or violence, and no smut or spice -- not even a "closed door" or "fade to black" love scene.

This has been my 59th book read off my TBR list for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Classic Christmas Crime Stories" ed. by David Stuart Davies

There's something about the bustle and chaos of the lead-up to Christmas that makes me crave the restoration of order that a good mystery provides.  This collection of festive mysteries and other crime stories was just what I wanted to read in the middle of December!

There are eleven short stories here, ranging from very familiar Christmas mysteries like "The Blue Carbuncle" by A. Conan Doyle to story featuring the characters from the BBC show Rosemary and Thyme.  I enjoyed nearly all of the stories ("The Case of the Seven Santas" by H. R. F. Keating got really tedious after a while, for me).  My favorites, in the order in which they appear, were:

• "The Blue Carbuncle" by A. Conan Doyle (already one of my absolute favorite Sherlock Holmes short stories)
  
  
• "The Case of the Dead Wait" by Peter Lovesey
  
  
• "Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson
  
  
• "Death on the Air" by Ngaio Marsh
  
  
• "Stuffing" by Edgar Wallace

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murder, bloodshed, poisonings, a smattering of bad language here and there, and occasional hints at lascivious behavior.

This is my 58th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"The L. M. Montgomery Christmas Collection"

I love L. M. Montgomery's writing, and I love Christmas, so I am naturally drawn to her festive stories and poetry.  The Christmas with Anne collection is one of my favorite Christmastime reads, so I am excited to add this new collection to my shelf.  It does have some overlap with that other volume -- both contain the "Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves" from Anne of Green Gables, as well as several of the same short stories.  This collection has a couple of different Anne chapters too, and six Christmas/winter poems that are paired with appropriate classic paintings.  There are paintings to go with the short stories and Anne chapters as well, and I love all the thought that obviously went into the pairings.

I bought the paperback edition of this book, but I wish I had gotten the hardcover instead.  I see there is now a pocket-sized hardcover edition available, as well as the full-sized one, and I might get that for myself and put this paperback copy into my kids' box of Christmas books that we haul out every year.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's everything sweet, wholesome, and lovely.

This is my 57th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"A Little Persuaded" by Kendra E. Ardnek

I was hesitant about this final volume of the Austen Fairy Tales by Kendra E. Ardnek.  Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel, but this book is blending it with "The Little Mermaid," and that is not a fairy tale I tend to love, at least not most retellings of it.  In fact, I actively dislike the Disney version.

Happily, Ardnek made the two stories and sets of characters work together really nicely.  Enna, her Anne Elliot/Little Mermaid character, was as retiring, thoughtful, and wise as Anne Elliot, but with some of the longings and disappointed hopes of Hans Christian Andersen's original Little Mermaid.

It was great getting to see lots of characters from earlier books in this series, especially since this is their last adventure.  I would have liked a little more resolution at the end, which is mostly a personal issue -- I love resolution, and books/stories with more open endings tend not to be my favorites.  Still, I feel like all the characters I have come to care about have a good chance at a happy and safe future, so I am pleased.

Particularly Good Bits:

Enna was used to people talking about her as though she wasn't there.  She wasn't used to being defended (p. 34).

"Austere alone knows the future, but we can prepare for it as best we can " (p. 104).

"Focus, Enna," she whispered to herself. "Thinking about how much there is to think about isn't going to help at all" (p. 189).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  No real violence to speak of, no cussing, no smut.

This has been my 56th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Noel Streatfeild's Christmas Stories" by Noel Streatfeild

This is EXACTLY the sort of book I want to read at Christmastime!  Heartwarming, sweet, uplifting short stories featuring realistic people in realistic situations that are treated with humor and kindness.  

My favorite stories were:

+ "The Moss Rose," about a young skater who loses her costume and skates on the subway, but it all turns out okay.

+ "The Princess," about a princess who goes shoe-shopping and gets shanghaied into performing in a ballet incognito.

+ "The Chain," about a boy who imagines that all of his favorite fictional characters form a chain of joy that helps his sister get well enough to come home from the hospital for Christmas.

+ "Christmas at Collers," about some city kids who are forced to spend Christmas in the country with their ailing grandmother and discover that hustle and bustle are not essential elements for a merry Christmas.

I absolutely loved this collection!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  As wholesome and uplifting as they come.

This is my 22nd book read and reviewed for my 4th Classics Club list, and my 55th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Meant to Bee" by Storm Shultz

This is the sweetest rom-com kind of book I have read in a long time.  Yet it also has a lot of serious and meaningful things going on!  I think that's what makes it so delightful.

Single mom Cordy spends everything she has on a cute little cottage in a small English village, sight unseen.  When she and her toddler arrive there, that cottage turns out to be full of leaks, creaks, and grime.  But Cordy has nowhere else to go, so she rolls up her sleeves, blows her nose and dries her eyes, and gets to work figuring out how to make a life there for herself and her daughter.

Enter a surprise delivery of beehives.  And Ronan, a young man who's only in town for a few days to convince his younger brother to go back to veterinary school.  And an older gentleman with lots of advice on how to care for bees.  Next thing you know, Cordy and Ronan have the house fixed up, and Cordy has opened a small shop in her front room.  She sells honey and baked goods and cute gifts, and she manages to make enough to keep herself and her daughter fed and clothed and housed.

And then, her ex shows up.  The father of her child who had no interest in their baby's existence until now.  Oh, and he has the power to shut down Cordy's shop.

But it all turns out okay!

I really love books about setting up a store and managing a store, as well as books about fixing up a house and decorating it and getting settled.  So that whole aspect of the book really drew me in.  But what I loved best about this book was how Cordy's friends encouraged her to look outside herself for help.  There's a wonderful discussion of why Cordy doesn't attend worship services that doesn't dismiss her struggles or her reasons why she hasn't attended services in a long time, but also doesn't brush off attending worship services as unnecessary if someone doesn't "feel like it."  That is a really important conversation within the book, but also one that resonated with me.  This line hit me especially strongly:

"People shouldn't keep you away from God.  People may be rude from time to time, and there are some in the church who can be unkind, but those people do not represent Christ."

I lost a friend in recent years who felt insulted by something someone in our congregation said to her, and she decided that meant she wasn't welcome in our church anymore.  I'm not even sure who said it, or if they meant it as an insult, but that's how she took it, and I wish so hard I could have read this book a couple of years ago (except it hadn't been written yet when all that went down) because maybe I could have quoted that line up there to her, and maybe it would have helped.

Anyway, this is a really enjoyable book, and quite funny!

(More) Particularly Good Bits:

"Forgiving him doesn't mean you drop all your boundaries.  Just because you forgive someone, doesn't mean you let them back to do the same thing they did before."

"I knew that his not liking French fries was a sign."

"Falling in love is easy, but sometimes you have to choose to love someone.  Not all the time, because if you have to choose all the time that's forcing it, but in the hard moments.  In the 'we have no money' moments or the 'someone is trying to pull us apart' moments, that's when you choose to love, and Malcolm didn't."

I generally prefer life without spectators.

"You make everything feel like home."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of unwed motherhood and some kissing.  No smut, no cussing, not much violence (someone does get punched in the face...).

This is my 54th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins

I have put off writing this review for almost two weeks now.  Which, I suppose, tells you a lot right there, doesn't it.

I really enjoyed The Moonstone when I read that a couple years ago.  And I've read some short stories by Wilkie Collins that were fun, so I expected to enjoy The Woman in White too.  I wanted to enjoy it.  I tried to enjoy it.

But oh my goodness, did I ever have to push my way through this book.  I did want to know how it all ended, so I kept with it, but it was a struggle.  Mostly because I did not particularly like any of the characters.  They weren't people I'd want to hang out with in real life, so I didn't want to hang out with them in their fictional world.

I am glad I finished the book, but it's not one I'll reread.  Too much slogging for too little payoff.

The basic plot is that a young man encounters a strange woman dressed all in white one night on the outskirts of London.  She is on the run from someone, she gives him some dire warnings, and she disappears.  The young man takes a new job as a private art tutor for a young lady at her family's country estate, and it turns out that the woman in white was someone this young lady used to know.  And then people fall in love, and there's an arranged marriage to mess everything up, and everyone is super unhappy for most of the book.  And, by the end, they are only kinda sorta on the way to maybe one day being less unhappy, which was just not fun, y'all.

Particularly Good Bits:  

The days passed on, the weeks passed on; and the track of the golden autumn wound its bright way visibly through the green summer of the trees (p. 54).

If only I had the privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival's best horse instantly, and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun -- a long, hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous highwayman's ride to York.  Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats, for life, I must respect the housekeeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way (p. 164).

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper (p. 256).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for spousal abuse, both verbal and emotional.  

This is my 21st book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, my 53rd for #TheUnreadShelfProjec2023, and my third read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

Oh. My.

I picked this up in an airport bookstore on the way home from visiting my parents earlier this month.  I really was in the mood for a mystery, but hadn't brought any with me, and this seemed like a perfect read for October, especially since I have been participating in the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram again this year.

What a wild ride this book is!  I almost don't want to say too much about it because I didn't really know anything about the plot before reading it, and that was a perfect way to go into this book.  All I knew was that it was a group of strangers who are on an island together, and then people start dying.  Which sounded kind of like the movie Clue (1985), and I am pretty sure the makers of that movie were referencing this book in several places -- I will have to rewatch it to be sure, though.

Anyway!  This book is thoroughly shocking, in the sense of making me think, "Holy cow, THAT happened?!?" over and over and over.  I read it in a day and a half.  Brilliant stuff -- I can see why it is generally considered one of Christie's absolute best.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some pretty violent and gruesome murders.

This has been my 20th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, my 52nd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023, and my second read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"The Ferguson Rifle" by Louis L'Amour

I decided to read this because it had Chantrys in it, and I had just reread Borden Chantry, which remains my favorite L'Amour book.  While I didn't love The Ferguson Rifle as much as Borden Chantry, it was still a very enjoyable read!

This one is set in the very early 1800s -- Lewis and Clark get mentioned as being contemporaries of the characters, so that tells you about what era this would be.  Ronan Chantry lost his wife and son in a terrible fire, and is a broken and haunted man.  Armed with a Ferguson rifle, an early sort of repeating rifle, he heads out into the wilderness to find... something.  Peace?  Himself?  Death?  He isn't sure.

Ronan takes up with some fur trappers, and they make plans to work together in the mountains.  But they run into Spanish soldiers who don't know about the Louisiana Purchase and think that the trappers are trespassers.  Then they run afoul of some Ute warriors.  And then, they rescue a woman and boy who were being pursued by various baddies because the woman might know where an ancient treasure is.  Then the whole book turns into a treasure hunt, which was a lot of fun.

Particularly Good Bits:

As long as one travels toward a promised land, the dream is there, to stop means to face the reality, and it is easier to dream than to realize the dream (p. 17).

"A man is born beside the road to death.  To die is not so much, it is inevitable.  The journey is what matters, and what one does along the way" (p. 99).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for violence and some mild cussing.

This is my 52nd book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfChallenge2023.

"Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman" by Patricia Meredith

Yes, I know it's not even Halloween yet.  But, as someone who keeps Christmas in her heart the whole year 'round like Ebenezer Scrooge, I snuggled right up to read this book even though it's not the Christmas season yet!  In fact, I had such a great time immersing myself in all things Christmas while reading this book, that coming back to the real world and having to think about things like Halloween costumes for my kids was always a bit disorienting whenever I stopped reading.

Anyway, Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman is a pretty jolly book, even though it does involve murders.  The main character is a snowman named Sam Shovel, and if that fact combined with the cheeky book title doesn't clue you in to the kind of festive, referential fun this book contains, probably nothing will.  References to classic mystery books and characters abound, from Sam Shovel (think of Sam Spade) to Nick and Nora Claus (instead of Nick and Nora Charles).  And references to Christmas carols and poems pop up everywhere, as well as innumerable iterations of Santa Claus from around the world.

I absolutely loved how Meredith created a Santa network, with international Santas like Egypt's Baba Noel, Germany's Der Weihnachtsmann, Russia's Ded Moroz, Italy's Babbo Natale, and China's Sheng Dan Lao Ren all being distinct people who work together with Nick Claus to spread Christmas presents and joy around the world.  That was so clever, and it created a natural way to include all kinds of different Christmas traditions and treats in the story.

The mystery revolves around the mysterious death of Mr. O. Tannenbaum, owner of the North Pole's Christmas tree farm.  Sam Shovel and an Icelandic "Yule Lad" named Kertasnikir (secretary to the now deceased Tannenbaum) set out to find the culprit, which is a bit difficult since Kertas spends most of his time trying to quell his urge to eat candles and Sam Shovel's memory is pretty bad since he's a snowman.  But they persevere and eventually do find the killer.

I am not ordinarily a big fan of cozy mysteries, as they can often be too cutesy for my taste.  I prefer hard-boiled mysteries where murder is shown to be the abomination it is.  BUT I make an exception for Christmas mysteries, which can be as cozy and cute as they please, and still not annoy me.  This particular book was such a delicious confection of Christmas-y elements that there was no way I wouldn't enjoy it!  In fact, I suspect it's a book I'll reread in Christmastimes to come.

By the way, if you're starting to think of books you want to read during the Christmas season, I have a page called Christmas Reads where I link to all my reviews of Christmas books on this blog.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.  I was not required to provide a review of it, positive or otherwise. 

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for dealing with poison and murder.  No cussing or smut or on-page scenes of violence except someone throwing things at a snowman from time to time.

This is the 51st book read from my TBR collection for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023 and my first read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"A Right to Die" by Rex Stout

This is one of the best fiction books I have read that concerns the Civil Rights Movement and was actually written during the 1960s. 

A father asks Nero Wolfe to investigate his son's fiancee because he is sure there must be something wrong with her or her past, and that his son needs to be aware of it.  The father and son are black, and the fiancee is white, and it's 1964 -- the father is sure that either this girl has ulterior motives for wanting to marry a black man, or she is simply toying with his son's affections.

Wolfe ordinarily doesn't touch things involving digging up dirt on spouses, even potential spouses, but he owes the father a debt of sorts, so he sends Archie Goodwin to dig around in the girl's Midwestern hometown.  Before Archie returns, the case takes a sinister turn, and suddenly they're trying to prove someone is innocent of murder by catching the real murderer.

What made this book noteworthy, in my opinion, is Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin's straightforward attitude toward race.  They admit that, as white people they can't understand fully what life is like for black people, just as the black people they are working for and with can't fully understand what life is like for them.  But they do their best to treat everyone they encounter with equal dignity and seriousness.  As Archie puts it at one point, "...when I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin" (p. 56).  

I'd be interested to know how this book was received when it was released because it strikes me as something that could have ruffled some readers' feathers.  Wolfe and Archie are both of the opinion that interracial marriage is fine, for instance.  They are both working for a black man.  There are black characters who are nice, who are annoying, who are helpful, who are dodgy, who are trustworthy, who are proud, who are ugly, who are beautiful -- as complex and varied as any cast of white characters in his other books.  Stout is clearly saying that differences of appearance, habit, style, manners, or upbringing are all external things and don't matter.  What matter are a person's values, morals, and attitudes.

The mystery here is one of Stout's best, I think.  This is going high on my list of favorite Nero Wolfe books.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of unmarried people sharing an apartment and a bed, though everything is handled delicately.  Suicide plays a central role in the plot, also.  Some mild cussing and reasonably tasteful descriptions of murder.

This is my 50th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Peter Duck" by Arthur Ransome

This book has a very unusual premise:  it is a fictional story written all together by the (also fictional) characters of Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale.  It's a story that they made up together that stars themselves, but also a bunch of people they made up, like Peter Duck himself.  Got that straight, now?  If not, don't fret -- it took us a little while to get our minds wrapped around it too.  But we did, eventually!  

I read this aloud to my kids over the summer, though we got sidetracked for a bit and just finished it up toward the end of September.  It's a jolly good treasure-hunting yarn, and was such fun to experience alongside my kids.

Within the story, the four Swallows and two Amazons, plus Captain Flint (aka Uncle Jim) are all set to go on a summertime sailing adventure around Britain.  But when they invite an old seafaring gentleman named Peter Duck to go along, they soon find themselves being chased all over by Black Jake and his foul crew of miscreants, who are convinced Peter Duck knows where there's a fabulous treasure hidden over in the Caribbean on a deserted island.

Well, naturally, they all end up sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to find that treasure and get it before Black Jake can.  Many adventures befall them, especially once they reach the island and go looking for the treasure that Peter Duck did indeed see buried there when he was a boy.

If you like wholesome stories about kids having adventures and learning new skills alongside some trusted but adventurous adults, you need to read this series!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some fairly intense parts involving natural disasters and big storms, and also a hand-to-hand fight with pirates.  No cussing or inappropriate content.

This is my 19th book read for my fourth Classics Club list, and my 49th from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Of Fire and Ash" by Gillian Bronte Adams

Of Fire and Ash is my teenage daughter's favorite book right now.  She's eagerly awaiting the next book in the series, Of Sea and Smoke, which launches in just under two months.  And she wants to dress as the main character from this one, Ceredwin, for Halloween this year.  So, when Gillian Bronte Adams announced a read-along of this book on Instagram, I decided to participate because I knew it would make my daughter really happy if I read it.  And, it did!  She had such a great time discussing it with me as we read -- she reread it during the read-along too.

I can see why my daughter loves this book.  Ceredwin is a fierce, opinionated young woman and a mighty warrior.  The book has nonstop excitement, lots of fighting and angst, and not really any romance.  There are funny characters, sad characters, and lots of very brave characters.  Also, some dastardly villains.  If I had read this before she did, I might have asked her to wait a couple years before reading it, as there are some torture scenes that I might have thought were a little more than she could handle, though she doesn't seem to be bothered by them at all, as it turns out.

But this was not really a book I enjoyed.  I appreciated many aspects of it, yes.  The characters were excellent, and they were why I kept reading, because I wanted to find out what happened to them.  But I did not like the pacing of the story -- I actually set the book aside many times because of the pacing.  There are three different stories happening simultaneously, each with its own main character, and the book would spend a couple of chapters with one character in their storyline, then hop abruptly to another right when I was getting invested in what was happening.  Often, I would just put the book down and go do something else because the cord of my interest had been severed.

Also, the pacing suffered from something I have noticed in a few other modern books lately:  lack of rest for the readers.  When you have an adventure tale, in particular, every time you have a big high point of action, your audience needs some rest after it, just like your characters.  Think about The Lord of the Rings, how after being chased by Black Riders, the hobbits and audience get to rest in Bree.  Then, after the attack at Weathertop, we get rest in Rivendell.  After the ordeal in Moria, we rest in Lothlorien.  And so it goes, throughout the whole saga -- the audience gets to catch their breath along with the characters.  If you don't let them rest, they will set your story aside to find rest away from it -- but there seems to be this thinking in today's writers that you have to keep throwing exciting stuff at your readers constantly or they will lose interest.  Trouble is, they will also get overwhelmed and lose interest because of that.

In this particular book, many times when the characters got to rest after a battle or skirmish or fight with a monster, the book yanked readers away and tossed them into another big fight scene in a different storyline, and that got very tiring.

Now, would I recommend this book?  If you like swords-and-sorcery kinds of high fantasy, absolutely.  The writing, aside from the pacing, was stellar.  The story and characters were definitely engaging.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for violence, torture, scary situations, death, branding, angst, emotional pain, and monsters.  No cussing and no smut.

This is my 48th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Mojave Crossing" by Louis L'Amour

I say!  This book is a rollicking good time.  It's all about Tell Sackett again, star of the earlier book Sackett, but this time he gets a much more straight-forward and focused story, and I appreciated that.  His narration wasn't quite as drily humorous, though that did return here and there, but I overall liked this book about him better.

Tell Sackett is basically just on his way to exchange a whole lot of gold for some trade goods in California.  Then he'll head back to Arizona and sell the trade goods.  Some of the gold is his, and some of it belongs to friends and neighbors who invested in his idea.

Well, he finds himself agreeing to take a black-eyed "witch woman" across the desert to California with him because she appears to be on the run, and he can't find it in himself to refuse to help a woman in trouble.  Only thing is, that woman IS trouble.  And Tell finds himself in plenty of dire situations before he finishes his errand and heads on back to Arizona.  Some of which involve a distant cousin of his, Nolan Sackett.

Also, there's a really fun, albeit small, twist at the very end that kinda makes me want to flip back through the book and reexamine a few conversations to find clues to it.  And I LOVE that kind of thing.

Particularly Good Bits:  

There are men who prefer to keep trouble from a woman, but it seems to me that is neither reasonable nor wise.  I've always respected the thinking of women, and also their ability to face up to trouble when it comes, and it shouldn't be allowed to come on them unexpected.  Many a man has sheltered his wife from his troubles, until suddenly he dies and she awakens to poverty as well as grief (p. 38).

It was not in me to believe myself fated to die at any given time.  Deep within me I knew, having seen many men die, that no man is immune to death at any time at all (p. 115).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for quite a few cuss words, some western violence, and the brief mention of rape.

This is my 47th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Carry On, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse

Earlier this summer, a friend shared this news article that stated that Penguin Random House has started censoring P. G. Wodehouse's books.  Incensed by this kind of Nazi-esque behavior, I went to various used book sites and bought up a complete collection of the Jeeves books, all in one cool, older paperback edition that I really liked the looks of.  While the CEO of Penguin Random House later released this statement saying that the whole issue has been blown way out of proportion, I still prefer to censor books myself rather than have someone else try to tell me what or how to be offended.  

I am an intelligent person who is well aware of the continual shifting of societal mores over the few thousand years of human history, and I am able to read books written in the past and know whether or not there are words or ideas there that I disagree with, find distasteful, or would not espouse/use myself because they would be hurtful to others.  I also find books written in the past with differing attitudes to ours to be a help in teaching my own kids about how ideas and attitudes change over time.  I find it very dangerous to try to erase those differences by pretending they never existed, whether it's by censoring fiction or burning history books under a swastika flag.  You can't change the fact that people thought differently from you in the past, but you can prevent yourself from learning by blinding yourself to the past.

None of which tells you anything about how funny this book is.  It's downright hilarious.  I laughed aloud multiple times while I read this.  From Bertie Wooster hiring Jeeves because he cured his hangover to the way that Jeeves pulled so many of Bertie's friends out of terrible scrapes, every story here was ridiculously nonsensical and adorable and funny.  So funny!  

I'm not sure I've ever read a full Jeeves book before, though I have read quite a few of Wodehouse's stories in anthologies and so on.  Of course, this is more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but that made it great to pick up and read a bit, and then go do something else.  I am so happy to have the whole series now!  This was an absolutely perfect book for me to read at the tail end of summer when I was feeling blue and gray and unhappy with the world.  I am going to try really hard to remember how well these stories work for me at the end of summer.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG because I don't think it's allowable to rate a P. G. Wodehouse book anything different.  Also because there is a little mild cussing, but nothing else objectionable.

This is my 18th book read for my fourth Classics Club list, my 46th read off my TBR shelf for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023, and the last book I completed for #20BooksOfSummer23.

"The Last Atlantean" by Emily Hayse

Emily Hayse's books have a kind of direct, inevitable heroism that I find enthralling.  Her prose suits other and older worlds, filled with larger-than-life heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses.  This whole book felt like a movie made in the 1950s but set a few decades earlier.  

Hattie is a lighthouse keeper's daughter living in Maine in 1912.  A stranger washes up on shore one night, and Hattie rescues him, helps nurse him back to health, and falls in love with them.

Not even halfway through the book, they get married, after he's revealed that he's not just a random sailor, he's actually Isurus, the rightful king of Atlantis.  Yes, the lost kingdom of Atlantis.  Which seems not so much lost as hidden, in this.

Of course, Isurus and Hattie go to Atlantis.  With the help of a handful of faithful followers, Isurus attempts to take down his half brother, who betrayed Isurus and then usurped the throne.  There are underwater pathways and shark battles and other exciting and dramatic things, plus a sweet and clean love story.  Just enough worldbuilding to make Atlantis a convincingly otherworldly realm, but not so much that I got bored (this is often a problem for me with fantasy books).  I found this book a healthy dose of bracing and heartening fiction, which I definitely needed.

Long live the shark king!

Particularly Good Bits:

"The only thing you can do is make choices, one after another, and hope the fates smile upon us.  No one becomes a hero, or a villain, without a choice.  Everyone has a choice" (p. 22).

Life was moving on around her, relentless as ever, but the feeling of that moment -- she would have it to hold against all dark and sorrowful times (p. 73).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence and a smidgeon of kissing.  No smut; no cussing.

This is my 45th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"The Witch at the Edge of the Woods" by Jenni Sauer

What a beautiful, big story wrapped up in a tiny novella!  I read nearly all of this book while at my daughters' gymnastics practice, and I kept getting tears in my eyes, refusing to cry, and then sneezing from the held-back tears.  By the end of the book, I'm pretty sure the other parents nearby thought either I had the plague or really bad allergies.  Oops!

Eva Behnam lives in a cottage at the edge of the woods.  She's not exactly a witch, she simply is from another race and world than the one where she lives now, and that Elassi heritage means she has powers that the people around her don't.  So, they label her a witch.

At the beginning of the book, Eva is reeling from the worst sort of breakup, the kind where you discover the person you loved was only pretending to love you, but actually using you for some purpose of their own.  By nature a healer, Eva is discovering that your own hurts are often the hardest to heal.  But, by reaching out to those around her and helping them heal, she finds the rest and balm she needs herself.

This book is a celebration of kindness, helpfulness, friendship, patience, and perseverance.  Although it hasn't eclipsed A Little Beside You as my favorite book by Jenni Sauer, I think it may be her most beautiful book yet, inside and out.  If there was ever such a thing as cottage-core sci-fi, this is it.

Particularly Good Bits:

"My mother always said in every situation, you have two options: to either help or to hinder.  There's nowhere in the middle to rest.  And I'd rather help" (p. 50).

...the thing she hated most about friendship was allowing her friends to make choices she knew were the wrong ones (p. 71).

"You are not alone.  And you don't have to ever apologize for hurting" (p. 83).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for difficult topics including infant loss/miscarraige, spousal abuse and child abuse (mental, physical, and emotional), and attempted marital rape (very obliquely referenced).  No cussing or smut, but some physical violence.

This has been my 44th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett

I have no memory of this book.  I KNOW I read all of Hammett's novels about twenty years ago.  But the title is the only familiar part about it.  I didn't even remember that the main character is the Continental Op.  Weird.  Or maybe not weird -- I read all of Hammett's novels in a row, in a big anthology I got from the library, and they did kinda smush together in my brain.  So that's probably why it didn't feel familiar.

Anyway!  I thought at first this book was going to be about fighting Communists because it actually involves a Communist agitator at the beginning, but it turns out to be about a whole lot of gangsters battling it out over control of a town.  So the titular "red harvest" really refers to all the blood that's spilled by the end, not harvesting Commies.  Or being harvested by Commies.

The Continental Op shows up in Personville for a meeting with a man who wants to hire the Continental Detective Agency for an unnamed job.  That man then dies, and it turns out he was basically the last decent, law-abiding citizen of Personville, which is nicknamed Poisonville for a good reason.  The bulk of the book is about the Op setting various gangsters and crime bosses against each other so they will take each other down and he won't have to get his hands dirty.  Except, by the end, he has to anyway.

An unpleasant book about unpleasant people?  Yes, but also... wow, so satisfying by the end when all the baddies have come to bad ends.  It was just the sort of hard, no-nonsense, smooth read I have been craving in these last, unending days of summer.  I don't love Hammett's prose the way I love Chandler's, but he has a straight-forward and slyly humorous style I enjoy anyway.

Particularly Good Bits:

"Plans are all right sometimes," I said.  "And sometimes just stirring things up is all right -- if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top" (p. 85).

The machine-gun settled down to business, grinding out metal like the busy little death factory it was (p. 122).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a lot of violence and blood that somehow manages not to get excessively gory, plus some cussing, lots of alcohol and tobacco use, some laudanum use, and a lot of innuendo about why one woman is so terribly popular around town.

This is my 43rd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Mara, Daughter of the Nile" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

I've got mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, the historical details and worldbuilding are fantastic.  I took a history class on Egypt and the Ancient Near East back in college, and reading this brought back so many good memories of that class and the professor, who was my favorite history prof.  

The characters were nuanced and believable, and mainly likeable.  I didn't like some of the things that Mara in particular did, but I understood why her history as a slave and her desperation to be free informed her choices.  And the plot was thick with intrigue and suspense, with lots of spying and sneaking and planning.  

But there was a point about four-fifths of the way through the book where I set it down in great annoyance for over a day because it started to involve Miscommunication, and I am always always always irked by Miscommunication.  It was a little less avoidable here because spies tend not to trust others easily or reveal things readily... but it also bugged me.  And I could see where it was going to lead, which it did, and I had a hard time picking the book up again after that.  But I did, because I did want to know how it ended AND I'm going to be using this book for the oldest literature class at our homeschool co-op this year.  I'm glad I finished it, as it was pretty satisfying (even if I did have to suspend disbelief about a young woman who has been beaten unconscious TWICE in the past few hours blithely walking around and not screaming when someone accidentally touches her lacerated back.  Um, no).

I don't want to give the plot away too much, so I'll just say it follows Mara, an Egyptian slave who ends up acting as a spy for rival powers in the court of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, one a leader of rebels trying to unseat the queen and the other trying to discover who the rebels are.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for quite a few kisses and embraces, a young woman being beaten/whipped repeatedly, a suspenseful grave-robbing sequence, and political intrigue.

This is my 42nd book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.