"A Holiday by Gaslight" by Mimi Matthews

What a fun finale to my Christmas reading this year!  I polished off this novella in about a day, and it was like a nice dessert -- satisfying, but not over-satiating.  It has a little bit of a North and South flavor to it, intentionally, with a young lady falling for a man in trade.  I'm going to be rereading Gaskell's book in February, and this nicely got me in the mood for that.

In this case, the young lady is being courted by a merchant who is stiff and formal around her, causing her to misunderstand the level of his affection for her.  She breaks off their courtship, but has second thoughts and tries to get to know him while he spends the Christmas holidays with her family.  It was fun, generally clean, and I enjoyed it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some old-fashioned swear words, mentions of a man admiring a woman's figure, and a few detailed kisses.  Tiptoes along the line of clean or not, and mostly stays on the clean side.

This was my 5th Christmas book read and reviewed for the Literary Christmas reading link-up and my 57th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020!!!  I was really only hoping to read 24 off my shelves, and then I kept upping my goal whenever I hit my new one, and yeah... I am agog.  Now if only I hadn't bought nearly 50 books this year, this would mean I cleared off a couple of shelves!  But, there's always next year, right?

My Favorite Reads in 2020

Time for an end-of the-year reading wrap-up!  I'm linking up with Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl for this.  

As has been my habit for the last few years, I'm doing two lists, my top ten new reads and my top ten rereads.  If you want to see my previous lists, they're all on this page.  

If I reviewed a book this year, I've linked the title to that review.  There are a few here that I've reviewed previously and didn't review again this year -- you can look up my previous reviews in my review lists if you want.

Okay, on to the fun!

New Reads

(Yes, I listed three books all together in one slot.  They form one cohesive story, so I figure that's fair.)

1. Christmas with Anne by L. M. Montgomery (G) -- a collection of short Christmas stories (not about Anne), plus two sections from the Anne books that are about Christmas.

2. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (G) -- four tired British women rent an Italian villa and change their outlooks on life.

3. The Two Blue Doors trilogy (book 1, book 2, book 3) by Hillary Manton Lodge (PG/PG13/PG13) -- a restaurateur and a doctor start a long-distance relationship and travel to France and Italy. This trilogy made Lodge an auto-buy author for me.

4. Marsalis on Music by Wynton Marsalis (G) -- a fun and fascinating exploration in which the famed jazz trumpet player guides children and adults alike through the forms and functions of music.

5. Over the Moon by Natalie Lloyd (PG) -- magical realism involving dust monsters, flying horses, and people who can weave starlight.

6. Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker (R) -- my new headcanon for what Edward Rochester's life was like before he met Jane Eyre, while he knew Jane initially, and how everything ends up.

7. Aslan's World by Angus Menuge (G) -- a Bible study that explores Biblical themes in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

8. Rook di Goo by Jenni Sauer (PG-13) -- quirky sci-fi with a found family, Cinderella overtones, and a beautiful depiction of living with clinical anxiety.

9. Old Ramon by Jack Schaefer (PG) -- quiet story of a boy learning about life from an old mann two dogs, and a herd of sheep.

10. The Secret in the Tower by Charity Bishop (PG-16) -- Katherine of Aragon seeks to remain in England after the death of her husband, Prince Arthur, and various political machinations arise from the situation. Also, Thomas Lovell continues to be awesome in this installment of the Tudor Throne series.

Rereads

(You will note that two books tie for second place and two for sixth.)

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (PG) -- my favorite novel.  A young woman continually resists men's efforts to control her, and obeys God and her own conscience instead.

2. The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery (PG) -- a downtrodden young woman finds a new zest for living when she learns that she is dying.  Also, this book has my favorite fictional romantic hero in it.

2. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (G) -- a loquacious orphan gets adopted by an old-fashioned woman and her shy brother.  No one is ever the same again. 

4. Persuasion by Jane Austen (G) -- a woman and man who had once been engaged, then broke up, learn that second chances are a beautiful thing.

5. All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling (G) -- adventures of a boy and his animal friends.  Also includes the story about Mowgli as an adult, which I'd never read before!

6. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (PG) -- a naïve young woman makes new friends and learns that not everyone is as nice as they seem to be (but if a guy acts like a jerk, he's totally a jerk).

6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (PG) -- two people keep insisting they don't like each other even though they actually do like each other, a lot.

8. The Princess Bride by William Goldman (PG-13) -- true love, death, resurrection, pirates, the greatest swordsman of all time, a giant, the most beautiful girl in the world, a prince, a six-fingered man, a Sicilian, and the fire swamp.  You think this happens every day?

9. Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery (G) -- a girl gets to know her father and, at the same time, figures out who she is too.

10. All-of-a-Kind Family by Sidney Taylor (G) -- a Jewish family in turn-of-the-century NYC with lots of kids who have adventures.

This was a wonderful year of reading!  I read 94 books (new personal adult record!), I discovered some new favorite authors (Hillary Manton Lodge and Elizabeth Von Arnim), and it was just altogether a lovely year, book-wise.  

"Hercule Poirot's Christmas" by Agatha Christie

I have discovered a newfound appreciation for Hercule Poirot over the last couple years.  I entirely blame Kenneth Branagh and his 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express.  

I read almost this whole book yesterday, and it was great fun!  I mean, great fun considering it's a book about a severely dysfunctional family and murder and so on.

Poirot isn't even in the first third or so of this book, which is all about this old man and his children, most of whom hate each other.  The old man gets killed, Poirot and some British policemen get called in to solve the crime, and the rest of the book is about that.

This was a fast read, and I'm happy to say I did not solve the crime before the hero did, which is the sort of mystery I like best.

Particularly Good Bits: 

"I believe the present matters -- not the past!  The past must go.  If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it.  We see it in exaggerated terms -- a false perspective" (p. 33).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a lot of talk about a man having illegitimate children through his many love affairs, and a pretty gory murder.

This was my 4th book read and reviewed for the Literary Christmas reading link-up hosted by In the Bookcase, my 13th for my third Classics Club list, and my 51st for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020.

"Yuletide: A Jane Austen-Inspired Collection of Stories" edited by Christina Boyd

This was a diverting collection of short Christmas stories.  They all center around Pride and Prejudice, which I didn't realize at first -- I thought there would be a mix of all of Austen's novels, but nope, all P&P.  Some of the stories retold Pride and Prejudice in a modern setting.  Others were a Christmasy sequel to the book.  Still others wrote an alternate version of the book where Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy fell in love in a different way from the original.  Many of the stories were good, a couple were great, and some were only okay.

My favorites were, in order of how they appear in the book:

"The Forfeit" by Caitlin Williams -- Mr. Darcy is stranded near Meryton at Christmas and must spend the holiday with the Bennet family while waiting for the weather to clear.  During the festivities, he and Elizabeth spend a great deal of time together, much to their mutual satisfaction.  (An alternate ending for P&P)

"By a Lady" by Lona Manning -- Elizabeth Darcy endeavors to make friends with her husband's cousin, Anne, and they discover a mutual interest in books.  (A sequel to P&P)

"The Season for Friendly Greetings" by Anngela Schroeder -- Lizzy and Jane Bennet attend a ball and get to know Col. Fitzwilliam and learn the truth about a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Wickham, thus learning to understand and appreciate another mutual acquaintance, Mr. Darcy.  (An alternate ending for P&P)

(From my Instagram)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some stories and PG-13 for others.  The modern-set ones are more PG-13 and the Regency ones are more PG.

This is my third book read and reviewed for the Literary Christmas Reading Link-Up hosted by In the Bookcase and my 50th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020

"We are the Ship: The Story of Negro Baseball" by Kadir Nelson

This book was awesome!  If you'd like to learn more about Black baseball athletes and the history of American baseball in general, this middle-grade nonfiction book will give you a great overview.  If you've seen Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, you'll be familiar with some of the names here, but I expect that you still will learn quite a bit of new info from it.  I certainly did!

I feel like most people only know about Jackie Robinson being the first Black baseball player to break the color barrier, but not about all the other Black baseball players who came before him.  I myself know Robinson's story pretty well -- I really love his autobiography, I Never Had it Made, and the biopic 42 (2013) with the late Chadwick Boseman playing Jackie Robinson.  So I loved the chapter that told some of his story in this, but I also loved that it did not spend the whole time talking about him, because Robinson's story is not the whole story.

Not only does Kadir Nelson tell this history in an engaging way, using a first-person voice to pull the reader close, but his breathtaking full-page illustrations fill this book to bursting with wonderful visuals too.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No bad words or objectionable content, though it does mention that some players would curse or chase women or smoke or drink.

"A House to Let" by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, and Wilkie Collins

 

Well, this was an interesting premise for a novella, anyway.  Charles Dickens and his writer friends Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Anne Proctor all got together to write a book in several pieces that got stitched together later with a narrative framework.

It begins with "Over the Way," co-authored by Dickens and Collins, which tells of an elderly woman who moves to London and becomes fascinated by the house across the street from her new home.  It's up for rent, or "to let," and she thinks it contains a mystery, so she asks her butler and an old friend to both find out the history of the house.

Elizabeth Gaskell picks up the story with "The Manchester Marriage," which is part of the house's history, all about a widow who remarries a kind man, but inadvertently causes heartache.

Charles Dickens adds to the house's history with "Going into Society," about sideshow performers who turned the house into an attraction for a time (think The Greatest Showman).  One of them tries buying his way into society, but discovers that society only wanted to be friends with his money, not him.

Adelaide Anne Proctor continues the list of unhappy happenings with a series of narrative poems called "Three Evenings in the House" about a woman who continually gives up her own chances at happiness to help her brother.

Proctor's other contribution, "Trottle's Report," brings in the current history of the house and the mysterious goings on there.  Another tragedy is in the works, but perhaps it can be averted!

Dickens and Collins end the whole story together with "Let at Last," which does at least have a happy ending, so the whole thing ends on a good note.

Having different authors for the different bits gives them the flavor of being stories told to the characters by very different people, which worked very well for this sort of story -- better than I expected it to, in fact!  I liked "Going into Society" best, I think, because it didn't end totally sadly, but more in a realistically melancholy sort of way.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some sadness, deaths, and child abuse of the sort you commonly find in Dickens.

Several of the stories-within-the-story take place around Christmas, as does the main narrative that frames them, so this is technically a Christmas story, and thus it is my 2nd book read for the Literary Christmas reading link-up hosted by In the Bookcase.  It's also the 11th for my 3rd Classics Club list and my 49th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020.

"Christmas with Anne" (and Other Holiday Stories) by L. M. Montgomery

This is a book I hugged.  I think it may even have edged out Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas as my favorite Christmas book.

It's a collection of short Christmastime stories by L. M. Montgomery, along with the Christmas parts of two different Anne books, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Windy Poplars.  Those happen to be my two favorite Anne books, and I'm starting to wonder if the inclusion of Christmas in them might be part of why they're my favorites.

Anyway, not every story in this is perfectly, incandescently wonderful... but several of them are, and the others are enjoyable too.  Several of them brought tears to my eyes, and several made me laugh aloud.  

Mine from my Instagram account

My favorites, besides the Anne chapters, were "Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket" and "The Josephs' Christmas," with "Christmas at Red Butte," "The End of the Young Family Feud," and "Ida's New Year Cake" rounding out my top five.

If you love heartwarming stories of good people sharing joy with each other, bringing comfort and cheer to others, or making peace with someone at last, then you will doubtless enjoy these as much as I did.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Clean and wholesome.

This is my 48th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020, my 10th for my 3rd Classics Club list, and my first for this year's Literary Christmas link-up from In the Bookcase.