Laurel’s Comments (group member since Dec 30, 2013)

Laurel’s comments from the All About Books group.

Overview:
I always want to read far more than I will ever accomplish. And I have over 2,000 books in my TBR lists.
1. Random Reads: I draw 30 titles to highlight as Random Reads, which is no guarantee that I will read them in a given year, but it does give them some priority. My goal is to read at least 12.

2. Book clubs and online group reads: My face to face group, Daytimers, is a guaranteed 12 books. I'll read other online group picks as I please. The main theme I chose for this year is Stars (with some other "sky" titles) (5 titles). There are also two other mini-themes: titles with water (5 titles), and there are 3 titles featuring Native Americans.

3. A Good Yarn - Reading the Alphabet: This is another face to face group that I am in, but we pick themes rather than titles. I'll also read at least one book for each letter. And then I have some catching up to fill in from 2019... We also pick an annual theme for ourselves, and since I have focused on Stars (and other Sky titles) for the Daytimer's list, that will also be my personal theme for the year.

4. Authors and series: Last year's "author of the year" was Madeleine L'Engle. I haven't made much of a dent, so that will be continued. I'll also list some authors and series from previous years that I want to continue or finish.

5. Leftovers and library books: a combination of old and new. Sort of a catch-all for anything that doesn't fit above.

My overall goal is 52 - a book a week, OR (because so many books on my list this year are chunky monsters), 16,000 pages, however many books that is.

Annual theme: STARS
READ 2019 The Map of Salt and Stars
READ Alone with the Stars
READ When Stars Are Scattered
READ The Fault in Our Stars
READ This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl
READ The Stars Are Fire
The Giver of Stars
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer
The Movement of Stars
Where the Forest Meets the Stars
READ The Starless Sea
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
READ A Bend in the Stars
Written in their Stars
Children of the Stars
READ The Pull of the Stars

Quarterly/seasonal themes:
Winter/Spring (and probably all year...)RUSSIA
READ The Bear and the Nightingale
READ The Girl in the Tower
READ The Winter of the Witch
READ War and Peace
READ Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
READ A Bend in the Stars
Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age
Russka - reread
The Bronze Horseman

Summer: ARTHURIAN/MEDIEVAL
Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur
The Story of the Champions of the Round Table
The Book of Joby
The Summer Queen
Queen By Right
READ The Demon's Brood: A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty
Bloodline

Fall: MACBETH/Thorfinn/Vikings
King Hereafter
Lady Macbeth
Macbeth: A Novel
Macbeth
READ A Mighty Dawn
Tomb for an Eagle
Flight of the Wren

Winter: WINTER
Midwinter of the Spirit
Rebecca - reread
Mrs de Winter
Winter's Tale
Winter of the World
The Winters
The Winter's Child
Winter Counts: A Novel
The Winter King
Winter Counts
Winter Solstice
The Winter Vault
Winter in Madrid
A Wild Winter Swan
Winter of Despair
Death and Nightingales (main character: Beth Winters)

Planning ahead 2021 (all year?): ODYSSEY
The Odyssey and The Iliad
A Short History of Myth
Ulysses
Ulysses: Complete Text with Integrated Study Guide from Shmoop
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic
Circe
Sing, Unburied, Sing

#41 Mary Poppins Comes Back
3 stars - Children love absurdity, and are far more forgiving of Mary Poppins oddities than I am, perhaps!

#42 Where the Crawdads Sing
4 stars - a bit on the implausible side, but what a lovely paean to the marsh and the natural world.

12 books to go in 25 days. Ha ha, that's a book every two days.

Would LIKE to finish the following:
READ Where the Crawdads Sing
READ The Garden in Every Sense and Season
READ Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet
READ Mary Poppins Comes Back
READ Wuthering Heights
The Tall Pine Polka
The Map of Salt and Stars

Thinking of adding some Madeleine L'Engel:
READ A Wrinkle in Time
READ A Wind in the Door
READ Many Waters
A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Well, that would be 11 books. Maybe I can sneak in
Christmas Bells, or
READ White Birch, Red Hawthorn

Wish me luck!!!!!

#39 The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
4 stars - Too good to be true, but oh so charming.

#40 The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: A Social History
4 stars - Full of fascinating details.

I'm on the waiting list for that one...

#38 Dead Lions
3 stars
Entertaining but slow and constantly shifting plot threads. Still I like the set up of this series, and just might read more of them.

#37 Educated
3 stars

Gripping but painful. And definitely an unreliable narrator.

#34 The President Is Missing
3 stars
It was okay, but it didn't inspire me to read any more James Patterson.

#35 Earthly Joys
4 stars
I know she takes liberties with history, but she tells a good story!

#36 Virgin Earth
4 stars
Sequel to Earthly Joys.

And now I am 9 books behind schedule on my annual goal. Can she catch up??

As usual, I find myself getting sidetracked from my good intentions. I had determined to read The Garden... (above) and Hidden Lives and also The Tall Pine Polka for my H is for (things that are) High category. But then I decided I needed to rewatch seasons 4,5, and 6 of Downton Abbey prior to seeing the movie this weekend and all reading has gone out the window. There is also the current political drama unfolding over the last few days and if I'm not watching Downton Abbey, I'm glued to CNN.

I did finish The President is Missing on audio, and have started Wuthering Heights in the car. It has proven to need more attention, so I've restarted the audio once for the first 10 chapters or so, and now I've gotten the book as well to read along side. The structure of the thing required reading the Spark Notes synopsis online to understand who was speaking. I had thought the narrator was Nelly Dean, and so I was terribly confused at the references to it being a man. Now I realize there are two narrators - the tenant Mr. Lockwood as well as the housekeeper! I think I am getting it sorted now. The narrator, Joanne Froggatt is wonderful. Having been born and raised in Yorkshire, she is completely fluent with the dialect. I have ancestors from Yorkshire, so am finding it very evocative of the time and place they lived.

Well, I am going to visit my elderly parents (both 89) next week, so I am hoping to have some reading time around running errands with my mom (dad is in assisted living with Alzheimer's). I have suggested taking her to see the Downton Abbey movie since she loved the TV series, and she thought that was a "thrilling" idea.

Currently listening to Audible's recording of Wuthering Heights, read by Joanne Froggatt. One of those books that you hear so much about you think you've surely read it long ago. But clearly I haven't! It is not at all what I expected. Enjoying it!

I have some catching up to do! Goodreads says I am four books behind in my goal. Well, I have a couple of books I've been "reading" since the beginning of the year, that would give me my G and H titles for my Good Yarn book club:
The Garden in Every Sense and Season
The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: A Social History

I'm almost done with
The President Is Missing for Daytimer's.

And I'm half through the next Slow Horses series
Dead Lions but I had to return the ebook, and now have to wait for it to become available again...

I have a long car trip coming up, so I hope to listen to
Wuthering Heights which fits both a G and an H category for Goal #5, also
Earthly Joys which fits several categories as well.

So those are my priorities right now!

#33 Whisker of Evil
4 stars. Returning to my reread of this series from a couple years ago. Needed something light and familiar to read.

#32 Crazy Rich Asians
3 stars. Not really my thing at all, though I did enjoy the movie version of this book.

#31 Boone's Lick
5 stars. More of a novella, but I thought it was great fun, and Boone's Lick is where some of ancestors first settled in Missouri.

#30 The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
4 stars. Maybe 4.5.
Well-researched and includes lots of details about tea, the hill tribes and their customs, particularly the Akha from the Yunnan area of China.

#29 Women at Fort Boonesborough, 1775-1784
5 stars. A snippet of what life might have been like (especially for women) on the Kentucky frontier. Biographies of every known woman (including children and slaves) who were there between 1775 and 1784. Taken from multiple sources, including collected interviews.

#28 Slow Horses
4 stars, which is great for the first of a series. I really enjoyed this farce/thriller about a bunch of failed Bristish intelligence agents trying to redeem themselves. Not recommended on audio - the constant scene-switching is too hard to follow without at least the visual cue on the page of a small gap in the text.

#27 Drastic Measures
3 stars - Another okay book, but I don't think I'll read any more of these.

#26 Making of the Primitive Baptists
3 stars - Not really what I was looking for, but I found it somewhat interesting, given that some of my ancestors were Primitive Baptists.

#25 Before We Were Yours
5 stars - Terrific book. Same general vein and style as The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah - over the top drama, a bit romancy in style, but based on true events.