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

Laurel’s comments from the All About Books group.

LOCATION, location, location!

Wales/Arthurian list
and any other location specific lists

Wales/Arthurian:
1. The Snowdonia Killings
2. Crimson Shore
3. The Chinese Sailor
4. Ygerna: A Pendragon Chronicles Prequel Novel
5. The Story of the Champions of the Round Table
6. The Book of Joby
7. To Carry The Horn
8. None So Blind
9. Joan, Lady of Wales: Power and Politics of King John's Daughter
10. Eve Green
11. Hidden Company
12. The Wheel Spins

Prague/Vienna
My women's choir is traveling to Prague and Vienna in June, so this seems like a good opportunity to read a few books set in those locations!
READ 1. The Prague Sonata
2. Bohemian Gospel
3. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
4. A Woman of Note
5. Compass
6. Ecstasy
7. Exile Music
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
9. The Prague Cemetery
10. Austerlitz
11. Time's Magpie: A Walk in Prague
12. The Piano Teacher

TIME AND SPACE
In previous years, I have drawn 30 titles from my TBR lists to highlight as Random Reads each year. This has been no guarantee that I will read many of them, but it gives me something besides leftovers to read, and brings long buried items to the fore. In fact, I only read ONE of my random picks last year. So this year I am breaking up this category, AND I am trying to keep all my lists to a dozen titles! Old themes are going under themes. Series are going under Series. And I think Wales will be going in a new Location category, so that leaves Historical fiction (pre-20th century), 20th century fiction, Non-fiction, and Fantasy/Other lists. And some of my mini-themes were historical time periods, so those might get moved here too....

Macbeth/Thorfinn/Vikings:
1. King Hereafter
2. Lady Macbeth
3. Macbeth: A Novel
4. Macbeth
5. A Sacred Storm
6. Tomb for an Eagle
7. Flight of the Wren
8. The Golden Horn
9. The Half-Drowned King
10. The Whale Road
11. Viking Warlord: A Saga of Thorkell the Great
12. The Swan's Road

The Plantagenets/Wars of the Roses
1. The Summer Queen
2. Queen By Right
3. Bloodline
4. Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England
5. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
6. Blood & Roses: the Paston Family and the Wars of the Roses
7. Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The Wars Of The Roses
8. Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses
9. Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III
10. The Queen’s Rival
11. The Game's Afoot
12. The Adventures of Alianore Audley

Historical Fiction: (Random Reads) - keeping 6, 6 new
1. Courting Mr. Lincoln
2. Wolf Hall
3. The Pillars of the Earth
4. Juliet
5. Minds of Winter
6. Season of the Raven (12th cent. England)
7. The Winter Isles (12th cent. Scotland)
8. The Fatal Crown (12th cent. England, #1 of trilogy)
9. Searcher in the Dawn
10. The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage that Forever Changed the Fate of England
11. By Honor Bound
12. A Matter of Interpretation

Other Fiction: (Random Reads) - keeping 7, 5 new
1. The Cornish Coast Murder
2. Margot
3. The Secret Keeper
4. The Evening Chorus
5. The Murmur of Bees
6. The Eight
7. Letters from Skye (dual timeframe, 1912, 1940)
8. The Crown Jewels Conspiracy (#1 of 2)
9. The Farm at the Edge of the World
10. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
11. The Tolstoy Estate
12. Baker Towers

Non-fiction: (Random Reads) - keeping 2, 10 new
1. Decoding the Celts: Revealing the legacy of the celtic tradition
2. Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle that Made England
3. Homer's Odyssey
4. The Hills of Wales
5. The Grammarians
6.The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws
7. Tudor: The Family Story
8. She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of Medieval England
9. The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District
10. The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome (#1 of 3)
11. Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life
12. Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

THEMES
I like to pick an annual theme every year. And then there are always leftovers! I never seem to be able to let go of a theme. I keep adding new titles year after year! I'm moving my "Random Reads" old themes here this year. I also usually have several mini-themes. Location and time period can also be a theme, but I'm giving those separate categories this year.

"Book of" titles" (Continued from 2021)
1. The Book of Joby
2. The Book of Lost Things
3. Book of a Thousand Days
4. The Book of Speculation
5. The Book of Fires
6. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
7. The Book of Uriel: A Novel of WWII
READ 8. The Book of Unknown Americans
9. The Book of Air and Shadows
10. The Book of Dreams
11. The Book of Strange New Things
12. The Book of Lost and Found

1. Winter (continued from 2021)
1. Midwinter of the Spirit
2. The Winter Soldier
3. Minds of Winter
4. Winter's Tale
5. The Winter Guest
6. A Wild Winter Swan
7. The Winter's Child
8. Winter Counts: A Novel
9. The Winter King
READ 10. Winter Solstice
11. The Winter Vault
12. Winter in Madrid

The Odyssey I keep listing this one, and never starting it! Maybe this is the year? Obviously, I have to start with
The Odyssey and The Iliad so those aren't part of this list...
1. The World of Odysseus
2. An Orchestra of Minorities
3. Ulysses and
Ulysses: Complete Text with Integrated Study Guide from Shmoop
4. An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic
5. Omeros
6. Olympus, Texas
7. The Penelopiad
8. Homer's Odyssey
9. Ilium
10. Ransom
11. Over the Wine-Dark Sea
12. The Siege of Troy

Old Themes: Revisiting Moby Dick
1. The Whaler
2. The Widow's War
3. Railsea
4. The Movement of Stars (also stars)
5. Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer (also stars)
6. Ahab's Return: or, The Last Voyage
7. Hannah Rose (Ahab's Legacy #2)
8. The Rathbones
9. The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir
10. The Art of Fielding
11. We, the Drowned
12. The Whale: A Love Story

Old Themes: (formerly Random Reads) - carried over 6, drew 6 new
1. Bel Canto (music)
2. Orfeo (music)
READ 3. The Forest of Vanishing Stars (stars)
4. An Irish Wife: A Novel (wife titles)
5. 142 Ostriches (birds)
6. The Plover (birds)
7. The Railwayman's Wife (wife titles)
8. Mozart's Sister (music)
9. Swallows of Kabul (birds)
10. Sparks Like Stars (stars)
11. The Jewels of Paradise (music)
12. The Other Bennet Sister (P&P)

BOOK CLUBS
These are the only must reads, so I'm listing them first...
My face to face group, Daytimers, is a guaranteed 12 books.

I also added a new book club in November 2021 - I joined my church book club, Perspectives. They read about 9 books a year, monthly except for a bigger book during the summer. Of course, I want to read everything the group has read previously, but that isn't realistic. I'll pick a few and make an even dozen of it.

A Good Yarn - Reading the Alphabet
This is another face to face book group that I am in, but we pick monthly themes or challenges rather than titles. We started a new alphabet in 2021, and decided to pick geographical places for our "theme". So this group is listed under Challenges below.

Daytimer's Book Club
READ 1. Jan: Foreign author: Anxious People
READ 2. Feb: Romance: The Return
READ 3. Mar: Prize Winner/Nominee: The Vanishing Half
READ 4. Apr: Non-fiction: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
READ 5. May: Minnesota author: The Lager Queen of Minnesota
READ 6. Jun: Woman author: An American Marriage
READ 7. Jul: Historical fiction: The Four Winds
READ 8. Aug: Memoir: Somebody's Daughter
READ 9. Sep: Classic fiction: The Grapes of Wrath
10. Oct: Mystery fiction: The Thursday Murder Club
READ 11. Nov: Suspense fiction: American Dirt
READ 12. Dec: Domestic fiction: All Adults Here

Perspectives Book Club
READ 1. Jan: The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life
READ 2021 Feb: The Book of Lost Friends (This was read by me last year, but I am leading this one, and the rule is we can't suggest a book for the group that we haven't already read, so it is unnumbered)
READ 2. Mar: meeting cancelled, but reading The Urgency of Awareness: Unlocking the Power within Individual, Organizational, and Community Efforts for another church group.
READ 3. Apr: Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
READ 4. May: Behold the Dreamers
READ 5. Summer (Sep.): The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
6. Oct: The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves
7. Nov: meeting cancelled
READ 8. Dec: Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion
-------------------------
Previous group reads:
9. Cantoras
10. This Is How It Always Is
11. Sing, Unburied, Sing
12. The Year of Magical Thinking

Online group reads:
1. The Crystal Cave The Reading Loft, March 2021 (reread)
2. The Devil and the Dark Water The Reading Loft, August 2021
3. The Midnight Library The Reading Loft, Sept 2021
4. Corrag The Reading Loft, Jan 2022
5. Frenchman's Creek The Reading Loft, Feb 2022
READ 6. Winter Solstice Life of a Book Addict, Dec 2021
7. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Reading the Chunksters, April 2022
8. The Lost Wife - On the Same Page, Buddy Read for April
9. The Apothecary Rose (reread) - History Mystery Lovers featured author May 2022
10.
11.
12.

OVERVIEW:
Chomping at the bit here to set my 2022 goals! This is always my favorite part of reading. Ha ha! Seriously, planning is half the fun (or more.) I love making lists!

It's basically the same from year to year. There are book club books - those are the only must reads. Everything else is a tool for deciding what to read next. I like to have a theme to work on (or several themes.) I pick 30 or so random reads from my TBR ocean every year in six different categories. In the past I have listed these all together, but this year I am wanting to organize everything differently. I'll still have lists for non-fiction, Welsh and Arthurian fiction, historical fiction (pre-20th century), other fiction (20th/21st centuries, sci fi, fantasy), old themes from previous years, and series (divided into new series started and old series continued).

I'll be drawing more than 30 of these "random reads" so that every list has a dozen choices. No, my goal is NOT to read every book in these lists. One from each list would be ambitious enough! I always want to read far more than I will ever accomplish. Realistically I'll read about 48 books. But I am feeling unrealistic this year, so I'm setting my goal at 60 books! I add an alternative cumulative pages goal and if I succeed at one or the other, I will be happy (and amazed! Ha!) So my pages goal this year is 17,520 (which is also a multiple of 12, in case you wondered...)

Finally, I don't like the limitations of Goodreads 1-5 star rating system, so I add colors to my ratings to give it a little more nuance. Here is my rating scale:
Ratings
5 + stars = Gold (Gold medal, nothing higher. Well maybe Platinum but let's not go there....)
5 stars = Purple (Grand Champion ribbon)
4.5 - 5 = Blue (Blue ribbon, 1st prize)
4 stars = Red (2nd prize ribbon)
3.5 - 4 = Pink (tickled pink, in the pink, ...but not quite red?)
3 stars = Green (Green for Go, not outstanding, but I'd read more by this author - or not)
2.5 - 3 stars =Yellow (Caution)
2 stars = Orange (Hazard Warning, LOL!)
1 star = Black (Black-balled and also probably not finished)
DNF (not rated) = Gray

My goals involve so many lists of book that I wish I could read! Sadly the reality is that I'm not likely to manage more than one book a week. But planning is half the fun!

8 more days and 7 more books to reach my goal. I'll finish
READ One Day in December - 2 hours, 41 minutes left.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is checked out from the library, and due back in one week with a hold waiting, so I must start it now.

Just bought on Kindle
READ A Cornish Christmas Carol - it's a novella - 91 p. , so should be a quick read.

That leaves 4 more. I've had a look at my TBR for some other novellas and short stories...
READ Mayhem Mansion - 101 p. - It's even a Christmas story.
Winter's Bite - 54 p. - and fits my "Winter" theme.
READ The Amersham Rubies - 38 p. - a short prequel to the Molly Murphy mysteries.
READ A Mind of Her Own - an Audible Original - 109 p.
READ Questing Beast - 30 p, - an Arthurian/Sci Fi short story.
And maybe, just because...
READ Along the Tapajós - children's book - 40 p.

I'm trying to reorganize my challenges this year. I usually pick 30 random reads in different categories - and one of my categories is 3 books set in Wales.... I'm thinking about how to list these categories differently, so that it isn't all one challenge.... Especially since I've only managed to read one book for this challenge in 2021. Now you've got me thinking I could do location as a challenge. I'm not going to keep track here, but put it all in my own challenge thread.

So maybe Wales - 4 books
Cornwall - 4 books
and Vienna/Prague - 4 books

I've got quite a few lined up for Cornwall already, and I'm in a choir that is going to Prague and Vienna in June, so it might be fun to read some books set in those two cities....

#41 Murder on the Menu
A solid 4 red stars, which is unusual (from me) for a 1st of series cozy mystery. It had me laughing out loud, and I was up until 3 am reading it... Jodie was fun. She drives a van that she bought from a guy that owned a fetish shop in Tavistock. Yeah, that will get you noticed! Ha ha. And my ancestors are from around Tavistock, so I enjoyed the local flavor (no pun intended.) The plot seemed oh so familiar and predictable, but I guess that's what cozy mysteries are.... I would have liked more than one recipe, and why didn't it tie into the book? Something she was making for the wedding perhaps? Anyway, I've already got the next book lined up.

Cumulative Pages: 16,059

#40 The Lord God Made Them All
5 blue stars - One more book in the series to go....

Cumulative pages: 15,773

#39 We'll Always Have Parrots
4 red stars - Lots of fun. I continue to enjoy this series. Not much more to say that I haven't said in previous reviews of this author. This one spoofs the world of comic books and sci-fi "Cons". I didn't guess "who done it" and Meg's dad is still my favorite character...

Cumulative pages: 15,400

#38 The Alehouse Murders
4 red stars - A good start to the series. Bascot is flawed but likeable. The plot is somewhat slow moving, and the ending was a bit of a let down. The joy is in the historical details. This seems well-researched. If there were inaccuracies, nothing jumped out at me. I thought the author did a good job weaving her details into the story without being too heavy handed about it. I did think the main character was going to be Nicolaa, the chatelaine of Lincoln Castle, at first and was a little disappointed when she sort of got dropped and Bascot took over. I hope we see more of her. Lots of room for character development going forward. Not quite as "light" as the Brother Cadfael books, but similar.

Cumulative pages: 15,046

#37 All Things Wise and Wonderful
4 blue stars - This one bounces back and forth between Herriot's recollections of his practice in Yorkshire, and his experiences in London with the RAF, including learning how to fly an airplane. Not quite as focused as the first two books, and we really didn't get much of Helen and his new son! But still delightful storytelling. This includes some stories that were published separately as children's books like The Christmas Day Kitten and Oscar Cat-About-Town.

Cumulative pages: 14,769

We're into December now, so I guess I had better decide what I can realistically get read by the end of the year. I don't think I'm going to make my goal - that would be 12 more books!

Pretty sure I'll finish these:
READ All Things Wise and Wonderful - audiobook, 21 minutes left
READ One Day in December - audiobook, waiting for hold
READ The Alehouse Murders - library ebook, about 70 pages to go
READ We'll Always Have Parrots - couldn't find audiobook through the library, so I purchased on Audible
READ The Lord God Made Them All - maybe I'll get to this one, since I'm traveling this month....

After I finish Alehouse Murders - starting a series set in Cornwall, for my Good Yarn group (Dec./Jan. is a setting that starts with C, with Christmas as a bonus. Christmas is the 4th book, if I get to it!
READ Murder on the Menu
A Brush With Death
A Sprinkle of Sabotage
A Cornish Christmas Murder

Various other books I've started and not finished this year, that probably won't get finished (this year), and that I may create a 12 + 4 list of them to prioritize for next year...
Anglesey Blue
One for Sorrow
Wolf Hall
The Valley
The Chocolatier's Ghost
Neverhome
Queen By Right
From Hand to Hand: the Welsh novel O Law I Law
Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur

#36 Normal People
3 yellow stars - I am not the audience for this book.

Cumulative pages: 14,321

#35 Left Neglected
4 red stars

I enjoyed this much more than her first book Still Alice. The author avoided becoming too technical while still giving "lay" people an idea of what it is like to experience this condition. I also appreciated her use of humor throughout. I think she tried to find a happy balance between being too rosily optimistic or too depressing. Nevertheless, I still found her outcomes to be unrealistic. Sarah just "happens" to be offered the perfect job for someone with her condition, for example. Her mother is able to come live with them to help out with the children. And they are quite well off financially. And her husband agrees to find a new job and relocate.... How would this story play out for those who don't have those things? Anyway, aside from that, this book is food for thought that life might be more than constant busyness, and corporate striving, and living a wealthy lifestyle. As someone who has worked part-time most of my life, I can't identify with that. Sarah learns to relax, to quiet her constant brain chatter, and to forge better connections with the people in her life. There's a lot to be said for that.

Cumulative annual pages: 14,048

Thanks, Greg. For sure it's an opportunity to get to know a different group of people. Maybe you can start a group! We've done book studies, too, but I didn't even know this group existed until they posted in the newsletter. The group is called Perspectives, so I think the idea is to read books (fiction and non-fiction) that expose you to ideas outside of one's comfort zone? Next month's book is The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. I've requested it through interlibrary loan so may not get it for a couple of weeks.

I've just joined another book club with members from my church. They started the group in 2013. They posted an invitation for new members, and I had read the book they were reading for November, and a number of previous books they had read, so I thought I would try it. Great bunch of people! I have added this year's list to message 4 above (Perspectives Book Club) and of course I want to play catch up on the books I haven't read. So I just downloaded
READ Left Neglected

#34 The Giver of Stars
5 Purple stars. A feel-good, happy-ending book about strong and unconventional women. I liked it a lot. Having said that, I probably should have given it a lower rating, because it borders on fluff rather than substance, there are historical inaccuracies, and the plot is resolved much too conveniently. There were a number of plot points that defied credulity, and many of the characters felt like cliches. But I liked it. And it's about librarians, and spunky women, and friendship, and supporting each other, and overcoming adversity. So there.

Total cumulative pages: 13,724

November plans:

Daytimers book:
READ Normal People

A Good Yarn: the group decided to continue the B geography challenge for November. This will give me a chance to catch up on my A challenge choices:
Anglesey Blue
READ The Alehouse Murders
and maybe,
The Apple Orchard
and more B books:
One for Sorrow (Byzantium)
Backyard

Because it fits the season:
We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, a President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace

And various other leftovers, still leftover... Which makes me think I should put together a 12 + 4 list, not that I would finish it this year - I'd be happy to cross even a few off the list... but I'd have those titles front and center to focus on...