Ceelee's December: Getting Better All The Time!

[Ceelee]

happy New Years Fellow Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends!

December was a tough month for me since it was the first Christmas without my mom. Also still recovering from my little detour in September/October but I have good news! No more bleeding so no need for banding during my last endoscopy so I won't need another one for a year! I also just came back from a two week vacation at my special guy's cabin in Colorado and it was so nice to get away and relax for a bit and see some snow! It gets cold in North Texas but we rarely see much snow and the past three years we have either had only dusting or none!

Even with all the sadness and stress, I managed to read and finish four books! Right now I have a big pile of books in various stages of progress so hopefully I will have even more done by the end of this month!

A book I just stumbled upon in as book club offering a fee years ago was THE DIARY OF ELLEN RIMBAUER: MY LIFE AT ROSE RED. It was all in diary form except some notes from the edition Joyce Reardon. I suspect Stephen King actually wrote it because he was involved with the mini series! Now that I have read the book I would like to see the movie again! I hope I can find it on one of the streaming services. The story is most likely based on Mrs Winchester why had a strange house built after her husband died because she couldn't live in the one she and her husband occupied because she was afraid of the ghosts of all the people who were killed by Winchesters' guns. The house had a lot of strange angles and pathways to keep the ghosts confused and wouldn't
bother her. Shirley Jackson, who grew up in the San Francisco area (I didn't know that until i read her amazing biography a couple years ago) based her interior of Hill House on Mrs Winchester's house.
This book really clicked for me on a lot of different levels! I really enjoyed it!




I also read DEADLINE by Nora Roberts. Great book but Ms Brown sure milked the plot to the nth degree! Good read though and I could just feel the summer scenes at the beach.



I had a bunch of Christmas books picked out but only managed to read two. I will try to start earlier this year! One of the books I read was JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE by Stephanie Barron. which was set in Bath during the Christmas season. It was perfectly delightful! I love that Jane Austen mystery series and I am planning on reading one of them in my Determination Reading Challenge. for one of the two series books. I have my books picked out but need to write them down in the particular order I want to read them. I am a little slower in getting projects done these days!



The other Christmas book I read was THE NIGHTINGALE BEFORE CHRISTMAS by Donna Andrews. I enjoy that series too even though I think she goes a little overboard on the cutesy cozy elements in this story and her time line was a little hard to believe. I think it is neat every one of her books has a bird name in the title. Good choice for people who do reading challenges who love cozies and have a task where you need to read a book with an animal on the cover or in the title.



That is the latest from my little reading world. Hope everyone is having a tolerable January and reading lots of great books! Enjoy your reading adventures and try to stay warm!

[OMalleycat]

Glad you're feeling better, Ceelee, and had a good Christmas. I enjoy the Donna Andrews series. She's funny without going too far outside the bounds of realistic fiction.

[Amy]

Glad to hear you are feeling better.

[Ann]

Ceelee: Snow, vacation and positive health news sound great. Good books to offset the sadness and stress of the holidays are welcome. I had forgotten about the creepy Winchester house - that was a good book!

[Susie]

Hope you feel better every day :) Glad you were able to read some good books in December. I am so far behind on Donna Andrews it will take me forever to catch up!