2018 Reading Log

1. Zero History by William Gibson

2. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

3. Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

4. Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane^ by Andrew Graham-Dixon

5. The Art Detective: Fakes, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures^ by Phillip Mould

6. The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece^ by Laura Cumming

7. Caliban’s War by James S. A. Corey

8. Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey

9. Pep Talks for Writers* by Grant Faulkner

10. North and South^ by Elizabeth Gaskell

11. Emma^ by Jane Austen

12. Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey

13. The Convenient Marriage^ by Georgette Heyer

14. The Corinthian^ by Georgette Heyer

15. Sylvester^ by Georgette Heyer

16. The Grand Sophy^ by Georgette Heyer

17. Pride and Prejudice^ by Jane Austen

18. Sense and Sensibility^ by Jane Austen

19. Me Before You^ by JoJo Moyes

20. Arabella^ by Georgette Heyer

21. Faro’s Daughter^ by Georgette Heyer

22. Northanger Abbey^ by Jane Austen

23. Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets^ by John Woolf, Nick Baker

24. Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life^ by Elizabeth Gaskell

25. The Weaver Takes a Wife^ by Sheri Cobb South

26. Howard’s End^ by E. M. Forester

The conclusion of William Gibson’s Blue Ant Trilogy held a few surprises. Mostly, it was just solid near-future storytelling. I feel like it may have had a bit less compelling social commentary than the two previous works in the series, but the settings were vividly executed.

I don’t engage a whole lot with celebrity worship, but I admire Mindy Kaling a lot and was curious about her writing, so I picked up her autobiography. She’s a very good writer and an interesting person, and I’m glad I read her book that covers her life through her stint as a writer and actor on The Office. It didn’t include her time writing and staring in The Mindy Project but she has a book out now about that and I should pick it up.

My husband got me started watching The Expanse on SyFy. He’d read the books and recommended that I read them. They’re my absolute favorite sci fi books right now. James S. A. Corey (actually the pen name for a writing duo) handled multiple POVs more deftly than anyone publishing right now, and they have the science of space travel nailed down. I love hard sci fi, and this is some of the best.

At this time, I started listening to more audiobooks. I’d been having trouble finding time to read, but I can listen to an audiobook while I’m doing chores, so I find this to be a good compromise. I listened to the Caravaggio biography while driving from Boston to southern Indiana to move the family back home. It’s very comprehensive and a good read. His life was wildly exciting, so it would take effort to make this into a boring book. I definitely thought this was going to be a chore to get through for research purposes, but it wasn’t a chore at all.

Grant Faulkner is one of the founder of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and this was the first year I participated, so I picked up his Pep Talks for Writers book to flip through for inspiration. I did not win. I do not write quickly and 2,000 words a day is an exhausting pace for me.

Once again, I picked up a classic after having watched the mini series adaptation. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is marvelous, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about Elizabeth Gaskell until now. Margaret is just the sort of female protagonist I enjoy in classic literature, and the story is an interesting exploration of how we feel “at home” where we find ourselves habituating, and how to deal with loss and unmet expectations.

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Victorian era novels, and it’s working-class historical setting was fascinating. I haven’t read any Victorian novels outside of Dickens, so I liked getting a different perspective on the time period.

Another historical female author of note I can’t believe I’d never heard of before is Georgette Heyer. I kept seeing her name pop up in Facebook groups I’m in. She was an author who pretty much invented the genre of Regency Romances and was wrote nearly 50 novels from the 1920s through to the 1970s. Some of her works are better than others, but they’re all in the same vein. They’re quaint and not nearly as salacious as modern romance novels. They generally end much like an Austen novel, with a kiss and/or a wedding. My favorites are Venetia, The Grand Sophy, and Arabella and perhaps Faro’s Daughter.

The Weaver Takes a Wife by Sheri Cobb South was a historical romance that the Audible app recommended to me. It wasn’t good, but it passed the time.

I was very happy to close out the year by finally getting around to reading Howard’s End by E. M. Forester. It was not quite as enchanting as A Room with a View but strong-willed female protagonists are totally my thing, so of course I loved it. It had such a strong sense of place.

2017 Reading Log

1. The Brilliant History of Color in Art by Victoria Finlay

2. The Boston Raphael* by Belinda Rathbone

A few things were happening in my life that kept my nose out of books during this time, I was working about 60 hours a week and we’d moved cross country from Indiana to Boston for my husband’s career. Another factor is that I developed a severe case of tinnitus (ringing in my ears) due to a medication side effect. Never having true silence impacts my ability to concentrate, and I prefer having background noise to mask the screeching tinnitus which also distracts when reading.

The Brilliant History of Color in Art is brilliant. I picked it up on a whim at the library and didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. It’s one part travelog and one part natural history of pigments. I have recommended it to quite a few people when I see it in the books section of museum gift shops. I need to pick up another book on a similar subject by the same author, but I haven’t yet.

The Boston Raphael* by Belinda Rathbone is the story of how the Boston Museum of Fine Arts acquired a Raphael painting, but it’s written by the then-curator’s daughter and the first part is a bit of family history and navel-gazing about museum politics and Boston high society, so I never got through all of that chaff to get to the good parts where they talk about the Raphael.

2016 Reading Log

1. The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

3. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by John Tiffany, JK Rowling

4. Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between by Lauren Graham

5. Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham

I immediately read another Sherlock book after finishing the first. I think I’d intended to make a run straight through them, but I got sidetracked at some point. I should return to this project.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson was memorable for being set at the World’s Fair and the “ripped from the headlines” nature of the story. It’s a period of history that doesn’t get a lot of study, but it’s fascinating because it’s right when we were becoming a modern society.

I had to read Cursed Child right when it came out so I didn’t have the surprises spoiled for me, but it’s only an okay extension of the Harry Potter story. I was fortunate to see the play in NYC a couple of years after reading it, and it was only okay live as well. I did like seeing the familiar characters dealing with adult problems, but the shift in medium from “unreliable narrator in a novel” to “dialog-driven stage play” creates too much of a disconnect.

I had to read Lauren Graham’s autobiography for work, but I picked up her slightly autobiographical novel as well because she was such a competent writer. Her autobiography was memorable for the writing advice she gives in it. And the cover, if I’m being honest. I purposely went out and bought the hardback instead of downloading an ebook so I could take this picture. And while I was reading, I was stuck in a row on a full flight with two of the most awful people I’d ever encountered. They were a doctor and a nurse co-workers on their way to a convention. They popped some pills and drank about three screwdrivers apiece, talked trash about their estranged spouses and went into graphic detail about the sexual exploits they were going to get into in the hotel room during the conference. Their plan was to make their first stop a weed dispensary, then have a sex marathon…and I guess attend some of the conference sessions? Anyway, it was harrowing and I almost had them arrested for trying to engage in sex acts on the plane right beside me.

Easy read. Clear writing, engaging style. The characters are all fully realized, but not a lot happens for long stretches. The pace seems to lag in places, and the major developments are all fairly predictable. Still enjoyable despite that.

—From my Goodreads review of Someday, Someday, Maybe, ⭐️⭐️⭐️