What are you reading in December 2014?

Not much going on here lately! Thought I'd try to start things up again. I'm just about to finish The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin, and enjoying it even though I get a little lost now and then since I haven't read any of the other books in the series. Also just started Conan Doyle's Casebook of Sherlock Holmes -- great stuff.

Thanks for the restart. I hope others will join in.

I've just finished And Furthermore, by Judi Dench, and am drafting my review. My comments usually begin with a six-word encapsulation. This one says:

Six-word review: British star's light-hearted theatrical autobiography.

It's a pleasure to read about someone who's had a long and wonderful career and still loves what she's doing. I like the way Judi makes us feel we know her, even if we really don't.

Aside on retirement: She says: "You do see people who work towards an age, and then at sixty or sixty-five you see them go into a deep decline, and you wonder: Why? What do you retire for? You retire if you are in a job that has just kept you employed, and given you some kind of income, and then you retire to do things that you really want to do. Well, I am doing the things that I want to do now, so I don't want to retire." (page 240)

Some of us don't manage to find careers that thrill us in that way, but I've known people who have: teachers, writers, even my dentist. I loved my career, but I didn't love my job, so I was glad to retire.

I'm reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, which was first published the year I was born. Although he makes many interesting points, so many of his insights were anchored in sexist and classist assumptions -- which are glaringly obvious with today's eyes -- that his arguments now seem muddled.

The copy I'm reading belonged to my late husband, and it has copious marginalia he made in the 1970s (before I knew him). Very interesting to see what he thought was significant.

I am re-reading my Terry Pratchett books, On the Trail of Genghis Kahn: An Epic Journey through the Land of the Nomads by Tim Cope and an audio book, The Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston & Child.

Too bad the Preston/Child is an audio book, a personal bugaboo of mine. I think it's their best and sets up much of the rest of the Pendergast stories.

I listened to what was probably the last of the Pendergast series and really enjoyed it - hence the one I am listening to now. My library only has a small selection of audio books so I take three and usually only have time for two before they are due back. I listen to them while I am spinning and knitting.

I've done all the Pendergast books on paper so far, and I'm up to number ten. Nice to know there are several more to come. I couldn't do them back to back, though. I have to get aboveground for a breather in between monster chases in dark tunnels.

Scientology has sort of paralleled my life, and way back I would even have liked to have had my engrams deleted. So now I am reading Going Clear. I have read tidbits about L. Ron Hubbard, but I didn't know that he was so markedly screwed up.

Robert

I have been reading older stuff for the most part this year. The Warlord of the Air and Land Leviathan by Michael Moorcock, Moon Maid by Burroughs.
At this time I just started Alexander Fullerton's Last Lift from Crete

Two of the books that impressed me most this month were Lila by Marilynne Robinson and The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell.

Two of the books that impressed me least were The Sick Rose by Erin Kelly and The Secret Place by Tana French.

The month is almost over, but I have a little reading left to do. I want to finish the last 200 pages of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I had a hard time getting into this book, but I'm going to go ahead and finish it next week. I also have the short story selections in two December issues of The New Yorker.

23.6 years over 60, and have just finished Santorini
by Alistair McLean, the first McLean Iʻve ever read. Well done, but it didnʻt make me want to look into some 25 other titles that are listed for him. The "Once and Future" name of Santorini is Thera. The title was what attracted me to the book (a pb not as old as the 1980s setting of the book). No action ON Santorini, a famous pre-classical archaeological site.
This title comes from S./T.ʻs being the nearest land to its maritime setting (Aegean Sea), in the last decade of the Cold War.
Now reading A Perfect Peace by Amos Oz. Very good, very wide-ranging so
far. One of a very few Israeli novels I have ever read.

I've finished my last book (All the Light We Cannot See) and my last audiobook (The Goldfinch) of the year. I've also finished up all of the magazine short stories that I planned to read. Tomorrow I'll decide what my first book of the new year will be. I've already started my first audiobook, which is Gone Girl.

I read French's In the Woods and didn't care for it. The older crime to which the recent crime is linked is never solved. I think French breaks an unspoken promise of a mystery writer to the reader. My friends have assured me that her later novels are better. I may ski; The Secret Place. Have you read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson? It's a favorite of mine.