What I've read this year

 Got a couple days to go and hopefully will finish a couple more books, been a hot-cold year as far as reading goes.  Feeling a lot of ennui.  

Starting in January of 2022:

1) The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy

2) Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne (Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard)

3)  Citizen-An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

4)  Fumbling, Kerry Egan (second time reading it, a man suggested it to me in 2005, he was part of my epiphany moment on my first Camino, the God in the small details of my life moment, my other huge moment was in 2019 when the voice in my head changed from angry, blaming, and shaming to saying/ "I love you.")

5)  The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham.  I don't know what came before this book, but I see a slew of dystopian novels taking inspiration from it.  (Yes, there was H.G. Wells, and George Orwell, but whole idea of a pandemic and two widely disparate responses to that event, remind me both Emily St. John Mandell, and Jose Saramago.)

6)  Stella, Takis Wurger.  Fiction, but based on the story of a real woman.  Who would you betray to survive?  And on the part of the narrator, what would you turn a blind eye to when you both lack a solid internal compass and are also drawn to a bright light wanting to be loved?

That was what I read until the end of May, and two of those were read on the first couple of days of January.

7)  Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, Warsan Shire (poetry)

8)  The Memory Librarian: and Other Stories of Dirty Computer, Janelle Monae (and collaborators).  Really good sci-fi/fantasy debut, and also helped me understand the album more.  The story I originally avoided reading, because it didn't sound interesting, ended up being my favorite in the end.  (I can't look it up, but it's the one with the three kids.)

9)  The Throwback List, Lily Anderson.  I don't know why I picked this up, maybe I wanted escape.  I loved the three main characters!  Didn't really want it to end.  Main character loses her tech job in California suddenly and ends up having to move back to her small Oregon hometown.  On her first night back in her old childhood bedroom, she opens up a diary (?) that had a "to do" list she wrote when she was a teenager and decides without any other prospects to fulfill it.  The first is to tp her neighbor's house, a girl she didn't really get along with at the time, and then finds that her former best friend is now best friends with this woman.  She does fulfill the list, finds a new job in the city, but realizes her life is in the hometown. Ending is ambiguous.

10)  Persuasion, Jane Austen.  I'm pretty sure I also read this one last year, but it's funny that since I've read the book fewer times than I have watched versions on film, I feel like I find things I've forgotten, and it's as if I had not read it before.

11)  A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle.  I read this one last year, too.  I love this book.

12)  Stolen Focus, Johann Hari.  Hari did an experiment on himself, ditching his computer and smartphone (replaced with a Jitterbug phone for emergencies) and went and lived in the Hamptons, I think.  Has to do with our addiction to technology and if there is any solution to that.  He has some suggestions, but also acknowledges the level of privilege he had to be able to take the time away unplugged, and that not everyone can do that.  The most interesting story for me was an interview with a veterinarian who is known for giving anti-anxiety (anti-depressants?) to animals in captivity and his acknowledgment that it's not a cure-all but helps to ease the suffering of having to live in such an unnatural environment.

13)  Fame-Ish: My Life at the Edge of Stardom, Mary Lynn Rajskub.

14)  Coyote Tales, Thomas King (illustrated.  A children's book I read during Native American Heritage Month.)  There are only two stories.  It's adorable.  Like poetry, and plays, children's books really need to be read aloud.  Made me giggle the whole time.

15)  Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandell.  Borrows a bit from "The Glass Hotel," book about time travel.  The first half of the book is set-up for the last half, and each story disconnected until the end.  Unclear to me why Gaspar feels so strongly that he needs to intervene to change the outcome of one of the stories.

16)  This Time Tomorrow, Emma Staub.  Another book about time travel, does it better (though reviews compare it to "The Midnight Library" and find it lacking.)  I haven't read the latter and enjoyed the former.  I like that there are physical consequences, like as with a long-term addiction, that she feels it in her own body.  That she can't change the outcome she most wanted to change, but that she bought herself more time.

17)  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Edward Albee.  I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I think the copyright might prevent me from talking about it.

Ooh, not many.  If I finish the last three, I will update.  Happy New Year!

Dickens, again

 The first day of winter came with icy scenes: sunny, bitingly cold, and slippery streets and sidewalks. The roofs on the hillside I can see through my window now are still covered in snow. We had three hours of dumping rain on Tuesday, followed by snow, followed by dropping temps. I mostly tried to avoid going out, but I got hungry and went to a cafe, even the workers were still wearing heavy coats, and then had an eye appointment, so had to go out again.

I found an audio version of "A Christmas Carol" that I quite enjoy, it just says it's "Audiobooks", doesn't list the narrator. I'm reading it, as well.

To begin, Marley is decidedly dead, and we set the scene of biting cold both inside and outside of Scrooge. We meet Scrooge, who owns a counting house, his nephew, his clerk, Bob Cratchit, the two portly gentlemen collecting alms for the poor, and the ghost of Jacob Marley, former business partner of Scrooge, and who died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve.

We don't know the source of Scrooge's bitterness nor his sole value in money alone, and the acquisition of it for it's own sake rather than how it could be used for good in the world.  When asked by the gentlemen to make a donation, he asks about the debtors prisons, the workhouses, the Treadmill and the Poor Law, and why don't the poor find comfort there.

At home he is visited by the terrifying ghost of Jacob Marley who says he's come to warn Scrooge that he will share his fate of wandering the world and seeing the suffering of others with a desire to ease it, but without the means. When Scrooge comments that Marley was a good man of business, Marley cries to Scrooge, "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business."

Before he departs out the window, he warns Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits over three subsequent nights. (Which always has confused me, it's Christmas Eve, and actually early Christmas morning when Marley appears in his room, and Scrooge goes back to work on the 26th, so is it really three separate nights?)

Oh yes, we also are introduced to Scrooge's most known words of "Bah," and "Humbug!"

Starting Anew in 2022

 1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse - Charlie Mackesy

One of those books I kept seeing on lists of top sellers last year.  I was out wandering around earlier in the week, not quite sunny out, barely 20 degrees, stomping around on the ice, to at least get some exercise in.  Walked over to Barnes and Noble because they had coffee and were open.  Lots of books on sale, blew my grocery money on cooking magazines and this book (hardcovers were 50% off).  What sold me was I opened it to the page where the horse says, "I can fly, but I stopped because it made the other horses jealous."  I felt like that was a thought I needed to spend time with.  Also, reading it today, it's such a pretty book.

Now It's A New Year

 Wow, I guess I never finished updating what I'd been reading for the Book Bingo.

40.  Angels in America Part One: The Millenium Approaches - Tony Kuschner 

41. Caught Inside. A Surfer's Year on the California Coast - Daniel Duane

Then in November.

42. Cultish. The Language of Fanaticism - Amanda Montell

Interesting premise and subject, but the interjecting of herself into the narrative and regular referring to future chapters annoyed me while reading it.

Last days of December:

43. The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandell.  

Reaffirmed for me why I love her writing.  Essentially about a Madoff-like character and his Ponzi scheme.  But also, about our own moral compasses and how we can all justify our actions, somehow claiming our own innocence while placing all the blame on the central actor; someone to sacrifice to assuage our guilt.  We close our eyes to how we survive (and we should survive), but we also go through life with our own shadows we can say don't matter in comparison to what he did.  As long as there's a "healthy" return, most don't question how that was possible.  Or a career.  Or a lifestyle.  Interesting stuff.  Read it in a day because I thought it was long past due at the library. (It wasn't, at some point I renewed it and forgot about it. Libraries have been closed due to the ice at any rate. So still have it.)

44.  Dark Persuasion, A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media - Joel Dimsdale.  

Covers similar ground to Montell, but more in depth on historical context.  Also, see the "Glass Hotel" above regarding justification.

45. Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika - Tony Kushner.

So, you know, nowhere near 100 books, but definitely more than in 2020.

Cheers.  Happy New Year!