2023 Books So Far

A list of books read in 2022.

1. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens - Technically read through most of 2022, but I finished it in 2023. I specifically read this the way it was serialized and I think that made all the difference in reading Dickens.

2 - 4. Abhorsen Trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) by Garth Nix - A fun reread that kept me interested.

5. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie - Very haunting book. Another one off my classics club list.

6. Hammer in the Sky (and other Wonder Tales) by LL Rose - A collection of speculative fiction short stories. Some were truly haunting. Received as a giveaway on StoryGraph.

7. Across the Wall and other tales by Garth Nix - short stories by Garth Nix. Primarily read to get more Old Kingdom tales.

8. Clariel: the Lost Abhorsen by Garth Nix - This was a DNF a long time ago. I enjoyed it much more this go around. 

9. Goldenhand by Garth Nix - Final tale to Abhorsen story (as of now). Wow... this was really interesting and tied up many of the loose threads.

10. Angel Magic by Garth Nix - A bit tougher compared to his other books. Different magic system and not sure I was a huge fan.

11. Newt's Emerald by Garth Nix - Vaguely Austen type fantasy. OK. Not my favorite but it was decent enough.

12. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - One of my classics club books. Just as good as I remember from reading it nearly 20 years ago.

13. A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer - Beauty and the Beast retelling. Story itself was fine. Not sure I'm interested in reading the rest of the series

14. Weyward by Emilia Hart - Fantasy or magical realism involving witches. Feminist read. Loved it. Right in my wheelhouse.

15. The Last Word by Taylor Adams - forgettable thriller. Quick read but otherwise nothing special.

16. East of Eden by John Steinbeck - Read for classics club. Surprisingly engaging and one of my favorites so far.

17. Possession by A. S. Byatt - Read for classics club. I wanted to like this more than I did. Full review coming soon.

18. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Readalong with my mom. Obvious reread. So much fun!

19. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

20. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

21. The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford - This has been on my TBR forever and I was very excited to read it. It was underwhelming. 

Oh Look! I have a blog!

Clearly I don't post here much anymore. I'm still reading a ton, but I've found reviewing to be a bit of a frustration the last few months (years). 

I do like the idea of writing book reviews and may even come back to it. 

Looking at what's going on with my blog, I see a few different things

1. Classics Club: I was supposed to finish this in 2022. I asked for an extension to 2024. I finished three more books from the list that I still need to review (Peter Pan, Handmaid's Tale, Possession). I DNF'd The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare. I still have Vanity Fair and Don Quixote plus the Volume of Austen's Juvenilia to read. I'll admit, I'm not super thrilled with any of those last three - particularly as I also have read a number of other classics for challenges that weren't part of this list. I'm inclined to swap those last 4 books out for other things I read and call it done. I have a second club list in the wings that I'm particularly excited for, but I think I'll wait for a bit before I consider it. I also might just keep going with my current one and see if I can knock a few more off before 2024...

2. Newford Collection: This definitely fell by the wayside. His books can be hard to find and often involve doing a lot of ILL in order to acquire them. My library has a ton of his books available on Hoopla, but not through Libby or in physical format, so I don't have an easy way to read them and haven't taken the time. 

3. Review pages are out of date and won't be updated. I'll pull them down soon.

In general, I am reading a ton. I bought an e-reader a year or two ago. Originally, I'd planned on using it solely to read classics as I find most of the library editions have tiny print and are difficult to read. However, I quickly integrated it with Overdrive and now do most of my reading on the device. As such, I tend to read books I can easily get from Overdrive. I'm looking to put up a list later this month.

Anyway, if anyone still reads this blog, hello! 

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

I read Peter Pan every few years. I don't know what chokehold this story has on me, but I love it so much even as problematic as it is. I had considered reading it aloud to my daughter as I read it, but we'll need to have a few conversations first before I do so thanks to some of the content. 

Pan himself is such a creepy, magical character. I'd be very much like Wendy had I met him as a kid. I always wanted to. 

Barrie captures childhood and development well considering this was written in the early 1900s. How the kids act, especially Peter. They're decidedly kids and act with the lack of judgment that kids so often have. 

The last chapter, in particular, hits different as an adult. I read it, and just burst into sobs. My spouse thought I was nuts. Something about the gay, innocent, and heartlessness of kids and the fact that Peter forgets is just so devastating even though you know that's how it has to be. 

A very pleasant reread and lovely break in the longer books on my classics club.

Martin Chuzzlewitt

There are some Dickens books that everyone knows. There are some that everyone at least knows the title of. And then there are some that seem clearly forgotten. This is one of those.

Roughly 12 years ago, I decided to read Dicken's novels in the order he wrote them. I started with Sketches by Boz and continued forward. It's been a long project. Chuzzlewitt came up when I made my Classics Club list. 

Before reading this one, I looked up the serialization schedule. I tried to read it by that, meaning I'd read the first couple chapters and then take a short break - either reading a lighter book or taking a day off of reading in general. In doing this, the structure of the book suddenly opened up and made a lot more sense. 

I liked this one. The amount of sass in the narration was really fun whenever Dickens was writing about one of the villains. His critique on the US was also quite apropos and honestly probably still applies to today. Funnily enough, apparently, his US readers hated this book and essentially "canceled" Dickens after reading this because it wasn't to their taste. 

The characters were entertaining enough though there's definitely a point where you just want to punch a few of them in the face because their comeuppance doesn't seem to be coming quickly enough. Of course, in the end, it all comes together like any good Dickens novel does. I definitely enjoyed this one.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Huh. Apparently, I never reviewed this book even though I finished it last year. I'm not going to summarize this.

I went into this book with a lot of trepidation knowing the general thought on Russian literature as being "difficult." In general, I didn't find this difficult to read. It was much like Dickens. Lots of words and description, but if you're paying attention, easy enough. I did find that I had to focus though. I couldn't just sit and read for hours. This was a spend maybe 20 minutes reading a day type of book. 

Having never seen any of the movies and knowing only that the story involves Anna Karenina going outside her marriage with a man name Vronsky, I wasn't sure what I was going to read. I was not expecting the giant treatises on farming from Levin. 

In general, I really enjoyed the early part of the book. While I didn't necessarily agree with the various characters, it was pretty fun. Around the halfway point, I found the book to be more of a slog. While I don't mind morally corrupt characters, there usually has to be some other quality in the book to keep me interested in the story. This one, I just found it to be frustrating a dull. 

I especially hated now Anna was a horrible person for going outside her marriage, but her brother was hardly knocked down every time he cheated. Clearly that was a main part of the novel, but I still hated it. I can see why many people don't enjoy reading classics as you see a lot of those double standards. (I'm thinking Tess of the D'Ubervilles...)

Glad I read this, but I likely won't read it ever again.

2022 Wrap Up and 2023 Thoughts

Wow. It's been a while since I wrote anything here. I stopped reading for a while due to all sorts of reasons, and when I started back up, I wanted to read without the work of reviewing. But I'm back. I think.

Favorite books from 2022: 

- The Ladies of the Secret Circuis by Constance Sayers

- The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Most Weirdly Accurate to Life: 

- The End of Men by Caroline Sweeney-Baird 

Longest: 

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Shortest: 

- The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Full list of what I Read

1. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman 
2. Carrie by Stephen King
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Hawthorne School by Sylvie Perry
5. The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck
6. The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross
7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
8. The Sleep Solution by W Chris Winter
9. Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
10. The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
11. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
12. Catching Fire by Suzanne Colling
13. The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde
14. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
15. The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde
16. Questland by Carrie Vaughn
17. Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas
18. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
19. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
20. The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud
21. The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud
22. The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud
23. The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud
24. On a Night of a Thousand Stars by Andrea Varyura Clark
25. Fencing With the King by Diana Abu-Jaber
26. The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers
27. The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu
28. The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird
29. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
30. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
31. Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
32. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
33. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
34. The Girl who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
35. The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
36. Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments by T. L. Huchu

Coming up in 2023

I have two main reading focuses this year. 

First, I extended my Classics Club list to 2024. I'd like to finish as many of the books on that list as possible before the year's end. Currently through most of Martin Chuzzlewitt!

Secondly, I have an absolute backlog of professional development books that I am really looking forward to reading. I've just been so distracted by the wonderful shiny books on my Overdrive wishlist!

Have a great New Year all!

Fair Play by Eve Rodsky

Title: Fair Play

Author: Eve Rodsky

Pages: 352

Finished: April 12, 2022

Premise: Rodsky begins the book discussing the domestic labor so many partners do all by themselves at home. This labor tends to go unrecognized and can eventually cause enough resentment for couples to split. Rodsky decided to figure a way to break this system and came up with the Fair Play game method. 

She breaks the domestic labor into 100 different tasks. Partners are to take time to discuss which of these tasks they value in  their home, discuss what full conception, planning, and execution of those tasks are, discuss what the minimum standard of care for those tasks are, and then deal them out in ways that make sense. Once one person holds a task, they hold all of that task from conception to execution with a minimum standard of care. 

Of course, no card is meant to be held forever and partners are encouraged to meet once a week to review and redeal as necessary.

Thoughts: I really like this idea. My partner and I are fairly equal in what we do around the house. The problem is we both handle everything, which means we both are doing full conception, planning, and execution of many duplicate tasks. This means we’re harried all the time AND things fall through the cracks when we assume the other has taken care of things. I think a system like the one described here where we know who is responsible for each task is fantastic and would really lighten our mental load. 

I also love the fact that the author stresses the Minimum Standard of Care. This means that both partners can do the task without it being a problem. I foresee that being crucial in the discussions.

I just need to schedule a time with my partner to talk about this now!