December was a very good reading month. I had planned to read Winter Solstice to coincide with the solstice, and I finished two days before Winter solstice, on December 19th. The remainder of my books were mysteries: two with espionage elements, one Christmas mystery, the most recent Thursday Murder Club mystery, and a book of Miss Marple short stories by Agatha Christie.
Fiction
Winter Solstice (2000) by Rosamunde Pilcher
Elfrida Phipps, once an actress on the London stage, 62 years old, has been living in Dipton in Hampshire, England. She has become friends with Gloria and Oscar Blundell and their 12-year-old daughter. Oscar's wife and child are killed in an automobile accident. Oscar asks Elfrida to help him move to Creagan, Scotland where he owns half of an Estate House which used to belong to his grandmother. Mainly set in Scotland in the two months leading up to Christmas, this is a lovely story of friends and family. See my review.
Crime Fiction
The Last Devil to Die (2023) by Richard Osman
Book 4 in the Thursday Murder Club series. Two men and two women in their seventies or eighties have formed a club called the Thursday Murder Club. They started out investigating cold cases, but now they investigate current crimes whenever they get the chance. In this case, an antique dealer has been killed. He was a friend of Elizabeth's husband Stephen, and the foursome feel they have to solve the crime. Their friends in the police discourage them, but they persist. Joyce takes on a bigger role in this case. This is a wonderful series; I will continue to read these books as long as the author writes them.
Missionary Stew (1983) by Ross Thomas
I loved this book; it is only the third book I have read by this author. I would call it a political thriller but it has a bit of espionage too. All the characters in this book are very strange; that is often true in fiction about politics or espionage. The two protagonists had unusual childhoods, one with a father who was jailed for being a Communist, the other having been basically ignored by his mother, an intelligence operative in France during World War II. The mother is a real piece of work. And one of the prominent secondary characters is named Velveeta Keats. I want to read all the rest of his books, and fortunately I have ten of them on my shelves.
The Paris Diversion (2018) by Chris Pavone
I have read Pavone's first three books and enjoyed them. The Paris Diversion is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. If you enjoy fast-paced thrillers you might like this.
Who Killed the Curate? (1944) by Joan Coggin
This is a vintage Christmas mystery, a humorous mystery, of the screwball comedy type, I guess. It was first reprinted by Rue Morgue Press in 2001, and more recently reissued by Galileo Publishers in the UK. The main character is Lady Lupin, who is now married to a vicar and living in a small village. She doesn't fit in at all; she is too scatterbrained and doesn't have any idea of how to be a vicar's wife, but she is so well-meaning that no one minds too much. And she and her husband are madly in love, which is very refreshing. It is set at Christmas which is why I had saved it to read in December. I enjoyed it, but I only recommend it to readers who like a lot of humor in their mysteries.
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories (1985) by Agatha Christie
This collection is comprised of 20 short stories by Christie, all starring Miss Marple, the amateur sleuth who lives in a small village in the UK and uses her observations of the people she knows in St Mary Mead to solve crimes. The first thirteen short stories were published in book form in The Thirteen Problems in 1932 (aka The Tuesday Club Murders). The others were published in three other collections of Christie's stories, mixed in with stories about other sleuths. I reviewed some stories from this collection in June, in September, and this month.
End of Year notes
I read 90 books in 2023. The longest book I read was 823 pages: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. The average number of pages for the books I read was 295.
Of the 90 books I read, 60 books were from my TBR pile (purchased prior to 2023), which surpassed my goal of 48 books. I will continue to aim at 48 books from my TBR in 2024.
I read more espionage books in 2023. Of the 65 mysteries I read, ten were espionage novels. One of my nonfiction books was about espionage in World War II, Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre. Espionage fiction is my go to comfort reading. That may sound strange because so often those books are fast-paced thrillers. I do love those too, but several espionage books I read this year were slow-paced thoughtful books.
I was surprised that I read 12 nonfiction books. Several were books about books, one was graphic nonfiction, and two were biographies of the Mitford sisters.
The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken at the Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden, a small park in Santa Barbara. One of our favorite places to visit, it is near downtown and covers only one city block, but has lots of paths to walk around on. The large aloe plant with orange flowers at the top was blooming in January 2023, and I have seen many such plants all over the Santa Barbara / Goleta area in December and January.
The photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.
18 comments:
Lovely pictures, Tracy! What a nice park to visit and take walks! I still need to read past the first book of the Thursday Murder Club. Plan to this year. I really enjoyed the first book.
Congratulations on reading 90 books in 2023 and 60 of them from your TBR file! I am going to try for 60 books read in 2024. Winter Solstice will be one of those books.
I come to CA every year but I never seem to get out of the SD area. Maybe someday-the photos are lovely. Osman is amazing. A writer that comes on the scene with such a bang is unusual.
I have not read any of your December reading. They sounded like good books. Your husband's lovely photos took me away for a little while from the coldest weekend of the winter here in Saskatchewan. In mid-morning it is -33C with a wind chill to -46C (about -52F). We stayed home from church. The furnace is going continuously. Tomorrow we expect the temperature to go up a bit.
It was good to see Chriss Pavone on your list, Tracy. I haven't read his work recently and I should. And I'm really happy you enjoy the Osman series; I like its premise a lot.
I somehow missed your review of Winter Solstice, possibly because you posted it on Christmas Eve and we had family here. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. Also glad you liked Who Killed the Curate? I bought a collection of lots of AC's short stories for my Kindle so plan to read those slowly through 2024. I'm currently reading two volumes of mystery short stories, one is Sherlock Holmes, the other by Cyril Hare. So far, both are excellent.
Kay, it is a lovely park. I have fond memories of that park because we lived nearby when my son was young. Regarding the Thursday Murder Club books, you have lots of good reading to look forward to.
Kathy, My Goodreads goal for # of books this year is 60. I probably will read more than that but I would rather read less books and review more of them. I hope you will like Winter Solstice.
You read lots of good ones in December. And congrats on reading so many books from your own TBR pile last year! That's awesome. I think I read like 9 from mine.
Patti, I have only been to San Diego once but I do remember it was a beautiful city.
Osman has done very well with the Thursday Club Murders. I read that his next book was going to be a standalone mystery.
Bill, it has been colder here the last two weeks than usual, but it seems balmy compared to your temperatures. I cannot even imagine how cold that must be. I am glad you stayed home and kept warm.
Margot, I like the way Chris Pavone writes. And his settings are so good. It is unusual for me to keep up with a new series like the Thursday Murder Club books.
Cath, Winter Solstice was the perfect book for December and in addition to the story, I liked the setting. I am halfway through the first book of Sherlock Holmes stories, and I need to finish it. I started in 2022 I think. I am glad you reminded me of Cyril Hare's short stories. I have a book of them.
Lark, I was happy with my December books. Sometimes December is not my best reading month. I hope to do even better on reading from my TBR this year.
The thing that most impresses (almost shocks) me about your 2023 reading is that you actually read 60 books from your TBR stack. I usually hope for a dozen or so, and I can't even imagine approaching a number like 60. I love your reading choices, and I've come to depend on you a bit to tip me off about spy books, be they brand new ones are old ones I managed to miss back in their day.
I'm a big fan of the Murder Club series and, like you, I plan to keep up with that series as it continues (I hope) to grow in a number for a long time to come. Too, I've read a couple of the Pavone novels preceding this one, and I enjoyed them a lot. I'll have to find this one at some point for sure.
Here's wishing you a great 2024 Reading Year. I know you'll keep me busy. lol
Sam, Thanks for the kind comments. I learn a lot from reading your posts and they have helped me expand to some areas I would not have tried before. The discussion of Booker-nominated books was very inspiring.
I would guess that 2/3 of the 60 books were acquired before 2022, and the other 1/3 purchased in 2022. So a lot of the books I read in 2024 will be ones that I purchased in 2023, some right before the end of the year.
I am sure you will have a good reading year in 2024, and you have a lot of interesting plans for your reading.
I have that Osman waiting for me at the library and I deliberately did not pick it up on Friday because I knew I had to do a lot of housecleaning this past weekend!
I think I said this before but I am very glad you enjoyed Winter Solstice. I must say that when I read it, I thought Elfrida was quite er-elderly and of course I am not that age, which is sobering! I had been planning to reread it in December but I misplaced it (naturally, I saw where it was a day or so ago).
Who Killed the Curate is extremely silly although enjoyable. I really do not like ditzy heroines but I did like that. I think I bought another in the series while in London in 2022. I own several of her children's books which are also full of that type of humor.
It is about 30 degrees outside and I need to take the bus to work in about 15 minutes. I wish I could stay home and read! A very rich college classmate said to me last night, "Do you think about retiring?" and I said grimly, "Yes, I think about it." But not yet!
You had a great reading year, 90! And plenty of mix in your reading too. Happy reading in 2024.
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