First Roundup of 2024

A beautiful visitor to our neighborhood on a December afternoon.

Happy New Year! I did a fair amount of reading in November and December, so here's a roundup of how I closed out my reading year. One notable exception is Demon Copperfield, which I finished on December 31. Demon deserves his own post, so I didn't include him here.

Nature's Best Hope, by Douglas W. Tallamy - another life-changing book. The basic idea is that everyone, from apartment dwellers in big cities to suburban neighborhood  types, can take positive, small steps that can have a big impact in terms of recreating the local ecosystems that have been paved over, plowed under, or simply overrun by non-native plants that do not provide the right food for the insects and microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain, which affects everything else (including us) in the food chain. While many of Tallamy's followers insist on everyone ripping out their lawn and rewilding their yards, Tallamy would be happy if you just learned about a couple of keystone plants (i.e., those that feed/house a wide variety of insects and birds) like goldenrod and planted them. Baby steps lead to life changes!

If you are interested in learning what plants are native to your area, you can enter your zip code here: Native Plants | Audubon

The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman - really enjoyed this, especially the setting (a retirement village in England) and the 70-something characters who keep sharp by solving cold (and not so cold) cases. This is a series, so I am looking forward to getting to know all of the characters better, especially Elizabeth, who seems to have had a very Cold War career if I am reading rightly between the lines.

Murder at an Irish Christmas, by Carlene O'Connor - I wanted to do some holiday reading this year, and this popped up. It was a decent 3-star read--it is part of a series, which could be fun. Loved the Irish setting and a good set of characters, although I confess there were a lot of them and most with unpronounceable names, which sadly made it hard for me to remember who was who.

The Shortest Day, by Colm Tóibín - a super short story that takes place in New Grange outside of Dublin. New Grange is a prehistoric site, and the story links the ghosts of the past with an archeology professor. It was okay--Tóibín's work never seems to live up to the hype surrounding him as an author. I didn't come away with a deeper insight in the connections between past and present. I think I would have liked it better without the ghosts actually.  The part about the professor and how he relates to the site was more interesting than the dynamics of the ghost society. I just am not into fantasy, I guess.  

A Christmas Secret, by Anne Perry - another 3-star holiday read, this time set in a Victorian (or maybe Edwardian) English village. Fun to read but fairly light in terms of mystery and characterization. It also felt very contrived as opposed to an organic story, if that makes sense. I believe that the Vicar and his wife who are the main characters were minor characters in other Perry mysteries.

The Road to Dalton, by Shannon Bowring - set in the 1990's Maine small town where the inhabitants struggle with poverty, boredom, prying eyes, and judging hearts but manage to find sparks of hope and moments of joy and love and purpose that keep them moving forward. This is Bowring's debut novel, and I am looking forward to seeing what she does next, especially if she continues to set her stories in Maine.

The Late Show, by Michael Connelly - the first in the Renee Ballard series. Very promising beginning to the series, with a good main character with lots of quirks that make for interesting reading--I like the fact that she is from Hawaii, paddleboards for exercise, works the night shift, and has a dog and a grandmother. I swear, I am learning my way around LA just from reading Connelly's mysteries! 

Here is an interesting LA Times article about the woman that Connelly based Renee on: There’s a real-life Michael Connelly character in the LAPD, and she’s gunning for Harry Bosch’s job - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)