TBR List Update: December

   

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In December 2023

Books read: 5

Books I decided NOT to finish: 4

The Family Upstairs: I dunno, I just re-read the book summary in the catalog and decided it sounded like too many characters with names I was going to mix up.

Yours Cheerfully: A sequel to a book I read last year and just didn't enjoy that much.

The Orphan Collector: I don't want so many downers on the list; I read a sample of the ebook and it didn't grab me.

Yes, Chef: Eh. Perhaps my recent push through a mountain of food memoir has dulled my appetite for a back-of-house kitchen diary.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 27*

Best book of the month: Any Other Family

This fictional work about an extended family formed through open adoption (birth parents, 3 sets of adoptive parents, 4 kids) seemed very relatable for someone in my current stage of life. The birth mother character was, frustratingly, off stage for the whole novel and seemed pretty two-dimensional. But I identified with various facets of the three adoptive mothers, and the story made me think about family relationships and community.

Worst book of the month: I Shudder at Your Touch

It would probably be this collection of short horror stories, only because they were imbalanced. I wasn't particularly inspired to keep reading, so I failed to finish it when I got sick a couple days before the end of the challenge.

*At two weeks until the end of the year, I reviewed the 27 books remaining on the TBR List and determined which would remain for next year. Then I added my collection of titles that has been growing all year, and the ones I currently have checked out/in my possession, for a total of 90 books I would like to read in 2024. Oh, and there are a few (not available at the library) on my Amazon list, which I might get around to.

All in, I completed 96 new books this year, re-read several more, and made the freeing decision NOT to read about 25 more, out of a starting list of 150. I finished the epic space opera series with Honor Harrington as the main character, and polished off several from the Mary Russell (and Sherlock Holmes) collection -- both of which I started in college. Not a bad result for #VirtualMountTBR (2023); depending on how you count it, I stopped within sight of Mt. Seleya or vaulted past and got halfway to Mount Olympus!

TBR List Update: November

  

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In November 2023

Books read: 3

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

The Secret Life of Groceries: This has been sitting half-read on my list since 2022, and I have accepted that I'm not going to finish it. I do feel like I got some of the same info from the undercover journalist at Wal-mart in The American Way of Eating last month.

Juicy Mother: The only copy of this graphic novel for adults has gone missing at my library, and I don't want to read it badly enough to pursue interlibrary loan.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 36

Best book of the month: Hide / Winter's Orbit

A tie! I enjoyed these two very much, of the four that I actually completed this month. (There are reasons for that. My hands are full.)

Worst book of the month: The Baker Street Letters

It wasn't as bad as all that; just bottom of the list of four. The main character was somewhat repellent, and I wasn't pleased for him at the end.

TBR List Update: October

 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In October 2023

Books read: 8

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

Notes from a Young Black Chef: It wasn't that I don't like food memoir. It wasn't that I have anything against young Black chefs making it big on the D.C. scene. It wasn't even the idea of anyone spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a single restaurant meal (although this didn't help). Mostly it was the reflective syntax that held up ideas and then negated them, repeatedly.

Curious Toys: I guessed the identity of the villain about halfway through, and couldn't sit through any more chapters of his creepy perspective. I skipped ahead to confirm a few plot points, and returned it.

Tiger Daughter: I picked it up at work and intended only to flip through it, but ended up reading about a third of the text to figure out what happened in the story. Enough to make note!

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 42

Best book of the month: 

Nettle & Bone was good for a while, but didn't feel resolved. It had been built up a lot from reviews (so much so that I put it on hold even though it was not on the TBR list) and it just wasn't all that I'd hoped.

Worst book of the month: 

Meh. Nothing really. 

TBR List Update: September

      

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In September 2023

Books read: 4

Books I decided NOT to finish: 11

Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA:  It was the least interesting one left on the list.

In an ironic twist, American Appetite was removed from the contenders because the only copy in my library system was discovered to have had coffee spilled across it by a previous borrower or browser. 

Into the Vietnamese Kitchen has lovely coffee-table qualities, but it was enough to flip through it and take note of a few anecdotes from the author and some flavor combinations (and information about how to choose a quality fish sauce).

From the culling of food culture/history/memoir titles: 

• African American Foodways
• Getting What We Need Ourselves
• Every Nation Has Its Dish
• Food on the Page
• From Scratch: Inside the Food Network
• Southern Food and Civil Rights

Four Hundred Souls is a worthy tome, but I've tried several times now to go back to it without success. I'm going to resign myself to not having read it, and take it off the list; I at least know that it exists and can recommend it to readers who want to tackle it.

I also tried (for 3 months!) to get around to reading The Woman in the Mirror, and have accepted that I won't.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 50

Best book of the month: The American Way of Eating

The narrative style (from an investigative reporter) drew me in and I could relate to her experiences in retail grocery, food service, and agriculture (I haven't worked in that last industry, but a couple years ago I read Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture, which was pretty fresh in my mind).

Worst book of the month: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

I didn't really grasp the plot-within-a-plot. This could be because I read the ebook -- would a print format have made the POV clearer from chapter to chapter? Anyway, meh.

I was hoping to catch up this month, by reading the backlog of books I physically have in my possession, but I am still behind. Next come all the horrific treats I requested specifically for spooky season... will I gorge on those sweets or finish my veggies first?

To Be (Read), or not To Be

Heading into Q4 of this challenge year, I'm being a little strategic in my approach to #VirtualMountTBR. I will definitely not read 66 titles (plus those in-progress/in my possession) in 3 months, despite a good showing so far this year. Time to winnow!

Some of the 15 foodways history and food memoir titles are a little redundant, so I thought I might choose only two or three, and hope that browsing the others satisfies my curiosity. Turns out I really liked 6 when I saw them in person: a couple that looked fun and will go quickly thanks to a third of the page count actually being illustrations or footnotes, some memoir from an undercover journalist with a flair for storytelling, and the most accessible of the nonfiction written for a lay audience with a TV remote close at hand.

My first pass resulted in a Maybe stack (to the left) and a No stack (to the right).

Further review: keep these!

I also placed holds on several delightfully horrifying novels and some short stories for the month of October, which will hopefully be read quickly. The Stephen King re-reads are something I've been looking forward to -- they won't count toward my new books read this year, but they'll help shorten the TBR list.

I've limited my NEXT year's list to 50 books (not there yet) and have an idea of a couple I'd remove if I needed space. With any that I choose to keep for another year, and perhaps even some unplanned titles, that should make a full reading itinerary for 2024.

TBR List Update: August

     

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In August 2023

Books read: 6

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

Despite hanging onto and coming back to Lost Children Archive, I DNF; the topic seemed interesting but the execution was so dry and weirdly detached! How does the main character feel about her husband accepting a job across the country without consulting with her? Does this mean their marriage is on the rocks? What does he think about her career, and what adjustments or sacrifices is she making to accommodate his? "The girl" and "the boy", their children, blended together for me into an amorphous backseat blob -- I kept forgetting which one was older. When I looked at the "leftovers" from June and July's holds, it just didn't seem worthwhile to keep slogging through this one when I could clear the pile.

I started Calypso, but David Sedaris is for a select palate (not mine). Trauma tossed off wittily but not with a personality I can relate to.

Books left on the TBR List: 66

Best book of the month: A Half-Built Garden

I was so excited by this one! 30 or 40 pages in, I wrote a glowing recommendation to library colleagues, feeling like I'd finally identified the niche of queer Jewish feminist sf that speaks to me most deeply. It's near-future when the aliens land and tell the first humans they meet that the planet Earth is running out of resources and will perish (and the human race along with it) if humans don't evacuate their home planet in the aliens' ships. But the humans, part of a watershed network that champions ethical use of natural resources and seeks to make decisions through AI-assisted consensus negotiation, take umbrage -- they KNOW Earth is in trouble and have been working the last two generations to reverse humans' terrible impact on the planet. Shouldn't they get a chance to save their home?

Worst book of the month: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

I did NOT like the first-person writing and all the (improbable) dialogue without commentary in this novel's style. I skimmed a lot of it to get to the plot twists, and would have given it up (DNF) if it hadn't gone so quickly. Creepy, yes, but mostly annoying and confusing.

TBR List Update: July

    

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In July 2023

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

I flipped through Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk, but with a towering stack of library holds, it didn't make the cut. I renewed At Home like 8 times -- I do like Bill Bryson's chatty nonfiction -- but finally gave it up. I need more narrative, I guess. I also dropped The New One, which is about new parenthood, because I'd been first on the hold list for months and it was never free, and then I guess my library no longer has access to it in Overdrive, but I didn't get a notification that the hold would never be filled. Maybe I'll listen to the audiorecording sometime and not count it as a book.

Books left on the TBR List: 71

Best book of the month: The Sparrow

I liked The Sparrow more than I thought I would, and the sequel Children of God wasn't bad. either. (It wasn't on the TBR list, but I wanted to read it right after finishing the first, which was.) I missed their debut 20+ years ago, so only had a bare knowledge of the plot: Jesuit priest is only survivor of a space mission to an inhabited planet -- and he is maimed and reviled and generally in a deplorable state. This story was part sci-fi, part philosophy. and took careful reading to explore questions about conversion/colonization, faith/doubt, and what it means to be human. Lots of yummy linguistics, anthropology, theology. There wasn't a ton of text spent on the mechanics of space travel or communication, which means it holds up to a critical review a few decades later -- the same timeframe that part of the book takes place. Thankfully, the author had the good luck to set first contact in 2019, not 2020! I like a story that makes me think, and this one had quite a few ethical puzzlers to mull over.

Worst book of the month: Nothing!

I didn't read much, but it was all pretty good!

#VirtualMountTBR Update: Halfway Point

6 months into a year-long challenge, what's left on the TBR list? 77 titles out of 150. 

• I'm not counting the "in progress" ones already checked out to me.
• I read or listened to a few off-list titles that I came across at a convenient time. They count toward my annual total, but don't bring down the TBR.
• I started discarding titles that I decided NOT to finish.

The breakdown of what remains:

I'm most looking forward to...

• The Foundling
• Ida B.
• A Half-Built Garden
• Not much else, truthfully. I'm kinda burned out. And I'm already wanting to read things on next year's list.

TBR List Update: June

   

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In June 2023

Books read: 8

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

Shadow of Freedom is one I've probably read before, and it's not part of the Honor Harrington main series (it's the last on the Saganami Island subseries), so if I haven't read it, I don't care. I just have one more -- Uncompromising Honor --before I will complete the series that I started in college.

I'd had X on the list since I was a teen librarian, and I finally got around to reading it for this challenge... and I couldn't get into the writing style. There was a lot of description but not much action in the first half-dozen chapters of Malcolm X's life story, so I gave it up.

Books left on the TBR List: 77

Best book of the month: True Biz

True Biz is one I will be recommending with enthusiasm! From a Deaf author, it tackles a number of hot-button issues in Deaf culture (including cochlear implants, access to language, and the history of activists insisting on Deaf inclusion). I learned some more about ASL grammar and enjoyed the complex relationships between characters. The title refers to "true business" -- slang like "real talk" or "word" or "no cap" -- in this case, the policy that the headmistress has with her students to relax consequences for misbehavior if the student is truthful and forthcoming.

Worst book of the month: A Rising Thunder

What a slog. There are selections in this 14-book space opera series that are mostly about relationships, worldbuilding, and futuristic developments. Then there are the ones about interstellar politics with at least 4 major players (and their corresponding casts of naval officers, spies, assassins, and celebrities), play-by-play of epic battles in spaaaaaaace, and all of the nitty-gritty physics of FTL travel. Ugggggh. Guess which one this was?

I got COVID at the beginning of the month and had to isolate, which provided an excellent opportunity for audiobooks. I polished off a series, The Orphan Train Adventures, that I started in childhood. They weren't on my TBR list (so don't exactly count toward the challenge), but I'd favorited them in Hoopla. Then, when I returned to work, a stack of holds was waiting for me! So that was my month's reading sorted.

TBR List Update: May

  

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In May 2023

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 6

We Are All the Same in the Dark: Too many twists. I couldn't handle the suspense of guessing how the murders had been done, so I skipped ahead and read the end and now it doesn't matter. Next!

Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class: I would have watched this as a documentary -- the topic is interesting -- but my brain felt too lazy for nonfiction. Same with Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.

Lost interest before reading: Recursion, The Angel of the Crows, Midnight Riot

Books left on the TBR List: 91

Best book of the month: Simon Sort of Says

I kept interrupting my wife to read aloud funny passages from this middle-grade novel about a middle-class Nebraska family that moves to the middle of off-the-grid nowhere USA. Eventually I just said, "You're reading this after me." The author has a dry sense of humor that this weirdo connected with -- plus there were religious puns. Shades of Jenny Lawson and squirrels with a higher purpose. Multiple positive adult role models plus a trio of tweens who didn't read like cardboard cutouts. It's one of those juvie books where a character applies behavioral tricks to handle trauma, and I'm a sucker for that low-key mental health support in literature. Content warning: school shooting survivor PTSD. I'm not sure I know whom to recommend this to, but maybe it's you! If you like it, it's definitely you.

Worst book of the month: 

Nothing really stands out! 

For most of the month I had a handful of books "in progress" -- I'd put them down and not be able to find them when next wanted, or be at work with one book having forgotten another at home. So they got finished slowly, but often more than one in quick succession. Almost halfway through the year -- 1/3 of the list is gone! 33 on next year's list, though...

TBR List Update: April

 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In April 2023

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

I really liked how it felt to say no and remove a book from the list. Weirdly freeing. I'm making note here of what the books were and why, just because.

Rebel Cinderella: biography of a woman I'd never heard of before -- an Emma Goldman type who married Prince Charming scion of a blueblood family. It was interesting reading about the media coverage of their match... but I found myself skipping ahead, not going back to it, picking up another book instead. It can go.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader: for perhaps the pettiest reason -- the text was too small. I didn't like the font. It seemed like too much work that week that my brain was craving spring breezes and sappy sci-fi. *shrug*

Books left on the TBR List: 104

Best book of the month: All the Women in My Family Sing

I guess? It was a chewy collection of essays, all by women of color. One of them was from the Bay Area, and her first few paragraphs of what it felt like to be a new mother trying to make friends among parental peers had me jumping up from my seat with recognition. (The kids at a school storytime often sign SAME with like enthusiasm when a point resonates with them.)

Worst book of the month: Gifts

Less than I had hoped for from Ursula LeGuin; I had forgotten part of the way through that this was the first in a series, so I expected more development of the conflict and then some resolution. Just meh overall.

This was a busy month! I didn't read nearly as much, so I am behind (peering out from my stack of library holds) and decided to not any new holds from the list in June. (May's are already ordered.) Hopefully I'll have some time to catch up! Or some difficult choices as to what to return unread.

TBR List Update: March

 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In March 2023

Books read: 18

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

I really liked how it felt to say no and remove a book from the list. Weirdly freeing. I'm making note here of what the books were and why, just because.

Vita Nostra: I read a chapter in the ebook preview, and just didn't love the style (although the magical school genre is full of my favorites, there are occasional mismatches like The Magicians and Atlas Six).

Putting the Rabbit in the Hat was recommended by a colleague a year ago, and I was iffy then. I am absolving myself of guilt for not following up on a personal recommendation; we had a good conversation at the time, and that was enough.

After attempting again to finish The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, I succumbed to the kind of fatigue that never seems to overtake me on cross-country flights.

Books left on the TBR List: 115

Best book of the month: Demon Copperhead

I was #137 on the library hold list when I requested this Barbara Kingsolver novel last fall. Everyone said "It's worth the wait!" and now I agree with them. The story of Damon's unusual birth to a teen mom in Lee County, Virginia, and his subsequent journey through the foster system and from home (or laundry room pallet) to home (or McMansion) amid the growing opioid crisis of the late 1990s, is tragic, grimy, emotionally exhausting, and shot through with threads of humanity. It's a portrayal of one type of American poverty -- rural, generational, relationship-rich but cash-poor -- perpetuated by institutions (educational, judicial, correctional, military, medical, industrial), endured by many, ignored by more. Although Kingsolver notes that her book is an homage to Dickens's David Copperfield, I did not find that not having read that classic negatively affected my experience. 

Worst book of the month: Foster

There was a similar waitlist for this slim volume (and I was both surprised and relieved to discover how short it was), but it did not satisfy. I wanted more of a backstory, more meat to the conflict, more resolution. I wanted better for the main character. I wanted to know more of what she was thinking and feeling instead of coming up against a blank wall. It was strange to me (because of how much I've looked into modern adoption and foster care) that all of the arrangements were made privately, informally, although I know that sort of kinship care was and is common in families/communities. I learned that this story was fleshed out into a film, The Quiet Girl, and perhaps with scoring and cinematography it gains emotional depth.

TBR List Update: February

 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In February 2023

Books read: 11

Books I decided NOT to finish: 4

Touchstone, it turns out, is not one of the Mary Russell series that I'm trying to complete. It's the first of a different series about a WWI soldier experiencing intrigue on an English estate several years after the war. Off the list!

Also, I accidentally read Room to Dream (#3 in the Front Desk Series) before getting #2. So I decided not to read Three Keys at all.

I think Julie Andrews's biography Home renewed 5 times before I decided I was just never going to get to it, and I was all right with that.

Same for Something Wild -- I'd put it on the list to fill a category in the 2022 Reading Challenge, and I don't actually find it interesting. Returned unread.

Books left on the TBR List: 127

Best book of the month: Dreamcatcher

This was a re-read, but it's been a couple decades and I enjoyed the cross between the dark doings of Derry and close encounters of the third kind. (TMI warning: Just as Psycho made millions nervous about the other side of the shower curtain, you may be reminded of this story when you next visit the bathroom.)

Worst book of the month: Liberation Day

This collection of short stories by George Saunders did not hit with me, despite coming recommended by some librarian colleagues. Some intriguing thoughts on identity and agency through a lens faceted by politics and technology, but a little too thinky for me right now.

TBR List Update: January

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In January 2023

Books read: 12 (plus a short article that I thought was longer when I added it to the list)

Books I decided NOT to finish: 1

I have had Black Pioneers in a White Denomination on my TBR list for almost a decade, and I finally checked out a copy through interlibrary loan, and... decided to DNF about a third of the way through. It was published as a graduate thesis in 1984, through the lens of the late 20th century, and that's not so relevant for me today. I was also looking more for a sociological discussion of contemporary Unitarian Universalist congregations, and this focused on two historical figures in the ministry.

Books left on the TBR List: 138

Best book of the month: In Love

It was approachable (I blazed right through it) and heart-rending and very honest. I come from long-lived people, and 3 of my 4 grandparents experienced some form of dementia before they died (and the 4th died young, so who knows whether he would have); I can expect to revisit their struggles with my own parents (both older now than Brian Ameche was when his Alzheimer's was diagnosed) and perhaps have those genes waiting in myself. Very existential read, prompting the big questions like "What do I want to leave as my legacy?", "How will I live after a major life disruption?", "What makes life worth living?" etc.

Worst book of the month: Christmas Days

I had this whole setup for a mood read -- snow outside, me wrapped up in a blanket with a mug of cocoa -- that this collection did not live up to. Some of the recipes, with their accompanying anecdotes, were intriguing. One or two of the short stories or essays could have stood alone, and I'd've been happy if I'd encountered it in the wild. But the back-and-forth between two formats, and the overall atmosphere of this writer's memoirs, failed to gain my empathy or hold my interest for long.

Reading List 2022

Here's an archived copy of my reading list for this year. I'll be keeping up the new list here: http://mlisunderstanding.blogspot.com/p/reading-list.html

I would recommend the bolded titles with enthusiasm, and I enjoyed the italicized titles but probably wouldn't read them again.