As Kathy noted, I am also almost finished with my selection for the Christmas Book Club thread and I like the story very much.

I picked up a library book that looked interesting; Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum. I’m only a few pages in to,it but so far, I like it.

I just finished Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood and it was just ok. It's the second in this series which is now also being filmed. Not sure I'll continue.

I finished The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny. I liked it, but to me it wasn’t really believable. There were lots of twists that keep you guessing who they can trust and who they can’t.

Now I’m reading .Mind Games by Nora Roberts. It’s pretty good so far. An Appalachian woman and her granddaughter have what I guess you’d call second sight. They see things in dreams that are actually happening or going to happen.

Donna

That sounds good, Donna. I put it on my For Later shelf on the library website.

I have just finished The Dark Wives, a Vera Stanhope novel by Ann Cleeves.

Rather disappointing and unfair as a mystery as we are not given enough clues to guess the villain/s. Not Golden Age rules!

I think this is the third detective I have read about or viewed recently who has run out on a wedding at the last minute!

I just finished So Brave Young and Handsome by Leif Enger. I had loved his first novel Peace Like a River, but my reaction to his novel Virgil Wander was more muted. While it was beautifully written, I became impatient with its slow pace. However this one I enjoyed every bit as much as much as the first novel. Perhaps the fact that they both involve a journey may have contributed to my experience. In any case, Enger remains a writer I admire. It is with high hopes that I plan to read his new book I Cheerfully Refuse in 2025. I don't have it yet, but I put it on my family's holiday wish list.

I got about half way through The Jinn-bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu but eventually donated it unfinished to the Friends of the Library book sale. It is supposed to be an SF version of Aladdin, but it did not work for me. You win some you lose some.

I don't know if I posted this last month (or two), but I enjoyed T.Kingfisher's recent book A Sorceress Comes to Call. As always, her books are lots of fun. The situations are fantastic, but the people and their reactions are so wonderfully realistic they could be you or people you know.

I recently learned that there is a new novel by Guy Gavriel Kay coming this spring, Written on the Dark. He is one of my dozen or so favorite writers, so I am in anticipation.

This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes is an amazingly frank and very outspoken biography of her life from childhood in a close-knit Jewish family. She is bright, goes to Cambridge where she 'gets into' acting and makes her way via university drama to work at the BBC, followed by the theatre and eventually Hollywood. Over here she is best know for her appearances on TV 'chat shows' and documentaries set in the US and Australia, where she now mostly lives.

If you have delicate sensibilities this is not the book for you. M M has no shut-off button. If she doesn't like someone she doesn't hesitate in telling us and uses various 4 letter words with gay abandon.

She does, however, have a beautiful speaking voice with excellent diction. You may have seen her in the film The Age of Innocence or maybe in some of the Harry Potter series.

I finally finished Mind Games by Nora Roberts. I liked the story but, in my opinion, it was far too long. A woman with ESP (they never really name her ”gift”, but she can see what people are thinking and feeling) is psychically connected to the man who murdered her parents, until she finally figures out a way to break the connection. It was 700+ pages, and I think about 400 or so would have been sufficient!

Donna

I finished Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop a short time ago. I liked it but didn’t love it.

I had a short trip and took Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan as it was a travel sized book. Set during Christmas in Ireland in the '80s and beautifully written about a man facing a moral dilemma. It's been made into a movie with Cillian Murphy playing the main character.

I'm in the middle of a biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Chasing Beauty by Natalie Dykstra. The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is one of my favorite places in Boston. It's absolutely beautiful, the collection is eclectic and interesting, so I thought I'd really love this book, and I really don't. Can't really put my finger on why except that it's just not that interesting, a lot of where she traveled and what she wore, like an instagram account without the photos.

Owl Be Home For Christmas by Donna Andrews

Just starting it.

Midnight and Blue, Ian Rankin

Finished Owl Be Home For Christmas by Donna Andrews. Ready to start Beach Music by Pat Conroy. I've been meaning to read it for years. It's 750+ pages, so I'll be at it a while if I stick with it, which I hope I do. I have loved what little I've read by Pat Conroy in the past.

Hi all,

I am reading Trust by Hernan Diaz. It won the Pulitzer, if such things still matter. It was a bit of a slow starter for me and I cannot decide if it is the book's fault or my own fault for being too busy with work to focus on the book. (I really must retire soon!) But now I can barely put it down.

PAM

Just started Grey Wolf by Louise Penny .

Reading The Secret Hours by Mick Herron. I've only read his Slough House books until this one.

I'm re-reading Mistletoe Murder, a collection of a few short stories by PD James. They are rather dark for the season, to be frank.

Ginny.........get one of Donna Andrews' Christmas mysteries ! They will lighten the mood :0)

Just finishing up with The Women by Kristin Hannah. I tend not to read bestseller "women's books", but I am reading this for my book club. It is a novel about three surgical nurses who served in Viet Nam and the aftermath of their service. The author depends a bit more than I personally would like on brandnames and other minutiae of the period. Despite this relatively minor irritant, she does a fine job of evoking the period and the attitudes people had. I was growing up during this time and had forgotten much of what she describes, but it comes back to me now.

It is also a vivid picture of what wartime service did to people. I would recommend it.

I am also reading a war book - The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel. I saw Mr. Edsel on an episode of Expedition Unknown and thought I would try it. I read some, then think I’m not that interested in it, then something interesting happens that keeps me reading.

I’m also reading I, Michael Bennett by James Patterson.

Msmeow, Might I recommend Florentine Art Under Fire by Frederick Hartt? It's the first-hand account of saving Italian art from the Nazis, written by a man who was a "monuments man" himself and actually there and himself under fire in Florence and other parts of Italy. He wrote soon after the war. It is gripping and a real page-turner, much better than the much later books or the movie Momuments Men. Hartt went on to become one of the premier experts on Italian Renaissance art and an Ivy League professor.

I just read The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen in two sittings. Very suspenseful story about a group of retired CIA officers living a quiet life in Maine. A woman named Maggie is the main character. A body is dropped in her driveway as a warning, attempts on her life are made and she must find out who is trying to kill her and what it has to do with her past life. It's a real page-turner, if it does have too many miraculous escapes. There is a sequel coming and it seems this may be the start of a new series for this author. I never heard of her and this is the first of her books I have read.

A Boy in the Water by Tom Gregory is the story of his successful attempt to swim the English Channel when he was only 11 years old. As the age limit was raised to 16 soon after he will always hold this position. He describes how he could hardly swim more than doggy-paddle three years earlier but was encouraged by a local swimming coach, in whom he developed great faith . . . and some slight fear.

I am no swimmer but found this story of hard physical endurance in one so young quite remarkable.The details of his 'swim' are told in chapters around his training routine and life with his family, the need to 'bulk-up' with huge carbo' based meals and learning to deal with the cold (always sleeping covered with nothing but a sheet and never wearing a coat or sweater) seems mild compared with practice swims in Lake Windermere and never giving in to cramp or exhaustion.

The swim was 32 miles and Tom did it in eleven hours!

An impressive accomplishment!

However, I don't think I will read it myself. I got cold just reading your description.

I've been slogging through The Secret Hours, a standalone by Slough House author Mick Herron. and threatening to give up. Now, about two-thirds of the way through, it has become surprisingly good. It is still about the London MI 5/6 organizations and has some of the main office people in it but it's nothing like the series I'm familiar with. I think some of them are the same characters but in their early days, but I'm not too sure who is who. The write-ups say it is a very clever and funny book, which may be true if you are more familiar with the set up than I am.

I finally finished The Monuments Men yesterday. It was interesting learning about the Monuments, Fine Arts and Antiquities group. I also learned a lot more about WWII.

I also finished I, Michael Bennettlast night. It was based around a drug cartel leader’s capture and trial, so I didn’t like it much (I generally try to avoid drug stories). It ended very abrutly, like they had hit a word count and just stopped. I suppose the next book in the series will finish the story.

I have two books going right now. One is an e book for reading in bed; Meteor Storm by DF Capp. It’s a s/f story with the premise that the earth (as we know it)is coming to an end because of an approaching meteor storm.

The other one is The Treasure Hunters Club by Tom Ryan. I picked it up off the new books shelf at the library as the inside cover blurb looked interesting. A group of people convene on a seaside town and search for buried treasure. According to the blurb, locals know there is more buried in the sand than just a lost treasure. I am only a few pages in so can’t say yet if I will like it or not

I saw Monuments Men as a movie, Msmeow. It was pretty exciting as I remember.

I am now reading The Briar Club by Kate Quinn and am liking it better than any of her books I've read besides The Rose Code.

Ditto on both those observations, Carolyn !

I loved The Briar Club!

I also liked The Briar Club.

Based on your recommendatios, I have placed The Briar Club on hold. Surely I can find time to read it besides the tbr books I have waiting for me! lol

I read Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand. She says it’s her last Nantucket novel. I enjoyed it.

I’ve read some of Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid. I don’t know the plot of Shakespeare’s play, so I don’t know if this is the same story told from her point of view. I’m not sure I’m interested enough to finish it.

Donna

Here it is New Year's Eve and I have come down with a cold. I've cancelled all planned activities for the next few days. Perhaps now I can make some good progress on Beach Music by Pat Conroy. I've been reading it off and on all month, but but have not given it the attention it will require to get through its 768 pages. I'm on page 396 at the moment. Wish me luck. And I wish all of you a Happy New Year and good reading!

Poor Kathy! How miserable for you.

I stayed awake for the New Year ring in and watched the fireworks from Sydney on TV. They are always spectacular.

I am struggling to start a new book, I just can't seem to concentrate so I am rereading chapters of the books I like. I do need to read something!

A very light read was It Must Have Been the Mistletoe by Judy Astley about a large family group taking over an old house on the coast of Cornwall for Christmas. Rather too many characters who got through dozens of bottles of wine and spend too much time sobbing or hugging each other. Of course it all turns out fine in the end . . . and it snowed . . . something it almost never does that far South West.

Kathy, there seem to be a lot of 'flu about in the UK. I'm sure a glass of hot toddy will put paid to your cold and help you sleep.

A Happy New year to us few remaining here at RP. May 2025 bring some more readers and lots of new books for us to enjoy!