Last Month in Review: December 2013

Oh, December 2013. Even though you were here just a few days ago, you're mostly like a distant memory for me.  Despite working retail, I still managed to read a dozen books, albeit some were audio books and one was a re-read. In chronological order, here they are:

1. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.  Technically this was the third time I read this book this year, so I reckon you could say I kinda liked it.  Full review here.

2. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding.  (audio read by Samantha Bond) Had some mixed feelings about this one.  It was hard to listen to Bridget talk about how hard her life is as single mum when she's well-off enough to own her home, send her two kids to private school (which they call public school, right?), employ a nanny and not have to work at all. Sure, she's sad and there's no statute of limitations on mourning a beloved spouse, but she really does come across as awfully spoiled.  Still, there are moments, and when they happen they're pretty great. Samantha Bond was a good choice for reader.

3. The Secret of Raven Point by Jennifer Vanderbes. A young woman gets a mysteriously worded letter from her brother stationed on the Italian front during WWII, shortly before he disappears.  She becomes a nurse and requests a posting in Italy to track him down. Solidly written and a slightly different take on the traditional wartime relationship book.

4. Anything that Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of New American Food Culture by Dana Goodyear. Eh. Occasionally it was quite fascinating, but I was interested in having a more cohesive narrative. I think I wanted a combination of Andew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods show and a foodie memoir and didn't really get satisfaction from either component.

5. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett.  Easily the best book I read in December and one of the best books I read this year.  I LOVED this collection of essays. So well written and intimate and insightful.  This may well end up being my favorite Ann Patchett book.

6. The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell.  (audio read by Brian Troxell)  Despite having a pretty good reader, this book was a little hard for me to follow on audio. Beyond my own seasonal distractions, there were so many random jumps in character POVs and timelines for this novel and I wasn't always able to keep up.  Beyond that, I mostly didn't care, so I wasn't especially invested in following it. There were, however, passages of such beauty that I regretted not having a physical book so I could underline them.

7. The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness. I can't pretend that I absolutely understood this book (I'm sometimes too literal a reader to appreciate the fabulistic), but I thought it was lovely and ethereal. I am, however, largely in love with the cover.

8. Long Man by Amy Greene.  A quiet novel set in a small town in eastern Tennessee, just days before it's scheduled to be flooded in order to bring electricity to the region. When a young girl goes missing, the few people who hadn't already evacuated help search for her while her mother accuses an itinerant ne'er do well of taking her--or worse. Very well written but not in any kind of showy way.

9. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. This YA book was WAY overhyped to me and thus I ended up picking it apart. I won't spoil the book for you, other than to say the ending was utterly ridiculous, but you can read what I said on Goodreads, if you like. Suffice it to say that it fulfills three readerly pet peeves of mine and there was a good chance that I was never going to like it, whether it had been hyped or not.

10. Thirty Girls by Susan Minot.  This is one of the most powerful stories I've read in a long time.  Dueling narratives of Jane, and American journalist in Kenya, and Esther, one of the thirty thousand Ugandan children who were stolen by the Lord's Resistance Army over the course of a decade and forced to do terrible, terrible things. Why, WHY had I not heard about these children before?

11. The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin. Ghost ships, 19th century spiritualism, nautical adventures, and Arthur Conan Doyle as a character?  Yes, please!  Great attention to period detail and well written.

12. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. (audio read by Rebecca Lowman and Maxwell Caulfield)  Okay, I read this one in book form many months ago and felt totally "eh" about it.  I mean, it was fine, it was a little cute, but more than a little annoying.  Then I listened to the audio because the publisher mailed one to me, and listening to it has VASTLY improved my opinion of this book.  I think this proves, more than anything else I could give as an example, that there is such a thing as the right book at the right time for the right reader. Now, however, these characters are my friends, and I feel things for them, and I may or may not be in love with Levi (I am). I wouldn't have said at first that Rebecca Lowman was a particularly good reader, because she sounds just like an 18-year-old college freshman talking about her life, but, well, that's kind of the point of the book.

And now I have so many books to look forward to in 2014.  I may take place in my FIRST EVER readathon, courtesy of Tika at Reading the Bricks and I'm pretty darn excited about it  Particularly the snacks. It will help assuage the deep sadness that I know many of us will be feeling when we recall the SIX MONTHS we spent reading Harry Potter together in 2013, picking it apart, falling in love with the series even more, and finding the perfect gifs to express our feelings. Alice, whatcha gonna do for an encore?