December Reading List

Ten books read this month which makes the total books for 2020 one hundred and two. 

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver had been on my 'to read' list for so long I had forgotten to look for it. It was no longer on the new books shelves. I plucked it out of the stacks and am so glad I did. I had also forgotten what a wonderful writer she is. The book goes back and forth between two families who live/d in the same house but 140 years apart. 

The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett is the prequel to his The Pillars of the Earth, which I bought years ago and have never read. But after reading and enjoying this prequel, I'm going to dig out my copy of Pillars and finally read it.

Still reading my way through Jodi Picoult books. I only have four or five left which include her YA books. Handle With Care is about a child born with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) and how it affects the family.

Songs of the Humpback Whale is more about a dysfunctional family than it is about whales.

Think Twice is my last Lisa Scottoline book until she comes out with a new one. I have really enjoyed her Rosato & Associates series as well as her stand alone novels. 

I liked Unsheltered so much that it sent me back to Barbara Kingsolver's books and I discovered one I had missed reading. The Lacuna is about a young man with a Mexican mother and Anglo father. His mother moves back to Mexico, taking him with her. Fate takes him into the realm of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as Lev (Leon) Trotsky. I am so glad I didn't miss reading this book which came out in 2009. 

Small Wonder is a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver. For me,not quite as entertaining as her novels, but still interesting.

My library books were due back Tuesday which was the day of our big snowstorm, so I called in and renewed them. That left me without a book to read which sent me to my own shelves and another book by Barbara Kingsolver - one I first read in 1997 (I know because my Half Price Books receipt was still in it) - The Bean Trees.  Rereading it is a reminder that I should reread more of the books I saved, because they were favorites. And it is almost like reading them for the first time.

Tansy Undercrypt is an author I have come to admire through her daily facebook posts of microfiction. She can tell amazing stories in just of few lines. So when she announced the publishment of Wondrous Whatsit, The Microfictions, Volume I, I ordered a copy. Most are only one page in length with a few trailing onto a second page. The shortest is only two sentences. 

Small Towns, Dark Places was Tansy Undercrypt's first published collection which came out in 2012. My daughter was already a big fan and gifted me a copy. I read it and reported to Kari that the stories were "a bit too dark for me". It has languished on my book shelves ever since. 

But I decided to read it again now with a new respect for this self-proclaimed purveyor of doom and whimsy and can report this time how much I liked and appreciated those stories from the Tractor Triangle - the "Bermuda Triangle in the Midwest, an area that stretches from Unseemly Lake, Minnesota to Endless Travails, Iowa, on to Misfortune, Wisconsin and back again."

Happy reading in the New Year.