Rest of the year reads

November and December were pretty decent reading months. I don't feel like writing proper reviews so here we are.

November 

3 Agatha Christie books, all excellent mysteries that kept me guessing per usual:

• The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot) - classic murder on a train, locked room mystery. Murderer/s ended up being something out of left field that I feel was not set up well enough for the readers to have guessed it; it felt like cheating a bit. ★★★½

• The Seven Dials Mystery (Superintendent Battle, a new guy to me. He's a police super and looks big and wooden and dumb but is actually very smart.) Young people keep getting murdered, and a secret society called the Seven Dials might be behind it... The biggest twist ending of all of them! Some Jeeves books vibes with the Bright Young Things friend group. Very exciting. ★★★★

• Cards on the Table (both Hercule Poirot AND Superintendent Battle! glad I read T7DM first) A dinner party that is half murderers, half detectives/police results in a murder, naturally. Still is very twisty. Got wlw vibes from the two roommate bestie girls, but sadly no (not that I actually thought AC would go there). ★★★★

These were all ebooks. I usually try to stick to reading AC books in physical form since that fits the books' vibes better, but B&N did this weird thing where they had a ton of excellent legit ebooks (rather than the usual self-published stuff) for free, so I downloaded a bunch (including the above 3) before they changed their minds. 

I also read an excellent and relevant nonfiction book suggested by my therapist, but I overshare enough on this blog as it is, so I'm not telling you what it is. :P

December

I usually go ham on SimonTeen's 25 free reads of December, but this year I was very busy in December and/or wasn't feeling most of the books. There were some great ones I definitely was interested in and would have read under different circumstances, but alas. The only one I managed to read was Love at Second Sight by F.T. Lukens, whose book Otherwordly I read last year as it was part of SimonTeen's offerings for the 2024 25 free reads of December. This one is also a gay YA fantasy book, but this one is set in a world where witches and vampires and werewolves, etc. exist and live alongside humans. 15-year-old human Cam's plans for a normal sophomore year with his nonbinary witch bestie Al are derailed when he has a very scary premonition about the violent death of a young woman, and it turns out he's a clairvoyant with rare abilities whose alliance is desired by every supernatural group in town. Cam has to deal with the sudden popularity, the supernatural society politics he hasn't grown up with, his parents' anti-supernatural bigotry, and his popular werewolf crush noticing him. Oh, and he has to figure out how to stop the murder from happening.  I liked this book and found the mystery most compelling; the romance was cute but felt a bit underdeveloped. There was a lot going on in this book, though. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of thing (urban fantasy, I guess?). ★★★★

I had plans to finally read some of my Christmas romance ebooks I've downloaded over the years during this holiday season, but for some reason instead I reread The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis because I found the copy I had left at my parents' house (I have one at mine, obvs). It's basically CSL doing a take on The Pilgrim's Progress (a heavily Christian allegory about conversion and the Christian walk, etc.) but with his own spiritual life and conversion. This was not particularly easy to read, despite the chapters being fairly short; it's very philosophical and uses lots of academic language and quotes in Greek, Latin, and French that are not translated. I can kind of suss out the latter two depending on how similar the words are to Spanish, but this is not ideal. It's one of CSL's weirdest and weakest, I feel. Also it's racist and sexist ("brown girls" are a metaphor for lust 🤮). Not recommended unless you're studying him and his works academically or something. ★★★

I reread Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories by L.M. Montgomery, as I do every holiday season. The Christmas stories are much better and generally happier than the New Year's stories.  

 

I decided to read a couple of children's books I had bought and hadn't read yet. It's my reading log and I'll count picture books if I want to :P 

Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos by Monica Brown, translated into Spanish by F. Isabel Campoy, and illustrated by John Parra, is a biographical nonfiction picture book about Frida and her pets. I didn't add it to my LibraryThing and there's no record of it in my order emails, so I must have bought it in person at a local indie bookstore, probably Cellar Door Books. The art style is very colorful, bold, and naive, which suits the subject matter. The book makes it sound like Frida had a lot of these pets as a child, when she actually had them as an adult (I'm pretty sure; I'm also sure she did have pets as a kid but don't remember having read about them). It's a cute book that's worth buying if you're a big a fan of Frida Kahlo as I am. ★★★★ 

 

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison, is a picture book biography of a very important Black librarian who knew the power of stories to let people know what is possible and how to rise up. Ms. Baker curated book lists of books with good African American representation (as well as writing her own) and went on to be the coordinator of children's services for the entire New York Public Library system (the first Black person to do so) and was hugely influential. This was an excellent book with bright, vivid, interesting mixed-media art, and I highly recommend it. I also enjoyed the author's story about the impact of her own childhood librarian. ★★★★½