Red & Green Books to Put You in the Holiday Spirit -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

Red & Green Books to Put You in the Holiday Spirit

Here’s a red and green stack of Christmassy (or at least wintery) books for a little festive fun.

I'm in a festive mood because I finished my last trial yesterday. The last one! I've practiced law for over 33 years, the last 18 spent working with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. My work was rewarding and I love the clients I've helped over the years. But I now have one foot and the toes of the other over the line to retirement. There’s still a fair bit of administrative wind up for my last cases, but (knock wood) I won’t have to go to court again. I loved my lawyer career, but I’m ready to spend time with my retired lawyer husband.

Now I plan to spend more time playing with my books, like this, and reading them. See any books here you’d read or have? I started A Christmas Treasury and am enjoying it tremendously. Just what I needed tto transition from work-mode to holiday-mode. 

Blood Upon the Snow (1944) by Hilda Lawrence

The Case of the Abominable Snowman (1941) by Nicholas Blake

A Holiday for Murder (1938) by Agatha Christie

The Gilded Man (1942) by Carter Dickson

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976) by Maya Angelou

Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens

Elizabeth David’s Christmas (2003 compilation) by Elizabeth David

The Drunken Botanist (2013) by Amy Stewart

Evergreen (2023) by Lydia Millen

A Christmas Treasury of Yuletide Stories & Poems (1994), edited by James Charlton and Barbara Gilson

Snow White and Other Grimms' Fairy Tales (2022 MinaLima Edition) by The Brothers Grimm

The St. Nicholas Anthology (1952) edited by Henry Steele Commager

The German Christmas Cookbook (2023) by Jürgen Krauss

Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook (2020) by Regula Ysewijn

Alpine Style: Bringing Mountain Magic Home (2024) by Kathryn O’Shea-Evans

September 2025 Reading Wrap Up -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

September 2025 Monthly Wrap Up 

I read a lot in September because I was stressed out about work. When I get really busy with work, I don't read much. But when I have time to finish all my work but am stressed out about it, I read a lot to take my mind off my jitters. Do you know what I mean?

Here is the list of the 21 books I read in September, in the order they appear in the stack in the picture. Have you read any of these?

PICTURED  

French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David. David is like an English Julia Child and this book is probably her most famous. It's a classic, but took me forever to read because it is so dense. 500 pages with only a handful of pen and ink illustrations, mostly for chapter headings, and the ingredients incorporated into the text instead of listed at the beginning. I'm glad I read it but don't think I'll cook much from it. This was the last book in my TBR 25 in '25 stack. Woo hoo!

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. I remember the movie playing on tv when I was a kid so I've had it in my head to read for decades and the book has been on my shelf for years. It was an exuberant, bittersweet story and I'm glad I read it, but it isn't a favorite. It counts as my Greece book for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. 

Miss Mole by E.H. Young. I read this one for Spinster September and loved it. The title character has a subversive sense of humor and it was a lot more fun than I anticipated. I'd like to find and read more "Furrowed Middlebrow" books from Dean Street Press. 

No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym, another spinster book. Her books have such a Jane Austen vibe. I love them.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. This one is really popular and the author won the Nobel Prize for literature, but it was not for me. I didn't like the idea of a crime spree with no consequences. I read it the week after Charlie Kirk was killed so a story about killing people you don’t agree with didn’t feel good. Even if you throw in the John Wick-like motive. Still, it counts as a Poland book for the ERC. 

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I had to read something by the ur-spinster for Spinster September! Alos, I'm rereading her six main novels to celebrate the semiquincentennial of her birth. Only one left!

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. I loved this book when I read it in 1992, right after I finished law school. The story of two couples who become best friends shortly after grad school hit me hard as I was starting down that same path. I reread it last month, this time as an audiobook. This time around, the story hit me from the other side, now that I am about the same age as the two couples at the end of their time as friends. It's such a wonderful novel.

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff. I read this because of the title and am glad I did. It was a wonderful, bittersweet family story about so much more than their annual vacation at the beach.

A Guilty Thing Surprised, Murder Being Once Done, and No More Dying Then by Ruth Rendell are books 5, 6, and 7 in her Inspector Wexford series. I am really enjoying my tear through this series. Wexford is such an interesting character!

Something Old, Something New: Classic Recipes Revisited by Tamar Adler. Adler wrote The Everlasting Meal, one of my favorite food books. This cookbook interprets older recipes for contemporary home cooks. It is excellent and the perfect antidote to Elizabeth David. Unlike the David book, I will cook with this one.

The Elements by John Boyne is labeled a novel but is really an omnibus edition of four previously published novellas (with far superior covers), Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. All are quick reads and they kept me entertained, but such unlikeable characters! I had the same problem with the one other Boyne book I read, A Ladder to the Sky. It's the same problem I had with Drive Your Plow. I like the bad guys to get their just desserts.

English Country House Style: Traditions, Secrets, and Unwritten Rules by Milo and Katy Campbell. I am trying to get back to reading my coffee table books and have a whole collection of books about English country houses and decorating. This one was fabulous.

NOT PICTURED

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien is a gem, even if I forgot to put it in the picture. The Country Girls is the first novel in the trilogy of the same name. I look forward to reading the other two.

Art, Love, and Other Miracles by Kiki Astor was a fun romance book set in Mexico City. I added it to the kindle app on my phone, which I rarely use, but like to have in case of emergency. I was traveling a lot in September, so had many opportunities to read a few pages here and there while waiting around.

A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman won the International Booker Prize in 2017. I read this one with my ears. An Israeli friend recommended it and it is very good.

A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker is book 16 in his Bruno, Chief of Police series. I love the series but the stories are starting to blur in my mind. Martin has created a huge cast of supporting characters and getting them all crammed into every story means the stories are going to be similar. It's not like Bruno goes off by himself and solves a mystery in Thailand or something. He's there in his French village, with his two ex-lovers, assorted friends, the same co-workers, and a gaggle of neighbors. Only two more books to go, at least before he writes another one.

What were your September favorites?

My Sign Up Post -- TBR 25 IN '25 & MT. TBR CHALLENGES

 

THE TBR 25 IN '25 CHALLENGE

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

My Sign Up Post

This is my sign up post for the TBR 25 in '25 and Mt. TBR Challenges. If you want to join me in the TBR 25 in '25 Challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here. Bev at My Reader's Block hosts the Mt. TBR Challenge. You can find the details for that one here. 

The number of unread books on my shelves is staggering. I long ago stopped referring to "my TBR shelf" because there are many shelves of unread books in my house. I prefer to think to it as a "library" and may never get to all of them. But I mean to try. 

Last year, I read the 24 books I picked for the TBR 24 in '24 Challenge, plus another 70 books for the Mt. TBR Challenge, for a total of 94 books read from my TBR library. I hope to reach at least 100 this year. 

You do not have to pick your TBR 25 in '25 book ahead of time. You can. Or you can pick them as you go. Or you can pick and then change your mind. The only "rule" is that the books have to have been on your shelf before January 1, 2025. 

Here are my TBR 25 in '25 picks, in alphabetical order by author. I'll read them in any old order:

• One Man’s San Francisco by Herb Cain

• French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

• The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell FINISHED

• Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster NOW

• Biter Orange by Claire Fuller

• Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

• Q.’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

• Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

• Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

• Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch FINISHED

• Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

• The Widow on Dwyer Court by Lisa Kusel

• The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev

• Lost & Found: Public Theology in the Secular Age by Michael A. Milton NOW

• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell

• Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

• Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair FINISHED

• The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen by Nigel Slater NOW

• The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

• Zabar's: A Family Story, with Recipes by Lori Zabar

There was no rhyme or rhythm to how I picked these. A few, like the Herb Cain book, have languished on my shelves for too long. Others came to me more recently, but with the understanding that I would read them right away, which I haven't. Some are for group reads on Instagram, like Imitation of Christ and the du Maurier biography. A few won prizes and I'm trying to read all the winners, like the Charlotte Jay book that won the very first Edgar Award for best mystery in 1954.

I got this post up so late that I've already read several of these. I wanted to start strong in January so I have momentum to read these and then move on to my Mt. TBR books. 

I don't know which books I'll read for that one yet. But I signed up for the Mt. Everest level to read a total of 100 books off my shelves. That means I need 75 in addition tot he 25 listed above. I'm ready to climb!

 

March 2024 -- MONTHLY WRAP UP

 

MONTHLY WRAP UP

March 2024

Thanks to an unexpected, unusual, but much appreciated lull in my workload, I read more books in March than I’ve ever read in one month as an adult. I now have a glimpse of what retirement might look like and am looking forward to it all the more!

See any here you’ve read and enjoyed, or want to?

Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope, the second book in the the Palliser Series, which I am reading this year as part of a group read on Instagram. 

Fay Weldon’s Love & Inheritance Trilogy: Habits of the House, Long Live the King, and The New Countess. The novels are set in London society at the turn of the 20th Century. They have strong Upstairs, Downstairs themes, which makes sense because Weldon wrote several episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, including the first, prize-winning episode. She published these three books in 2012 and 2013, shortly after Downton Abbey captured the collective imagination, and there are many similarities! The trilogy was thoroughly entertaining, if light fare compared to Trollope.

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David, Britain's foremost food writer. This is a collection of food, restaurant, and travel essays, many from newspaper columns and magazine assignments.

My Kind of Place by Susan Orlean is a collection of travel-inspired essays. This is one of my #TBR24in24 books. It reminded me that Orlean used to live here in Portland where she wrote for our weekly alternative paper, Willamette Week. 

The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper by Dominick Dunne. Before he reinvented himself as a novelist, Dunne was a television producer in Hollywood. This memoir, chock-o-block with personal snapshots of celebrity society in Hollywood in the 1950s and ‘60s, would be insufferable without Dunne's charm and frank admission of how badly he messed up his life later on.

The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas by Paul Theroux, about his 1978 train journey from Boston, through North and South America, to Patagonia, another TBR 24 in '24 read.

The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life by Charles Murray, a common sense guide to adulthood, which I wrote about here.

Menagerie Manor by Gerald Durrell, about starting a private zoo on Jersey, was the first first book by him I've read, but won’t be my last. Another TBR 23 in ’24 read. I'm going to pass this on to my daughter-in-law who is a vet at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. because I think she will find interesting the comparison between a private zoo in the 1960s and '70s and a public zoo now. 

I’ll Never be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier. This is du Maurier's second novel and I found it tough going. I'm in a Du Maurier Deep Dive reading group on Instagram and we are down to the last few books. This one is my least favorite DDM book so far. The main character is unattractively immature and I wanted nothing to do with him. If I weren't a du Maurier completist, I would not have finished it. 

The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle, a wine-themed cozy mystery set in Marseille. Loved it. 

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto was my book club pick for March. I am pleased to report that everyone in the group enjoyed it, which is unusual for book club! 

Songbook by Nick Hornby, the only author I like enough to read a 20+ year old book about pop music.

The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary. I read this because it is on Anthony Burgess's list of Top 99 Novels in English, one of my favorite lists for reading inspiration. It might be a classic about the life of an artist, but there is a reason you don’t see it around much anymore. The protagonist, artist Gully Jimson, is highly unlikeable, which made the book a slog for me. Oddly, by one of those reading coincidences, in The Old Patagonian Express, Paul Theroux mentions in passing and without context that some wall art he sees from the train window would make Gully Jimson proud. I am happy to cross this one off my TBR 24 in ’24 list.

Slightly Foxed, Issue 81, Spring 2024. I like to include these in my lists of books read so I can keep track of which ones I've finished.  

His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle, which brings me to the end of the Sherlock Holmes series. Several years ago, I found a boxed set at an estate sale and jumped right on it, intending to read (and reread) them straight through. But my enthusiasm waned and it's taken me almost 14 years to get through all of them. 

NOT PICTURED (READ WITH MY EARS)

Foster by Claire Keegan, my other book club’s latest pick. This is an excellent novella about a young girl in Ireland sent to live with foster parents. We don't meet until April, but I am sure the book will be a popular one. 

A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin. I have been working my way steadily through his John Rebus books, making a concerted effort the past year and a half. This is book 23 of 24 (so far), so I am close to wrapping up the series. I love the books, but it's a long series! 

What were your March reading highlights?