Sandy's Books: December ⛄️🎄⛄️ 2019 (thread #4)

The last month to see if I can finish my library cascade before the end of the year, and fit in some BBs before my hoped-for Christmastime book gifts appear.

Reading update:Two 4-★ novels, and, just reviewed

Seasonal photos for winter and the crazy season of decorating ~~

Of course I need my book counter. I keep losing track of the total number of completed readings!

removed

Welcome. I hope you'll be particularly chatty now that all that turkey and trimmings have been processed.

I know there are masses of threads I have visited and not responded or commented. I gathered insights to add to my WL, envied people in warmer climes, and generally look forward to finding out what people have posted on WL for their friends & families to fulfill.

Happy New Thread, Sandy! Waiting to see if Pulley was able to pull the ending together better in her second book.

Hi Roni. I tried to be quite subtle about the book's dénouement, so I just hit the main points with little detail. Sure it had some hiccoughs, but I liked the narrative a lot. It was a haunting tale in the way magical realism can be. I like the details ~ Pulley is good at sucking me in so I don't see the blur between factual and *almost* real.

Happy new thread!

I'm just plumping up the pillows, settling in, and eagerly awaiting a photo in >4 SandyAMcPherson:.

Happy new one!

Happy new thread, Sandy!

>8 quondame: Hi Susan. Glad to see you here...
>9 lauralkeet: Now there's pressure! But lovely to know there's an eager audience...
>10 figsfromthistle:, >11 karenmarie: Welcome. Great to have you visit.

>12 SandyAMcPherson: just an eager audience, no pressure intended!

Happy new thread!

Happy new one, Sandy. Also awaiting >4 SandyAMcPherson:!

I may just continue to be lazy for the rest of the month and not bother with a final thread, myself

Happy new thread, Sandy!

>5 SandyAMcPherson: I know there are masses of threads I have visited and not responded or commented.
We all do, I visit many threads without leaving a comment. I would not have time to read if I did ;-)

>14 foggidawn: Hi foggi. I'm reading Ballet Shoes this week. Were you the one who suggested this book when I was looking for middle-grade reading? It is turning out to be quite an engrossing read ~ a 'gentle on my mind' story. 💖

>15 jessibud2: Hi from the flatland, where we are (ah-ha!) NOT having freezing rain! Yes, do relax. We're not obliged to read at all! I made shortbread today...

>16 FAMeulstee: Hey good to see you. I zoomed the threads looking for the new BBs so I could potentially score Christmas gifts in the online sales. Canada being as much a slave to "Black Friday" as our neighbours to the south.

So fun to know peeps are awaiting the baby play-mat being finished. I'm farming out the squaring up and seam binding. That's the part I really do poorly! And don't enjoy. Apparently I will have to wait until next week...

>17 SandyAMcPherson: I remember Ballet Shoes, and other Shoes books - I think our middle school library had a section of -girl's'- books, but probably not, just a co-incidence of lots of them is a couple of shelves on the south wall.

Happy new thread, Sandy.

I used to post more than most, I guess, but "lurking" is a honourable profession!

>17 SandyAMcPherson: I can't remember if I recommended it or not, but it's one that I can see myself recommending, so it probably was me? Anyhow, glad you are enjoying it.

Finished book #103!
I'm still amazed that I achieved reading even 75 books. What a great lot of fun and support this 75-er group provides! And the encouragement to review has been invaluable in prompting my memory of the story while still fresh in my mind.

Ballet Shoes (★★★★) A book bullet, from humouress (https://www.librarything.com/topic/310765#6958180).

Surprisingly engaging! Initially, with the way the 3 orphans are so casually acquired and adopted, the story lingered on the edge of syrupy. However, the down-to-earth narrative of 1930's London and the prosaic details of the girls' lives was charming.

Streatfield wrote an amazingly captivating novel of a close-knit home and an enlightened view of dance, stage and ambitions fulfilled for practical reasons. The ending was the only flaw, being rather abrupt and a little too pat, but it was very enlightening for its day in that one of the girls was so well-mentored in her wish to pursue the study of mechanical and aeronautical devices.

I started reading the Stephens and Mephisto mysteries awhile ago. After a couple books, the theme wasn't appealing and didn't "compete" well with the Ruth Galloway series.
However... having finished the RG novels currently available I think I'll revisit the Magic Men series.

Here's the newest ~ fifth book, which appeared on Goodreads recently

Happy new thread!

I remember reading one of Streatfield's "Shoes" books as a youngun -- probably that one, since LT says it's first in the series and the other titles don't strike a chord the way Ballet Shoes does. I remember absolutely nothing about it, except that I enjoyed it.

>24 lauralkeet: I'd never heard of these stories until humouress suggested the book title.
I'm wondering if many middle grade readers these days would not find enough action which seems so prevalent nowadays? I loved the pace of the story and it was so well-written (except for my review criticism about the ending...).

So there's been chatter now and then about Junk Drawers and about deleting photos there. Back last spring, I had masses of trouble figuring out how to upload photos to talk...
After much faffing about, I got the Junk Drawer to work reliably and not have obscure little blank squares instead...
Here where I wrote out a small tutorial for jessibud2 ...
https://www.librarything.com/topic/310773#6984534

I thought it might help others. There's probably a wiki page somewhere but I have added annotated screenshots because I am more of a visual person...

Happy new thread Sandy!

>25 SandyAMcPherson: Ooh, I got a mention :0)

>26 SandyAMcPherson: Maybe if you click on 'Help' at the top of the page you could add your tutorial to that wiki?

>26 SandyAMcPherson: - Thanks, Sandy. I am also a visual learner so your tutorial is probably just the thing that will work for me. I will try it tomorrow as I won't be home till dinner time tonight and I know I'll be too tired to focus by then

>25 SandyAMcPherson: I think you might be right about today's middle grade readers. When my daughters were that age (they are now in their mid-20s) interested in books I enjoyed as a child, but many of them fell flat for them.

I've also noticed that certain television programs, popular say in the 1980s, don't hold up well when watched today. There's something different about the pacing. So perhaps there are other factors?

>26 SandyAMcPherson: You might send a private message to Jim (@drneutron), the mastermind behind the 75ers group. He's pretty well plugged into LT and might have a suggestion about how to share your creation, which is a thing of beauty. 😀

>27 humouress: Thanks for popping by. I think having a visual on the wiki would help a lot but I'm not sure that my way of using annotated diagrams and photos is appropriate for a prose-driven wiki.

I'm going to follow up >29 lauralkeet: Laura's suggestion and maybe Jim can run with it...

Laura, high praise, (a thing of beauty), thank you. In fact, I think you were the one that LizzieD mentioned for some help for navigating photos onto Talk, yes?

Just send Sandy a PM to this effect, but...

I think it's a great idea to see if we can get this on the wiki. One option is to link it to humouress' wiki page on doing cool things in threads, which we link to from the group wiki page. Another option, as I think about it, is to make a separate wiki page with this content, then just link directly to it from the group wiki page in that same area as the link to humouress'. First I gotta figure out how to embed pics in wikis - not hard, just gotta find the time to do it... 😀

>31 drneutron: Take your time! Work does have that annoying habit of getting in the way of fun stuff. But the pay cheque is just so handy!

>30 SandyAMcPherson: 'Twas I, yes. And now look how you've run with it!

>31 drneutron: excellent.

Warning: LARGE images (for clarity) and a loooong post here ~

The initial visuals, https://www.librarything.com/topic/310773#6984534, were too small to read on the Talk screen
(thanks to jessibud2 for the feedback).

I have re-drawn the annotations ~ here is another How to tutorial for junk drawer use.

My advice to enlarge the images if you can't read them on TALK: put your cursor on the image and 'right-click' to save to your device; on Mac computers, hold down the control button and click. I don't know how to do this on tablets, but one of our lovely 75-ers on Talk probably can advise.

Once the image is saved, you can manipulate it in a photo program to magnify the picture. I use "Preview"as a default app. On Mac systems, there is also iPhoto. I'm no longer a Windows user, so can't help there...

Here are the latest adjustments to Junk drawer, along with my original comments:

#1: Look in the top-right corner of your profile page and find "member Gallery"; Click as shown in image here ~


________________________

#2: Finding the Junk drawer and the link to add an image file (*jpg, *png, *gif or *bmp) Click the indicated selections ~


________________________

#3: Uploading the image to the junk drawer ~



What to do next ~~ upload the image to TALK!! (I know lots of folks can do this but some of us less computer-literate folks take forever to figure it out and for me, it was so frustratingly-arrrggh!)

===================

So you want to have an image from the junk drawer appear in Talk ~
KEY POINT... click the image so the one you want is all you see in the junk drawer ☛ right-click (control-click on Mac) and select either "copy image address" (if Safari is your browser) or "copy link location" (Firefox) or the equivalent on other browsers...



NEXT - paste the copied link into the HTML format for images:
(I have substituted the sideways V characters with " § " and " † ", so you can see the code):

Here's the HTML for the previous image, "copy image address"

§ img src="https://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/9e/f2/9ef2a79fa36048f63716f4b7477434b41716b42.jpg" †

The main thing to add to this code, if you want to reduce the size of the image, is to specify height in between img and src, like this: (make sure to incorporate the spaces exactly as shown!)

.... § img height=150 src= ... †

TIP: Preview the post to check the height, which you adjust up or down by increasing or decreasing the number. Reclick 'preview' each time so the image is the size you want.

In this post, I left the images at quite a large size, so the details were legible; in my opinion, this sizing overwhelms the thread!

St. Nicholas' Day ~ my grandchildren will be up early to see what he left in their shoes!



Probably high-quality chocolate and a small toy. They will also enjoy Christmas day gifts with family visiting, but we're staying home. Prairie winter travel is too fraught.

I meant to post about Malory's book ~



A friend scored this gorgeous volume at an estate sale.

I forgot to look at the bibliography page though, so I'm not sure how old this edition is. I snapped an inadequate set of photos with my mobile phone camera but only the cover is worth showing off. The illustrations were so vivid. I think Mallory makes no effort at historical accuracy, so I've never been attracted to reading this title.

>35 SandyAMcPherson: Happy St. Nicholas Day! The Sunday School kids at my church always bring an extra shoe to church on the Sunday nearest the feast day, and they set them out on the porch for "St. Nicholas" to fill with candy. It's a fun tradition.

>37 foggidawn: It is indeed a fun thing. My grandkids were born in Amsterdam and Sinterklaas is more real to them than "Santa". They live in B.C. now.

A few years ago, when we were walking beside one of the canals (November 15 actually), a barge pulled up to a landing and St. Nicholas (with his white horse!) rode off along with a small entourage. It was so real and there wasn't a big crowd around, so felt quite normal.

We didn't follow but I guess he was headed to a festival to mark the beginning of the season. Those processions are so jam-packed, our family tended to avoid Dam Square where this happens amongst all the Christmas market booths.

We liked that Dec. 25 is more about families gathering for a feast and just being together. Christmas Eve is usually when a candle-lit service was attended and there are small gifts exchanged in some families. It is so much less frenetic than a celebration all on the one day.

The Miniaturist (Jessie Burton)

Regrettably added to my DNF graveyard

After about half the book, I had to give up. I think this is one of those novels that a reader either loves or struggles, with no in-between. Many reviews suggest that the story is worth soldiering through to reach the halfway point, but I didn't find it worth the slog.

For my tastes, the story was weirdly depressing, alternating between dreariness of the new wife's half alive-life and the 'Miniaturist', a strange persona with unexpected insights into the character's lives. I found very little of the prose moved the story forward so that there was progress, some sense of flow. There's the bones of an excellent narrative here, but there was not an especially uplifting tone to relieve the 17th century gloom. (2**)

I was sorry to be so ambivalent about this novel, because I sense it was more a case of my frame of mind at the time, than any real flaw with the author's work. I seem to have very little resilience these days for reading about dark, sad lives or psychological weirdness. There never seemed to be an uplifting point or positivity in this novel.

I refuse to even keep count of the number of books I abandon because the list would depress me. If we booklovers learn one thing in life, it's that life is too short to waste on a book that isn't grabbing you. There is ALWAYS a next book waiting...!

I also hear you about not being in the mood for dark or *downer* books. I have been like that pretty much all this year.

On a happier reading journey, I was enchanted by Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore (Sheri Tepper).

This was a book bullet from Susan (quondame) and I am so glad to have been alerted to this Marianne trilogy. In book 1, I was immediately drawn into the story right from the beginning and stayed up ridiculously late reading the first half of the novel.

My review is quite succinct ~
An imaginative adventure, beautifully written with a subtle use of the magical aspects. Although some plot twists were unsurprising, the story followed the theme and didn't create a flat-lined narrative. The final sentence very cleverly invokes a cliff-hanger, both alluring and insidious. Sheri Tepper is a new-to-me author and didn't disappoint.

~ and I went all out, with 💥💥💥💥💥!

I was absolutely slain by the final sentence in the book, Deep inside, Snake whispered an unheeded warning, because there isn't a copy of Book 2 to be had from the library, to borrow by interlibrary loan, or to buy from reasonably-priced online sellers. Arrrgh. I have my family in other cities searching their secondhand book shops for the title, Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods.

I'm going to request Book 3 even though #2 is unread... this book falls into the "I'll re-read it many times" category, so I don't think I will feel that Book 2 is ruined just because I read #3 ahead of #2.

>41 SandyAMcPherson: Book 3 is a different sort of story, and doesn't spoil/spoil book 2 which is more of an alternate track book 1.

A friend who is more advertant^* than I noted the point system in MtM&tM is very like her OCDish way of dealing with what is beyond her control. As she was blind, she listened to the book on a tape I made for her so she had more time to think about it, that's my excuse.

^*From Fledgling

>42 quondame:, I guess we cross-posted... I went off momentarily to tell you, Yes!, good BB.

Also, I want to express my deep despair that so far, there's no Book 2 available,

>43 SandyAMcPherson: Amazon is selling it much more reasonably that when I went looking - I think I paid $25.

>44 quondame: Thanks for your comments. I'm a frugal buyer, however...

In fact, I am the penultimate in being fussy about condition, so buying used has to be from dealers we know.
The other hassle, is that I need a Canadian source, otherwise, it is so expensive.
Shipping plus customs and the exchange rate disqualifies paperbacks from the USA as an option.

For buying used, even before the online days, the condition is completely unpredictable. Many sellers do not understand that (for example) "very good" means it has all the pages and shows wear, with defects noted. In my world, not a book for which I would pay more than $3 or $4.

There are standards for describing book condition as you probably know, but we've had appalling experiences from well-known sources who think they can get away with misleading descriptions. So if we can't find friends or relatives to check book condition and buy for us, we stick to looking on our travels and at used book sources that know us.

I'm sure Santa-Honey will eventually discover it somewhere. Over the years my 'WishList' has been amazingly fulfilled.

Not so much reading this week, although I did finish The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, review coming up later...

In the meantime, some homemade yumminess.

Later today, I will tackle the Christmas cinnamon buns, a morning tradition in Christmas week.

Book #105 ~ The Forgotten Beasts of Eld ~



There are nearly 50 reviews of this story (on LT), and I probably don't have much extra to add. I'm confounded by the thought I had originally read this when my younger daughter was accumulating YA novels. But the story was so completely unfamiliar that I'm now doubtful I ever read it before.

Anyway, it was a nice segue back into the comfortable style of 1970's and 80's fantasies. I like the way mood is developed as much as action in this narrative style. I find thoughtful concepts develop in my own mind about implications for living/not living alone, for the greater harm/benefits of hate and revenge and letting go. McKillip may not have intended this novel to become an avenue of self-exploration but that is what developed for me.

As I say, it was an imaginative story and I would have loved to read more about the 'wizardlings' and hoped for additional interactions with the wondrous beasts. Parts of Forgotten Beasts felt rushed and in places, I would have liked more "story" around the details.

So guess what all you folks that wanted more arts and crafts? I'm all finished that baby gift project. Finally.

There was a lot of competition with reading non-renewable library books and organizing the Christmas gifts for mailing.

Laura probably fell asleep on those cushions waiting for the photos.

It's beautiful!! Wow, that's a talent I wish I possessed. I have a friend who quilts and though I tried once (a course for beginner's), it's just not my thing. I can't sew worth a damn though I adore quilts! Congrats for finishing this! What a gift.

>4 SandyAMcPherson: >48 SandyAMcPherson: Wow! What a fabulous baby accessory!

Thanks for nudging me awake, Sandy! LOL. The quilt looks beautiful, and will be a lovely keepsake. I still have quilts that my mom made for my two daughters.

>49 jessibud2: Thanks for your compliments. I am very definitely *not* a conventional patchwork quilter. It was a real challenge for me to have the flannel cotton blocks line up (which they didn't, entirely). Flannel doesn't have the tight-woven stability that 'proper' quilt-quality cottons feature.

>50 quondame: Hi Susan. Thanks for dropping by. Floor mats rock! And I feel so relaxed about the exactness of the patchwork.

>51 lauralkeet:, Hi Laura. We'd all love to see some pix of these keepsake quilts. Right, everyone?
Richard will probably visit to exclaim, "Mastodon huntresses had time to make quilts? Who knew?"...

>52 SandyAMcPherson: hmm, that would require me to unearth said quilts from the storage boxes somewhere deep in our basement. I have another idea though. After my Mastodon huntress mother passed away, a friend had notecards made featuring some of her quilts and gave sets of notecards to my brother and me. Such a nice gesture. Anyway, maybe I'll scan a couple of 'em to share here.

>53 lauralkeet: What a fabulous idea!

I never take photos of the quality needed for prints, just suitable for ephemeral digital pix!
Indeed, I think scanning notecard images just the ticket.

Loved Ballet Shoes when I was ten!

That is not a Tepper I have or have read . . . must find!

That's a McKillip I want to reread!

Love the cartoon too -- it's infrequent I love a book so much that I get that despairing feeling but when I do, argh!

Beautiful quilt regardless of how the patches line up, Sandy!

>55 sibylline: Ballet Shoes was a suggestion from humouress and quondame suggested Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore. Otherwise I would have missed out on some wonderful reading.

I'm living in optimistic anticipation that The Man will succeed in discovering Book 2 of this trilogy. Maybe even by December 25th, hey! I have Book 3 requested from the public library. And in >42 quondame:, Susan reassures me that Book 3 is a different sort of story, so I'm going to read it as soon as I finish The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.

>56 ronincats: Thanks, Roni. It will be a cosy gift for winter floors. I'm glad I made it a double thickness, because this 6-weeks-old child apparently is rolling around and doing her own tummy-time already! So on the floor is safest.

Hi Sandy!

>34 SandyAMcPherson: Beautifully done, from a retired IT person who wrote lots of click-by-click documentation for users!

>39 SandyAMcPherson: and >40 jessibud2: I’ve started tracking abandoned books and so far this year have read 992 pages in 7 abandoned books, 3.5 hours in 1 audiobook.

>58 karenmarie: Hi Karen. I'm chuffed to little mint balls that you approved the Junk Drawer tutorial. Thank you for the kind words.

When Jim (drneutron) is done flying solar probes and all, he's going to look into how one can add images along with text to a wiki... or telling me how to add them.

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill ~



Abbi Waxman has an interesting narrative going here, with my interpretation of Nina Hill’s bookish life as follows:
Nina is apparently very much a bibliophile ~ except in this story, she is portrayed more as someone who uses reading to escape a life that was bereft of parental presence and not much nurturing. As an adult, Nina spends her time scheduling most of her daily life, right down to what she’ll feed the cat and what to do every evening.

With daily employment at a bookshop and a social life that really holds people at a distance (trivia gaming in pubs not being open to introspective connections with actual individuals), I don’t believe Nina is all that bookish: she’s a lonely kid who craves sensitive people that can understand her need to quell panic attacks.

The writing was at times amusing, although the quips came across as “witty sayings the author read or heard somewhere else”. The story was insightful about anxiety and illustrated how very debilitating this syndrome can be. My main criticism is the intrusiveness of the narrator, which invaded the story from time to time, as if the author was having us step outside her novel and pass opinions.

Overall, I decided the book was pretty decent reading for those who like chick-lit that features millennial relationship lifestyles, even though the conclusion felt very unfinished. Readers may find that the chronicle has a flat-lined ending with some ridiculous food-fighting at the bookstore. It was as if Waxman was tired of the character development and just wanted to finish the final draught “thankyouverymuch, I’m done” sort of atmosphere.

Edited to mention that this was a BB from Roni, https://www.librarything.com/topic/311636#6967317!

Greetings to my fellow biblio-geeks!

A winter solstice is the moment in time when the Earth's tilt away from the Sun is at its maximum and the Sun's maximum elevation in the sky is at its lowest. Thus the ice crystals form magical lighting effects ~


Sundogs and a sunrise on the Winter Solstice

Soviet Santa says "Happy Yule!" Solstice Greetings to all. Read more here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-santa

>61 SandyAMcPherson: Greetings back, Sandy!
Beautiful picture, I din't know those were calles sundogs, always learning new things :-)

Have a comfy, caring, and very

Merry Christmas!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, some other tradition or none at all, this is what I wish for you!

Thank you for keeping me company in 2019.......onward to 2020.

Thank you all for visiting while I've been distracted with the seasonal "busy time" ... and in the middle of it all ~ our chest freezer decided to give up the ghost 2 days before Christmas! Nothing like having to unload a 14 cu. ft deep freezer when we were expecting Christmas Day to Boxing Day frivolities.

The images and sentiments were all very welcome. I'm planning on tidying up here with some final reviews from my holiday reading binge!

~ ~ by Christina Thompson

This biography of populating Oceania was interesting and frustrating by turns. I selected the book because it promised an insight into how the Polynesian islands were originally populated. For my tastes, the narrative was too much from a Euro-centric view. Relative to the Polynesian immigrants, it was difficult to separate the speculative ideas from the facts supported by soundly-based data. Many passages were historically interesting, but the final overview was based more on rat DNA than human genomics. Unlike genomics research in other archeological excavations, such as Bronze age digs in Ireland (*Cassidy et al., 2015), the Polynesian work doesn't appear to have used these tools to find racial irruptions from from far-flung immigrants.

The other great flaw in Thompson's book were the absence of illustrations and a glossary. The history would have been clarified with maps to illustrate the immediate geography being described; a glossary would help keep non-specialists informed as the story progressed. As it was, there were constant interruptions to the flow since unfamiliar island names and terms were sprinkled through out the text. I'm glad I read the book, but I did end up skimming a certain amount, looking for more of a scientific discussion on the original peoples than was presented.

*Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1518445113

>68 SandyAMcPherson: Oh dear. RIP chest freezer. I hope you had a nice holiday despite that hassle.

>70 lauralkeet: Thanks, Laura. RIP indeed. And we only bought it in 1976, too.

:D

New one is now in place and reloaded. Chilled to -22 oC in no time. And wow, is it ever quiet!

Book #108

Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse by Sheri S. Tepper, 1989.

Warning ~ a crabby review because I was especially narked that Marianne's baby didn't arrive during this escapade. I was more polite on the book's work page...

Not nearly as engaging as Book 1, Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore (and I have yet to get my grubby mitts on Book 2). A novel written, for the most part, as playing on a game board. The premise was less than enthralling. Perhaps a pushy book agent or a publisher was the incentive for the novel (rather than the author). Most of the time, the story felt contrived as in "the continuing saga of heroine X..."

My main difficulty in feeling drawn into the plot lay with there not being enough indication as to what 'creatures' Marianne and her companions had been changed into. Eventually, with a lot of skimming back and forth (yeah, totally ruins a story), I contrived to follow the plot ~ but by then, meh! did I care?

From time to time, the narrative pops out of the board-game milieu and into the world from the first novel. We then enjoy Makr Avehl's exploits chasing around in the strange world of Cattermune's devising. By Chapter 21, Makr Avehl in dragon form, brings the novel back into a more enjoyable tale and the resolution follows a somewhat scripted dénouement. I would have liked the characterizations a lot more had Tepper devised less of a man rescues woman scenario, but the plot is reflective of a 1980's theme, so has to be taken with that frame of reference.

1976? That’s impressive, and also makes its demise perhaps a wee bit less surprising

>72 SandyAMcPherson: Sorry you had so many issues with this. I loved the game story line with Marianne's first host. But it's not in the same class as the first book.

Your dead chest freezer is Ryan Reynolds's age. It owed you nothing.

The grump-reviews each made perfect sense to me. Just not up to snuff, eh what? I expect I'll see you around in 2020, it's too hard *just* to lurk.

>75 richardderus: What??! You mean I can't take it back?

PS. Ummm, who is Ryan Reynolds?

My reading stats lifted from Goodreads...



Courtesy of Roni because she had such a cool 2019 display.

I don't have all 108 books that I read this year inputted to GR but now that I know there are these ready-made visuals, I've some incentive to add every book from now on. The biggest flaw with GR is that if you have quite old books to list (like my 1908 Two Dianas in Somaliland or some quite rare publications), these don't display properly. However, still worth the fun of visuals!

Glad you were able to figure out the screenshot! This is the second year I have religiously recorded my reads on Goodreads, and it's all because some other LTer displayed this great graphic!

Happy new year, Sandy. Do you have a 2020 thread yet? Let me know so I can star it!

My last book of the year, which I just finished this afternoon, just went into the LT catalogue:

By Patricia Wrede, Snow White and Rose Red.



I guess this is a major record for me: 109 books read. I'm surprised...

OK... Later this evening I'll start my 2020 page.
I hope y'all star it and visit often!

Happy New Year!
My 2020 75-book challenge thread is here