December 2024 Reads

I am almost finished with The Vanishing Kind, a Novel of Suspense by Alice Henderson.

I have finished 3 books so far in Dec
The Paris Apartment
Strange Folk by Alli Dyer
Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story
now reading
The Third Wife of Faraday House and
The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

Finished The Vanishing Kind by Alice Henderson.
Reading Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier.

I started Ansuz by Marlens Salvsten I won from LT. I am going to finish the books I stated in December for my challenges in 2025.

I re-read The Mirror and the Light in parallel with the BBC tv series.

I re-read Small Things Like These for Christmas.

Finally finished Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile by the explorer John Hanning Speke. It was tough going - more than 600 pages, a faithful reproduction of his 1863 journal, and it reads as a journal rather than a narrative. Some of it is a bit dull and repetitive, and its frustrating that of course he used place names as they were known at the time, but which are no longer in use, so even though I know that area quite well, I was unable to follow some bits of his journey easily. I was in that part of northern Uganda for a few days just a couple of weeks ago, and it was interesting to compare it as it is now with how it was then. Many of his anthropogical and other observations are questionable to say the least, but that was the state of knowledge during that period. The less said about his attitude to the indigenous inhabitants of the land, the better, although he was less abusive than many of his contemporaries. All in all an excellent and interesting read, an important historical record.

I read a few books this month, but the best was Tracy Kidder's book, Rough Sleepers. Highly recommended.

I only read one book this month, but it was a fun one - John Scalzi's Starter Villain. It's definitely required reading for cat lovers!

I have a number of books I will finish in January.

Pat Barker's The Voyage Home tells the story of Agamemnon's voyage home accompanied by Cassandra, and we all know how that turned out. Good, but not among Barker's best, I think.

Andrew Krivak's Like the Appearance of Horses is the third (and I should think last) in the series that began with The Sojourn. Krivak writes beautifully and has made his inter-generational trilogy a history of the twentieth century.

>3 mnleona: I love Jamaica Inn! Hope you enjoyed it.

>12 Hope_H: I did. It was somewhat different than the movie.