Chatterbox Tackles Her TBR Mountain in 2026

Painting: "Swamped", Peter Doig, 1990

Untitled – Poem (1968)

Muriel Rukeyser
1913-1980

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

Back for another year... I've lost track of the time I've spent in this group, but think my debut was 2010. All I can say is that yet again, I posted less and read less than I had hoped in 2025, although I was far better at the latter (reading is my default mode) than the former.

My name is Suzanne; I live in Rhode Island with two cats and possibly soon to be three cats, and lots of books. Far too many books, so once again my New Year's Resolution (yes, capitalized because of its importance!) is to diminish the physical TBR mountain to a point where whoever has to manage clearing out my apartment whenever I pass on to the library in the sky doesn't end up in a loony bin.

It has been an utterly insane year. It was my second full year as a staff reporter, aka "correspondent", at Reuters, covering financial markets, and thanks to our new administration here, the state of the world and other things, it has been literally non-stop. I'd schedule time off only to find myself working, and I think I worked every single weekend in the first five months of 2025. The good news is that my editors still love me; the bad news is that I'm approaching burnout. When I managed to get away, it was for tiny windows of time -- a few days in northern Ontario, which was wonderful even thought the occasion was to scatter my father's ashes in the French River; a week in the Yucatan, Mexico in December. Where I ended up rescuing a tiny black kitten from a plaza in a small Mexican town; Max, aka "Mini-Max", was too small to be vaccinated and brought back with me (he was only five weeks old, the vet thought), so I found him a foster home with the help of the driver I had hired to get me from point A to point B, and will fly down to pick him up in February. Hoping that the resident felines, future 'grandpa' Sir Fergus and diva 'mom' Minka, aged about 14 and 6 respectively, can tolerate a hyperactive kitten. If not, I DO have a plan B.

Having a demanding full-time job has eaten into my reading -- for the second time in at least a decade I fell well short of my target of 401 books (or at least 365... one daily). I made it to 339 last year, it's unlikely I'll even match that in 2025!

We'll see how life unfolds in 2026. Work is lilkely to stay insane, but I will have to take some medical leave, starting with two days in early January, as I deal with a diagnosis of severe lumbar stenosis. Basically, spinal arthritis became so severe over years I spent arguing with my primary care doctor that I needed an MRI that walking more than a block without pain is now almost impossible and after about 3 blocks, my left foot and leg go numb/have shooting pains. My orthopedist is urgently recommending surgery, though I'm praying that a cortisone epidural will make things a bit more manageable and allow me to postpone/avoid that, with the weeks off work and months of recovery they tell me would be involved. But this is not sustainable, the pain is more persistant and severe than it was even six months ago, in spite of physio and anti-inflammatories. Blech. One result is that i don't get to the Providence Athenaeum as frequently as I used to, so I'm making fewer serendipitous book discoveries.

Which means I MAY have more time to post about my reading in 2026 as well as simply logging it. Still, if I disappear for a few weeks, it's probably because the combination of work and medical stuff means I have zero bandwidth for anything else.

The art? That's by a contemporary artist whose landscape works I love, as they bridge abstraction and representation. The poem? I know, a bit downbeat -- but it's a reminder that we've lived through periods that felt insuperable before, and survived. Muriel Rukeyser was an activist/poet, whose poetry can sound almost like essays in verse.

I'd like to read more poetry this year, as well as chip away at all the advance review copies stashed in various places in my home that can be dropped off at a Little Free Library (my version of the worldwide cat distribution system is the worldwide BOOK distribution system.) I always end up re-reading books, but try to balance that with new stuff that strikes me as interesting or books that struck me as interesting a few years ago but that now languish on shelves or my Kindle(s) unread...

You can keep track of what I'm reading by checking the lists below or searching my library for the "Read in 2026" tag. I'm VERY bad at discussing individual books in detail, though I will post my "best of 2025" list below soonish, with notes... :-) And if you have any questions, just ping me, either below or in DMs.

Happy reading to all!

Here's my current reading list...

This is where you can find an ongoing list of what I'm reading. I always read far more than 75 books; this year I'll make a nod in the direction of reality by scaling back my prior target (401 books) to a new one (350) that is still more than I managed in either of the last two years.

To see what I have been reading in real time, your best bet is to go to my library on LT, and look at the dedicated collection I've established there, under the label "Books Read in 2026". As I complete a book, I'll rate it and add it to the list. I'll also tag it, "Read in 2026". You'll be able to see it by either searching under that tag, or clicking on https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Chatterbox/booksreadin2026.

I do have some reading objectives, noted under a variety of categories in subsequent posts, below. These are purely aspirational!!

Here's a quick guide to my star ratings, which are very definitely personal and idiosyncratic.

My guide to my ratings:

1.5 or less: A tree gave its life so that this book could be printed and distributed?
1.5 to 2.7: Are you really prepared to give up hours of your life for this?? I wouldn't recommend doing so...
2.8 to 3.3: Do you need something to fill in some time waiting to see the dentist? Either reasonably good within a ho-hum genre (chick lit or thrillers), something that's OK to read when you've nothing else with you, or that you'll find adequate to pass the time and forget later on.
3.4 to 3.8: Want to know what a thumping good read is like, or a book that has a fascinating premise, but doesn't quite deliver? This is where you'll find 'em.
3.9 to 4.4: So, you want a hearty endorsement? These books have what it takes to make me happy I read them.
4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes sentimental faves, sometimes dramatic, sometimes so astonishingly well-written that they make me swoon. Always transformative and memorable

The January List:

1. The Predicament by William Boyd (finished 1/1/26) 4.35 stars
2. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (finished 1/1/26) 4.5 stars
3. Evensong by Stewart O'Nan (finished 1/2/26) 4.4 stars
4. Dead Ringer by Chris Hauty (finished 1/2/26) 3 stars (A)
5. The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge by Nic Dunlop (finished 1/3/26) 4.4 stars
6. *The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry (finished 1/3/26) 3.5 stars (A)
7. Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge (finished 1/4/26) 3.7 stars
8. End Game by Jeffrey Archer (finished 1/6/26) 3.4 stars
9. Kindred by Octavia Butler (finished 1/7/26) 4.35 stars
10. The Spy in the Archive by Gordon Corera (finished 1/8/26) 4.15 stars (A)
11. It's Getting Dark by Peter Stamm (finished 1/8/26) 4.2 stars
12. *The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell (finished 1/9/26) 3.75 stars
13. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight (finished 1/10/26) 4.3 stars
14. Matterhorn by Christopher Reich (finished 1/10/26) 3.4 stars (A)
15. Providence by Caroline Kepnes (finished 1/11/26) 3.7 stars
16. Death Before Compline by Sharan Newman (finished 1/12/26) 3.7 stars
17. One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El-Akkad (finished 1/14/26) 4.8 stars (A)
18. Countdown to Pearl Harbor by Steve Twomey (finished 1/16/26) 4.2 stars (A)
19. The Persian by David McCloskey (finished 1/16/26) 4 stars
20. Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean (finished 1/18/26) 4 stars
21. Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather (finished 1/18/26) 4.2 stars
22. Odd Child Out by Gilly Macmillan (finished 1/19/26) 3.45 stars
23. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (finished 1/19/26) 4.3 stars
24. Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee (finished 1/20/26) 5 stars (A)
25. A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews (finished 1/21/26) 4 stars
26. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean (finished 1/22/26) 3.5 stars
27. Nun Shall Sleep by Graham Brack (finished 1/24/26) 3.5 stars
28. Jane and Dorothy by Marian Veevers (finished 1/24/26) 4.25 stars
29. The Cambodia File by Jack Anderson (finished 1/25/26) 3.45 stars
30. Murderland by Caroline Fraser (finished 1/27/26) 4.3 stars (A)
31. Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey (finished 1/28/26) 3.8 stars
32. The Queen Who Came in From the Cold by SJ Bennett (finished 1/29/26) 3.9 stars
33. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (finished 1/30/26) 4.2 stars
34. Heart the Lover by Lily King (finished 1/31/26) 5 stars

The February list:

35. On the Back of a Tiger by Zülfü Livaneli (finished 2/1/26) 4.25 stars
36. *Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough (finished 2/5/26) 3.9 stars
37. Hated by All the Right People by Jason Zengerle (finished 2/7/26) 4.1 stars (A)
38. The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes (finished 2/9/26) 4.2 stars
39. The Cormorant Hunt by Michael Idov (finished 2/10/26) 4.2 stars
40. Cromwell's Spy: From the American Colonies to the English Civil War: The Life of George Downing by Dennis Sewell (finished 2/12/26) 3.9 stars (A)
41. The Right to Remain by James Grippando (finished 2/14/26) 3.9 stars (A)
42. Matisse at War by Christopher Gorham (finished 2/14/26) 3.7 stars
43. Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (finished 2/15/26) 4.35 stars
44. *84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (finished 2/15/26) 4.4 stars (A)
45. For Services Rendered by Will Thomas (finished 2/16/26) 3.8 stars
46. The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s by Jason Burke (finished 2/18/26) 4.4 stars (A)
47. Journey to Nowhere: a New World Tragedy by Shiva Naipaul (finished 2/20/26) 4.3 stars
48. *The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye (finished 2/22/26) 3.8 stars (A)
49. Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing by Nicholas Meyer (finished 2/23/26) 3.3 stars
50. Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham (finished 2/24/26) 4.2 stars
51. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (finished 2/24/26) 4.35 stars
52. Sorry Not Sorry by Mark Critch (finished 2/25/26) 4.1 stars
53. Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy by Max Hastings (finished 2/26/26) 4.3 stars (A)
54. Please Look After Mom by Kyung Sook-Shin (finished 2/27/26) 4.4 stars
55. Short LIfe in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels by Toby Ferris (finished 2/27/26) 4.35 stars
56. Tata by Valerie Perrin (finished 2/28/26) 4.8 stars

The March list:

57. The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria by Laura Joh Rowland (finished 3/1/26) 3.7 stars
58. Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World by Julia Cooke (finished 3/2/26) 4.8 stars (A)
59. *Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (finished 3/4/26) 4.35 stars (A)
60. Monopoly X by Philip E. Orbanes (finished 3/5/26) 3.4 stars
61. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharas (finished 3/6/26) 5 stars (A)
62. The Invitation by Veronica Henry (finished 3/6/26) 3.85 stars
63. *The Etruscan Net by Michael Gilbert. (finished 3/7/26) 4 stars
64. Shadows of Ghadames by Joelle Stoltz (finished 3/7/26) 3.3 stars
65. The Messenger Cat Café by Nagi Shimeno (finished 3/7/26) 3.35 stars
66. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (finished 3/8/26) 4.85 stars
67. The American School of Spies by Stephan Talty (finished 3/8/26) 3.9 stars
68. *Blood Royal by Vanora Bennett (finished 3/9/26) 3.9 stars
69. The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (finished 3/11/26) 4.15 stars
70. *A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor (finished 3/12/26) 4.2 stars (A)
71. The City in Year Zero by Michael Russell (finished 3/13/26) 4.2 stars
72. Entitled by Andrew Lownie (finished 3/17/26) 3.3 stars
73. The Plato Papers by Peter Ackroyd (finished 3/18/26) 3.8 stars
74. The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (finished 3/19/26) 4.3 stars
75. The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens (finished 3/21/26) 4.2 stars
76. Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (finished 3/21/26) 4.3 stars (partly A)
77. The Resistance Painter by Kath Jonathan (finished 3/22/26) 3.6 stars
78. Under the Falls by Richard Russo (finished 3/24/26) 4.3 stars
79. The Unpleasantness at Netherfield by Claudia Gray (finished 3/25/26) 4.1 stars
80. Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden (finished 3/25/26) 3.6 stars (A)
81. Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist by Geoffrey Kelly (finished 3/26/26) 4.3 stars (A)
82. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick (finished 3/26/26) 4.65 stars
83. A Murder in Springtime by Martin Walker (finished 3/27/26) 3.8 stars
84. *The Long Journey Home by Michael Gilbert (finished 3/28/26) 4 stars
85. We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz (finished 3/29/26) 3.65 stars
86. The Teachers by Alexandra Robbins (finished 3/30/26) 4 stars
87. Storm Child by Michael Robotham (finished 3/31/26) 4.1 stars

The April list:

88. The Tourists by Christopher Reich (finished 4/2/26) 3.4 stars (A)
89. *101 Dalmations by Dodie Smith (finished 4/3/26) 4.15 stars
90. This is Assisted Dying by Stefanie Green (finished 4/3/26) 4.2 stars
91. Eleanor by Alice Loxton (finished 4/4/26) 3.95. stars (A)
92. This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman (finished 4/4/26) 3.7 stars
93. Sisters in Death by Eli Frankel (finished 4/5/26) 3.45 stars
94. Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945 by Ian Buruma (finished 4/6/26) 4.3 stars (A)
95. The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia by Robert Kolker (finished 4/6/26) 4.5 stars
96. The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa (finished 4/7/26) 3.25 stars
97. West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan (finished 4/8/26) 4.2 stars
98. Imperfect Women by Araminta Hall (finished 4/9/26) 4.2 stars
99. The Queen's Companion by Lucy Pick (finished 4/9/26) 4.3 stars
100. The Bureau of Unknown Fates by Gaêlle Nohant (finished 4/10/26) 4.3 stars
101. The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (finished 4/10/26) 3.7 stars
102. The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral into Madness Under Putin by Marc Bennetts (finished 4/11/26) 4.15 stars (A)
103. The News From Dublin by Colm Toibin (finished 4/11/26) 4.2 stars
104. The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston (finished 4/13/26) 3.85 stars (A)
105. Putin's Sledgehammer by Candice Rondeaux (finished 4/14/26) 4 stars (A)
106. The Last Woman of Warsaw by Judy Batalion (finished 4/16/26) 3.3 stars
107. Skylark by Paula McLain (finished 4/17/26) 4.1 stars
108. Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams (finished 4/18/26) 3.4 stars
109. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin (finished 4/18/26) 4.4 stars (A)
110. *Where Dead Men Meet by Mark Mills (finished 4/19/26) 3.9 stars (A)
111. A Nasty Little War: the Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War by Anna Reid (finished 4/20/26) 4.3 stars (A)
112. Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre (finished 4/21/26) 5 stars (A)
113. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James (finished 4/22/26) 4.4 stars (A)
114. The Hiding Season by Ava Glass (finished 4/24/26) 3.45 stars (A)
115. What the Night Brings by Mark Billingham (finished 4/26/26) 4.2 stars
116. There Will Be Bodies by Lindsey Davis (finished 4/27/26) 3.7 stars (A)
117. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (finished 4/27/26) 4.35 stars
118. A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majmudar (finished 4/29/26) 4.3 stars??
119. Medgar & Myrlie by Joy-Ann Reid (finished 4/30/26) 3.6 stars

The May list:

120. The Spy's Wife by Reginald Hill (finished 5/1/26) 4.2 stars
121. How to Disappear by Gillian McAllister (finished 5/3/26) 3.85 stars
122. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (finished 5/3/26) 4.8 stars
123. *A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfield (finished 5/5/26) 3.8 stars
124. *Shadow of the Moon by M.M.Kaye (finished 5/5/26) 3.5 stars (A)
125. The Hawk is Dead by Peter James (finished 5/6/26) 3.6 stars
126. Two Kinds of Stranger by Steve Cavanagh (finished 5/7/26) 3.9 stars
127. Awaken the Kitten Within by David Michie (finished 5/10/26) 3.7 stars
128. The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick (finished 5/11/26) 4.1 stars
129. *Last Hope Island by Lynne Olsen (finished 15/12/26) 4.4 stars (A)
130. The Killer Question by Janice Hallet (finished 15/14/26) 4 stars
131. The Fugitive Colors by Nancy Bilyeau (finished 15/15/26) 4 stars (mostly A)
132. The House of Boleyn by Tracy Borman (finished 15/16/26) 4.3 stars
133. The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives by Elizabeth Arnott (finished 15/16/26) 4.1 stars (partly A)
134. Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu (finished 15/17/26) 4.1 stars
135. The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (finished 5/18/26) 4.5 stars (partly A)
136. The Secret Sharers by Qiu Xiaolong (finished 5/19/26) 3.2 stars
137. Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler (finished 5/20/26) 4 stars (A)
138. *The Reckoning by Rennie Airth (finished 5/21/26) 4.35 stars (A)
139. The Dancing Bear by Frances Faviell (finished 5/23/26) 3.6 stars
140. Are you There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
(finished 5/24/26) 3.7 stars
141. The Star From Calcutta by Sujata Massey (finished 5/25/26) 3.85 stars
142. Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict (finished 5/25/26) 2.9 stars
143. The Great Museum of the Sea: a Human History of Shipwrecks by James Delgado (finished 5/26/26) 4 stars
144. *Class Reunion by Rona Jaffe (finished 5/27/26) 3.7 stars
145. A History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramagao (finished 5/28/26) 4.3 stars
146. The Final Target by Nora Roberts (finished 5/29/26) 3.6 stars
147. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (finished 5/30/26) 4.5 stars
148. Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire by Antonia Senior (finished 5/30/26) 4.35 stars (A)
149. Ghosts of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino (finished 5/31/26) 4 stars
150. Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson (finished 5/31/26) 3.4 stars
151. The Book of I by David Grieg (finished 5/31/26) 4 stars

The June list:

152. *Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black (finished 6/1/26) 3.7 stars (A)
153. The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir (finished 6/2/26) 3.6 stars
154. Ruby Ridge by Jess Walter (finished 6/4/26) 4.35 stars (A)
155. The Last Movement by Robert Seethaler (finished 6/6/26) 4.5 stars
156. *Rainbow's End by Ellis Peters (finished 6/7/26) 3.6 stars (A)
157. Tom Paine's War by Jack Kelley (finished 6/8/26) 4.35 stars (A)
158. The Subtle Pleasures of Indiscretion by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 6/9/26) 3.75 stars
159. *Kinfolk by Pearl Buck (finished 6/9/26) 3.65 stars
160. The Wall Dancers by Yi-Ling Yu (finished 6/10/26) 4.2 stars
161. Night Flight to Paris by Cara Black (finished 6/10/26) 3.3 stars (A)
162. Fox and I by Catherine Raven (finished 6/13/26) 4.15 stars
163. This Changes Everything by Lisa Scottoline (finished 6/13/26) 3.6 stars
164. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (finished 6/14/26) 4.45 stars
165.

* - Re-read
(A) -- Audiobook

Reserved: for the list for the second half of 2026

Best Books of 2025:

The Fiction List:

Woodsburner – John Pipkin
I’ve had this novel about Thoreau’s misadventures and their impact on his community on my shelf for a long time. Excellent read….

The Dream Hotel – Laila Lalami
A creative take on the world into which we may be heading, as AI sweeps across the universe.

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
A group of people on a train bound for disaster. Donoghue makes it unputdownable.

The Book Censor’s Library – Bothayna al-Essa
An author I’d never heard of; a dystopian book that I’ll never forget.

Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy
One of my relatively recent discoveries, this novelist never disappoints when it comes to delivering thought-provoking ideas about our climate wrapped into a compelling narrative.

Is Mother Dead – Vigdis Hjorth
Well, there’s a title for you… Family estrangement; over the course of the novel the layers of the story are peeled away.

The Silence of the Choir – Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
Another author who can’t put a foot wrong. This time he tackles the plight of an ill-assorted group of African migrants/refugees in a small Italian town.

What We Can Know – Ian MacEwan
A tale about a literary dinner party, held in our present day world, and how it became legendary in a future world irrevocably altered by climate change.

A Tiger for Malgudi – R.K. Narayan
How on earth did I miss Narayan previously?? Planning to read more of his Malgudi books soon!

A Dog in Georgia – Lauren Grodstein
Slightly lighter fare. A woman who is confronting domestic change does something REALLY drastic by hopping a plane to Tbilisi

The Eleventh Hour – Salman Rushdie
A collection of short stories about the dying and soon to be dead. If you think that’s bleak, you don’t know Rushdie’s way of spinning a yarn. I especially relished the story about the academic ghost....

The Non-Fiction List:

Patriot – Alexei Navalny

A tough read, but much to admire here in terms of its author's courage and commitment.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf – Rebecca Rowley

What did Jane Austen read? Rowley introduces us to some of her predecessors and peers; including people I’ve never heard of. Fascinating

Careless People – Sarah Wynn-Williams

Lots of buzz surrounding this insider look at Facebook. The author’s transformation from eager idealist to disillusioned employee is sad, but there is much to think about here.

Murder the Truth – David Enrich

Pretty much a must-read for journalists navigating an increasingly thorny world.

Every Living Thing – Jason Roberts

Once upon a time (in the 18th century), two men competed to come up with a system for categorizing life. I’m fascinated by the last period of time when it felt possible to have such a breathtaking ambition – to organize ALL knowledge.

A History of Canada in 10 Maps – Adam Shoalts

Seriously, lots of fun for this geography/geopolitics geek and dual US/Canadian citizen.

Dark Renaissance – Stephen Greenblatt

I loved Greenblatt’s “The Swerve”, about one of my personal heroes, 15th century bookhunter Poggio Bracciolini. This behind the scenes look at Kit Marlowe is ALMOST as good.

The Gales of November – John U. Bacon

Because I grew up hearing altogether too much of the Gordon Lightfoot song about the Edmund Fitzgerald, of course, I had to read this – and it was an absolutely fascinating look at the Great Lakes.

Stranger in the Shogun’s City – Amy Stanley

The author does a fab job of piecing together the life story of a misfit woman in Tokugawa-era Japan. For those who read Clavell’s “Shogun” and think they understand Japan before Matthew Perry’s arrival forced it open to the west, this will be a wake-up call (and a thumping good read for history buffs.)

READING GOALS I

New, new things
New/just-published/upcoming books

No Friend to This House – Natalie Haynes
The Last of Earth – Deepa Anappara
Heart the Lover by Lily King Read
The Loneliness of Sonny and Sonia – Kiran Desai
Flashlight - Susan Choi
So far Gone – Jess Walter
Parallel Lines – Edward St. Aubyn
The Predicament - William Boyd Read
Vigil – George Saunders
This is Not About Us - Allegra Goodman Read

New -- to me, at least
Books by debut writers or new to me authors

The Pillagers' Guide to Antique Pianos -- Kendra Langford Shaw
Workhorse – Caroline Palmer
All the Colours of the Dark – Chris Whitaker
Boring Asian Female - Canwen Xu Read
The Correspondent - Virginia Evans Read
Leverage – Amran Gowani
Yesteryear – Caro Claire Burke
The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives – Elizabeth Arnott Read
Rapture – Emily Maguire
The First Friend – Malcolm Knox
Night Swimmers – Roisin Maguire

The real thing
Nonfiction reading

In Trees: An Exploration – Robert Moor
The Stolen Crown – Tracey Borman
Angelica – Molly Beer
The Great Museum of the Sea – James Delgado
Unabridged – Stefan Fatsis
The Perfect Tuba – Sam Quinones
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove - Barbara Demick Read
The Revolutionists -- Jason Burke
Dinner with King Tut – Sam Kean Read
Noble Fragments – Michael Visontay
Paris in Ruins by Sebastian Smee Read

Canadian content
Books by Canadian authors

On Isabella Street – Genevieve Graham
Real Ones – Katherena Vermette
This is How We Love – Lisa Moore
A Truce That is Not Peace - Miriam Toews Read
The Wagers - Sean Michaels
The Book of Records – Madeleine Thien
Pick a Color – Souvankham Thammavongsa
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus – Emma Knight Read

READING GOALS II

Mysteries and Thrillers
Chills and excitement...

Hang on St. Christopher – Adrian McKinty
There Will Be Bodies – Lindsey Davis Read
Voices of the Dead – Ambrose Parry
The Fatal Unpleasantness at Netherfield - Claudia Grey Read
The Good Liar – Denise Mina
Right to Remain - James Grippando Read
The God of the Woods - Liz Moore
What the Night Brings by Mark Billingham Read
The Killer Question - Janice Hallett Read
The Black Wolf - Louise Penny
Dead Ringer by Chris Hauty Read
Just Another Dead Author - Katarina Bivald

Around the World in a Dozen Books
Reading globally; books from beyond North America/UK

When the Cranes Fly South – Lisa Ridzen (Sweden)
The Dinner Party – Viola van der Sandt (Netherlands)
Beasts of the Sea – Iida Turpeinen (Finland)
I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman (Belgium) Read
The Complex – Karan Mahajan (India)
On the Back of a Tiger - Zülfü Livaneli (Turkey) Read
Floodlines – Saleem Haddad (Lebanon)
Everyday Movement – Gigi Leung (China/Hong Kong)
The Disappearing Act – Maria Stepanova (Russia)
Eating Ashes – Brenda Navarro (Mexico)
The Thinning – Inga Simpson (Australia)
It's Getting Dark - Peter Stamm (Switzerland) Read

The World We Live in
Current events and the challenges they create for us; a nonfiction challenge

Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia – Julia Ioffe
The Wall Dancers – Yi-Ling Yu Read
Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane
Looking at Women Looking at War – Victoria Amelina
London Falling – Patrick Radden Keefe Read
One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This - Omar el-Akkad Read
Getting to Reparations – Dorothy Brown
We Survived the Night – Julian Brave Noise Cat
Mother Emanuel by Kevin Sack

Europa Mania
Books from one of my fave publishers, Europa Editions

Tata – Valerie Perrin
Ashland – Dan Simon
The Last Movement - Robert Seethaler Read
Shelter in Place – Alexander Maksik
The Book of I – David Greig Read
Vulture – Phoebe Greenwood
The Rarest Fruit - Gaêlle Bélem
Madelaine Before the Dawn – Sandrine Collette
A Mask the Colour of the Sky – Baseem Khandaqji
Tangerinn – Emanuela Anechoum

READING GOALS III

On the Lighter Side
Books with little to no nutritional value whatsoever

Under the Stars - Beatriz Williams
The Last Woman of Warsaw – Judy Batalion Read
The House of Boleyn - Tracy Borman Read
The Valley of Ravens - Barbara Erskine
The Book of Lost Stories - Trisha Ashley
The Astral Library - Kate Quinn Read
The Invitation - Veronica Henry Read
An Ideal Husband - Erica James

Get these ARCs Off My Shelves!
Tackline the TBR stalagmite/creating shelf space

The House of Beauty – Arabelle Sicardi
Merge – Grace Walker
Suspect – Scott Turow
Letters to Kafka - Christine Estim
The Medici Curse - Daco Auffenorde
A Disappearance in Fiji - Nilima Rao
Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing by Nicholas Meyer Read
The Life We Bury - Allen Eskens Read
Providence -- Caroline Kepnes Read
If I Forget You -- Thomas Christopher Greene
The Darkling Bride - Laura Andersen

Biography and Memoir
Kinda self-evident...

Matisse at War by Christopher Gorham Read
Storyteller: the Life of Robert Louis Stevenson - Leo Damrosch
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion Read
The Aviator and the Showman - Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Medgar & Myrlie - Joy-Ann Reid Read
The Rebel Romanov - Helen Rappaport
The Last Adieu - Ryan Cole
Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor - Donald Robertson
Raising Hare - Chloe Dalton Read
We Loved It All - Lydia Millet
The Boundless Deep - Richard Holmes

Wall of Shame
Books universally praised, critically hailed or by 'important' writers that I've not read (yet)

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence
Kindred - Octavia Butler Read
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon DNF
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
The Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Projects/Work
Books that I am reading either for work purposes or because I've got a side project underway

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History by Andrew Ross Sorkin Read
Taming the Street by Diana Henriques
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf
The Twilight Before the Storm by Viktor Shvets
What Went Wrong With Capitalism by Ruchir Sharma
The Spy in the Archive by Gordon Corera Read
The Impossible Bomb by Gareth Williams
How the Cold War Began by Amy Knight
The Gouzenko Transcripts (anthology edited by Robert Bothwell

READING GOALS IV

Fantastical/Dystopian/Time-Traveling Worlds
In a world that isn't our own...

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson Read
The Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
The Paradox Hotel - Rob Hart
Shock Induction - Chuck Palahniuk
There's Something Wrong with the Cats - C.J. Powell

Big Adventures
Exploration -- both literal and intellectual, a place where travel, adventure and philosophy meet

Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell
Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness by Adam Weymouth
On the Shadow Tracks by Clare Hammond
Knowing What We Know by Simon Winchester
The Amber Route by C.J. Schuler
Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know by Mark Lilla
How to Be: Life Lessons From the Early Greeks by Adam Nicolson
Deep South by Paul Theroux
Vanished Beyond the Map by Adam Shoalts

Historical Fiction
Novels set in worlds/eras that have passed into history

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The Hollow Crown by Helen Holllick Read
The Queen's Companion by Lucy Pick Read
Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet
The Pretender - Jo Harkin
Hope and Destiny - Niklas Natt och Dag
The Shadowed Land - Signe Pike
Cities of Women - Kathleen Jones
Canticle - Janet Rich Edwards
Blood Royal - Vanora Bennett Read

Book Bullets
Purely aspirational reading, or my version of the 2026 "Black Hole"

Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan (vivians)
House of All Nations by Christina Stead (avatiakh)

Welcome back!

Happy New Year! I'm looking forward to hearing about Max. My SIL has family scattered through the Yucatan Peninsula, and several of them are here visiting me in Tennessee this week.

From your reading goals, Dinner with King Tut caught my eye. I'll be curious to see what you think of it.

>10 drneutron: Hi Carrie! We should do a shared read of The Makioka Sisters sometime this year; while doing your Santa purchases, I accidentally forgot to modify addresses in my Abebooks cart, and this was the only book I couldn't redirect to you, so I got a copy as well! I started reading it when I lived in Japan and really enjoyed it, but think I ended up getting bogged down, so I'm going to try again. In recent months, I've done the same with Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse and plan to tackle some other Meiji and later Japanese 'classic' novels.

Getting Max here will be an epic. First, I need to get a new birth certificate. Then, I can use that to get a new US passport. THEN I can book travel and sort out logistics. Good grief. My Canadian passport is still valid, but I don't want to have to argue with Logan airport immigration about THAT when I also have a kitten to import. TWO "migrants", one of 'em feline, might prove two too many for the authorities...

>12 Chatterbox: I would love to do a shared read! I'm already overcommitted for January, so maybe in the spring?

>13 cbl_tn: sounds like a plan! No urgency on my end...

Welcome back Suz. xx

I can imagine that your year at work was quite taxing because of the unexpected taking place so often. I hope things settle down a bit for you.

New Year greetings from Kuala Lumpur. My project is at least physically completed and an addition to the city scape.

Look forward to keeping up with you in 2026

Sorry to hear about your health and pain issues.

I was interested to read the Muriel Rukeyser poem at the top of your thread, as I've just read a novel in which this activist and poet is one of the main characters. Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward is to be published next month I think (I read a Netgalley) and focuses on three women - Muriel Rukeyser, Andrea Dworkin and a woman who I think is fictional - Chomsky and Foucault have significant supporting roles in the narrative.

Hi Suzanne! Happy New Year. I hope it's a year with less pain and more pleasure. Hard to pace yourself when the job intersects with the political mania these days, but is sounds like you need some time protected from work. Hope you can work that out.

>18 elkiedee: Thanks for the book bullet! I've flagged it to add to my UK Kindle in February when it's published. It sounds intriguing...

>19 ffortsa: Yes, really hoping for a better balancing act in 2026. Part of the struggle is that we've lost a few people over the last 12 months or so, and they haven't been replaced and I don't think will be. So that means we've got fewer folks and the news flow never ever ever stops. I'm trying to be more disciplined about shutting down at an earlier time of day especially since my editor keeps pinging me at 7 am every morning.

But any reduction in pain would be a BIG win.

The ubiquitous end of year meme; answers in the form of books I read in 2025.

Describe yourself: Lucky (Jane Smiley)

Describe how you feel: Guilty by Definition (Susie Dent)

Describe where you currently live: The Dream Hotel (Laila Lalami)

Your favorite time of day is: The Eleventh Hour (Salman Rushdie)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Canoe Lake (Roy MacGregor)

Your favorite form of transportation: The Winds From Further West (Alexander McCall Smith

Your best friend is: The Marchesa (Sarah Dunant)

You and your friends are: Magnificent Rebels (Andrea Wulf)

Describe your job: The Ghostwriter (Julie Clark)

What are you eating: White Chrysanthemums (Mary Lynn Bracht)

What’s the weather like: A Bitter Wind (James Benn)

You fear: The Moon of the Crusted Snow (Waubgeshig Rice)

What is the best advice you have to give: Show Don’t Tell (Curtis Sittenfeld)

Thought for the day: Everyone Who is Gone is Here (Jonathan Blitzer)

How you would like to die: Night Crossing (Robert Ryan)

Your soul’s present condition: Awake in the Floating City (Susanna Kwan)

What is life for you: This Strange Eventful History (Claire Messud)

Great meme answers!

>21 Chatterbox: Love these answers! all good wishes for the new year, Suzanne

All good wishes for 2026, Suzanne. I love to follow your reading, but it's hard to catch up. I wish you more time and a lot less pain without surgery.... and a happy feline addition.

I love when you're able to find book titles that reflect real life for the memes. Have you done any ghostwriting during you career?

Last year my "describe yourself" was Sister Carrie. It's even spelled correctly!

>26 cbl_tn: Yes, indeed, have done some ghost-writing or co-writing. I've co-written/ghosted two books, one of which I'm credited on as a co-author, and have done some memoir projects before I joined Reuters, as part of an attempt to set up a business along those lines. I tried to set that up with a friend, but we had very different ideas of how to build it and very different views of good writing (I joke that she never met a preposition she couldn't misuse; she jokes that I never re-read stuff that I've drafted....) so she pulled out to focus on other stuff and I moved back to full time daily journalism. I just finished off my last major project -- a memoir of a woman born to a Jewish family in 1936 in Warsaw, and how her family members survived the war -- last year.

The fit for some of the memes can be tough; I always seem to stumble over the food one!

>24 magicians_nephew: >25 LizzieD: Hi Jim & Peggy! Happy 2026 to both of you...

Flagging something that may interest folks. There's going to be an online screening of "The Librarians", a documentary that has gotten a lot of attention and praise on the festival circuit, about the librarians fighting book banning.

For those in the US only, alas. $15 to watch. January 10 (Saturday), 5 pm Eastern. I'm planning to watch this; have been eagerly awaiting a chance to see it.

https://kinema.com/events/The-Librarians:-Screening-and-Virtual-%22Right-To-Read...

>27 Chatterbox: I thought you might have! It sounds like you and your friend have different strengths. Writing style is so personal that compatibility is important.

I had a life-changing visit to Dachau in college and I have gravitated toward Holocaust memoirs ever since. Your latest project sounds like one I would appreciate.

>28 Chatterbox: Thanks for the tip. We'll be watching. Judy's sister was a university librarian in her working days.

>28 Chatterbox: - Happy new year and new thread, Suzanne.

I saw *The Librarians* here in Toronto at our local documentary theatre (Hot Docs) a few months ago. Very powerful. Insane and terrifying, in one way, of course, but I have so much respect for those librarians brave enough to stand up for the right to read and for the right of libraries to bring that right to EVERYONE. Some of (all of) those right wing nutbars are beyond belief in their politics but I guess that is what the right wing is these days. Afraid of truth, afraid of anything and everything that doesn't conform to their narrow vision and how they might be challenged to think beyond it. One thing is for sure: none of them could ever be an LTer!

On book banning, I'm quite worried about what may happen here - Reform has already won a number of county councils and have talked about taking unsuitable books out of libraries. I fear we might be heading back to the days of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1990 (I think), which prohibited local councils from "promoting homosexuality" - but I think Reform might want to move on to books which show sympathy for immigrants and all kinds of other things.

>32 elkiedee: Yes, I think the core problem is the authoritarian thinking that shapes what can or can't be read/consumed/made available to readers. Obviously there are suitability issues, but politicians willing to assume the financial sector can self-regulate should surely extend the same assumption to professional librarians?? But the core problem is that authoritarianism -- the view that people cannot be trusted to think independently. How it takes shape -- what specific books are banned -- may differ depending on the political context, so here it's the moral panic of "sexualizing children", whereas in Europe it could well be sympathetic views of multiculturalism and immigraiton. Sigh.

One of the things I'm most grateful to my parents for is the fact that they never once attempted to censor my reading. I became a bibliomaniac in the summer of 1969, when I was 7 and my brother developed months and I ended up stuck indoors in "quarantine". Within a month or so I had gone from the typical first grader elementary books to books a few years above my age range and by August, I picked up a copy of Anne Frank's Diary when we went to Amsterdam. Which brings me to....

>29 cbl_tn: The same summer we visited Munich and Dachau. AFTER I had read the diary. We had driven from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and then south toward Germany. At which point, I had a fit of screaming hysterics in the back seat of the car, insisting i would NOT go to the country that had killed Anne Frank. (I don't think I really understand what to be "gassed" meant, but I was quite clear on the question of what genocide was...) My father had to pull off the highway for a full two hours to calm me down, eventually (as I would later realize) lying to me that the bad Germans had all gone. Of course, this was less than 25 years after the end of the war; no such thing.

I'm currently reading The Lost Executioner by Nic Dunlop, about the Cambodian genocide. I picked it up on its publication in 2005, but was never able to get beyond the first chapter or two, as it had only been 3 years since I'd been in Cambodia and visited Tuol Sleng, the school-turned torture center-turned genocide memorial at that point, and I simply couldn't deal with it. One point that strikes me now is Dunlop's mention of the fact that per capita population, the Khmer Rouge outdid the Nazis and the Hutus as genocidal maniacs. They eradicated a greater percentage of the Cambodian population than those two groups did COMBINED. Of 11,000 university students as of 1975, 450 survived; 5,300 out of 106,000 secondary school students.

Dunlop, a photographer by profession, is particularly damning about how we view this genocide by analyzing the MoMA show of the Tuol Sleng photographs of those incarcerated and murdered there. (Out of tens of thousands, there were SEVEN survivors.) He argues that taking these out of their context and given the lack of familiarity with Cambodian history and the broader Indochina wars that produced the KR genocide, it's tantamount to objectifying them as "artistic portraiture" subjects or portraiture.

The other point he makes, which I hadn't really thought about, is the fact that when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978/early 1979, the Khmer Rouge became refugees who the international community were eager to aid. (There's a comparison there to the Hutu refugees in Congo...) No one ever wonders about who may have been admitted as refugees to the USA, etc. fleeing Vietnamese communism (supported by the Soviet Union), even as we (however belatedly) hunted down Holocaust perpetrators. There has been no comparable reckoning. A friend of mine, and the cousin of a dear friend, was one of the major players in the DOJ shepherding those initiatives, and I want to discuss this with him at some point in the future.

So I'm thinking a lot about the geopolitical questions about how/whether we acknowledge that there has been a genocide and how aggressively we pursue perpetrators. The Armenian genocide is still a subject of controversy; what happened in Myanmar with the Rohingya community still isn't widely acknowledged. And people feel much less connected to the Cambodian or Rwandan genocides than to the Holocaust. And yet if we're to understand how/why these horrors occur, we need to understand that it's some kind of human tendency that manifests in certain contexts, and not unique to any people as perpetrator or victim.

FWIW, my definition of genocide is tied to the concept of a conscious/deliberate strategy of annihilation of a people. So personally I don't consider the Irish potato famine a case of a genocide, even though I acknowledge that the British clearly didn't care less how many Irish peasants died. The same with famines in British-ruled India. There was no attempt to systematically deprive people of food, just an appalling conviction that they weren't somehow real human beings.

OK, clambering down (slowly; painfully) from my soapbox.

>31 jessibud2: I read That Librarian by a Louisiana middle-school librarian who ended up in the eye of the storm in the final days of 2025. She tells an important story, but it's so clunkily written that it astonished me. Malapropisms, misspelled slang terms, etc. etc. Badly in need of a good editor, and it kind of depressed me for that reason. I'm all in favor of writers maintaining their own voice but NOT when it's at the expense of basic competence in sentence structure, grammar, etc. It was a nails on chalkboard read for me.

I hope you've had a good start to the new year, Suzanne. I always enjoy following what you read, and so I'll be a regular visitor.

>33 Chatterbox: Nice work on the Soapbox. :)

Hi Suzanne, I am sorry to hear about your pain and the associated treatment woes. It really can be an all-encompassing thing, and with all your hours over the typewriter (feverishly producing *copy*!??!) it is no wonder you are short on your reading goals (however lofty they are).

I read more last year than in some previous years (61- have typically hovered around 50) which I out down to audio audio audio. I listen every night and now can't really not as it also serves as a soothing tool and snorer-blocking-out mechanism. Humph.

Anyway, I hope you get more breaks this year, and can soom welcome a new cat into your life!

Hi Suzanne--glad I found your thread. The art you have up top is stunning!

Sorry about your medical woes--I hope you get some relief, and good luck with the new cat adoption!

I look forward to following your reading this year.

And thanks for sharing about The Librarians--I will definitely check that out.

So, they told me not to expect too much from the steroid epidural, but I can't help being almost giddy at the initial relief I felt -- I could almost have danced out of there (well, that's due to the topical anaesthetic, which DID wear off) and for the first time in literally years, I walked with almost zero pain. Obviously, injection site pain has kicked in since then but I don't have the same kind of constant, grinding pain in my hip and lower back. I really, really hope that this is sustained. I'll start trying to walk a bit more from Thursday onward, and see what happens, and within ten days or so I should have a sense of whether it's helping. It won't solve the underlying problem, but could be a solution to the pain that allows me to defer surgery for years, potentially. The nurse told me that if I feel relief from the anaesthetic that means the epidural needle found the right spot in the joint/spinal cord.

Hurrah...

>38 Chatterbox: That sounds like good news. Fingers crossed that it keeps working its magic.

>38 Chatterbox: That's great news! I hope the pain stays away.

>33 Chatterbox: That is an interesting post, Suz. I remember my first visit to Cambodia - visiting the torture centres and the Killing Fields. Very, very unsettling the atmosphere in those places.

The Pol Pot regime was extremely diligent in its eradication programmes and the rate of killings compared to population is truly horrifying.

You are probably right about definitions of genocide but the famines brought on by the neglect and lack of care of those in authority - whether by the British Empire or others - would in these days surely be actionable as crimes against humanity.

>41 PaulCranswick: Definitely agree on the "crimes against humanity"; we've made some strides (at least conceptually/legally/morally) in accepting the idea that if you have authority over people, you have a kind of duty of care to them, in terms of their physical security. As always, the gap between the ideal and reality is the problem.

What I found so intriguing about East-West Street by Philippe Sands is the way he drew out the distinctions between crimes against humanity and genocide in legal terms in the context of WW2. His subsequent books, alas, have been rather "meh"; I was really looking forward to reading his book on the attempt to bring justice to Pinochet, but it was a bit of a turgid read, alas -- unfortunate, given the really important topic and the relative lack of books on the subject (at least in English...)

Deleting inexplicable duplicate post...

Hello Chatterbox. Happy New Year! You sounds like a busy bee, or exhausted pigeon as it were. I've been gone for a while, but now I'm back. I hope to do more reading this year as well as being active here on LT. My first book of the year is quite a pistol. Crooks by Lou Berney. Fast paced, with a whimsical, yet foreboding style, it evokes Elmore Leonard. I'll be around and hope to stop in every once in a while. I have some reading goals, but they are not half as comprehensive as yours. ;-)

Well, I may have celebrated prematurely on my back/hips, or I just have to be more patient. I tried to do the walk from my home to the local dollar store, 2 blocks each way, but by the time I got back, the pain was quite bad. Not as bad as rapidly as would have been previously, and more of a severe ache than sharp gnawing, but... Still, moving around the house and sleeping has been easier, so there's that!

And work going nuts. Though we did NOT get the supreme court ruling on Trump's tariffs today (the smart folks think the justices can't reach an agreement on how to finesse the exact decision, which everyone expects to be an overturning of the tariffs BUT with different justices having different views about the broader issue) there's plenty else happening...

I finally read Kindred, one of my LT Christmas Swap gifts from my Santa and the first book by Octavia Butler that I've read. Fascinating and thought-provoking... But my two fave books so far this month remain Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton and Evensong by Stewart O'Nan, with an honorary mention for The Predicament by William Boyd.

>I'm waiting for my copy of The Predicament because I loved Gabriel's Moon. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

>46 vivians: I hesitate to use the word "delightful" about a noir-ish book, but it was a very worthy follow up to Gabriel's Moon...

If you're getting the relief that lets you sleep, Suzanne, I'll be very, very glad for you. Ditto moving around the house. Maybe the walking will come too.

Your work is going nuts because the world is going nuttier.

And --- I really like the only S. O'Nan I read, so I'll keep *Evensong* in mind. Thanks!

>45 Chatterbox: I loved Raising Hare too, Suz, when I read it last year. I can't really put my finger on what made it such a special book.

Hope the back and hips are not giving you too much grief.

So, today was back to the orthopedist for follow up re spine/hip. Sadly, the initial benefits were very fleeting -- an amazing initial reaction was due to the anaesthetic, which at least tells us that they have the right spot, but what was about a 50% reduction in pain is now about 10%. And most of that is when I'm not trying to walk, so blech. I'll do this once more, prob in about eight to ten weeks (have to wait between cortisone injections), and after that, it's a surgery consult.

So that is depressing me, as is the fact that my insurer has decided to no longer pay for my Aimovig. So I just spent my entire budget for retrieving Max the kitten on my migraine medication, which I really need... Insurer already was spacing out authorizations for the meds, which are supposed to be every 30 days, making me wait 7 weeks in between. I'm roping in the manufacturer, our HR department, etc. etc. to get an external review going, but really... How many times do I have to fight this battle?? Now contemplating a GoFundMe for my birthday to finance Max-the-kitten retrieval. ARGH.

At least I've read some good books. My first 5-star book of 2026 was Paris in Ruins by Sebastian Smee, a pitch-perfect chronicle of life in Paris from about 1868 to 1872, incorporating the Prussian siege, Napoleon III's fall and the Commune, combined with a biography of Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet and early Impressionism. It's kind of awe-inspiring, the way the author managed to blend the personal, the historical and the artistic analysis seamlessly. I listened to the audiobook, and couldn't stop listening all last weekend.

An early contender for "wow, that was fascinating but dark and quirky" is I Who Have Never Known Men by a Belgian author, published in the late 90s and now having a new lease on life thanks to book influencers, I think. Compared by some to The Handmaid's Tale, but this is MUCH more bleak than that novel. I actually had to break away and read something completely mindless partway through to cope with the narrative... But it was fascinating, well written and well translated, and wow, the author had quite an imagination. Worth a look.

>6 Chatterbox: >7 Chatterbox: >8 Chatterbox: >9 Chatterbox: Wow! I thought I was ambitious in my reading goals for 2026. You put me to shame, Suzanne!

>21 Chatterbox: I do love that meme and the variety of answers put forth by the readers.

>50 Chatterbox: I do hope things go well for you at the orthopedist today!

>50 Chatterbox: I really enjoyed I Who Have Never Known Men—it’s the kind of book that sticks with you, isn’t it?!

Karen O

>52 klobrien2: Oh yes, it's unforgettable!

Apparently Max the kitten BROKE A CHAIR at his foster home. I mean, really? What kind of devil kitten am I about to adopt??

Hi Suzanne. I finally got an appointment with a neurologist a few months ago and she took me off the zomig I had been on for years. I now take Ubrelvy, taken as needed when I get a migraine (she said it's safer that the triptan) but perhaps more important and interesting, she also put me on a daily preventive called Candesartan. I have never been on a preventive before. I think this combo is working for me. The number of migraines has been reduced from what it used to be. It isn't cheap but I do have good coverage (80% covered by insurance; I am in Toronto, though). I think it's about equivalent in price to the zomig but if I have to take them less often, it's a win. I can give you exact prices in a pm if you are interested. Maybe your insurance would cover this one

Ubrelvy is great (I've taken it once or twice) but it's not going to be covered either, alas. Have taken other blood pressure meds like Candesartan as a preventative to no great effect, alas, and am already on different bp meds (Losartan) that don't help, so not convinced that's going to be a good fit. I'm going to enlist my HR department and FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Also reaching out to the mfer.

>53 Chatterbox: how is the chair-breaker going? Are we talking too much cat food here, or enthusiastic rambling?
...hope you're well and warm in this storm I hear you're facing...

>56 LovingLit: I strongly suspect a massive zoomie binge on the part of a small kitten...

Yes, we got a ton of snow -- I calculate about 15 inches or so, and some more to come this afternoon before it finally tapers off. I spent yesterday on a 3 pm to 10 pm general reporting shift, and found myself tracking down details of a private jet crashing in Bangor, Maine in the final hours and working until nearly midnight. Ooof.

>57 Chatterbox: I read a brief notice about that crash, but no info on injuries, etc. Did you get updates?

>58 ffortsa: Yes, there were 8 people on board; 7 fatalities. The sole survivor was a crew member, whose condition is serious. The plane is affiliated with a personal injury law firm in Houston which, ironically enough, also tackles lawsuits in connection with aviation accidents... The two name partners were not on board, I am hearing from sources, but they haven't released names of those who were as yet.

Had my performance review today; landed one of the handful of "exceeded expectations" in the group, but it's not going to translate into more money, which is very frustrating as my annual rate of pay is still based on what they offered me for an initial three-month contract, and I'm clearly doing much more and better than most people in our group.

Which means I will have to do the GoFundMe for Max the kitten retrieval. Blech.

We are getting MORE SNOW. We were at 18 inches, and it's coming down again. Forecast is for another 2 inches. I realize that anyone who is being bombarded by lake effect snow is going to pooh pooh that, but I think it's more than I've seen in a decade.

>59 Chatterbox: landed one of the handful of "exceeded expectations" in the group, but it's not going to translate into more money
Well, that is crappy. What a rort.

>60 LovingLit: I mean, I should definitely not complain. I'm financially stable. Just cash flow constrained (thanks in large part to the blasted insurance/migraine meds).

>61 Chatterbox: I think a complaint - even if only to oneself and one's friends - is justified in this case. You're good at it and you work hard, so I think you should be paid more (for what it's worth). :)

>59 Chatterbox: 18 inches is quite a lot. Good thing you can work from home. I think we got a measured 9 inches in NYC, and so far Momdani seems to have escaped the curse of the New Mayor Snow Storm, but we will see. Varying reports have us getting a few dustings again this week, but all agree it's going to be abnormally cold.

Glad your performance review was positive, sorry about the money. One of the recommended techniques is to ask the review what more you can do to get a raise. Puts the ball in their court.

Now we're hearing about a nor'easter poised to dump another 10 to 15 inches on us this weekend, lol!

The perils of working in a union shop: managers insist that the union wants us to get across the board raises and their hands are tied on merit pay, while the union folks say that's BS and the wages are just floors, not caps. Sigh. We're in the midst of contract negotiations, too -- they are offering 0.5% per annum over the next three years. I did a wee bit of saber rattling, but may settle for doing something like a four-day week or more flexibility in terms of the job scope, or minimal restrictions on travel budget in lieu. We'll see... It's been flagged, and noted...

>64 Chatterbox: Good luck in all the union squabbles and management negotiations, Suzanne!

Stay safe! Stay warm!

Finally posted my best of 2025 list up at >5 Chatterbox:

>66 Chatterbox: Dang. Wish you hadn't done that. You just lengthened my TBR, and it's already impossibly long. Two in particular: the Europa edition set in Italy, and the novel set in Georgia. I may also have to reread the Pipkin, & pull 2 other titles from my fiction TBR to the top. Sheesh.

>66 Chatterbox: You didn't do my TBR any good either, lol.

I hope the varied negotiations go well, and that you don't get to much more snow this weekend. I'm just far enough south that it may miss us entirely.

I'll echo Stasia - stay safe and warm!

Apologies for lengthening the TBR -- but they are pre-vetted titles!

if anyone wants a picture of a tiny Max-the-kitten, I just posted my GoFundMe for him, and there's a VERY cute picture of a very small kitten on it, for cat afficionados. It will be interesting to see what he makes of snow!!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-maxs-journey-to-his-forever-home

Had my first haircut in six/seven months today -- My editor wants to have coffee with me when I'm in NYC Tuesday afternoon, and then said her boss (who I know, but not well) wants to join us. And then that she's going to introduce me to HIS boss, the global news editor. Good grief. This is what happens, I guess, when you get an excellent review and then ask for a raise?? But I can't show up looking like a hobgoblin.

The snow here remains deep; there are icicles hanging from all the buildings. But at least it looks as if we'll dodge the worst of this weekend's snow -- maybe only an extra inch or two from the Nor'Easter. Planning to sleep and read with what's left of the weekend before the insanity resumes on Monday...

>69 Chatterbox: Good luck getting your new little kitten home, Suzanne, and good for you to take him in and give him a home!

>69 Chatterbox: Such a gorgeous little kitty! I can see why he captured your heart.

Karen O

>69 Chatterbox: Gorgeous little ball of fur. We have a cat named Max who has some undesirable traits including constant stalking of our older tabby cat.

>72 avatiakh: Eeek, I hope Max doesn't stalk Fergus, who is 15, weighs less than 8 pounds and is increasingly frail... Minka, however, can hold her own!

Just finished a five-star book, Heart the Lover by Lily King. I picked it up and literally could not put it down.

Ooof, I have not been posting at all, have I??

Now back in Mexico to pick up Max; we fly home tomorrow morning. He is a bona fide imp. My plan A, plan B and plan C transport plans all fell through so after a lot of additional expense, I ended up getting a same-day passport appointment in Boston and flying down myself. It was a crazy 10 days or so -- first to Boston for that, then home, then two days later up to New Hampshire for a journalism conference, then home overnight, then the plan was to fly to Las Vegas for a work conference (about ETFs and asset management conference). Well, I tried. I rerouted myself to fly via Charlotte NC rather than Chicago to avoid a giant winter storm. But the disruptions to the system caught up with me and I spent 9 hours sitting in a wheelchair (only way I can cover anything more than the smallest distances) waiting for my flight to leave. It didn't. At 1 am, I checked into a hotel near the airport and at 7 am I hopped on the first flight of the day back to Providence because -- good grief -- they were expecting tornadoes to close down the airport. (Schools had been cancelled). That happened about 30 minutes after we took off. So had I stuck around and tried to get to Vegas, it would have required another 8/9 hours at the airport, and I would have missed the first day.

The only good part of this is that instead of flying home late Wednesday and then leaving for the airport to get to Mexico at 3am Friday, I actually had three days at home. And throughout all this I was too tired to get much reading done at all.

I just can't cope with travel when my hip/spine are this painful. My next steroid epidural injection is April 7th, and within a month I should know whether surgery is the next step and if so, what kind.

So far this month, three books stand out, for quite different reasons:

Starry and Restless is about three women writers prior to, during and after WW2, including Rebecca West. Excellent. I had never heard of one of these women before. Highly recommended, very deftly structured. A book bullet from the NY Times, of all places. (I rarely get book ideas from there.)

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans was a delight; bringing to life an elderly woman with a complicated past and avoiding a lot of sentimentality.

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas is a superb look at global elites, and how the current political climate has been shaped. Nope, it's not at all MAGA conspiracy stuff; rather, a sobering look at how much people like Clinton actually have in common with Bill Gates and even with Tucker Carlson. A reminder that the old political "lines" no longer tell the full story.

Was it Emily Hahn you hadn't heard of before? I have a copy of her memoir China to Me, which I think has been published by Virago (though I can't remember whether my copy is that edition), and I still have to read the book.

>75 elkiedee: Yes, it was!

Well, Max the boy kitten turns out to be Max the girl kitten! Three separate Mexican vets got this wrong...

So, I guess that she'll stay Max, named in honor of Dr. Maxwell, the time-traveling disaster magnet of the Chronicles of St. Mary's by Jodi Taylor...

SO MUCH going on, Suz! Congratulations on finally saving Max the Girl! I hope that she fits right in.

I read China to Me, which is a Virago Traveler and also a biography, Nobody Said Not To Go. What a woman!!!! I want to read her bio of The Soong Sisters and a number of other things. She went from Colorado School of Mines to the New Yorker by way of Hong Kong and Shanghai during WWII. I think I have all that right. Add Gelhorn and West, and that is some book!

>77 Chatterbox: I had a roommate in college who was a "girl Max"--her name was really Marianne, though. There must some trickiness to kitten gender assignment---I've heard many tales of "vets getting it wrong" at the beginning.

>78 LizzieD: China to Me is a Virago Traveller, but there's also an Open Road Media edition which is available on Kindle here in the UK for £2.99 (and through Kindle Unlimited but I decided from a trial that that doesn't work for the way I read).

So, Max the (now female) kitten has arrived safely. But Fergus has been diagnosed with lymphoma is his upper jaw. Terminal, but he's still reasonably content so I'm taking it week by week.

>81 Chatterbox: oh dear. I didn't think lymphoma was localized. Hope he's reasonably comfortable.

>82 ffortsa: Apparently it can be; the vet was surprised to discover it hadn't spread (and it mostly manifests in cats in the GI system). He's a lot more comfortable since he had several teeth pulled a week ago, and that's when they did the biopsy. Sigh.

>83 Chatterbox: I am so sorry to hear this. Pets are family.

Fergus is OK for now; stable, at least. He is eating and drinking and purring, but quite lethargic. So it's watching and waiting.

Today was a bit of a crazed day, though. Got up early to get to the orthopedist's clinic for my second epidural steroid injection, only to realize that Max-the-kitten was limping and not wanting to put weight on her front right paw. So en route, I rushed her into the vet's, and then went off to MY medical appointment. Turns out there is nothing wrong with the paw -- but she had/has a fever, and had lost some weight in only a week. Blood tests normal, nothing on X-Ray, so we have zero ideas about what's going on. Vet gave her an antibiotic shot and I've got anti-inflammatories to pop into her. Sigh. What I wouldn't give for a dull moment.

The infusion went well, but now I feel as if a horse has kicked me in the small of the back. I'm just hoping that this time it works. I don't want surgery, but I also don't want things to get steadily worse and worse. I'll see the surgeon at the beginning of May.

Recent reading highlights include Daughters of the Bamboo Grove; Barbara Demick never disappoints. I have a few friends who adopted daughters from China during the period in question and now find myself wondering whether they are aware of all of the issues Demick raises in her book... Another excellent non-fiction book is the upcoming one by Robert Kolker, The Vanishing Family. Like his last, this focuses on a family plagued by a genetic history of neurological woe -- in this case, early-onset frontal temporal dementia. Recommended.

Some others were a bit disappointing. Allegra Goodman's latest novel was good but not memorable. Another book -- fascinating but a bit clunky in writing style -- was about Canada's assisted suicide laws, and one of the first doctors to volunteer to offer this. Recommended by my ex-SIL, who is a psychiatrist and a Catholic, after we had a discussion about the move toward allowing people with severe depression and other mental illnesses to also request medical aid in dying (MAiD). That won't happen for at least another year/18 months.What I had not realized and found chilling is that the Supreme Court case that opened the door for MAiD was brought by a woman in her late 80s who was battling precisely what I've been diagnosed with, degenerative spinal stenosis. It's progressive, and she clearly was at a much later stage in its evolution, being confined to a wheelchair and largely unable to move arms or legs, so vastly more extreme than what I'm dealing with. But it made me think very seriously about all the stuff that we worry about -- cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's -- when sometimes it's the stuff that comes out of left field that wreaks havoc on us as we age.

Meanwhile, I'm taking some time off work, part in sick days and part in personal days, to try to regain some strength and energy. I now have some muscle relaxants to take, which actually do help a bit, at least temporarily, but at the price of making me sleepy and loopy. I need to keep focused and organized with work...

Please, good vibes for Sir Fergus and Max-the-kitten. I hope the latter is just sick in order to cost me hundreds more dollars and justify her title as the world's most expensive kitten.

Oh dear, Max is proving to be an expensive kitty. I had to take my Max to the vet this morning, he had a swollen cheek and as I suspected an abcess. $950 NZD later and I have a groggy cat home from the vet, bed rest for 3 days which he'll never do.

Sympathy all around, Suzanne. I can't even begin to speak specifically to all that you have going on. I very much wish though that your steroids will begin to do their job quickly and well. I'll also hope that Sir Fergus continues as our lovely dog May did several years ago. She was diagnosed with a mammary sarcoma, the surgery showed that the cancer was beyond the margin removed, and the vet gave her about six months more. I spent a bunch of those six months apprehensive and grieving. May, however, lived another 3 or 4 years and died at 13, good for a dog her size.

Well, three days after the steroid injection, the small infection/reaction has abated, and I was able to do a bit of house cleaning/reorganization today. I'll be back at work Monday. The time off has been much needed, and very welcome.

Max-the-kitten is bouncing around the place again, thankfully, and making little squeaks when she wants food. Fergus is... OK. Still eating and drinking and otherwise just sitting and watching the world go by. Which is fine.

Sir Fergus is no longer with us. Yesterday, I had to make the difficult decision that it was no longer fair to him to have him struggle along and feel more and more vulnerable as his strength and pleasure in life dwindled. It was very hard, but very peaceful. The vet cried, as well -- a sign of how everyone who met Fergus bonded with him.

I'm deeply sad.

>89 Chatterbox: I am so sorry for your loss. That's a hard decision to make. I'm glad you have a supportive team with your vet.

>89 Chatterbox: I am so very sorry to hear your news about Sir Fergus. I've been in that position and know how hard it can be.

>89 Chatterbox: Condolences on the loss of Sir Fergus. When it's time, you know, but it's not easy.

I'm sad to hear that you had to lose Sir Fergus for his sake. I remember well your welcoming him home and finding his perfect name. We cherish them while we have them. My sympathy to you, Suz.

Adding my sympathies, Suzanne. It never gets easier but I guess that's the cost of loving them.

Thanks, all, for the kind words. It's always difficult, and Fergus was such a friendly cat that every human being felt the impact of his purr-sonality. (apologies for the dreadful pun...)

At least Max the kitten came through her spay surgery with flying colors -- literally, as she already has returned to flying from one end of the apartment to the other. Poor Minka -- she hoped, very briefly, that she was going to be an only cat...

Hey Suzanne :)

Just checkin' in to see what's happening in your neck of the woods.

>97 LovingLit: Hey there, thanks for checking in!!

Right now the lowlight is the weather -- temps into the 90s and really muggy, air quality alert, yadda yadda. Shouldn't last too long (she said hopefully)

Max the kitten is bouncing around, and has developed a habit of waking me up at 4 am by by biting my hands or feet. This is a less-than desirable thing, but the only solution seems to be for me to redirect his attention to one of his long dangly toys that she can chase instead. So imagine me, prone and groggy in the dark, flicking a cat toy around for a hyper-alert 7-month-old kitten to pursue. For up to an hour. Until she gets tired of it...

Work fine but very busy. Spine surgery part 1 is now scheduled for July 2, and I'm taking a week in Paris before that, as for most of the rest of the year I'll be in recovery mode. (Second part will be the beginning of September). By the end of the year, I aspire to be walking with minimal pain! Which would be very exciting. Paris may be a challenge, but I know I can pace myself by stopping every few blocks at a cafe....

Reading has been a bit meh this month so far. Interestingly, one of the highlights has been the fantasy novel The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. I had read her historical novels set in Georgian London, so I knew this would be a well-written book, but it's also imaginative and complex, even as there are a lot of the pot-boilerish tropes. The characters are very compelling, and it turned out to be unputdownable.

I saw on fb your new Max :)
I'd love to get a kitten to round out our number of cats to 2...wonder how Gabby (not aged 6) would feel about it but I reckon her nurturing would kick in at some point, right?

Paris sounds amazing! And frequent stops are mandatory so as to see life go by and become part of the fabric yourself (even if the real reasons for needing to stop are far more pragmatic than that).

>98 Chatterbox: The Raven Scholar sounds like a good 'un.

Adding it to the list.

>98 Chatterbox: You'd written before about the confusion over Max's sex, and I had to laugh. Years ago a had a kitten named Max (Maximillian) who, along with the rest of his siblings from a semi-feral mother, I'd sexed as a young age. I'm usually pretty good at sexing kittens, but this time I blew it. It was much later when Max was about to be neutered that I realized Max needed to be spayed, lol. Fortunately, she didn't hold it against me.

>98 Chatterbox: The Raven Scholar was a fabulous surprise for me, too. I'm looking forward to reading Hodgson's historical novels. It's going to be a long wait for the sequel to The Raven Scholar.

It's great that you have your surgery scheduled, and some fun in Paris beforehand.

I like your Paris plan! And I laughed at the image of Max running around the room and Minka sighing heavily after giving up on the single cat dream. Sorry about Fergus and sending best wishes for the surgery in July.

Max is STILL running amok... My 12 yo catsitter will have a ball playing with her. I'm off to Orlando for a conference tomorrow -- big investment types, and each year they invite only a single reporter. This year, it's me.

And I'm going to be on a Reuters panel of "editors" to discuss investment themes, with my boss, her boss, and a Reuters columnist, on October 1. I fear they have a mistaken idea about me -- or did they promote me and forget to tell me/raise my salary??

SpaceX IPO is looming large on the horizon, so life is anything but dull. Crazed cats, loony investors, professional challenges, mobility woes, lol. Never a dull moment. And if there is one, I can always fill it up with a book...

Just got approved for an e-galley of Robert Harris's new books, which takes us back to the ancient Rome of his trilogy about Cicero, only this time focusing on Agrippa, Augustus's best pal. So, should be really engaging. Will TRY to save it for the plane flight to Zurich/Paris.

I'm resolved to pack only a rollaboard bag and a personal item/carry on. I have always been a maximalist, so this is a big challenge for me. Having Kindles will help; I know I don't REALLY need to pack physical books as well. One of our desk editors in Sydney, who has become a buddy over the last few years, spent two weeks with a single rollaboard in four or five European countries, so if she can do it.... :-)

>103 Chatterbox: How many Kindles do you now have? Just as a matter of curiosity?

I now have 3 Paperwhites,
a 2015 replacement for one lost/stolen on a train when I dozed off
a 2019 one bought when I won a £300 Amazon voucher through Mumsnet, which offered a prize draw for commenting on a thread about children moving to secondary school (I had it for some time, and I bought the Kindle myself and then bought a lot of new ebooks with the voucher, including ones I'd been waiting for to come up as Daily Deals
a 2023 one - the first bought in September crashed and was replaced by the end of the year under warranty, while I was still paying the cost in instalments.
Also a now obsolete Kindle Keyboard (2011 or 2012, again it had to be replaced under warranty)
and 2 Kindle Fires which are rammed, different screens, can't remember when I got them but before mum died when I was travelling by train. One was a real con and one was cheap and I knew what I was getting, a way of using Amazon content, and for Amazon to market their product range, fairly cheap! I haven't worked out how to remove content, so I can download other things such as audiobooks, books with visual things that are there but work poorly on an ereader.

Reuters panel - are you able to join any kind of journalists' union which might be able to advise on something like this. I appreciate it's hard when you're freelance, and I don't know how much the union are sympathetic or can be helpful, or are worried about another group of members, but this is outrageous, I think, to just assume flattery will pay your rent and living costs. Unions aren't just about picket lines. I hear of Mike's casework, and some of the issues there can be tangled.

>104 elkiedee: I now have three Kindles -- all the Oasis (which isn't made any longer) model. One is my main US kindle, and I also have the UK kindle and a Canadian Kindle registered to by late father's address, although there are only about three dozen books on that one. I did spring for a backup Oasis on eBay, as I'm petrified that one of them is going to conk out on me, and I really don't want to go bah the rest to ck to using the Paperwhite.

I've not been freelance for a while now. I became a Reuters employee (and News Guild member) even before I went from being on a contract to being full-time. I'm fine with doing the panel -- it's a compliment and will give me some leverage the next time I request a raise. We're stuck in union talks that began last October or so, and they are offering only 1.5% a year base rate, with the rest to be a merit pool divided among people with higher performance ratings. I would benefit personally from that at the moment, as I got an "exceeds" expectations at the end of the year, but I hate the way that editors are told how many "exceeds" and "greatly exceeds" they are allowed to give each year; the system is fundamentally flawed and that's what the union is attacking.

The Florida conference was really productive, even though I came back with the beginnings of a cold which is making me grumpy and miserable right now. Oh, and I met Mickey Mouse and danced with him, lol, and went to Epcot and saw the fireworks, though I refrained from going on rides after hours; I didn't think my spine would stand it.

Have ordered my new adjustable bed frame, which I'm going to have assembled professionally, as I can't bend or lift much without pain. Leaving for Paris the night of the 18th!

Glad to see you are posting a bit again. I am off to ALA this year. My sister, wanted to go, and a friend from Alabama is also going to room with us, so we should be very cost effective. It will be my first ALA with absolutely nothing for me to do, except what I want to do. That might be fun.

For the sake of my overstuffed house, I am resolved to be very picky about what books I bring back. We are driving and it will be tempting for me to fill the car.

>105 Chatterbox: Thanks for patiently explaining your situation to me, I do remember now that you were finally offered a post. I can see that doing the panel is a compliment, but am worried at the expectation that extra work might be on a complimentary basis. Good luck with sorting this out.

I'm also glad to know that someone else is paranoid enough to have 3 Kindles, though I'm quite happy with two Paperwhites and a Paperwhite signature. I'm not sure that I'm keen on the new thing's excessively heavy cover though (bought by me), it's thicker than the Paperwhite Signature.

>106 benitastrnad: Well, if you see anything you think I'd like from the folks at Holt or Soho.... :-D

>107 elkiedee: Any hours I work (including traveling...) get billed to Reuters. I can take it as comp time or in $$. Right now, given the cost of my two surgeries, I'll be opting for $$!