January 2026 reads

I have read 6 books so far. One was only 88 pages on my Kindle and another was a very short one I won from GR a long time ago. I did read The Lascaux Cave Paintings by Fernand Windels and finished The Shipwrecked Spinster by Patricia Veryan. I also read Snow White for one of the challenges on LT. I read Samson by Israel Drezin I won on LT, another short book.

A friend who likes to stretch my literary horizons loaned me a boxed set that begins with My Brilliant Friend and its successors. Too soon to make a judgment call. Finished My Sister's Quilt, a very quick set of short stories, and revisiting a favorite mystery series with Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie.

So far I have finished reading The Seventh Plague by James Rollins and now reading an oldie A Dangerous Love by Brenda Joyce

I'm getting tired of reading on Kindle, although it's the only way of reading new books as it's very difficult to get proper books delivered here, so I'm rereading a lot of my old books from my bookshelf. This month I'm on John Le Carre's George Smiley trilogy. I've finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which, along with his The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (which I reread last year), is probably the best spy novel ever written - Le Carre is in a class of his own! I'm currently near the end of The Honourable Schoolboy and next I'll move on to Smiley's People.

I agree that Le Carre is a first class writer of spy fiction. I am currently reading Legacy of Spies which references so many characters from the Karla trilogy and is fascinating in its evocation of ghosts from the past of the'Circus'.

I've now finished The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. I think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People are better than The Honourable Schoolboy, but John Le Carre sets a high standard, and the latter is still very good.

I'm currently reading The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko. It's pretty grim - change the name to Robert F. Kennedy and the first part of the book sounds just like current events. One can only hope the US doesn't get to experience the events that followed once Lysenko achieved complete control of Russian science.

Currently reading Death in Brittany by Jean-Luc Bannalec

I'm hooked on this book Swallowing the Muskellunge by Lawrence P. O'Brien

I've just reread a couple of old Alistair MacLean books, The Golden Rendezvous and Santorini. Neither of them are amongst his best, I would say. Currently reading Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Command, again possibly not one of the best of the Sharpe series.

Amongst free reads on Kindle I've recently read several by Kevin Wignall, all of which I have really enjoyed, including I Arise (no touchstone), Those Who Disappeared, The Names of the Dead, The First Death of Winter, The Story Starts Here (no touchstone) and The First Law of Chaos (no touchstone). I've read a lot of free books on Kindle Unlimited from new authors, and to be honest most of them are rubbish - there's a reason they are all free! Most of them seem to be detective novels, and are by new and unkown authors who self-publish a series of eighteen books about Detective Inspector so-and-so and his/her mates. They are usually formulaic, poorly edited, lacking in originality and full of (supposedly) dramatic psychological and emotional back stories, and I often wonder whether they are by real human beings following some guru's script or by AI. However Wignall is a notable exception. His books are very good, and each is individual, not part of a series, although one can detect a certain dark strand in them all.

And for non-fiction I'm reading Modern Railway Operation by David Lamb, an old hardback from my extensive railway collection. "Modern" is a relative term, as this is a 1941 revised third edition of a book first published in 1926, but it is very interesting, and a lot of basic railway operating principles are still relevant.

>10 John5918:

I remember trying one of the Sharpe books on a friend's recommendation. I didn't think it compared favourably with the Aubrey/Maturin series that I was working my way through at the time.

>11 librorumamans:

I find the Sharpe series very variable. Some are good, others not so. I do like Bernard Cornwell's non-fiction account of the Battle of Waterloo, Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles, probably the clearest exposition of that battle that I have ever read, and also his Azincourt, more commonly known as Agincourt. He is a historian in his own right.

Going through some family papers, I found Scandinavian Roots American Lives by Nordic Council of Ministers. My husband's family were Scandinavian. Some good pictures. Book published in 2000 and only 48 pages.

While looking for free books on Kindle I found Tea and Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher, which looked promising. Imagine my disappointment when, after a few pages, it turned out to be a vampire fantasy romance, which is definitely not my cup of tea, if you'll pardon the pun, and I gave up less than a third of the way through. To be fair, it does have a tea shop in it and mentions some teas - Assam, Ceylon, even Lapsang Souchong - but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

I've also just re-read One Shot, a Jack Reacher story by Lee Child.

Almost finished with Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva.

>10 John5918: For a better sample of Alistair MacLean you might want to think about...."A small dusty man in a small dusty room. That's how I always thought of him, just a small dusty man in a small dusty room."

or, you might want to consider that "The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one today and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City." :-)

Finished Prince of Fire. It was well written but a hard read because of the terrorism. First time I have read Daniel Silva

I pick up short stories when I need a palate cleanser; this weekend, The Home Front by Margaret Craven was a perfect comfort read.

Currently reading The Memorist by M.J.Rose seems to be about resurrection

Finished The Diva Poaches a Bad Egg by Krista Davis.

I've just finished re-reading The Railway Children by E Nesbit, a charming and delightful tale. Perhaps surprisingly for a children's book, the railway detail in it is relatively accurate.

Now enjoying Dear Mrs. Bird; adventures and foibles of a wannabe journalist at a woman's magazine struggling to survive in WWII London. The writer has a nice, light chuckle-worthy touch.

Whew! Just finished The Secret of Secrets, a nearly 700 page headlong race through Prague to preserve a to-be-published dissertation on consciousness and parallel research by the CIA to create and control out-of-body experiences to invisibly spy on others. It held my attention, but I think that was due more to the (true) fascinating detail on the city and its legends than on the (fictional) plot.

Circus by Alistair MacLean.

And now Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean. This one is more like classic MacLean.

>25 John5918: Jeez, John, have you taken up speed reading?

Finished Rational Ideas Book Two by Israel Drazin.
"This book provides examples of how Judaism has evolved from the time of Moses." On the back of the book.
The author has written 58 books as of 2025.
Chapter One : The Oral Torah Was Not Revealed on Sinai.
There are 25 chapters which are usually 1 or 2 pages.
Chapter 6: Hermann Cohen's Problematic Philosophy
Chapter 7: Ralph Waldo Emerson Was Only Half Right.
Chapter 15:Secrets of Shavuot
Chapter 19: My Family's Zemirot Contributions
Chapter 21: Israel Has No State Religion.
There is such a variety of topics I was glad the chapters were short.
I am not Jewish and so would have like a glossary of terms.
I find the author quite knowledgeable. He is a Rabbi, he is an attorney, he was the youngest U.S, Army Chaplain are some of his accomplishments. He also has many awards.
This is the second book I have read by Israel Drazin. This short book leaves the reader wanting to learn more.
I won a copy from LibraryThing. The opinions are my own. It will be a re-read for me. A 5 star rating.

I finished the Lysenko book and The Web Beneath the Waves. The Web book is short - 107 pages - but it does an excellent job of describing the various aspects of undersea cables (construction, laying, risks, and the near total dependence the modern world has with respect to their functioning).

>24 John5918: - how about Black Shrike and When Eight Bells Toll????

>26 TempleCat: Doesn't take long to read this type of book!

>28 alco261: When Eight Bells Toll is one of my favourite MacLean novels, along with HMS Ulysses and The Guns of Navarone, but I'm currently going through the free ones on Kindle.

>28 alco261:

You might find Tubes : a journey to the center of the internet interesting, if you can get hold of it.

>29 John5918:

You're taking me back decades in time, John!

Reading The Wedding Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverni
I am trying to read books I own.

>32 mnleona: I am several installments behind on the Elm Creek Quilts series...I should figure out where I left off. Have you read her standalone historical novels? I especially liked Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker.

Still working on My Brilliant Friend. I told the benefactor from whence it came that it seems to be a cross of Little Women and The Godfather. In small doses, it's interesting, but there's a lot of navel-gazing (aka introspection) that makes the story move slowly.

False Impressions by Jeffrey Archer. I avoided reading his books back when he was writing them as I didn't particularly want to give money to a disgraced Tory politician who served prison time for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Now I'm older I'm probably more tolerant. He's done his porridge and paid his debt to society, but more to the point no money changed hands as I got it free on Kindle. This one is a run of the mill pulp thriller, competent but not brilliant.

>33 gmathis: I did finish. I am sure I have another one of her books but will have to find it. I think reading the other books before this one would have helped with the names although she did a good job of still making it a stand alone read.
My review:
This is another book of the Elm Creek Quilt Series.
This book is full of memories and to be honest, I lost track of so many names. The daughter of Sarah and Matt McClure is getting married. The book takes us back to before the birth of the twins of Sarah and Matt, Caroline and James.
I did like descriptions of the quilts, the people involved since the birth of the twins, meals and colors. I liked the chapter about Union Hall and even though it was fiction, there is also history.
I felt the book was long but still interesting so I gave it a 4 star rating.
It is a clean read.