Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

It's December tomorrow! What are your reading plans for the last month of 2020?

This'll be the last month of my 21st c. lag project before I can dive into 2021 challenge reading, so I'm just coasting along with some shorter works after a number of lengthier nonfiction pieces and seeing where my interest takes me. I've been very happy with the progress I've made so far, and it'll be nice to pack a few more contemporary works away before setting off on another journey into the classics.

21st Century Lag
Battleborn - Claire Vaye Watkins (completed 12/15/20)
Amsterdam Stories - Nescio (completed 12/16/20)
Jonny Appleseed - Joshua Whitehead (completed 12/20/20)
Crush - Richard Siken (completed 12/21/20)
Monstress, Vol. 2: The Blood - Marjorie M. Liu (completed 12/25/20)
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce (completed 12/27/20)
The Children of Húrin - J.R.R. Tolkien (completed 12/29/20)
The Angel Makers - Jessica Gregson (completed 12/31/20)

Post 1970 (Lag) - Wild Card
Sayonara, Gangsters - Genichiro Takahashi (completed 12/23/20)

(Nonfiction) November Remainders
Catherine the Great - Robert K. Massie (completed 12/8/20)
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali (completed 12/10/20)
River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh (completed 12/13/20)

December is the time to finish up 2020 challenges. I still need two books for Bingo:

1. A Murder of Quality by John le Carré which I have started already.

2. An Asian classic - I already have Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters, but I may save that one for 2021. Another Asian classic that I have been toying with is The Diary of Lady Murasaki. This author wrote The Tales of Genji, which is 1008 pages long. I thought I could try out the author on a shorter work first. Plus I like that it is a diary.

3. We will finish The Outsiders in class this week, weather permitting. We are under snow and ice advisories right now.

4. A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert

5. I am in the mood to read some Science Fiction short stories. I own several anthologies that I have not read all the selections in yet. If I finish my books, I will probably read some of those.

December Reading

Read
1 Nemesis by Agatha Christie (old & new)
2 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by.Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (personal challenge about women's history)
3 The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (group read)
4 The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (group read)
5. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie (Old & New)
6 Orlando by Virginia Woolf (abridged)
7 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
8 Medicine Women: The Story of Early-American Women Doctors by Cathy Luchetti (personal women's history challenge)
9 The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (another group's buddy read)
10. Tim Cratchit's Christmas Carol: The Sequel to the Celebrated Dickens Classic by Jim Piecuch (holiday light read)
11. Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers another group's read)
12 The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs (personal women's history challenge)

Currently Reading
1 Orlando by Virginia Woolf (buddy read)
2 Henry VI, Part 2 by William Shakespeare

Planning to Read
1 Naturalist by E O Wilson
2 The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

Last month of the year - this year I'm finishing up my last few challenge books and throwing in some special christmas books :)

Currently reading:
Six Merry Little Murders
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (serial reader)
Gode naboer
The Fate of the Tearling (audio)
Xala (X-title)
The Winter's Tale (group read)

To read:
Kameliadamen (group read)
Kanel, klejner og julekaos (christmas serial)
De blodrøde julemænd (christmas serial)
Never Mess with Mistletoe
The Silence of the Elves
Paraplymordet
Murder in Saint-Rémy
The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation: A Christmas Story (serial reader)
Explosive Eighteen
Gran, gløgg og gift
Murder in the Mews
The House of Long Ago
Snow Can Be Deadly
Enden på historien
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (audio)
Highfire
Christmas on the Island
Bloody Lessons
A Classic Crime Collection
Mord på bestilling (short stories)
Cat's Eye
Red, White & Royal Blue (audio) - started
Christmas Stalkings
Dietland
I skyggen af Sadd
Small Gods - started
The Captain's Daughter - started

RANDY'S DECEMBER 2020 BOOKS

WILL FINISH:


Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny


The Way West by A.B. Guthrie Jr.


Books of Blood: Volume Three by Clive Barker


Every Dead Thing by John Connolly


Blackout by Connie Willis

WILL READ BUT WON'T FINISH:


The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe


War by Sebastian Junger


Books of Blood: Volume 4 by Clive Barker


The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard


Blood of Amber by Roger Zelazny


The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar


Dark Places by Gillian Flynn


The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

Mysteries
The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny currently reading
Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan

Group reads
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert

21st Century catch up
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

Christmas Short Stories
The Chimes by Charles Dickens
The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol

When Rebecca won the December poll, and I thought, gee, I'm in the mood to read that, I decided to put aside some of my challenges and make time for it instead! So here's my plan:

A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert (group read)
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (bingo)
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (bingo and group read)
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora (other group read)
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (other group read)
A few short stories I haven't picked yet

And then, to take me through the end of the year and into the next one, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. :-)

This month I will finish
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts (local group read),
Sermons and Soda-Water (last book needed for my Birth Year Best Sellers Challenge) and
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (last book needed for another group's Bingo),

reread Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day for this group,

and read
My Storied Year (new & written by a friend),
The Ghost Bride (other group read),
The Diviners (other group read),

and, maybe if my library reopens, The Mystery of Grace (other group read).

I've pretty much abandoned my Old & New Challenge. I like the books I chose obut they have proven to be easily put down/put off for another book that catches my eye.

Annette wrote: "This month I will finish
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts (local group read),
[book:Sermons and Soda-Water|4850529..."

I also abandoned mine. It was the third year I had tried it, but I have only succeeded one out of the three years. Bingo really is my favorite.

Halfway through the month, I've finished up the rather longwinded remainders of November and am chugging through what I can of my lagging 21st century collection before 2021 hits, resulting in four read books and the possibility of reading anywhere between four to eight more. I'm so keen on being able to make a clean switch from year to the next that I'm keeping an ongoing tally of remaining pages of current reads versus the reading amounts I have left this month, assuming I keep to my usual daily pace. It'll be hard to not automatically swap out works later in the month, but it'll be worth it on January 1st.

Halfway through the month, I am done with only one of the books I listed above. Halfway through three others. And as is the norm for me, finished one not planned. If the trend continues, I should finish the three I’m halfway through plus one other listed and something I don’t even know about today :)

Lynn, I found that my style of reading changed with the pandemic lockdowns here. My time is spent differently. A lot of my previous activities actually take more time when done virtually.

I am lagging here with reading with so many things to get done this month. I have finished my Old & New Challenge, continuing with my Virginia Woolf challenge, and my Shakespeare history plays challenge. The VW challenge was always supposed to last into 2021, and I will have to finish up my history play challenge in January. Disappointing, but less disappointing than not finishing altogether. I read on.

Annette wrote: "Lynn, I found that my style of reading changed with the pandemic lockdowns here. My time is spent differently. A lot of my previous activities actually take more time when done virtually."

Yes, things that used to be easier can now take much longer. You would think online shopping would be easier, but for some things that I bought locally, it has been challenging.

I seem have lost my reading mojo this month. It's like I can't wait for next year's books, but I'm done with this year. I read a little each day but not enough to read most books I planned. I will read Christmas short stories and maybe one more novel. I think I needed a break and my brain decided to take it despite my plans.

So in December I read a bit more thanks to the Christmas vacation time.

Books:
1. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
2. A Murder of Quality by John le Carré
3. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
4. The Diary of Lady Murasaki by Murasaki Shikibu

and I read selections from some of the short story anthologies I own:

1. A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett 12/15/2020 3 stars
2. The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov 12/22/2020 5 stars
3 Second Variety: Short Story by Philip K. Dick 3 stars 12/24/2020
4. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber 4 stars 12/25/2020
5. The Lineman by Walter M. Miller Jr. 4 stars 12/26/2020
6. ForgetfulnessJohn W. Campbell Jr. 5 stars 12/28/2020
7. The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke 4 stars 12/28/2020


If you are interested, the anthologies are (and I have not finished them):

1 The Science Fiction Hall of Fame #1
2 Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology
3. The World Treasury of Science Fiction
4 Fiction 100: An Anthology of Short Stories
5 The American Short Story: A Collection of the Best Known and Most Memorable Short Stories by the Great American Authors
6 Russian Authors

I ended up finishing this month with a record twelve works, which I've hit in years past but, due to the inordinate length of a significant number of the works I read for challenges this year, I haven't been able to hit till now. In the end, I cleared out another chunk of lagging works, had a decent break with more contemporary lit, and am now fully ready to dive back into the challenge scene with many a (purported) classic and other older works of good repute. So, so long 2020! You had some decent moments, but for the most part, good riddance.

Aubrey wrote: "I ended up finishing this month with a record twelve works, which I've hit in years past but, due to the inordinate length of a significant number of the works I read for challenges this year, I ha..."

Happy New Year!

Congratulations Aubrey on a good month and Annette Happy New Year! This last year has not been what anyone would have wished or planned, but I hope there were still bright spots for everyone.

Annette wrote: "Halfway through the month, I am done with only one of the books I listed above. Halfway through three others. And as is the norm for me, finished one not planned. If the trend continues, I should f..."

Replying to myself (typical)... I only managed to finish 4 of the 8 books listed in Message 8. But as has been my practice this year, I picked up & finished 8 other really quick reads and finished up a collection that has been lagging since June.