It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 12-19-22

Currently Reading

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

“Keegan’s precisely considered details about character, setting, memory, and dramatic moment create a story you will want to read again and again. Her deceptively simple language is pitch-perfect.”—Boston Globe

Recently Read

Any Better Than This by Eric Sean Rawson

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—and the Arpanet? It’s June 1967.
On the way to his wedding in Berkeley, a strait-laced computer engineer working on a Defense Department contract picks up a free-spirited hitchhiker. Join Elliot Ames and Morning Star McGovern on a trip down the rabbit-hole that was the Summer of Love.

I won Any Better Than This: A Summer of Love Story through a LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. The novel is a crazy ride that isn’t exactly my cup of tea. A noir farce? A satirical love story? Dark humor, wacky characters, but I might be too straight-laced to laugh at some of the scenes. The characters seem meant to be types that we laugh at, but real harm gets done by the bad guys.

Edited to add: Now that I’m finished, the book grew on me by the last quarter! I would have liked more of the present-day story which was of the “author” and his teenaged daughter trapped together during the pandemic while he was writing this narrative of his parents’ imagined past, from the time before his parents got married and had him.

Currently Listening To

Christmas Cookie Murder by Leslie Meier

A Lucy Stone holiday mystery never disappoints!

Recently Listened To

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

Another favorite audiobook of 2022! I hope I get my list posted this year.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik is the last book in her addictive Scholomance trilogy. When this one came through on my library holds, I couldn’t wait to start it, even though I had planned to listen to Christmas books over the next couple of weeks.

Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost is a cozy mystery set in a town that’s all about Christmas – Mistletoe, Maine. First in the Christmas Tree Farm series.

This post is linked to “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. Check out the link-up party there for more book lists!

Please tell me what you’re up to in the comments!