Book interlude

Tea and cookies with The Exiles Return--not Mrs Miniver, as I assumed--(and some hangers-on)

 My plan is to return to London one of these days--or at least to writing up the enthralling tale of our time there last year. Not that I wouldn't like to return in person too (so many places for tea!), but god knows the way the current administration is going Americans will be banned from just about every other country on Earth--and who can blame them? I stray.

Some of the stacks

 Today was the Red Letter Day long anticipated around here: the day I finally dealt with the piles of books that were shifted to the bedroom floor when we were clearing the living room to make space for Christmas dinner guests. I have just pointed out proudly to Scott that that means it was less than two months, aka practically no time at all. But I noticed this morning that there were drifts of dust and such accumulating between the stacks and that just seemed a little too nasty.

Oregon vacation reading (not recommended), vacation snacking (yum), vacation drinks (lovely)

 I started by sorting so the second photo above does not include Scott's "to be read" books or the blank books or the Mountaineers publications or the field guides or miscellaneous other sorts that required less thought. And it also includes some titles that never made it to the floor but instead have accreted since Christmas on tables and such. I never did a final "2024 in Books" post and I sort of thought that might be what this would be, but now I'm doubtful that's going to happen. But let's see:

The Sentence, tea, and cupcake chez Aurora

 Going by the list to the left, I read eighty-four books in 2024, and for the first time in thirty-seven years I don't need to add "not including books read for work" which, I must say, has been damned nice. Oh, I quite enjoyed a lot of the books I read as part of my job, but I also am not sorry to have all the time--and mental capacity--for my own. I was pretty good about using the public library, at least for the first half of the year and then I had a lot of books purchased on Bookstore Day(s) providing me fodder through the summer and beyond. Indeed, I still have not read a couple of the books picked up the end of last April. 

At Sea-Wolf: I remember liking The Last Samurai, but I find I don't remember the story at all.

 I confess I am shocked to find that I read only five Trollope novels in 2024; I would have thought the number would be a lot higher, but then I don't consider page counts in these belated summaries. I went heavy into mysteries (eighteen) which I attribute, at least in part, to getting books from the library: mysteries is an easy section to browse. Two favorites from that genre, both courtesy SPL: My Murder and After She Wrote Him. 

The Goodbye Cat (good, but not as good as The Travelling Cat Chronicles) in the backyard

 There were only eight children's books this year, and half of those were re-reads, while I also read but eight non-fiction titles. The loveliest of those was likely Maeve Higgins' Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them though Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? was also quite fine. The most disappointing book of the year (possibly of the decade, if not the millennium) was David James Duncan's Sun House, while the in-search-of-a-publisher Islands and Other Stories (Scott's latest) was the best. If I take Scott's book out of the mix then the best would likely be The Trumpet of the Swan, The Girls, or one of those two mysteries.

Americanah (and maybe some snacks for later) at La Parisienne