52 books project for 2024

It's that time of year, to make lists about books read and books to read. I've been thinking about what to put on my "Best Books of 2024" list, but I'm still working on that. I saw a list that was divided by category, which immediately got me re-ordering my draft. I may need a section for "favorite re-reads."

I've also been thinking about my "52 books project." This is the second year that I set myself the goal, or challenge, of only buying 52 books that I hadn't read. If I read a borrowed book, and I decide that I should add it to my library, that doesn't count against the 52, since my main goal is still to reduce the TBR stacks and shelves.

Again this year I met the goal, with only 44 new books. I was in Barnes & Noble the other day, looking for a calendar, and I realized I could still buy a book or two, but I wasn't even that tempted. I was tempted on other days, though. There was more impulse buying this year, primarily from the book sale shelves at my local library (ironically, often right after I dropped off a bag of books for the book sale shelves). I think that my neighborhood Barnes & Noble closing in January for renovations and staying closed all year has helped. It also helps that my neighborhood independent bookstore closes at 5 PM, so I can never get there on weekdays. On the other hand, I discovered how easy it is to order books from Blackwell's, so I don't have to wait for North American editions.

If I met the goal of buying fewer books, I still failed to read all of the books that I did acquire this year. I have 17 of the 44 still on a special 2024 stack (the ones on the list with no letter grade). The stack is just to my left as I'm typing this, to remind me.

I currently have 7 books on my 2025 planning list, though the publication of one isn't confirmed yet. I'm sure that list will grow, because there are always new or new-to-me books. And as always, the book people I follow on blogs or now on BlueSky will introduce me to new books and authors. That's something to look forward to in the New Year.

Reading through despair

I woke up the morning after the US election to disbelief and despair. I think I went through all the classic stages of grief - definitely anger and denial - in the first hour. I remember the morning after in 2016, but this was and is so much worse.

I talk a lot about "comfort reading," both in real life discussions and on-line. At this particular time in my life, I am reading science fiction and fantasy pretty much exclusively. I know this is a coping mechanism, and as I've said elsewhere, it is working for me right now. It's a mix of re-reading favorite authors and trying new ones. I want compelling worlds, with competent and above all morally good (or at least grey) characters, who recognize their shared responsibility to people and their worlds, and act on that. I am collecting all the recommendations I can find, and I also wander through the sci-fi/fantasy section of the library each week. It's probably just as well that my local Barnes & Noble is still closed for renovations, so I'm not out buying on impulse. I have been re-reading a lot, which is not cutting down the TBR stacks, but at least I'm not adding to them (much).

Here is a short account of what I read in November:

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty (2023 TBR)  In this alt-medieval fantasy set in the Indian Ocean, retired pirate captain Amina Al-Sirafi is blackmailed into retrieving the kidnapped daughter of one of her old crew. For that, she needs to track down her remaining crew and claim her ship again. This was an amazing adventure set in a magical Muslim world. It's the first in a trilogy, and I am looking forward to Amina's next adventures.

Catalyst, Audrey Faye (2024 purchase)  This is the eleventh book in the Ghost Mountain series about a shifter pack in British Columbia. Audrey Faye self-publishes through Amazon, so her books are unfortunately only available there. The series begins with Alpha, where three wolves stumble on a pack that has been severely traumatized by evil leaders. One of the three, Hayden Scott, kills the alpha in a fight and assumes leadership, to find a small group of terrorized women and children. Over the books, the pack begins to come together, to heal, and then to thrive. The stories don't wallow in the trauma, this isn't torture porn. The reader learns only enough of what has happened to understand what a character is feeling or needs. These stories are an epitome of care and comfort and healing, and I re-read them regularly. In fact, I read seven of the previous books around this new one - in part because there are a lot of characters to keep track of (I made a chart).

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers (re-read)  I turned to Becky Chambers earlier this year, when I was having foundation work done on my house. Her worlds and characters are compelling, and they also wrestle with ethical and personal questions, but most of all they take care, of themselves and others. I went on to re-read Record of a Spaceborn Few (for the second time this year).

Strange Practice, Dreadful Company, and Bitter Waters, Vivian Shaw (library books/ebook purchase)  I have seen these books recommended many times, and I finally went looking in the library. I found the third in the series (Grave Importance) on the shelves, but after reading about half, I felt like I was missing too much of the backstory, particularly the connections between the characters. I went back and started with the first instead, Strange Practice. In this series, Greta Helsing is a physician to supernatural creatures, with a Harley Street practice inherited from her father. Descended from Abraham van Helsing, the family turned from hunting "monsters" to protecting them. The books pull in (and slyly reference) characters and events from classic horror stories, which in this world actually chronicle true events but have been written over into fiction. The main characters includes vampires and vampyres, werewolves and mummies. I need to get back to the third, before the fourth and final comes out next year.

The Redoubtable Pali Avrampul, Victoria Goddard (re-read)  I picked up my first Victoria Goddard book, The Hands of the Emperor, in 2021. 738 pages later, I emerged with a new obsession, and eventually a shelf full of books. There are various connected series in Goddard's fantasy Nine Worlds. Pali Avrampul belongs to the second I read, the stories of the infamous Red Company, as her site says, "Friends by chance. Revolutionaries by accident. Folk heroes very much on purpose." After the Red Company disbanded, Pali went on to become a professor of history. This story begins with "Professor Black" preparing to take a sabbatical, which will involve meeting the Emperor. That leads to her to return to being Pali Avrampul and meeting up again with old friends. Goddard has just published the third book in a triology about Pali and her sisters, background stories to the Red Company. I have them in ebook, but since they are now available in print, I am adding them to this year's TBR. Victoria Goddard is also self-published, though not through Amazon, but I'm not sure her books are widely available in libraries.

I don't know what December will bring, reading-wise. I'm just grateful to have the comfort and distraction of good books, and fellow readers with whom to share books and recommendations.

An entertaining mix of cases

Mr Fortune's Trials, H.C Bailey  (TBR shelves, 2024)

After reading Mr Fortune, Please in September, I went looking for more reprints of H.C. Bailey's books. I struck it lucky with Mr Fortune's Trials, originally published in 1925. The six "Trials," as Bailey labels the cases that Reggie Fortune takes on, were the most entertaining I have read yet. Only two of them, the first and last, involve murder - or at least successful murder.

It makes sense that a book published in 1925 would include stories that are connected to events or the aftermath of the Great War. In "The Only Son," Wilfrid Hartford survived the war but lost his father and elder brother. He came home with "lung trouble" and (the reader understands) psychological trauma. His mother, desperate to help him heal, has found a doctor to care for him in England. But Reggie, who knows this doctor is a scientist, not a physician, is compelled to investigate that treatment. In the much less serious "The Hermit Crab," Miss Platt-Robinson, a tireless worker during the War, has been rewarded for her service with the position of superintendent of the Record Department of the Ministry of Social Welfare. There are rumors of conflict among the staff, and Miss Platt-Robinson has started to get threatening letters. Then she disappears. Reggie actually enjoys tracking her down.

My favorite "Trial" was the third, "The Furnished Cottage." The cover of the edition I read refers to this story, where Reggie is for once the victim. It's apparently taken from the cover of the original U.S. edition in 1926.

Reggie is set up for an accusation of theft, at an over-the-top reception to view bridal presents, where he is meant to be found with stolen emeralds. Even more astonishingly, he is kidnapped and left in the cellar of a vacant house, with a pitcher of poisoned water to tempt him to a quick death. I was quite impressed with his ingenuity in solving this case.

I have another book of H.C. Bailey stories on the TBR stacks, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more.

Cosy fantasy with jam and books

The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I've been hearing a lot lately about romantic fantasy (especially under the new term "romantasy"), and cosy fantasy has also been getting some attention, particularly with Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (both of which I enjoyed). I saw this recommended as both, and I put it on my library list. The other night, I stopped at a newer Barnes & Noble and decided that I didn't want to wait out the long library queue for this. (The B&N near me has been closed most of the year for renovations, which has cut down considerably on my impulse book-buying.)

The Spellshop opens with a library burning. Revolution has broken out in the capital city of Alyssium, and the emperor has been defenestrated "in a rather dramatic display." The staff has fled the Great Library, except for one librarian: Kiela is sure it will be safe, that the revolutionaries will respect the

hallowed stacks [that] were filled centuries-old treatises, histories, studies, and (most importantly in Kiela's opinion) spellbooks. Only the elite, the crème de la crème of the scholars, were allowed to even view the spellbooks, as only the rarefied few were permitted, by imperial law, to use magic.

She has worked and also lived in the library for eleven years, tucked away in a wing with only a sentient spider plant named Caz and the occasional researcher for company. She and Caz have packed some books away, just in case. But the flames have nearly reached her section before Caz can convince her that they have to flee. They move the books down to docks in the lower level of the library, where there is a boat they can use to flee with city with the books. Kiela is intent only on escape, but she realizes they need a plan. She decides to sail back to the island of Caltrey. Her parents (who have since died) moved to Alyssium when she was a child, in search of opportunities and a life beyond their small community. If their old house is still standing, she can hide herself, Caz, and the books there.

What she and Caz find is an island that is slowly dying, because the Empire has abandoned the magics that keep the world safe. With the spellbooks that she has rescued, she and Caz decide to try casting some spells, to try and help. But since magic is still illegal - as far as they know - they will call them "remedies." And they open a shop selling jam, as a cover, because raspberries are growing everywhere, and there is a lack of jam on the island (the fishing on which the economy depends is dying, because necessary spells are wearing out and not renewed). Their research process of trying out spells is delightful, as is the community that Kiela and Caz slowly discover. This is a book that celebrates community, and the power of books and knowledge shared. It celebrates food as well - not just jam, but food shared too. I also enjoyed the magical creatures, particularly "cloud bears" that act as forest guardians. This was a joy to read, and I hope that Sarah Beth Durst has more stories to tell set in this world.

An unusual female detective, from 1915

The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange, Anna Katharine Green  (TBR shelves, 2020)

I had seen Anna Katharine Green described as the first women to write detective stories in the U.S. before I found a pristine Penguin edition of her first book, The Leavenworth Case from 1878, on the library sale shelves. I thought it was interesting for its setting in Gilded Age New York as much for the locked-room mystery. After finishing it, I found a couple of her later books in print and added them to the TBR stacks. I was in a strange mood this week when I couldn't settle on a book to read, and I picked this one up almost at random.

The Golden Slipper consists of nine "Problems" that Violet Strange helps to resolve, most set in New York City. She is a woman of fashion, a popular figure, welcome everywhere and showered with invitations. She is described as a debutante in the first chapter, but like some of Georgette Heyer's characters, she has poise and confidence, she is not an ingenue. Though she is the daughter of a wealthy man, she works for the head of detective agency as a confidential agent. We never learn his name. The daughter of a wealthy man, with a limousine at her disposal and outfits for every social occasion, Violet nevertheless needs money, and she must keep her work (and her funds) secret from her father. This need for money forces Violent to accept cases she would rather not be involved in, and it's a thread running through the stories. Eventually we find out why she needs the money, as the final "problem" is sorted out.

The cases that she takes are an interesting mix. Some involve theft, others murder. They become increasingly complex and melodramatic, particularly the last one, which has a secret passageway with corpses whose cause of death I had a hard time taking seriously. Violet falls in love with one of central characters in a "Problem," another thread that runs through the stories. Since he is described as 

"a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts [family] whose great place on the coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless..."

Struck by the word "degenerate," I couldn't believe he turned out to be the love interest (but not the reason she needed the money).

I enjoyed the stories, the earlier ones more than the later. This was apparently Anna Katharine Green's only book to feature Violet Strange. I do have another of her books on my shelves, Lost Man's Lane, whose main character is Amelia Butterworth, an older woman who inserts herself into the mystery and like Miss Silver and Miss Marple, sees more than the police officers do.

Anne Frank Remembered

Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold  (TBR shelves, 2019)

Anne Frank was recently featured as a "Person of the Week" on the BBC History Extra podcast, which reminded me that I have had this book on the TBR shelves for a good while. I was also reminded by finding on the library sale shelves Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, described as "the adult counterpart to Anne Frank."

As far as I can remember, reading Anne Frank's diary was my introduction to the Holocaust, as I think it must have been for others in my generation in the US. I owned a copy of the original edition, and when I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam after college, I bought the expanded version published later. I wish I could remember more about that visit now.

Though I haven't read the Diary in a few years, the story that Miep Gies told in her memoir was very familiar, but it was so interesting to see that familiar story from the other side of the door into the Secret Annex. This is also the first memoir I have read about life in occupied Holland during World War II. Both Miep and her husband Jan (Henk in Anne's diary) were active in the Resistance, beyond helping those in the Annex. I did not know that Miep was born in Vienna (in 1909) and sent to Holland after the Great War as part of a program to help feed children amidst post-war shortages. She never returned to live in Austria, but when the Nazis invaded Holland, she was classified as a citizen of the Reich, which distressed her and complicated her life and resistance work.

Miep Gies's narrative about the struggles of life in wartime, with the constant shortages, and also the constant small acts of resistance, is compelling. I also appreciated that her memoir covered the years after the war, and the changes in her life and in her country. I have Dutch ancestry through my father's side of the family, which I have only just begun to learn more about. I would like to visit again some day. In the meantime, I am very glad to have this on the shelves next to Anne Frank's famous diary.

Editing this to add: after hitting "publish" I realized I have read another memoir of life in the Netherlands during the war, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place. I might need to read that one again.

Returning to Singapore, after the war

 The Angsana Tree Mystery, Ovidia Yu  (TBR shelves, 2024)

This is the eighth book in Ovidia Yu's Crown Colony series of mysteries, this one set in 1946. As soon I saw it was coming out this year, I knew it would be one of my 52 books for 2024. And I see that she has already announced a new one for next year, The Rose Apple Tree Mystery, so there's the first book for my 2025 list.

The first book in this series, The Frangipani Tree Mystery, is set in 1936, with Singapore a British Crown Colony but with Japanese power gathering in the east. The last four books were set during World War II and the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, and they were dark and sometimes difficult to read - not because of the mysterious deaths, though I am sometimes surprised by violent turns in the stories, but because of the brutal treatment of Singapore's residents and the struggles they go through just to survive. Ovidia Yu noted that she drew on her mother's experiences in the war in writing these books.

The Angsana Tree Mystery is the first set after the end of the war. Singapore is again a Crown Colony under British administration, but political change, and upheaval, is in the air with the push for independence from colonial rule in India, Malaya, Burma, spreading across the east. In Singapore, there are tensions as the residents are trying to rebuild from the devastation of the war and occupation, while British administrators reassert their authority. Su Lin has been working with her former boss in the police force, Thomas Le Froy, managing a public health service project. He has been accused of embezzling the funds, so their work is on hold, as is their tentative romance (which honestly, I have a little trouble believing in). Su Lin is bringing some holiday treats for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival to another family when she finds one of the daughters standing over a dead body. She knows that Mei Mei Pang couldn't have killed the man, and she immediately starts trying both to help her through the shock and to find out who did. Spoiler alert: there are more dead bodies to come.

This is a complicated story, one I sometimes had a little trouble following, but I enjoyed meeting Su Lin and her redoubtable grandmother Chen Tai again. As always I found the Singapore setting fascinating. It is a place I hope to visit some day. This year I also enjoyed Oanh Ngo Usadi's memoir of her U.S family's relocation to Singapore, Hawker Dreams. I look forward to my next fictional visit.