I love this image and what with the cold weather we've been having and the short days already so grey and cloudy-filled, there is something inviting about this image. It looks so nice and cozy there, and I shall be trying hard to mimic the reading woman in her quiet solitude this weekend.
Thirteen days until my winter break (and then eleven free days when the university is closed to do mostly as I please).
Twenty-two days until the end of the year.
Twenty-two days to read how many books to clear off my night stand? Twenty-two days to catch up on telling you about all the books I meant to tell you about when I finished them (but was lazy about). Actually today's post was meant to be one of those catch up posts, but maybe in the end it will just be one long post with lots of very brief 'reviews'.
I feel like I need to focus on (this has been a constant theme with me since about August, hasn't it? But soon the new constant theme will be new books and reading ideas for 2017) what is at my bedside that I am immersed in at the moment.
I am into part seven of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and you will be happy to know that Lata has again taken center stage. This is the longest section yet with over a hundred pages so it should help move the story along at what I hope will be a nice, brisk pace.
I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that I am reading Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's Goodbye Piccadilly: War at Home, 1914. I am about halfway through and as always, I enjoy CHE's writing. This is a very Downton Abbey-ish-Upstairs/Downstairs sort of story. I am not sure how many books she plans to put out about the WWI era, but I think there are at least three and maybe a fourth is forthcoming. Maybe through 1918 when the war ended? In any case I want to read them all and thought it was time to get a start before she gets too far ahead of me.
I've also been reading (in earnest now as I have let this one sit for far too long) Laurie King's The Game, which is the seventh Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mystery. I think I lost a thread there somewhere. This time out Mary and Holmes are in India and they had been traveling as itinerant magicians and it felt like they were forever traveling and nothing much was happening. Of course it never helps when you only read a few pages at a time--then it really does feeling like they are only and forever walking and never arriving. So it just took a little attention and a nice chunk of reading time and the story has picked up again and reminded me how much I love the character of Mary Russell. How many women do you know would go pig sticking in Simla, and even though she gets in over her head she always manages to pull it all off creditably for her sex (I do love a smart, independent woman). Oh, and it was not exactly a pleasure she opted to do for fun but in the service of solving a mystery. I have already got number eight at the ready as it is set in San Francisco. I am moving slowly through these books, but I am at least reading them roughly one after the other (rather than letting years pass by before picking up the next book). I think there are about fourteen books in total, so I have my work (pleasant work however) cut out for me.
I've been juggling India with Italy as I am also reading in earnest (same situation here as above) Maurizio de Giovanni's Blood Curse, which is the second in the series of Commissario Ricciardi's 1930s Neapolitan mysteries. It is another series I hope to read at a steady pace. There are only eight books featuring the Commissario so far. If you recall, he sees dead people. I love the characters and the twist and enjoyed the first book immensely. I also want (and maybe I will switch gears next time out when I finish this one) to read his newer contemporary crime series also set in Naples (so far only two books plus one earlier that can be read as a standalone as well as a precursor to the series).
Mary Stewart's Stormy Petrel has been my escapist lunchtime read. It may be highly optimistic and probably too ambitious to think that I will spend too much time over the weekend with it, but you never know what you'll be in the mood to reach for. I need to pick up Jane Smiley's Golden Age, which is the third book in her Last Hundred Years Trilogy, this weekend if I hope to finish before the end of the year.
I'm really counting on these last three weeks of the year to be filled with lots of reading time, as you can see. There are a few other books that are awaiting my attention but first these books. My reading list is always too long, but we'll call it hopeful rather than hopeless!