SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady
Just another GR refugee. Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.
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2015 Roundup
Well, I had a good reading year in 2015 - I beat my original goal of 75 in October, and finished with 95 or so books read. And most of them were good reads, some very good indeed.
Best books I read this year: We Two, a joint biography of Victoria and Albert, by Gillian Gill; Dawn of the Belle Epoque, a cultural history of Paris, 1870-1900, by Mary McAuliffe; The Victorian City, a study of Dickens' London, by Judith Flanders; Uprooted, an Eastern European fantasy novel by Naomi Novik; and The Martian, by Andy Weir.
Weirdest reads: Embers, by Sandor Marai. (Beautiful writing, but a strange, strange "plot.") The Awakening of Miss Prim, by Natalia Fenollera.
Best author discovery: Judith Rock, who writes historical mysteries set in the Paris of Louis XIV. Her detective is a Jesuit priest, whose duties are teaching rhetoric and ballet to the aristocratic sons of France. There are only four volumes that I know of in the series; the first is The Rhetoric of Death.
Weakest reads: Murder as a Fine Art, by David Morrell. (The main character is well developed; unfortunately no one else is, and the plot is highly melodramatic.) The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman. (Too many plot elements stuffed, with none done full justice, into one short novel.) The Alchemist's Daughter, by Mary Lawrence. (A historical mystery with ahistorical tea, and a heroine I didn't either like or care about.) Medium Dead, by Alexandra Gladstone. (Victorian lady doctor, whom all including Queen Victoria accept, and her boyfriend, the earl whose hobby is breaking and entering combined with lock-picking, I just couldn't buy.)
But all in all, a very good year! I hope 2016 is as good.
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