A December Reading Update

It's going to be a busy day as we finish getting the house ready for impending company. I don't know how much time I'll have over the next ten days or so to keep updating this BLog although I'll try to get the odd post in.

Today I'll do sort of a final update on my 2019 reading. I've got one book on the go at the moment; The Cooperman Variations by Howard Engel, a Benny Cooperman mystery which I'm enjoying very much. I won't read any more books in 2019. I've got my first few 2020 books set up in my night stand. I'll try to provide a look at my 2020 challenges in a future post, hoping to do that before end 2019. I hope I enjoy my 2020 reading as much as I've enjoyed this past year.

This will be a brief post, just to provide some basic info on what I've accomplished reading-wise in 2019.

Goodreads has put out a summary of my reading stats so let's start with that. Just remember that I'm going to add in the above book in my stats. So this is how Goodreads breaks down my year.

Total pages and books - 41,734 pages over 137 books (add in one more book and 279 more pages) Note that Goodreads total page count is based on the book copies I just for my Goodreads bookshelf. Sometimes I can't find the exact version that I'm reading but I usually try to find one with a similar page length)
Shortest Book - 48 pages, Tank Girl - Carioca
Longest book - 879 pages, Justin Cronin - The Passage
Most popular - Night by Elie Wiesel (994,060 read)
Least popular - French Alley by Matthew Clay (0 read) (but me of course)
My average rating for 2019 - 3.6 of 5
Highest rated on Goodreads - Night by Elie Wiesel 4.32
My first review of year - The Black Dudley Murder by Margery Allingham (3 stars)




Now for my last monthly update.

Dec 2019

General Info                 Dec                  Total (Including my current read)
Books Read -                   9                      138
Pages Read -                 2,900                40,000 (somewhat at variance from Goodreads)

Pages Breakdown
    < 250                           3                        60      
250 - 350                         4                        35     
351 - 450                         1                        27     
   > 450                            1                        16     

Ratings
5 - star                             1                          7      
4 - star                             8                        74      
3 - star                             -                         53      
2 - star                             -                          4

Gender
Female                            3                       55
Male                               6                        83

Genres
Fiction                            4                       24
Mystery                          3                       80
SciFi                               1                       27
Non-Fic                          -                          5
Classics                          -                          2            

Top 3 Books
1. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery (5 stars)
2. The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White (4.5 stars)
3. Death in Captivity by Michael Gilbert (4.5 stars)

How I did in my Challenges
 
12 + 4  Challenge - (completed 16) (Challenge Complete)
Papa Bear Challenge (Books I've had the longest on my Goodreads bookshelf) - I completed 14 books
Mama Bear Challenge (Middle of my Goodreads bookshelf) - I completed 16 books
Baby Bear Challenge (Books most recently added to my Goodreads bookshelf) - I completed 14 books
Goldilocks Challenge (Random Number Generator) - I completed 13 books
Break from Challenge Challenge (Freebees every time I complete 10 books) - I completed 15 books
Challenges from Other Groups - I completed 21
September Individual Genre Challenge - Women Authors - I completed 9 books
October Individual Genre Challenge - Horror - I completed 4 books
November Individual Challenge - War - I completed 4 books
December Individual Challenge - A Mish Mash - I will have completed 5 when I finish The Cooperman Variations

A Brief Look at 2020 (My first five books)

1. The Death of Kings by Rennie Airth (John Madden #5)












"In the fifth novel in the John Madden mystery series, Inspector Madden is called upon to assist Scotland Yard on a notorious decade-old murder case.

On a hot summer day in 1938, a beautiful actress is murdered on the grand Kent estate of Sir Jack Jessup, close friend of the Prince of Wales. An instant headline in the papers, the confession of a local troublemaker swiftly brings the case to a close, but in 1949, the reappearance of a jade necklace raises questions about the murder. Was the man convicted and executed the decade before truly guilty, or had he wrongly been sent to the gallows?

Inspector Madden is summoned out of retirement at the request of former Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair to re-open the case at Scotland Yard. Set in the aftermath of World War II, The Death of Kings is an atmospheric and captivating police procedural, and is a story of honor and justice that takes Madden through the idyllic English countryside, post-war streets of London, and into the criminal underworld of the Chinese Triads"

2. Tales of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov (Black Widowers #1)














"There were six of them. Professional men and their waiter. They gather at the Milano Restaurant once a month for good food and good conversation. But lately the Black Widowers have added a new entertainment to their meetings. They have begun to solve mysteries, murders, and conspiracies of seemingly impossible dimensions.

With all the skills of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot combined, these six men and their ever-faithful waiter, Henry, take on challenging cases that will tease your deductive skills to the limit and keep you guessing to the very end.

Contents:
* The Acquisitive Chuckle
* Ph as in Phony
* Truth to Tell
* Go, Little Book!
* Early Sunday Morning
* The Obvious Factor
* The Pointing Finger
* Miss What?
* The Lullaby of Broadway
* Yankee Doodle Went to Town
* The Curious Omission
* Out of Sight"

3. It's Classified by Nicolle Wallace (Eighteen Acres #2)


"Charlotte Kramer, America’s first female president, is beginning her second term and is determined to make her mark on history although events do seem to be conspiring against her. Melanie Kingston, her best friend, just signed on as secretary of defense. Will their relationship survive? Dale Smith is the senior communications advisor to the vice president and knows a secret that could not only ruin her own career but put the credibility of the White House on the line. Tara Meyers is the most popular vice president in recent history, but does her public image match her private life?

When a classified terror threat is made public, all the weaknesses of this presidency are laid bare — and with the country’s safety at stake, someone in the White House isn’t taking any chances"

4. Children of the Night by John Blackburn

 "For centuries, the small English village of Dunstonholme has been the scene of mysterious tragedies. Local lore traces these strange events back to the year 1300, when a sect of Christian heretics known as the Children of Paul were involved in a bloody massacre. Since that time, there have been railway disasters, mining accidents, shipwrecks, and other terrible happenings. Now a wave of suspicious deaths has the locals on edge and looking for explanations. Dr. Tom Allen and adventurer J. Moldon Mott think they know what is behind the killings: an ancient evil, dating back seven hundred years, lies hidden underground—and it is preparing to emerge to the surface...

5. Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler









"Barney Panofsky smokes too many cigars, drinks too much whiskey, and is obsessed with two things: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and his ex-wife Miriam. An acquaintance from his youthful years in Paris, Terry McIver, is about to publish his autobiography. In its pages he accuses Barney of an assortment of sins, including murder. It's time, Barney decides, to present the world with his own version of events. Barney's Version is his memoir, a rambling, digressive rant, full of revisions and factual errors (corrected in footnotes written by his son) and enough insults for everyone, particularly vegetarians and Quebec separatists.

But Barney does get around to telling his life story, a desperately funny but sad series of bungled relationships. His first wife, an artist and poet, commits suicide and becomes--à la Sylvia Plath--a feminist icon, and Barney is widely reviled for goading her toward death, if not actually murdering her. He marries the second Mrs. Panofsky, whom he calls a "Jewish-Canadian Princess," as an antidote to the first; it turns out to be a horrible mistake. The third, "Miriam, my heart's desire," is quite possibly his soul mate, but Barney botches this one, too. It's painful to watch him ruin everything, and even more painful to bear witness to his deteriorating memory. The mystery at the heart of Barney's story--did he or did he not kill his friend Boogie?--provides enough forward momentum to propel the reader through endless digressions, all three wives, and every one of Barney's nearly heartbreaking episodes of forgetfulness.

So there you go. My last look at 2019. Have a great Boxing Day and enjoy the rest of your year.