December Reading Thread

Just finished a 14th reading of The Lord of the Rings (not counting the appendices, which I do mean to read shortly), which I first finished probably in 1967. Oh, it's so good.

This would have been about the time of the first Tolkien conference, at Mankato Stater College in Minnesota.

Chris von shannow said:

Marvellous book

Click to expand...

And coincidentally I've just given it as an answer to a book search over in the Stack Exchange site - and it's been accepted as correct by the querant

I started this one a good while ago, at the time I DNF because I didn't know how many books would be in the series. (I have a dread of the ones that get to "book 30 plus" and counting forever more)
I now have the full set as ebooks so I'll try again, book one of the Expanse - Leviathan Wakes.

I don't plan on reading them all one after the other, I'll read other books in between them.

The Road To Miklagard, Henry Treece. Volume 2 of the Viking trilogy - original Puffin edition, price 4/6.

I just finished Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll, detailing the IRA plot to kill Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton bombing of 1984 and the subsequent manhunt for the perpetrators. It's a fascinating tale and well worth reading, particularly if you have also read the excellent Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, another book (and now a TV series) on the 'Troubles.'

Change of pace now and I've started Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche by John Higgs.

~The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
This was fun! What makes murder/mystery novels for me is either the setting or the characters. This almost-cozy novel has delightfully wrought characters, a decent plot and enough sugar, without inducing a diabetic coma.

Finished Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake -- not his best, but like most of Chandler, very readable -- and now I'm dawdling, picking off a short story here and there. Reread "The Signalman" by Dickens because I had access (via Shudder) to a BBC adaptation with Denholm Elliot (quite good, and mostly faithful, lifting a fair amount of Dicken's dialog right off the page).

Also a couple of stories by W. W. Jacobs, "The Three Sisters" and "The Well." I ducked around a reread of "The Monkey's Paw" for now to give his other stories a chance -- being the one story he's remembered for, it obscures that he was a competent commercial writer who was well regarded in his lifetime.

A friend loaned my American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Not really my type of thing, but we shall see...