Let's Bust a Recap : 2022

Well, the good news is: we've made it through another year. Can you even believe it? I didn't clear the To Be Blogged stack, and I only finished one book in December (yesterday!), but it was a great reading year and I'm looking forward to making a fresh new book list for 2023 today. 

But before we do that, let's take stock of 2022. I read a lot of really great books this year and, quantitatively, this was my best reading year yet with my tally adding up to 46 books. I got re-acquainted with the library system this year thanks to my book club, and I've finally read The Lord of the Rings which felt like a major literary milestone for me. I discovered a series I never dreamed I'd enjoy but ended up loving (also thanks to book club), and I finally read and consequently unearthed some new favorite authors I've been meaning to get to for years. I still haven't tackled David Copperfield despite this being the third year I've put it on my book list, and I only managed to complete one presidential biography this year though I am well on my way through my biography of Polk. C'est la vie. Tomorrow is another day, or, as it happens, another year. Here's what I read in 2022.

January

Jonathan Edwards' Resolutions & Advice to Young Converts : completed 1/8

Great way to start the year. Highly recommend reading this in January.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (re-read) : completed 1/20

The Proposal by Lori Wick (re-read) : completed 1/23

I love a good re-read, especially near the beginning of the year, and I did a lot of comfort reading in January. This English Garden series by Lori Wick is a familiar favorite for me. 

The Rescue by Lori Wick (re-read) : completed 1/24

The Visitor by Lori Wick (re-read) : completed 1/27

February

The Selection by Kiera Cass (library book) : completed 2/1

Not my favorite, but the book club decreed this would be the book for January so to the library I went.

The Elite by Kiera Cass (library book): completed 2/2

The One by Kiera Cass (library book) : completed 2/5

The Lady's Mine by Francine Rivers : completed 2/15

So excited to get a new release from one of my favorite authors!

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare : completed 2/25

Ye ole Bard's most maddening comedy yet.

Church Membership by Jonathan Leeman : completed 2/28

 

I Am A Church Member by Thom S. Rainer : completed 2/28

The MVP of the three church membership books I read this year.

March

What Is a Healthy Church Member? by Thabiti M. Anyabwile : completed 3/11

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (re-read) : completed 3/29

Wasn't planning to re-read Jane Eyre this year, but this was the book club book for February. Haven't decided if I should recap this for the blog or not. Any thoughts on that?

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (re-read) : completed 3/31

Wasn't planning to re-read this EVER, but this was the book club book for March. Just as depressing as the first time around with an added sense of dread knowing what was coming. 

April

Summer Promise by Robin Jones Gunn (re-read) : completed 4/10

Decided to go back to the very beginning and visit with Christy this year for my Robin Jones Gunn selections.

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (library book) : completed 4/18

Easily my least favorite book of the year. 

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : completed 4/27

May

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (read aloud) : completed 5/20

Such a good idea reading these aloud with my husband. We loved them.

Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear : completed 5/21

June

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse : completed 6/1

One of those newly discovered favorite authors I'd been meaning to get to.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (read aloud) : completed 6/3

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty : completed 6/17

Another new favorite author.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (library book) : completed 6/23

That series I didn't expect to love.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (library book) : completed 6/28

July

Cress by Marissa Meyer (library book) : completed 7/8

Winter by Marissa Meyer (library book) : completed 7/14

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (read aloud) : completed 7/24

That ending. 

August

President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler by Christopher J. Leahy : 

completed 8/6

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne : completed 8/15

Not a summertime book!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman : completed 8/24

One of my favorites this year. So much laughing and crying.

Present Concerns by C.S. Lewis : completed 8/30

September

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare : completed 9/8

Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais : completed 9/15

Could not put it down. Looking forward to her next book.

In His Image by Jen Wilkin : completed 9/21

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie : completed 9/30

Read the book; skip the movie.

October

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (re-read; read aloud) : completed 10/2

Got to read the whole book to my niece when we brought her home with us for a week. Love that.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (re-read) : completed 10/6

Thinking I'll end up recapping this one.

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : completed 10/15

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl : completed 10/20

So fun.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl : completed 10/26

But I liked this one even better.

November

A Whisper and a Wish by Robin Jones Gunn (re-read) : completed 11/5

Yours Forever by Robin Jones Gunn (re-read) : completed 11/6

The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer : completed 11/27

My BFF Christina read this one with me. 

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley : completed 11/28

Flavia is so fun. Looking forward to more of her adventures.

December

Watership Down by Richard Adams : completed 12/30

Recap coming soon. This one was so good.

I'd love to hear what you read this year or if you kept any resolutions you made for yourself. I hope you made some memories in 2022 you'll treasure, and I hope you're looking forward to a brand new year. Thanks for visiting this little corner of cyberspace, and have a safe time bringing in the new year tonight! Don't forget to check back soon for my 2023 book list. 

From me and mine, peace and love to you and yours. 

Let's Bust a Recap : Hum If You Don't Know the Words

We're chipping away at the To Be Blogged stack and today's feature is Bianca Marais' 2017 debut Hum If You Don't Know the Words. This book first hit my radar in 2019 when I was trying out the Instagram and Marais' second book If You Want to Make God Laugh was coming out as a new release. I was immediately intrigued by both titles, and when I realized that Marais is a native South African and both books are historical fiction set in South Africa during the apartheid era, I immediately added them to my Must-Read list. My sister-in-law got them for me for Christmas that year (thanks, Dakota!), and I promptly put Hum If You Don't Know the Words on my 2020 book list, but didn't manage to get to it that year. It went back on my list again this year, and in September my friend Amanda chose it for our book club to read. It ended up being the most unputdownable standalone I read this year.

In Hum If You Don't Know the Words, we're introduced to Robin Conrad, a ten year old white girl living in Johannesburg with her parents in the 1970s, and Beauty Mbali, a widowed Xhosa woman raising her children in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei. During the Soweto uprising, Robin's parents are brutally murdered and Beauty's daughter goes missing. Through a series of events, Beauty is hired to care for Robin and this unlikely pair forge an unexpected and complicated bond. The book alternates between their perspectives, and even though there were absolutely devastating elements to this story, the overall tone held hope high. I didn't want to stop reading about these characters, and If You Want to Make God Laugh instantly earned a spot on next year's book list. While it's not a sequel to Hum If You Don't Know the Words, I hear that Beauty and/or Robin may make a cameo in its pages. (I really try to go into the books I read as blind as possible, so I don't know all that much about Marais' follow up novel and please no spoilers in the comments if you've read it!)

I can't say enough good things about Hum If You Don't Know the Words. I enjoyed the South African setting and language (having lived in Joburg for a short time myself in 2009 and 2010), I appreciated the historical context (which was a vital aspect of the novel and written well), and I especially loved the characters' stories (Robin's abrupt coming-of-age and attempts to understand the scary, ever-changing world around her; and Beauty's struggles to find her daughter in a world that's entirely against her because of her black skin color juxtaposed with her mothering of a frightened little girl who can't even understand the benefits she's been given simply because of her white skin color). I wasn't ready for the book to end when it did, and I seriously considered starting Marais' next book immediately. 

All in all, this is a novel I'd recommend to just about anyone. While there are very difficult—potentially triggering—situations and some strong language sprinkled throughout, Hum If You Don't Know the Words will ultimately make you consider the sanctity of human life and—I would hope—cause you to recognize that every person deserves to be treated with dignity. 

Ten out of ten; would recommend.

What's the most unputdownable book you've read this year?

Let's Bust a Recap : Gone With the Wind

Alright, well since I admitted yesterday that I still had Gone With the Wind hanging around on my shelf, waiting since last year to be blogged about, I figured I'd go ahead and just tackle it today. According to Goodreads, I began reading Gone With the Wind on October 2nd last year and finished it on November 14th. However, I vividly remember wishing I could just devote all my time to reading it until I finished instead of, you know, going to work and handling my adult responsibilities. If it wasn't for all that, I'm pretty sure I'd have devoured this one in about a week. I read some real gems last year, but if push came to absolute shove, I might have to say that Gone With the Wind was my favorite book of 2021, and it's definitely on my list of All Time Favorites now.

Gone With the Wind is one of those Southern classics I was always a little ashamed I hadn't read, but because of its sheer length (and maybe also due in part to the sheer length of the film as well), I just never picked it up. I've had that tattered hardcover edition sitting on my shelf for years. Now that I've read it, it's one of those books I'm chagrined I didn't pick up sooner. I couldn't put it down, and I'll forever be indebted to my sister-in-law for agreeing to buddy read it with me and giving me that final nudge I needed to start it. Literally days before we began reading it, I found that mass market paperback in a Little Free Library and boy am I ever glad because it went everywhere with me.

If you're somehow unfamiliar with this iconic saga, it's the coming-of-age story of Scarlett O'Hara, a spoiled sixteen year old Southern belle living in Clayton County, Georgia when the South is on the brink of seceding from the Union and entering the Civil War. Throughout the course of the novel, Scarlett grows up, ends up being widowed twice and married three times, successfully preserves her family plantation Tara through the Reconstruction Era, births three children (and has one awful miscarriage), loses one of her children, and ends separated from the man she loves but with the determination to get him back. 

When I say I experienced just about every human emotion imaginable while reading this book, I am not exaggerating even a little. Margaret Mitchell produced a masterpiece of a novel and I totally get why it's still one of the most popular books in the world. Despite its 1936 publication date, in a poll as recent as 2014 it's still considered the second most popular book in America behind only the Holy Bible itself. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. The thing that won me over and made me a lifelong fan was Mitchell's ability to write such human characters. While Scarlett and Rhett Butler do some absolutely reprehensible things, you completely understand what led them to their actions. It's hard to hate Scarlett (or Rhett for that matter) when I'm sitting in my cozy armchair at home wondering what I would have done in the same situation. While I aspire to be the kind of Southern woman Scarlett's mother Ellen or the indomitable Melanie Hamilton are, I can sympathize with young Scarlett's desperation and her overwhelming determination to "make it". While reading Gone With the Wind, I flip-flopped between despising Scarlett and pitying her. That's excellent writing. I've said before that my favorite books tend to be ones that present me with moral dilemmas and ethical tension that's hard to stomach, and Mitchell produces that tension in spades in Gone With the Wind. 

There have been several sequels and prequels to Gone With the Wind (some authorized, some not), but none by Margaret Mitchell herself. And even though a couple of these have come highly recommended to me by trusted sources, I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to read any of them. Gone With the Wind stands on its own and despite its heartbreaking and unresolved ending, it needs no sequel. There's something so fitting about Scarlett's closing lines: "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day." Throughout all of Gone With the Wind, Scarlett copes with her own impossible choices by not thinking of them today, but putting off the hard thoughts for another day. What better way to end her story than with her personal maxim?

The 1939 movie adaptation starring Vivien Leigh is considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time, and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1939. I personally have only seen it in its entirety maybe twice in my life, the last time being at the beginning of 2010 so I'd be hard pressed to comment on the book versus the movie. But now having read the novel, I have the vague idea that I'd prefer to just sit down with it again over watching the film, something akin to my disgust with the Pride and Prejudice adaptations floating about in the world. But I'll hold my final judgment on this until I rewatch the movie with my sister-in-law. (She loves the movie.)

Gone With the Wind is not without its problems, and if you want to come at me with how problematic Gone With the Wind is, go right ahead. It will not change how I feel about the book, or the fact that I have every intention of reading it again. It is frequently the center of controversy and has been challenged and banned in multiple places, and I definitely get how it could be extremely triggering for some readers. Gone With the Wind may not be the book for everyone, but it will have a home in my library until I'm gone from this earth. 

Have you read it?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Secret Garden

So here's the thing: The Secret Garden is one of two books leftover from last year that I've been wanting to recap before putting them back on the shelf. (The other is Gone With the Wind.) My original plan was to follow up by watching the movie adaptations before writing my recaps to include some thoughts about how they compare to the books they were adapted from, but you know what? It's December. I've been watching World Cup games since the week of Thanksgiving and now we're thick into my Christmas movie collection, and I just can't have these books carry over into another year. So let's talk about this sweet children's novel today. It was one of my favorite books of 2021.

I read this book in September last year while I was laid up with the COVID. And I can't even tell you how much I loved it. Two years ago in 2020, I finally got around to reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and it left me determined to read The Secret Garden as soon as possible. I enjoyed A Little Princess, but The Secret Garden is now easily my favorite of the two. 

The Secret Garden was published in 1911, a few years after A Little Princess, after being serialized from November of 1910 to August of 1911. It's about a little girl named Mary Lennox who is sent to live with her uncle on the Yorkshire Moors after she is orphaned due to a cholera outbreak in British India where she was born and has lived her whole life to this point. She's only 10 years old, and has lived a neglected existence because her wealthy, self-absorbed parents couldn't be bothered with her care. Mary is a sour, unattractive, rude child when she comes to England, but through the revelation of the beauty of nature, she softens and grows into a lovely little girl. Her friendship with Dickon Sowerby and her discovery of her bedridden cousin Colin add fun to her life and a vital human element to this story. 

I recently read a beautiful piece on this book over at Word on Fire, and because I was moved by reading it and also because I could not possibly express these sentiments nearly as eloquently as Haley does, I'm going to link it here and urge you to take a few minutes to read it. 

The Beauty of Creation Beckons: The Secret Garden & the Awakening to Abundant Life

Other than that, I will take a moment to compare the novel to its 1993 movie adaptation which I've seen many times. Unlike with the two adaptations of A Little Princess that I own, The Secret Garden is a much more faithful adaptation of its source material. The only bone I have to pick with it is that I wish Dickon's mother had been a more central character in the adaptation like she is in the book. Other that that, I would highly recommend watching this one after reading the book. In fact, maybe I will have a little Christmas movie moratorium tonight to watch The Secret Garden. (Did anyone see the 2020 adaptation? How was it?)

This book came to me just when I needed it. Sometimes, when I read a beloved children's classic that I missed out on when I was a child myself, I mourn the lost time, but I'm glad to have discovered The Secret Garden when I did. It's found a home on my list of All Time Favorite books, and I'll certainly be reading it again. 

Let's Bust a Recap : Death on the Nile

Well, if you're reading this, thanks for staying with me on this never-ending saga of "Has she quit blogging forever, or will something pop up randomly after a month and a half of silence?"

Listen, I did not accurately factor in how the World Cup would negatively impact my reading life—much less my blogging life. It's my all-time favorite sporting event and it only comes around once every four years. You'd think I would have given a thought to how planting myself in front of the TV for eight hours a day to watch the beautiful game would have an effect on the rest of my life, but no. Not a hope of that. 

Anyway, I'm popping back in today to try to make a dent in the To-Be-Blogged stack and to assure anyone wondering that yes, I do in fact intend to keep up this little hobby of mine, however sporadic that may look.

And the book I plucked at random out of the stack for today is Death on the Nile by the Queen of Crime herself: Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE. 

If you've followed this little corner of cyberspace for any length of time, you may remember that I'm still a bit of a Christie newbie. I've only read two of her other novels (in 2017 and 2018 respectively), and after reading And Then There Were None, went on a bit of a Christie strike thinking no other book of hers could possibly be worth it after that brilliant display of murder-mystery prowess. 

I knew the strike was destined to end sometime, however, as I continued to collect her books and add them to our home library. Since my recap of And Then There Were None at the end of 2018 (at which time I only owned three of her books) our Christie collection has grown to a whopping 28 of her novels. And when friends of ours invited us over to watch the new movie released this year, I begged for a little time to read the original work first. 

So about halfway through September, I re-entered the world of Agatha Christie to read her 1937 rendering: Death on the Nile.

And I have to say: Agatha did it again. 

In Death on the Nile, our famous Belgian, Hercule Poirot, is approached by the effervescent Linnet Doyle (previously Ridgeway) on board the steamer Karnak (cruising down the Nile—hence the title) about the matter of her ex-best friend Jacqueline de Bellefort stalking and harassing her and her new husband Simon. Linnet, who is independently wealthy and has everything she could possibly want, stole Simon away from poor Jackie, and ever since their marriage, Jackie has been popping up everywhere they are and making them feel terrible about themselves. 

But when Linnet turns up dead in her cabin one night after Jackie makes a huge scene with Simon and a little pistol, this case of harassment turns into a murder mystery that only Poirot could solve. As he delves deeper into the details, he finds that nearly everyone on board has a reason to want Linnet dead. But who actually killed her?

I won't ruin it, but wow. How does she do it? Once again, Christie tied my brain in absolute knots trying to figure this one out, and once again, I was left gobsmacked by the final resolution. If you've never read anything by Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile would be a great one to pick up. 

The movie, on the other hand, was a bit of a letdown. Opposite to my experience with Murder on the Orient Express which was wonderful up until the end where everything seemed to fall apart; Death on the Nile seemed to drag on and on, but then Branagh really stuck the ending. They significantly cut down the cast which took away from the brilliance of Poirot solving the case, and just added in a lot of awkward, unnecessary bits that didn't do anything for the story except maybe make it a little more relevant to contemporary culture. Gag me. Our little group had a good time watching it though, and then I had the satisfaction of being questioned about what was changed from the book. 

Interestingly, I found myself reading an article recently about the All About Agatha podcast. I'm not a podcast listener myself (though I've tried), and these Agatha experts rank Death on the Nile #9 out of all Christie's mystery novels. And for anyone wondering, that's 66 novels. I was thunderstruck to see that they had the gall to put And Then There Were None at #2, but also intrigued. I actually own a copy of Five Little Pigs (though I have an American edition titled Murder in Retrospect), and now I'm at a loss as to how to decide my next Christie novel. All along, I'd been planning to read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd next (which you'll notice is #3 on this list), but then that got upset by Death on the Nile this year. Not to mention, I still haven't read a Miss Marple mystery yet. 

SEND HELP.

All told, I'd definitely recommend Death on the Nile, and somebody please tell me which Agatha Christie novel I should put on next year's reading list! This link should take you to a list of the 28 I own on Goodreads if you feel so inclined to help a sister out. 

Where do you land on the scale of Agatha Christie fandom if 1 was "Agatha who?" and 10 was "I have a poster of her in my bedroom"? Any other World Cup watchers out there? Who do you choose in the final: Argentina or France?