rhian_of_oz Reads in 2023 - January to June

I'm Rhian from Perth and this is my fifth year in Club Read. I've decided not to set any reading goals this year though I will note that as at 31 December 2022 my TBR count was 130.

Currently reading:
The Body by Bill Bryson
This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal
Vagabonds by Jingfang Hao

Next up:

Suggested January reads (based on Category challenges or group reads):
MysteryKIT (tv/movie detectives) -
RandomKIT (hidden gems) - How Long 'til Black Future Month
SFFKIT (why didn't i read it sooner) - Black Man, Death's End, The Paper Menagerie
SeriesCat (new to me) - The Knife of Never Letting Go, The City of Brass, White Heat, A Master of Djinn, The City We Became, Halting State, Age of Myth, Drop By Drop, The Underdog, The Silence of Girls

Priorities from wishlist(WL) or TBR
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (TBR)
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (TBR)

Series to finish:
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Queen of Ruin by Tracy Banghart
Perhaps The Stars by Ada Palmer
Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson
The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson
Death's End by Cixin Liu

CR BBs
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg (bragan)
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (RidgewayGirl)
I'm Off Then by Hape Kerkeling (cushlareads)
The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green (wandering_star)
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (RidgewayGirl)
The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye (BLBera)
Dinosaurs A Novel by Lydia Millet (avaland, BLBera)
Broken River by J Robert Lennon (arubabookwoman)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (rachbxl)
Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes (rachbxl)
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (rachbxl)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (shadrach_anki and Victorian Tavern)
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (BLBera)

Wishlist from other sources
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis (TV series)
Once Upon A Tome by Oliver Darkshire (BSB)
The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams (BSB)
The Secret Book Of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry (BSB)
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin (The Passage)
The Collected Regrets Of Clover by Mikki Brammer (BSB)

Quarter 1

January

1. The Deadly Daylight by Ash Harrier


2. Legends of the Lost Lilies by Jackie French


3. City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett


4. A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany


5. There's a Murder Afoot by Vicki Delany


6. A Curious Incident by Vicki Delany


7. A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear

February

1. A Three Book Problem by Vicki Delany


2. Hyperion by Dan Simmons


3. The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer


4. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr


5. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell


6. City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

March

1. Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles


2. Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes


3. The Diet Trap Solution by Dr Judith S Beck


4. Saving Time by Jodi Taylor


5. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik


6. Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland


7. The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

QTD
Books owned pre-2023: 4 (20.00%)
Books purchased in 2023: 4 (20.00%)
Books gifted in 2023: 0 (0.00%)
Borrowed books: 12 (60.00%)

YTD
Books owned pre-2023: 4 (20.00%)
Books purchased in 2023: 4 (20.00%)
Books gifted in 2023: 0 (0.00%)
Borrowed books: 12 (60.00%)

TBR: 134

Quarter 2

April

1. Encore in Death by J. D. Robb


2. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

May

1. I Am NOT Fine, Thanks by Wil Anderson


2. Your Own Kind Of Girl by Clare Bowditch

June

1. Identity by Nora Roberts


2. An Impossible Imposter by Deanna Raybourn


3. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

QTD
Books owned pre-2023: 2 (28.57%)
Books purchased in 2023: 4 (57.14%)
Books gifted in 2023: 0 (0.00%)
Borrowed books: 1 (14.29%)

YTD
Books owned pre-2023: 6 (22.22%)
Books purchased in 2023: 8 (29.63%)
Books gifted in 2023: 0 (0.00%)
Borrowed books: 13 (48.15%)

TBR: 134

Happy 2023! I loved Hamnet. Hope you do too. I haven't read any Vicki Delany yet, but she's in my TBR ocean. Didn't come up as a random read this year, but that doesn't mean I couldn't read something of hers this year!

Happy New Year. Wish you well with your studies and you get some fun reading time in too.

Welcome to Club Read 2023, Rhian! I hope you like Anxious People when you read it. Backman is one of my favorite authors, and it was nice to get back to his more usual tone after the Beartown books.

Hi Rhian - waving at you from (very far) across the Tasman Sea in Wellington!
Hamnet is on my TBR list - I have yet to hear a bad thing about it, but just haven't read it yet.

>7 WelshBookworm: Happy 2023 to you too. The Delany series is okay (pretty cosy and just the ticket for the busy time around Christmas) but if you like Sherlock-related stuff I recommend the Sherry Thomas series (though admittedly I've only read two).

>8 dchaikin: Thanks Dan. I see you've created your thread so I'll head over and drop off my star.

>9 labfs39: Thanks! I'm glad I read Beartown even though it was confronting but I had to put Us Against You aside at a particular point (it's clear something bad is going to happen) and I haven't picked it up since. It's reassuring to hear that Anxious People is more like his other books.

>10 cushlareads: Waving back! I visited Wellington for work in 2016 and liked what I saw so we'll definitely be back one day.

I'd be up for a buddy read of Hamnet if you'd like. I've barely started it so I'd be happy to put it aside until you're ready.

Happy New Year, Rhian. I loved Hamnet. I'll watch for your comments on it.

>13 rhian_of_oz: I loved Anxious People! I liked it better than A Man Called Ove.

Well, your intro post had me curious about my owned, but unread books. I might need to adjust some goals to deal with that number.

I will be interested to see how you like The Silence of the Girls. Barker is a very good writer and I enjoyed her take.

>17 ELiz_M: I have The Silence of the Girls as a BB from Cariola but it seems there's a lot of love for this at CR.

>14 rhian_of_oz: I thought our library had plenty of e-book copies of Hamnet, but it doesn't. Which is very odd - it's a great library system with a pretty e-book good collection. I've reserved a hard copy just now - reading it together would be fun. But don't wait because there are 4 people ahead of me and it might be a few weeks off.

>19 cushlareads: I'm happy to wait - I have 130 other books that I can read in the meantime :-).

Can you remind me when you're down to one person ahead? I'll set up a thread for it then and see if anyone else wants to join us.

The Deadly Daylight by Ash Harrier

This is the first book in a middle-grade mystery series featuring 12-year-old Alice England.

I liked this. I like Alice and her friends and I thought the mystery was well done. I'm looking forward to the next one though I have to wait because it's not due for release until the end of February.

That sounds like a fun story, and I've added it to my TBR-wishlist.

Just stopping by to drop a star Rhian. I’ll be checking in once in a while.

>22 shadrach_anki: I'll be interested to see what you think if/when you read it.

>23 NanaCC: Thanks Colleen! I dropped my star as soon as I saw your thread.

Looking forward to following along again this year, Rhian.

>25 AlisonY: Thanks, back atcha. Hopefully my reading will be worth following!

Hi Rhian,
Hamnet has come up for me at the library already! I'll go and collect it today.

>27 cushlareads: Excellent! I'll start us a buddy read thread and see if anyone wants to join us.

Legends of the Lost Lilies by Jackie French

This is the fifth and final book in the Miss Lilly series.

I'm feeling quite ambivalent about this book (and the whole series really). On the one hand they're easy to read and tell women's stories across the span of the two world wars, but on the other they're often melodramatic and implausible.

I don't regret the time spent reading them and I obviously liked the characters enough that I wanted to "keep up" with what they were doing, but I'm relieved I'll no longer have to wrestle with myself about reading the next one.

>28 rhian_of_oz: might join you; it will be a reread for me but I'd love to talk with others while we are reading it

>30 cindydavid4: You're very welcome to. The thread is here.

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

This is the second book of the Divine Cities trilogy.

Another cracker of a book - so good! The good news is that the final instalment is available via my state library but the bad news is it is going to take a while for it to get to me. (This is actually good news in disguise because I have quite a few book commitments at the moment)

This series was a BB from Michael (dukedom_enough) for which I am very grateful.

A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany

This is the fourth in the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series whose main character is Gemma Doyle, owner of the the bookshop and a very observant woman who keeps inadvertently discovering dead bodies.

These are pretty light and a bit of fun. By this stage of the series we have a number of familiar characters who have their own quirks and recurring behaviours. The mystery and investigation is also pretty light, with all of them so far ending with Gemma having an 'aha' moment and confronting the killer, though thankfully not in a stupid way that puts her life in danger.

I already have the next one out from the library which I will read. I'm finding these to be really good summer reads.

Ah right, it’s summer in your part of the world. Series sounds fun.

>34 dchaikin: It's so much fun I immediately read the next one.

There's a Murder Afoot by Vicki Delany

In this instalment (number five) Gemma and her friends travel to London for a Sherlock Holmes conference. We meet her family, including her smarter older sister who works for some unnamed government office. At the conference Gemma meets her dodgy uncle that she'd never heard of, and whose murder she ends up investigating when her father is the main suspect.

I'm not sure why but I liked this one better than the others. The Pippa character was especially fun.

My library has the next two so I'll probably go and pick them up maybe Friday or Saturday and then I'll be up-to-date. Number eight is due to be released at the end of February but I'll be back at uni by then so this may be just a fleeting summer romance :-).

So while the library had the next Sherlock Holmes Bookshop book, someone had checked out the second next one. I've requested it from another branch so it will likely be available on Monday.

A Curious Incident by Vicki Delany

Friday afternoon had me feeling like something light and book number six was just the ticket. We're back in West London and a woman is found dead hours after a public fight with her gardening rival. Gemma is asked to investigate by the 11 year old daughter of the rival (main suspect).

This was fun and easy and I read it in one sitting.

>36 rhian_of_oz: wrong touchstone,curious incident of the dog at midnight a book I absolutely loved, but would want to read yours too

>37 cindydavid4: Thanks, fixed it.

The Vicki Delany series sounds very entertaining. I'll make a note of them.

A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 17th in the Maisie Dobbs series which has been a bit up and down for me from number 10 onwards, including two "avowals" of abandonment after numbers 15 and 16.

I was quite pleased then that this one reminded me more of the earlier books that got me interested in this series, I think because the focus of this one was on the case being investigated with the personal issues being secondary.

>40 rhian_of_oz: 'avowal of abandonment'
Maisie inspires that, lol. It was book 11, in Gibaltar that annoyed me the most. But I kept coming back. #14 was one of the better ones as it came back to the regular characters. Sigh, I'll probably read #17 too.

>41 raidergirl3: If you like the earlier ones then I think you'll like this one.

A Three Book Problem by Vicki Delany

This is book seven in the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and sees Gemma and friends onsite during a recreation of an English country weekend when the host is killed.

I've enjoyed this series but I consider it like a summer fling - fun while it lasted but not life changing. I may remember it fondly in my dotage :-).

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

What can I say about this book? I'm torn, some bits I really liked, some bits I really didn't, and I *especially* didn't like the ending, though I think that is partly because I didn't feel like the payoff was worth the effort.

I read this for bookclub and opinion was divided/mixed so I wasn't alone in my feelings for it.

It's apparently like a sci-fi version of The Canterbury Tales (which I haven't read) and it contains lots of references to John Keats (who I also haven't read). I recognised Raymond Chandler as an influence for one of the tales so I realise that I have missed what the other tales used for inspiration. I think if you had a literature degree you would probably pick up what Mr Simmons is putting down.

This was published in 1989 and won a Hugo (I've read two of the other short-listed in the same year and agree that this is better than them, certainly in scope and world-building) but I don't think it's aged well. Though looking at recent reviews on LT I am in a minority with my opinion.

This is the first in a tetralogy. There were a lot of questions left unanswered which I would like to know the answers to, but not enough to read the remaining books.

>43 rhian_of_oz: I may remember it fondly in my dotage :-).

LOL

A Sunlit Weapon is next for me in the Maisie Dobbs series. I"m happy to hear it's a good one. The Vicki Delaney series sounds like fun; I think my library has them, so I might give one a try when I need something light.

>46 BLBera: I'm glad I gave Maisie another chance so I hope you enjoy it too once you get to it.

I should give Maisie another chance. I have the next for me, In This Grave Hour, on my bookshelf. It has been a while since I last read one

>48 NanaCC: Looking back on my thoughts on In This Grave Hour I said "I like these well enough" which in hindsight seems to be damning with faint praise :-D.

If you give it a go I hope you enjoy it.

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

This is the first in the Enola Holmes series, where Enola is the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, aimed at (I guess) a middle-school audience.

I quite like a Sherlock Holmes derivative, and I also like a well-written middle-school book, but I am pretty 'meh' about this one. It was okay.

I'm not sure how I feel about Enola, I didn't find the mysteries compelling, and I found much of it improbable (especially the end).

I shan't be continuing with this series.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

I have All The Light We Cannot See but I haven't read it yet. I picked this up at the library because I liked the title and borrowed it because the first chapter sucked me in.

I liked this a lot. It's not an easy read - it's quite long and there are a number of story arcs where the connection is not clear for a while - but I would say it is definitely worth the effort.

Looking at reviews suggests this is quite different to 'All the Light' which I will keep in mind when I get around to reading it, but based on this Mr Doerr can definitely write a great story.