lindapanzo reads her usual in 2024--part 1

I'm back for 2024. I started doing categories back with the 999 challenge in 2009. With the pandemic, I've found that simplifying is ideal for me and so, for 2024, I intend to keep the same four categories I had in 2022 and 2023. At some point, I lost my creativity but I do know what I like and these categories are it!!



Category 1: Mysteries--28 books read (out of 60)
Category 2: Sports--5 books read (out of 10)
Category 3: Nonfiction--12 books read (out of 15)
Category 4: Fiction--11 books read (out of 15)

Category 1: Mysteries--28 of 60 read

1. Six Feet Deep Dish by Mindy Quigley--finished on 1/8/24
2. Ill-Fated Fortune by Jennifer J. Chow--finished on 1/15/24
3. The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert--finished on 1/19/24
4. Crook o' Lune by E.C.R. Lorac--finished on 1/23/24
5. The Stranger in the Library by Eva Gates--finished on 1/27/24
6. The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle--finished on 2/3/24
7. Rhythm and Clues by Olivia Blacke--finished on 2/6/24
8. A Smoking Bun by Ellie Alexander--finished on 2/9/24
9. Random in Death by J.D. Robb--finished on 2/17/24
10. Murder at the Blarney Bash by Darci Hannah--finished on 2/25/24
11. Up to No Gouda by Linda Reilly--finished on 3/3/24
12. Easter Basket Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross--finished on 3/5/24
13. The Socialite's Guide to Murder by S.K. Golden--finished on 3/10/24
14. The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies by Susan Wittig Albert--finished on 3/16/24
15. Patchwork Quilt Murder by Leslie Meier--finished on 3/20/24
16. Murder in the Tea Leaves by Laura Childs--finished on 3/23/24
17. The Socialite's Guide to Death and Dating by S.K. Golden--finished on 3/26/24
18. No Parm No Foul by Linda Reilly--finished on 4/6/24
19. Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley--finished on 4/12/24
20. The Last Word by Gerri Lewis--finished on 4/21/24
21. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto--finished on 4/27/24
22. Fatal First Edition by Jenn McKinlay--finished on 5/1/24
23. The Last Hope by Susan Elia MacNeal--finished on 5/4/24
24. Murder Most French by Colleen Cambridge--finished on 5/8/24
25. Brie Careful What You Wish For by Linda Reilly--finished on 5/13/24
26. Village Politics Can Be Murder by Jeanne M. Dams--finished on 5/19/24
27. Trouble Is Brewing by Vicki Delany--finished on 5/29/24
28. Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone by Sarah Graves--finished on 6/1/24

POSSIBLES
--Darci Hannah
--Connie Berry
--Ellie Alexander
--Colleen Cambridge
--Korina Moss
--Maddie Day
--Mindy Quigley

Category 2: Sports--5 of 10 read

1. The Cardinals Way by Howard Megdal--finished on 1/5/24
2. Run to Win: My Packers Life from Lombardi to Canton by Jerry Kramer--finished on 1/30/24
3. Baseball's Great Expectations by Patrick Montgomery--finished on 3/1/24
4. Comiskey Park's Last World Series: A History of the 1959 Chicago White Sox by Charles N. Billington--finished on 4/2/24
5. Season of Shattered Dreams by Eric Vickrey--finished on 4/23/24

POSSIBLES

Category 3: Nonfiction--12 of 15 read

1. Three Days in January by Bret Baier--finished on 1/1/24
2. The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year by Matt McCarthy--finished on 1/24/24
3. Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz by József Debreczeni--finished on 2/1/24
4. The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich--finished on 2/13/24
5. The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner--finished on 2/19/24
6. Whistle-Stop Politics: Campaign Trains and the Reporters Who Covered Them by Edward Segal--finished on 2/22/24
7. Walk through Fire: The Train Disaster that Changed America by Yasmine Ali--finished on 3/18/24
8. Save Me a Seat!: A Life with Movies by Rick Winston--finished on 3/28/24
9. I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters by Terry Golway--finished on 4/11/24
10. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians by James Patterson--finished on 4/16/24
11. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin--finished on 5/10/24
12. The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson--finished on 5/26/24

POSSIBLES

Category 4: Fiction--11 of 15 read

1. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride--finished on 1/14/24
2. Last Night by Luanne Rice--finished on 2/2/24
3. Navy Husband by Debbie Macomber--finished on 2/7/24
4. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser--finished on 3/8/24
5. Matagorda by Louis L'Amour--finished on 3/12/24
6. Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg--finished on 3/17/24
7. An Offer for a Spinster by Dorothy Sheldon--finished on 4/7/24
8. Cut & Thirst by Margaret Atwood--finished on 4/13/24
9. The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan--finished on 4/20/24
10. Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles--finished on 5/16/24
11. The Last List of Mabel Beaumont by Laura Pearson--finished on 5/22/24

POSSIBLES

--Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
--Künstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine
--The Librarian of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes
--Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
--Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
--The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict
--The County Line by Steve Weddle
--Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

One thing I definitely want to do for 2024 is participate more fully in the CATs and KITs. I say that every year, but this time, I mean it!!

Welcome back! Love your simplicity. I'll be following your reading, especially the mysteries!

Hope you have a good reading year, Linda.

Happy reading in 2024!

Welcome back, Linda! Looking forward to seeing how those categories fill up!

Good luck with your reading in 2024.

70 mysteries! Happy reading in 2024.

Enjoy the 2024 Category Challenge and I am looking forward to seeing you at the 2024 TIOLI Challenges. Here's hoping for a pleasant and book-filled year!

Good luck with your 2024 reading!

Happy reading, Linda!

It's nice to be back and here's hoping we all have a great reading year in 2024.

On New Year's Eve, I'm well into Bret Baier's book, Three Days in January about President Eisenhower and his transition to JFK. Really enjoying it and I was pleased to find that he's got a few other Three Days books, including Three Days at the Brink about "FDR's daring gamble to win WW2," as well as Three Days in Moscow about Reagan and the fall of the Soviet empire.

Have a great year of reading! I'm hanging my star.

I filled out the LT Top 5 Books of the Year

For 2023, my top 5 books were:

1. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
2. Horse by Geraldine Brooks
3. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
4. The Opera Sisters by Marianne Monson
5. Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell

ABC is playing the ball drop

I haven't even looked to see what my top ones (besides the Bible and Spurgeon devotionals) were. I won't put those year-long reads in the LT Top 5.

With my 15th Thingaversary coming up fast (on Jan 13), my thoughts are turning to the 16 books to pick to celebrate. Since we're just a few days away, I'll start filling in the list.

THINGAVERSARY BOOKS
1. Forecast for D-Day: And the Weatherman Behind Ike's Greatest Gamble by John Ross
2. Fudge and Jury by Ellie Alexander
3. Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley
4. The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner--FINISHED
5. Run to Win: My Packers Life from Lombardi to Canton by Jerry Kramer--FINISHED
6. Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
7. Winter Street by Erin Hilderbrand
8. Murder at the Blarney Bash by Darci Hannah--FINISHED
9. Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk
10. Diva: A Novel by Daisy Goodwin
11. The Mystery of the Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah
12. The Maid and the Socialite by Lynda Drew
13. A Mic for All Seasons by Kenny Albert
14. A Crime of Passion Fruit by Ellie Alexander
15. I Never Did Like Politics by Terry Golway
16. Last Night by Luanne Rice--FINISHED

>21 lindapanzo: How exciting! Have fun with your considerations, Linda. LOL, my Thingaversary isn't until June but I am already working on my list!

>22 DeltaQueen50: I think I’ve got most of them in mind but not positive yet. Frigid this weekend after a heavy snow so it’ll keep me occupied.

>21 lindapanzo: Congratulations on the upcoming Thingaversary! Great idea to have a list ready! I'll be checking back to see what you choose. My 17th is in May.

>21 lindapanzo: Look forward to seeing the list. I always completely forget that we are 'allowed' to buy books for Thingaversary - I should look mine up!

I added the first quarter (4 books) of my 16 today. Maybe another 4 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the actual day of my Thingaversary.

Happy Thingaversary for Sunday!

>21 lindapanzo: Took a BB for number 1 on your thingaversary purchases!

>27 pamelad: Thank you.

>28 Tess_W: That one does sound interesting. I saw an interesting obit in the NY Times about Maureen Flavin Sweeney who died at age 100 in December. She took weather measurements at a remote post in County Mayo and sent in the key hourly barometric pressure readings that led them to postpone the D-Day invasion by a day, most likely saving the invasion from catastrophe. As part of the obit, they talked to the author of this book. She was truly one of those "unknown people" who changed the course of history.

>29 lindapanzo: - That's very interesting. I think I might get that for my husband.

>28 Tess_W: >30 dudes22: You need a subscription to read the NY Times obit but here's another obit for her. Very interesting.

https://www.irishamerica.com/2021/06/maureen-flavin-sweeneythe-mayo-woman-whose-...

One thing I liked about the NY Times obit, though, is that it opened with how ordinary people in the midst of an average day have changed history. Such as the young Bedouin shepherd looking for a sheep who went astray and who then found the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or Frank Wills, a security guard who was making his rounds one night in 1972 and who spotted a piece of tape holding a lock open in a building where he worked and which exposed the Watergate break in.

Maureen Flavin was doing her job was like that. And it happened on her 21st birthday.

After the 10 days of snow then frigid temps, we're now in an extended period of "January thaw" and virtually all of the 18 to 20 inches of snow we had has melted over the course of the past week. Except for the piles created by the snowplows.

And, for the first time in a long, long time, yesterday, we had full sunshine for a time.

I've finished the first of my Thingaversary books, Run to Win: My Packers Life from Lombardi to Canton by Jerry Kramer. I've read some of his other books (he was the fabled right guard on the Packers during the Lombardi era (1960's)). This one was just kind of meh. Probably my least favorite book of the 10 books I read this month.

In the wee hours today, I finished one of the best books I've read in quite some time.

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz by József Debreczeni

I gave this long lost memoir of life in the Auschwitz camps 5 stars but, if I could, I'd give it 10 stars!!

This memoir by the Hungarian journalist and poet who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944 and was put to work as a slave laborer is brutal, painful to read, and yet important to read. Incredible detail about daily life in several of the camps, including, for his final months in camp, living in a hospital camp where prisoners too weak to work awaited death on extremely limited rations.

It's a haunting eyewitness account with details about the harsh treatment by fellow Jews in positions of authority and about food, bartering, diseases, and the deaths he saw.

Though painful to read, this book is riveting. I've read quite a few books about life in the camps and I can't recall any better than this. It should be a classic.

>33 lindapanzo: For some reason, I have a fascination with concentration camp stories. Taking a BB for this one.

>34 lowelibrary: This is a new release. I think it came out a week ago.

I notice that quite a few people name their favorite and least favorite books of the month. I'll aim to give that a try this year.

For January, my favorite book was The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. A novel very different from my usual. I'd like to read more by this author.

For January, my least favorite book was Run to Win: My Packers Life from Lombardi to Canton by Jerry Kramer. The Packers are my favorite football team and I've always liked Jerry Kramer and have read other books by him. This one was dull and repetitious. Not a total dud but my least favorite of a pretty good reading month.

>36 lindapanzo: I thought the McBride book sounded interesting when we ordered it last year, but if it was a top book of the month for you, I need to make sure I get around to reading it!

>37 thornton37814: I hope you like it, Lori.

Almost two months into the year and I think I'm going to have to tweak my targets for each of my four categories. To my surprise, I am plowing through a whole lot more nonfiction than I expected I would. I'm halfway through my goal for the year and should finish a 6th nonfiction book in the next day or so.

Truth be told, I'm usually watching sports but, lately, I've been putting the game I want to see on TV but then pulling out my Kindle as well. Alas, my Blackhawks are the worst team in the NHL and I tend to turn to my current read when they're out of the game, which seems to happen often these days.

For February, my favorite book was Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz by Hungarian poet and journalist József Debreczeni. For all the reasons I mentioned in post >33 lindapanzo: above

For February, my least favorite was Arthur Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League. Not bad but not that great.

For March, my favorite book was Murder in the Tea Leaves by Laura Childs. Half of the books I read are mysteries and my two favorite mystery series are Louise Penny's Three Pines series and Laura Childs' Tea Shop series. In a month when I read the newest installment in either series, it's bound to be my favorite book of the month. I note that this one was the 27th book in the series.

My least favorite book in March was Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser. I had high hopes for this one but it disappointed me.

My excellent reading year, thus far, continues, though the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs and the start of the baseball season will likely cut into the number of books I read.

>40 lindapanzo: I hate to say it, but I'm probably going to skip that installment of a favorite series because of the tea leaves/fortune telling angle. I'm behind on the series. I read one out of order. I didn't realize I hadn't read one. I also haven't read the one before the tea leaves one.

>41 thornton37814: Not really much in the way of fortune telling/tea leaves though. It's one brief scene. I often wonder why she titles her books as she does but at least it's a tea reference.

I don't like fortune telling type books either.

>42 lindapanzo: Maybe I can get through it if that is the case, but if it gets too bad, I'll just abandon it.

>43 thornton37814: One thing that concerns me is that she's now publishing two of these tea shop mysteries each year, not one. I hope the quality doesn't decline.

>44 lindapanzo: I thought that it hadn't been a year yet since I'd read one and had been caught up. No wonder I can't keep up! LOL

For April, my favorite book was the historical fiction book by Jennifer Ryan, one of my favorite historical fiction authors who typically writes about WW2 British homefront. The Underground Library was terrific. Among all her books, possibly the only one I've enjoyed more was her The Chilbury Ladies Choir. An honorable mention for favorite book read in
April was James Patterson's new book, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians. I'm guaranteed to love any book involving books, booksellers, and librarians and I thoroughly enjoyed this nonfiction book as well.

My least favorite April book was Cut & Thirst by Margaret Atwood. Nothing wrong with this story by Margaret Atwood but, for me, it was just OK.