What are you reading the week of December 23, 2023?

I have about a hundred pages to go in Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar. As a boy in his early teens, Kuznetsov lived in Kyiv near the infamous Babi Yar ravine where thousands of Ukrainians were murdered by the Germans during the Second World War. Less than two weeks after capturing the capital of Ukraine, the Germans killed more than 30,000 ethnic Jews in two days there. Babi Yar is a memoir written in the form of a novel, but the author frequently interrupts the story to remind the reader that all of the events described actually happened. The book was first published in the Soviet Union during the 1960s, but it was heavily censored. The edition that I'm reading restores the censored material and sets it off in bold type. I highly recommend it, but the book is not for the faint of heart. It's a searing account of inhumanity and desperation.

I finished the LTER book, Snapshots of a Life. To read his stories is as if you were sitting in a diner listening to a friend tell stories of his life. While most are not soul searching, they do portray a snapshot of a life as the book's title promises.

Will be finishing up The Battle of Jutland in the course of the day. Next up will be Nettle & Bone and Slaying the Dragon.

Moving on to the last two books of the year: Calculated Risk and Eyes of the Void.

I'm just about to start The Massacre at El Mozote. Not exactly holiday fare, this is an historical account of a vicious attack on civilians in an El Salvadorian mountain village during that country's civil war in the 1980s.

I'm reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I'm not very far in, but I'm enjoying it.
In the world of audiobooks, I'm listening to The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn, liking it very much. She is such a good story-teller.
Happy Christmas to all of you who celebrate.

I have 2 and a half stories left in The Haunting Season: Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights. It's been extra chilly while reading these scary stories.

Her Christmas Cowboy – Jessica Clare
3***

A predictable cozy Christmas cowboy romance!

Caleb is painfully shy around women, and not all that open even around his brothers. But the moment he saw new local schoolteacher Amy, he knew she was the woman for him. The problem is he can’t manage much more than a grunt when face-to-face with her, and when he DOES try to speak, he garbles the words and comes out with unintended awkward (or downright rude) comments. But he volunteers to play Santa to Amy’s Mrs Claus for the sake of the town’s children. Maybe once he gets to know her, he’ll find a way to speak to her.

Of course, there’s at least one jerk in the picture, and Amy, recovering from a bad divorce, is vulnerable. But Caleb is just so sweet and considerate and always comes to her rescue. It’s inevitable that they’ll get together, and the sex will be incredible for both of them (despite the fact that he’s a virgin and has no idea at all what he’s doing).

Well, what did you expect? It’s a Christmas Cowboy Romance … capital ‘C’ and capital ‘R’. Fun to read and a great escape.

The Ship Of Brides – Jojo Moyes
Digital audiobook performed by Nicolette McKenzie
3***

In 1946 a group of women embarked on a six-weeks long journey to Great Britain, leaving Sydney harbor aboard the HMS Victorious, a royal navy aircraft carrier. The 650 (or so) women joined the crew of some 1,100 sailors on a journey none of them would forget. The women were all married to British service men whom they’d met when those men were briefly stationed in Australia during WW2. This is fact. Moyes own grandmother was one of those women and her story inspired this novel.

The novel focuses on four women: Jane, a 16-year-old teen without much education and who is ready to party; Avice, a society debutante from a wealthy family; the visibly pregnant Maggie, who’s leaving behind her father and brothers on the farm to join her husband; and Frances, a nurse who keeps mostly to herself, and wants nothing more than a fresh start. Moyes intersperses these women’s personal stories with events aboard ship: beauty contests, educational seminars on how to be a proper British wife, drunken brawls among the sailors, shopping in exotic ports, heart-breaking telegrams, secrets kept and scandals revealed.

Two men feature prominently as well. Captain Highfield whose Naval career is about to end, is tasked with getting his men, his ship and the women passengers safely to Britain. And Marine Nicol who is part of the detail tasked with guarding the women’s quarters and who has his own personal heartache.

Nicolette McKenzie does a fine job of performing the audiobook. She has a lot of characters to contend with and manages to make each sufficiently distinct, so I didn’t get confused about who was speaking.

I just finished Silver Bells by Luanne Rice. It was a nice Christmas story.

I finished The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner. In December 1981, during the fierce civil war in El Salvador, members of an elite strike force of the Salvadoran Army arrived at the village of El Mazote in a mountainous section of the country mostly controlled by leftist rebel forces and proceeded to murder somewhere around 800 villagers: men, women and children in the most horrible ways imaginable. The point was to demonstrate to the surrounding areas that the consequences of supporting for the rebels could be dire, even though even the most cursory investigation of El Mazote would have shown the army leaders that these villagers were doing their best to have nothing to do with either the rebels or the government's armed forces. Cruelty and viciousness was the point.

New Yorker reporter Mark Danner does an excellent job of setting up the background of the atrocity, geopolitically and internally. His writing is clear and concise, and his reporting (the book is an expanded version of his writing for the New Yorker) is excellent.

I have a longer review posted on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, unless the copy I ordered online of An Old Guy Who Feels Good, a memoir by Worden McDonald shows up in the mail today.

Hope everyone got or read great books for Christmas!
Finished from the library: A Winter by the Sea by Julie Klassen
New and 2nd installment in the "On Devonshire Shores" series. In December 1819, the Summers sisters welcome the Duke and Duchess of Kent, their infant daughter Princess Victoria, and their entourage to Sidmouth. Some of the story takes place over the Christmas season so it was festive reading!
The 3rd novel A Seaside Homecoming will release in Dec. 2024 and a Christmas novella to follow.

Current read: Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (2015)
Short stories occurring during Christmas and winter months. The book is part of the British Library Crime Classics collection.

Once Upon a December – Amy E Reichert
Digital audiobook narrated by Sharon Freedman.
3***

This is a delightful holiday rom-com set in a magical Julemarked in Milwaukee (my home town). The Julemarked appears in different cities, within that city’s Christmas Market. Time is different in the Julemarked. The only clock has 25 numbers and chimes only a minute before midnight on Christmas Eve, to let the residents of the magical place know that they are about to shut down for the next year. But it’s not really a year in their land. So, they don’t age as we regular humans do. And the Julemarked doesn’t necessarily come back to the same city every year.

Anyway … Jack Clausen and his family run Kringle All the Way, baking and selling the delicious yuletide pastry. Astra and her girlfriends stumble upon the shop one year and they marvel at the delicious treats. And Jack falls – HARD – for Astra. But she’s of the real world and he can’t have a relationship with her until (and if) she remembers him.

Is there a way for these two to be together? Can either of them leave all their friends and family behind to be with the one they love?

Besides the wonderful fairytale at the heart of this story, I really enjoyed all the references to my city. Reichert is something of a foodie and an unabashed Milwaukee booster, so it’s no surprise that she takes her readers on a little culinary tour of Milwaukee. I was listening to the audiobook while I was in Texas for a family event, and I kept wanting to “run out to XXX to get some YYY” but, of course, I couldn’t because I wasn’t at home. Well, that was better for my waistline, albeit frustrating!

Oh, and for those who search for that kind of thing, there’s a wonderful dog, Bernie, in the story, too.

Sharon Freedman does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. There are a lot of characters, and it can be challenging to keep Astra and her three girlfriends straight when they are together, but Freedman was up for the task.

You Sound Like a White Girl – Julissa Arce
3.5***

Subtitle: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

Arce came to the United States with her parents when she was only eleven years old. Eager to achieve “the American Dream” (whatever that is), she studied hard, perfected her English, excelled at college and got a prestigious job at Goldman Sachs. All while undocumented. But no matter the outward appearance of success, Arce felt that she was not accepted or welcomed. Her take on this is that the white people in power will never allow brown and black people to actually assimilate in the USA culture.

Arce gives many examples of ways in which white people have harmed indigenous populations, from the Spaniards who conquered and killed off Aztec, Mayan and Incan populations, to the US settlers who stole the land and resources from the various native tribes in what is now the United States.

But the tone of her arguments in the book was so angry and outraged, so self-important and uncompromising that it turned me off.

I am a Mexican-American woman. I was born in the USA, as was my mother, but I barely spoke English when I started school. When I came to college I was often asked “Where are you from?” And yet, I never felt like I did NOT belong. I took the questions of others as natural curiosity, and I answered, “I’m from Texas.” I didn’t turn my back on my cultural heritage, but I fully identified as being “American.” As I read this book, I kept wondering how Arce can bear the weight of all that outrage and anger. It must be exhausting.

She has some valid points to make in this book, but in the end, I think “she doth protest too much.”

It’ll be interesting to see what the others in my Hispanic book club think of this book.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Digital audiobook performed by Arina Ii
4****

A particular coffee shop in a Tokyo back-alley has been serving customers for more than one hundred years. More than the coffee, the shop offers a unique experience – the chance to travel back in time to a particular moment. But there are rules: you can travel only once; nothing you do or say will change what is the present reality; your visit will end as soon as the coffee gets cold. Over a few months four distinct customers elect to make the trip for different reasons.

This was just a delightful surprise. I quickly became invested in each character’s life and his or her reasons for traveling. The vignettes are in turns humorous, tender, insightful, or frustrating. It made me wonder who I’d visit, what ONE person and ONE instant in time would I want to experience again.

I would definitely read more from this author.

A Quilt for Christmas
by Melody Carlson

Today I finished Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory. Even though I'm not usually a romance reader, these books have enough meaningful side plot and humor to keep me coming back for more.

The new thread is up over here.

>8 BookConcierge: In as much as the insignia of HMS "Victorious" is a woman bearing a wreath of laurel raised on high, perhaps this shows that the British Admiralty does have a sense of humor.