@TimeforaGandT this is how your list looks on the mobile site:

Thanks @EineReiseDurchDieZeit, I’ve added a couple of those to my kindle list.

@SheilaFentiman thank you, I read it last year and loved it, beautiful book!

@RazorstormUnicorn I have been waiting for Pigs in Heaven to be reduced but may have to buy it anyway as I loved The Bean Trees

@MonOncle have you read Small Things Like These? It’s pretty short.

A couple of short reviews from me before the festivities start.

The Art Thief, Michael Finkel

This is the true story of Stephane Breitwieser who over the course of 8 years stole over 200 works of art, keeping them in his loft-bedroom at his mother’s house. I thought this was a cracking story but I didn’t love the execution. Did the author want me to feel sorry for Breitwieser??? It felt like a very sympathetic portrait of a massive narcissist.

North Woods, Daniel Mason

I really liked this one! This is about a house in Massachusetts and the lives of its inhabitants beginning with the story of a puritan couple, with each tale bringing us toward the present day. I really loved the writing, the sense of place, how the stories are subtly interwoven (and the ghosts). I feel like this would be a good book club book.

I’m on the hunt for a short book so that I can get to my goal of 30 before the year is out. I’ve got The Mirror & The Light on the go on audio but it’s so incredibly long I’ve got no chance of finishing it. Just 30 hours left!

Happy Christmas to all! Thanks for having me this year, have loved following along with your reading.

@noodlezoodle on the last thread you mention Death in Zion, I love these books too, I have Death in Yosemite and for some reason I particularly enjoy reading about the people who swim past the no swimming signs (at the top of thundering high waterfalls one just spent an hour hiking last!) or people who fall off cliffs after climbing the safety barriers. I'll have to look for the Zion one.

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara King solver

Number 50! Really enjoyed this. It's a follow up of Turtle and her mum Taylor who gets themselves into a bit of legal trouble after a TV appearance. It could stand alone, but since The Bean Trees is great I would read that first. The characters come to life so well.

Hoping I have time for one or two more books, I have finished with work now for this year and have little pressing to do, so might just put on Christmas lights and have a glass of wine in the evening (afternoon?) and read!

Can you see

THIS IN HUGE LETTERS

@TimeforaGandT? if you can, that’s what most of your list was like…

I assumed you’d discovered the wonder of bigly font and were keen to use it!

Yes, it looks normal size to me (with some irregular spacing). Is it huge for everyone else? Apologies all!

@TimeforaGandT does your list look like a normal sized font to you? If so then all the comments will be baffling!

I did not expect my list to cause that much comment!

@AgualusasL0ver (and anyone else who is interested), the first play in The Forsyte Saga is called Irene (and, as the title suggests, tells her story). It is narrated by Fleur who is trying to understand her family's history and uncover the secrets. Characters and plots are pared back from the book to focus on Irene and her story (and the play covers the first two books). It's very simply staged with only chairs and lots of movements as different family members meet to chat etc. It was very good. We couldn’t get tickets for consecutive nights so are back in early January to see the second play (Fleur).

Yet another book taken from a recommendation on here, Havoc by Rebecca Wait. This was great! A crumbling, second rate boarding school for girls sees an outbreak of what used to be known as ‘mass hysteria’, which we see from the point of view of Ida (6th form student), Eleanor (geography teacher) and James (neurologist, through faxes to his mentor).
Most people have a Secret, the petty minutiae of a boarding school is given free and hilarious rein, there are some touching moments to do with following your dreams and trying to escape past mistakes.

98. Reasons to be Cheerful - Nina Stibbe

I just checked back and discovered that it was 2019 when I read Nina Stibbe's Man at the Helm, the first of her vaguely autobiographical novels about her alter-ego Lizzie Vogel’s youth in Leicester, spent growing up in a hopelessly dysfunctional family. This is the third, picked up in a charity shop while I’m away for Christmas, and was a complete delight.
By now Lizzie is 19, restless for change and hoping to embark at last on life’s great adventure. What she actually does is find a job as a dental assistant working for JP Wintergreen and his senior nurse/girlfriend Tammy Gammons. She meets Andy Nicolello, who never quite becomes her boyfriend despite her best efforts, learns to drive, and grows up in many hilarious (and also a few heartbreaking) ways.
Stibbe's style is probably quite marmite, so it’s likely to leave some people cold, but I spent most of this sniggering like Muttley with occasional outright guffaws. Maybe not a book for anyone with a dental phobia (it opens with a fairly wince-making scene), but it’s a very funny, mostly light-hearted read.

I love @TimeforaGandT 's jump scare list and am so glad it wasn't me who did it 😆

😂

GLAD TO HEAR IT EINE

@cassandre SUPERMASSIVEBOLDS!!

This link seems pertinent to the interests of the thread…

www.theguardian.com/books/2024/dec/21/the-best-crime-novels-to-read-christmas

Just HOW huge are we talking Eine? In terms of font that is?😂

I also laughed out at @TimeforaGandT 's list and @Stowickthevast 's wry comment. You gotta love the crazy MN list formatting, it's the Christmas gift that keeps on giving! or not

@TimeforaGandT Snorted tea out of my nose almost at your list. I desperately wanted to go the Stratford and spent a whole afternoon working out how to see The Forsyte Saga and Macbeth but alas failed, do let us (me) know how it was.

Both huge bolds for me!

To be fair @EineReiseDurchDieZeit I’m early on in both - 11% PHM and 26% AD so I’m being premature in my judgement!

Say it isn’t so that the audio of Project Hail Mary isn’t a bold or American Dirt 😔 @ÚlldemoShúl shocked!

I’ve just laughed so much at your intermittently bigly list @TimeforaGandT 😂😂

Great list @TimeforaGandT
I’ve finished two more today
193 King Sorrow by Joe Hill (audio)
Recent release- a group of teenagers conjure up a dragon to protect one of them from being blackmailed. What they don’t realise is they have to feed it a life every year or one of them will die. This was presented as dark academia meets Stephen King’s (the author’s father) It. What it was was silly entertainment and enjoyable for all that in amongst the fairly dark reads I appear to have picked for myself this winter.

194 Night Crawling by Leila Mottley
I think I’m probably one of the last people on the thread to read this. 17 year old Kiara has to sell herself to pay the rent when she is abandoned in every way that counts by the adults in her life. This leads her further into a life of exploitation. I liked that Kiara was more than her victim hood- she had friends, a little boy she took care of and a love interest too. However this was dark and sad and I’m sure realistic. Hard to believe the author was only 17 when she started to write it. Probably bold- need to sit with it a while.
I’m in the middle of reading another three which I reckon I will probably finish for the end of the year- Project Hail Mary (audio)Buckeye (hardback) and American Dirt (ebook) I don’t think any of the three are shaping up to be bold for me, and doubt I will finish the next book on my tbr (Wolf Hall) before the year is out so will probably do my round up on the other thread tomorrow.