December 2023 Reading

I began the year with a semi-goal of reading 69 specific books.  Here at the end of the year, I read 89 books, but some of the 69 are still unread.  I am all right with this.

In December, I read fourteen books, of which four were picture books, three were nonfiction, and the remainder were fiction.

 

Picture books first.  My librarian kid gave me four picture books for Christmas because he said I needed them.  He was right.  Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang is both hilarious and useful for those of us who could use some practice feeling our feelings.  It’s a fun read-aloud for kids of all ages (yes, I did read it to my 26 year old because he was handy; this is normal in our family.).

 

Joseph Kuefler has created an adorable world in his Digger books.  I read The Digger and the Flower, The Digger and the Duckling, and The Digger and the Butterfly.  All three books are about increasing our awareness of the world around us and gaining empathy.  I love the caring community built by the heavy machines and their surroundings.

 

On to nonfiction.  I got The Portable Renaissance Reader edited by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin out of a Little Free Library some time ago.  It has both the virtues and the drawbacks of an anthology.  It was great to get a taste of various kinds of writing around all kinds of topics throughout the Renaissance period, but each selection is presented with nothing but a title, the name of the author, and the year.  A small amount of context might have been helpful.  Further, the selections were not chronological.  I’m sure the editors had some reason behind their organizational scheme, but it remained opaque to me.  As an introduction to the thinking of the period through primary sources (albeit translated and/or abridged), it is a useful book.  I know more after reading it than I did before.

 

My church book group is reading No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu.  We’re not quite done discussing it as a group, but I did finish the reading.  It is Bishop Tutu’s first person account of his time with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa after the demise of apartheid.  It’s not an easy read, despite Bishop Tutu’s facility with language, but it is important.  I am always shocked by the horrible things that humans think of doing to other humans.  Set against the brutal and terrible events of the times are the kind and humane efforts of other humans to get right with each other.  There are lessons in this book for Americans because we do need to address the lingering effects of structural racism in our own country while continuing to live together.  Highly recommend.

 

Starting in January, I will be helping to facilitate a Sacred Ground workshop (an anti-racism training program at my church that I attended last year).  In preparation, it was suggested that I read Facing Feelings in Faith Communities by William M. Kondrath.  I needed this book.  The central thesis is that many of us have been trained to think that some of our emotions are more acceptable than others, so we tend to substitute culturally approved feelings for our real but less palatable ones.  The trouble with this is that our feelings point us toward what we need and when we make those substitutions, we fail to get our needs met.  The book is definitely thought-provoking and useful as I try to live with authenticity and integrity.

 

Now the fiction.  My other kid gave me the new Patrick Rothfuss novella, The Narrow Road Between Desires, for Christmas.  It’s sweet and funny and clever and exceptionally well-written.  I will take any opportunity to spend more time with Rothfuss’s characters in his world.  Check it out.

 

I continue to gallop along through the Veronica Speedwell novels by Deanna Raybourn, polishing off A Murderous Relation, An Unexpected Peril, and An Impossible Impostor.  They are always good fun, although the particular set-up to the last one was a little anxiety-provoking for me.  It was only my faith in the genre requiring everything to turn out at least mostly all right that got me through to the end.  Highly recommend the series as a whole.

 

Speaking of series, I read The Silver Tracks by Cornelia Funke, which is the fourth of the Reckless books.  I thought it was also the last, but I was wrong.  I have to wait for the fifth one to come out for the various issues to get resolved.  This is unfortunate, because I want to know.  I am liking the series quite a bit because it does not skirt hard problems and because the characters are strong and relatable.

 

My librarian kid gave me The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett for Christmas 2022 and I finally read it this week (not because I didn’t want to do it earlier, but because I was trying to prioritize reading stuff that had been on my shelf for longer).  It is hilarious and true and wonderful, like basically all of his other work.  The three novels that make up the trilogy are not Discworld books, but rather set in our own world.  They treat the adventures of small people called nomes, who discover that the world is much bigger than they imagined.  Chaos ensues.  I laughed out loud repeatedly and would recommend this book to everyone.

 

Finally, I read The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro.  It is a story about Nico Di Angelo from the Percy Jackson book.  Like the rest of the series, it does a really good job of allowing characters to be who they are and to become even more.  It’s funny and complicated and sometimes sad, but 100% worth reading.  It also centers around a young gay couple in a deeply affirming way, so it would be a great gift for any young queer people who need to see themselves as protagonists in a positive light.

 

So:  December total:  14

Fall total:  34

2024 total:  89