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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

2022 Wrap-Up

If you take a look at my book review postings from this year, I started out reading a lot and then dropped off in the middle. That happened in 2021 because I got divorced. This year, 2022, it was because I started dating again. Here's to learning, growing, overcoming challenges, and taking steps forward!

Anyway - back to the books. I had a goal to read 21 books and I only read 18, so I was close! I had goals to read specific authors, participate in the Back to the Classics reading challenge, and participate in Mindful Readers Bookclub (with my family). I read 10 books from my TBR. I also read a play and Christmas story - which I try to do every year.

Top 3 Books of 2022
1. The Arrows Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950- )     9.6/10
    -Arrow's Flight (1987) - 9.1/10
    -Arrow's Fall (1988) - 9.4/10

by Ray Bradbury 
(American, 1920-2012)

by Tamora Pierce (American, 1954-)

Back to the Classics 2022
I read books that fit into 9 of the categories, which gets me 2 entries into the drawing. I emailed Karen directly for my form of contact. I just noticed that I read LOTS of short stories this year! I believe I've switched up the categories on some of them since posting them initially, but here they are:

1. 19th Century Classic
by Louisa May Alcott (American, 1832-1888)

2. 20th Century Classic

3. Classic by a Woman
by Jane Austen (English, 1775-1817)

4. Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

5. Classic Short Stories
by 20 different authors

6. Nonfiction Classic
by CS Lewis (British, 1898-1963)

7. Classic on Your TBR  Longest
by Ray Bradbury (American, 1920-2012)

8. Classic in a Place You'd Like to (Re)Visit
by 14 authors, edited by Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)
New York!

9. Wild Card Classic
by George Bernard Shaw (Irish, 1856-1950)

Author Challenges - all TBR
Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950-)
The Arrows Trilogy

Tamora Pierce (American, 1954-)
The Circle Reforged Series
     -The Will of the Empress (2005) - Sandry
     -Melting Stones (2008) - Evvy (simultaneous to Will of the Empr.)
     -Battle Magic (2013) - Briar (Prequel to Will of the Empress)

Mindful Readers - Family Book Club
(some are duplicates from above)

January - Mystery
by GK Chesterton (English, 1874-1936)

February - Romance
by Jane Austen (English, 1775-1817)

March - Feminism 
by 14 authors, edited by Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)

April - Fantasy
Fable (2020) (not pictured)
by Adrienne Young 
(American, 1985- )

May - Comedy/Satire
by Ray Bradbury 
(American, 1920-2012)

June - Thriller
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

July - Romance
by George Bernard Shaw (Irish, 1856-1950)

August, September, November
x, x, x

October - Thriller
by HP Lovecraft (American,  1890-1937)

December - Christmas/Winter
by 20 different authors

Bottom 3 Books of 2022
by GK Chesterton 
(English, 1874-1936)

by George Bernard Shaw 
(Irish, 1856-1950)

18. Persuasion (1817) - 4.4/10
by Jane Austen 
(English, 1775-1817)

Bottom of the Barrel
Books I started, but didn't finish:

The Moonstone (1868)
by Willkie Collins (English, 1824-1889)

Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights (1967)
by Ryu Mitsuse (Japanese, 1928-1999)

by Amos Tutuola (Nigerian, 1920-1997)

The Blazing World (1666)
by Margaret Cavendish (English, 1623-1673)

I hope the Back to the Classics reading challenge happens again next year, but, unfortunately, I doubt it. My family is doing the Mindful Readers bookclub again! I plan to focus on Mercedes Lackey and reading more of my TBR in 2023. 

Another blog with my reading plans for 2023 will be coming soon!
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Monday, December 26, 2022

Home for Christmas - Short Stories

 
Title: Home for Christmas - Stories for Young and Old

Author: 20 stories by 20 different authors
Originally published: 1895-1995 
(I couldn't find the publication date for 7 stories.)
Page count: 33

Dates read: 11/13/22-12/22/22
2022 book goal progress: 18 out of 21

Back to the Classics category: 
Classic Short Story Collection
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 
genre/theme: December - Christmas/Winter

Read my other book reviews for my 2022 goals HERE.

Description on Back of Book:
They are some of the warmest childhood memories, those unhurried evenings around the fireplace, Christmas tree, or dinner table, when there was time for a story. Now, with this collection, you can keep the telling tradition alive in your family, and pass it on to your children or grandchildren.

Home For Christmas includes twenty time-honored favorites. Several are by world-famous children's authors; others are little-known European tales not available in English anywhere else. Selected for their literary quality and their spiritual integrity, they will resonate with readers of all ages, year after year.

Mini Overall Review:
Most stories were cute and heartwarming. It is a good read overall. Some stories are very religious and most have religious undertones. If you're looking for a collection of Santa stories, this is not the book you're looking for.

Contents and Ultra-Mini Reviews of All Individual Stories
1. Brother Robber by Helene Christaller (German, 1872-1953)
Heartwarming. 7 pages

2. Three Young Kings (1956) by George Sumner Albee (American, 1905-1964)
Humorous and heartwarming. One of my favorite stories in the whole collection. 16 pages

"Father Miguel, who was eighty-two, was so frail that his white linen cassock appeared more often than not to be unoccupied. There was very little of him still in residence on earth. He had a small, poetically modeled head and a voice, and that was about all."

"Lazaro was efficient. Either that or he was lazy. Or it may be that efficiency and laziness are merely different names for the same thing."

3. Transfiguration by Madeleine L'Engle (American, 1918-2007)
Meh. 12 pages

4. The Cribmaker's Trip to Heaven (1920s) by Reimmichl (Austrian, 1867-1953)
Christian Scrooge - meh. 10 pages

5. The Guest by Nikolai S. Lesskov (Russian, 1831-1895)
Very religious - meh. 10 pages

6. Christmas Day in the Morning (1955) by Pearl S. Buck (American, 1892-1973)
Cute, but bittersweet. 7 pages

7. The Other Wise Man (1895) by Henry van Dyke (American, 1852-1933)
Unnecessarily long, but a beautiful and heartwarming story. It's a mixed retelling of the 3 wise men and The Gift of the Magi. 29 pages

"He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick, and comforted the captive; and his years went by more swiftly than the weaver's shuttle that flashed back and forth through the loom while the web grows and the invisible pattern is complete."

8. The Miraculous Staircase (1966) by Arthur Gordon (American, 1912-2002)
Interesting - based on a true story. 6 pages

9. No Room in the Inn (1995) by Katherine Paterson (American, 1932- )
Meh. 11 pages

10. The Chess Player by Ger Koopman (Dutch, 1912-1983)
Weird - meh. 10 pages

11. The Christmas Lie (1957) by Dorothy Thomas (American, 1898-1990)
Heartwarming. 20 pages

12. The Riders of St.Nicholas by Jack Schaefer (American, 1907-1991)
Not religious, which was refreshing and nice. 28 pages

13. Grandfather's Stories by Ernst Wiechert (German, 1887-1950)
Violent - I didn't like the story. 10 pages

14. The Vexation of Barney Hatch (1957) by BJ Chute (American, 1913-1987)
Beautifully written story, but I had mixed feelings about the ending. 24 pages

15. The Empty Cup (1951) by Opal Menius (American, 1915-2013)
Very sad; very religious; cute ending; left me with a bad taste in my mouth overall. 14 pages

"We were, that night, two shadows in a garden of shadows, but the gloom was only beauty to us in that time when no shadows lay across our lives."

16. The Well of the Star (1941) by Elizabeth Goudge (British, 1900-1984)
Adorable story. I will be finding more of her Christmas stories to read. 24 pages

17. A Certain Small Shepherd (1965) by Rebecca Caudill (American, 1899-1985)
Cute. 20 pages

18. The Carpenter's Christmas by Peter K. Rosegger (Austrian, 1843-1918)
Humorous, yet frustrating. This shows how goodwill and generosity are better than being pious and religious. 9 pages

19. What the Kings Brought (1916) by Ruth Sawyer (American, 1880-1970)
Very cute and heartwarming. 12 pages

20. The Christmas Rose (1908) by Selma Lagerlof (Swedish, 1958-1940)
Magical, but overly caricature-like - meh. 19 pages

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let BJ Chute have the last words:

(The following are the first few paragraphs from The Vexation of Barney Hatch.)

"The big bell clanged in the church tower, and all the pidgeons gossiping on the roof flew up in a violent state of nerves, as if the Day of Judgement had come upon them.

This created a fine rumpus of snow-gray wings in the snow-gray sky over Barney Hatch, but it confirmed him in a private theory that pidgepns were not quite right in the head. The church had been around for more than a century, and the bell gave its great shout every hour, which meant that twenty-four times a day for over a hundred years the pidgeons or their ancestors had been blowing their tops. Barney was not mathematically an able man, but even he could see that the thing had got out of hand.

A panhandler himself, Barney had a certain professional sypathy for pidgeons, birds with an eye to the main chance and an alert capacity for spotting likely crumb-droppers."

Note:
I usually give the first sentence of the book and also rate the books I write a review on. That doesn't seem appropriate for a collection of short stories all by different authors, so I skipped that in this review.

Also, for books to be counted towards the Back to the Classics 2022 reading challenge, they need to be published before 1972. Of the 20 stories - 12 were published between 1895-1966 and 1 was published in 1995. Of the 7 stories I couldn't find the publication date for, 4 authors passed before 1972 and 3 passed after. That's 16 stories before 1972 and, since the challenge asks for at least 6 stories to count for this category, I'm going to count it even though not all of them fit the criteria.
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