Fiction log - November 2024

Fiction books
(anthology). The Witch Who Came in From the Cold: Season One (e)
Ben Aaronovitch. The Masquerades of Spring (e)
Pamela Freeman. Victor's Quest
Tamora Pierce. Cold Fire (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Fire in the Forging (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Healing in the Vine (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Magic in the Weaving (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. Magic Steps (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. The Power in the Storm (e) (re-read)
Tamora Pierce. Shatterglass (e)
Tamora Pierce. Street Magic (e) (re-read)
Rafael Sabatini. The Sword of Islam
Shelby Van Pelt. Remarkably Bright Creatures (e)
Evangeline Walton. The Island of the Mighty

In progress
Hanan al-Shayk. Women of Sand and Myrrh
Arthur Conan Doyle. The Valley of Fear (e) (re-read)

Abandoned
(anthology). Tremontaine: Season One (e)

Picture books
Lee Fox, Mitch Vane. Jasper McFlea Will Not Eat His Tea
Julia Patton. The Very Very Very Long Dog
Eve Titus, Paul Galdone. Anatole

Non-fiction books
Marc Abrahams. This Is Improbable
Andrew Ford. Try Whistling This: Writings on Music (e)
Patrick Radden Keefe. Say Nothing (e)

Non-fiction books in progress
Rosaleen Love. Reefscape

( short, screen, and stage )

( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland

Week in review: Week to 29 November

Long service leave is over, and I'm back at work. The first few days were busy as I caught up with what had been done in my absence, but then things settled back into the old rhythm. I briefly considered blagging some extra time off on account of respiratory interestingness, and would have if I still shared a working space with other people, but since I work from home there's not a risk of sharing infection, and I was awake and alert enough to do the work, so I decided that it would be better to be back on duty when people were expecting me to be back.

The lingering cough has continued to linger, but is mostly gone now.

I've caught up with the random monthly reading challenge, finishing off my October book (This Is Improbable) and November book (The Sword of Islam). The challenge for December is to read one of the five longest (by page count) books on the to-read list, which seems just a bit rude for the challenge that starts only one month before the final deadline. (To be fair, the rules of the challenge actually allow doing the prompts in any order, so there's nothing stopping someone choosing a book for this prompt in January and spending the entire year on it. Still.) The five books on my to-read shelf with the largest page counts are mostly omnibus editions - a complete works of Shakespeare, a complete novels of Austen, and Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume - plus one novel, The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton, and a 1981 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

I've also started catching up with Natural Six, which I'd been keeping up with easily during long service leave but then fell a couple of episodes behind when I had the lurgy and lacked the concentration to watch three-hour-long episodes. I expect to be caught up before the next episode comes out, but then I'll be dealing with the issue of being back at work and having significantly fewer three-hour blocks of free time in a week, so I might fall behind again.

I haven't resumed doing 750 Words yet; my current plan is to write off November and start again fresh on the first day of December.