With all the writing focus on NaNoWriMo in November, I missed doing a reading update last month!  So now that the dust has settled on NaNo and on the holidays, I thought I’d hit the highlights today for the last couple months, before doing my annual Reading Round-up at the end of the year.

In the past two months, I read two more Terry Pratchett books, Interesting Times and The Last Continent, both wizards/Rincewind books.  Rincewind went first to Discworld Asia (with a surprise return of Twoflower) and then to Discworld Australia.  Chaos ensues, of course, and they were both quite amusing.

I got one more Martha Wells book in this year – City of Bones, a stand-alone with Wells’ usual excellent world-building, if a little less found family than I usually find in her books.  And I did one more T. Kingfisher book as well, Thornhedge, a truly delightful spin on Sleeping Beauty.

I read one big historical fiction book, My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, which was very well-done.  Badly-named, though, I think, because it’s the story of Eliza Hamilton, with a lot of emphasis on how she was her own (incredible) person, not merely Hamilton’s wife.  This one was complicated, tragic, with a surprisingly beautiful love story, and Eliza was plainly an amazing woman.

In December my reading pivoted to quite a few holiday-themed reads.  I did two mysteries.  First, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron, part of her Jane Austen mystery series.  A little slow starting, but better once the mystery got going and the atmosphere was very Austen. The next mystery was It Came Upon a Midnight Shear by Allie Pleiter, about a small-town yarn store at Christmas–and a murder.  It was very much a cozy mystery, but there was maybe not quite enough mystery to it.  There wasn’t much in the way of clues or suspects until they finally wrapped it up.

I fit in two classic Christmas reads, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Christmas with Anne, a collection of holiday-themed short stories by L. M. Montgomery.  Both rereads, but it had been a few years, and both were very good.

I also of course did some holiday romances.  The best was Once Upon a December by Amy E. Reichert – the hero lives in a magical Christmas world while the heroine is in the normal world.  They’ve met many previous Christmases, but she never remembers. There was genuine mystery about how they’d end up together (because obviously they would!) and some emotional scenes despite the fluffy Christmasness of it all.  Also, lots of discussion of baking.

I also read The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox, about two twins switching places at Christmas and falling for two guys.  It was sweet, if rather implausible, and the two guys were a little too perfect.  More baking was involved though!  I’m currently midway through my last read, Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo, which is a “fake engagement at Christmas” story, though the holiday seems a bit more background than front and center.  The heroine is an aspiring fashion-designer, so apparently it’s all baking or textiles in Christmas novels!

There might be time for another book or two before the end of the year, but that’s most of it!  I hope your reading has been going well for the year, and I’ll be back with my reading round-up for 2023 soon!