#and then the author became better known by the andrews name and they reissued covers/made ebooks confusing

[e-b-reads]

Books of the Month(s): Nov + Dec 2024

It's not that I was too busy with work (or even school) in November/early December to do a wrap-up; I was too busy reading. Now I've emerged a little from my self-imposed reading break (as in, a break from everything else to read) and can write about what I read and enjoyed!

(BTW this is how I managed to hit over 200 books this year, after all. No, I'm not sure how I read 34 books in December either. I swear I spent some time not reading.)

Emma (Jane Austen): Had the urge to reread, and I'm glad I did! Honestly I feel like Emma gets a little more flak than I personally feel she deserves (in, like, people's analyses, not in the text) for being interfering and wrong about people. She is interfering, obviously, but in a way, that's part of her skillset - she uses it all the time with her father (and presumably with servants as she runs her household). And she's mistaken sometimes, but so is everyone else when they're certain she's going to be heartbroken over Frank Churchill. Anyway. Also I really like how Knightley and Emma are friends first.

The Alpine Betrayal (Mary Daheim): OK so this series is part of how I managed to read so much at the end of last year. Emma Lord is the owner of a newspaper in Alpine, Washington (a small former logging town) in the 1990s - early 2000s. (The books are set when they were published - except the last few, published in the 2010s and all set in 2005.) She's also in her 40s and the mom of a college-aged (to start) son. This is an alphabetical series, as in The Alpine Betrayal is the 2nd book, and The Alpine Zen (which is not at my library!!) is the 26th and final book. I thought I'd read, like, the first handful, and then I just kept going. I still think I'll make a separate post about the whole series, so I'll just say I picked this book in particular because I think it shows you several things I liked about the series as a whole; it's set in a small town, but not a perfect cutesy one - loggers are out of work and mad about it, characters (including recurring and main ones) have a variety of realistic flaws. Not perfect books, I'll write more in the separate post if it ever materializes, but worth a look if you're interested in the subject and setting!

Every Crooked Nanny (Kathy Hogan Trochek/Mary Kay Andrews): This title is book 1 in a mystery series I picked up on the rebound from the Alpine series (it's much shorter), and it's another one that straddles the line nicely between cozy mystery (youngish woman running a business, fun recurring characters, consistent setting, though it's Atlanta rather than a small town) and something more realistic/gritty (the youngish woman is an ex-cop and PI running a house cleaning business, so the recurring characters are people like her chain-smoking mom/business partner and a variety of cleaning ladies of various ages, races, and socio-economic status; racism is acknowledged and sometimes argued about; there's just a general realistic, diverse cast of background characters including those in realistically shitty situations). If you know any other mystery books/series that hit that sweet spot, I'll take suggestions!