#the leather bound books are by Mme de Staël

[hedgehog-moss]

I'm sorry if this has already been posted but did you share your top books for 2023 anywhere? :D

Here's my book recs tag, the latest post is my top 10 nonfiction reads of 2023!

I've read mostly disappointing fiction last year, so I'm glad that the first novel I read in 2024 was a good surprise—it's Les guerres précieuses by Perrine Tripier which I mentioned yesterday, I picked it up by chance knowing nothing about it and the story involved 3 of my favourite things: I love old women as protagonists, I love books structured around the four seasons, and I love when a house is very important to the plot or characters to the point that "the House" is written with a capital letter. Unfortunately no translations yet.

I recently started The Women's War by Alexandre Dumas, which I found by chance in a secondhand bookshop, having never heard of it. I asked everyone I know if they knew about it because it feels weird to discover a new Dumas in 2024, and only got negative answers (it's not a recent posthumous publication either, it was first published in 1840..) My mum's theory is that the title suggests it's about women so everyone ignored it. My own pessimistic assumption is that it's embarrassingly bad and that's why we don't talk about it.

And I'm looking forward to reading the books I got for Christmas :)