Here is What We're Reading in December, 2017.......

I'm reading Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie Du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and the Birth of the Modern World by David Bodanis.

I'm going back to Cornwall with the eighth book in the Poldark series: The Stranger from the Sea.

Oh I LOVED the Poldark series, remember reading a summer away when I zoomed through those wonderful books. I am reading Oliver Sacks The River of Consciousness and really enjoying it.

The Hero's Walk / Anita Rau Badami
3.5 stars

Sripathi and his daughter had a falling out when she moved to Canada from India and wanted to marry someone she met there. They never spoke again, though Maya went on to have a little girl herself, Nandana. Unfortunately, when Nandana was only 7-years old, Maya and her husband died in a car crash. Sripathi had to collect his granddaughter and bring her to India to take care of her and to live with the rest of the family: his son, Arun, his sister, Putti (who never got married, as their mother never approved of anyone!), their mother, Ammayya, and Sripathi’s wife, Nirmala.

It started a bit slow for me, as I found it tricky to figure out who was who, as there were a lot of characters! There was also (at least at first) some jumping around in time, as characters were lost in their memories, as well as present day, so I found that trickier to follow, as well. I enjoyed Nandana’s story from the start. The book got better in the second half, once I figured out (mostly!) who was who. However, I didn’t like Sripathi much: especially in the first half - I found him to be a very angry man.

>3 mdoris: They are very zoomable books! I'm glad that I'll be heading home for Christmas in a couple of weeks and can borrow the next book from my parents.

Today so far I've read from two very different books: Doctor Who and the Androids of Tara, by Terrance Dicks, and King's Ransom, by Ed McBain.

I've just started Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett.

Having enjoyed Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie Du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and the Birth of the Modern World by David Bodanis, I'm re-reading Candide by Voltaire.

>7 LynnB: Wow, that's quite the subtitle!

I'm re-reading Smiley's People, by John le Carré, and finding some quotes jumping out at me as being especially familiar. Either I wrote them in my commonplace book on my last read (and I'm pretty sure I *did* write the ones where the Circus folks are complaining about translators), or le Carré incorporated them into his talk "An Evening with George Smiley", which I saw in the movie theatre in October.

I'm probably the last person in the world to begin this series but I'm reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I got the illustrated version as an early Christmas present for myself and I'm loving it. It does live up to its hype.

>9 arcona:, I'm in the same camp as Stephen King, i.e. she does know how to write. From that standpoint what impressed me most is that the writing matures along with the characters. The first is correct for age 11, the last correct for age 18.

>7 LynnB:, maintaining the theme of enormous subtitles, I recently finished reading Clarissa, Or The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life and Particularly Showing the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children in Relation to Marriage. I'm guessing David Bodanis may have been having some fun with the period he was writing about, when this was a thing.

I'm starting my latest ER book, Rowan and Eris by Campbell Jefferys.

Next Year For Sure by Zoey Leigh Peterson.

Loved Bellevue Square!

I'm reading Evita: The Life of Eva Peron by Jill Hedges.

>14 LynnB: Ooooooh, I'd be curious to know what you think of that one when you're done!

I raided my shelf of old Christmas stories from when our kids were little and I'm having such a good time reading them! There are some gems!

Just started Galveston by the creator of the True Detective series. Hard-boiled noir so far.

I'm reading The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald.

Must confess I've done very little reading of late-adopted two little dogs at the beginning of the month and they are proving to be an unexpected challenge, behaviour wise. The only book I've managed to finish is Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves, one of my favourite crime fiction authors.

>19 ted74ca: Congrats on your new additions! :-) Good luck with the training.

I'm reading Hunting Houses by Fanny Britt which I got for Christmas.

I'm ending the year with I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters.

Just in time, on Dec 31, I finished a novel by a writer from Victoria, BC. I thought it was really, really good. By Gaslight by Steven Price.