Book-Round Up: Christmas Edition

 Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala: I didn't love Manansala's third in the series as much as the first two, but it was enjoyable and I'm looking forward to the fourth, which I hear is very good.

Winter in the Air and Other Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner: Not all of the stories in this collection were wintry, but they were thoughtful and melancholy, with hints of Warner's sly wit. Many of the stories depicted characters on the verge of a transition, looking uncertainly to the past and the future -- appropriate for end-of-year reading.

Another Little Christmas Murder by Lorna Nicholl Morgan: An old-fashioned Christmas mystery, complete with a snowstorm, impassable roads, eerie manor house, and suspicious characters trapped together. A fun read for the season.

The Little Library Christmas by Kate Young: I loved this mix of recipes, memories, and literary quotations, and I wish I had time this season to make some of the delicious (I assume) food. Next year!

Holiday Romance by Catherine Walsh: This was a step above the usual Christmas romance, with endearing relationships (including the protagonists' families) and low-stakes but meaningful drama. I highly recommend it.

An Ex for Christmas by Lauren Layne: I wanted one last holiday read for the season and I found this on the Libby app. I enjoyed it while I read it, but the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get with some of the decisions the characters made.

Book Round-Up

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd: This was a fascinating premise -- what if phantom settlements on maps could become real? -- but a mediocre execution. Too many of the characters made inexplicable or just plain dumb decisions, and it was far too easy to figure out the bad guy. A disappointment.

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helene Tursten: A second set of stories about a murderous octegenarian from Sweden. The stories suffered slightly by trying to show us how she became so murderous, but they were delightful nonetheless. And I adore the book design!

The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey: Is it a re-read if I don't have any recollection of the first read? This is Tey's last story featuring Alan Grant and published posthumously. I wonder if she had planned for this to be the last Grant story, which might explain the bifurcated feel to the novel; the first half deals mostly with Grant's psychological recovery in the Scottish highlands of his youth, and it's not until the second half that the mystery-solving begins in earnest. Still, it's an enjoyable read, and I can add it to the list of disparate books that refer to the lost city of Wabar (see also: Declare).

Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala: The second in the series, and as fun as the first. The writing wasn't as strong, but I appreciated Manansala's commitment to addressing the trauma the characters experienced in the first book, something rarely dealt with in cozy mysteries.

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware: I've been a big fan of Ware's for a long time; Building Stories was an impressive reading experience. Jimmy Corrigan is an earlier work, stemming in part from Ware's own experience with his absentee father while, like the other work, also touching on almost-crippling loneliness. Ware's artistic talent is just as impressive, but the main story left me cold, perhaps because Corrigan is simply not as engaging as the protagonist of Building Stories, perhaps because, unlike Corrigan, that protagonist actually does things rather than just allowing things to happen to her. An earlier storyine, having to do with Corrigan's grandfather as a child, was touching and heartbreaking.

Book Round-Up

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz: a meta-ish cozy riff on the Sherlockian/Watson partnership, where a fictionalized Horowitz teams up with a disgraced former cop. I should have loved it, but I didn't; it left me cold. 

In preparing this post, I realized I never wrote about the other Horowitz book I read!

 Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz: I liked this mystery quite a bit more, in part because there's a mystery within a mystery -- Susan Ryeland is the long-time editor of Alan Conway, and when he dies mysteriously she must not only solve his murder but figure out what happened to the last chapters of his last manuscript. We are treated, then, to both a contemporary whodunit and a pastiche of a Golden Age cozy. Lots of fun.

D: a Tale of Two Worlds by Michel Faber: D is for delightful. This was a wonderful middle-grade novel about a girl -- Dhikilo, a refugee from Somaliland -- who is sent on a quest to return the letter D to the world. It reminded me very much of The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my favorite childhood books. A reviewer on Goodreads complained that the choice of the letter was arbitrary, but early on a politician states that "iversity [sic] was all very well, but not if it got in the way of forging a strong, safe nation." It seems quite clear to me why Faber chose D.

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala: Another delightful read. This is the first in Manansala's cozy mystery series, set amongst the Filipino community in a small town in Illinois. The writing was a little green, not surprising given that this is Manansala's first novel, but I loved the characters and the story. Can't wait to read the next two!