Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

OMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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Books

Book 788: Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1) – Hilary Mantel

I clearly was not in a hurry to read this one. It has been on my Kindle since I purchased it in December of 2011 and that was TWO years after it won the Booker Prize! I avoided it for some time because I was waiting for the remaining two books: Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020), but I also avoided it because it’s a freakin’ tome. It comes it at just under 560 pages.* Thankfully the next one is shorter (436), but the last is 200 pages more coming in at 764 pages! OOF that is going to be a commitment when I get around to it.

I also actively avoided it because that was around the time that I came to realize that in general I find myself enjoying the runners up to the Booker Prize more often than the actual winner. There’s like a mental hurdle I don’t think I can quite make the leap over to fully appreciate and see the beauty in most of the winners. I knew this was long and I knew that it had A LOT of description and the formatting was weird (minimal quotation marks, the point of view), so I knew it would be a big challenge for me.

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Books

Book 769: Christmas Angel (The Christmas Angel #1) – Eli Easton

On the 10th day of my MM Holiday Romance binge, I went historical with another Kindle Unlimited novella.

Christmas Angel takes us to 1750s London where we meet John, a tall, dark, and handsome detective of sorts, and Alec, an ethereal heartbroken wood sculptor. It also kicks off a series of work connected by the titular angel that span hundreds of years (see first quote in paragraph for the full list). I’ll probably read them all, but maybe not this year.

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Books

Book 760: Bring Me Edelweiss (Five Points Stories #2) – Kyle Baxter

As promised, here’s the next in the Christmas/Holiday MM romances 😀 I read this one immediately after the first even though I had every intention of crossing at least one of my outstanding nonfiction ARCs off my list. I was smart after finishing this one and made myself finish a nonfiction before I got to read the third in this series!

As much as I enjoyed The Problem with Mistletoe, this one ramped up the cheese and I am here for it. It was less about Christmas than the first (and I’m assuming the last, Mistletoe in the Marigny), but between the super nerdy tall guy (Joel), the beefy veteran prince of a small European nation (Freddie) it worked for me.

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Books

Book 757: Screens Apart – Charlie Novak

After finishing Strawberry Kisses rather than do the responsible thing and keep going down my galley list to the next nonfiction book I wanted to get done before the end of 2020, I sought out the book Novak mentions these characters made their first appearance.

SO responsible right? I at least enjoyed it, I’ll just have to remind myself that as I slog through those nonfiction works in the next few weeks.

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