I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to finish as many part-read books for the 52 book challenge as I can, as well as managing a couple of other reads along the way! Not a high-scoring month unfortunately, but some good stuff included in it anyway. I'll do a separate post to reveiw the 52 book challenge as a whole, so here is my December tally.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Even I can hardly believe that I've never read this until now, despite many years of intending to... I watch Michael Caine and the Muppets bring the story to life every year while decorating the Christmas tree, or straight afterwards, and yet I've never quite managed to pick up the book. But now I have! For all that I've always veered away from Dickens as too long-winded and difficult to read, this is very straightforward and manageable. OK, yes, I had the muppet performers in the back of my mind for much of it, but I like to think that reflects well on them and the brilliance of that particular adaptation as well as how closely it actually keeps to the original for surprisingly much of the script. But even where the muppets weren't present for me, it was vividly and appealingly written and I utterly enjoyed it.
[47. Self-insert by an author]
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
This was a bookclub read - my first back in a book club I used to belong to. Before the discussion I was very worried that I was going to be completely out of my depth, if this was the sort of thing they enjoyed reading. Fortunately, most of the other members had apparently found it as unappealing as I did! The main characters were all selfish and utterly unlikeable, nothing much happened, and the story really didn't seem to go anywhere. I absolutely would not recommend this, and am no more likely to read any of Fitzgerald's other works than I was before: I have once or twice picked up The Great Gatsby, and put it firmly back down after reading the first page. It's not that it's bad - it just doesn't appeal to me, and it was a slog to make it through to the end when Ihave so many other books I'd prefer to be reading.
A Book for Christmas by Selma Lagerlöf
I saw this in a bookshop and (wisely, as it turned out) decided not to buy it for myself on the basis that it was a very obvious thing for someone else to have seen and picked up for me! The very next day, I was given it as a gift! This is a compilation of short stories or extracts from longer works, all based around the festivals in December - St Lucy's Day, Christmas, and New Year. They're very old-fashioned and Swedish in flavour, unsurprisingly, but I enjoyed them very much, partly because of exactly these characteristics. A lovely little treasure.
The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah [audiobook]
This is the first of the new Hercule Poirot books, written and published with the consent of Agatha Christie's estate. While I'm not sure that I feel any new Poirot books were necessary, I have very much enjoyed this one, superbly narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt. When three bodies are found murdered one evening at the luxorious Bloxham Hotel in London, Poirot inevitably becomes involved in the investigation. What connects the three victims? Why is there a monogrammed cufflink in each of their mouths? And who killed them? Hannah does seem to have done a pretty good job of following Christie's style and characteristics, I think (while being in absolutely no way any kind of expert!), other than this seems to have spent considerably more time explaining the how and why rather than discovering the who. Overall though, I've enjoyed this greatly. For a while I was fairly sure I knew whodunnit - but I was satisfactorily wrong.
[21. Written by a ghostwriter]
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