Welcome to December!

There’s a lot of snow on the ground here in Canada, and I love it. I love Christmas and everything related to it.

There’s just something about it that screams “reading” to me. Nothing like relaxing on the couch at night with a blanket, a decaf tea, a couple of cookies, and a good book to read while the snow is coming down outside.

And on the other side of that, shoveling. Nothing like getting the headphones on, then losing myself in an audiobook as I shovel my driveway, my neighbour’s driveway, and the sidewalk. Not that I am doing all that just to be nice; I’m using it as an excuse to get some extra audiobook listening time in!

I know this season isn’t for all, but just remember – escapism is a valid coping strategy, and there’s nothing wrong with escaping into a good book!

I read Exit Strategy, the latest Jack Reacher novel, in November. That’s the fourth Reacher novel since the TV show began, and the first one in which I actually pictured Alan Ritchson as Reacher. That was quite cool and always funny when that happens.

I thought it was another “solid, but unspectacular” Reacher novel. That was the second Reacher novel written solely by Andrew. I don’t think he does a bad job. He generally captures the character quite well. I’m not a fan of how he writes the fighting scenes; they remind me of the Bourne movies, where everything moves so fast it’s hard to keep track.

With the books, I find those scenes hard to picture. The plot was also overly convoluted at times. With Lee, he was always having so much FUN with the Reacher character. I’m not feeling that way with Andrew just yet.

I read The Memory Collectors by Dete Meserve right now. It’s in the near future, and there is a time-travel service that lets people travel back to a random moment in their lives and spend 1 hour there.

However, four strangers, all connected in one way, travel back in time to the exact same day and end up stuck there, unable to return. Then they start to learn about their connection, on a deadly night, a couple of days after they arrived.

I really enjoyed the book up until the final act. The story was interesting and a great concept, all the protagonists were great and interesting and I found myself rooting for them, but the final act knocked it down a few pegs. It was just completely skippable, and added nothing.

I’ll likely check out more works by this author if they have written anything else in the sci-fi field.

I listened to I Died On A Tuesday by Jane Corry at the moment. In this thriller, eighteen-year-old Janie White was hit by a van and left for dead. Twenty years later, pop superstar Robbie Manning is arrested for the hit and run. The narration presents both their perspectives and that of Vanessa, who works as a witness support officer and will assist Jane during the trial.

For the first 60% of the book, I was enjoying it. It’s not one that’s going to win any awards, but I’d put it in the “perfectly acceptable” category. I was enjoying listening to it. The protagonists were good. The story was interesting, with quite a few twists. The pacing was great.

Then it just fell off a cliff. It got to the trial, and I felt it just became absurd and amateurish. One of those things where you are yelling, “This would never happen”. The evidence presented made it fairly obvious which way the case would swing, yet oddly, the characters were all reacting as if it’d swing the other way.

And it continued that way, following the events at the trial, it got really convoluted and just all over the place. I got about 7 hours of enjoyment out of it – pity it’s 11 hours long!

I’m in that sweet spot right now where I finished both at practically the same time, so I don’t just get to pick a new book to read, but also a new book to listen to!

It’s such an exciting feeling looking at all the potential worlds I get to enter!

I watched the adaptation of The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. I was quite disappointed in it. Not a very good adaptation or movie.

I was talking to my daughter about it after we both watched it, as she had also read the book. I asked her what she considered the most memorable scene in the book, and she said the scene in the sauna, with the writing on the mirror. That was the scene I remember most from the book, too. I spoke to a few others who had read the book, and they also noted that it was one of the most memorable scenes.

Yet it wasn’t in the movie at all. If you’re going to do an adaptation, that’s something you should do; speak to people who have actually read the source material, and ask them what scenes stick out from the books. Then incorporate them. You can stray from the source material for the majority of the movie, but I always feel those key, memorable scenes must remain.

I attended a play last week titled Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, which is set within the Pride and Prejudice universe. I’m not a big theatre fan, but this was very enjoyable with some great performances and scintillating direction. I’m going to have to keep an eye out for more plays like that taking place within a book’s universe.

Not applicable to most, but if you are in the Kingston, ON area over the next couple of weeks, check it out. It’s at the Domino Theatre and runs until December 13th.

And I think that’s about it for me. It was another quiet month for me on the reading front, primarily because I was working on a couple of big projects for our sister site, Book Notification.

That site has grown so much since we launched it back in January 2023 that I spent most of November working on a big user guide covering the basics of the site and all its features. And there are a LOT of features. That was one of the big projects, and I am thankful it is complete.

If you’re interested in everything that Book Notification has to offer, have a peek at the user guide.

Alright, on with the newsletter.

Each month, we give away 5 $25 Amazon gift certificates to random subscribers.

To win, all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we click “Publish,” we take a list of all our subscribers, put them into a random draw, and those are the winners.

Our winners this month are:

Susan L. from Ocean Shores, WA
Leslie B. from Beachwood, OH
Gerry from Port Chester, NJ (Email begins with gjd)
Frank G. from Goshen, IN
Leslie from Anchorage, AK (Emai begins with lapa)

All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.

So it goes.

Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com

Jokes of the Month

What happens when a team of graphic novelists plays football against a team of comic illustrators? It always ends in a draw.

I couldn’t find the Mills & Boon section in the library. I asked the librarian, and she said I had been looking for love in all the wrong places.

A man walks into a bookstore and says, “I hope you don’t have a book on reverse psychology”.

Why are science fiction novels like cookbooks?

You keep thinking, ‘well, that’s never going to happen.”

I like to read translated books. My favourite is Celsius 232.778.

(Jokes from The Book of Book Jokes by Alex Johnson)

Book Recommendations

In this section, I give 3-5 random book recommendations from readers of the newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. Just hit reply. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too!

EMP Survival in a Powerless World Series: I don’t know the best way to link this series, but I know we have a lot of EMP survival thriller fans out there.

This is a series written by about 16 authors, and it currently has approximately 130 books. Authors include J S Donovan, James Hunt, and Alexandria Clarke.

I haven’t read anywhere near them all, but I believe they are all standalone. It’s a neat series to read. Sue had written in to mention it as she knows my wife and me are fans of this genre. I’ve checked out a couple of them and enjoyed them.

Cold People by Tom Rob Smith: Author of the Child 44 trilogy, this is a standalone novel recommended by Keith, who wrote:

A “post-apocalyptic fantasy”, per the website. After an ecological collapse that kills off most humans, aliens arrive and claim the planet for their own. What’s left of humanity will only be allowed to exist in Antarctica. Any human outside a prescribed limit at the deadline time is immediately killed. Enterprising people make their way south any way they can, and world governments rush to send their best and brightest to established South Pole bases in an effort to preserve humanity and science. It soon becomes obvious that humans v1.0 won’t survive long term in that harsh environment, so they turn to genetic engineering to create humans v2.0 who are better adapted to their new reality. Some Sci-Fi parts I wish had been better developed, but overall very good. 8/10.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr: First book in a two-book series, following the brilliant but troubled psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kriezler.

It takes place in 1890s New York, and Kriezler attempts to solve crimes using early criminal profiling methods.

The first book in the series won Best First Mystery at the Anthony Awards. In The Alienist, a reporter, a pioneering psychologist, and a determined young woman secretly work with the police to use early criminal profiling to track down a brutal killer targeting boys on the streets.

The Christmas Ring by Karen Kingsbury: A cool concept with this one, as it was released in late October, and then the movie hit theatres starring Kelsey Grammer just 2 weeks later.

So if you are looking for a Christmas book / adaptation combination this month, this standalone novel could be the one for you.

A military widow searching for her family’s lost Christmas ring falls for a kind antique dealer, but when he uncovers a painful secret about the ring’s past, they must fight for both the heirloom and their second chance at love.

Merry Christmas, You Filthy Animal by Meghan Quinn: Rom-coms aren’t really my genre, but I’m one of the biggest Home Alone fans you’ll ever meet, and I’m hoping to make an exception this month to check this book out.

I just love that cover.

By the NYT Bestselling author Meghan Quinn, at rival Christmas tree farms, grumpy Atlas “Max” Maxheimer and cheerful newcomer Betty go from feuding over customers to falling for each other as holiday pranks, town drama, and one very important ornament turn their small-town battle into a messy, funny love story with a lot of Home Alone references.

December Book Of The Month

Silent Bones by Val McDermid: This is the eighth novel in the top-notch Inspector Karen Pirie series by Val McDermid. It was released in the UK to very positive reviews in October, and has its US release this month. A great excuse for me to promote it!

It’s one of those series you can read out of order, since each case is self-contained, but you know the deal: it’s a lot better to read in order, get to know the characters and the relationships and so on.

If you are looking for a series to binge this month, this could be it. These are Scottish cold-case police procedurals featuring Karen working for the Historic Cases Unit of Police Scotland.

If you’re a fan of Tartan Noir, be sure to check out this exquisite series by Val.

10 More Notable Books Releasing in December

Brought to you by BookNotification.com where you can get updated on all the upcoming books by your favourite authors with your own personalized calendar!

Pictures of the Month

Thanks to Carla.

Send in your own to site@orderofbooks.com or by replying!

Images, jokes, etc. We’ll take it all!

Your Thoughts!

Last month, I asked you what the best book you read this year was. The answers are later in the newsletter.

This month I am asking:

Do you own any book merchandise? If so, what? ie: clothes, bags,mugs, hats etc.

(And if you don’t that’s okay; just e-mail in to say that and we’ll still include you in the random drawing!)

I’m just curious because up until earlier this year, the only book-related clothing I had was a Harry Bosch t-shirt. As we were launching the I Care About Books Podcast, I decided to buy a couple of book-related shirts to wear during the podcasts.

Well, that has snowballed. I initially bought a t-shirt with the cover of The Illustrated Man, a t-shirt supporting public libraries as a safe space, and a Pennywise top.

This has resulted in lots of strangers coming up to me to comment on my shirts – primarily The Illustrated Man t-shirt – and leading to lots of great conversations about books. Of course, with Book Notification to promote, I can use the shirts for marketing as well!

I’ve started to go a bit crazy with it all. There’s not a lot of legitimate dealers out there, unfortunately – and I really hope authors step up their game with merch – but over the past few weeks, I’ve been buying a variety of book-related t-shirts.

I can’t actually name them all here because I bought a few of them for my wife as well for Christmas, and she reads the newsletter – but don’t worry, you’ll see me model them in future podcasts!

Anyway, what about you – do you have any book-related merch? Feel free to send in pictures as well.

And feel free to share the websites you have bought from or are buying from. I primarily purchase from Out of Print, but would be happy to check out other retailers! It’d be neat to get a list going. And has anyone bought off Litographs? That’s one that has tempted me for awhile.

E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next month’s newsletter. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Reader Mailbag!

Click here to read.

Book Notification
Order of Books » Newsletter » OrderOfBooks December Newsletter

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