Read The Day of Atonement: A Novel by David Liss which I really enjoyed.  Set in Lisbon, Portugal.

I am reading the Last Call of the Nightingale by Katharine Schellman   Set in 1924 NYC  lots of Jazz Era reference. Enjoying it so far

Happy New Year!  I just finished The Women last night.  Eh.  I know this one got rave reviews.  Most Kristin Hannah books do.  However, while I find them okay, I'm never blown away by them. This one is was no different. I will start a new eyeball read today, but I'm not sure what that'll be.

I finished listening to Eleanore of Avignon before the end of the year (can't remember if I reported that or not),  I liked that one a lot.  I am listening to The Stone Witch of Florence, which is okay.  The dialogue is very modernized (the book takes place in the 1300s), and that kind of grates on me.  The narrator reads the main character's spoken words like a petulant teenager of today.  

Finished the Liss book, posted it and it is requested.  Now into A Rising Man (Sam Wyndham, Bk 1) by Abir Mukherjee which takes place in Calcutta.   Very interesting read.  Ordered the second in the series from our library.  Shelley:  I couldn't get into Women so DNF.  Glad I'm not the only disappointed one! 

I finished The Curse of Penryth Hall by Jess Armstrong   Set in 1922 Cornwall England. Interesting gothic mystery.  Characters are complex and interesting. Looking forwad book 2.

Read Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill.  Takes place in Laos after the Communists have taken over.  Three countries are jockeying to occupy the country - Russia, Vietnam and China.  Ordinary people discover a plot to overthrow the current government that lists names from a general down and a date for the action but who can they tell about it without alerting the plotters?  Most entertaining read.

Also finished The Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters, another exciting Peabody and Emerson mystery with an unexpected dramatic ending.  Great read!

I finished The Booklover's Library :: Madeline Martin.  I very good HF set in WWII England. I lot of it dealth with the children being evacuated. It must have been very difficult for those children and their parents.

Beginning Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb, categories historical and historicasl fiction among others.

Hello from freezing cold Minnesota where we are hoping our Vikings can pull of a win this evening!  

I finished listening to The Stone Witch of Florence by Anna Rasche which, while mildly entertaining, was kind of stupid in my opinion.  LOL!  I guess because I went from a similar book (Eleanore of Avignon), which takes place in the same time period and general place with two women healers dealing with the plague  (14th century Europe - Eleanore in France and Ginevera in Italy), I had something to compare.  Eleanore of Avignon is more realistic, whereas The Stone Witch has an element of the fantastical, but it wasn't just that.  The Stone Witch felt much more like a "fluff" book with some silly dialogue written very much in a current, American vernacular.  Eleanore of Avignon was much more serious.  Probably not fair to compare the two since the authors weren't necessarily going for the same thing, but reading them back to back made it impossible not to compare them.  Anyway, I've moved on to listening to The Huntress by Kate Quinn.  I'm not usually a big Quinn fan, but I really did enjoy The Briar Club, which I read recently, so I thought I'd give this one a go. 

My current eyeball read is Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. It's been a little bit of a so-so start for me.  The language can be difficult.  I have no idea what some of the English characters are saying (due to the slang and old English) or the Indian characters, but usally I can at least get the gist of what they are talking about, so that'll have to be good enough.  It is getting more interesting the farther I get into it.  I'm not 100% sold on it, but I'm not quite ready to bail on it yet.  We'll see. 

REK - I enjoyed The Women during the time period the main character was in Viet Nam.  (Although "enjoyed" doesn't seem to be the right word considering what was going on in Viet Nam at the time.) It was once she got back to America that the wheels kind of started coming off for me.  It's not that I didn't sympathize with what she (and thousands of other VN vets) faced, but for whatever reason I just started getting frustrated.  Maybe it was that I felt that the character development was a little abrupt.  She went from a naive, rich girl to a battle-hardened war-time nurse to a falling-apart vet, and while I can understand how that can happen, it just felt like it wasn't fleshed out enough.  I don't know.  Hard to explain. 

Thanks for your comments Shelley about The Women.  Don't remember why I didn't finish it but I know I didn't get very far.

Completed Whose Names Are Unknown.  Interesting that this book was in the process of being published when The Grapes of Wrath came out so it was put on hold because it was too much like that novel.  Published much later, its tale is sad and heart rending.  Sometimes I put the book aside as I reflected on the life these people lived.  First the drought, second the dust storms, third the depression and finally the loss of their farms when they left for California to find work just to survive.  Life at its best life was endured from one day to the next.