Books I read in December 2018

The photo above is art made by Jane Mount and you can purchase prints of her work and even create a customized bookshelf for yourself. Just go to her website:  Ideal bookshelf

A Forgotten Place by Charles Todd (library) A Bess Crawford Mystery. If you like these type of period (WWI-WWII) dramas, you must try the Bess Crawford Mysteries. They are written by a mother-son writing team. In this one, Bess goes to check on a former patient in Wales and of course finds a mystery.
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo (library) I did not like this one as much as I did the books about Georgia O'Keefe and Julia Childs. But I did learn a lot about Coco Chanel that I did not know already.
The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson (library) This is a dual reality book, like the Movies: Sliding Doors or Family Man. The character is given a glimpse of what her life would have been like if she had taken a different path. I liked it.
Ten by Gretchen McNeil (library) Combine "Mean Girls" with Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Great creepy atmosphere on an island in the PNW. I liked it
The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg (library) a book about grief and it is set in Cuba, so I liked that part too.
Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman (library) written by the lady who wrote Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt. Great book about mothers and daughters.
How to Hepburn by Karen Karbo (library) I liked this one better than the one about Coco Chanel, but I still like the Georgia O'Keefe and Julia Child books the best.
Bitter Medicine by Sara Paretsky (audiobook) I am so addicted to listening to books in the car now, I rarely listen to music or radio anymore and if I am in a rental car and do not have an audiobook, I feel like I have wasted so much time, when I could have heard a book.
Past Tense by Lee Child (library) the latest Jack Reacher novel. Small town in New Hampshire, feels creepy like close to Stephen King's Maine!! Also reminded me a bit of the one that was also set in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Make Me.
A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult (library) ripped from the headlines like she does, this one is about a shooting at an abortion clinic. Interesting because she follows the timeline backwards to see how all the people involved got to that one point in time.
Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions by Amy Stewart (library) I have really enjoyed these, this is the third in this series and she has based these on REAL people, real things that happened, with some fictional stuff thrown in there to flesh things out. I recommend these, but you need to read them in order I think.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher (audio book) one of Carrie's memoirs, especially poignant now that she is no longer with us and at the time she wrote this, she was 52....which is how old I am now.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson (library) slow to get going and not that great once you got there. set during WWII - MI6 stuff about a secretary who transcribes the recordings of possible spies. If the subject matter interests you, you might give it a try. I was underwhelmed
The Witch Elm by Tana French (library) Another book that was slow to get going....Maybe I am just in a bad mood this week? But it was a pretty good mystery in the end.








Okay, so what was my favorite book of all that I read in 2018? It was a tough year, looking back....I really did not enjoy a lot of the books I read. They were just okay or so-so, predictable or disjointed in their writing. So after much deliberation, my favorite book that I read in 2018 is A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.