December was a month where I was at home in Montreal finishing writing a novel, with a celebration at the beginning for my birthday and at the end for Christmas and New Year. I read sixteen books, and some of them were disappointing but some of them were really great.
The Summer Pact — Emily Giffin (2024)
Deeply disappointing book. I kept waiting for the rich, spoiled protagonists to wake up and get it, and I suppose in the end one of them did to some extent. I know why I keep reading Giffin—it’s because some of her books are terrific and all of them are compellingly written—but some of them really let me down. Content warning: Suicide is a central theme of this novel, and it’s too shallow to hold the weight of it.
Usurpation — Sue Burke (2024)
Third in the Semiosis series, don’t start here. Well, I suppose you could, it would probably stand alone reasonably well, but you should do yourself the favour of reading the first two because they’re terrific. All three books are very good, and I really liked this one. Sentient trees from another planet are on future Earth and are trying to deal with Earth’s problems, while still being alien trees. The alien POV is excellent. The future Earth is pretty grim, but overall this is a hopeful book with a lot of fascinating things going on at many levels. Sue Burke is doing really interesting things.
The Road Trip — Beth O’Leary (2021)
Two parallel stories, one about how two people fell in love and then broke up, and the other about how the same two people have to take a road trip to a wedding with some other people. It’s genuinely funny and very readable, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as other books by O’Leary. This may be largely because it’s all about people of one generation, where all her others have multiple generations and are better for it, or it may be that it felt a little forced.
The Unraveling — Benjamin Rosenbaum (2021)
Gosh this was good. It’s strange, I’ve seen a reasonable amount of conversation about this book and all of it made it feel as if it was set in the near future and focused on currently hot topics like gender and the attention economy, which is why it came out in 2021 and I didn’t read it until now. However, I was wrong. I should have read this book instantly, and you should read it now if you have so far passed over it. It’s much, much more interesting than I was expecting. It’s set in a far future in another solar system, far away from us in space and time, and it’s about civilization—what it is and whether it can last, and the futuristic disability of being bad at managing multiple bodies when (of course) everyone has multiple bodies. It’s about growing up feeling awkward with reasons for it that are different from our reasons but still feel as valid and comprehensible as our reasons, in a changing society that is also very different.
This is a very complex society and Rosenbaum has thought about the kinds of things it would do to society when you have extended lifespans, multiple bodies, few children, lots of art, an alien observer, open access, and vast but limited resources. This is a deeply immersive book and pays off the effort it takes to get into it. Definitely one of the best books of recent years. I want more from Rosenbaum, not more in this world or about these people—more different, weird, complex, well-thought-through worlds.
Elephants Can Remember — Agatha Christie (1972)
Technically a re-read, but the first read was so long ago that I’d utterly forgotten it. This is a book about some old people trying to solve a crime that happened in the past by interviewing a lot of old people and putting things together. It’s fairly obvious what’s going on from early on, but the journey is delightful, and Ariadne Oliver at a literary lunch in the first chapter is priceless.
Back to Istanbul — Bernard Ollivier (2023)
Remember the books Bernard Ollivier wrote about walking the Silk Road from Istanbul to China after he retired from being a journalist? I read them all in 2020/21 and talked about them here. This book is a walk he took ten years later, when he was 73, in 2012, from Lyons (where he lives) to Istanbul, through Italy and the Balkans. This time he has his new wife with him. I’ve always felt travel books suffer where there’s more than one person; they don’t focus on the world the same way as someone does when they’re alone. This was indeed the case here. When his wife can’t keep up and he does some stretches alone, the book is much better. However, even with two people this is a good read, and his thoughts on walking through the different countries of the former Yugoslavia are very interesting. It made me want to read his other books again.
Alice Payne Arrives — Kate Heartfield (2018)
Time travel novel that never quite worked for me. It has all the ingredients, a mixed-race lesbian highwayman, a female Canadian time travel agent who’s conspiring against her own organization, futures that wink in and out of existence as changes are made in the time war going on in the past, but somehow when they get whisked together they don’t quite cohere. I thought this might be because it ends abruptly and that things might be leading to something that would resolve in the next volume, but the next volume starts a new adventure.
A Villa With a View — Julie Caplin (2024)
Romance novel set in Italy with a theme of belonging—the heroine discovers her dad isn’t her real father and sets out to meet the Italian film star who is, to be put off by his remarkably attractive business manager and stepson. Of course they fall in love. Slight, but with quite good Italy; while it hits all the expected beats it does them well.
Consider the Lilies — Elizabeth Cadell (1955)
A murder mystery and romance set in a small village in Cornwall. It doesn’t quite work as either a murder or a romance, but as usual Cadell sure can write funny people living in a village. I don’t exactly recommend this, but I raced through it and laughed several times.
Sword Dance — A.J. Demas (2019)
Recommended to me by people here. This is a romance set in fantasy ancient Greece. It gets points for having a disabled protagonist, a sarcastic eunuch love interest, a fish sauce factory, and a retired (!) vestal virgin, but loses them all again by choosing to have (!) Platonists as the bad guys. Really? Platonist bad guys? If you don’t mind that you might enjoy it.
My Two Italies — Joseph Luzzi (2014)
Memoir by a guy whose family came to the US from Catania, who as an adult fell in love with Florence and Northern Italy. Very well written and very interesting, both about his parents and about his own life and relationship with his identity and with Italy. This was really fascinating.
The Tower at the Edge of the World — Victoria Goddard (2014)
Novella about an as-yet-nameless person who will play a significant role in other books in the Nine Worlds series, and if you’ve read them it’s easy to work out who from the title. Excellent.
Cardinal Bessarion — Michael Malone-Lee (2023)
Bessarion was a Greek monk who came to Italy to help reconcile the two fighting branches of Christianity and was converted to the Latin position, made a cardinal, and stayed in Italy—meaning he was in Italy when Constantinople fell and a lot of his friends were killed or fled. He was nearly elected pope twice. He was a scholar and a humanist and instrumental in helping the West regain knowledge of Greek antiquity. But there are biographies you read because you want the information, and this is one of those, rather than the kind you read for pleasure. Bessarion is a fascinating person and it was well worth my plodding through this book to get all the details, but only if you really want them.
Hearthfire Saga Book 1 (probably to be called Tree of Lies or Fire in the Dark) — Ada Palmer
Unpublished, probably will be out in 2026 but that’s just a guess. Yet again I am here to tell you about a book of Ada’s and all I have is a barrel of wow. I’m almost afraid to say how much I like it. Wow! It’s so amazing! It isn’t like anything else. It is unique and wonderful. It’s coming out of a deep knowledge of Norse mythology and the latest scholarship and also a deep emotional connection to the stories and the Norse gods. It’s doing so much, and so well, and it’s really hard to talk about without spoilers, especially as you’re not going to get to read it for at least a year. The point of view is incredible. It’s really powerful. Lots of people have done retellings of Norse myth but this is like a new original Edda.
The Comeback — Lily Chu (2022)
Delightful novel about a lawyer in Toronto whose flatmate’s cousin from Korea comes to stay and both love and havoc ensue. Every character in this feels real, and so does every location, and every problem. Chu is very good at writing about people and families and the way different people think about things. This was excellent. If you usually read SF and Fantasy and you want to try a current genre romance novel to see why people like them, this would be my recommendation.
You Are Here — edited by Ada Limón (2024)
Anthology of poetry about the natural world at this moment of climate crisis by a large number of award-winning contemporary US poets. Taken as a whole this was good, but there wasn’t much that stood out, and there weren’t any new-to-me poets whose work I was encouraged to read because of it, which was disappointing because that’s what I was hoping for.
