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To answer my own question, I always do the Goodreads Challenge...I read 202 books in 2023! My record was 2022 with 224 books, but I usually average between 150-200 books.

As to what I've been reading this past month (including my first for 2024...)

The B-List

Long Way Down: An Epic Journey by Motorcycle From Scotland to South Africa by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman B+

I was fascinated by their motorcycle trip journey from Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa. It wasn’t quite as good as their first sojourn around the world, Long Way ‘Round, but it had me looking up all the countries on Wikipedia because I wanted to learn more and made for a great last read of 2023. Of course, I have been in love with Ewan since 2001 when I saw Moulin Rouge…

Second Chances in New Port Stephen B+: One main character returns to his hometown in Florida after crashing and burning in his career in NYC, and runs into his ex girlfriend, who happens to be a trans guy. It was a queer romance worth reading.

Never Been Kissed (B) and New Adult by Timothy Janovsky B+ More gay male romance…Never Been Kissed is the first one in a trilogy (someone still hasn’t returned the second one that was due Dec. 26th, but I honestly don’t see any connection between the books), and it is about a 22 year old recent college grad who hasn’t been kissed trying to save a drive in. He does get his first kiss, of course. New Adult was the better cliché romantic comedy about a guy wanting to be a stand up comic and chooses to go for his breakthrough over his sister’s wedding, and then wakes up 7 years later as a successful comic…who has alienated all his family and his BFF/love of his life, so he has to make it right.

Wayward by Chuck Wendig B. Wayfarers was so much better. This reads as a forced second season of a series that would have been better as the limited series the creators imagined it as. It’s five years after the pandemic of the fungi, and the AI program is taking over and up to no good. God, I hope this wasn’t a preview of 2024 like Wayfarers (published in 2019) predicted 2020.

A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg B. A 50ish year old man is told he needs to move south because he won’t make it to Christmas in the cold north of Chicago with his lung disease and is given only six months left to live. Of course the small town south cures him and he helps makes someone’s Christmas and all those cliches. I like Flagg, though…but eye rolled my way at the saccharine parts.

The C-List

The Exchange by John Grisham (C). By far Grisham’s most disappointing read, and it’s all because it’s marketed as a sequel to The Firm. It should NOT have been a sequel because none of it makes a lick of sense. The Firm, which I reread because I hadn’t read it since 1996 when I was in 8th grade, ends with Mitch and Abby McDeere fleeing the US because they were wanted by BOTH the FBI and the Mafia. So explain to me why he’s now working in NYC at the world’s biggest law firm under his ACTUAL NAME? Sure, there are mentions of spending a year or two in Italy and working in London with the law firm before returning to NYC…but…it doesn’t track.

The actual plot has nothing to do with The Firm. This reeks of his publisher wanting a sequel to The Firm, and Grisham complying by inserting the characters into the story he was working on (which involves an international kidnapping in Libya and trying to come up with money before she’s killed). And Abby is contact person because…?

I don’t know, the more I think about it the more I want to lower it to a D rating. I hope this isn’t a sign for 2024 that the first book of the year was so disappointing.

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend C: I loved the original Adrian Mole books about is adolescent years, but his adult books just aren’t as good. It makes me sad that this was the final one, where he finds out he has prostate cancer (that everyone mispronounces, hence the title). Townsend was supposedly working on another one when she passed away (around 2014/2015), and I can only hope it would have ended the series more satisfactorily.

Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick C. I loved his Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style that I read in November, but this one, a gay male romance about falling in love with the gay Prince of Wales was soporific, jejune, trite and sophomoric and other vocabulary words from my junior year of high school.

Rococo by Adriana Trigiani C. I loved her Big Stone Gap series, but I couldn’t get into this book at all about a 40 year old male interior designer in the 1970s in Jersey…who was straight. And didn’t want to get married. It was a bore and a chore.

Re-Reads:

The Firm by John Grisham. What’s aged the most are the prices! Mitch McDeere sold his soul for only $85,000 a year! So much better than the needless sequel.

The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. Preparing to read the entire Dark Tower series. I read the 2003 re-edit of both, and both read better this time around. Hope the Dark Tower series as a whole is an exception to the rule of my not generally liking fantasy. I hated the Gunslinger but enjoyed the Drawing of the Three when I read them around 2017.