Read:
Ghost Forest – Pik-Shuen Fung (Strange Light, 2021)
Gentlemen of the Road – Michael Chabon (Ballantine Books, 2007)
The Most Wonderful Time of All Years – Darrell W. Johnson (Regent College Publishing, 2013)
26 Knots – Bindu Suresh (Invisible Publishing, 2019)
People from my Neighbourhood – Hiromi Kawakami (translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull Press, 2021)
Did Not Finish:
Palmares – Gayl Jones
The Shadow King – Maaza Mengiste
There was nothing particularly wrong with either of these books, more an issue of the wrong timing. I simply found that I wasn’t reaching for either one and was instead choosing to avoid reading altogether. For me, that’s a sign that I need to move on to other books and so that’s what I did. I may come back to one or both.
Currently Reading:
Hope in Times of Fear – Timothy Keller
Defenestrate – Renee Branum
Starling – Kirsten Cram
2021 Goals:
(More complete post on the end of my 2021 Goals to come.)
Books Read: 74/100
Books Reviewed: 59/74
Asian-Canadian Literature Challenge: 7 (26 Knots and Ghost Forest both counted toward this challenge this month.)
A Virtuous Reading Challenge: 5/12 (Nothing new read for this challenge in December
Current TBR: 219 (previously 221)
Other Reading:
We are very close to finishing The Secret Garden with our girls at bedtime (in fact, we’ll likely finish tonight).
In December I finished reading the books of Job, Psalms, and Revelation, which also brought my Bible Reading Plan to a finish. I finished a couple weeks before the end of the month and so then focused on Advent reading, particularly in conjunction with The Most Wonderful Time of all Years.
Thoughts:
I’ve come to recognize that December is not a strong reading month for me. With extra busy-ness at work, holiday planning, and often travel involved, it’s just not a month where I have a ton of free time. As such, I’m pleased to have gotten 5 books in for the month and that was better than I expected. I completely let go of blogging for the last week or so of December so I’ll try and catch up a bit in the coming days but I’m not sure that I’ll post full reviews for the books I did read in December. My highlight for the month was definitely Ghost Forest.
I plan to do a year in review type post as well as one on my goals in 2022 soon too!
Karissa Reads Books 
Looks like you did a reasonable amount of reading despite the busyness of the season! Happy New Year to you and your family, Karissa – hope it’s a good one!
Thank you! Happy New Year to you!!
Although many bloggers write about it, this had not dawned on me until just now: I have no clue how many books I read each month. It is what it is, is sort of how my reading goes. I will say this: I also tried to read a Gayl Jones book and just could not finish. The writing was….intentionally complicated? I couldn’t follow along and DNF’d the novel.
No, you don’t, do you? You check in on your reading weekly though. Do you track the number of books you read in a year at all? I didn’t notice in your year end post.
I’ve never read Gaul Jones before and the subject sounded interesting. When I found myself lagging over it I checked out some reviews on goodreads and some of them said similar so I felt like it wasn’t going to change for me if I kept reading.
Total I completed 127 books. It was in the speed gauge graph (weird, but funny) that had how mean I read vs. how many books I DNF’d.
Oh yeah, I totally missed that. Speed gauge because you’re a speedy reader!!
Hahaha, no, I chose the speed gauge because there were only two things I was comparing, and i was like, “Look! It’s kind of like whether the gas tank is empty or full!”
I read Ghost Forest in December, too!!
It was so good! The author went to school with a good friend of mine and I grew up in Vancouver too so there was a lot that felt familiar plus lots of new perspectives and stories to consider.
Oh wow, so cool!! I started reading it just as I was leaving Vancouver 😅 I also spent many summers in Richmond with my grandparents so the beginning part definitely felt familiar to me too!
Oh yeah, then you would be familiar with the area too! Funny, I spent many summers in Toronto with my grandmother!