Welcome to December!  A quick note that there may be some changes to the newsletter over the next couple of months, as our mailing list provider doubled their prices. If you don’t receive the newsletter on the 1st of January or February, feel free to reach out so we can look into it.

December is the one month of the year when I regret switching to a Kindle.  I miss the days, both as a child and adult, making a list of Christmas gifts that I wanted, which consisted of nothing but books.

You can gift ebooks, but it’s just not the same thing.
 
There ARE some gifts you can get for book lovers outside of books, however.  I wrote an article at Book Notification with the Top 10 Christmas Gift Ideas for Book Lovers. 
 
My personal favourite is the Author Clock, which I purchased for my daughter for her birthday this year, but it has “conveniently” made its way to my desk.  Hey – she’s at school all day.  It’s going to waste!
 
Of course, I have to start the newsletter with some promotion for our sister site, Book Notification. Launched last year, it allows you to get notified of new books by your favourite authors, track your “want to read” list, rate and review books, see what books you are still to read by an author, and so much more.

We’re now at over 61,000 authors audited and listed, more than 12x the size of Order Of Books. This month, we added a new feature allowing users to export all of their book data which was a requested feature.

If you’re not registered yet – head over to Book Notification and start getting notified of new books by your favourite authors, as well as enjoying all of the other features.
 
This month wasn’t great in terms of quantity of reading, but I made up for that with quality.  I was in Fort Worth, Texas early in the month which was quite fitting, because I was reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and a large part of it takes place in Fort Worth, so that was pretty cool.
 
It was a superb book, one of the best books I’ve read all year, and I’ll write more about it in the recommendations section.  I’m watching the adaptation with my wife currently.

Speaking of adaptations – I read and watched A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, then watched the Tom Hanks adaptation, as part of my book adaptation club.
 
I quite enjoyed the book.  It was a solid story and sad in parts. I’d recommend it.  As for the Hanks adaptation?  It was an interesting one.  As adaptations go, I thought it missed quite a few key scenes and backstories which I was disappointed about.
 
But Mariana Treviño was perfect as the annoying neighbour, Tom Hanks did a wonderful job, and it was very enjoyable watching the characters being brought to life.  Overall I really enjoyed the movie. 
 
Unfortunately, I’m “banned until further notice” from making any more book club picks, after making a room full of adults cry with that pick.

If you’re curious about ratings, I have both a Twitter thread and BSky thread covering all previous adaptations that we’ve read and watched.

I finished The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which I wrote about last month.  One thing that ate away at me during the book was some unnatural conversations, essentially to bring the reader up to speed on the world that Nora had ‘landed’ in.  But it came off a bit silly at times, 
 
For example, Nora closes the door on a man she doesn’t recognize.  Her spouse asks why she acted like he was a stranger, then states “He’s been our neighbour for three years.  We went camping with him and Hannah in the Lake District”.  I mean – who talks like that about a close friend?
 
Overall, I enjoyed it enough.  I’ve read various books within this genre, so it was nothing groundbreaking, and pretty shallow.  It received a LOT of hype and my guess is it’s primarily from people who haven’t read something like that before.  Not one I’d rush out to recommend, but if someone asked I’d say “Yeah, go for it”.

Now if you want the ultimate in that trope, watch The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage.  An all-time great movie, and perfect for the holiday season.
 
Earlier this year, I read Home Is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose and loved it.  I noticed she had a four hour audio original titled #CrimeTime available on the library app, so decided to give it a try.
 
This was a full-on production, complete with sound effects, etc.  I’d never listened to one of those before and thought it was a cool concept.  Unfortunately, I had to DNF about an hour in.  It was meant to be a madcap mystery full of humour, but honestly, I just found it extremely cringy.  I’m not sure if it was intended to be that way, but it missed the mark with me.
 
I finished off the month by reading The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden. A teenage girl has went missing, and a boy aka “The Perfect Son”, is the main suspect.

This is one of the earlier Freida McFadden thrillers and it shows – it was missing some of the cleverness she would inject in books down the road. It was an okay read but not one I’d recommend. Very paint by the numbers.

That’s all my reading for the month.  It was a busy month, and my mum came to visit from Scotland with my 4-year-old nephew for the last week of November.  He kept me quite busy!  Looking forward to a more quiet December and getting a lot of reading in.

Each month we give away 5 $25 Amazon gift certificates to random subscribers. 

To win all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we go to hit “Publish” we take a list of all of our subscribers, throw them into a random draw and those are the winners.

Our winners this month are:

Nancy from Great Barrington, MA (email beings with ‘nlm’)
Anthony from Trenton, NJ (email begins with ‘newport’)
William from Elmhurst, NY (email begins with ‘rbs’)
Valerie from Montreal, QC (email begins with ‘valrick’)
Bob W. from Spring, TX

All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.

Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com

Quotes of the Month

“I don’t think you should ever have to apologize for your excitement. Just because something’s cliche doesn’t mean it’s not awesome. The worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad, dumb or stupid for being excited about something”
– Taylor Swift (very fitting quote for the book world)

“Of making many books there is no end…”
– Ecclesiastes 12:12. Based on my TBR, this is very true.

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”
– Napoléon Bonaparte

Submit your own quotes; just hit reply. Book-related is great but happy to share non-book related too! Love seeing quotes from books! Thanks to Ella, Jenny and Christine for this months quotes.

Book Recommendations

In this section, I give 3-5 random book recommendations from readers of the newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. Just hit reply. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too! 

11/22/63 by Stephen King: This is the story of a man who discovers a time slip.  Whenever he enters it, he lands in the world of September 9th, 1958.  He discovers that anything he changes in that world will remain changed when he returns to 2011.  However, if he enters the time slip again, it resets it.
 
He has cancer, so cannot complete the one goal that he wanted to accomplish – stop the assassination of JFK.  So he enlists Jake Epping, a regular at the diner that he owns, to go in there and stop the assassination of JFK.
 
This is one of Stephen King’s best books and is highly recommended.  One of the best books I’ve read.

The Brilliant Life Of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons: Diana recommended this one, also known as Eudora Honeysett is Quite Well, Thank You.

Eudora Honeysett, an eighty-five-year-old ready to end things on her own terms, finds her world turned upside down when she meets ten-year-old Rose, a whirlwind of color and joy.

Through adventures with Rose and their kind neighbor Stanley, Eudora rediscovers the beauty of life, leaving her to question her carefully made plans.

Dublin Trilogy by Caimh McDonnell: This dark comedy “trilogy” currently has 11 entries, of which 8 are full-length novels. It was recommended by Dennis.

The first book in the series is A Man With one Of Those Faces and if you are looking for some comedy this month, this is the series to check out. Could be a good Christmas gift as well – always fun getting people started on a new series.

Paul Mulchrone accidentally survives one attempt on his life, but the second one is no mistake—now he’s on the run. With only a crime-obsessed nurse and a violent rogue cop to help, he must crack one of Ireland’s most infamous cases before they all end up in the history books themselves.

Marcus Ryker Series by Joel C. Rosenberg: This is a political and military action thriller series. The first novel in it is called The Kremlin Conspiracy.

Former Secret Service agent Marcus Ryker faces his deadliest mission yet. As a power-hungry Russian president edges the world toward nuclear war, Ryker must channel everything he knows about protecting lives into stopping a rising czar in his tracks.

Recommended by Tom, who wrote “I heard a couple of weeks ago that Joel Rosenberg is adding a 6th book to his Marcus Ryker series, which will drop in March. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading the the series again and I am really enjoying it, again. It’s interesting that several of the things he writes about in this series have actually happened. If you haven’t read this series I think you will like it. And your subscribers will too.”

December Book Of The Month

Locked In by Jussi Adler-Olsen: Great news for fans of Jussi Adler-Olsen and his Department Q series as the tenth book in this series comes out this month.

Not so great news, as it’s the conclusion of the series.

In the electrifying finale of the Department Q series, Detective Carl Mørck is framed for murder and drug trafficking, landing him in a dangerous prison with a bounty on his head.

As time runs out, his loyal team defies orders to uncover the truth, racing to clear Carl’s name and unravel a deadly conspiracy before it’s too late.

10 More Notable Books Releasing in December

Brought to you by BookNotification.com where you can get updated on all the upcoming books by your favourite authors with your own personalized calendar!

December Charities

While I appreciate all offers of donations to show your appreciation for the site and newsletter, I’d much rather you do that by supporting some great causes.  Each month I pick a few select charities broken down by our most popular countries or topics that you can support instead.   Thanks! Feel free to donate to a similar charity but in your own area.

I rotate this list each month.  Feel free to suggest a favourite charity – hit reply.

Pictures of the Month:

Christmas Book Tree submitted by Nancy.

Submitted by Norma.

Submitted by Norma.

Book Jigsaw Puzzle. Submitted by Judy.

Send in your own to site@orderofbooks.com or by replying! Images, jokes, etc. We’ll take it all! Bit of a backlog but working my way through it.

Your Thoughts!

Last month I asked, how you rate books. Your answers are later in the newsletter.

This month’s question comes from Pamela, who asks:

“I was wanting to ask if you have a private collection of books at home that you would never part with and what authors they have been written by?”

Great question. I got rid of all of my physical books about 15 years ago when I made the conscious decision to switch to ebooks only. However, I do have a book shelf at home that has a few books on it. They are:

Replay by Ken Grimwood: My all-time favourite book. I currently own over 20 copies of it. Whenever I meet someone new, be it a friend, an accountant, a lawyer, etc – I give them a copy.

Home Is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose: The book itself was a solid thriller, but the reason I have a copy of this is because of the really cool VHS-style cover.

Enid Blyton: The author I read as a kid and she got me into reading. I own every Famous Five, Five Finder-Outers, and The Secret books. I keep debating adding to these with various other of her series.

My wife, who has read waaaaaay too many survivalist books and is convinced an EMP attack is going to happen any day now, is preparing for that by purchasing physical copies of all of her favourite books. I think she has about 30 at the moment. Too many to mention, but a few of them are:

– Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
– The Warehouse by Rob Hart
– Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
– The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

What about you? Which of your books would you never part with, if any?

E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next month’s newsletter. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Reader Mailbag!

Click here to read.

Thanks For Reading!

Thanks everyone for the feedback etc. Feel free to e-mail me about anything book related. I love chatting books with anyone and everyone!

Remember & check out https://www.OrderofBooks.com for all your order of book needs

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Order of Books » Newsletter » OrderOfBooks December 2024 Newsletter

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