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LAO's avatar

Your link to the AK Blakemore’s Glutton is wrong. Otherwise I 100% agree that Glutton and Yellowface are absolute gems.

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Jay Taylor's avatar

Not sure if you delve into police procedural crime fiction, but the crime novels I enjoyed the most in 2023 were Leif G. W. Persson’s four Detective Backstrom novels (3 + 1 offshoot).

You don't know whether to love the "fat, short, and primitive (read: sexist)" Backstrom or loathe him, but the books certainly deserve their acclaim.

I plan to read his three historico-crime novels in 2024 and hope they are as stimulating.

Do enjoy your blog and appreciate these recommendations. "The Glutton" and Bovary are en queue 2024. Am currently reading David Copperfield, so will add Bleak House, although I understand they differ entirely. Where has Dickens been my life entire? Bloody shame it took me a half-century to find him.

Re: Anna Karenina. No review can convey its remark; easily the best ever.

Two stinkers I did not enjoy in 2023, even though both enjoy universal acclaim: Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. To each his own, but neither satisfied, even if brilliant in part.

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