Bring it, 2024 -- And by "it" I mean BOOKS!

JENN MCKINLAY: It’s that time again, Reds, to tabulate the total of our bookstore gift cards received during the holiday season (woo hoo!) and plan our purchases for 2024! So, what are your most anticipated reads (excluding the Reds because of course we’re on the top of each other’s lists) for the coming year?

I’ll go first:

ONCE UPON A MURDER by Samantha Larsen

I absolutely loved, loved, loved the first in this new series - A NOVEL DISGUISE - An impoverished woman masquerades as a male librarian to an earl to keep the roof over her head, set in 1754. Brilliant!

ONE OF US KNOWS by Alyssa Cole

I really enjoyed WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING and am eager to see what this author does next for a suspense/thriller read.

JUST FOR THE SUMMER by Abby Jimenez

I've read all of Abby's books - she is fantastically funny, poignant, and delightful. I will read anything she writes, even her grocery list.

All right, Reds, your turn! What titles are you most looking forward to? 

HALLIE EPHRON: Top of my list: I’m looking forward to reading a book that slipped by me this year, a memoir by Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. 

It’s Bringley’s first book. In it he tells the story of how, after his younger brother died, grief-stricken and lost, Bringley quit his job in publishing and took a job at the Met as a guard–where  he found the time and space (and the beauty of the works of art) that he needed to grieve and heal.

I love the Met. Spent untold hours there when I was an undergrad and an art history minor at Barnard. I’ve become intimately acquainted with grief in the last two years. I don’t know how I missed this book when it came out but I’ll be making up for that in January. 

RHYS BOWEN:  with various health concerns looming over us, including a new knee for me sometime soon I need good suggestions for comfort reads!

But I am looking forward to Jackie Winspear’s last Maisie Dobbs novel. That will be bitter-sweet reading as I’ve enjoyed Maisie’s journey.

LUCY BURDETTE: Rhys, have you tried the Lane Winslow series set in western Canada? I just finished the first, A KILLER IN KING’S COVE. After a slow start, I loved the book.

I’m also hoping Santa brings me Richard Osman’s THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE, and François-Régis Gaudry’s LET’S EAT PARIS. And I’m finally going to read ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, which is already waiting on my nightstand.

JENN: I loved ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE but haven't watched the Netflix version - afraid they'll ruin it. Anyone see it?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm looking forward to Deborah Harkness's THE BLACKBIRD ORACLE, the long-awaited fifth book in her All Soul's series, but that's not out until July. A little sooner is Natalie Jenner's, EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, out in May. And I am hoping there will be a new Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London novel in 2024, although I haven't seen anything about a release yet. 

In the meantime, maybe I will get to the copy of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE on MY nightstand!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am about to devour my idol Lisa Scottoline’s THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVLINS, which I know will be fabulous. Oh, what else–Soon I’m going to interview Elizabeth Gonzalez James about her new THE BULLET SWALLOWER, which is billed as a magical realism Western. What?  Yup. It is fabulous so far!   SWIFT RIVER by Essie Chambers, so looking forward to it. And the wonderful Mary Kubica’s new SHE’S NOT SORRY. One more? Michael Koryta, one of my favorite authors ever, has a new novel which he’s written as Scott Carson called LOST MAN’S LANE. Cannot wait! 

(Don't you love how our choices are different?)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I didn’t know about the Michael Koryta book - he’s one of my faves, so thank you or the heads up!

As one of our resident SF fans, top of my list is THE MERCY OF GODS by James S.A. Corey, the pen name for the writing duo that brought us the brilliant Expanse series. Humans become the captive and unwilling helpers of their alien conquerors as the latter attempts to dominate the galaxy. No one does realistic political space opera like these guys, so I’m already pre-ordered, and the book doesn’t come out until August.

And my most anticipated “haven’t read it yet but will in 2024” is YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang. I think Jenn has read this? It’s gotten major attention since it came out at the beginning of last summer, but of course, I’m always reading a year behind or a year ahead…

JENN: Yes, I did read Yellowface. Let me just say, it is a wild ride. There is some very cutting observations made about publishing that I enjoyed tremendously.

All right, Readers, your turn. What are you most eager to read in 2024?

Cryptic crypto and other things I don't grok

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Most of the time, I feel as if I’m keeping up, technology-wise. I worked in high tech starting in the 1980s and used early versions of email and browsers before most of us knew what the Internet was. I wrote about “groupware” for IBM and Lotus, and also about "middleware" for a short-lived tech start up (middleware allows programmers to access old ("legacy") databases with new user interfaces).

These days I manage my computer and cell phone reasonably well and update my own web site. But I find myself hitting a wall with terms like:
Cryptocurrency
Blockchain
Non-Fungible

Look up those terms and here we go, down the rabbit hole with explanations like:

Non-fungible tokens are, in a way, a lot like cryptocurrency. The record of NFTs’ existence lives on blockchains, they can be bought and sold using cryptocurrency, and there isn't necessarily a physical asset that ties them to the real world.

Individually I (sort of) understand (most of) the words. But… overall, my brain feels as if this is a huge pile of gobbledygook.

So maybe this is not something I need to understand? But it must matter, because a few days ago China banned cryptocurrency trading and mining. Leading to this headline in Forbes:

So, can I just tune out $150 Billion? After all, bitcoins aren’t tangible. I’m never going to physically encounter one.

And yet... and yet… come to find to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are “mined,” and that requires powerful, expensive hardware and lots of electricity which is contributing to climate change. How much? The answer seems to be “a lot,” but I invite you to go venture down that rabbit hole yourself and try to figure out what that means.

Plus cryptocurrencies are apparently used as a tool for facilitating criminal money laundering. See China’s ban.

I thought I was keeping up, but clearly I am not.

Now can someone help me figure out how to use that coin sorting machine in my supermarket? I've got jars and jars of pennies which, though tangible and fungible, have nearly no value.

How about you? Bitcoins, anyone, or are you sticking with cold hard cash and Krugerrands?