I’m trying to get back in the swing of things after a two-week vacation visiting family in northern California. That’s the longest I’ve been away from home in a long, long time. It’d been a year and a half since the last time we took a flight and I was a little anxious about flying during the holidays, but everything went pretty smoothly. Our outbound journey got us in to SFO early, our bag was among the first down the chute, we caught the inter-terminal train to the BART station, and our train arrived just as we got there, so it was nice.
On the return flight, we were delayed a bit. Our plane was parked at the airport overnight, but someone forgot to clean and service it, so it was late being tugged to the gate. Then they had a hard time finding cleaners, and the catering was under-serviced (according to the grumbling staff). Still, we didn’t have a connection to worry about, unlike many others on the flight, so we weren’t all that put out. When we landed, the crew asked for people to remain seated so passengers at the back of the plane with a close connection could deplane and make their next flight. Did everyone comply? No, of course not. If anything, it was the slowest deplaning process I’ve ever seen.
People.
I stumbled upon an interesting TV series on the flights. Six episodes of a show called Full Circle on Max, starring Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant as married parents living in style in Manhattan because her dad has become a celebrity chef. There’s a kidnapping plot orchestrated by a Guianian syndicate led by a woman (CCH Pounder) who thinks she needs to lift a curse on her family. The kidnapping goes sideways but, in the process, it exposes some long-held secrets by both parents. Directed by Steven Soderbergh with Randy Quaid as the celeb chef and William Sadler as his brother. I liked it. Watched three episodes on each flight.
We did so. many. jigsaw puzzles! My three-year-old grandson had spilled a stack of puzzles, so some of the pieces got intermingled. We had to assemble them to figure out which pieces went with which puzzle, which was a bit of a challenge. One puzzle had unique pieces (matted front, distinctive backside color), so it was easy to sort them out, but for the others we just had to put them together. We had as many as three going at once! At the end, we had one complete puzzle, one missing a single piece and another missing a few pieces. My daughter advertised in a group on Facebook and was able to borrow some other puzzles, so we always had one going.
I thought I’d get some reading done while on vacation, but that didn’t work out. I received a couple of novels for Christmas (the latest from Grisham and Connelly) but they’re still unopened. The grandkids kept us busy and entertained. We watched a lot of Muppet movies and a couple of Diary of a Wimpy Kid films. My daughter rented the Taylor Swift concert movie, too—she and our granddaughter went to one of the California shows.
We also watched some football games. My son-in-law comes from a Michigan family, so there was intense interest in the Rose Bowl. He flew down to L.A. and attended the game with his parents. It was a real nail-biter. The championship game is tonight in Houston. He’s not here for that one, but I’m sure he’s nervously watching it on TV.
Despite not reading anything during the final two weeks of the year, it was a pretty good year for reading. In 2022, I read 37 books but last year I managed 57. Several were books I read to my wife, including a batch of King novels. If you’re interested, you can see the full list here.
Here are my top ten titles in no particular order:
- The Deluge by Stephen Markley
- Holly by Stephen King
- All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
- The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
- A Better World by Sarah Langan
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
- An Honest Man by Michael Koryta
- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
- Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott
- Where I End by Sophie White
It’s quite a diverse batch. I only finished the Garmus book a couple of days ago so it became the first title on the 2024 list, too.
Of the books I read, I reviewed ten:
- City on Fire by Don Winslow
- Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott
- City of Dreams by Don Winslow
- The Deluge by Stephen Markley
- The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell
- Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
- Forever Home by Graham Norton
- Where I End by Sophie White
- The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder by Lawrence Block
- The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson
I’m already into my third book for 2024 (only one of them complete thus far). Time, too, to start another jigsaw puzzle!
