December Monthly Blog
Window at Bergdorf Goodman Department Store in NYC decorated for the holiday season 2025.
Hello cozy mystery readers. Can you believe we have only 31 days left of 2025? I feel as if I’ve read only a third of the novels I’d intended to read and yet keep getting more advertisements for novels that I’d like to read – desperately! It’s gotten to the point that I simply erase the sites for some of the book collections when they land in my mailbox. I can’t deal with the “stress” of not pressing the button to buy the book on Amazon! Of course, this should be my biggest worry. So, between Book Funnel and Kindle I have a royal 62 novels to read. “Not to worry!” I say to myself. Just chip away at it and keep a score card to encourage myself.
As I can see, my 2026 is going to be one of keeping up with “good works.” I also have to keep writing the novel that I started and then stopped when I got sick and ended up in the hospital (It’s why we didn’t have November’s meeting for which I am very, very sorry). Don’t anyone ask me about the ambulance ride. The drivers were excellent, the siren was loud, and we hit every bump in the road with resounding definition. Now I know why one gets strapped in. My daughter tells the story of having to call 911 one way, I on the other hand, saw myself sliding down the wall as if I were the black swan doing her solo. I was graceful and waited for applause – not the paramedics. At any rate, I haven’t written and must get back to it. I feel as if I’ve lost the feeling of being midst my characters and their individual issues much less moving the plot along.
I must change the topic and get back to the month’s main objective: celebrate, celebrate, celebrate! Have you finished getting your gifts together, planning the meals, straightening up the house (or hiding the evidence – we’re in the habit of wheeling unwelcome items around to bedrooms and closing the door!), wrapping, and remembering to watch all of the great programs scheduled for December? I still have to varnish some of the presents I intend to give. I’m kind of looking forward to the task. The brush I have to use is brand new and the bristles are in excellent condition, soft, pliable, and ready to dip into a bottle of wonderful smelly stuff. Barnaby, our dog, will take a few sniffs and turn his back on me and walk out of the office. He’ll probably sulk for the rest of the day as if I permeated his air with something awful purposely to upset him. Tomorrow’s the day – get ready big guy!
Have you gotten your planner, organizer, or calendar for next year? I couldn’t decide on calendar choices, so I ended up purchasing five calendars. Each one has stunning photos. I think that I’ll hang each one. I purchased an organizer as well. I like to put stickers on the little squares that have special dates, like the ones for meetings, or ones for certain doctor visits. This year I purchased a book of stickers that’s called “Preface of Plant Poetry.” I’d forgotten that I’d purchased it and when Diana opened the carton from Amazon she called out to me that the book had arrived. I was gob smacked that I’d purchased another poetry book, but indeed it was stickers. How elegant a title for such an ordinary type of product! At any rate, I went to use some of them and discovered that they’re the kind that are on the cellophane paper. Whoa are they hard to peel off! One of these days I’m going to figure out how to make stickers on Canva and print them off on good sticky paper.
Karin’s Book Reviews
I read Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple’s Final Cases. It’s a collection of short stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. One of the stories, “Greenshaw’s Folly,” was made into one of the episodes for the Christie’s Miss Marple television programs on BritBox and other venues. Most of the short stories in this collection were written before the brunt of her novel writing. They have a particular point of view that is quite pre WWII and involves the types of homes and staffs that were more common before the war.
I’m reading the recently published novel, The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer by Ragnar Jónasson. The novel is the second in the Helgi Reykdal Icelandic series. So far, I’m enjoying it. There are elements of Agatha Christie novels in that there are plenty of red herrings, atmospheric description that becomes almost another character in the novel, and a steady pace that seems to envelope the reader with the constant question of where is Elin S. Jónsdóttir, the missing mystery writer. I’ll let you know if it ends as well as it has begun.
