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Listed in the order I read them. F= Fiction; NF=Nonfiction; A=Anthology

1. The Cat's Meow: How cats evolved from the savannah to your sofa - Jonathan B. Losos (NF)
2. Charlotte Illes is not a detective - Katie Siegel (F)
3. I go by sea, I go by land - P.L.Travers (NF)
4. Les prénoms épicènes - Amélie Nothomb (F)
5. Rilke: the last inward man - Lesley Chamberlain (NF)
6. Torrid tales from the creative trenches: Instant classic that no one will read - various (A-F)
7. Waiting for Gertrude - Bill Richardson (F)
8. Midnight Sweatlodge - Waubgeshig Rice (F)
9. Moon of the Crusted Snow - Waubgeshig Rice (F)
10. Moon of the Turning Leaves - Waubgeshig Rice (F)
11. Myth and Mayhem: A leftist critique of Jordan Peterson - various (A-NF)
12. The Library of Heartbeats - Laura Imai Messina (F)
13. Two Solitudes - Hugh MacLennan (F)
14. Your Brain On Art: How the arts transform us - Susan Massamen & Ivy Ross (NF)
15. Bookworm - Robin Yeatman (F)
16. Not your child - Lis Angus (F)
17. A Different Kind of Evil - Andrew Wilson (F)
18. Legacy - Waubgeshig Rice (F)
19. On Rereading - Patricia Meyer Sparks (NF)
20. Anna O. - Matthew Blake (F)
21. Le Påtissier d'Hitler - Peter Bevore (F)
22. Barbara isn't dying - Alina Bronsky (F)
23. Blue Notes - Anne Cathrine Bomann (F)
24. Library for the war-wounded - Monika Helfer (F)
25. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk (f)
26. Agatha - Anne Cathrine Bomann (F)
27. Wonder World - K. R. Byggdin (F)
28. Where's the mother? Stories from a transgender dad - Trevor MacDonald (NF)
29. La définition du bonheur - Catherine Cusset (F)
30. Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Döblin (F)
31. Beauty and the Beat - Lisa Whittington-Hill (NF)
32. The Call of the Toad (Unkenruhe) - Guenter Grass (tr. Ralph Mannheim) - F
33. Health for All: A doctor's prescription for a healthier Canada - Jane Philpott (NF)
34. An elderly lady must not be crossed - Helene Tursten (F)
35. Kallocain - Karin Boye (F)
36. Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood (F)
37. Mr. Norris changes trains - Christopher Isherwood (F)
38. Siblings - Brigitte Reimann (F)
39. The Wall Jumper - Peter Schneider (F)
40. Félix et la source invisible - Albin Michel (F)
41. I love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko (NF)
42. Tough on Crime - David Holdsworth (F)
43. Perilous Passage - Arthur Mayse (F)
44. The girls dressed for murder - Lynn McPherson (F)
45. Case of the Curious Collection - Carolyn Keene (F)
46. Paradise Pending - Kris Purdy (F)
47. Secrets in the Water - Alice Fitzpatrick (F)
48. Laughing on the outside: The life of John Candy - Martin Knelman (NF)
49. The Vampire Cat & Poems by Robert Thomas Payne (A)
50. Mike Harris made me eat my dog - Linwood Barclay (NF/humour)
51. The Secret History of Audrey James - Heather Marshall (F)
52.The Mystery Guest - Nita Prose (F)
53. Kairos - Jenny Erpenbeck (F)
54. The Paris Network - Siobhan Curhan (F)
55. Let sleeping cats lie - Louise Clark (F)
56. Altered Boy - Jim McDonald (F)
57. Meeting my treaty kin: A journey toward reconciliation - Heather Menzies (NF)
58. The Fells - Cath Staincliffe (F)
59. Death in Fine Condition - Andrew Cartmel (F)
60. The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey (F)
61. Not a novel: A memoir in pieces - Jenny Erpenbeck (NF)
62. Dandelion Daughter - Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (F)
63. Café Babanussa - Karen Hill (NF)
64. The Circle - Katherine Vermette (F)
65. Bury the Lead - Kate Hilton & Elizabeth Renzetti (F)
66. IRL: Finding realness, meaning & belonging in our digital lives - Chris Stedman (NF)
67. Kukum - Michel Jean (NF)
68. Death at the Sign of the Rook - Kate Atkinson (F)
69. Woman of Interest - Tracy O'Neill (NF)
70. The Wall Between: What Jews & Palestinians don't want to know about each other - Raja G. Khouri & Jeffrey J. Wilkinson (NF)
71. Murder crossed her mind - Stephen Spotswood (F)
72. Teach me, I can learn - Alice Martel (NF)
73. In all things: A return to the drooling ward - Ed Davis (NF)
74. What she left behind - Ellen Marie Wiseman (F)
75. Women in Prison - Joan Henry (NF)
76. Lizards hold the sun - Dani Trujillo (F)
77. Swiss Sonata - Gwethalyn Graham (F)
78. Book and Dagger: How scholars & librarians became the unlikely spies of World War II - Elyse Graham (NF)
79. Crooked Seeds- Karen Jennings (F)
80. Honor the Dead - Amy Tector (F)
81. The Mistletoe Mystery - Nita Prose (F)
82. The Foulest Things - Amy Tector (F)
83. The Grey Wolf - Louise Penny (F)
84. Memories before and after The Sound of Music - Agathe von Trapp (NF)
85. Montréal-Nord - Mariana Mazza (NF)
86. Double Vision - Peggy Blair (F)
87. The Lost Book of Bonn - Brianna Labuskes (F)
88. Breaking Canadians: Health care, advocacy & the toll of COVID-19 - various, ed. by Nili Kaplan-Myrth (NF)
89. Norman's Conquest - Don Butler (F)
90. Vampires of Ottawa - Eric Wilson (F)
91. I who have never known men - Jacqueline Harpman (F)
92. How to protect bookstores & why - Danny Caine (NF)
93. Shapes of Wrath - Melissa Yi (F)
94. How to solve your own murder - Kristen Perrin (F)
95. The Diapause - Andrew Forbes (F)
96. Fatal Harvest - Brenda Chapman (F)
97. Everyone in my family has killed someone - Benjamin Stevenson (F)
98. The Hard Road Out: One woman's escape from North Korea - Jihyun Park & Seh-Lynn Cho (NF)
99. Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North - Rachel Joyce (F)

So in January 2023 I wrote the following:

https://blogcutter.dreamwidth.org/2023/01/08/

So did I do what I planned or hoped to do? To some extent yes, somewhat to my surprise!

1. Improving my French

I made it to two of the book discussions held at Alliance française. I renewed my Alliance membership and have bought the books to be discussed in February and April 2024. I listened to Téléjournal (on the Gatineau station) a number of times, mainly on Sundays when local newscasts tend to be few and far between. And I've acquired a fair number of books in French (I listed 4 of them in my last entry) and we'll see if I actually end up reading them! As for oral French, I've had some occasion to use it when I've been in Gatineau; I'm less self-conscious about it than I would have been in my younger days so I guess that's progress.

2. Spending less time online and more time in real life

The comments I made last year still apply. I'm still working at it and still only partially succeeding. But I still use cash when I can and it makes sense, I still write some cheques in addition to using online banking, I still maintain paper-and-pen(cil) planners, I still sometimes write longhand and prefer it for many tasks.

3. Succession Planning (for this phase of my life and beyond)

This, as you might expect, is still ongoing. I didn't really make much progress in terms of financial planning or updating official documents. Let's just describe the situation there as stable. But as for decluttering, I did make some progress. I arranged for Canadian Diabetes to pick up several boxes of unwanted and unneeded household stuff. I packed up several boxes of books and donated them to the Friends of the Experimental Farm for their (usually) annual book sales. They actually held two drop-off days in 2023, one for the sale they held in June (the first one since 2019) and one for the sale planned for 2024. Getting rid of bigger items is a little more problematic. There's some furniture we could probably donate but unfortunately there's no longer much demand for office furniture like desks and filing cabinets.

So what about my goals for 2024? I plan to continue on in those general directions but under item #3 I'll be a little more specific. I want to include some "want tos" rather than just the "ought tos". Come to think of it, that's likely why so many resolutions are ultimately doomed: too many goals that are difficult or distasteful, not enough that are achievable, enjoyable dreams or aspirations.

In 2023, I managed some great trips, which I've written about previously: a trip to Sweden and a tour of the Eastern Townships, "On the trail of Louise Penny". There are still a number of places on my travel bucket list. Germany (especially the Berlin area), where I haven't been since reunification. Austria. Italy. Norway. And within Canada, I want to visit every province - I've never been to Saskatchewan or New Brunswick.

So let's see what 2024 will bring!

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