January was a great month for reading! Of course that’s because it was a lousy month for other things, between the wintry weather and getting sick. But at least my reading year is off to a great start. Here’s what I read in January: My favorite reads: My favorite has to be Our Missing Hearts, which…
I’m a big Jane Harper fan, so I was thrilled to pick up her new book on NetGalley. Harper writes mysteries set in remote parts of Australia. In this third book of the Aaron Falk series, investigator Falk is visiting friends in the fictional Marralee Valley, in Southern Australia’s wine country. I’ve actually been to…
In this post are two shorter reviews of books that are set in other countries that I highly recommend. Both provided two things I love: rich historical detail and strong, interesting characters. Both are also set in places I’ve visited: Budapest and Pompeii. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper Recommended by Lory at Entering the…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about authors we discovered in 2022. By my count, I read 54 new authors in 2022. Here are some of my favorites. There were a few others I thought about including on this list: Gabrielle Union, Susan Cain, Clare Chambers, Katherine Center, Jesse…
I’ve been recommending Chambers a lot lately, even to my husband who has pretty different science fiction tastes. This is surprising because I didn’t like Chambers’ first book, A Long Way to a Small, Dark Planet even though most people raved about it. I found it a bit contrived and self-conscious. But, in my eyes at…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about our bookish goals for 2023. I wrote about this already in this end of year post, so this will be more of a summary. 2022 was a stressful year, and my initial impulse for 2023 was to make things easy and not…
In 2023, one of my reading goals is to go back to reading more books about other countries. I used to be in a book club that focused on international reads but I gave that up. So this year my challenges will focus on reading about other countries. Ideally, the book should be written by an author…
I had mixed feelings about this book, which I received as an advance review copy. Kamada’s novel provides a close look at what life was like for a family in the Japanese internment camps. I wish there were more stories about this, so we could have a better understanding of the terrible things that happened…
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is our top books we read in 2022. I already wrote about my top 2022 releases and my favorite audiobooks. These are my favorite books that I read in 2022. Those are my favorite books of 2022! What were some of your favorites?
Instead of a December wrap-up, this is a look at the year as a whole. I was fortunate to have some time off from work this week, so it’s been a perfect time to reflect and to think about my goals for 2023. More on that to come in January! 2022 in my personal life:…
I can’t remember a year where I’ve read so few of the books that are being touted on the Best of the Year Lists (see, for example, Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, and Time). This year I read 34 books published in 2022, which is similar to how I read last year,…
I read this book for the Gaia Nature Reading challenge, and it was both fascinating and timely. Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction, writes about how science is being used to address some of our biggest environmental concerns, such as invasive species, carbon emissions, and global warming (at the same time, recognizing…
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