Category: About Reading

My August Reading Wrap-Up

August was a busy month, mostly spent planning for our trip to Spain.  We are super-excited to finally be off on our adventure to London, Barcelona, Granada, Seville, and Madrid.  But August was also a really upsetting month, due to the horrible deaths in Charlottesville and Barcelona and finishing up with the flooding in Texas.…

My July Reading Wrap-Up

This month I torpedoed my 20 Books of Summer list by signing up for a pile of NetGalleys and ARCs.  I’m not saying I regret those reads, which were quite good; something just made me go “off-list” this month. Otherwise, my July was all about my sister – I got to visit her in Wisconsin…

Developing strong female characters: one author responds to negative reviews by writing a better book

Those of you who write book reviews, and who care about reading fiction with well-developed female characters, may find this article in Literary Hub as fascinating as I did.  Science fiction author Daniel Price writes about the response his book The Flight of the Silvers received on Goodreads. I’d braced myself for the worst with…

My June Reading Wrap-up

June is always one of my favorite months.  It’s the start of summer and the weather is usually perfect, right in between May which is too wet and July which gets pretty steamy.  Plus it’s my birthday month. It was a good month, if a quiet one.  Summer reading, seeing friends, and an outdoor concert…

The Power of the Debut Novel

Last month I read two fantastic books that were the authors’ debut novels (The Hate U Give and The Leavers). That got me thinking about other great first novels I’ve read, which got me to thinking: why are so many authors’ first novels their best ones? I think it’s because there’s a raw, emotional quality…

May Reading Wrap-up

May was an eventful month, beginning with a DC blogger happy hour, Zezee with Books, and Grace from Books without Any Pictures.  It was awesome to meet them and I look forward to hearing more about their blogs — I’ve already thought of questions I want to follow up on.  We met at local bookstore Kramerbooks,…

My April Reading Wrap-up

I’m not sure how I managed to read so much in April, although two long flights including a three-hour delay certainly helped.  We visited Seattle for a lovely weekend with my in-laws, where we tasted wine, enjoyed science fiction and fantasy exhibits in the Museum of Pop Culture, took a boat tour, and of course…

My March Reading Wrap-up

My reading was thematic this month.  I started with 1984 and then moved to a book about rural America, Strangers in Their Own Land.  I read Diane Guerrero’s book about her parents’ immigration to America and their deportation back to Columbia.  I read The Daily Show, which turned out to be as much about U.S.…