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…
Wishing you all a very happy and safe holiday season! In 2022, at least half of my reading was by audiobook (occasionally I combined audio and print versions). I generally listen to audiobooks while walking, doing household chores, and driving. My dad lives an hour’s drive away, which lends itself to a good audiobook, provided…
Barbara Kingsolver rarely disappoints, but I was nervous about reading this adaptation of David Copperfield, a favorite classic. Copperfield is considered to be most autobiographical of Dickens’ works, which explains why it feels much more “real” to me. I don’t always love adaptations, because they often hew so closely to names and details that the…
I picked up this book on the recommendation of Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a moving story of a young black nurse in the 1970s, about a real-life class action suit to address the coerced or forced sterilizations of young women of color in hospitals and institutions across the United States. Civil…
I was afraid this book might be a little “sappy” for me. I like emotional reads but rarely read the kind of books described as “heartwarming”, and this book about a friendship between a dying teenager and an elderly woman fit that bill. But it came highly recommended by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Best Books of Summer 2022,…
Brideshead Revisited was written during World War II by Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh. Brideshead reflects many aspects of his life, from experiences at Oxford, his friendships with the British aristocratic set, and his military service. He published his first novel in 1928 at the age of 25. Also around that time he was married, then…
I loved this novel about a strong, opinionated woman in the early 1960s who is a chemist, a single mother, and the star of a cooking television show. This sort of novel could easily become trite but it never did. Elizabeth Zott has to deal with sexism, harassment, and assault, as she navigates the world of science…
This year I signed up for a challenge to read more books about the environment (hosted by Gum Trees and Galaxies). I haven’t read too many yet this year, but I read these two in June and July and it made sense to write about them together. Both books are pretty impossible to “review” in…
Rules of Civility is the debut novel of Amor Towles, also widely known for his book A Gentleman in Moscow. The novel is set in New York City, beginning in the 1960s but then jumping back to the last night of 1937. It centers around Katie, a 25-year-old secretary who is out for New Year’s…
Mediocre is a book about racism and sexism in America, and like Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, it’s written in an accessible, personal manner. This one is more a discussion of U.S. history, similar to Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, though I found the book most powerful when she was talking about her own…
Before the Ever After is a beautifully written middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose father, a professional football player, is suffering from CTE. The book occurs in a time before anything was widely known about CTE and its effects on many athletes. Zachariah, or ZJ, is in the dark about what’s happening to his father, and…
This is my second novel by Lisa See, and I felt they were similar in a lot of ways. Both Island of Sea Women and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane are slow-paced multigenerational family dramas, that cover a primary character from childhood to old age. Both concentrate a great deal on history and culture. Both involve…
The Book Stop 