Category: Award winners
Reading the Women’s Prize 2020 Nominees
Every year I put a lot of Women’s Prize nominees on my TBR list. Early in the calendar year, the Women’s Prize announces its longlist of 16 books. These are books written by women and published in the previous year. They must be written…
Looking Forward to the 2020 Women’s Prize Longlist
My favorite book list of the year is The Women’s Prize longlist, which will be announced March 3. These are sixteen novels that are in the running to win the Prize, and I get a lot of great reads from this list (though I’m…
Review: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
I wasn’t sure I’d like this book at first. I don’t love science fiction that focuses too much on technology at the expense of character development, and this book features a high-tech robot as a main character. I read it because I needed a…
Review: Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar
I absolutely loved this children’s book about a girl from a Cuban-Jewish family living in New York who is seriously injured in a car accident and ends up in a full body cast. It’s a perfect book for children in about 3rd-4th grade who…
Review: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
I recommend this historical novel about two researchers who discover a cache of letters from the 1660s about a rabbi in London and the young Jewish woman he’s taken in, Ester Velasquez. The rabbi and Ester have emigrated from Amsterdam, but before that they…
Reading the Hugo Nominees: Time to Vote!
This year I read nearly all of the Hugo nominees for best novel and best novella, because my husband and I get to vote for the winners. Voting closes at the end of this month and the results will be announced at WorldCon at…
Reading the 2019 Women’s Prize Longlist
Every year I read as much of the Women’s Prize longlist as I can. Not for any challenge, but just because it’s a great source of reading material and one that continues to get more diverse. It doesn’t matter much to me who makes…
Review: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
It’s hard to say this book was fun, since it involved more violently ill characters than any other book I can think of… but it’s a page turner and yes, a lot of fun too. Time travel, the Middle Ages, plague, and Christmas –…
Reading the Hugo Nominees
This year my husband signed up to vote in the Hugo Awards, and together we’re reading as many of the nominees as possible. Voting runs from May 11 to July 31, and the awards are announced in August at WorldCon in Dublin. As described…
Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney
I loved the way this book begins, because I identified very much with Marianne, one of its two narrators. Marianne and Connell are two teens in a small town in Ireland. Marianne is smart, independent, and proud, but has no friends at school. Connell…
Review: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
The Great Believers was heartbreaking, but so good and very worth reading. I realize that reading a book about the AIDS crisis in the 80s isn’t a light read, but I feel like it’s really important to understand. It’s also a book for anyone…
Thirteen Books I Meant to Read in 2018
This week’s topic, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is the Top Ten Books I Meant to Read in 2018. There’s a whole lot more than 10, but I’ve already written about backlist books I want to read and challenge books I want to…
