A few months ago I posted about the 2021 Women’s Prize longlist. At the time I had only read two of the books, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (both excellent). Since then I’ve read four more of the books from the longlist: Piranesi, Luster, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps…
The finalists for this year’s Nebula Award were announced on March 15, 2021. The Nebula Awards are voted on by members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America which, according to its website, has over 1,500 members. I’ve read four of the six Nebula finalists for best novel, and I started but didn’t finish…
I’m seeing plenty of reviews of this book, but I’ll add mine to the mix. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs something a little different and a little escapist right now. It’s a short (too short) novel and one I couldn’t put down once I started reading. It’s one of those rare books I…
I always look forward to the release of the Women’s Prize longlist, because I get to cheer for the authors I’ve already read, and discover a bunch of new ones. I know I won’t love every book on the list, but I always end up with a few new favorites, so it’s worth it. The…
You’ll have heard of this book because of the awards it won in 2020, including the Booker Prize. This story of a young boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow is worth the read. It’s dark, but once I finished it, I missed the characters. By the time you finish it, Shuggie…
I read this for my book club and really enjoyed it. This is the kind of book you put down and then you find yourself thinking about long afterwards. This author won the Nobel Prize in 2018, and I can see why. It’s kind of a strange book, but then I always find translated works a little difficult…
I love reading about Australia, ever since I traveled there in 2013. I was struck by the similarities in the history of Australia and the United States, though I felt Australia was much more open about its troubling treatment of Aboriginal populations. Too Much Lip tells the story of Kerry Salter, a young woman who…
I couldn’t be happier that Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet won this year’s Women’s Prize. I love O’Farrell but I worried that this book couldn’t live up to my expectations, after all the rave reviews. It absolutely did. Hamnet is about William Shakespeare, though he’s never actually named in the book. It’s 1596, and 11 year old Hamnet…
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 in English but they can be from any part of the…
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 often disappointed by the shortlist). Last year’s longlist included Ghost Wall,…
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 winner of a Lambda Literary Award for the Reading Women challenge,…
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 have ever felt left out – and what kid hasn’t? I…
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I read, breathe, and live in bookish worlds.
Book Reviews
"Books are a uniquely portable magic" - Stephen King
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"She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers" - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
"The world was hers for the reading."
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