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…
George Eliot, a classic Victorian novelist, has created characters that are so distinct from other novels of the time. Published in 1860, this novel is set around the 1820s in Lincolnshire, England. I was drawn into this story from page one, with little Maggie Tulliver playing on the banks of the River Floss. Maggie is smart,…
This is a book I’ve been recommending lately, and it’s one you may not have heard of (I discovered it through Modern Mrs. Darcy’s summer reading list. This debut novel is a story about a dysfunctional family in small town Texas, and it’s based on the stories and themes of classical mythology. I thought it was fantastic.…
There was a lot of interest in this book from my Nonfiction November post about books on habits and productivity, and since I’m finding this book quite useful, I thought I’d share a little more about it. Brewer is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who studies habit formation and mindfulness. His website says he is “passionate…
It’s the end of Nonfiction November, and Week 5, hosted by Jaymi at The OC Bookgirl, is about which books we’ve added to our TBR list. First, I took a look at my TBR post from last year, where I added Here For It, Get Well Soon, Catch and Kill, and The Body Keeps the Score. …
This week’s prompt asks about books that are “Stranger Than Fiction”, hosted by Christopher at Plucked from the Stacks. The books in this post aren’t untruthful in any way, they just tell dramatic stories that, if they were fiction, you might find hard to believe. These stories have all the elements of fiction — character development,…
This week’s prompt, hosted by The Thousand Book Project, asks you to share books on a single topic that you recommend (“be the expert”) or to look for books on a topic (“ask the expert/become the expert”). In my previous Nonfiction November post I shared books I read this year on a few common themes…
O Beautiful is a story about America – a specific part of America, but it reflects attitudes and issues found nationwide. So it’s fitting that there’s a lot going on in this novel. Maybe a bit too much at times, but it definitely held my interest. Elinor is a Korean-American in her early forties, previously a…
I’m reading Reichl’s life backwards. Last year I read the excellent Save Me the Plums, so this year I decided to go back to her previous book, about her work as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. And while I enjoyed this one a bit less, Reichl is still an engaging and thoughtful…
I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I almost didn’t finish it. But my book club had so many good things to say about it, I persevered — though I ended up with mixed feelings. The story is about Nahr, a woman living in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. She…
It’s Nonfiction November, a five-week event of discussions on everything related to nonfiction. This week’s prompt, hosted by What’s Nonfiction, is about looking back at our year of reading nonfiction. What was our favorite read, what did we recommend most often, and which topics were we drawn to? I’ve read 15 nonfiction books so far this…
This book is Pan’s memoir of a year when she decided to challenge herself to live like an extrovert. She explains that there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert, only she’s an excessively shy one (a “shintrovert” as she calls herself), which means she’s probably missing out on friendships and career opportunities by not engaging…
The Book Stop 