This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is a “genre freebie”. I decided to write about something that I’ve been reading lately, historical fantasy novels. By this I don’t mean fantasy novels set in the past, I mean books that are primarily historical fiction, focusing on actual history and real places,…
In this post are two shorter reviews of books that are set in other countries that I highly recommend. Both provided two things I love: rich historical detail and strong, interesting characters. Both are also set in places I’ve visited: Budapest and Pompeii. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper Recommended by Lory at Entering the…
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…
I had mixed feelings about this book, which I received as an advance review copy. Kamada’s novel provides a close look at what life was like for a family in the Japanese internment camps. I wish there were more stories about this, so we could have a better understanding of the terrible things that happened…
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 loved Gallen’s Big Girl, Small Town, so I was happy to receive an advanced review copy of Gallen’s second book. I highly recommend her for anyone who’s looking for something similar to Derry Girls. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, though I didn’t love it as much as Gallen’s first book. As a…
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,…
I gave up reading historical romances for a little while because they started feeling dated and repetitive. I understand that it’s hard to write about independent women and diverse characters in times that don’t lend themselves to that. I’m grateful to Evie Dunmore – and now Mimi Matthews – for bringing me back to historical…
Many readers of Donoghue’s other works will probably be disappointed by this one. She’s a beautiful writer and a powerful storyteller, and I appreciate how different her books are. This one isn’t my favorite of hers, but it was a thought-provoking read. Haven tells the story of an island off of Ireland called Skellig Michael,…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about books I love that were written over 10 years ago. I decided to narrow my list to the ten year span between 2002 and 2012. For more favorite books, you can see this list of favorite books written before I was born,…
I’ve read 65 books so far this year. Of these, StoryGraph characterizes my reading as predominantly “emotional”, then “reflective”, “funny”, “mysterious”, “light-hearted”, and “informative”. My most frequent categories of books are romance, historical, contemporary, memoir, and literary (as categorized by StoryGraph, which isn’t necessarily the way I’d categorize each book). I’ve read more nonfiction than…
The Book Stop 