Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is the Top Ten 2016 releases I wanted to read but didn’t get to. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Ghana) Hag-seed by Margaret Atwood The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (Ireland) Today will be Different by Maria Semple Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (South Africa)…
I’m hoping 2017 will be the year I immerse myself in this blog and see where it can go. I’ve been puttering along for a little while now, keeping it up but taking the time for other (needed) things. In 2017 I want to return to some of the blogging activities I love, plus expand…
Bidding a not-so-fond farewell to 2016, here’s what I read in December: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch Before the Fall by Noah Hawley All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain What I’m reading now: What’s Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi. What’s up next: my library…
Before I get back to the business of writing book reviews, I wanted to take a minute for one more post-election post. It feels like everyone’s talking about what to do next. A lot of it’s noise to me. I’m worried about my job and honestly not feeling like I can make much of a…
Dear Readers, It’s been a couple of days since the election, and it’s still the nightmare we can’t wake up from. You’re not going to hear me being upbeat and saying let’s all love each other, let’s work together and give more and do more. I’m wallowing. It’s not the right thing to do, but…
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I love reading scary books, and I’m clearly not alone in that. What makes horror so attractive? People who study children’s literature say that scaring ourselves is a way to process what’s truly scary in life. It’s non-threatening because it’s not real. That makes…
Hello readers! My August wrap-up is also my 20 Books of Summer Wrap-Up, and it will tell you something about me that I ended up at exactly 20 books at the end of the month (hint: I’m a bit on the goal-oriented side.) I’m always sad when summer ends. As a kid, summers meant long,…
July was a fantastic month because of our trip to Hawaii. When I travel, I don’t necessarily try to tie my reading to my trip location. But on this trip I noticed a few interesting parallels. First, I read The Dictionary of Mutual Understanding, which is about the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, while we…
Wanted to share a bit about our vacation in Hawaii. I feel a little guilty posting this, since you didn’t get to go. But Hawaii is one of the most beautiful and interesting places on earth. If you think Hawaii is just about beaches and Mai Tais, you’d be wrong! I have admit, I’ve been feeling…
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is ten facts about me. I so rarely get to write about myself on this blog. So, here are a few semi-interesting, semi-chronological things about me. I’m part Polish, Romanian, and Czech. My father was born in Czechoslovakia but had to leave as a…
For me, traveling requires a lot of preparation: closet-cleaning, shopping, list-making, and of course, stocking up on books to read. I often think about what makes a good travel read. For me, there’s no one definition of a good travel read. Some like to read about the place they’re going to, some prefer really light…
I love the combination of science fiction and mystery, and Robert Kroese’s The Big Sheep is a perfect example of a science fiction detective story, with humor to boot. The story begins with the mysterious Keane and his partner Blake (our narrator) reporting to a genetics laboratory where a number of enhanced sheep have been…
The Book Stop 