This week’s Top Ten topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is about books that were just too good to review. About a year and a half ago, I posted about books I loved that I didn’t get around to reviewing. Probably this was because of time constraints, though there are other factors: sometimes enough has…
I picked this book up from NetGalley because I thought it would be fun to try out some new romances, and I liked the title and especially the cover. With no expectations, I thoroughly enjoyed this fun romance that mashed up a bunch of romance tropes with witchcraft, shapeshifters, politics and sibling rivalry. Violet comes…
Mediocre is a book about racism and sexism in America, and like Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, it’s written in an accessible, personal manner. This one is more a discussion of U.S. history, similar to Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, though I found the book most powerful when she was talking about her own…
Before the Ever After is a beautifully written middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose father, a professional football player, is suffering from CTE. The book occurs in a time before anything was widely known about CTE and its effects on many athletes. Zachariah, or ZJ, is in the dark about what’s happening to his father, and…
Welcome to the first wrap-up of 2022! It’s been a pretty good month, though I’m getting tired of the cold and I know a lot of people who dealt with Covid this month. Hope you’re hanging in there. First, I want to introduce you to Max and Jasper, two 7-8 month old tabbies (friends, not littermates)…
I picked up this book on NetGalley as a way to lighten my reading and find some new romance authors. I didn’t know anything about the book or the author, but I was intrigued by the title. The idea of a “good girl complex” seemed like something I could understand, and I’m drawn to stories…
I loved this memoir about Coleman’s time working in a wildlife sanctuary in Bolivia. It was completely different from anything I’ve read before, and I enjoy reading about people who do things that I’ll never have the courage to do. In her early twenties, Coleman quit her job in England and backpacked around Bolivia. Wanting to do…
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…
Every year I think I’m going to focus on the series I’m in the middle of, rather than starting up new ones. And every year that doesn’t happen. In 2021 I did make a strong effort to continue series. Some favorites were the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal, the League of Extraordinary Women series…
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,…
I’ve been focusing on the same few challenges for a few years now, and I decided to mix it up a bit this year, but with this caveat: I don’t want to add pressure to my reading life. That means I’m not going to focus on what or how much I read. Instead, I’m choosing challenges that…
On the last day of the year, I’m thinking about reading challenges and my reading this year. I haven’t decided what challenges I’ll do in 2022, whether I’ll continue the ones below or start something new. 2020 and 2021 have given me reason to pause and think about why I participate in reading challenges. As…
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Based in Romania, reading all over the world. Mostly fiction, some memoires and a little bit of poetry.
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