I love novels that are so steeped in history, they meld fiction and nonfiction. These are most often historical novels about real people who did noteworthy things, where the author builds the story around both fictional and nonfictional characters and dialogue. The best of these novels are deeply researched, and by the end I’ve experienced history in…
Dear Miss Kopp is the sixth book in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart, and I was thrilled to receive an advanced review copy from NetGalley. This is one of my favorite historical series, and if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend picking up the first book, Girl Waits With Gun. What makes…
I loved this book. I already thought Schwab was great, but this book combines so many things I love – history, travel, France – and it’s really character/relationship driven. The story is complicated, and there were lots of times I found myself trying to poke holes in the logistics of it all. But it’s worth…
If you’re like me, the first time you knew anything about the 1921 Tulsa race riots – or race massacre – was this summer, when Trump scheduled a rally in Tulsa on June 19 (Juneteenth). Before that I was mostly unaware of this history. What happened in Tulsa is a perfect example of the way our…
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…
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but I ended up finding it both fascinating and moving. I knew it was about a true-life group of people in the Appalachians with blue skin, and it was also about the historic Packhorse Librarians, women who delivered library books on horseback to families in the…
If you’re trying to avoid thinking about the pandemic, this will NOT be the book for you. Otherwise, it’s another fantastic novel from Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Wonder. This is a historical novel set in Dublin in 1918 during World War I and the devastating influenza pandemic. Julia Power is a 30-year old nurse in…
I don’t often write about books in series, but I read a few recently and thought it might be helpful to discuss them together. For those who haven’t read these series, or aren’t caught up, I’ve avoided spoilers and focused more on the series in general than on specific plot details. I should also say…
I always appreciate historical fiction that covers an event that I should be aware of. Salt to the Sea is about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German transport ship carrying 10,000 German military and refugees from Germany and surrounding countries. Over 9,000 people died after the ship was hit by missiles from a…
As Halloween approached, I’ve been thinking about scary books and why we read them. With all the horror in the news, my work colleagues have been increasingly asking for “lighter” book recommendations (I’ve been recommending Less). I’ve written several posts with recommendations of good horror reading recommendations of good horror reading, but in this post…
I read Pachinko for a book club and also for my Reading All Around the World challenge. This book was also listed frequently as one of the best of 2016. It’s about a Korean family who move to Japan during World War II. While it covers several generations of the family, it focuses on relations…
This is my first novel by Helen Dunmore, a well-known British author of historical fiction. This was, in fact, her final book, as she died this summer of cancer at the age of 64. Her obituary in The Guardian notes that: She knew she was dying only at the editing stage but suggested, in an…
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I read, breathe, and live in bookish worlds.
Book Reviews
"Books are a uniquely portable magic" - Stephen King
*somewhere to collect my (mostly) bookish thoughts*
"She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers" - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
"The world was hers for the reading."
Thoughts on Literature, Expressing Creativity, Being Authentic
books, libraries, life
