Happy New Year! Last night the husband and I stayed in, cooked a nice dinner, drank a “special occasion” bottle of wine. A pretty good New Year’s Eve as far as I’m concerned! Today I worked on getting the blog ready for the new year – updating links, cleaning up my TBR list, etc. I…
Tag: literature
Top Ten Tuesday: the Best Books I Read This Year
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is favorite new-to-me authors I read in 2014. This post is also “co-hosted” by Estella’s Revenge A Month of Favorites. Here are the best books I read this year: East of Eden – John Steinbeck – a classic novel about Steinbeck’s own family…
50 Books that Define the Last Five Years?
In anticipation of all the upcoming “best of 2013” lists, I wanted to share this list of 50 books that define the last five years in literature. It’s a long enough list that everyone will find something they like here. But what do you think of the list as a whole? In case you’re wondering,…
Reading Huck Finn, Want to Join Me?
I’ve been reading light lately, but the last classic I’m tackling this year is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. This is a book most people read in high school or college, but it passed me by and I’ve always meant to read it. Huck may be a child, but already I can…
The Classics Club Book Spin
The Classics Club is doing something called a “Classics Spin”. What is that? First, I have to take my Classics Club list of 50 books and pick 20 I haven’t read. I post the list, and on Monday the Classics Club will pick a number from 1-20, and that’s a book I have to read…
Are today’s book critics too nice? Or are authors too defensive? You decide.
Are book reviewers too nice? A recent group of articles in Salon and the New York Times raise the question. In an article in the New York Times, critic Dwight Garner says authors have been too defensive about negative reviews, turning on the critics and, as David Eggers once did, pleading for reviewers to be…
I Join the Classics Club: 50 Classics in 5 Years
Jillian over at A Room of One’s Own has created the Classics Club, where you sign up to read 50 classics over five years. Since I love a good book list, I thought it was worth trying to create a list of 50 classics I want to read. I came up with this list by…
It’s Monday, What are You Reading?
“It’s Monday! What are you reading?” is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Bookjourney to share with others what you’ve read the past week and planning to read next. It’s Monday and I hope it was as nice a weekend for you as it was here! We had gorgeous weather, game night with friends, and…
It’s Monday, What are You Reading?
“It’s Monday! What are you reading?” is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Bookjourney to share with others what you’ve read the past week and planning to read next. It’s Monday, I worked late, and I just about have time for a “What are You Reading” post. You may be thinking, I haven’t read much…
Literary March Madness: The Morning News Tournament of Books
I read about this fun site at Estella’s Revenge: The Morning News Tournament of Books — it’s March Madness meets great literature combined with a lot of humor, and it even features writers you may have heard of as judges. Here’s the deal: they picked sixteen highly acclaimed books published last year, created a bracket…
Shaking up my reading: The Man Booker Prize nominees
Sometimes it’s good to shake up your reading list. So when the “longlist” for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on July 26, 2011, and I hadn’t heard of a single one of the books, I thought it was time to extend myself a bit. According to the Booker website, they’ve shaken…
Review of Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
I picked this book because I read about it on other book blogs, and it always receives rave reviews. It’s best described as a quiet book, where not a lot happens. It’s a book about friendship and relationships. I don’t know if I loved it as much as many do, but it’s definitely a book…
The Book Stop 