Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft might have been the first book I was excited about in 2025, like as I was reading it. I just somehow didn’t expect it. I suppose the cover doesn’t give much (including the mood) away. I don’t hate the cover, but the overall impression is…
Not to be confused with Night Watch (Discworld #29) by Terry Pratchett. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024, which was how it caught my attention as a giant doorstop of a hardcover book. Then it caught my attention again when it went to paperback, because what the heck?—it was…
This is largely a story of first-in-a-series. It’s also a long story because the most yet-unreviewed book of 2025 (for me) is speculative fiction. Let’s jump right in. It feels like I read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley forever ago, maybe in a different life. Or maybe I was yanked through a wormhole…
I have had this ARC sitting on my shelf for a lot of 2025. However, I wanted to wait till closer to Christmas to read and review it. I like everything in its season, and I balk at people who film holiday content in the summer, etc. I mean, they kinda have to, but I…
I am in a book club that just throws a book at you at a club meeting, and it’s the book you’re meant to read for the next club. There is no preamble, no warning, no sneak peek. Sometimes this works for me, and sometimes it baffles me: should I read this book? I know…
Earlier this year, I discovered that I might not hate Pulitzer Prize winners. For years, I had been reacting to The Goldfinch, which I reviewed here and am not a fan of. Also, I don’t get people’s love of it. So I had written off the Pulitzer. (Maybe there was more to that emotional decision,…
I have been shoving a couple books down people’s throats in 2025, each one after I read it. One of them I’m about to introduce to you, and I can confidently say introduce because it’s not a widely known or distributed book (or author). But it should be. And he should be. At least for…
This book came out of left field, but I am so glad it did. I am in this one book club (out of seven) that reads kinda whatever these two guys (okay, they own the bookstore) choose, at least most months. They don’t reveal the next month’s read until everyone is sitting around discussing the…
Oh, I have some things to say about Kerri Maniscalco’s Stalking Jack the Ripper. The first thing is that I did not actually finish this book. I’m being honest. But I read more than half and attended a book club, listening to lots of other opinions (plus reading reviews online). (I also skipped ahead and…
Perhaps I should have DNFed this one and put it in the ALC (advanced listener copy) graveyard where it could have avoided any scathing reviews. But I didn’t. As some of you may recall, I have been listening to advance reader copies of books as a bookseller, which allows me to weed out some books…
Not all of us are devoted romance readers. Not all of us are on the ol’ BookTok following the “smut” lit comedy and reviewers. I guess we no longer call a certain type of romance literature erotica? Because there is a scale, instead. On one end of the scale, Anne of the Island, the third…
Is it still summer? Is it the fall? Is it back to school? I suppose it depends on where you are in the country (and the world) and what your schoolyear calendar looks like. Here, school started ages ago (three weeks for my young adult and teen but in July for my year-round nephews), and…
I have been told since the drop of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that I needed to read it. So, when The Empusium showed up on bookshelves this year with its cool cover and then winkled its way onto one of my book clubs’ lists, I jumped at the…
I have been reading romance novels now and again over the past few years, maybe half a dozen. But now that I get advance listener copies as a bookseller, I am “trying out” audio books at a much faster rate. Many of these books happen to be romance, and since I am curious about many…
Series review, which is also a book review. Yes, Monk and Robot is a series. It is also a book, but let’s give that italics: Monk and Robot, by Becky Chambers. You see, the two books of the Monk and Robot series—Psalm for the Wild-Built and Prayer for the Crown-Shy—are novellas and, like the Murderbot…
When the woman leading our book club discussion of Real Americans by Rachel Khong said that Khong writes without a plan, little gears aligned in my head and I thought, “Of course she doesn’t!” I can’t guarantee that she’s one of those “outlines are below me” authors, but it would fit. (For my opinions on…
I was a little scared of The Honeys by Ryan La Sala because of the horror thing, even if it is YA. Honestly, many teens in my life can handle way more jump scares and gore than I can. Or they think they can and therefore watch and read it. But this book was full…
I read Bunny by Mona Awad because I was about to attend an event with the author. Out of the books available by the featured authors, Bunny was one that I already intended to read since many people over the past year had mentioned it, especially in conjunction with Yellowface (R. F. Kuang), another book…
I had almost no expectations when I bought Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown and then slid it from the shelf then opened it to read it in the few days I had left for this book-club-read. I’m happy with the cover, but it would be impossible to set a reader up for exactly what they’re going…
I have a lot to say about Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. So I’m going to fly through the reviews as best I can. Synopsis: Loved Demon Copperhead. Made me look back and realize I actually like most of the Pulitzer-winners that I’ve read. (The Goldfinch had me feeling…
the starving artist 