I considered a back-to-school theme for September’s what to read theme, but that stopped appealing when I thought how much no one wants to be handed more work to do at the beginning of the school year. Maybe I’ll do that next year. Instead, I’m going with a writing theme. Why? Because I am already…
I’m going to have to agree with some other readers that Happy Place is not my happy place when it comes to Emily Henry or my vacation reads. But I did enjoy reading it. I still laughed and sighed and felt the sizzle of a romance; this book just had some more issues for me…
I had so many conflicted feelings when I finished this book. Then I watched the limited streaming series and had more conflicted feelings, but not the same feelings, exactly. And then the New York Times published their best books of the twenty-first century and then the people’s choice, and there was Normal People again, not…
(Head to the end of the post to see my picks.) Sure, there’s a bunch of political stuff going on, but the book news in the past week or two has also been blowing up, unpredictably so. It all began with a little list that the New York Times put out. They put book lists…
After seeing T. Kingfisher conduct author interviews at my local bookstore, I walked away with the opinion that I would get along with her and also walked away with a copy of her most famous book, Nettle & Bone. A few weeks later I read the book while out of town and was hooked from…
I enjoyed reading Universal Love by Alexander Weinstein. I would recommend it. (I did already, to my husband.) There are some things to mention, like how I know the author. There are other things, like how my husband has become a huge fan. (He doesn’t know the author.) If there is any part of you…
Way back in the spring, I went to a writing conference and didn’t tell. I wrote some notes for you, typed them up, and then got too busy with reviews and other things to share what it was like. North Carolina has a good writing network. I mean, there might be better, but there is…
Well, well, well… I have been out of town. On and off for a few weeks. So I missed my post for what to read in July, skipped right over the Fourth of July altogether. But I am still going to give it to you and maybe you can use it next year. Actually, I…
I consider the Fourth of July as a second-tier holiday, as far as the depth and breadth of the festivities go for me. For the past few years I have been in Syracuse, NY with my husband’s sisters and parents and their families, donning starred and striped socks and painting the bursted-bomb air with sparklers,…
I think The States by Norah Woodsey is a good idea: a very light sci-fi approach to Jane Austen’s Persuasion featuring lucid dreaming, Ireland, and a filthy rich Manhattan family. Great. (I mean, I could do without the New York City or rich people bits, but for this they work as the Elliots.) The plot…
At the start of Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc, you are given the fuzzy demise of two royal cousins in the very late 1800s. Then you quickly pull way back and, over several chapters, both the main characters are born and placed in their shared world of wealth, power, rules, restrictions, expectations, intermarriage, prestige, excess,…
It was just a normal day and I was just driving my ’17 Forester (named Smokey) along the Triangle freeways and highways when the latest episode of The Writer Files came up on my podcast player. I was like okay, that sounds good, and Kelton Reid started telling me (in his deep, dulcet, and mellow…
Trust by Hernan Diaz took home the Pulitzer Prize, landing it on my TBR. And with all the mystery behind its structure? It’s a “literary puzzle?” Cool. But it was the subject matter that killed it for me: Wallstreet and finance in New York City in the 1920s-1940s or something. But also the characters and…
It’s summer! Or it will be this month. Some of you have already moved into summer schedules and others are soon to follow. I have a week left of driving my son to school, but I am beginning summer read #1 tomorrow (finishing up another book today). Personally, I like my summer reads to be…
It has been the world’s slowest burn through homeschool and other things, but I do get noticed, more acknowledgment (and my network grows) with each week, each month, each year. I get people wanting to send ARCs on a regular basis, now. I get comments on the blog more than I used to. I even…
I can’t help but wonder if what I didn’t enjoy in Jessica Anya Blau’s Mary Jane was just me being defensive. I mean, my book club mostly found it readable, believable, and open and fair to both families presented in it. Meanwhile, I came ready to say that it was yes, readable, but not believable…
I mean, it’s not exactly New York City, but I do find that authors (and other events and shows) often come though the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill). This month, a group of fantasy writers on a whirlwind tour together blew through and held an event at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. I have become a Quail…
Thank goodness I have finally returned to reading decent books. That’s not great books. But it’s an improvement over bad books. Which means, yes, I thought that Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult was a decent book. Not a great book. And thankfully not a bad book. It’s definitely a book club kind of book,…
I really hate doing this, but it’s so bad. Mine is not a universal opinion, not even universal in my book club (though it is also not unique). But while I was interested in what was happening and kept turning the pages, the writing style was just way too much. And the plot was all…
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor is bleak and difficult stuff. I was just drooling over it for its clarity, cleanness, style, innovation and trend-setting… but was dying inside due to its content. Satirical down to the word, nothing and no one in the world of the South in the early…
the starving artist 