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…
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 should have known. But the teal spredges on Rebecca Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Tomes & Tea #1) got me. But there was the kinda cringe-y title and the AI-looking, too-modern illustration inside the front cover. And there was the okay rating, my friend warning me about the “clunky” writing. And the event…
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…
Ghosted by Amanda Quain is one of those YA books that is mostly meant for teen readers. I would say more than half of the YA books I read are more universal, but there you have it. That’s obviously more than okay. I enjoyed the read, to an extent, just maybe not as much as…
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…
Worth Fighting For by Jesse Q. Sutanto comes to a bookshop near you in a couple, short days. I got an ARC as a bookseller and was curious to read Sutanto for the first time. I am also actively looking for romance authors who I can stand behind. I did not realize exactly what this…
I haven’t been able to find a lot of recommendations for Mother’s Day reads. This year I had Mother-Daughter Murder Night and The School for Good Mothers lined up and only got to one. That leaves one for next year, though, already sitting on my shelf. As for Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon, well,…
Let’s just jump straight into my summer reads recommendations. Which I will add to in the coming months as I make my way through ARCs and see what shows up on the shelves. I’ve already read a few of this summer’s releases and there are four that I am going to recommend. My most emphatic…
A Family Matter by Claire Lynch will be published in June in both England and America. (There is a giveaway on GoodReads, if you want to enter.) I expect it to be well-received. It is a beautiful, poignant, and pacific book with strong currents of pain, injustice, and joy beneath that carefully considered surface of…
About a million years ago (in July of 2024), I went to a book event with an author that I didn’t yet know. The reason I went is that the novel he was reading from was an Arthurian story and one that I kept seeing everywhere (even though it was just then being published). I…
Now that all ya’ll are recovering from your midnight Emily Henry parties, I have a review for you. Just kidding. If you were at a midnight release party, you own the book and probably don’t want my two cents. Go read the book and enjoy. As for those of you who don’t know what I…
It’s poetry month! And as a result, I will be reading some poetry. Funnily enough, the first book of poetry I read was not poetry at all. It was flash fiction. It is such a slim volume, and I bought it at the same time as these other books of poetry on my shelf (about…
I was looking at the line of April TBR book spines on my shelf last night, thinking about how good they all looked and wondering how many of them will disappoint me. I’ll say it yet again: I wanted to like Beasts of Prey (Beasts of Prey #1) by Ayana Gray. For a little while…
I have been reading at least one picture book per month, this year. I love picture books. I sometimes feel like that’s cheating, to read a children’s book, but there is no cheating. I am making this up. I read Doug Salati’s Hot Dog because it won the Caldecott and Ezra Jack Keats awards a…
I have been recommending The Vegetarian by Han Kang at the bookshop. The thing is, I recommend books sometimes that I didn’t really enjoy reading, because I understand that not every reader is me. If there is a connection there… I will recommend it. But the truth is that I have mixed feelings about The…
Comedy is really social, maybe even socio-political. Which is why a book like Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis hasn’t aged well. It’s funny (I can see that, or at least some of that), but the British academic satire from the 50s was mostly beyond me, at least emotionally. There were a few scenes that I…
the starving artist 