The cover. That’s what a lot of reviews mention because, well, most people expected to read one kind of thing based on the cover and then got something else. Myself, I read Miss Iceland by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (ohd-thur ah-vah oh-lahfs-dah-tur—ish) because it was a book club read for one of the clubs I am…
Warning: unpopular literary opinion. This book was everywhere last year (meaning 2023). The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by respected, successful author James McBride was called a top novel of the year, including at Goodreads. But how a third of Goodreads readers rate this five stars, I have no earthly (haha) idea. Sure, as one…
I loved reading North Woods. Not everybody at book club did. There were even DNFs. I suppose it’s not an easy book and it is rather literary. But I thought it was exciting, very beautiful in its prose, unique, and well-executed. I will be looking into Daniel Mason’s other books and waiting for the next…
I keep coming back in my mind to reading Hamnet in February. I hadn’t read Maggie O’Farrell before, and I was so impressed I was just waiting to come back to her. The Marriage Portrait—her newest book, from 2022—was my chance. While it did not disappoint, I ended up liking Hamnet better, but only because…
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,…
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,…
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…
This won’t be a long review. I don’t have that much to say about A Million to One by Adiba Jaigirdar. Just in and destroy and out. I jest. But do I? I did not like this book and I did not think it was well written. That’s the nice way of putting it. Josepha…
Halfway through The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, I was already confident that I was going to like it enough to recommend it. I trusted the voice and was so impressed that even if the ending was not satisfactory, there was still much to praise. I put it on my best reads of February blog,…
I’m not sure that A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende’s most lauded work. I have been meaning to read her, but I started here only because it was a book club thing. This is one of Allende’s more recent books (2019, out of the 28 listed on her site; she’s published four…
A book club read, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is another great read of 2024, for me. I’m even going to call it a favorite. It has little things (and one big thing) wrong with it, but overall, it is an amazing book that deserves book club reads and awards and whatnot. It helps that I…
Valentines Day is a couple weeks away. Some of you will choose to ignore this holiday, and that’s one way to do it. Others of you will take the opportunity to put a wreath of hearts on your door, make a reservation at a fancy restaurant, and curl up with some chocolates and a good…
I felt like I was doing cartwheels while reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and I mean that in a good way. Or like I was watching Garmus do cartwheels. Her writing style, characters, and plot are so free-wheeling. The subject matter is often sad, serious, and even brutal, but somehow this book is…
I do not prefer the epistolary form, and I am wary about having two authors on a book cover, as well, so The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Anne Barrows had two knocks against it from the beginning. But I had liked the movie. So one knock for.…
I have been reading Greek mythology lately. I have been teaching mythology to a small classroom of approximately-ninth-grade boys and I have, as a rabbit trail, plunged into book after book of Greek mythology. It was always a subject that interested me. (The truth is that just about everything in English 1 interested and still…
The books we’ve been reading for middle school literature lately (I teach a co-op class) have been so short that the students have actually asked for more reading suggestions. Not all of the students, but still. After Animal Farm and then War Horse, we landed on another super-short novel (which we’re not going to call…
Lyddie was another in a line of middle grades historical fiction that I have read as the Middle School Language Arts teacher at the homeschool co-op I am a part of. I’ve been more impressed by the selections for this year (part of a writing curriculum based on Modern History as opposed to last year’s…
Well! There are gushing reviews of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and there are scathing reviews of Outlander. No one expects it to be literary fiction—it’s popular fiction—though many claim it is great historical fiction (though it incorporates time travel), but the real discrepancy revolves around “rape culture.” I would say one out of ten, maybe…
A couple months in to school, and this is the third book I am assigning for my middle grades Language Arts class which is also studying Modern History. The first two books were a moderate win, so I thought it would be too much to hope for another success, and yet… This book was even…
I have been really enjoying history, lately. Perhaps it’s my age showing. Perhaps it’s my way of dealing with the overwhelming amount of “history” that’s happening to us right now. It makes me feel like I have more perspective and I also feel like I relate to the people on the pages of history more…
the starving artist 