A book about books

If you, like me, enjoy reading books featuring a bookstore, a library, an author, or, in this case, a bookbinder, you might enjoy the one I just finished—The Echo of Old Books, by Barbara Davis. I last encountered… Read More

Completist?

My reading habits have changed over the years, partly because I’m not as willing as I was when younger to stick out a book I am not enjoying, and partly because (I like to think) I’ve become a… Read More

Quirky?

On the strength of enthusiastic comments on What Should I Read Next?, I picked up Miss Benson’s Beetle, by Rachel Joyce. I haven’t read anything by her before, but saw some raves for two of her previous books,… Read More

Misspers

Quite by chance, I ended up reading two books in a row about missing persons. The first was Force of Nature, by Jane Harper, one of her Aaron Falk series, and the second was Liane Moriarty’s latest, Apples… Read More

Standards, genres

I find I don’t often enjoy the books that mainstream book clubs are out there touting like mad; or sometimes I do enjoy them, but it’s more like an unhealthy sugar rush than a savored meal, something you… Read More

Endings

Does the ending of a book alter your perception of the entire story? This is what I’m pondering, a few minutes after turning the last page of The Moonlight Child, by Karen McQuestion. The book had a compelling… Read More

How’s the weather?

I may have mentioned (once or twice or a dozen times) that I am not much of a romance reader. I’m not fond of the prevailing tropes of enemies-to-friends or city-folk-migrate-to-a-small-town-and-fall-in-love; I find the ways many romance authors… Read More

Re-wilding

Scottish-American conservationist John Muir, the “Father of the National Parks,” once wrote that “…when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else.” John Muir This quote was specifically called into use… Read More

Short stories

I get offered daily e-book bargains—freebies, or super-cheap prices—by BookBub, and sometimes I take them. I have learned, however, to first look up each one on Goodreads to see its average star rating and read some reviews; sometimes… Read More

Metaphor

If I had to define the central theme of the book Black Cake, by Charmaine Wilkerson, it would probably be summed up by this quote: “But the fact was, when you lived a life, under any name, that… Read More