From One Book Lover

Intrepid Reader Karen had a great summer reading. How great? Well, it looks like she consumed the entire Outlander series and immersed herself in cozy mysteries.  Did you know "cozy mysteries" is a thing? I have been reading them for ages and just thought that was my author's pet name for her series.  "Cozy mysteries" apparently involve cats saving humans from their own foolishness. (Maybe it's just me....) Well, I know my cats are exhausted each night after they keep me out of danger every day, even when I am at work — thanks to the Cat Networks. At any rate, here is what Karen read this summer: Troublemaker  Outlander  Dragonfly in Amber  Voyager  Drums of Autumn  The Fiery Cross A Breath of Snow and Ashes  An Echo in the Bone Written in my Own Heart’s Blood  Murder in the Art Gallery  A Sip of Murder:A Japanese Tea Garden Mystery  Cream Puff Murder Gone with the Ghost  You’ve Got Tail The Secre...

Home no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles tr...

Summer is officially over in the Northern Hemisphere, and I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it means more time indoors curled up with books. On the other hand, winter is coming. But let's not focus on that just yet. Let's talk books. I did not gobble them up like a glutton, as I have in years past. Instead, I read in fits and starts, trying out (and rejecting) title after title until I found one that fit. More often than not, I found YA novels helped smooth out the snags, and I was able to read steadily for a while before I floundered around for another book. I am a firm believer in jettisoning books that don't work for the reader. Nothing against the book: my friend Carole has read books I have been unable to get into — but I'll try again. (And thank heavens for that, or I would have missed The Dinner and Less .) So, without further ado, here is what I read during the 2018 summer reading program from May 25 to September 23: The Public L...

I'm taking some time to catch up on my reading. If you can't decide what to read next, I have a few suggestions: A Man Named Ove The Sun is Also a Star An American Marriage What are some books you recommend? List them in the suggestions below! See you in the autumn, and keep reading!

Not to brag, but my reading is poking along at a speed that would get it run off the road in any country. Just kidding.  About the bragging part, that is. Seriously, I am putting along at an embarrassingly slow pace. So far, in the nine weeks of summer reading, I've read a whopping 11 books. Eleven. Please note that last year, I read more than two dozen books. Granted, quite a few were graphic novels, but we established that such a fete is not "cheating" because the visual details in a graphic novel are intense and must be studied carefully. I am mixing it up this summer. I just finished the book for  Dear Evan Hansen , which required listening to the soundtrack as well as reading the story. It's more than dialogue. It's also stage direction. That &$%# ain't easy. I am cutting myself some slack because the book I read immediately before that was The Devil's Arithmetic . I have to thank The New Yorker article on Holocaust books for c...

I hope your summer reading is coming along swimmingly.  If you are in the areas on the globe experiencing record rains and/or record heat, hopefully you can spend extra time indoors and get more reading done. Intrepid Reader Karen has planned her summer reading carefully, and I see at least one or two books from her list that dovetail with titles I find interesting. Who among us has not salivated over adventure tales or time-travel stories? I rest my case. So, without further ado, here is Karen's reading list (also fondly referred to as TBR, or to be read, stack): Pope Francis’ Little Book of Compassion Troublemaker  Never Broken: Songs are Only Half the Story  Outlander series books 1-8 The Case of the Green-Dressed Ghost  Beyond the Fortune Teller’s Tent Legend of the Jade Dragon  The Pocket Watch Holy Bible  Morna’s Legacy  The Ruby Red Trilogy  Dragon Bones Lost City of Z The Source  The Secret Scroll Man ...