Tag Archives: Books

August 19, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with a High Page Count


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Closeup of a huge hardback book. It looks like it has 800+ pages in it. Sometimes I have to include books I haven’t actually read in my answers to Top Ten Tuesday posts because those weekly topics cover things I have little to no experience reading about.

Luckily, this is not one of those weeks! While I didn’t quite come up with a full ten answers, I have read and enjoyed all of these books. If they catch your attention and you’re interested in older tales, consider this a personal recommendation from me.

1. The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1) by Ken Follett (976 pages)

2. Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (729 pages)

3. Hawaii by James A. Michener (937 pages)

4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (502 pages)

5. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth’s Children, #1) by Jean M. Auel (516 pages)

6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1216 pages)

7. The Stand by Stephen King (1152 pages)

8. Dracula by Bram Stoker (488 pages)

9. Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams (478 pages)

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July 8, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’d Like to Re-Read


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog for submitting this theme.

A deciduous tree - possibly a maple tree - that’s growing next to a pond. This photo was taken at twilight or just after sunrise when part of the sky is dark but there is light at the horizon. The pond water is perfectly still and so you can see a perfect reflection of the tree in the water. Here are some books I hope to reread someday:

1. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

3. The Giver (The Giver, #1) by Lois Lowry

4. Becoming by Michelle Obama

5. The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1) by Ken Follett

6. Watership Down (Watership Down, #1) by Richard Adams

7. The Shining (The Shining, #1) by Stephen King

8. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

9. A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers

10. The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #6) by C.S. Lewis

It’s a fun assortment of genres and themes. How about all of you?

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May 14, 2025 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Love That Became Films or TV Shows

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of the red, soft chairs in an upscale movie theater. There is a curtain covering the screen and light glowing at the bottom of the curtain, probably to give audience members a better chance to see where they’re walking before the film begins. This will be a longer list, but most of the books on it are older. I have not had as much luck seeing more recent favourites on the small screen or the big screen, but I hope that will change now that the writer’s strike has been over for a while.

Books into films:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Matilda by Roald Dahl

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

Room by Emma Donoghue

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

 

Books into TV shows:

 

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid’s Tale, #1) by Margaret Atwood (And they’re making a tv show based on the sequel, The Testaments, too!)

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett

The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) by Lev Grossman

The Mist by Stephen King

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

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April 30, 2025 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Want Youth to Discover

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A teenage girl sitting at a desk and doing homework. She’s just turned around to see who is behind her and has a thoughtful expression on her face. Since I don’t have kids, maybe these books are already widely loved by kids and teens today.

Either way, I think they’re timeless and worth reading. I’m picking some older books and then including newer ones, too.

1) Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Why? Because Shel understood the weirdness of being a kid.

 

2)The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss

Why? Dr. Seuss knew how to explain complex and important topics to young readers in fun and accessible ways.

 

3) Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by Deborah Howe

Why? To help develop their critical thinking skills and because the idea of rabbit vampires who drain the life out of vegetables is amusing.

 

4) The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Why? One of the things that really bothered me when I was a kid was how resistant some of my male classmates were to stories about girls. I never complained about the dozens of male protagonists we read about, but somehow it was considered a big deal for them to see the world through a girl’s perspective or empathize with us.

I think books like this one could be a good way to help push against the idea that men and boys are somehow more important or interesting than women and girls.

 

5) The Small Spaces Quartet by Katherine Arden

Why? It’s an exciting middle grade mystery quartet that includes strong friendships and talks about some interesting historical events.

 

6) She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

Why? This is a good introduction to the haunted house genre, and the deeper themes in it about racism and colonialism are thought provoking as well.

 

7) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Why? It’s a thoughtful and honest discussion about race and racism.

 

8) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Why? From what I’ve heard, it’s a nuanced coming-of-age story, and every kid and teen should read lots of those!

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March 25, 2025 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Did Not Finish


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A bored-looking white woman is balancing two hardcover books on her head as she looks to the side. Here are some of the books I started reading in the last month or two but did not finish. I’m including my reasons for not finishing them in today’s post because of how subjective these things can be.

What I consider to be reasons to stop reading might be the sorts of writing styles, themes, genres, or topics that other readers love, of course! So if something on this list looks good to you, consider it a book recommendation if you wish.

1. Northern Nights by Michael Kelly

Why It was a DNF for Me: Too scary! Since the events of 2020 I have kept thinking I could handle the horror genre again only for it to be too much for me in 95% of cases.

 

2. When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future by Paul Bierman

Why It was a DNF for Me: It took way too long to even begin to say anything about what these ice cores say about our possible futures. Maybe someday I will have the patience to try again.

 

3. Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands by David Strayer

Why It was a DNF for Me: I tried to read this one right after #2 and once again found the pacing too slow to keep my interest.

 

4. Truth, Lies, and the Questions in Between by L.M. Elliott

Why It was a DNF for Me: A relative of mine raved about this book and I expected to love it.  I liked the characters but found the rampant sexism and focus on Watergate and other politics a little too much. To clarify, both of these things felt pretty realistic for the time from what I know about this era….I just need happier things to read at the moment. Someday I will revisit it.

 

5. Black Woods, Blue Sky: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey

Why It was a DNF for Me: The many forms of abuse written about in this book, including the neglect and endangerment of a young child. In no way do I expect protagonists to be squeaky clean, but I’m not really interested in reading about a character who repeatedly harms others without showing any remorse for their actions or intentions to change (at least in the portion of it I read). I don’t have any desire to be a parent, but I would have made sure that kid had all of her basic human needs and at least some of her wants met every single day.

 

6. The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder

Why It was a DNF for Me: I already knew most of what the author had to share. If you don’t know the history of women doctors in this era, though, this is a good place to start.

 

7. It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body by Kate Gies

Why It was a DNF for Me: This was an excellent read, but I was dismayed by how poorly her parents and medical providers prepared her for the many surgeries she endured as well as how many painful complications she had as various ear replacements became infected or were rejected by her body. It was heartbreaking.  Yes, she was too young to consent to the reconstructive surgeries as a small child and of course her parents needed to decide for her then, but it surprised me that no one ever wondered if all of those surgeries were really in her best interest after the first few failed and she’d endured weeks to months of misery after each one. Eventually, it became too much for me to continue reading.

 

8. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories by André M. Carrington

Why It was a DNF for Me: I struggle with anthologies in general, but I do keep trying them. This one combined so many different writing styles that I just couldn’t get into the flow of it even though I wanted to.

 

9. All the Water in the World: A Novel by Eiren Caffall

Why It was a DNF for Me: I was irritated by the choppy writing style and, from what little I read, total lack of an explanation for why everything suddenly flooded in New York. I mean, wouldn’t people leave the city and go somewhere dry and safe if your hometown became part of the ocean? I sure would.

 

10. The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Why It was a DNF for Me: Weak character development. I desperately wanted to like this tale more, but I needed stronger descriptions of who the characters were as human beings.

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December 30, 2024 · 1:00 am

What I Read in 2024

A photo of a white bunny with a grey ear who is wearing a gold-coloured pair of human glasses on its face. The glasses are comically large on such a small animal.The rabbit is lying next to an opened book. One can imagine that it is using reading glasses to read that book.

Happy New Year, readers!

In January of 2013, I began blogging about everything I’d read that previous year.  This tradition began when my dad asked me how many books I’ve read in my entire lifetime.

I couldn’t begin to give him an answer to that question, but it did make me decide to start keeping track from that moment forward. The previous posts in this series are as follows: 2023, 2022,  2021, 2020, 2019, 2018,  2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

2024 was a year of not finishing novels as often as usual and I do not include DNF titles or short stories in these roundup posts. Those things can help to explain why this list is shorter than it typically would be.

There has been some hard stuff over the past year and a half in my personal life that have affected my reading habits. Sometimes these things can make it hard to concentrate, read books about certain sad topics,  or have as much time for reading in general as one would prefer.

My hope is that 2025 is full of nothing but cheerful, healing surprises for all of us.

(Yes, I know I’ve shared this photo of a rabbit who appears to be reading a book here before. The repetition is intentional because I need more excuses for laughter in my life).

I only read one young adult book in the past year. I think I’m leaving that genre to the age group it was intended for.

The theology section is a new addition and probably not one I’ll repeat in 2025.

Other than that, this is mostly the same mixture of genres I always read.

Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs

 

A photo of a grey squirrel sitting in a patch of ferns eating something as daylight streams down around him or her.

“The Lady in the Van” by Alan Bennett

“Always Pack a Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin” by Marion McKinnon Crook

“Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women” by Pashtana Durrani

“Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life” by Barbara McLean

“Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America” by Joy-Anne Reid

(The internet gave me this squirrel photo as one of the top results when I searched for biography-themed photos that can be used by anyone. Perhaps squirrels write adorable little autobiographies now, and who I am to question that possibility? 😉 )

Fiction

 

A brown-skinned woman with gorgeous, curly, black hair is cuddling her yellow Labrador retriever as she reads a book. The dog looks interested in the book. “Clan of the Cave Bear” (Earth’s Children #1) by Jean M. Auel

“The Mammoth Hunters” (Earth’s Children #3)  by Jean M. Auel

“The Valley of Horses” (Earth’s Children #2)  by Jean M. Auel

“The Sacred Mountain” by Andy Black (this is a fan fiction book that was written to finally tie up the most important loose ends Jean M. Auel left in the Earth’s Children series).

“What Does It Feel Like?” By Sophie Kinsella

“The Field” by Robert Seethaler

 

History

“Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum” by Antonia Hylton

 

Horror

 

A photo of two little white figurines wearing jeans and two different shades of green shirts who look comically scared. Their facial features and body language are seriously over-exaggerated. “Why Didn’t You Just Leave” edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin 

“I Found A Circus Tent In the Woods Behind My House” by Ben Farthing 

“I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls” by Ben Farthing 

“The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion” by Margaret Killjoy 

 

Poetry

“The Home Child” By Liz Berry

“Let the Light Pour In” by Lemn Sissay

 

Mystery

“The Small Museum” by Jody Cooksley

 

Psychology and Sociology

“Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood” by Gretchen Sisson

 

Science Fiction and Fantasy

A photo of a tree that has lost all of its leaves. It’s growing either next to a field or to a grassy area that’s recently been mowed. Superimposed onto the tree are a pair of purple human eyes. This looks like photoshop to me.

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens

“Midwinter Magic and Mayhem” edited by Frances Evelyn

“Cryptid Bits” by Jess Simms

“Tucker Vs. The Apocalypse” by Jay Allan Storey

“Christmas Inc.” by Tim Vee 

 

 

Science, Health, and Medicine

An out-of-focus photo of a young Hispanic doctor or researcher swirling a blue liquid around in one beaker while his other hand holds another beaker filled with blue liquid still. “Insulin: A Hundred-Year History” by Stuart Bradwel

“Raising Hare” by Chloe Dalton

“Cloudspotting for Beginners” by William Grill

“James Herriot’s Treasury for Children:  Warm and Joyful Tales by the Author of All Creatures Great and Small” by James Herriot

“Dreams” by Melanie Gillespie Rosen

 

Theology

“The Lambing Season: Stories of Life on an Irish Family Farm” by John Connell

“Bible Truths You Won’t Hear in Church” by Drew Costen

 

Young Adult

“Gay the Pray Away” by Natalie Naudus

 

 

Tomorrow’s Top Ten Tuesday topic asks us to share our favourite reads of 2024, so come back then to see which books I loved the most!

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September 18, 2024 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Should Have Ended a Different Way

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

 

Photo of a person wearing a hoodie and hunching over a little as they read a book. They are in a room that is only partially illuminated with light, so you can see a weak yellow-orange light behind them but it is not strong enough to show us this person’s age, race, sex, or any other identifying characteristics. So all you see is their silhouette as they read.

Just like last week, I’m digging deep and picking books from a wide variety of genres that I have rarely if ever discussed here before. (So there will be no ranting about the Earth’s Children series today. Ha!)

These were all books I otherwise enjoyed, by the way. I simply wish their endings had been different for reasons I will share below. Beware of spoilers in this post, although I did try to minimize them as much as possible.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

What Should Have Happened: Either most species should have gone extinct or the characters should have figured out what killed off everyone with a Y chromosome and fixed it.

 

Tyrell by Coe Booth

What Should Have Happened: Tyrell was smart person who was working so hard to get out of poverty. I liked him and hated how ambiguously things ended. In my imagination, everything worked out well for him and he’s living a quiet, happy life. I choose to believe he now has a good job,  a few adorable kids with his wife, and was recently convinced to adopt a dog from the local shelter that he pretends to find annoying but also sneaks treats to when no one is looking.

 

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

What Should Have Happened: Ideally, new evidence would have come forward to exonerate Mary, but I would have accepted any other possible ending as well other than the one we received.  I was annoyed when I read the last few pages of this book even though the rest of it was great.

 

The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery

What Should Have Happened: A time machine and proper medical treatment so that a certain beloved character can live a long, healthy, and happy life. (Yes, I know that’s unrealistic for this era, but it still broke my heart to realize what happened to them).

 

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan Henry

What Should Have Happened: Once again, we need a time machine so that one of the characters in this book could received the medical care they needed to live to a ripe old age in good health even though I know people with their diagnosis did not live very long back then. It feels deeply unfair that this was their fate, though, and those deaths caused so much pain.

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September 11, 2024 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books With Fantastic Endings

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Five hardcover books with bright red covers have been stood up on a white background. They are arranged so their pages are fanned out and their spines are facing each other in a circular pattern. My first impulse for this week’s prompt was to discuss books with fantastic endings that I’ve talked about here before, but I’m going to try to stretch myself and choose titles I have rarely or maybe even never discussed on my blog instead.

Now let’s see if I can briefly describe why I loved these endings without giving away too many spoilers about them.

I will be jumping around among various genres a lot in this post as that’s what my reading habits have always been like.

 

My Real Children by Jo Walton

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: It was open-ended. Given how serious Patricia’s memory loss was, a definitive answer would have felt a little odd to me.

 

Westlake Soul by Rio Youers

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: Westlake performed marvellously in it!

 

Angelica: A Novel by Arthur Phillips

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: As a heads up for those of you who need it, one of the storylines in this book revolved around whether a child was being abused or if her strange behavior could be explained by paranormal means instead. I thought this book did an excellent job of resolving that question while still remaining true to the time period when it was written and when child abuse was rarely if ever discussed in polite company.

 

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: There was a lot of character growth by the final stanza. (This was a story told in the form of poems).

 

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: This entire book took place over a few days in  a maternity ward in an Irish hospital during an outbreak of the 1918 flu. While there were still things about it that felt rushed to me, the ending went a long way in explaining why everything moved so quickly.

 

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: It was happy. Given what happened earlier in the storyline and how often those things turned out tragically back then, that is not at all what I was expecting. It was pleasantly surprising to say goodbye to these characters with the assurance that they were going to be okay.

 

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

Why the Ending Was Fantastic: I loved how much room it left for a sequel while still tying up nearly all of the important conflicts in the storyline. The fact that romance was not part of this storyline was also refreshing to me. We need more books that focus on non-romantic relationships in my opinion.

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August 21, 2024 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Book I Wish Were More Popular

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A gorgeous black woman dressed in a mermaid costume and sitting on the sand at the beach as the waves roll in. Her bra is metallic purple, her fin is light green, and her hair has been braided with red extensions. She’s lovely and looks very happy to be there.

It was so tempting for me to list five or six stories today, but I did follow the rules by narrowing down my choices to books that have been published in the last five years that I think should have been far more popular than they were.

My answer for this week’s theme?

The Deep by Rivers Solomon. That link will take you to the Goodreads page for it, and this one will show you my review of it from 2020.

What is it about? Without giving away spoilers, it’s about black mermaids who bear little to no resemblance to Disney’s bubblegum representation of mermaids. Their meaning is much deeper and thought provoking than that.

What I love about this novella are all of the layers readers get to unwrap as they discover more information about Yetu and her people. My impression of her changed several times as I read this book, and I keep hoping someone will finally turn it into a film or TV show.

Other themes in the storyline include intergenerational trauma, the lingering effects of racism, figuring out how to heal from the past, accepting love (both romantic and platonic), and, interestingly enough,  the many differences between aquatic and land-based organisms.

Obviously, humans in their current form cannot live in the ocean. It takes a lot of alterations to make such a thing possible and some of them created opportunities for amusing misunderstandings, so keep an eye out for those moments as they appear.

The world-building leaves a lot of space for readers to come up with our own ideas of how certain things worked or what happened in the time periods Yetu does not have knowledge of as well. This is yet another reason why we need more readers for this book and for an on-screen adaptation to happen.

I need more folks around who would like to discuss the possibilities of this world and what might happen next to the characters!

 

 

 

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June 5, 2024 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Are Tearjerkers

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of a biracial woman dabbing away tears from her cheek as she cries. She is wearing a white, longsleeved blouse and has a lovely Afro. I enjoyed tearjerkers a lot more when I was a kid than I do now as an adult. Or maybe my tastes in this genre have simply evolved over time?

If a book advertises itself as a tearjerker, I am generally less interested in reading it than I would have been at 8 or 10. (Perhaps this is why so many of the stories on my list are written for roughly that age group give or take a few years?)

But if a well-written story happens to have a few scenes that make me cry, I don’t mind it one bit.

Here are some tearjerkers I’ve enjoyed at various ages. As I haven’t reread most of them recently, I can’t say whether my opinion of them remains the same! Hopefully, they’re just as good as I recall, though.

1. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

2. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

3. Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan

4. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

5. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

6. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Logans, #4) by Mildred D. Taylor

7. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco

8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

10. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

11. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Whistle Stop #1) by Fannie Flagg

12. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

This last book is my one exception to the rule. I reread it last year and it was even better than it was the first time around. If you can handle something that talks about infertility, child loss, and grief in a 1920s-era but still fairytale-like format, I highly recommend it.

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