Category Archives: Blog Hops

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This week’s list might seem a little out of character for my reading habits. I jump around a lot in various genres, but the vast majority of the books I read were written in the last thirty to forty years.

(Do book published in 1980-1990 count as contemporary or historical? I have no idea!)

With that being said, there have been some classic novels like Jane Eyre that I loved reading.

So I’m always theoretically open to reading more classics….it’s just rare for me to actually be in the mood to adapt to the sometimes wordy writing styles from past decades and centuries.

Now I don’t even remember why I was interested in these specific titles, but they’re still on my TBR list.

1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins

2. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

3. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

4. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

5. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

6. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

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Summer is my favourite time of the year when it comes to food. Not only are many of my favourite fruits and vegetables in season, the warm weather leads to delicious grilled dinners and sometimes a scoop of dairy-free ice cream for dessert.

In short, you’re going to be tempted by all sorts of food today from a wide variety of cuisines, so strap in and prepare to start craving the best of what summer has to offer.

1. Asian Grilling: 85 Satay, Kebabs, Skewers and Other Asian-Inspired Recipes for Your Barbecue by Su-Mei Yu

2. Burgers Every Way: 100 Recipes Using Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Lamb, Fish, and Vegetables by Emily Haft Bloom

3. The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi

4. Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark

5. Der Erdbeerpflücker (Jette Weingärtner #1) by Monika Feth

6. Saladish: A New Way to Eat Your Vegetables by Ilene Rosen

7. Mason Jar Salads and More: 50 Layered Lunches to Grab and Go by Julia Mirabella

8. Smoothies: 50 Recipes for High-Energy Refreshment by Mary Corpening Barber

9. Shug by Jenny Han

10. Sundae My Prince Will Come (Wish, #6) by Suzanne Nelson

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I could have easily made this list twice as long. What a great topic!  Please note that the final opening line references the death of a child.

1.“I am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon- pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her, perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance- and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone.”

― Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard

2. “Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”

― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

3. “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.”

― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

4. “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”

― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

5. “It was during Latin that the Austro-Hungarians arrived with their dogs and zombies to kill everyone at the Eden College for Young Ladies.”

― David Wake, The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead

6. “Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.”

― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

7. “Maybe punching her enemy right in the nose wasn’t the smartest way to get out of class, but it was definitely a much more entertaining way.”

― Ophelia T. Starks, Nightfall Academy

8. “During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see.”

― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

9. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

10. “The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn’t right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up.”

― Jenny Erpenbeck, Aller Tage Abend

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I’ve been abandoning books more regularly these past few months. Have any of you noticed the same thing about your reading habits

Here are ten books that I recently started reading but couldn’t finish for reasons I’ll explain below.

1. Nests, Eggs, Birds: An Illustrated Aviary by  Kelsey Oseid

Why I Stopped Reading: I originally thought it was written for adults, but it read like something intended for kids.

2. Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

Why I Stopped Reading: I couldn’t get into the writing style at all.

3. The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada
by Mark Osborne Humphries

Why I Stopped Reading: It felt like reading a dry textbook…and I’m one of those delightfully nerdy people who loves history and reads textbooks for fun.

4. Lake Erie Stories by Chad Fraser

Why I Stopped Reading: See also #3.

5. Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us by George Zaidan

Why I Stopped Reading: The author over-explained everything. If the page count has been cut back by 30-50%, I’d be raving about this book instead.

6. The Uninvited by Cat Winters

Why I Stopped Reading: See also #5. Presumably, there are ghosts somewhere in this tale, but I gave up on it before they so much as uttered a peep.

7. Epidemiology: A Very Short Introduction by Rodolfo Saracci

Why I Stopped Reading: This was a good read, but now is not the right time for me to be immersing myself in this particular topic. And I happened to DNF it right after The Last Plague, too.

8. The City We Became (Great Cities #1) by  N.K. Jemisin

Why I Stopped Reading: I loved the short story that spawned this novel, but I couldn’t get into the writing style of the book. This is something I may try reading again in the future.

9. Dracul by J.D. Barker

Why I Stopped Reading: It’s been far too long since I read Dracula. I had no idea what was happening or what any of the references were. My new plan is to reread Dracula and then give this another try.

10. Slammerkin by  Emma Donoghue

Why I Stopped Reading: I strongly disliked the main character. Reading about sexual abuse also isn’t something I’m in the right headspace for right now.