Books

My 13-year-old daughter started reading Wings of Starlight immediately and waited anxiously for me to finish it. A romantic YA book prequel to Secret of the Wings? We both loved it.

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Books that I might want to read this fall. This is not a reading plan or a goal, but just some of the books I’m considering for this season’s reading.

Books on My Physical Shelf

• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
• The First Ladies by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
• Weyward by Emilia Hart
• Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid
• This Spells Love by Kate Robb
• The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde
• The Love Elixer of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen... [Read More]

Reading this book was like hanging out with friends and exploring New York with them for the summer.

• Seasonal Vibe: Summer
  • Starts with a high school graduation and takes place during the summer after graduation.
• Travel Location: New York City

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Just some books that I think I might want to read this summer. This is not an exhaustive list, or even a “To Be Read” list, but just a selection of books that I think I might read during the next season for a variety of reasons.

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My daughter’s sixth grade class was reading Holes by Louis Sachar. I decided to read it too since I had never read the book, but liked the movie. 

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The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is one of those backlist classic books I’ve meant to read for years. I’ve loved the Anne of Green Gables book series since I was a young girl, but I haven’t read many of her other books. I read this mostly from an actual paperback book.

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Did you know that you can put photos in your GoodReads reviews? If you’re a “bookstagrammer” and also use GoodReads, adding one(or more!) of your photos to a review can let even more book lovers enjoy them.

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This year, I went to yallwest for the first time. That’s a Young Adult book festival in Santa Monica. I went by myself and had a great time meeting people and attending panels.

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Happy New Year! I truly love Rainbow Rowell’s New Year’s Eve themed short story, Midnights, and I already have it in two other volumes of her short stories. This year, I was delighted to enjoy the story in this adorably small paperback, which also has unique illustrations that are not in the other volumes. 

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In November, I started reading the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin for the first time and read Iron Flame, the sequel to Fourth Wing from earlier this year, as soon as it came out. I also continued my Jane Austen read-through by reading Mansfield Park.

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The new Percy Jackson book came out this week, and I read it within two days, despite being quite busy and trying not to rush it. In the end, it was pretty short and very wonderful.

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I was intrigued when I saw Every Duke Has His Day by Suzanne Enoch described as Bringing Up Baby, in the style of Jane Austen. I love Bringing Up Baby, which is a 1938 movie starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and a Leopard. I grew up watching it, incorporated the song from the movie(I Can’t Give You Anything But Love) into my wedding ceremony, and had a framed Bringing Up Baby poster in my living room. I also like Jane Austen books.

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Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot was a funny and enjoyable fantasy romantic comedy with excellent fall vibes in a cozy small town, perfect for the Halloween season. 

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The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a great historical fantasy adventure. Amina Al-Sirafi is a middle-aged piratey sea captain who is persuaded out of retirement and away from her daughter. What she thinks will be a fact finding and rescue mission to recover the daughter of a former crewman turns into a full scale supernatural adventure. 

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Fourth Wing was a wild ride.  I enjoyed the dragon-centered fantasy adventure and the romance. The narrative style is a bit more crass and profane* than I prefer, but I was easily pulled in by the world, story, and characters. And, of course, the dragons! I think I hit the point of “can’t put it down” at about the 60% mark. I flew through it and preordered the sequel.

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I finished The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry last night, and loved it. 

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Currently bouncing back and forth between two different books, one hardcover and one digital book. I like them both, but I keep getting interrupted when I sit down and open The Secret Book of Flora Lea. For that reason, I’m further along in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. 

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It’s time to select my Book of the Month Club pick for May. I’m excited because this will be my 12th box, and I want the tote bag! I’m also excited about having a full year of books stamped with their months. Next month is also my birthday month. I’m really interested in The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry. I wish that was a main pick!

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• Scan the genres
• Look at the covers and titles
• Read the descriptions and recommendations blurbs
• Look up books of interest on Goodreads and Storygraph
• Check the number of pages (I don’t want my hard cover to be too heavy)
• Check the Book of the Month Club Reddit group to see what other people are picking
• Read the sample excerpt in the Book of the Month app
• Don’t “vibe” with any of the sample excerpts so far? Start over.

I finally finished this graphic novel. I’d had to stop reading with less than 50 pages until the end and finally got the chance to sit down and finish it. This is the second graphic novel memoir that I’ve read. The other was George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy. 

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Rainy days are perfect for reading with a cup of coffee! I’m currently reading  A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Cozy Sci-Fi? Serving tea on some moon? The promised robot hasn’t shown up yet, but it’s lovely so far.

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I’ve finished Chain of Thorns, and The Last Hours series of Shadowhunter books has concluded for me.

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I got this new mug, and I love it so much!

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Last night, I read a short story by Lucy Maud Montgomery(author of Anne of Green Gables) from 1903 called The Strike at Putney. It’s about a group of church ladies who are told by their church elders and minister that a missionary woman cannot speak in the church, because a woman cannot preach from the pulpit.

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October is here, and I’ve got my fall pumpkin mug and The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling(sequel to last year’s perfectly halloweenish The Ex Hex). After a few chapters of The Kiss Curse, I was ready to get out my Halloween stuff.

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Earlier this week, I celebrated my anniversary(with my husband) at a beautiful beach resort. One of the wonderfully relaxing things I got to do was read on the patio of our ocean view room. Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen was a perfect book for spending the last days of summer next to the ocean. I’m only about halfway through, but it has a wonderful late summer/early fall vibe. And yes, I made that coffee with my travel aeropress and hand grinder that I brought with me.

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I got my new bookcase assembled and started lining up my Book of the Month books in month order.

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I loved all the different locations. I had also recently been to Palm Springs in July(for my daughter’s dance competition) and really enjoyed all the jokes about how hot and ridiculous it is. A fun summery “rom-com”.

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It was nostalgic, with depth. I appreciate the themes of video games and theatre, and the friendship love story.

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Wonderful! Different than what I expected from the description. This book felt modern and relevant to the times, but was also fantastic with sci-fi and fantasy elements. Fun and weird, but dealt with serious issues as well.

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I’ve read a quarter of my July Book of the Month. I married a game developer, so I was excited to try a book about game developers, and I love the different time periods and locations so far.

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Book and coffee pairing! Book Lovers was an ideal summer read.

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I’m delighted by the embossing on my Book of the Month. It’s the last day of June! Where did the month go? 📖📖📖

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The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle was a lovely book. It was told from the point of view of three different women in England during World War II. I loved getting to know each character and easing into the village. This book was filled with women helping each other, and included some sweet romance. I also enjoyed the detail about clothes rationing, “make do and mend”, and wartime “utility” design for clothes.

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I’m really enjoying The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle, my Book of the Month book for June! It’s been a while since I’ve read a first-time book in paper format that wasn’t for my kids, and it’s been really fun.

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My birthday was earlier this month, and as part of my celebration I finally ordered a Book of the Month box. I selected The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle as my book of the month. I added on The Sound of Stars as well, a book which I’ve already read and enjoyed in ebook format.

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I was planning to space out my re-read of Chain of Gold and Chain of Iron when I was expecting a November release of the final book in The Last Hours trilogy. Since the release date for Chain of Thorns has been moved to January 2023, I decided to just read the first two books now and enjoy them!

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This was a wonderfully presented graphic novel that told George Takei’s personal story of his experiences at Japanese internment camps during WWII. It was also a memoir of George Takei’s life after the war. The story from young George’s perspective was really affective. As a parent with young children, it was especially impactful to read about how the children viewed the experiences with innocence, many times thinking things were fun adventures. And how much the parents worked to keep it that way.

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The No-Show was different and wonderful. The book is told from the perspectives of three different women; Siobhan, Miranda, and Jane. At the beginning of the The No-Show, I was most interested in the stories and backgrounds of the three women. Even when I wasn’t sure what to think about each woman’s interactions with “No-Show” Joseph Carter, I was invested in finding out more about the female characters.

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Coffee pictured with my gorgeous 10th Anniversary edition of Clockwork Angel. Unfortunately, I’ve completed my chronological-ish reread of shadow hunter books and I’m trying not to start re-reading The Last Hours yet, since the final book in that series is not coming out until November January.

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Rainy day reading and coffee! It doesn’t rain much here, so when it does rain I’m excited. Until I have to go somewhere. I’m now reading Queen of Air and Darkness as part of my chronological-ish Shadowhunter reread. 🌧🌧🌧

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I’m in the mood for classics. These editions of the Anne books are some of my favorite volumes. I feel like the designs genuinely reflect the books!

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I loved If The Fates Allow by Rainbow Rowell. This wonderful little story really spoke to me. It was such a relatable tale of our times. It took place during Christmas 2020. If the Fates Allow captured so accurately the struggle of having holidays and managing family during the pandemic. Another unexpected point of this story that I really connected to was the Nebraska grandfather. I was born and raised in California, but my grandfather was from Nebraska. He died about ten years ago, and while he was pretty different from Reagan’s grandfather, there were some things that reminded me... [Read More]

While reading the History Smashers book about The Mayflower, I remembered this Baby-Sitters Club book that I read as a kid. In Claudia and the First Thanksgiving, they put on a Thanksgiving play at the elementary school. They do lots of research to make it more historically accurate, but then parents get mad and make them change it to a “traditional” Thanksgiving story. They stealthily write “Censored” on all the posters. 

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I’m a confirmed descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims William Bradford and William Brewster. I’ve been to Plymouth and seen the museums and the Mayflower 2. There wasn’t really that much in this book that I didn’t already know about the Mayflower Pilgrims, but it still kind of messed with my head. 

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This was before coffee, dear readers. Although our research did reveal that in the ninth century, an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi noticed how excited his goats became after eating the beans from a coffee plant. So, really, it was before coffee was available in France, which we think is inhumane.

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I finished reading My Contrary Mary today, and it did not disappoint. More of a review of the book will be coming soon. Life and kids got in the way of my finishing it sooner, but I was excited to finish reading My Contrary Mary on my new Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition.

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The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling was a fun, fast book that felt like an adult Sabrina the Teenage Witch plus Halloweentown(yes, the Disney Channel movie). I enjoyed this modern witch romantic comedy with a tiny bit of light mystery. I liked that it had chapters in the perspective of both main characters, so I really felt that I got to know them.

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Earlier this year (March 2021), I read the most recent Shadowhunter book, Chain of Iron from The Last Hours series by Cassandra Clare. I loved it! I thought it might be my favorite Shadowhunter series so far. But there were some details from other books that I just wasn’t remembering. I’ve been reading Shadowhunter books since 2010, and in that time a lot has happened, including having three children. I’ve pretty much just been reading each book as it comes out. Some of them were read when I had tiny babies and my brain was fuzzy.

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