4 Stars. I miss Obama in the White House, I really do. Reading his thoughts and decision-making processes, his deliberations, his efforts to reflect many voices from many backgrounds in his policies–I just miss that stability and thoughtfulness. That said, I’ll start with my one complaint. At 703 pages (751 with the index), the […]
5 Stars. Oh my goodness! This is so stinking cute and smart! I was never a big mystery reader as a kid. I could never guess “whodunnit” and that irritated me. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were practically nonstarters for me. I wish Goldie Vance had been around back in the day because she would have turned me into a mystery reader for sure! […]
Holy cow. I’ve been looking for a book with a great twist for years (since reading Shutter Island back in 2010) and been consistently disappointed. This book didn’t just twist, it corkscrewed! Repeatedly! I literally gasped at the end of each part. I am not a fan of the “Girl” or “Woman” psychological thriller craze. I gave both […]
Full disclosure: I requested Mexican Gothic from the library back in September or October, which is practically the only time of year that I seek out horror and/or Gothic reads. When my turn finally came up in November, I wasn’t necessarily in the mood for this kind of book but I decided to read it anyway and see what all the […]
4 Stars. I grabbed this on a whim as I was prowling through my library’s shelves last week. Who can resist a bright and cheerful cover that also portrays monsters? Not me. This was really cute and contained important messages about friendship; overcoming self-doubt; and living for your own ideals of happiness, not those dictated […]
4 Stars. In this information age, we find ourselves bombarded with facts or “facts,” as the case may be. A fringe group believing a kooky conspiracy theory may seem fairly harmless but when large swathes of the population believe anything they read that reinforces their own beliefs, we have a huge problem. Consider these sobering statistics […]
3 Stars. I’m going against popular opinion a bit in my review of this book. Don’t get me wrong; every review I’ve seen is glowing and I don’t exactly disagree. But I don’t fully agree either. First off, I do love this world. It’s interesting and full of magic and enclaves of magicians (Wizards? I’ve already forgotten what they […]
4 stars. I know this book probably won’t have much appeal to a broad audience but it was so engaging, I felt that I needed to review it. When my husband and I first arrived in Oregon in April of 2020 for his work assignment at a hospital outside Portland, my aunt put me in touch with one of her friends who owns a summer home on […]
3 Stars. I didn’t know much about this event other than the bare minimum prior to reading this book: a plane crashed in South America in the ’70s; the passengers survived by cannibalism; and the movie Alive, which I haven’t seen, is based on it. So I expected to get more of a straightforward recounting of the facts. What I got […]
2 Stars. I just couldn’t click with this book. Kittredge does write beautifully and he writes of a way of life that seems to be disappearing. He writes fondly of the hands who worked the ranch, some of them for years and years for little more than room and board. He describes the difficult land in the salt flats of eastern […]
4 Stars. I’m not quite sure what I expected when I downloaded this book from the library but it’s not exactly what I got. Not that I’m complaining; this book is absorbing. My review keeps turning into a book report because I want to discuss so many of the ideas I just read! I knew this was nonfiction about the worlds of […]