3 Stars. So, I have a problem with these “Girl” or “Woman” books that have been everywhere the past several years. Do we have a genre name for them yet? You know the ones. Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and on and on and on. I just can’t get into them. I loathe the characters. That’s exactly the point, but when I don’t like […]
Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share our favorite audiobook narrators this week. I’m almost always listening to an audiobook while I’m cleaning, driving, or even exercising and I’m trying (with some success) to win my husband over. It was hard to limit my list to only ten. I tried to write a bit about why I like […]
Welcome to my weekly update for April 23, 2023! We went to The Flower Fields in Carlsbad, CA this week. I visited while my husband attended a work conference in 2018. It was so spectacular, I made him go back to experience it with me this year. It was even better than I remembered! These Continue Reading…
4 Stars. Edna Wilder shared this collection of episodes from her mother’s life as a young girl growing up in a traditional Iñupiat village on the Norton Sound. It reads very much like an oral storyteller sharing her family history, which feels like the perfect format for this biography. She also included some traditional tribal […]
3.5 Stars. This book shares much more complex data in formats that are unfamiliar to me and probably many other casual readers. There was a lot more text to explain both the data presented and the format. I devoted as much time as I could to it, but an impending return date (today, in fact) limited me. That’s why I’m rounding […]
Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share a non-book freebie this week. “Choose your own topic that’s not related to books!…Take this time to let your readers get to know you a little!” So I decided to list ten of my favorite national parks. Unless otherwise noted, all images © Jennifer G. Continue Reading…
Welcome to my weekly update for April 16, 2023! We went up to Catalina Island and spent one night last weekend. It has a couple of tiny little towns but we only visited the bigger one, Avalon, named after King Arthur’s Avalon in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, Idylls of the King. It’s a beautiful island, Continue Reading…
4 Stars. Rex Ogle’s mother and stepfather physically and emotionally abused him when he was a child. In his second memoir, Punching Bag, he describes unimaginable incidents that are a terrible reality for far too many children. An alcoholic stepfather who continues the cycle of abuse that he experienced as a child himself […]
4 Stars. I find this review hard to write for some reason but I just found my notes so I’m going to basically just list my bullet point thoughts. The description of the beating death of Vincent Chin gave me nightmares. It felt too graphic (And as I write this I’m hip deep in my annual monthlong horror fest, so I’m not exactly a […]
Welcome to my weekly update for April 9, 2023! Happy Easter, Happy Passover, or Ramadan Mubarak to those who celebrate! I’ve been an affiliate of Malaprop’s Bookstore in my hometown of Asheville, NC for years now. I link to their website for books I haven’t reviewed yet. I’m keeping that relationship because I love my Continue Reading…
4 Stars. These novellas read like engrossing episodes of your favorite science fiction TV show and I inhale them like popcorn. Murderbot is an unexpected, understated delight and its dry sense of humor keeps me smiling. Its observations of humanity are on point and hilarious. It’s teamed up with ART (short for Asshole Research […]