Welcome to Litsy!

I loved Ausubel's No One is Here Except All of Us, so I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, it didn't quite do it for me. The portrayal of lab life is outdated at best, and the character interactions mostly seem...weird to me. The baby mammoth is cute, though, so there's that.

Visited a new local bookshop and chatted with the guy who runs a local writers group there. And of course got a few new books! I can never resist.

A widowed scientist and her two daughters find the frozen body of a wholly mammoth.

Maternal ✨ Isolated ✨ Genetic

Has the plot of a Wes Anderson movie

A really nice meditation on loss, family, and the bittersweet nature of enduring beyond trauma. I couldn‘t help but rooting for Jane, Eve and Vera, who are all just women trying to be bigger than their gender, age, and circumstance.

Lovely surprise bookmail! Been meaning to read this one for so long. One of my kids keeps carrying it around the house because he can‘t stop admiring the baby mammoth‘s cuteness. ❤️ Thanks, @RiverheadBooks !

Found a beautiful reading spot at Naumkeag in the Berkshires today.

Squarely in my wheelhouse! Ron Charles wrote that this is a mix of Anne Tyler (💛) and Michael Crichton. Not big on the latter, but he means the Jurassic Park element which this had a bit of but v believable. I love learning more about prehistory and the discovery process. Such an interesting premise and a nice read, though I did find the audiobook to be a bit lacking. A great mix of nerdy science with mother-daughter relationships. The cover💛🦣

This has such an odd premise but the book isn‘t about the wooly mammoth. It‘s about a woman overlooked at work and struggling as a single mom, her relationship with her daughters, and their relationship with each other.

I had a hard time with the first chapter feeling very, very slow but that seemed to be limited to the first chapter only.

When teens Eve and Vera tag along with their mom on a paleontological research trip, they end up finding a mummified baby mammoth. Genetic hijinks ensue from there is a story that is whimsical and at times profoundly sad. I had tried and not liked this author before, but I really liked this. My only quibble is the choice of the audio reader to voice the daughters to make them sound far younger than teens and I felt that didn‘t work.

I have so so many books to read!! If only I could read for my day job 😌