Welcome to Litsy!

It's always a pleasure to return to Kate Burkholder's world, and while the 16th installment had some plot twists that stretched believability a bit, it was still enjoyable. Love the characters in this series. Kate is gritty and tough without being obnoxious (actually, she kind of reminds me of Eve Dallas of the In Death series) and Castillo always writes the Amish as real people. It's also always fun to read books set in Ohio and actually know ⬇

Cannot BELIEVE I am working on a reading journal for ***2025*** That's not a real date!!!! @PuddleJumper is responsible for most of my challenges this year, although @lauredhel is also doing some work 😂 This year: #ISpyBingo #100YearsofBooks (and finishing @Librarybelle 's #192025 ), #Pantone2025 #Roll100 #GottaCatchEmAll and #BookChain

Not pictured - #ReadtheUSA #WickedWords @AsYouWish #FourFoursin25 @lauredhel #FictionalTraveler @julieclair ⬇

I picked up this book from 1965 because it's illustrated by Sam Savitt, and it's staying on my shelf for that reason despite it being a pretty so-so story. It's only 89 pages long, and some brief research makes me think it's a sequel to an earlier book about a Shetland Pony named Christy. There just isn't much story here, but I'm sure 10-year-old me would have been enthralled by a girl being gifted her own pony 😂

An old Scholastic Book Club book from 1935 that isn't in the database. Another soft pick, this was perfectly fine but somewhat boring fare. A brother and sister at the seaside on vacation meet up with a local boy with a semi-tragic backstory involving a lost inheritance. In the end, they find the long-lost will and happy endings are handed out all around. There's birdwatching, too, so I probably would have loved this when I was younger haha

The first book read for my #BirthdayBashReadathon was a bit of a random choice - a sequel to The Wind in the Willows, written by not-the-original-Willows-author. I'm always somewhat leery of people piggy-backing off of someone else's work, but I think Horwood makes it work. It's obvious that he has a great deal of love and respect for Grahame's original characters, but says he was always a bit saddened by the ending of Willows, which reassures ⬇

I picked up this charming book because somewhere along the line I read that P.G. Wodehouse loved it. This is a gentle story about a newly married couple and their first year of marriage. If, like myself, you are worried that things won't go well for them - fear not! They're absolutely adorable together and continue to be so all the way through. While Mackail pokes a little fun at their naivety, on the whole, all the adjectives I came up for this⬇

This isn't my favorite of Kjelgaard's book, but it's still an enjoyable read. 12-year-old Bud is “farmed out“ from the orphanage to an older couple on a farm. But it turns out that they're just lonely now that all their kids have moved on and while they do need help around the farm, they're mostly just wanting to help a kid who needs it. Bud is wary at first, but gradually comes to love the couple and their home. His first week there, he comes ⬇

I've read and enjoyed many of Nesbit's children's books, but didn't realize that she had also written a handful of “adult“ novels (in the sense that the main characters aren't children). Like her books for younger readers, this one was full of fun and humor, with likable characters and some silly scrapes. My biggest issue was that the ending felt really abrupt. I definitely needed to know more about the futures of all these characters, and ⬇

This was a cute but not amazing easy chapter book about a very spoiled princess who adopts a pig for her birthday - except the pig comes with a pig boy who isn't very impressed by the princess's princessiness haha The drawings were the best part. Soft pick. (i.e. 3.5* It was okay 😂)

#Roll100 @PuddleJumper
#100YearsofBooks
#BookSpinBingo

While I am always delighted to visited Amelia and Emerson, this isn't my favorite of the series. Their son Ramses is, frankly, obnoxious. The mystery is a little shaky. And every ten pages we have to listen to Emerson expounding on why he's more intelligent than anyone who has ever believed in any religion. But outside of those annoyances, there is still so much to enjoy. The setting, the non-Ramses characters (in fairness, Ramses matures and ⬇