#weekendreads

Definitely enjoying the cooler temperatures today.

📕I will finish the Matt Helm today. I picked it up at a FLL along with the James Bond books last week.

📘Handling Sin is my last #Roll100 for September and a bit of a struggle.

📗Loving my revisit to Brideshead for #HashtagBrigade and am reading far, far ahead of planned as a result.

#OffMyShelf “Prolific Author”

I picked this up for 50 cents at the library the other day. While I prefer Christie‘s novels, this was an enjoyable experience/story collection.

Five Poirot, one Miss Marple, two Parker Pyne, and one detective-less story (which felt more like Westmacott than Christie IYKYK). The only one I‘d read before was the Miss Marple, but I had seen all five of the Poirot ones adapted with David Suchet. I ❤️Agatha Christie.

#FridayHappyReadingHour

Let the weekend begin! 😋🧋📚

#Roll100 September pick

Thanks @Bookworm54 for the tip to go the audio route. The narration/performance by Kyle McCarley was excellent!

I enjoyed this “Cinderfella” story only it‘s a half goblin emperor and there‘s not exactly a princess charming at the end. But it is ultimately a heartfelt and heartwarming fantasy. The reader can‘t help but root for Maia, the rejected son of the elf emperor who is unexpectedly thrust on the throne at 19.

Pictured are Cheviots. I thought they were trees until I looked them up. 🙊🐑

Occasionally I have trouble with the classism and conservative attitudes in our #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub titles and this was one of those times.

The male romantic leads are older than their female counterparts and it‘s subtly implied they should be their masters. I didn‘t find the bits meant to be funny humorous and often it felt quite mean spirited. Overall just OK.

#Roll100
#OffMyShelf “One Word Title”

Mary Karr writes beautifully of her tween years and adolescence in Leechfield, Texas in the ‘70s. Not as sympathetic as her first memoir, because it‘s a difficult age for many and particularly for Mary, who is smart but also often impudent and challenging as well as challenged by her home life and the counterculture movement.

I would have made the prologue an epilogue, however.

Waiting at Panera while my dog gets groomed. 😋📚☕️🥗

#weekendreads

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub
#HashtagBrigade
#Roll100

I hope to finish Susan Settles Down and Cherry by Sunday. 🤞

Little Free Library find last night while walking Penny the dog. I already have copies of all but the tagged and might re-home two because I have those same editions even. But I couldn‘t resist grabbing them all. 😆

I first read this in the‘90s after seeing this movie. What a difference 30 years and some water under the bridge make! I am far less romantic now and more clearly see how all three of the main characters are trapped in societal pressures and constraints of their age and class in late 19th century upper class NYC.

Thank you @BarkingMadRead for leading the #hashtagbrigade once again! You are making reading the classics both manageable and fun. 😊

I finished the third book for #SummersEndReadathon !

I quite enjoyed this blend of fantasy and crime fiction. The world threatened by toxic leviathans was interesting and different enough from any other fantasy series I‘ve encountered. The characters were well drawn and believable. Dinios Kol is an engraver. He‘s been genetically augmented to have an edectic memory. He‘s a new assistant to the eccentric yet brilliant investigator Ana Dolabra.

#14Books14Weeks

I regret nothing! 😂 But other library books and/or challenges got in the way, so I only read 11 of the planned 14. I will get to The Impressionist, The Quincunx, and Await Your Reply before the end of the year, I hope.🤞

Thank you for hosting @Liz_M ! This is a great challenge and I love any excuse to make a stack of books! 📚

Hey there #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub reading friends!

Our pick for September is upon us. An unmarried brother and sister set up household in the Scottish Highlands…Susan is nursing a broken heart and Oliver is touchy about his war wound…could romance be in the cards for them? We will find out! 😃

This group is open to all. If anyone wants to be added to or removed from the tag list, let me know.
@LitsyEvents

#SummersEndReadathon

Finished my second book for the readathon. Thematically similar to The Remains of the Day, this is narrated by an older man in postwar Japan grappling with his own complicity with the past and Imperial Japan and with the new generation who view his choices through a different lens under the American occupation. Only two more novels left and I will be an Ishiguro completist.

Hello fellow #EBBR armchair detectives! This is a gentle reminder to get your hands on a copy of next month‘s tagged title, if you are so inclined. 😊

This buddy read is open to all. Please let me know if you would like to be added or removed from the tag list.

@LitsyEvents

#FridayHappyReadingHour

After a much needed afternoon nap, I‘m imbibing a Diet Pepsi with lemon. Ahhhh…to someday not having to work for a living! 🤞

#14Books14Weeks
#OffMyShelf “Magic Realism”

I think I prefer Erdrich‘s later novels, but this was very good. It gives context and background to her debut “Love Medicine”. Set in the early 20th century and told from two perspectives: Pauline who is adrift from real family, mentally scarred and eventually mad and Nanapush, a wise and wisecracking elder who is troubled by the continued incursion on and internal collapse of Native lands and ways.

#SummerEndReadathon

I have tomorrow off work, so I hope I can really indulge in this readathon and finish all three of these books by Labor Day. 🤞 The Erdrich and Ishiguro books are from my #14Books14Weeks stack.

Well fellow sleuths, how‘d you do with this month‘s #EBBR?

I missed many this time around. I have to applaud Sobel‘s efforts in misdirection in this particular book! 👏👏👏

I did read this title as a child because I remembered aspects of a few of the cases: the turned around telescope, the kidnapped pigs, the five items left in the grocery store (the magnet 🧲 that looks like a horse shoe-and what corner store sells magnets? 😂) Good fun!

#weekendreads

Starting the next book for #EBBR

“The Tainted Cup” is pure FOMO 😂

#OffMyShelf “Historical”

Not for the easily offended. Flashman is a terrible, amoral person. He‘s just incredibly lucky. Expelled from Rugby, he joins the army and ends up in Afghanistan, right in time for the first Anglo-Afghan war. I may continue with the series since Zelig-like, he is always at an interesting historical moment. The author is obviously a historian at heart. And I don‘t think the author endorses Flashman‘s behavior. Far from it.

#ChunksterChallenge2025
#AllergictoChunksters
#DoorstopKristen #KLBR
#OffMyShelf

I finished this 1125 page bind-up of all three novels. What a journey! This is the life of a medieval Norwegian woman - from her happy childhood, to her tumultuous courtship and marriage, to her years of motherhood and wifedom, to finally retreat to a nunnery and her death. Undset makes the characters, time and place come alive and feel relevant to the modern reader.

#FridayHappyReadingHour

I‘ve closed the laptop and poured myself an icy virgin G&T 🧊. It‘s HOT 🥵 today.

Then I‘m bound and determined to finish the tagged book on my kindle for #KLBR #DoorstopKristen and Flashman today so I can start fresh for the weekend. 🤞

My #Roll100 picks for September. I intentionally chose SFF titles I‘ve been meaning to read for years and so far, they keep getting picked! 😅👍 Looking forward to The Goblin Emperor!

Cherry I got over a decade ago when I read The Liar‘s Club.

Handling Sin was a recommendation also for over a decade ago when I obsessively followed book blogs.

The las two are off my physical shelf, so bonus.

#OffMyShelf “completely different”
#14Books14Weeks

Short stories are not something I normally gravitate toward, but I did enjoy this book of linked stories featuring a 30 something woman in the‘90s. Lucy‘s a photographer and a real “guy‘s girl”. She sails, she white water rafts, etc. but she is unlucky in love.

I have had this book on my shelf since 1999. 😵‍💫 It‘s moved with me three times in 25 years ! Glad I finally read it. 😅

Thank you @Butterfinger for this beautiful handmade bookmark. 😊

#WhereAreYouMonday

I‘m with Flashman on the 1842 retreat from Kabul of the British Army. He is really is a terrible person but one does get a good feel for the historical situation reading this book.

#OffMyShelf - memoir
#OhCanada

“Healing isn‘t a freeing experience when you‘re in the middle of it. It feels like land mines are exploding and ripping your flesh apart. Everywhere you step is dangerous.”

Powerful and raw. Knott writes about her struggles with addiction and abuse as an indigenous Canadian. Reminded me also of “Tattoos on the Heart” with its appeal to withhold judgment.

Trigger warnings for drug use, sexual assault and abuse.

#WhereAreYouMonday

My current book puts me back in Canada this Monday. A difficult memoir to read because the author has suffered so much pain and violence.

#OffMyShelf “one season”

This was a fast paced procedural but after finishing it, I‘m not sure the plot actually hangs together. DCI Erika Foster is recovering still from the death of her husband when she takes the case of a peer‘s daughter who was brutally murdered in London. She finds herself stymied when the powers that be appear to want to pin the murder on an innocent man. The crime and its unraveling all happen during the winter season.

#weekendreads

Reading the Helen Knott memoir for #OhCanada

The Pam Houston title I was gifted in 1999 😱 for my birthday. There is a dedication inside from the giver, dated. It and the Flashman book are for #14Books14Weeks

#OffMyShelf “translated”

Mon dieu! Zola does not pull his punches. Interesting to read this so close to the Rules of Attraction. The Kill is also a novel about amoral people behaving badly.

Set during the rampant speculation and corruption of the 2nd Empire, Saccard comes up from the provinces to collect his spoils by using any form of fraud or deceit. Everyone is a tool to be exploited him, including his wife and son.

#FridayNightReadingHour

I had to run an errand after work and decided to use it as an excuse to get an iced coffee. 😋 Still plugging away at the same four books as last Friday. 😅

#WhereAreYouMonday

I‘m in 19th century 2nd Empire Paris where Haussmann and Napoleon III are transforming the city into the wide boulevards and tall buildings so characteristic of Paris today. This building frenzy invites speculation and corruption. Fortunes are made and lost. Waste and decadence are encouraged and celebrated.

#weekendreads

A very classics heavy reading weekend for me. I have some driving to do and luckily the three classics are also available on Hoopla on audio. 👍

I had such fun completing the first #OffMyShelf challenge, I‘ll try the next board too! 😃 “Story was adapted”

Paul likes Sean but Sean likes Lauren but Lauren likes Victor… This was disturbing and transgressive yet surprisingly funny at times. Students behaving badly at a liberal arts college in NH. Very‘80s. So much sex and drugs. I didn‘t realize Ellis writes all his books in the same universe with character overlap.

CW for rape l/suicide.

My last category completed for the #OffMyShelf challenge! 🥳 “Gifted by a friend”.

In the acknowledgments, we find the story is based on a real woman‘s life, Eva Panic Nahir, a Hungarian Jew from what is now Croatia who was imprisoned in Tito‘s gulag and later emigrated to Israel with her daughter. In the book, Vera makes a decision to honor her principles and her husband‘s memory at great cost to herself and her relationship with her daughter.

🔎 This is a gentle reminder for any #EBBR readers to look into getting a copy of the tagged title, the next book (no. 7) in the series, for our joint-read in August.

🔎 Another fun opportunity to channel your inner 9 year old and match wits with Idaville‘s boy detective!

If anyone wants to be removed or added to the tag list, let me know.

@LitsyEvents

#WhereAreYouMonday

This Monday my book takes me to a fictional version of Bennington College in Vermont. Ellis calls it Camden College and places it in New Hampshire, but it‘s clear from what I know about the author it‘s really his Alma mater.

The behavior depicted is often reprehensible but not unknown to me and my own second decade. I‘m surprised at how funny it is at times.

Hey ##EBBR friends! How did you fare with this month‘s title?

I did pretty well-I only missed “The Case of the Angry Cook” and I thought the “solution” was pretty tenuous. 😅

I am also curious about “The Case of the Falling Woman”. I understand the reveal, but how did the kid get a picture of a woman falling in the first place!?!?🤔 Was it his mom on a trampoline?

My #roll100 picks for August - both library borrows. I‘m going to skip No. 41 since I read it this month already. 🙊

This was a slow burn, politically plotted SciFi and I thought it was great. Lots of intrigue within fantastic world building.

Mahit Dzmare is caught between her love for Teixcalaanli language and literature as ambassador to that Empire and her understanding that she will never be accepted as anything more than other and her fear that the Empire will annex her own culture and community, thereby erasing it.

My second #roll100 for July.

#weekendreads

Will definitely finish “The Fiction Writer” today. I put it on pause to read some other stuff.

Diving in to my 🤞last two books for July. “The Rules of Attraction” is my last #roll100 for the month. The David Grossman is my last #OffMyShelf book and also on my #14Books14Weeks.

Thank you for the tip @ChaoticMissAdventures ! None of my libraries had a copy but I was really pleased to see my local brick and mortar Barnes and Nobel had a stack of copies. 👍 #BlameitonLitsy

#WhereAreYouMonday

This Monday finds me in Malibu, California at a cliff side mansion. So far it‘s just OK but it‘ll be a fast read in any case.

#hashtagbrigade
#allergictochunksters
#chunksterchallenge2025

I couldn‘t wait. I had to finish!🙈

This is a story of Molly Gibson whose life is changed by two major events: her introduction to the Hamelys of Hamley Hall and her father‘s hasty decision to remarry.

Love, loved, loved this chunky classic! Molly is often passive and put upon but there are lines she will not cross, and the reader loves her for her loyalty and her integrity.

#weekendreads

Really loving the tagged book which is one of my #Roll100 picks for July.

Getting back on track with #DoorstopKristen

The third title is a #BlameitonLitsy spontaneous read.

#WhereAreYouMonday

My last #CampLitsy25 book takes me to a decaying town in Virginia.

#SeriesLove2025
#OffMyShelf - in a series
#14Books14Weeks

Another gentle and entertaining outing with Mma Ramotswe and co. An adopted woman asks the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency to find her biological family and someone is sending poison pen letters to the agency. Both mysteries are solved with compassion and kindness. ❤️

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub

The middle and upper class of a small English village rub along together awkwardly in this novel. The eccentric Mr. Monsoon, the pretentious Mrs. Rockaby, the loony Lady Tyce, etc. There‘s no real plot nor any character to root for really, but I enjoyed it on the whole. It‘s often funny and has maybe a subtle feminist edge to it at times, but as @Tamra noted, much longer would have been too long.