This space is to share the books you’re reading, your thoughts, and engage in discussion!
Please do use the spoilers function to hide information and discussion about books if they will spoil anything! Summaries of books are fine to leave un-hidden as long as they don’t give anything away.
On mobile, you can use the text [Details=“Text”][/Details] to use the spoilers function. Formatting doesn’t always work the first time on mobile, so please make check back on your published post and make edits if needed.
In the web browser, you can find it under the gear icon above your text box. Just highlight the text you want hidden, select the feature, insert your title in between the quotation marks.
If you want to see an example from 2020, I did keep a book log here:
Reckless by Selena Montgomery (nom de plume of Stacey Abrams!!). Romantic thriller, like 80% thriller and 20% romance, and very entertaining. I’d recommend for a solid pass-the-time read but I probably won’t remember it a year from now.
Currently reading:
The Diplomat’s Daughter by Karin Tanabe, historical fiction about young Japanese and German-American characters interned during WW2. A bit precious in character treatment but really well written, and documents some really unique experiences from that time.
Small Talk: How to develop your child’s language skills from birth to age 4 by Nicola Lathey, a nonfiction book about early speech development by a speech pathologist. Great mix of scientific & practical.
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. I just cracked open the first page but already know it’s going to be magical like every other novel of hers that I’ve read.
At this point a good 75% of my reading is determined by what’s available on Libby/library or Scribd. Much of that is just fine, unmemorable stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing (& stealing) more of what OMDers absolutely love.
I just put a library book on hold by Philippa Gregory called Dark Tides and I cannot wait to get it. The first in the series is called Tidelands and when I got to the end, I was actually mad that it was done and there was not another in the series yet. Hoping the next one is good too. I know that she has another series about Tudor Queens that I have not yet read as I am not sure that is my interest group…
Just finished Anxious People by Fredrick Backman. I did not like it much until quite a ways in, like almost put it down a few times didn’t like it. I ended up loving it once it came together toward the end though. I really enjoyed his A Man Called Ove too. I always know I love a book if I cry lol.
Most of what I read I cannot remember in a year, but that is probably more about my memory than the quality of the book. I do also read lots of fluffy romantic type stuff which all runs together the more of it I read…
I am excited to hear (and also steal!) recommendations that have been enjoyed here!
I just finished Uppercase Vol 16, a Canadian periodical that has been on my shelves for a couple of years unread. I got it from a winter craft show I volunteered at several times. They always had a goodie bag from the vendors for us.
It was a bit like an elegy, because the artistic world it was describing feels so damaged from the intervening years (it looks like this one is from Jan 2013 and would have been a back issue when I got it). Even the yarn dyer they mentioned is one that I know stopped dying ages ago. It’s like the Jamie Oliver show featuring the cooking of Italian nonnas that I watched this morning.
On the plus side, while looking up info to write about it here, I discovered that they didn’t actually stop publication as I had thought (or if they did, they’re back).
I gave the other issue I had to a friend, because it seemed like the right match, but this one I don’t know who it would be appropriate for. It has a number of stories about artists’ homes and ‘how I found a way to make a job out of what I like doing’ stories. And the right home for it hasn’t come to me yet. If anyone here is interested, I can send it your way and you can decide whether it stays with you, goes in the recycling, or keeps moving.
Fun thread . I tend to go for sci fi and space opera, occasionally with some fantasy thrown in. Just reread the first two Castaway books by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor (Castaway Planet, Castaway Odyssey) and the new/final one that I picked up from the library the other day (Castaway Resolution). Technically the three together are the second half of the Boundary series but it very much reads as two separate trilogies, this one being the
Castaway Summary
Swiss Family Robinson in Space
portion. Currently working on rereading the Grand Central Arena trilogy also by Spoor since I remembered how much I like his worldbuilding (Grand Central Arena, Spheres of Influence, Challenges of the Deeps) and I have access to all of those, unlike two of the other Boundary books.
I just caught up on Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series. Urban fantasy, changeling PI/knight errant goes on many, many adventures. The magic and world are seriously cool, the world building is pretty tight and sensical, and I love the characters to pieces.
I finished reading the Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden a few days ago. The books are The Bear and the Nightingale, The Girl in the Tower, and The Winter of the Witch. If there’s anyone left on the forums who hasn’t read them, what are you waiting for?! They’re amazing.
I’m currently on book 4 of the Dublin Murder Squad. I like how the author has a pattern of taking what appears to be a somewhat unlikeable character from one book and using them as the main character and making them sympathetic in the next book.
I’m also reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle after many many recs and I’m so glad I picked it up.
Finally, I’ve been doing a slow read through How to Make Your Dreams Come True by Mark Forster. It has elements of a lot of the visualization stuff that works for me plus an emphasis on working on what pulls you, with less of the woo-woo of some books and less of the misogyny of Think and Grow Rich. CW that he does talk occasionally about his weight but it’s not the focus of the book.
Also was very pleased with a tie between Untamed and Dreams, wherein Glennon Doyle puts forth that our dreams should become our plans and our marching orders.
And finished Challenges of the Deeps only to remember that he left a plot thread for a sequel (that hasn’t been written yet) so now I have to wait for that.
Finished Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin last night. It reminded me a bit of last year’s Circe. This time we view events through the eyes of Aeneas’s second wife, Lavinia, as she grows up as a princess of Latinum and the events of her life. Incredibly evocative.
Now reading Grace Burrowes’s Lady Eve’s Indiscretion in her Windham daughters series. It’s an oldie, but a goodie and will keep me occupied until the stuff I have on hold at the library comes in.
I do also read lots of fluffy romantic type stuff which all runs together the more of it I read…
. I tend to go for sci fi and space opera, occasionally with some fantasy thrown in. Just reread the first two Castaway books by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor (Castaway Planet, Castaway Odyssey) and the new/final one that I picked up from the library the other day (Castaway Resolution). Technically the three together are the second half of the Boundary series but it very much reads as two separate trilogies, this one being the