I’m bringing back my 5 word movie reviews for my own sanity. As before, if you want to add your own five word review, just leave it in a comment.
The Breakfast Club, 1985 (Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy) This is on my Top 10 List and we watched it with Gage for the first time. Grade A
Hamnet, 2025 (Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn) Grade A-
Shakespeare’s wife steals the show.
Eurovision, 2020 (Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Pierce Brosnan, Graham Norton, Demi Lovato) Grade B
My latest ridiculous guilty pleasure.
Anaconda, 2025 (Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, Selton Mello) Grade C+
Provided much needed laughter & jumps.
Arthur the King, 2024 (Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu, Juliet Rylance, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman) Grade C+
True story of stupidest race.
History of the World, part 1, 1981 (Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Gregory Hines, Sid Caesar, Shecky Green, Mary-Margaret Humes) Grade C
I read 12 books on January, a little bit of everything. Five nonfiction is a pretty good start to the year.
Five Star Books
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder. Nonfiction. This is such an important read. “In dehumanizing others, we make ourselves less free.”
These are not the most profound thoughts of On Freedom, but they are the most relevant to today. If you have an interest in the fascism we are seeing today read On Tyranny. If you want a more nuanced discussion about how free we really are as a nation, read his latest On Freedom.
I can’t recommend both of these books enough. On Tyranny will get you started. At just over 100 pages it packs a punch with little time commitment. I loved the graphic novel adaptation. On Freedom is longer and takes more time to absorb, but is so worth it. I almost gave up on On Freedom because it felt a little too textbooky, but once it got past that it was gold.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick. Fiction. This was my book blub read this month and we all really liked it. Four women form a book group to read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, thus giving themselves the name the Bettys. This is the early 1960s so women’s role were different and although each of them were married, they each were constructed by things out of their control. Can a woman ‘have it all’?
It focused on the bonds between the women, and ALL women. It explored what these friendships mean through these book group meetings with the fun cocktails, even if sometimes the book didn’t get read by everyone. Hey, it happens! There’s plenty of drama to keep you turning the pages making this a fast, satisfying read.
I loved that it was a good mix of women I did and don’t know. And a range of ages too. The essays were written by different people so there was a mix of writing styles too, some choosing a more biographical approach and other leaning into their personal connection with person. Let’s lift each other up. Our country needs it now more than ever.
4 1/2 Stars
The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint by Ylva Hillstrom and Karin Eklund. Nonfiction. A 64 page biography about someone who I didn’t really know anything about. And now I know about her and have seen her art, but I also know what was going on in the world in the late 1800s/early 1900s with spiritualism, homemade ouiji boards, thoughts on communicating with spirits, theosophy, alchemy…. It was so much more than I thought it would be.
Hilma af Klint really thought that the spirits were showing her the secrets of the universe. So she painted it. But no one wanted to see them until decades after her death. Now they hang in the most prestigious museums in the world.
4 Stars
The Onion Came First by Elinor Wilder. Paranormal romance. STEM Meets Supernatural is right on the cover. Annelie is a neurodivergent numbers gal from Wall Street. Reed is an alpha wolf shifter. They both become neighbors in the Claw Ridge Mountains. I loved how Annelie found a place and people who felt like home. Could you love a wolf? One that did math with rocks that it brought to your porch? Somehow Reed made that work🔥
I love this book and it’s not just because my friend wrote it, her first novel. Not only did it feel like a love story between Reed and Annelie, it also felt like a love story to and for neurodivergents and the people who love them.
The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren. Romance. The duo Christina Lauren has become a favorite of mine in the last few years. I’m a little later to the party so there’s a huge backlist, yay for me!
In the Soulmate Equation two people who barely tolerate each other are matched up as the perfect couple based on their DNA. She’s a single mother barely making ends meet and he is the creator of the matchmaking science. I thought this one was funny and sweet, a perfect escape from the news.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Fiction. I finally got around to the book most of bookish friends of a certain age have already read. It’s definitely for the woman who can understand what hormones, or lack thereof, can do to person and for the men who love them! You’ll feel seen even if Rocky is a bit much.
I like people who can be a bit much. I usually find them fascinating and Rocky was that for sure. The book takes place over a weeklong vacation with her husband, two grown kids, one girlfriend, and her two elderly parents. It’s a vacation they always take and the familiarity brings memories, both bittersweet and painful. I can see not liking this one if Rocky is too loud, too liberal, or too narcissistic for you. But for me, I found an underlying truth to this stage of life and Rocky made me feel a little less like a hot mess myself.
The Kiss Countdown by Etta Easton. Romance. This was a sweet debut with likable characters. The main characters agree to pretend to be dating even if the pretend doesn’t seem so fake.
Vincent is prepping to fly to the moon, yes, a real astronaut, and Amerie is trying to start her own business. Was it the most believable story? No.the engagement and her moving in with him only days after meeting were both pretty crazy. BUT I was still invested and enjoyed their journey.
The Midnight Lock by Jeffery Deaver. Lincoln Rhyme series #15. Thriller. No lock is going to stop the Locksmith 🔓. He likes to break into women’s apartments and watch them while they sleep, leaving clues all over that he’d been there. Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sacks and crew are back and ready to catch the bad guys! I love the team, the science, the twists and turns, NYC. It all works! It’s best to start at the beginning with The Bone Collector.
3 1/2 Stars
The Dream of Water by Kyoka Mori. Memoir. This took me a while to finish. I had a hard time getting into it, but the last half was good. The first half was a lot of looking back at her childhood in Japan before her mother committed suicide and her father remarried. The second half interspersed those memories with what was happening on her trip more smoothly and I found myself picking up the pace as I finished.
I liked getting to know the traditions and stories. Her father’s family was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. Her grandparent’s lived in the country in poverty. Even the way her family interacts with her and each other was an interesting observation.
Her relationship with her father was a recurring theme and I totally got it. Reading some of the other reviews that was a complaint by many, but I thought it made sense. If your father was the big reason that you left, going back would color all of your interactions with family.
I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider. Comics. I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider is a perfect gift for that capacious reader or writer in your life. It’s for readers, writers, poets, and those who want to understand them better. So, do YOU judge a person’ bookshelf? I judge only if they don’t have one!
Before I add books to my Top 100 I do a reread, or in this case a re-listen last year, to make sure they still belong on the list. As I read the review I originally posted in 2015 I still agree with everything I said. but the most compelling part is what I didn’t say. I didn’t spoil Hanna’s big secret. But Hanna’s big secret is the thing that turns the story into something worth reading, contemplating, and discussing. I think the emphasis on the relationship between a 15 year old boy and a 30 year old woman is obviously worth debating, but it isn’t what makes this story stick.
So much story in 200 pages. It’s translated from German so it may not feel the most poetic, but it packs a punch. I’m drawn to books that can say much with few words. I recommend the audio book and the movie.
Unabridged audio read by Campbell Scott. 4 hours, 30 minutes
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany. When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover–then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
I watched the movie made from this book in 2009 when it came out because I love Kate Winslet and I ended up being very moved by it. And it was with those images in my mind that I listened to the book expertly narrated by Campbell Scott. He became the young and then the adult Michael for me. Between the movie and Campbell’s narration there was a warmth and richness to this story that I don’t know if I would have found in reading the book alone. At just over 200 pages it tackled a lot and much of it had to be personally considered by the reader. What I’m saying is that I can vouch for the audio, but I don’t know it I would have loved it as much if I had read the book alone.
The first part is the love? story between the 15 year old Michael and the 30 something old Hanna. I didn’t ever truly figure out the why of it on her end, but it’s an easier sell for a 15-year-old boy to be captivated by a woman who teaches him all about sex . I found it realistic especially since as he started to spend more time with his peers he began to question Hanna’s place among them.
Flash forward a few years and Michael is at university studying law and his class is studying a trial of women accused of Nazi crimes and he sees Hanna for the first time since he was 15. She was a guard for one of the concentration camps and now must face her day in court. Michael is riveted and doesn’t miss a day.
I loved this for how much it manages to pack into such a short book. There was the strange physical relationship between the two, but then it moved into things more thought-provoking, horrifying and sad. It’s a great book for discussion and those who are interested in post-war Germany. Not a happy book, but one that left me satisfied and enriched.
Sheila over at Book Journey has hosted The First Book Event for the last 13 years. Go over and check out the full line up of readers and authors with their intended first book of the year. You’ll find me here with our newish kitten Pepper. He totally lives up to the black cat rep and we are dealing with some bad behavior so positive thoughts appreciated. Anyway, I chose my friend’s first novel, The Onion Came First by Elinor Wilder. I’ve started it and I’m really liking it. It’s got great reviews on Goodreads too. She calls it STEM meets Supernatural.
As happens with many bookworms, sometimes another new shiny book crosses our path and we must take a minute to check it out. As was the case with this graphic novel that I found while sorting library donations. So I took 40 minutes and read through the fun truths of readers and writers everywhere.
I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider is a few years old, but timeless in the understanding of his target audience. I chuckled. I smiled. I nodded my head in agreement. This was fun and a perfect way to start my reading year. And a perfect gift for any bookworm!
I was a terrible blogger the second half of this year, but with a new year on the horizon I’m feeling optimistic about 2026!
I read 132 books for a total of 35,642 pages. Four of them rereads. My most read author was Michael Connelly as I devoured the Lincoln Lawyer series from beginning to end. I started my Reading the World challenge and made it only to Israel. I’m in Japan now. I read 20 new to me authors and did a fantastic job of reading from my own shelves. Without further ado…
My Top Ten
1 The Lincoln Lawyer series by Michael Connelly (my list and cheating is allowed). Mystery series 2 Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Manu Larcenet. Graphic novel 3 The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. Historical fiction 4 The Reader by Bernhardt Schlick. Historical fiction reread 5 Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Historical fiction 6 Life and Other Inconveniences by Kristan Higgins. Fiction 7 Dear Martin & Dear Justyce by Nic Stone. Companion fiction books for teens 8 The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer by Joan Chittister. Nonfiction 9 The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians edited by David Rubenstein. Nonfiction 10 Around the World in 60 Seconds by Nusseir Yassin. Nonfiction
My only regret from this reading year is that I wish I’d wish I’d read more nonfiction so that becomes my goal for 2026. What about you?
How Do I Say Goodbye by Dean Lewis made me cry when I heard it the first time. It also hits a little harder now. My dad died suddenly a week before Thanksgiving. I’ve always called him an energizer bunny or said he had nine lives, but at 78 his time came. He was my protector, provider, and role model growing up. He was loud, a jokester, and always lending a helping hand. He took me on trips, accepted my friends as family, and showed me that book smart wasn’t the only kind there was. I hold that view of him while still seeing the complicated relationship we were in these past ten years. I’ve already felt levels of grief over the loss of who we were making this sudden end feel not quite real.
The holidays were spent on the road traveling home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Memorial, and a wedding. A busy time spent with family, the people who knew and loved him. It was exactly what we, my mom and Jason and Gage, needed. Now the quiet of January looms.
A slow reading month with only eight books, but given the craziness of the month it’s a win! October had two birthdays (mine and Gage’s), one anniversary (our 27th wedding anniversary), and a wedding trip/vacay to Colorado where the three of us and my mom watched my cousin’s daughter (and one of my flower girls) get married. Oh, and we also added a 2 pound furball to the house, making this a 3 cat house, and one of the other cats, Razzi, had to have surgery. I’m honestly looking forward to a more low key November!
My friend wrote a book! This novella is a set up for the series and I’m so proud of her! Not a Free Ion is a novella that sets up the Claw Ridge Mountains community that is home to wolf shifter packs. It’s a love story with a shifter who lost his sense of smell and a neurodivergent woman who has always loved him. They finally get there second chance when the stakes are high.
I’m not usually into wolf shifters or novellas BUT this was a fun introduction to the first book, where I’ve had the privilege to read a few early chapters. If you do like shifter stories, go ahead and show some love to my friend by reading this one. The opening rescue chapters will have you hooked from page one.
This was my favorite book of the month by one of my favorite authors. A widowed matriarch who is dying, a granddaughter once cast away now invited back with the promise of a sizeable inheritance for her daughter, and an absent son/father who still has a role in the story.
I loved watching Emma come into her own as she went back to the place she was raised and where her one and only love still lived with his new family. I liked hearing Genevieve’s voice as she told her story and the purified air way she had at looking at the world. I also loved that the mystery of the missing, presumed dead son was just a small part of the story and that when the truth finally became known it was almost a surprise I wasn’t sure was going to happen.
I really liked this age gap, social disparity romance. I loved watching kind hearted, somewhat clueless Alexis of a medicine dynasty fall in love with Daniel and the small town he lived in. I also fell in love with Daniel, the man of many hats, and the close-knit small town that needed and embraced Alexis.
This did address abuse both emotional and physical, which I appreciated. Too many girls/women can’t see the emotional abuse after they’ve accepted it as fact. Any story that can save girls from those relationships is one that should be shared widely.
Simons is a Charleston blue blood who always feels out of place. When she starts questioning her engagement to the perfect man according to her family she must make a choice.
I loved the Charleston setting and all of the ins and outs of the elites that live there. The story was part family ties and part dating horror stories and it moved along at a good pace. The grandma’s story of being brave was a nice through line.
The book is a collection of stories with a central location, the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul in Kyoto. The clinic can only be found when a person is struggling with life and the doctor only ever prescribes one thing, a cat!
Such a charming story with each chapter the name of the prescribed cat with a picture. Cat lovers will like the sweetness of a cat being able to cure all ills.
Zany scenes told with wit and humor are a Katherine Center gift. Her latest, the Lover Haters, has that along with a perfect specimen of a man and a woman dealing with body issues. Oh, and a large Great Dane who is involved in much of the story.
This was fun and I liked it. Not my favorite of hers, I like my men with at least as many flaws as I have, but still good.
Gage and I read the second Percy Jackson together. It’s slow going with school starting, but we did it! And he’s willing to continue so that’s the best thing
I still like how these books make mythology fun and are educating as well as entertaining. I’m looking forward to the next one just as much as he is!
So, this is my first Danielle Steel book in decades and, wow, it was not what I was expecting! I am not a big believer in trigger warnings and am sure I would have ignored them if there’d been any, but this book was just one big trigger for me.
My trigger warnings for you includes sick children and lots of child ER visits. I found no joy in this book from beginning to end, so if you like those types of books, have at it 😆
I don’t often post about books I don’t really like, but given how much it bothered me I thought I’d warn you.
I’ve finished my first country and while it took a little longer than I anticipated I feel like I’m off to a great start. My nonfiction book was written by an Arab born and raised in Israel and the novel’s main storyline was the prejudice against migrants with many chapters coming from her perspective. So, I liked that both books helped me see Israel from the eyes of someone not in the majority.
My goal is to read a fiction and nonfiction book set in and written by someone who was born in that country. As recommendations have trickled in I realized that it’s the ‘born in that country’ part that is going to make some books not work. I’m excluding the immigrant experience. It wasn’t my intent, I just didn’t really think it through in those terms. I’m not going to change the rules at this point. Maybe I’ll do a spin off challenge for that.
That being said here are three books I’ve read and liked in the last few years that were set in Israel, but not written by someone born there.
Too Far From Home by Naomi Shmuel – a children’s book about a girl who was born in Israel to two immigrant parents. A good book about prejudice and belonging. 4 stars
Dawn by Elie Wiesel – This is the second in the Night trilogy and a profound look at the evil of war. 5 stars
September reads. The last few weeks of September were so busy that this number is deceivingly low. I have a few books that I’m close to finishing so maybe I’ll make up for it in October, but that’s also a busy month so who knows. I’ve read 97 books so far in 2025.
❤️❤️❤️❤️Around the World in 30 Seconds by Nusseir Yassin. This was the first book in my Reading The World Challenge and a perfect place to start. (review here)
❤️❤️❤️❤️Waking Lions by Ayelet GundarGoshen was my fiction choice for Israel and it was a slow read, but a good one. (review here)
❤️❤️❤️❤️Before I Do by Sophie Cousens. I always love her romances and loved the age gap and different stages of life on this one. (thoughts here)
❤️❤️❤️❤️Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas is the first in the series. I liked it but am still undecided on whether I need to rush through like I did with ACOTAR.
❤️❤️❤️+Heat Lightning by John Sandford. I love all of his 30+ Lucas Davenport books, especially the ones with Virgil Flowers, but the Virgil ones where he’s on his own aren’t quite as fun for me.
❤️❤️❤️Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas. She’s one of my favorite historical romance writers but this one wasn’t a favorite.
❤️❤️❤️Where I’m From by Chante Thomas. She’s a local geography teacher who was giving out her book at One World Day and she signed it for Gage. It’s a cute picture book about where didn’t kids live and where their parents came from.
How I found, chose this book-It chose me. I ran across this book while I was cleaning up our spring book sale and the cover spoke to me.
I finally finished my fiction read from Israel and it was a gritty, moral look at the prejudice one can have against refugees in any country. It’s dense and slow moving, but it does pack a punch.
Dr. Etian Green hits a black migrant on his drive home from a long shift at an Israeli hospital. Even a doctor couldn’t save the man and so begins the moral crisis for this husband, father, and healer. When he is blackmailed by the man’s widow Etian’s whole life begins to spiral.
It felt like a quiet book because there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. What I got instead was a front row seat to the inner minds of Etian, his wife, and the beautiful widow. Fascinating. Etian goes from dislike of the refugees to understanding their plight in his country.
The writing was beautiful. The story was thoughtful and somewhat suspenseful. But I had zero problem putting this down until about 3/4 of the way through, when it picked up and I stayed up late to finish it. So, it’s a good book, but not one you’ll breeze through. And it’s the better for it.
And that cover? Gorgeous.
A few examples of the writing…
“However much he wanted to feel compassion for them, he couldn’t help recoiling from them. Not only from their smell and bodily fluids but also from their faces-alien, staring, filled with undying gratitude. He didn’t speak their language, and they didn’t speak his, so they communicated with waving hands and facial expressions.” p. 54
“A thin man reached out for a handshake, and Eitan shook his head, thinking that somewhere along the way, his empathy button had stopped functioning. He should have felt something. Kindness. Compassion. The responsibility of one human being for another. Not only toward this man standing here and shaking his hand emotionally while he himself was only waiting for him to stop. He hadn’t felt anything for the man on the ground with his head split open either. Or perhaps he had felt something but not the right something. Not what he should have felt.” p.75
“But Eitan knew he had never been more awake. And, appalled, he realized that at that moment, at that specific moment, he was prepared to set the whole house on fire.” p.208
“It would be his fault. Because he hadn’t taken good enough care of his family, and families are fragile things.” p.227
Stacy's Books 