Hi everyone! I started this in December and it’s been fun getting feedback from you guys and exploring books that I forgot I wanted to read because they got lost in my Goodreads list. Here’s an update #1 Kept 2/5 and read 1! #2 Kept 7/10. #3 Kept 8/10 and tried 1 but didn’t make it very far before moving on. #4 Kept 7/10 and I read 1 and am listening to another. Yes, I need to be a bi more ruthless in the removing of titles.
So you know that drill. Tell me if you think I should keep it on my list or get rid of it to make way for something else. They have all been on my list since 2012.
How to participate:
- Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf
- Order by Ascending Date Added
- Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
- Read the synopses of the books
- Decide: keep it or let it go?
Martha Brockenbrough’s Things That Make Us (Sic) is a laugh-out-loud guide to grammar and language, a snarkier American answer to Lynn Truss’ runaway success, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Brockenbrough is the founder of National Grammar Day and SPOGG — the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar — and as serious as she is about proper usage, her voice is funny, irreverent, and never condescending. Things That Make Us (Sic) addresses common language stumbling stones such as evil twins, clichés, jargon, and flab, and offers all the spelling tips, hints, and rules that are fit to print. It’s also hugely entertaining, with letters to high-profile language abusers, including David Hasselhoff, George W. Bush, and Canada’s Maple Leafs [sic], as well as a letter to –and a reply from — Her Majesty, the Queen of England.
Maybe worth flipping through if I find it at the library?
Daisy Drake needs Lucian Beaumont. Tired of being “on the shelf,” she craves adventure and Lucian holds all the clues to a long-buried Roman treasure. Too bad the devilishly handsome viscount doesn’t want her help.
Until she masquerades as a French courtesan who offers to teach him all she knows of the pleasures of the love couch. Of course, all Daisy knows about that she learned from the memoirs of a real courtesan, but she’s always been a fast learner.
I love a good historical romance but have no idea how this one made it on the list. Nothing about it makes me think I need to read it.
Roxanne Reeves defines her life by the committees she heads and the social status she cultivates. But she is keeping secrets that make her an outsider in her own town, always in search of acceptance. And when she is given a job none of the other white women want-researching the town’s African-American history for a tour of local sites-she feels she can’t say no.
Elderly Grace Clark, a retired black schoolteacher, reluctantly agrees to become Roxanne’s guide. Grace takes Roxanne to Catfish Alley, whose undistinguished structures are nonetheless sacred places to the black community because of what happened there. As Roxanne listens to Grace’s stories, and meets her friends, she begins to see differently. She is transported back to the past, especially to 1931, when a racist’s hatred for Grace’s brother leads to events that continue to change lives decades later. And as Roxanne gains an appreciation of the dreams, courage, and endurance of those she had so easily dismissed, her own life opens up in new and unexpected ways.
This looks pretty good.
Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely.
Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.
Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie’s fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.
This could be good, but has anyone read it?
Kathy read it and lied it.
It’s been days since reporter Elise McBride has heard from her sister, Ashley. She’s convinced Ashley has met with some kind of foul play, especially when she learns that bodies of other missing women have surfaced in and around Chicago–all victims of a brutal serial killer. Convinced her sister is still alive, Elise vows to risk everything to save her…
The last thing ex-cop Trent Brady needs is more blood on his hands. Yet when he catches Elise breaking into her sister’s house, full of reckless determination and fear, he knows she needs his help. But just as desire ignites between them, a twisted madman sets his sights on Elise. Hell-bent on possessing her for himself, this psychopath won’t rest until he has his perfect woman.
Looks like a quick escape?
It’s almost forty years since they left the convent and went their separate ways, but now the old school friends are planning to meet again.
They had almost forgotten how it feels confide in women friends, but back together again, sharing their past lives, their secrets, their aspirations and their deepest fears Sylvia, Fran and Bonnie embark on a creative venture that will challenge everything they thought they knew about themselves and will change their lives for ever.
Gotta say this one isn’t calling to me.
The last thing Libby Sawyer and her father expected upon their return from their summer home was to find strangers inhabiting a house that had been in their family for decades. Widower Michael Dobrescu brought his family from Romania to the town of Colden, Massachusetts with a singular purpose: to claim the house willed to him long ago. Since neither party has any intention of giving up their claim, a fierce legal battle ensues between the two families.
When important documents go missing from the house, Libby suspects Michael is the culprit. Determined to discover the truth behind the stolen papers, Libby investigates, only to find more layers of mystery surrounding Michael and his family. Despite their rivalry, Libby finds herself developing feelings for this man with the mysterious past.
This looks like a keeper.
Thrilling, true tales from the Vidocq Society, a team of the world’s finest forensic investigators whose monthly gourmet lunches lead to justice in ice-cold murders
Three of the greatest detectives in the world–a renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor and lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as “the living Sherlock Holmes”-were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders. Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugène François Vidocq-the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes-the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch.
This looks interesting.
Kathy’s mom liked it.
The streets of San Francisco would be lined with hardcovers if rare book expert Brooklyn Wainwright had her way. And her mentor wouldn’t be lying in a pool of his own blood on the eve of a celebration for his latest book restoration.
With his final breath he leaves Brooklyn a cryptic message, and gives her a priceless and supposedly cursed copy of Goethe’s Faust for safekeeping.
Brooklyn suddenly finds herself accused of murder and theft, thanks to the humorless, but attractive, British security officer who finds her kneeling over the body. Now she has to read the clues left behind by her mentor if she is going to restore justice
I’m not the biggest cozy fan, but this looks fun.
A Grand Murder is the first book in the Catherine O’Brien mystery series. When a prominent local businessman and friend of the chief of police is murdered on the front steps of his posh Grand Avenue Hill home, Saint Paul homicide detective Catherine O’Brien a pithy, vertically challenged, St. Paul, Minnesota, homicide detective with a monstrous coffee habit and her partner Louise are given two days to find his killer. They soon discover their victim had a list of people with motives to murder him, including his fashion designer ex-wife, his mistress’s husband, and the chief of police. The only evidence they have to go on is a missing cell phone, a stolen book, the victim’s letter opener, and an ugly pair of Alpaca wool mittens.
Can’t say I’m interested in keeping two cozy mysteries this week and I’m leaning toward the other one.
So, help me out. This is a week with no authors I know or any books currently on my radar. What would you keep on your list?
My Name is Memory. Finished 3-3-19, 3.5/5 stars, YA, pub. 2010
Last month Ian Rankin came to town and on a cold, snowy night and he had a packed house with fans that came from as far as Pennsylvania and New York. I must again give a shout out to our library system, who always brings in the big names (this month I’m seeing Harlan Coben and next month Stephanie Evanovich and Heather Morris). Anyway, I loved Ian’s first Rebus book and really wanted to spend an evening with a legit Scottish accent. So my mom and I went (he is signing her book here). He was delightful. He spoke for about an hour and took a lot of questions, some very serious ones about current affairs, like Brexit, and managed to educate and entertain.
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Stacy's Books 