Since I sort book donations at the library and frequent bookstores I decided to start this challenge with countries that cross my path organically, we’ll see how far that gets me. Pakistan was the next country to have both a fiction and nonfiction book come through the book donations which makes it country number 4.
This is the first country that did exactly what I wanted this challenge to do. Listening to I Am Malala with my family on a road trip gave me the deeply religious northern part of the country and how Islamic radicals fought to take control. The Museum Detective gave me a glimpse of a more cosmopolitan Pakistan with the Karachi setting. Both gave a real sense of the country, even if they differed on what view they were offering.
We listened to the version that was ‘rewritten for an audience her own age’. I chose it for the main reason that it would be short enough for a road trip, it’s only 5 hours. It was a good choice for us, but I don’t know how much was missing or changed from the original version.
Malala is an amazing person. Confident, brave, dedicated. He activism for the education of girls at such a young age is amazing. Her parents are to be commended. Learning more about how the Taliban came to have such a prominent role in her region was enlightening. I hadn’t known much about her life before she was shot and this book does a really good job of showing what happened before that made her a target of the terrorist organiztion.
It felt a bit repetitive at times, but still worth reading 100%. The audio included her speech in front of the UN at the end and I liked hearing her voice and her passion for education.
The police find a sarcophagus on a drug bust and Dr. Gul Delani is called in the middle of the night. She works for the museum and is an expert on mummies. We learn of the old Persian Empire, the history of mummies, the customs and social structure of Karachi, as well as the role of women. Was the sarcophagus real? Would there be danger for her if it was?
This was a nice flip side to the Malala coin. Women in Karachi were also second place citizens, but women could rise above, especially if your family had money. I really liked this one and would gladly read another book about Gul.
The closest I’ve come to reading anything about Pakistan before this was American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar – Stacy’s Books about a boy whose parents came from Pakistan and a Pakistani friend who came to stay with them.
My goal is to read a fiction and nonfiction book set in and written by someone who was born in that country. As recommendations 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.
I first fell in love with Susanna Kearsley’s stories with The Winter Sea and she’s captivated me ever since. It’s historical fiction, with varying degrees of romance and time travel, at its best. She reminds me of Diana Gabaldon in many ways.
The first book I read by her was The Winter Sea. I heard her tell someone that this is what some consider her ‘gateway’ book to introduce new readers to her work. If you want to judge her by the company she keeps these are the authors who wrote blurbs for the cover of the lastest book; Diana Gabaldon, Ariel Lawhon, Sarah Penner, Barbara Erskine, Susan Elia MacNeal.
If you like stories with historical intrigue, a little bit of magic and a hint of romance, and lots of great research holding it all together, she’s for you! I was able to meet her last year when she came to a local library to promote her latest book. She was every bit as wonderful in person as I’d hoped she’d be.
Satisfied. I finished this book tonight and I am completely satisfied. I was drawn into the story right away. Scotland, both now and in 1908, is an appealing setting and the idea of a successful woman being able to pick up and move anywhere in the world to world is exciting. I admit to being a little confused in the earlier chapters by all of the people and politics of 1708, but I got a handle on most of them and dismissed the others until they became useful in the story.
I was rooting for Carrie and Sophia to find love and happiness. I was sure of Carrie’s fate and hopeful for Sophia, but I did get nervous. I also kind of love that Sophia’s happy ending did not include everything she wanted. I shed tears and that’s not something I do often when reading a novel.
My love of genealogy was celebrated and Carrie’s discovery of ancestral memory was a fun one to consider. We all know we share DNA with our ancestors, why not the memories of them too? It’s safe to say that we won’t come close to this romantic notion in our own experience, but it is fun to dream.
A book full of love, political intrigue, strong women, strong men, mystery, and both storylines were good. I wish there’d been more of Carrie’s story but that’s because I’m greedy. I didn’t want it to end!
I loved The Winter Sea and this is a continuation of that story. I didn’t love it as much as its predecessor for one big reason. It also tells two stories, a modern one that links to a historical one, but in this book the modern story is not at all engaging. It involves two people who can read minds and travel in time by using their paranormal abilities. It was just to hard for me to care about Nicola and to a lesser extent, Rob. They could do too much. It was too easy. This was pretty much the first third of the book so I made a slow go of it. Once we got to Anna’s story in Imperial Russia, I loved it! Anna is the true star and I loved every minute of her adventures.
This was my least favorite of all of her books. If she hadn’t written it I would have given up on it before the halfway point. There was a nice twist at the end that was a reward for making it that far, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Mariana, one of my favorites, from my thoughts in 2017, the only one of her books I’ve read twice.
Here were my first thoughts on Goodreads when I finished this one, “My love affair with Susanna Kearsley continues. This was one of her first books and it may be my favorite so far. I didn’t want it to end. I was worried that the ending would be all wrong. But it wasn’t. It was perfect.” There is something so magical and romantic about her stories. There is history, romance, and a perfect sense of place in all of her books. This one also felt a little like a ghost story.
Julia was sure she’d found her house and she packed up and moved from London to a small English village without a second thought. She was a children’s book illustrator and was able to make a few friends right away just as she was being transported back in time at unpredictable times.
It’s tricky when you are going back and forth between time periods and characters. Inevitably, you are drawn more to one story than the other. This one did a great job of tying the two together so I was invested in both. Was this book, the first time she tried the time travel travel romance, perfect? No. Was it perfect enough to have me rereading the last few chapters again and again because I wasn’t quite ready for it to end? A resounding YES!
I love all of Susanna Kearsley’s books, but this is a favorite. King James has tasked Andrew Logan to find Sir David Moray and bring him back to the king to answer for the death of the prince. I LOVED the group making their way to the king while trying to escape from groups with competing interests.
There’s history, love in all its forms, second site, betrayal, respect, loyalty, and revenge. It’s fun and left me feeling satisfied for the futures of the characters. The authors note at the end tells what is based on truth (quite a bit) and what was made up in the mind of a gifted storyteller.
Sara, as explained early on, has Asperger syndrome. Her best friend is her cousin, who is offering her a chance at a code breaking job in Paris. A famous writer wants her to decipher an almost 300 year old diary and she accepts since she is between jobs. She gets put up at a nice home with a cook and with a good looking man who catches her eye as a neighbor. She begins to uncover Mary’s story, one that could easily be called a thriller, and it’s there that this book finds its heart.
I liked Sara and enjoyed the honest portrayal of a character on the autism spectrum, but it was Mary that had me turning the pages, hoping that she would get her happily ever after. For a girl abandoned by her family and then used to curry favor, she was easy to love. In the 1700s a trek from Paris to Italy was fraught with danger, especially when you were caught with a man who recognized the bounty on the head of her travel companions. I won’t spoil Mary’s end, but I will say that it was fitting.
Kearsley is a master at the dual storylines set in different time periods. Usually the storylines match up a bit better than they do in this one and there is most often more of a mystical aspect, but I was still happy to be reading.
I fell in love with Susanna Kearsley’s storytelling with The Winter Sea which connected to The Firebird which is connected to this one. They are all standalones, but you’ll recognize the Roman soldiers from this one in The Winter Sea and Robbie from this book appears all grown up in The Firebird. Just go ahead and read them all (you know you want to).
Verity makes a temporary move from London to Eyemouth, Scotland, a border town with a rich history. She is to help find evidence that the famed Ninth Roman Legion had been there. Archeological digs are not that exciting when they’re just starting out, so the slower pace allows Verity to get a feel for the new place and the new people who will feel like family before all is said and done. While most of Kearsley’s stories have contained dual story lines, one in the past and one in the present, this one was different with just a modern story and one active ghost.
Kearsley is one of my favorites. I always enjoy the trip into her magical worlds. This one had history, mystery, danger, just a touch of romance, and some paranormal shenanigans.
This was my first book of the year and it took me a while to become invested in the three characters whose stories make up Bellewether. Charley who moved to the area so that she could live with her niece after the untimely death of her brother, took a job as museum director of the under construction Wilde House. There she encountered maybe my favorite character of the book, the ghost. There was also a cute contractor and some animosity toward the grandmother she’d never met who lived nearby.
As for the 1700’s storyline, we move between Lydia and Jean-Philippe’s perspective as the former tries to come to grips with unwanted houseguests and brothers with problems of their own. Jean-Philippe only spoke French, so for much of the book he didn’t communicate freely.
I liked getting a deeper understanding of the war and what was happening in the region. Some of these characters were based on real people or compilations which made the story richer, but maybe not quite as fanciful as I’d hoped. There was romance, sure, but most of Kearsley’s books feel magical and this one didn’t quite get there for me. It’s still good and I really enjoyed the multitude of characters and history. My favorite ghost saved the day and the end was excellent and worth reading 400+ pages.
Any book that takes me to Italy starts as a winner and when Kearsley does it, well, don’t talk to me until I’ve turned the last page. This one felt different than all of her others, there was a gothic atmosphere that I always like. I liked the setting and the dark nature of it, Italy and Kearsley will always save a bad day.
Susanna Kearsley is a perfect escape for me. I fall into a different world, both geographically and historically, get a little romance (never too much), and close the book with a smile on my face a little smarter than when I started. This book took me to a small village in Wales, where literary agent, Lyn, is accompanying one of her clients to her boyfriend’s home for Christmas. He happens to be a successful author and Lyn hopes she can land him as a client. He also has a cute brother, but the real thrill is when she discovers one time flavor of the month writer, Gareth, hiding himself from the literary crowd.
Kearsley has officially become a comfort read for me. This was my third read from her and each of them has left me satisfied and happy. There is always a back story that takes place in another time that connects with the current story in some way. This book had less of the back story, which I think it suffered for, but the mystery, romance, and yes, evil all combined to make this a fun read.
The essence of the setting is always so easily felt and her writing is so accessible that once I get started I find it hard to put down. There were so many potential bad guys in this one that I didn’t really have and handle on it until late in the game, but those smarter than I probably figured it out much sooner.
The Rose Garden was set on the Cornish coast with Eva traveling between today and the time of the Jacobite Rebellion. I had to resist the urge to peek at the last page to see how things ended up. Rest assured, everything was good.
This one had an extra twist to the time travel storyline that was as confusing to my brain as it was a fun twist at the end.
This book is a collaboration with three other women, none of whom I’ve read before. I’m going to ruin the surprise and tell you that I loved this.
There once was a watch made from cursed gold and it ruined the lives of all who touched it. The four women seamlessly tell the tale of the watch, from its inception in 1700s Spain (Kearsley), to 1831 Scotland (Huber), 1870 London (Trent), and finally to 1944 Kent (Harris). The authors use characters from their previous books or series which will make their readers happy, but didn’t confuse me when I wasn’t familiar. It only made me want to read more about them.
You can see who else is on my Top 100 Authors list here.
Since I sort book donations at the library and frequent bookstores I decided to start this challenge with countries that cross my path organically, we’ll see how far that gets me. Sweden was the next country to have both a fiction and nonfiction book come through the book donations which makes it country number 3.
I think the nonfiction book was great in representing Sweden and its traditions. I enjoyed the fiction for more on what the day to day looks like.
I first started with this slim memoir. The subtitle Life Wisdom from Someone Who Will (Probably) Die Before You gives you a sense of the author’s humor. Magnusson shot to notoriety with her first book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning and although I didn’t read it, she does touch on it in the book, even giving some tips at the end. Essentially, once you hit middle age you should start decluttering little by little so that when you die, the ones you leave behind don’t have to deal with it.
This book was more about stories of her life. During WWII her parents evacuating Margareta and her sister to a farm to stay with friends to keep them safe when their town was considered a target of Hitler. She moved to the United States for a few years with her family and leaned English from dubbed TV. Due to her husband’s job they and their five children moved to many countries briefly before settling back in Sweden. Now she lives alone in an apartment in the city and here gives her thoughts on getting older along with stories about Swedish life. I loved learning about the traditions.
“The moment you start thinking it is too late, then you begin to die.”
I was completely charmed by her and loved this book! Highly recommend and I’ll be looking for her first book now. Sadly, she died this month at the age of 91 and her daughter confirmed that she let her attic and basement empty.
“Another thing I’m happy about is my old books. I like the books of Somerset Maugham-my husband introduced me to his work. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tove Jansson, David Sedaris, Kristina Lugn, Kazuo Ishiguro, and many more. I don’t want to get rid of any of them. Many new ones get published every year that I should perhaps read for a first time, but instead I read my old ones for the fifth, sixth, or seventh times. They are old friends.”
I read and loved A Man Called Ove by Backman a few years ago and yet still managed to not read any of his other books. This is a book about the beauty of fairytales.
Elsa is just 7 and leaps and bounds smarter than anyone she goes to school with. She gets into fights at school daily. Her grandmother is 77 and Elsa’s best friend. And she is a hoot. I loved her character so much.
The book opens with Elsa and her grandmother in an interview room at the jail waiting for Elsa’s mom to come pick them up 😆.
While I shed a tear or two and I ended up liking this one, I was not invested in the first half. It may be because I listened to it while driving and maybe I missed some important stuff in the beginning.
“If you can’t get rid of the bad, you have to top it up with more goody stuff.”
That certainly applies to the state of the world these days.
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.
I’m rereading books from my long ago compiled favorite books list to see if they should make my Top 100. This is a slow moving project, but one that this list maker enjoys. So, I first read this book when it came out in the 1990s and I remember being blown away by how good it was. I saw the movie they made with Billy Bob Thornton and was less than impressed, but I’m going to give that another try while the book is fresh.
Two brothers and one of their best friends happen upon a plane crash with a dead pilot and $4.4 million inside. They agree to a simple plan. One of them will take the money home and keep it for six months and if no one comes forward claiming it then they’ll divide up the money and go their separate ways. Obviously if that had happened there would be no book. What did happen was one bad decision after another that left the narrator, one of the brothers, hurtling toward the point of no return. He had a wife with a baby on the way and while he threatened to burn the money to keep the other two in check, it became obvious to everyone that he would never do that.
“Greed is what’ll get us caught,’ she said.
What’s so great about this book is that the moral questions are timeless. There is a depth to these characters because they are not criminal masterminds, they are just normalish people in small town Ohio. And parts will make you uncomfortable. Quite a few parts probably. As I reread this, I realized that three of the most disturbing parts didn’t even register in my memory, although I have no idea how I could have forgotten them.
The money, by giving us a chance to dream, had also allowed us to begin despising our present lives.
Will their plan work? It’s simple after all. As a reader you need to know what happens to the money and Smith escalates, shocks, and has you questioning what you would do at every turn. I don’t think that many thrillers will make it on my Top 100 list, but this one hits differently
“What we’ve done is horrible,” Sarah said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re evil, and it doesn’t mean we weren’t right to do it. We had to save ourselves.”
I finally finished my second book for this challenge. I really need to pick up the pace. Since I sort book donations at the library and frequent bookstores I decided to start this challenge with countries that cross my path organically, we’ll see how far that gets me. The fiction book showed up in my quarterly TBR box and the memoir came through the library donations.
A memoir by Kyoto Mori telling of her trip back to Japan after living in the US since college. 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.
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. A fun magical fiction book for Japan.
***
That being said here are four books I’ve read and liked in the last few years that were set in Japan.
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.
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!
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
On September 11 I participated in one of the Day of Service events. The Cleveland State University arena was packed with volunteers who packed meals to be distributed by the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. I was part of the clean up crew and by the time I got there at 11am they had already packed 290,000 meals! It was amazingly organized and I hope to participate again.
I also had tickets to see The Notebook musical at Playhouse Square that night at 7:30, so I decided to spend the time in between just exploring downtown Cleveland. I found an outdoor music performance while I ate and went to the library to charge my phone. I read in a church park and did some list making. I mostly walked. I met Jason for drinks and dinner before the show. It was a great day.
I listened to Lethal Prey by John Sandford This is #35 in the Lucas Davenport series (I’ve read them all) and #19 of the Virgil Flowers series (I’ve not read all of these). I like both of these detectives separately, but together they are perfection if you like police/FBI procedurals. The bad guy in this one was a cold, cold woman who made me look around and wonder what seemingly normal people I know are just offing people who get in their way.
I also listened to Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. This is the first in the Throne of Glass series and I will probably continue with the series. It’s about an assassin forced to compete in a series of tests against the worst of the worst where there will be only one winner and many will die. She’s the only female, and a teen at that. This fantasy series is addicting like the author’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series, but so far there’s been no hot fairy sex. And I okay with that!
What I’m currently reading
Waking Lionsby Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is my fiction pick for Israel and I really like it, but it’s not something I’m racing through. An Isreali doctor hits man with his car and watches him die. The wife of the man tracks him down a has a proposal for her to keep quiet about it.
I’ve read 92 books this year so far.
What we watched
For family movie night we watched I Am Legend. I’d seen this post apocalyptic movie before but had blocked out most of it. There were tears, hiding behind pillows and stress. That was all from me. My two guys loved it.
What I made
A cousin sent me a recipe for Stuffed Pepper Soup and I made it for the first time. I loved it and it was so easy to make. Don’t know what’s taken me so long.
Plans for the weekend
I’ve got an online reading club meet up at 1:30 and may have to go in to the library to facilitate a donation, but other that that it’s laundry! What about you?
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done one of these. But as fall weather rolls in, so does my desire to jump back on here and gab about books, movies, and maybe Gage too. I miss it.
Challenge: This week I started a new challenge I’m calling Reading the World. The post is here and I’m looking for recommendations for books from other countries. Here are recommendations I need today…Fiction books written by and set in Pakistan, Poland, Sierra Leone, Vietnam. And nonfiction books by people from and set in the countries of Afghanistan, Canada, Columbia, Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Trinidad&Tobago, and Egypt.
I started the challenge with Israel because I had both a nonfiction and fiction book. When I finish I’ll move on to Sweden because I have both books ready to go.
Finished this week: Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas. I love her historical romances, but this first of the Bow Street Runners series was not a favorite. I love her so much that I’ll still pick up the second one.
I’m listening to Lethal Prey by John Sandford, the 35th book in the Lucas Davenport series. This one also has Virgil Flowers and I love them together. The murderer in this one is pretty cold. Makes me look around at some normal looking people with suspicion.
Movies: Jason and I watch Sinners this week. What a weird and compelling movie. I both loved the original storytelling and didn’t care for the twist, lol. And for family movie night we watched Escape Room on Netflix. We like escape rooms, just not ones this deadly. We all liked the movie though.
TV: We’re working our way through The Middle. I think we’re on season 5 and we all love it, Gage especially. Jason and I watched the first episode of the Great Bristish Bake Off. We’re in a pool that Jason won last season so he’s under some pressure to do well this time too.
Puzzles: Today I’m hosting a puzzle swap at my house. I’ve been having an informal Little Free Puzzle Library on my porch since January and needed to clean out the 70+ puzzles that have been acquired. This is the 1000piece+ table.
This weekend: So far it’s been fairly quiet. I see lots of laundry in my future today and most likely a family game. What about you?
I’m back! I’ve been unable to use my blog for weeks but think everything is okay now. Bloggers know how frustrating this can be. I haven’t used my blog as much as Instagram these past few years because I wasn’t able to use my own photos. I still haven’t entirely fixed that problem but did manage to get this one on here so there is hope.
On September 1st I embarked on a new challenge. I’m calling it Reading the World and I’m going to attempt to read a fiction AND nonfiction book from every country in the world.
I’ve been toying with the idea for a few years and finding a few people attempting to read one book from each country on Instagram gave me the push I needed. I’m going to use the current UN list of 193 countries, but am opening to reading the territories too if books are recommended, but it’s not a priority.
I need your help! The rule (made this up myself) is that the author must be from the country and the book must be set in the country. There’s wiggle room for sci-fi or fantasy where the setting is fluid. Please recommend favorite books! I combed my shelves and pulled out this stack, once I have one fiction and one nonfiction from a county it gets read. The only one I had to start was Israel, so I’m currently reading there.
Send me any recommendations and especially these since I already have one book. I need nonfiction books for these countries. I’m partial to memoirs, but anything is fine. Canada, Afghanistan, Japan, Poland, Nigeria, Sweden, S Korea, Trinidad &Tobago. I need fiction options from Sierra Leone and Pakistan. I’m open to kids books too, sometimes those are my favorites!
I’ll be on here more since I’ll be tracking my progress. I’m excited for this challenge and excited to blog more. I’ve missed it.
Stacy's Books 