Is it just me or is the name “Alice” in just about everything I’ve been reading recently? I was looking over this website and happened to notice that the name Alice wanted to leap from every other page. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, After Alice, The Alice Network, Alice in The Glittering Hour. And that’s just the book references. We can go further back than just recently as well: Alice shows up as a name in quite a few things – including Twilight. I mean, I like the name Alice. I do. Some of my favorite […]
Book Review: The Glittering Hour
This one was a bit heart-wrenching. The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey is the kind of book you pick up thinking that it is going to be sweet – and it is on a number of levels. Most of the story is told through the perspective of Alice, daughter of one of the “Bright Young Things” that everyone talked about in the 1920s. And certainly, it starts off sweetly enough. Alice’s mother has put together a treasure hunt for her. A treasure hunt to explain how Alice came to be. And then you find yourself […]
Book Review: Uprooted
Uprooted by Naomi Novik was recommended to me as something to read to help with the end-of-book depression that I experienced at the end of The Starless Sea. Suffice it to say that it had been coming up more and more frequently in my suggested reading – whether it was Goodreads, What Should I Read Next?, or any of the other go-to sources of suggested reading material. Of course, Naomi Novik was not completely unknown to me. I had picked up Spinning Silver as my Book of the Month Club pick when that came out. […]
Book Review: The Alice Network
I’m spending some time this month going over the books I read in 2019 and thinking about whether I ought to fix the fact that I never wrote out a proper review for them. (If you looked at my post 2019 in Books: The Full Rundown, you’ll get a picture of everything that I read this year.) A fair number of those books were read for book club (better known as the CH Armchair Detective Society). The purpose of this book club was mostly for work – better team bonding, but doing so in the […]
Book Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue
Woah. I had no idea what to expect out of this book, but it was clearly written in the time around the 2016 election. There was so much hope in this book. Hope and fear and feeling and wishing for this alternate universe in some form or another. This was the book I was expecting, but also not at all the book I was expecting. Casey, you wonderful, wonderful human being – thank you for this! Interestingly, what comes to mind about this book is a quote I heard this morning from Kate DiCamillo in […]
Book Review: One Day in December
Well – as far as premises go, this one was pretty contrived. I typically am fairly okay with a contrived story line as long as it is well told. Unfortunately, that was not what I experienced with One Day in December. The story has a basic take-off point: Girl has bad day, girl gets on packed bus, girl sees boy sitting at bus stop, boy sees girl, neither of them actually get on/off bus to meet the other, girl spends a year looking for boy. Girl finally meets boy at a party and is introduced […]
BOTM: December 2019
Hey all! It’s that time of month again! My Book of the Month box has arrived! (Okay – note here that I said again and yet… I’ve never done one of these posts before! And yet – “again” is certainly true… This is my 36th box from Book of the Month.) This month I chose Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Because I’m also a BOTM BFF (I did say 36 boxes), I got an extra book for my birthday. I chose The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey. Ever since I chose Red, […]
2019 in Books: The Full Rundown
Since 2019 (as described in my last post) was the year of the book, I wanted to do a full rundown of everything I read this year. I read so many books I couldn’t put down – and I’m not even sure I’ve actually got them all on this list, but I think I’ve got most of them. So here we go: Currently Reading: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett The Shortest Day: Murder at the Revels by Jane Langton Best of the Lot: My Favorites Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by […]
2019: Year of the Book + A Review of The Starless Sea
If 2019 is nothing else, I would say it became the Year of the Book. I’ve always considered myself an avid reader, but this year was above and beyond what I’ve read in the past (or at least, since homework made reading for fun more difficult to find time for). 2018 was almost The Year of the Book. (It certainly started that way between The Philosopher’s Flight and The English Wife – both books I could not put down.) However, 2019 will get credit for the sheer number of good books I read that I […]
Dear Madam President: A Response
I can’t exactly call this a book review. The only review-like thing I can really honestly say is that Jennifer Palmieri’s book, Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World, is exactly what I needed after the year and a half we have been through since the results of the 2016 election. I was drawn to the book after hearing an article or podcast (potentially NPR?) mention it – specifically her chapter on “Nod Less, Cry More”. I was intrigued. But there was so much more in here than just sage, […]