I am totally stealing this from my Facebook memories. I wish I could credit the artist/author but I have no idea who that might be! Still, I love a good grammar joke!

🤣😂🤣

Every couple of years I make it a point to catch up with this series to see what the brightest minds in science writing are concerned with. This year there was a lot on the coronavirus, naturally. But also interesting articles about rabbit hemorrhagic fever, toxic dumping of DDT into the Pacific Ocean, earthworms, and the unsung heroine of lichenology. I love getting good science writing for the layperson on a variety of topics. Solid PICK for me.

Most rabbits have, in their skill set, the ability to pretend that they're healthy even when they're quite sick.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

My #WeeklyForecast for all of December. Ambitious. But I do have some time off coming up. The top row is all books I'm committed to: #doublespin (@TheAromaofBooks) #OokBOokClub (@JulesG) #IRLBookClub #NYRBBookClub (@vivastory) #ARC #bookspin.
The second row is mostly #LibraryLottery but I'd also like to try and fit in a couple for #cloakanddaggerchristmas (@merelybookish) and some #inprogress.

We'll see where things end up I guess!
@Cinfhen

Spinning Wheel of Book Fate, you have really outdone yourself this month. The tagged book (my #BookSpin) has been on my list for 5 years! Anyone who wants to search for the tagged title will see my first post on this title from 2016.
And the #DoubleSpin! How many times has #HOL defeated me!? I hope the #DoubleSpin will be the charm!
Looking forward to December reading!
@TheAromaofBooks

Hey, look at this! A #BookReport that's actually on time. Above is my report for the month of November. I did not finish as many books as I did in October. The top row are the books that I finished. All of them are really good!

The bottom row are all books in progress for various reasons. The #LibraryLottery has been impacting my reading *hard* this month. Plus more #chunksters on the month's #TBR. Pressing on!

@Cinfhen

Working on my #puzzleswap puzzle tonight. 🧩🧩 I'm going to be at this for awhile. 😊👍😄

Getting in a little nonfiction before the end of #NonfictionNovember. Reading COVID stories from last year & realizing not much has changed. We know so little about this virus & we don't even know if we're using the best methods to track & fight it. Also a NYC ER & how the doctors grapple with life & death decisions. When you can't treat everyone how do you decide who to treat? I don't think they are all COVID stories though, thank goodness! 😊

Whoooo!! I am SOOO READY for #BookSpin December! Woot! Bring it on! 😄

@TheAromaofBooks

The Triumph of Mechanics is a creepy story about mechanical rabbits that take over a town just in sheer numbers. Written by Karl Hans Strobl before he became a Nazi propaganda writer.

This is my #doublespin #bookspin for November!
@TheAromaofBooks

A little weird and a little wacky and perhaps just a little bit true. I was confused, I laughed, but ultimately I enjoyed spending a little time with Vincent D'Onofrio's mind.

Gerasimos met Theodora one summer in Pieria when she was just twelve years old and he was twenty-seven.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Admired and beloved, scorned and reviled, influential, controversial, and timeless, Eleanor Roosevelt changed history.

#firstlinefridays (a little late)
@ShyBookOwl

1. Completing a #bookspin book every month so far.

2. The tagged chunkster I'm working on.
#TwoForTuesday @TheSpineView

Thanks for the tag @EadieB!

@Sola Raynor @hollyvoncount @ICantImReading @IndoorDame Do you want to play?

THIS. IS. SO. AWESOME!!! Thank you so much @EH2018!! I can not wait to break this box open and get this puzzle underway!

Thank you for organizing this #puzzleswap @rather_be_reading!

November 15 is now officially Puzzle Day for me! 🧩🧩🧩 Woot!☺️😍

Squeezing in my #BookReport for October before November is over! I managed to read a lot of books in October. I also read a lot of really good books in October! A good reading month!

@Cinfhen

Hinode Beer Company, Kanagawa Factory,
To Whom It May Concern:

I, Seiji Okamura, am one of the forty employees who resigned from the Kanagawa factory of Hinode at the end of this past February.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

The first black man with a doctorate in tuba performance is an amazing story. But Mr. White's story gets even more amazing than this. He grew up destitute and homeless on the streets of Baltimore with his drug addicted mom. The story of how he fought his way out and the people who helped him on the way is uplifting and inspiring. I greatly recommend this book to anyone who needs some inspiration. 5 ⭐

Yes! Lots of good books in read October. 5 ⭐ for The End of Vandalism! About a small midwestern town (I place it in northeast IA) where nothing much seems to happen while people go about living their lives. Those lives encompass humor & passion & tragedy & redemption. The humor is delivered straight in what I like to call “midwestern dry.“ The action starts at the local high school where The End to Vandalism dance is being held to raise funds.

Joan is a mid-30s Chinese-American ICU doctor. Joan is hyper-focused on her career & doesn't know about things like Seinfeld or interior design. Joan is quite literal & assesses people by how much space they take up. Joan has social anxiety. Joan's older brother is deeply invested in her life choices. Joan's parents returned to Shanghai to live, but her father recently died. Joan has some issues. But you know what? Joan really is Okay. 5 ⭐ 👍

Claire Keegan is becoming a must-read author for me. I love her spare, strong writing style. This collection of short stories, while not all complete winners, are all worth your time. If you need more Irish writers on your #TBR, Keegan is a strong choice! I come away from reading them feeling like I've learned something true about what it means to be Irish.

This counts for my short story #bookspin commitment for the month!
@TheAromaofBooks

Earlier, the women came with flowers, each one a deeper shade of red.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

So it is to be short stories for the month of November. So says the spinning Wheel of Book Fate! At least this month should be easy to complete. 😊
#bookspin #doublespin
@TheAromaofBooks

Wanted to get my #bookspin up before the actually spinning for November! So here it is! I like how many books #bookspin clears off my #TBR!

@TheAromaofBooks

Hello @EH2018! This is arriving much more quickly than I thought it would. I hope it is not inconvenient!? It's coming direct from Amazon, so it's not marked!! 😳 #puzzleswap

@rather_be_reading

Finished It! #doublespin for October! I enjoyed meeting Blaine the Pain. Sorry that didn't happen until the end of the book. Blaine is obviously depressed. Perhaps because he's a monorail bullet train, not a steam engine as pictured on the cover! I'm enjoying these books even if they aren't ever going to be my lifelong favorites. Something about Stephen King's authorial voice just bugs me too much to really get into his books.

@TheAromaofBooks

A man with small eyes and a ginger moustache came and spoke to me when I was thinking of something else.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Switching from Pratchett to King tonight in an attempt to complete all my reading goals for the month. Bedtime is probably the wrong time of day to start reading Stephen King!

The Library of America is having a sale on boxed sets. No affiliation. Just thought people here might be interested.
https://loa.org/books/collections/3-boxed-sets?no_lightbox=1

#booksale

What in the heck did I just read!? Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Looking forward to the #nyrbbookclub discussion!

OK, this is a small thing that got into my head & now I can't get rid of the thought. Perhaps a fellow Litten can ease my mind. 😊 I am totally weirded out by the hyphen in the center Wintersmith cover. It's absolutely correct, but it looks totally weird on a cover to me. I'm wondering what made the publisher decide to put a hyphen in the title?! See the other Wintersmith covers for reference. ⬇

Absolutely not what I should have been reading if I want to meet my end-of-month goals. But I couldn't resist any longer. I tore through this 400+ page book in a little under 24 hours. I just love the Lincoln Lawyer books. I haven't found any other legal thrillers out there that I like as well. In this one Mickey Haller finds himself defending. . . himself.

5 ⭐ for The Law of Innocence.

The last book in The Last Policeman series. Such a great series! Each book has a slightly different feel to it, but as we get closer & closer to the asteroid hitting earth, it's understandable how one's focus might shift. The series is very noir in feel as the protagonist battles shadowy bad guys & the story keeps shifting. The end resolves satisfactorily; at least it did for me. 5 ⭐

One fall they held the blood drive in the fire barn at Grafton. Sheriff Dan Norman was there mainly as a gesture of good will, but one of the nurses didn't make it, so Dan agreed to place the gauze in the crook of everyone's arm. "And I thank you," he would say.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Barbara Pym is one of those authors that I've always been meaning to get to. So when my friend said let's do this book as a buddy-read, I jumped on it! But I don't think this was the book for me. I found it too sad and disheartening. I gather this one book was published several years after her first few books were published. It wasn't quite the tone I was expecting.

Before October is over, here is my round-up for September #BookReport.
I wasn't expecting to like The Slynx given that it's Russian future, post-nuclear dystopian science fiction (or possibly a dark fable). But it had some really good things to say and it was dark but with with and humor.
Plus it's a book out of Out of this World, which is a guide to speculative fiction in translation. This book is going to do serious damage to my #TBR.
@Cinfhen

5 Extra Big ⭐s!

I love Elena Ferrante's writing and I love this second book in her Neapolitan series. I've never come across what I think is a more realistic depiction of female friendship and now in this book, transition from girlhood to adult.

I think I've been waiting to read this because once I start reading a literally can't stop and once I've read all the books then I won't have them to read for the first time anymore!

I really enjoyed this debut novel. I received an #ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The story of 3 English-Nigerian friends living in London. I've read reviews that compares this to Sex & the City & it does have elements of that but this group of friends has been together since college days. Now in their thirties, some are married, some have careers, when a 4th friend from the past enters the group & starts to shake things up.

Well I sort of sped through this book. Can't say I enjoyed all the chess game descriptions and theory, since I know nothing about chess. And for a story about chess, the plot was fairly predictable.

I gather the show based on the book is much better. This seems like fiction for chess aficionados. But it was an easy, fast read with a memorable main character so it's a so-so for me.

I don't know. Ultimately I liked this book and I know Neal Stephenson writes really long books, but I feel like this book could have used some paring down. Plus I wasn't sure what the main thrust of the story was supposed to be? Was it an internet cautionary tale? Was it a story of have and have-nots? Was it a biblical retelling? Was it a technology cautionary tale? ⬇
#ARC @WilliamMorrowBooks
This was my #bookspin for September!
@TheAromaofBooks

Late with my #bookspin again! But I am excited about this month's #bookspin and #doublespin selections. Both long books again; same as last month and I only got through one of those. But given the way I tore through My Brilliant Friend, I don't think it will take long to get through The Story of a New Name. And Stephen King also reads fast! Fingers crossed I think I might be able to finish them both!
@TheAromaofBooks

A very touching tribute to his parents by Rodrigo Garcia on the occasion of their deaths. His father just happens to be a literary GIANT of the 20th century. Rodrigo chronicles every small detail of first his father's and then his mother's death. Despite all the television cameras, this could be any son writing with love about his father.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

⬇

I received a complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review of this book.
This is the story of Charlotte Lucas from Pride & Prejudice who is Lizzy Bennet's best friend and agrees to marry Mr. Collins shortly after Lizzy has refused him.

I like reading in the Jane Austen universe (it's really fan fiction, isn't it!?) but this one did not hold up for me. And ultimately I don't think the author treated Jane Austen's characters with respect. ⬇

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Thank you to the author for an advance copy of this book. Out of This World is going to be a must-have title for anyone interested in speculative fiction and/or world literature. The book is organized by language (as it should be for discussion about writers) and covers the countries where that language is spoken. The author covers many languages that you don‘t often hear about or connect to speculative fiction such as Hebrew, Czech, and Arabic.

Thank you to GroveAtlantic for this opportunity to review the #ARC. #Edelweiss #Netgalley

Small Things Like These is set in Ireland in the mid-1980s recession as we follow Bill Furlong through several days approaching Christmas. As the holiday season approaches, Bill reflects on his life, both present and past. Bill's life is pretty ordinary, except when you look closely and really notice things; it's the small things that matter.

Just to make the September #Bookspin official. I thought I was about halfway through Fall or, Dodge in Hell. Turns out I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this 800+ chunkster! And Eleanor Roosevelt v. 3 is about 700 pages. Got my work cut out for me this month!

@TheAromaofBooks

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must naturally assume that any woman possessed of less will welcome his proposal of marriage.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

I recently watched the movie Selma, so it was interesting to see the story from John Lewis's point of view. I only got through book one, but it was excellent. Looking forward to books 2 & 3! #doublespin for August!

@TheAromaofBooks

#Bookspin!!! I think I made it just in time! Even though I haven't officially ticked off my #doublespin for August. I'll do that next. 😁

@TheAromaofBooks