In this two-part novel, there is ONLINE, and then there is REAL LIFE. Being fully engaged in one means you are absent from the other. But when our main character‘s family needs her, the pull of reality trumps the cultivated nonsense of the virtual bubble. I admit I did not feel quite internet-savvy enough to completely grasp all of part one. Part two was what really captured me. It just broke me open at times. A very unique book.

A perfectly pleasant little romance. Not really my thing.

This novel is more like reading someone‘s journal, their private thoughts. It is a meditation on loss, grief, and writing. It is also about friendship - both the human and animal kind - and being a writer. Unusual and surprising.

This is an epic journey and well worth the 600+ pages to see it through. Impossible to describe the multilayered plot, and it would ruin it to know too much anyway. This exquisite novel involves multiple storylines, characters, and historical eras that Doerr manages to weave together in the most surprising and creative ways. Be prepared for leaps in time and imagination - you must have a bit of patience before the dots start connecting. Superb!

What a delightful start to the new year. This book of essays are incredibly personal, candid, and moving. The chapter on her choice to not have children was so forthright and interesting - a subject not often addressed. She touches on many of the great loves in her life - crucial friendships, her three fathers, her marriage, and of course her love of books and writing. I just ate it up.

Having a big snow in Tennessee means everything shuts down. So I‘m happy to have a day or two to read all day. ❄️☃️

This was really good. A nice thriller with a touch of humor and lots of colorful characters. Also an interesting exploration of national public lands and parks management, and cultural artifacts and appropriation.

My last book of 2021! Looking forward to great books for 2022. Happy New Year!

Okay @britt_brooke , challenge accepted! Here‘s my #Top21in21

@LouLouLane @mom2bugnbee @Booksnchill @ferskner @adnama82 @Elma

Oh how I loved this! Thoroughly engaging, gorgeously written, and a JOY to read. It‘s an incredibly entertaining story following four main characters whose lives and fortunes become entangled in one whirlwind week. A road trip/personal quest/adventure/coming of age delight!

A lovely, thoughtful little sci-fi story.

A delightful series!

A tiny little book about an author‘s feelings about book covers. Such an interesting take. Also finished my Goodreads Challenge- 80 books!

Kind of like a Hallmark movie minus the romance. I wanted a fluffy, uncomplicated book to read during the holidays and this fit the bill nicely. Three single women in their 50s sell their individual homes and buy a dilapidated southern home to renovate. I did love that it was just about their friendship. It wrapped up at Christmastime with a lovely feel-good ending that was absolutely predictable but I enjoyed it all the same.

Got together with my #Nashvillelittens in person last night for the first time in 2 years! Thank God and Dolly Parton for vaccines 🙌🏼 Thanks to @ferskner for hosting us and being the best secret Santa! It was a joy to hang out with all these amazing women. I came home with a perfect pile to read over the holidays. Merry Christmas to me 🎄📚

@Booksnchill @britt_brooke @Elma @LouLouLane @mom2bugnbee @adnama82
#LitsyMeetUp

Sort of a contemporary Harry Met Sally kind of vibe. It‘s funny and sexy and I just loved the whole thing. The audiobook is fantastic.

I liked the premise, and I was definitely carried along by the story, but it didn‘t exactly all add up. It seemed to point you in one direction and then not quite go there. Is this an examination of a marriage? A political thing? A mystery maybe? A past secret rearing up to cause trouble? All seemed possible at one point or another, but no real follow through. So I guess I enjoyed it but it wasn‘t particularly satisfying.

This is a wonderfully odd book, with a bleak humor that is right in my wheelhouse. Gilda is a ball of anxiety, depression, and existential angst, and yet she still won me over in no time. Austin‘s descriptions of Gilda‘s inner dialogue of lethargy and emotional dislocation are spot-on. You‘re just rooting for her every moment. Really loved this.

Grateful to have one last book from Rachel Held Evans. Jeff Chu does a wonderful job taking her last partial manuscript and holding onto her voice throughout. Chu threads in some familiar bits from her past stories and writings, so it feels complete. It also has a forward from Rachel‘s husband Dan, and comments from Chu and Nadia Bolz-Weber, which was lovely to include. Sad this is her last book, but thankful for her enduring legacy.

It is bittersweet reading this last book by Rachel Held Evans. Her writing meant so much to me, and I‘m glad to have one more chance to hear from her, but so so sad that she died so young and there will be no more. She was smart and brave and called BS when she saw it. She questioned everything about her faith and God. I miss her voice in the world.

All done with the 2021 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. Woo hoo!

A slim book of observed wisdom gleaned from Nelson Mandela, written by biographer and friend Richard Stengel. The book presents some beautiful lessons while sharing snippets and stories from Mandela‘s fascinating and varied life experiences.

This was also my final book for the @bookriot #readharderchallenge!

A useful disability 101 primer aimed mostly at a non-disabled audience. An excellent starting point for basic concepts, practices, and info on how to be more informed, and a better ally to the disabled community.

A rare and interesting look into North Korea, told by a Korean woman who spent several months there teaching English to elite college students. The students total lack of connection to the rest of the world was astounding, as was her own experience in the isolated country.

I‘m VERY late to the party here and just got around to reading this book. It was indeed as delightful and charming as I had been told. And hopeful. After spending the last year and a half with Covid reducing my outings and altering my world, maybe the Count‘s circumstances resonate in a different way. It feels timely.

A big-hearted, charming book about a woman who finds belonging in an unconventional chosen family. A lovely feel good read.

This series is great. You don‘t have to remember anything really to enjoy the next one after a break. They‘re clever and fun, and the Horowitz/Hawthorne pairing is thoroughly amusing. You MUST listen to the audiobooks. Narrator Rory Kinnear is fabulous!

This was a lovely book to curl up with on a cloudy day. Three generations living together in a house on the coast of Maine. A couple raises three children in the house with their beloved grandmother who is slowly getting lost to dementia. If you like Anne Tyler, this might be up your alley.

A look into Broome‘s childhood in Ohio, where he as a young black queer boy was met with hostility, ostracism, and racism. His adulthood in a bigger city was still fraught with self loathing, addiction. The writing is stunning in its skill and it‘s painful honesty. Looking back now with sobriety and experience, he speaks of toxic manhood, the devaluation of black lives, internalized homophobia, but also healing. Brutal at times but just fantastic.

A brilliant, searing tale of the cumulative weight of shame, self loathing, and living a closeted life. A young American is living in Paris, trying to attain the life expected of him while wrestling mightily with his desires for men. When he enters into an affair with an Italian bartender, Giovanni, he finds himself at a crossroads. Suddenly, everything he has been running from comes rushing to confront him.

Read this on @SerialReader for a spooky October read. Deliciously creepy.

This was a bit scholarly and dry compared to some of Gushee‘s other books, but worth reading. I appreciate his well reasoned, Christ-centered approach as he charts a possible path for those of us who are in various stages of reconstructing our spiritual lives after leaving the evangelical world.

This is one weird book. It has its good points - sharp, darkly amusing, insightful writing. Awad just nails the experience of chronic illness and pain. But then it takes a turn and we go from one extreme to another. The story gets more nebulous, blurring the lines of reality. It just got exhausting and repetitive - all the extremes. It would have made a bold novella or short story. Very bizarre.

Burke shares her story as the creator of the "me too" movement and her growth as an activist working to make a difference in the lives of brown and black girls who have survived sexual abuse. A survivor herself, Burke opens up about her own struggle to share the painful experiences that are at the core of her work. It is an excellent memoir, shedding light on the need for healing and empathy within the community of survivors.

If Mrs. Dalloway and Alfred Hitchcock had a baby, it would be Mrs. March. What a wild ride! I stayed up half the night to finish this one and was not disappointed.

Some beautiful passages in here. Plenty to ponder. I relate to Siddartha‘s restlessness, seeking, and the appreciation of wisdom that comes with age and experience.

Colson Whitehead is a new favorite author for me. His latest novel delivers the expected stellar prose and Colson‘s knack for creating an immersive environment for his characters. The seedy New York settings are great, as is the 1960s civil rights backdrop. But while I appreciate the pieces, I never really felt invested in these people. Worth reading though. I highly recommend giving the audiobook a try. Dion Graham‘s narration is excellent.

Happy Banned Books week to my fellow readers. Here are some of my favorite often-challenged books. Celebrate your freedom to read what you want!

A soft pick for me. The premise was interesting and I enjoyed it, but it was so repetitive. It got a bit tedious and I felt like it needed editing down quite a bit. I did love how Addie found a way to leave her legacy through art.

I‘m liking this book just fine, but the author uses LIMBS instead of arms and legs so, so often that it‘s driving me bonkers. She‘s also managed to use the word PALIMPSEST on at least three occasions, which seems a lot in under 150 pages. Aren‘t these the kinds of things editors are supposed to notice?

I did not particularly enjoy this. This genre is not really my thing, but I‘m pretty open to trying something new. Much of this was so out there I struggled to follow. I just did not feel like this was a strong collection of stories.

A wonderful personal memoir that reflects the need for national protections for the transgender community. This would be a useful Trans 101 for folks that are not as familiar with the daily reality faced by trans people. Sarah is an accomplished, passionate, compassionate woman and has a gift for explaining public policy through the lens of personal experience.

Basically a prodigal son story that‘s 300 pages too long. There were such a ridiculous number of coincidences that I was literally guffawing out loud as each thread of the story tied up neatly in a bow - all lessons learned, all good people rewarded, and all villains either killed off or transformed by their misdeeds into a good person. I think Dickens is just not for me. He does get credit for Miss Havisham though. She‘s one creepy, crazy gal.

So excited to see David Sedaris and my Litsy friends for the first time in forever! Loved seeing @Booksnchill and @britt_brooke in person again!

A worthy follow up to Hollow Kingdom. Clever, hysterically funny, and bursting with Buxton's gorgeous and amusing descriptions about animals and the natural world. ST, the irrepressible talking crow from novel one, catches us up after the almost complete destruction of the human race. He has become (along with some owls and an eagle) the main protector of the last human on earth. Robert Petkoff does the audiobook narration and it is MAGNIFICENT.

A balm for my angry, anxious, sad, pandemic-overwhelmed soul.

Completely fascinating. The book is presented as a conversation, in layman‘s terms and with specific examples that help you understand the concepts introduced. Dr. Perry has done a lot of research over the last few decades on the impact of trauma on children and how that plays out into adulthood. He also addresses how healing and building resilience are possible.

Enjoyed this mystery within a mystery. There were a few surprises tossed in at the end that were quite a stretch. But I liked the courtroom/jury room bits.

The audiobook had a good narrator so that kept me going. It‘s entertaining enough but the shaky premise left me constantly aware that it doesn‘t quite work. It was ok.

A very unique look at pregnancy and parenting through the eyes of a nonbinary/trans masculine person. Exploring what it means to be a non-female going through experiences that society puts in an exclusively female category. Good writing. Fascinating insights.

A cool little thriller about a plane full of innocent people whose lives are in the hands of a pilot faced with an impossible choice.