I don‘t generally read enough books in a year that doing a #Top21of21 wouldn‘t end up in top honors being handed out to the mediocre, so I‘m going with a #Top12of21 instead. In a turn of events I never could have expected a few years ago, a full third of my favorites this year…were in audiobook format. So here‘s to 2021, the year of the 5 star audiobook! 🥂🤷🏻‍♀️

Happy New Year, all! Looking forward to another year of #BookSpin

The latest in a bunch of unbelievable books I read this month. On one hand, fun light reading. On the other, girl goes home with stranger she just met after disembarking her stranded train in a strange place, teenagers crashing cars in snowstorms to deliver Twister to a Waffle House, and super self absorbed girl is magically transformed by…actually, I don‘t even know, but I didn‘t buy it. Maybe I am just too old and crotchety for this one. 🤷🏻‍♀️

A mourning 9-year-old who just wants to sing, a divorced schoolteacher, and a disgraced club owner come together for an eventful Christmas Eve Eve. This was a quirky book with clever writing but it‘s been a couple weeks since I finished it and it just didn‘t have staying power. At the end of the day, I‘m left with the impression that this was a little bit of a love letter to Philadelphia, which is a neat take. My December #bookspin

1. Yes 😬

2. I tend to prefer photos over illustrations, but beyond that it‘s hard for me to put my finger on what exactly draws me to a cover. 🤔

3. Hmmm, either “The Snarky Coworker” or “I Have That but I Haven‘t Read It” 😆

Thanks for tagging me @Eggs #WondrousWednesday

This year has been the year of the 5 star audiobook for me, and this was another great addition to the collection. This was a really powerful story of a Holocaust survivor trying to recover from the unimaginable trauma of losing much of her family to concentration camps, searching for her younger brother, and learning to live and love again after liberation. The writing and narration brought Zofia‘s pain and confusion but also her hope to life.

Bailed on this one. The writing was good, but it just wasn‘t drawing me in. I think the biggest problem, for me, was that the first person narrator was meant to be 9 years old but she read so much older that it kept jolting me out of the story.

In this follow up to Life After Life, Atkinson follows Ursula‘s brother Teddy into war where he becomes a respected bomber pilot and beyond. She expertly weaves the story back and forth in time, giving us the full picture of Teddy‘s life. Compelling and powerful and with a twist I didn‘t see coming, this is a great book. It would be a great one to discuss with a book group because I‘m sure I missed half the clever things Atkinson wrote into this!

One last #bookspin list for the year! Thanks for helping me explore my TBR, @TheAromaofBooks !

Another lame picture brought to you by reading ebooks. 🤪 Still enjoying this series - this is the 3rd book (one to go!). A little less Mare angst and a little more in the way of other perspectives make this an improvement on the last. Still love me some dystopian YA, even in my old age. This is my November #bookspin

It‘s……..November. #BookSpin

I had mixed feelings about this one. The reflection on aging and the convincing perspective of a character with dementia were powerful, but Ptolemy and Robyn‘s relationship was a little weird for me. A soft pick. My October #bookspin

This book made me cry on an airplane on my first day of vacation. Does anything more need to be said? But seriously, it got off to a slow start, but I ended up loving it. The characters were not always likable but they were sympathetic and the whole community jumps off the page. A really compelling look at a logging community caught in a web of corporate greed and shaken by the effects of herbicides that both enable and threaten their way of life.

Another month, another #bookspin

Trying to do some of this beach reading all the people talk about. 🏖🏖📖😁

I loved this bittersweet story about love and heartbreak. When Evie‘s parents get divorced, she loses faith in love. But then she meets a stranger who bestows upon her an unusual gift. Soon this encounter leads her to learning to ballroom dance with a handsome stranger named X. But to truly fall in love, Evie needs to find the strength to open herself up to both joy and pain. This month‘s #botm #bookspin left me in (good) tears.

All right, now where did these come from? I surely can‘t have been insane enough to buy more books when I have less than no shelf space. There must be some other explanation….. 🤷🏻‍♀️

OK, so it probably didn‘t need all of those first 100 pages of the main character‘s angst about the last book‘s happenings, but once it got rolling, I enjoyed it. Red Queen had a Hunger Games vibe to it that I really I liked but the sequel set itself apart more. I‘m here for Cal and Maven and also all the clever abilities Aveyard can dream up. This was August‘s #doublespin

Almost forgot my September #bookspin list. Because….how is it September? This simply must stop. 😱

Returning to her home state of North Dakota to report on life in a small town overtaken by an oil boom, Elinor Hanson encounters everything that is wrong with the USA. Misogyny, racism, capitalism run amok, environmental destruction, indigenous suffering, sharp division, hate, helplessness - Yun lays it all bare. Lots of pain, little redemption. It gets a pick for being well-written, but reading it felt a little like having a raw nerve poked.

I think I‘m going to add this month‘s #bookspin to the DNF pile. It‘s not bad, but also not really what I was expecting, and I‘m kind of bored, so on to my next adventure!

A sad story about the aftermath of a terrible crime in what could otherwise be an idyllic small town. Martin brings summer in a small Midwestern town to life and handles his characters with sensitivity even though many, maybe most, of them are unlikeable.

“Ask anyone who was living in the middle of it all and they‘ll tell you: it didn‘t have anything to do with good and evil; it was all about love.”

How is it already August? I don‘t approve, but here‘s a #bookspin list just in case August insists on going on without my approval. 🤪

I liked the first 3/4 of this dual narrative story about Brigham Young‘s 19th wife who set the dismantling of polygamy in process and a modern day 19th wife living in a fundamentalist sect who stands accused of killing her husband. Both narrative threads are well written and very interesting. I was thoroughly absorbed, but then the end seemed to drag out a little too long and was a little less than satisfying. Still a pick. #doublespin

Hellooo, my pretties. #botm

Elsewhere was good but probably forgettable for me as an adult reader. I would have liked to see more world building of this interesting afterlife and a little more depth to some of the themes that get glossed over instead of so much of the main character‘s angst and misconceptions. It definitely had its sweet moments and was a very quick read but I think it skewed too far to the middle grade side of the YA spectrum and left me wanting. #bookspin

Wasn‘t in the mood to hop right into another Kindle book, so I‘m cheating this month and reading my #doublespin first. Kindle is great, and my used copy of The 19th Wife clearly has a heinous crease in the cover, but there‘s still something a little bit more special about holding a good old paper book in my hand. I was daunted by the size of this one at first, but I‘m enjoying it so far!

Here‘s my #bookspin list for July, even though I still gotta write the review for my June pick! 😱

I imagined that an audiobook would never be able to make me cry. WRONG. This was an intense rollercoaster ride of a book about Claudia who returns from a summer away to find her best friend Monday missing. Despite her pleas, no one seems to be able to help her find Monday. A book filled with secrets revealed and a slowly unfolding tragedy. The unique timeline was a little tough to stay with on audio, but other than that, this one‘s a stunner.

1. 6. Do my college dorm rooms count? 🤷🏻‍♀️
2. This is a toughie. I loved my apartment in Boston because it was in Boston. I loved living in my parents‘ house, too. And I love my place now because it has a great balcony and is alllll mine.
3. This is very specific, but lately? Being outside as the sun is going down. Also reading and praying.

I missed Wednesday by a bit, but thanks for the tag @Kelly_the_Bookish_Sidekick #wondrouswednesday

Another exciting day. The return of the book sale enables a return of my old “feature.” Breakfast in a Book Fort: the “what have I done??” edition - starring the book I‘m actually reading, the very pretty-covered Everything Sad is Untrue, just to prove that I do actually read books on occasion, too. 📚😜

The best of the library used book sales is back! I clearly handled myself with restraint.... #bookhaul

It‘s almost #BookSpin time again. Here‘s my list!

Another soft pick. This is the story of a small town girl who hits it big as a Ziegfields show girl in 1920s NYC. I think this era is fascinating and Harrison did a great job of bringing it to life, but I had a hard time liking the narrator. She causes most of her own problems but says she earned her success with “hard work.” To me it seemed like all her successes were nothing more than good luck and being in the right place at the right time.

#bookspin helping me tackle my #botm backlog this month. I was sucked into this story right away, interested to see how Libertie would either escape or find a way to live within her impressive doctor mother‘s shadow. The writing is beautiful, and the first half chronicling Libertie‘s childhood and schooling are compelling, but Libertie‘s life and the book itself both seem to come off the rails a bit when she departs for Haiti. A soft pick.

I love Jenny Lawson. She is HILARIOUS. I found myself laughing out loud during chapters about lost shoes, saying embarrassing things, what makes a marriage last, and that time she got a bag of dicks in the mail. She doesn‘t settle for just laughter, though. An open letter to her health insurance company and her journal during a new treatment for depression, brought me to tears. This book is the full emotional experience (in the best possible way).

Sneaking in a #bookspin list at the last minute. Managed to read both my #bookspin and #doublespin books from last month, and both were excellent. Here‘s hoping for another good spin! 😃

Amnesia seems to have fallen out of favor as hackneyed plot device, but it makes a triumphant return in this tale of star-crossed lovers. I enjoyed this love story, riddled with tragedy though it was. I appreciated that the modern day perspective didn‘t come until 2/3 of the book was over and how that perspective added to the original and drew a contrast between love affairs that made Jennifer and Anthony‘s love...truer. My #bookspin for April

Mo the Surviving Succulent is pretty stoked about my #BOTM haul. I told myself I wouldn‘t get an add-on this month. Oops. 🤷🏻‍♀️

As Charles Marlow weathers the struggle of supporting his severely autistic son, he reflects on a formative year of elementary school when he became both a standout pupil and a friend to a special needs kid in his class. Add a pair of crumbling marriages, a student‘s perceptive senior project, a nun with dementia, an unexpected twist, and a serendipitous reunion - you get this strange and wonderful book. I LOVED how Kallos brought it all together.

I was excited to receive a copy of this from Henry Holt, but I could only give this about 50 pages before deciding it wasn‘t for me. I thought it was going to be quirky in an amusing way. Instead it‘s quirky in more of a...disturbing way? Close encounters of the disturbing sort with the homeless, sexualized disfigured dolls, boring philosophizing....really just strange and unpleasant reading.

I DNFed both my #bookspin books last month which is one way to whittle down my TBR, but here‘s hoping to actually *read* a couple of good books this month. 😉

Ha ha I see what you did there... 🧐😄

DNF. Everyone else loves this but after 100 pages, I feel like everything past the prologue is a letdown and I‘m getting whiffs of The Madonnas of Echo Park (another book I wish I hadn‘t finished). Orange‘s writing has some definite quotables, but no plot that has yet revealed itself and so little time spent with each character that it hardly works as a character study either. Profound prose alone isn‘t enough to keep me reading. March #bookspin

On the day of her daughter‘s graduation, Flora finds a secret in a filing cabinet that calls everything about her marriage to Julian into question. Diving into the past and present perspectives of the pair, their daughter, and their friends, Sweeney draws out a richly layered story of people on a precipice. Loved the glimpse behind the curtain of characters who live their lives in theater and love how well Sweeney mingles nostalgia and regret.

My #BOTM pretties have arrived! 📚

The best book I read last year is a #KindleDailyDeal today. Just sayin. 😉

I bought the owls a new couch. They say it‘s perfect for reading. Hope they will let me try it out sometime.... #WhooosCouchIsItAnyway

Mo the Surviving Succulent and I are very excited to have received a paper ARC for the first time in a long time. Even better, it‘s World War II era historical fiction, one of my very favorite genres.