Jill Lepore is a f*cking genius and if you disagree - I'll fight you behind a dumpster. JK. I'm too weak. But seriously. She's so f*cking smart. This was easily a favorite book for 2018.

P.S. This really hit me in the feels as I largely read it while at the near-identical house next door to where Jane Franklin lived towards the end of her life. So there's that.

Another romantic historical fiction set at a crumbling manor with a secretive past haunting those in the present (in this case post-WWII). Not particularly memorable, but an enjoyable read if that's your kind of thing.

A sweetly romantic historical fiction. I wanted a bit more oomph to it, but at the least found it an enjoyable read.

Hands down one of the best collections of creepy short stories I've ever read. So weird and unique.

I finished this almost a year ago. And have forgotten the major plot points. The first book was cool and new, but the 2nd and 3rd largely just felt very - same song second verse - rather than like moving along a story arc.

So so good. Beautifully written - I have never read a true crime book that refuses to lose sight of the victims so well. It is also fascinating to read knowing that the killer would be caught less than a year after the book coming out and comparing where her best guesses came close.

Not quite as good as the first, though still pretty good!

I thought I would hate reading from a dog's perspective, and I really didn't! This is certainly a creepy book - not only with the scenarios presented, but also in how your loyalties shift over the course of the story... 🐕😨💀

The third Wayward Children book basically picks up from where the first one ended. (Book Two was background on two characters from the first book.) We go to a nonsense world this time and also meet a few new characters. At only about 4 hours in length - this was the audiobook equivalent of a sweet, sugary snack 😉

First, I loved this series in high school 😍. BUT, the first 50 pages of this left me really put off. Nothing was all that different from what came before... but I'm different, and the cultural moment we're in is different too. The entire premise of Paul coming back into Suze's life (in Ch. 1) was super gross in the context of #metoo. Jesse's machismo hasn't aged well either. Suze also continued to act much like a teenager. ⬇⬇

Oh, this book was so much fun: bloody, steamy, and fast-paced.

You will feel the same way about this book as you do the podcast.

This was a very thought-provoking book which, while I finished it nearly a week ago, I'm still digesting. Lepore tracks her own investigation into Joe Gould as well as providing a somewhat fuller/broader biography of him than what Mitchell wrote. It self-consiously engages with the nature of biography and the larger historical concern of who is remembered/deemed important, as well as Gould's very complicated relationship with this concern.

I was initially reading Lepore's book, but she referenced these two New Yorker essays by Mitchell so frequently that I really felt I needed to read them myself. So after finishing Part 1 of Joe Gould's Teeth, I picked up Joe Gould's Secret. Presented back-to-back, these two biographical profiles are not only very well-written, but are a striking illustration of the power dynamic between author and subject.

Holly Black! I didn't read you for so long and this is everything I could have hope for and more! So good! Can't wait for the next book!

Sweet berry lime bundt cake, Stranger Things mug, and the -gorgeous- naked hardcover of The Cruel Prince 😍

Not a bad way to start the day! 😊😊

This #bookhaul largely dates to last month - which was my birthday month and is to blame for the taller than usual stack for me! A couple also came home with me from a #littlefreelibrary oops 😁

The tagged book will be hanging out on my coffee table for awhile - couldn't make it to the UK for the exhibition, but this book is the next best thing to Floo Powder!

This was a smart and thoughtful middle grade novel. Roz is a curious robot who learns to talk to animals and becomes "wild" thanks to her adaptive learning programming. As an adult reader, it can feel a little slow and simplistic, but I can see this really clicking with some kids' imaginations. As with any good robot book, there is also some epic fight scenes with laser canons ?

I'm not super into YA dystopia as a premise so, save for The Hunger Games, I have largely avoided that subgenre. This was better than expected, which is probably largely due to Ahern's experience as a writer - while this may be her YA debut, she's been publishing books for years - and this was apparent in the plotting and writing quality: confident and showing a sure hand. It was really quite enjoyable, and I plan to finish the duology.

Horror short story collection. Mixed bag. Some were good (The Dinner Party) - the opening story was particularly creeptastic. Some were bad (All the Pretty Girls) - can we just not with violence against women being the crux of the grisly gross-ness of a horror scenario?

Cameo of my rosemary plant that I probably killed because I forgot to water it for two weeks. 🌿💀

By the end, tears were rolling down my cheeks and my heart was well-squeezed. #tearjerker

#AYearAThon May 2018 - Rereads/Graphic Novels

I didn't really have any rereads that I wanted to get to at the moment, so I focused on graphic novels and got a fair bit knocked off my TBR. I Kill Giants, Seconds, and Lumberjanes were my fave of this batch, and Goldie Vance is really growing on me. I think Bad Machinery doesn't really marathon read well, and I have some more volumes of it which I will peruse more slowly and see how that goes.

"The sound of my knife slitting across a throat feels much too loud in the darkness."

(As this is a sequel I've edited for spoilers ?)

#openingline

An eclectic mix of authors, many older, but also a few newer authors mixed in. The tonal registers are also varied - including more amusing, satirical tales, to truly creepy, eerie ones, and others that veer more heartfelt and sentimental. I also thought that Niffenegger arranged the stories in a very well thought out order, with threads of similarity often running from one story to the next - be it in content, theme, or tone.

I actually enjoyed this sequel more than the first. The humor was slightly less sharp, but Hale did a good job of complicating some of the stereotypes that she leaned into to create humorous characters in the first book - I liked it. The story was more contained, the cast of characters remained largely the same, and the plot of the mystery was fairly light - enabling the greater character development while still keeping it a fast-paced read.

I'm loving these novella length SFF releases from Tor - sometimes digging into a big chunky SFF read sounds nice in theory but feels intimidating in reality when I have a lot on my plate life-wise. These shorter reads are just the right length, where I can get lost in a well written story in a place far from real life, but I can also feel accomplished when I'm able to finish it relatively quickly 👍👍

Ugghhh this month has been super busy so it's been ages since I posted here. I started reading this right at the start of April and while this has been my main read of the month, I'm still only just over half way through. Hopefully the last few days of this month will be a bit more calm.

I picked this up from a #littlefreelibrary and it's the third book in a series, but I haven't found it too difficult to jump right in!

Beautiful, as always. Can't wait for the next volume!

#MarchRecap

Admittedly, the vanity red ink didn't get me started on the right foot with this one, but I really did want to give it a chance as the narrator's voice and situation (American girl starting at European boarding school) put me in mind of the Shades of London series. BUT the whole set-up is unignorably silly. Rune suffers from an embarrassing singing "compulsion", there's mentions of auras and chakras (lol), and my patience, frankly, has run out! ?

So I'm finding this hard to capture on camera, but if the above text looks vaguely reddish, that is because it IS!!! I don't know WHO at the publisher's thought this was a good idea and signed off on it, but the entire book is printed in red ink!!! WHY????? This is driving me and my eyeballs nuts! 👀 😵🙅

Haunted houses are probably one of my favorite types of creepy reads and this literary horror novel was a #quickread that ticked that box quite nicely. It progressed briskly and maintained a tense, suspenseful atmosphere throughout!

Reminiscent of Tin-Tin's cartoony style, this was a fun, swash-buckling, standalone adventure. The beginning was a little text/exposition heavy, but it balanced out once the story got going.

Quite a few chuckles to be found here. Doesn't come close to Me Talk Pretty One Day for me, but that is a high bar to beat!

I've been hearing people rave about Backman for ages now - guess it's finally time to give him a go! #LitsyBuddyRead

I did really think it was pretty light and fun overall, but after reading this second, concluding volume, I am left confused who the intended audience is. For something that seems to be otherwise appropriate for younger readers, Cannibal Coliseum gets really quite gruesome! 🤢

So much fun! A cooking show in space! 🚀🍳🍴

So. I was really excited to read this. The cover and endpapers are get-out-of-here gorgeous and I was feeling the premise. And, at least initially, I was on board.

The beginning had some enticing Night Film vibes (cameo in the pic 😜) with the whole cult-following of Althea and her dark fairy tales. Alice wasn't particularly likeable, but her life hadn't been particularly easy either, and I enjoyed seeing her interactions with Finch ⬇⬇

This was SO fun!! I like a good old school mystery and this was a glorious homage to the genre. Narrators were both v good as well 👍👍

The title and basic premise (bookseller discovers a body with a mysterious photo in its pocket which sparks her to begin an amateur investigation) would lead one to expect this is a cozy mystery - and heads up, it's not! Things quickly become much darker, though it never reaches the level of grittiness or bleakness that makes up a good chunk of contemporary crime fiction. Fortunately, this wasn't a turn-off for me, and I largely enjoyed it.

Delightful! And clever! 🐈

#catsoflitsy

?

Haha it's not often too scary, but occasionally one will really land creepily well, probably due to each of our own weird little collection of neuroses. There are some longer form stories as well, mixed in with the "fears".

Graphic novels and comics library haul!

Snow day stuck inside 🌨 ➡ starting an icy, snowy book ❄

Historical romantic suspense, this was certainly entertaining and I flew through it. There were many interesting historical details about railroads and the medical profession in mid-19th cent England, and Elizabeth was a likeable protagonist. That being said, I didn't find her believable to the time period - it stretched plausibility to the point of taking me out of the story, and, as a result, I found the ending overly tidy and unsatisfactory.

#bewarethebookishwoman

I can only imagine how horrified Mr. Addison would be of reading women and their libraries today 😂😆😂

Time to go drool over some shelfies 😁

An enjoyable listen. The narrator had just the right amount of Scottish brogue - enough to add to the sense of setting but not so much as to make it difficult to understand him.

The plot wasn't wildly twisty and unpredictable, but the characterization along the way made the final reveal believable.

I found this to be a more slower-paced read, and I certainly enjoyed it overall. In particular, I appreciated how distinctive each of the main three women's personalities were and how that played out in their varying experiences of wartime and post-WWII Germany.

I was first drawn to this book as it was from an uncommon perspective for a WWII novel, and I initially thought the author was playing it rather safe ⬇⬇

There were certainly some emotional ups and downs, and it ended very sweetly - which was nice as it is the end of a trilogy. Nnedi Okorafor's imagination is a marvelous thing to experience!!

Thunderstorms are one of my all-time favorite things, but I also love the quiet that settles in during a snowfall. Tagged book is a long book that I hope to pick up soon. #thisorthat @RealLifeReading