Most of my #ForTheLoveofBooks reading seems to be finishing books I was already reading 😂 Still, it was good to finish these. I've started The Midnight Witness, but I'm not sure if I'll get it finished today or not as I'm getting ready to leave for work, followed by potential family shenanigans (my family isn't always good at deciding ahead of time 😆) @TheSpineView

Hey friends!!! I'm posting #BookSpin and #BookSpinBingo a little early this month since tomorrow is looking kind of crazy for me 😂 It's already September 2nd a lot of places around the world, right?? So what I'm going to do is post the numbers and the board as my next two posts, both under Spoilers so that if people haven't done their lists yet, you'll still have time!! Then I'll come back to this post and tag everyone. So whenever you're ⬇

I did like this one, but not as much as the first four. However, the “mystery“ felt a lot more realistic to me. Was I the only one expecting something to happen with Fleagle?? I felt like Trixie and Honey were a little more scatterbrained in this one and found myself puzzled as to why everything with using the ring for security was such a big secret. I was also confused by things like “we have no temporary place to put our gear“... I'm sorry, ⬇

I have my starter pile for the #ForTheLoveofBooks readathon this weekend. I've been trying to take one day a week as a break from social media (currently Fridays) so I am posting a day early. Planning to finish the tagged book for #BobWhiteBuddies and Paddy's for #Roll100 . The Midnight Witness is my August book for (unofficial) #LMPBC . And of course at least one more Amelia Peabody book, maybe more 😂 Thanks for hosting @TheSpineView !!!

I've been in a bit of a reading funk for what feels like months now, so I'm going to try participating in #ForTheLoveofBooks Labor Day weekend readathon and see if that helps!! 😂 I'm not sure exactly what I'll be reading yet, but sometime very soon I need to read the tagged so I can mail it on its journey.

Keep an eye out - #BookSpin may drop a *little* early if people are interested in tackling their lists as part of the readathon??

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Despite my persistent denial regarding the passage of time, yet another month has gone by!!! September is less than a week away, so if you are planning to #BookSpin it is time to get your lists together. Already!!!

We are coming into my busiest time of year, so while I'll still be here commenting regularly, my posting will probably be even more haphazard than usual 😂 We've survived an amazing peach season at the orchard and are now gearing up ⬇

Hey friends!! Things got a lil busy last week and then I just honestly didn't feel like like being online much this weekend haha But I'm back for the final section of our #RandomClassic

In the end, this book was just okay for me. It felt like a weird fever dream a lot of the time. Not a lot of explanations, not a lot of character development or background, just people drifting from place to place. I was confused by some things (why did no one ⬇

September's read is going to be depressing (because it's Steinbeck), but hey, it's short!! 😂 I'm thinking that we'll just plan to discuss the book in its entirety sometime around September 20. Let me know below if you want to be tagged for that discussion!!

I've gone ahead and done a random draw to figure out the first few books of 2025 (!!!) and it looks like we'll be kicking off the year with a Dickens chunkster!! As you may have noticed ⬇

I feel like I need to start this post by confessing that I really struggle with spelling the world Fahrenheit. Why is the H before the R!?

This is a very strange book. The world-building is so odd. I don't really have any idea of how people actually spend their days or what they do. There was a little bit of discussion at the end of the last post, that while most dystopian novels are speaking against a type of government overreach, in some ⬇

I've really been a poor host for this challenge this year 😂 But if anyone is interested, here's August's #ISpyBingo board!! I've been playing all the boards all year, so I've kind of forgotten that some people may prefer to see each month's board!!

@LiseWorks

(thru part 1) What an intriguing beginning! This section felt slow, yet weirdly addictive. I definitely wanted to find out more about this culture and what is happening, and found Beatty's “lecture“ to be very interesting. What do you think so far? What do you think of Guy as a character? What do you think happened to Clarisse?

I think I've always thought of this one, Brave New World, and 1984, as being the “classic“ dystopian novels. Are ⬇

Here's the #BookSpinBingo card! First, I put our official numbers (4 & 6) back in the mix. Then I drew them all out & wrote them down as I went, meaning the official numbers are just mixed into the card with the rest! As you can see, 21-25 are both labeled with their numbers & also as free spaces, so you can use them to match however you wrote your list. To score a bingo, just read books (in any order) that are in any row or column!! MORE INFO ⬇

Good morning, everyone! The moment you have all been waiting for!! Our official #BookSpin number is FOUR! Our official #DoubleSpin number is SIX!! I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at everyone‘s lists & am really looking forward to seeing your reviews!!

My next post will be the #BookSpinBingo card. I am NOT tagging anyone on that post!! If you want to bingo, please just check my profile for the card. This saves me having to double tag ⬇

As a side note, this book says it's from my dog, Waylon - because as a puppy Waylon chewed up my original copy!! And thanks ThriftBooks for smacking a sticker in the center of the cover🙄

ANYWAY I had a fabulous time reading this one!! Di joins the gang (and evens out the boy/girl numbers haha). There were some intense scenes in this one!! Second mystery in a row where Trixie is held at gunpoint by the criminal! 😅

Once again, I like how Trixie⬇

Okay, didn't I JUST have a post about how I couldn't believe that June was over?? And now it's almost August?! ACK

Unbelievable but true, we only have a week left of July!! So if you're planning to Spin in August, it's time to start thinking about your lists. Hopefully everyone is well and not TOO stressed about the fact that we're officially into the SECOND HALF of 2024!!😮

As always, looking forward to seeing what everyone is hoping to read!!

This book was honestly just peculiar. I enjoyed it - mostly - but some parts of it just left me scratching my head a bit. I really enjoyed the parts on the island and reading about him creating a life there. But then it felt like the ending went a bit off the rails, and then it was almost like he was like, “you know what, never mind, I'll just write a second volume“ and that's the end! 😂 Still, as a book widely acclaimed as “the first novel“ ⬇

I picked up this charming book because somewhere along the line I read that P.G. Wodehouse loved it. This is a gentle story about a newly married couple and their first year of marriage. If, like myself, you are worried that things won't go well for them - fear not! They're absolutely adorable together and continue to be so all the way through. While Mackail pokes a little fun at their naivety, on the whole, all the adjectives I came up for this⬇

I'm always down for a reread of one of my heart-books, so I was happy when this came up as a #HashtagBrigade read. I know its old-fashioned sensibilities aren't for everyone, but I think many of Alcott's lessons on love, patience, kindness, and selflessness are timeless. This one has been hugely influential for me throughout my life, so while I understand some of the criticisms of it... I don't accept them 😂

I'm not sure how old this particular⬇

Scrawled on the front page of this book is the statement that “This is the first Nancy Drew book I ever read“ probably written circa 1991 😂 I can see why this one got me hooked - there's loads of action and the treasure-hunting aspect was great fun. As an adult reread I was a little confused by the attitudes and actions of some of the characters, but overall I just let it ride with these LOL

Thanks as always for hosting @Librarybelle !!

This isn't my favorite of Kjelgaard's book, but it's still an enjoyable read. 12-year-old Bud is “farmed out“ from the orphanage to an older couple on a farm. But it turns out that they're just lonely now that all their kids have moved on and while they do need help around the farm, they're mostly just wanting to help a kid who needs it. Bud is wary at first, but gradually comes to love the couple and their home. His first week there, he comes ⬇

Like Emerson, I was a bit tired of hearing about the MASTER CRIMINAL but honestly these books are just such good fun that even the MC drama stayed pretty entertaining, even if the ending feels rather ridiculous. Ramses is still spoiled, but incrementally less obnoxious in this one. Overall I'm enjoying my reread of this series, but looking forward to the later books where Ramses is older and more a part of the team.

This installment of the Scarlet Pimpernel series is more of the same haha I really enjoy these books and it has been fun reading them in chronological order. This is one I hadn't read in the past. One of the band marries a French immigrant, but her father kidnaps her, claiming that the marriage isn't real because it happened in England (??) and he wants her to marry a rich counter-revolutionist who is willing to donate a pile of money to the ⬇

August's #RandomClassic is Fahrenheit 451. I've never read this one and honestly know very little about it, so I am going in almost completely blind. The book is divided into three parts, so rather than following a chapter a day, we'll be reading one part per week. Since the 1st is on a Thursday, I'll try to post discussion posts on August 8, 15, and 22.

As usual, I'm tagging my master list for this group. Please let me know if you'd ⬇

(thru ch 14) Well, ol' Robby has really been through it! Over 20 years!!!! I had no idea this book covered so much time. I'm still enjoying this one although he does get quite long-winded sometimes with his philosophizing, and the writing can be repetitive as he tells you what's going to happen and then tells what happened lol Obviously his desire to “get a servant“ instead of “get a companion“ is troublesome. But I thought his conclusions about ⬇

I was quite glad to be able to get a copy of this book from the library, but I literally think I am going to order my own copy after all because some JERK has random underlined not passages, not phrases, not even WORDS but literally random letters!?!? I think they were trying to mark works “subtly“ since, you know, it's a LIBRARY BOOK but it is SO distracting. Every page is like this, with at least 2, sometimes up to 10, words marked. 😑 ⬇

(thru ch7) I'm actually really enjoying this one, even if our narrator is somewhat repetitive. I had no idea so many adventures happened to him before he even got shipwrecked!! It kind of fascinated me that he was a slave for a couple of years himself, but seemed to think nothing of heading to Africa to get some slaves of his own. Crazy.

So many random things that he just says casually and then moves on. “I had two elder brothers, one of which ⬇

I've read and enjoyed many of Nesbit's children's books, but didn't realize that she had also written a handful of “adult“ novels (in the sense that the main characters aren't children). Like her books for younger readers, this one was full of fun and humor, with likable characters and some silly scrapes. My biggest issue was that the ending felt really abrupt. I definitely needed to know more about the futures of all these characters, and ⬇

I enjoyed this little “return to the hometown“ romance to start with, but was skimming by the end. The male MC has worked for literal years to gain the work position he just got because it will allow him to live close to his mom and siblings. Female MC waltzes back into town and ends up with a job as his subordinate. I lost all respect for her when she got super pissy because he wouldn't sleep with her because of the company's rules, despite her ⬇

Apparently this book bored me so much that I spaced on posting the final discussion post for #RandomClassics 😂This was a borderline pan for me. I did enjoy a couple of the chapters more than others, but overall this book just absolutely dragged for me. Partially, I felt like I needed more background on Britain's older history - I'm fuzzy on when the Romans showed up and what they did, so I got somewhat lost at times. I also just couldn't figure⬇

I feel like I need to start videoing myself drawing the numbers for this board to prove that I'm not cheating 😂 BookSpin and DoubleSpin in the same column, along with two free spaces!??!!? DoubleSpin in the row with three more free spaces?! Good luck out there this month, friends - the BookSpin Fates are smiling upon us!! 😂

Can't wait to see everyone's boards!!!

My standard monthly text/explanations below ⬇

Good morning, everyone! The moment you have all been waiting for!! Our official #BookSpin number is NINETEEN! Our official #DoubleSpin number is ONE!! I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at everyone‘s lists & am really looking forward to seeing your reviews!!

My next post will be the #BookSpinBingo card. I am NOT tagging anyone on that post!! If you want to bingo, please just check my profile for the card. This saves me having to double tag ⬇

Another win because I just love these books so hard that it doesn't even matter how good they objectively are 😂 I was so excited to see Trixie's brothers come back from camp and see the club starting to form. This one always stuck out for me because of the whole forgery aspect. Back when I first read this, we had carbon paper around the house and I, also, practiced becoming a forger 😂

So #BobWhiteBuddies - how did you feel about this one? ⬇

This sequel to The Rise and Fall of DODO was a bit of a disappointment. The story lacked cohesion and I had so many questions about why we were doing some things and not doing other things, mostly why can we save the life of one person via time travel but not the other?? The complete focus on one of the team members vs the absolutely whatever attitude towards the other really turned me off. A lot of this just felt kind of pointless. ⬇

This is brilliant bad cover work here - originally published/set in 1932, the main character of this story would probably literally rather die than show her bare midriff/legs in public😂 Love these 80s covers that try to make GLH look spicier.

This is typical GHL work - sweet, hardworking, poor girl receives help from a kind, goodhearted fellow and everyone ends up rich and happy in the end, with a dose of Jesus throughout. Not for everyone, ⬇

This was a cute but not amazing easy chapter book about a very spoiled princess who adopts a pig for her birthday - except the pig comes with a pig boy who isn't very impressed by the princess's princessiness haha The drawings were the best part. Soft pick. (i.e. 3.5* It was okay 😂)

#Roll100 @PuddleJumper
#100YearsofBooks
#BookSpinBingo

This was a book I wanted to like more than I did. Part of the problem is that the whole point is that Olivia runs a business where she matches people based on their Chinese Zodiac signs and making sure that her clients are paired with compatible signs. We are told the reasons for why she's so absolutely die hard about this, but despite the fact that we spend the whole book in Liv's head, I just never could quite figure out her obsession with ⬇

Jolie has a severe underbite that has impacted her health and looks her entire life. She's going to have surgery in a few weeks and even though the chances of her dying under anesthetic are very tiny - there is still a chance! So she decides to complete a list of things she would have wished she'd done if she ends up dead haha It's a fun premise and Jolie is a likable characters. I loved her warm family, and I always appreciate the way Winfrey ⬇

Thanks so much for having a spontaneous #Two4Tuesday #TuesdayGiveaway @TheSpineView !!!

I'd be tickled to receive any of the books my to-read list, but lately I've kind of been in a thriller mood, so I'd love to read the tagged book soon!!

Okay. I don't want to say this, but I have to: 2024 is less than a week away from being HALF OVER! 😲 I feel like my #BookSpin reminder post each month is actually turning into a mini existential crisis concerning the passage of time 😂 But here we are!!! July starts on MONDAY!!!!

If, like myself, you take refuge from the way we're hurtling through the rapids of life by reading, it's probably time to start thinking about your July list!! ⬇

I need to just go ahead and finish this book because I feel like I've been reading it forever 😂 I did find “Hal o' the Draft“ SLIGHTLY less boring than all the Roman “we're sitting about on a wall while other people fight battles other places“ bits haha But this book is nooooot for me and like @TheBookHippie I will NOT be picking up Puck #2!!!

Only two chapters left!!!!

@BarkingMadRead @julieclair @TheBookHippie