Welcome to Litsy!

1. Pretty much yes. Reminds me of one of my favorites lines in a Gregory Alan Isakov song….”If it weren‘t for second chances we‘d all be alone”.
2. The tagged book which I recently read.

@TheSpineView #Two4Tuesday

#WeeklyFavorites @Read4life

I am in Manhattan where the main character lives on Pomander Walk….the cutest little block in Manhattan. It‘s so nice to be back in NYC.

#WhereAreYouMonday @Cupcake12

@Jas16 OH WOW! What a wonderful surprise. And signed! Thank you so very much. I can‘t begin to tell you how much I appreciate this kind gesture. 😘

💗💚💛🧡💗💚💛🧡 Loved everything about this book right down to the afterward/author's note at the very end. She wanted her readers to cry, and I can 100% say she was successful when it came to this reader - though mostly it was exactly during this portion of the #audiobook.😝😢💙

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I just realized that Emma Straub‘s dad was Peter Straub (mental note to move his book ‘Ghost Story‘ up the tbr pile). This novel is really a love letter to a fictionalized version of him from a fictionalized version of her. I enjoyed the sweet father-daughter dynamic. The time travel aspect made me feel wistful and wish I could occasionally go back in time too.

“It‘s okay to lose people…Loss is the point. You can‘t take away the grief, the pain, because then what are you left with?”

reading and knitting

Main character Alice keeps traveling back and forth from her 40th birthday to her 16th birthday with the focus on her relationship with her father.

The love between father and daughter is heartwarming.

Of course, she tweaks different things on each trip to the past, but nothing can change the inevitability of death.

The author's note at the end really added to the beauty of the story.

*Photo is the Umpqua River a few years after a fire

Hard to resist this cover. 15 pages in and I‘m hooked!

A woman travels back in time to the day of her 16th birthday and changes a few things in an attempt to make her (and her father‘s) life turn out differently. A slow start, but clever and moving, and well worth the read. Bonus: In some ways, the story is reminiscent of the movie Groundhog Day, so now is the perfect time to read it! #litsylovereads

This is one of those books that grows on you as you read it and gets better with each turn of the page. Anyone close to their dad is guaranteed to shed a few tears.

A great first pick from my #auldlangspine match @JackOBotts that I probably wouldn‘t have picked up otherwise!

#12Booksof2023 Day 5: aha, i realised this morning I never posted this yesterday... And it's not because I didn't like it, but i guess i wasn't sure it was my favorite from this month? It is very sentimental, and VERY rooted in the 80s/90s NYC. However, it's a love letter from a daughter to her father, and given my own close relationship with my dad, and that I'm from the same decade as the author, I found it very moving. All the tears.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My September #Roll100 pick - in many ways a love letter to Straub‘s father, who passed a few months after its publication, Straub tells the story of a daughter‘s quest to spend more time with her father…through time travel. Beautiful, touching, a keeper.

A well-written time travel novel that is more thought provoking than kitschy. Explores the themes of father-daughter relationships, lifelong friendships, end of life issues, the angst of being 16 and the angst of being 40. How would our lives be different if we had made different choices in the past? And would different lives make us happier?

Great

#TBR
#SummerSpecial #FatherDaughter

💙📚💙

#MidYearFreakOut tagged by @dabbe
1. Hands down: tagged book.
2. N/A
3. None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
4. I have a lot of great books to look forward to, I am sure…but when they will be released. 🤷‍♀️
5. Lessons in Chemistry
6. Brother by Ania Ahlborn
7. Hard to say since I hate to judge anyone on one book.
8. Celine and Brad from Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute
9. Tagged
10. See #8
11. 😳
12. It‘s a long list.

Hey! I read a book! Took me a long time (because of life not because of the book) but I'm glad I finished. Wonderful book, worth a read.

Goodbye, May 💃🏻
I‘m doing terribly at my New Year resolution to read slowly as I‘ve been flying through audiobooks like crazy… but at least this means I can tick off two bingos for #bookspinbingo and finally mark a few lagging #roll100 books as read!
The tagged was a roll100 from a month or so ago (oops) and my fav of the month. It just barely overcame Essex Serpent (another roll100 🙃) and Vera Wong, which was a whim and unexpected hit for me.

Today, I‘m sharing a book I received in the mail. Penguin Random House sent this book to me. I‘ve never read a book by Emma Straub. This book sounds interesting. I‘m looking forward to reading it.

On Sale: May 16, 2023 (I just looked at the date on my phone and realized that that‘s today‘s date.) Happy Publication Day to This Time Tomorrow!

#bookmail #happypublicationday

Loved, loved, loved this book! A refreshing take on a daughter and father family dynamic. Beautifully written!

Loved this one! Such a good feeling when you‘ve got a book you can‘t wait to get back to. Loved the friendship and the parent/child relationship. Only thing missing was a definitive epilogue.

Why have I not read Emma Straub before? I loved this. Poignant but with humor, it was charming and relatable.

Next up on audio and my first by Emma Straub.

Another book I finished in March, #bookspin. This one started off slow for me but then the last half moved faster. It was an interesting idea of if you had the chance to go back what version of your life would you pick. Alice is grappling with the impending death of her father. She (accidentally) time travels on her 40th birthday to her 16th. For a few weeks she keeps going back to see if there is a way to change her father‘s fate. In turn she

Read The in March 2023 ...
#Goodreads #BooklyApp #StoryGraph #Bookstagram #MMDBookClub #OUABC #ReesesBookClub #Litsy #Libby

Weekly Reading Report
March 19 - 25, 2023

#Goodreads #BooklyApp #StoryGraph #Bookstagram #MMDBookClub #OUABC #ReesesBookClub

Alice goes on a bender on the night of her 40th birthday. When she wakes up the next morning somehow back in 1996, it isn't her 16-year-old body that is the biggest shock, or the possibility of romance with her adolescent crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 49-year-old version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, is there anything that she should do differently this time around?

#UnpopularOpinion. For me, this felt like a bit of a hot mess. I‘m sure it would have been a more fun trip down memory lane if I wasn‘t 15 years older than the protagonist. But if I‘m going to read about privileged New York people I need a more interesting story. Having helped my parents through their final hours, I needed a better story to make it worth reliving. Same on having to face cancer this year. And how old was that cat anyway?

I honestly download this one because it's on my #TimeMagazineTop100ReadsOf2022 and wasn't hoping for much as I passed on it several times. Well, this is me kinda kicking myself for putting it off so long. Have a box of kleenex and sit back and enjoy. So many feels! #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks

This #quote really made me pause.

📸 bookaapi

LOVE!! This is the first book this year that I can honestly say I loved. It made me cry more than once; it made me stop and think; it gave me all. the. feels. On her 40th birthday Alice time travels back to her 16th birthday and tries to recapture some part of her life …not her youth exactly because she perfectly happy at 40…but she wonders how some things might be different. It‘s just a fabulous, big-hearted book.

3¾⭐
You know how Groundhog Day got to be really monotonous with his constant do-overs because he was trying to change one specific thing and couldn‘t get it right? That‘s what this was like. Was it a dealbreaker…not entirely. Well, if it weren‘t for the last couple of hours where the story mostly redeemed itself, it might've been. Overall, this wasn‘t my favorite time travel story but it was definitely not the worst. Also…what was up with the cat?

This is ok. It's like an ode to the author's dad tbh. I maybe can't relate to that or something. It was ok. Time travel books might not be my jam.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

#FabulousFebruaryReadathon #BookSpinBingo

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice decides to travel back to 1996 when she was 16 years old. She sees her dad as vital and charming instead of ailing as he is today. Armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything she would change if she could?

Kinda slow to start, but really fun and interesting. Super heartfelt and sweet in so many ways without being saccharine or silly.

#12BooksOf2022

This might very well be my favorite book of the year. I read it in July, a month after my father died, and I loved the father/daughter parts in the book. I cried my eyes out but it felt good.
A perfect example of the right book at the right time.

Made me think.

I had read really good reviews of this book and I went into it with very high expectations…. and I thoroughly enjoyed it! But I do wish I had read it with no idea what it was about - I would have been much more swept away by it without my preconceived ideas.
Darn it, I feel like this is a 5 star book that I robbed myself of. Oh well, maybe I‘ll get it on audio next year and experience it again.

This was a sweet and poignant book, mainly because my dad died way too young, like Alice (and the author). I understood Alice‘s impulse to remake her dad‘s habits and possibly keep him around for a few more years. Straub‘s writing also floats around all many universal truths. Rather than repeatedly walloping us, she inches various options forward and lets Alice lead the way.

Full review https://www.TheBibliophage.com #thebibliophage2022

I absolutely loved this novel about loss and love and aging and life. Alice, who is about to turn 40, accidentally time travels back to her 16th birthday and is taken aback by how young her (now dying) father is, how many choices still are ahead of her, the closeness with her best friend who now lives in the suburbs with a family. She must figure out if she can change her present - or if she even wants to.

I enjoyed this, and felt that the time travel elements offered something new (even if it‘s a common trope). This is obviously a love letter to the author‘s father, and I found the father-daughter relationship in the novel to be very sweet. My favorite parts were the NYC setting and the nostalgia I have for my 90s teenage years. I don‘t want to relive them though. 😂 Ultimately, I didn‘t get the emotional punch I wanted or expected from this. 3⭐️

My lofty goals for #novelnovember! I am hoping with a five day holiday, I can get some good reading time in!

Thank you @Deblovestoread for the perfect #AllHallowsRead swap package. I just know I will love both of these books and the candy will be gone in no time 🧡

I read a lot of time-travel fiction, and this is definitely one of the better ones. This is the book that I wanted The Midnight Library to be. That one left me feeling underwhelmed, but this one was much more worthwhile.

Just starting this one, but so far, I‘m really liking it!