Welcome to Litsy!

This was fun. I've meant to read all the Newbery winners in order but I did this one out of order because I'm chasing those seasonal goodreads achieves. I was curious how the characters and situations would come together with all their quirks. If I had to choose favorites I would go with Turtle and Chris but it's very hard to choose because they all have their own charms.

#DaysDevotedTo
#gamespuzzles
#gamepuzzle
@Eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I realize that I‘m not the target demographic for this one, but I really appreciate that the author wanted to write a book that was not talking down to young people in a time when that was not really considered. The concept was really fun, but some of the very dated language and characterizations ended up pulling it down from a pick to a so-so for me. With a little updating this would make a very cool movie or play. ♟️♟️♟️.5/5

Thanks for the tag @Eggs !

1. Leverage, The Good Place, The Mummy movies, Ladyhawke, Clue
2. Loved board games! There was one I would always play at my aunt‘s house called 13 Dead End Drive.
3. I want to reread this book now. 😄

#WondrousWednesday

🌼Band of Brothers

🪻Hide and Seek, Tag, Red Light Green Light

🌹The Westing Game

@Eggs
#WonderousWednesday

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1. Just re-watched the first season of Deadwood last week, and it was every bit as great as I remember it.

2. Favorite board game was Life, favorite sport to play was basketball (until I got older and soccer took over), and favorite outdoor game was release (kind of a hybrid tag/capture the flag game).

3. My favorite elementary school book!

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @CBee @Ruthiella @Yuki_Onna @dabbe

♥️ Boom! ♥️

This was such a fun read, and so different for children‘s book ligature of the 70‘s. 4.5 ⭐️

Very fun read. 4.25⭐
Gave me memories of the movie Clue.

@NataliePatalie

"The sun sets in the sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

This clue themed display complete with an interactive puzzle sucked me in and suggested my tagged read. #mylibrary

My first finish of 2024. I‘d never read this classic.
I was able to figure out the mystery of the book. It had its flaws based on language of the era. It was fun seeing how Raskin played it out. Can‘t say it was a favorite, good though.
3⭐️ it was fun
Recommend for a light mystery middle grade level read. A bit of a palette cleanser.

I‘ve finished a couple books and started another I haven‘t had the mental capacity to do much after work. From the week of Thanksgiving through probably mid January it‘s ridiculously busy and I have some useless coworkers. I‘ll get my updates soon.
The tagged book was started this week (I think)
Here is my Arlo laying on part of my mom‘s coffee table while we worked on a puzzle during Christmas.

#Two4Tuesday
Thanks for the tags, @TheSpineView and @The_Penniless_Author

1. Two favorites as a kid: Sorry and Life.
2. The tagged book: THE WESTING GAME. My 7th grade students LOVED this book! 🤩

I thought this was a completely dif thing (didn‘t realize it was a middle school book- and honestly didn‘t rly notice that aspect), so it felt overhyped. Too many characters, which made the narration kinda confusing (like, who knows what?) and the pacing felt off for me. Interesting concept but I just thought it‘d develop differently.

Perhaps the epitome of a #whodunit?

I had never read this classic mystery before but it was a fun brain-teaser. The residents of an apartment building are named as heirs to the Westing fortune and must solve riddles and clues in order to receive the fortune.
#Scarathlon2022 #TeamMonsterMash @StayCurious #31by31 @Catsandbooks #Spookoween2022 @TheSpineView #Pointsathon @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES #AutumnAtoZ E @Texreader #bodycountbingo back from the dead @PuddleJumper

The hold this book had on me as a kid! The mystery, the puzzle/clues, the familiar setting (I grew up about an hour from Milwaukee, WI)! Such a clever and funny middle grade novel. I re-read it a few years ago and it still holds up. 😀 #scarathlondailyprompts #clue #teamslaughter

I like to indulge in some bookish nostalgia around my birthday. One of those books I borrowed over and over as a kid and it's still fun to read at nearly 36 😁

Oakley also likes the smell of old books 😻😂

I may have gone a bit overboard during thriftbook's last sale... I had to rearrange my bookshelf to fit all these in 😅

#bookhaul #mounttbr #booksmell #catsoflitsy

Two of my favorite elementary school reads were set in Wisconsin. #TravelTuesday

#12booksof2021

#August was an interesting reading month for me: I read the most books this month (8), the majority quick reads that had been languishing on my TBR for years. I was really happy by the quantity, but sadly none of them wowed me. I pick the tagged as the best of the month since I probably would have looooved it as a kid, but it felt dated to me as an adult

@Andrew65

#2021Book99
This is easily one of my favorite mystery novels, and my only regret is that I didn't know about it when I was a kid. This is exactly the type of book I would have read over and over in junior high.

Such an excellent mystery and incredibly smart for middle grade!! Sam Westing leaves 14 seemingly random strangers his $200 million fortune if they can play his game to the end. I still missed clues the second time around!

#audiobooks #kidlit #middlegrade

My review of this month‘s #bookspin book that I can‘t believe I finished 🥳 already. Definitely a book I would have enjoyed more as a kid, if I could have followed all of the characters. Outdated language also took me away from the story. I‘m looking forward to my #doublespin this week! With cover illustrated by my fave Charlie Bowater 🥰

This has been in my classroom for years (and I had inherited this well-worn copy). Finally reading it. I love a good closed room mystery. Not 100% sure if this counts as closed room, but close enough. It‘s okay, a little outdated perhaps. One I‘ve wanted to check off my list for a while though, and it‘s short! 😂

I wasn‘t terribly impressed with this one. Very uneven character developments, a lot of dead ends and false leads. I didn‘t understand the game aspect since few of the characters shared their clues, and those who did failed to win.

Fun. I enjoyed reading about the trials and errors of the heirs. It was fun, but I don't think I would suggest it to a child because of suicide. That to me, was not necessary.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Equal parts smart,confusing& ridiculous, the twisty turny plot of The Westing Game was a lot of fun to read! This book was published in 1978, but somehow I‘d never heard of it until recently.I never guess mysteries correctly& didn‘t even try with this one - it was fun just being along for the ride. And though at times it seemed a comprehensive wrap up was impossible, the ending all came together well. Definitely recommend for mystery fans!

“The sun sets in the west (just about everybody knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!”

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

It's funny what people will do for a bit of an inheritance, but given that 40 years later we can see exactly what really things people will do for money (and love & fame) thanks to reality TV, these folks are pretty tame.

Wealthy gent Mr Westing dies and gathers 16 heirs to play one final game to get that money. It was slow for me in the beginning but picked up in the middle as we got into the mystery of the story. There was some funny ⬇️

Tagged by @Apostcardlife and @Mavey Thank you!!

Clever. Diverse. Puzzling.

Want to play if you haven't already? @Traci1 @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm @bthegood @IamIamIam

#3wordreviews @ShyBookOwl

This is still my absolute favorite of all the Troll Book Club books I read as a school kid, and I was happy to see it still showing up in my daughter's book orders. A wealthy businessman has died and invited 16 heirs to live in an apartment building and compete to solve a puzzle that will earn them his entire fortune. I will forever remember this book as the one that taught me that, "All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare." ?

March #bookspin list!
@TheAromaofBooks

We're doing some serious bird/squirrel watching this morning. This is probably why can't seem to get much reading done. #ellenraskin #readKY #winterreading #catsoflitsy #childrensliterature #mystery

Mittens entertained himself by watching the birds and I have been reading children's literature. I remember that this was the one and only book that I enjoyed reading before I LOVED reading. Originally bought this book for my nephew, but thought it'd be a good thing to read it again just to make sure it's appropriate for his age. 😉 #readKY #mystery #childrensliterature #winterreading #snowday #staywarm #catsoflitsy

I only heard about this book a few years ago, which is wild since it‘s a well loved classic with adaptations and all. I wish I read this as a child since I think I would‘ve loved it, but it doesn‘t have a ton to offer an adult. It was goofy and passed the time. I had to look up how much 200M would be today and it‘s over 800M.

Late to the party on this one, but need a fun one to listen to in the background while I works

This book certainly moved fast (a middle-grade book will do that when you‘re reading as a thirtysomething). It‘s either a low pick or a high so-so. I‘ve opted for the latter because a couple of characters use the R-word 😬 which is all the more jarring because the cast is quite diverse. The book was originally published in 1978 so maybe keep that in mind.
#ShutdownReadathon book 8

#2020Book53
This is one of my favorite books to teach and I love watching my 8th graders get into the mystery.

This will either be very, very good or really awful. There is going to be no in between here. #bookadaptations

Middle-grade mystery reminiscent of some of Agatha Christie's big-cast stories.

Always a pleasure to reread this. The Westing Game was the best thing to come from my seventh grade English teacher (the competition for that is slim, by the way, she was wretched) and I read it every few years.

It took me most of the day to decide what to read next...but my library hold of the last Big Bang Theory season finally came in, so...I‘ll read tomorrow. 🤣

In brief - a kids‘ version of Clue. But otherwise very difficult to encapsulate - intriguing, sad, equalizing, witty, snide, confusing, unsettling. I‘m not sure that I was happy with it (see the trend of the adjectives), but it was quite a tale, and well-told.

One of my favorite books as a kid

#childhood #middlegrade

I read this in fifth grade, if memory serves. I loved it back then, and after rereading it as an adult, it still holds up.

About Ellen Raskin: “she said that she wrote for the child in herself, but for once I think she was wrong. I think she wrote for the adult in children. She never disrespected them or ‘wrote down‘ because she didn‘t know how.”

I remember reading this as a kid, and the mystery is as intriguing as I remembered.