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#OffMyShelf “pub year ends in 5”

“Well, there are a lot of things we don‘t know and choose and prefer not to know”.

Mantel‘s debut from 1985. Great writing but creepy, very dark and disturbing. There‘s something not quite right about the Axons: elderly Evelyn and her mentally challenged adult daughter Muriel. Unknowingly intertwined is former neighbor Colin, an unlikable school teacher, who is having an affair with Muriel‘s social worker.

#offmyshelf @wanderinglynn

#AutumnComfortSwap

Each box I opened kept getting more and more!

@kspenmoll the chocolate 🍫 did melt and has been devoured! lol

I have not read either hardcover book - great choices!

A very smart move to go with Emma as the Jane Austen book and tabbies!

I can‘t wait to use the tabbies; I‘ve been wanting that size for some time!

Thank you!!!

#OffMyShelf “recommended”
#AllergictoChuncksters
#ChunksterChallenge2025

Oof! So glad this is over. A 600 page picaresque comic novel that I didn‘t find very funny most of the time. I understand how it will appeal to some readers but alas not I. Buttoned up Raleigh Hayes leaves his ordered life in small town NC to go on a crazy quest to New Orleans on behalf of his estranged father. Along the way he reconnects with what‘s important in life.

#OffMyShelf “Prolific Author”

I picked this up for 50 cents at the library the other day. While I prefer Christie‘s novels, this was an enjoyable experience/story collection.

Five Poirot, one Miss Marple, two Parker Pyne, and one detective-less story (which felt more like Westmacott than Christie IYKYK). The only one I‘d read before was the Miss Marple, but I had seen all five of the Poirot ones adapted with David Suchet. I ❤️Agatha Christie.

#Roll100
#OffMyShelf “One Word Title”

Mary Karr writes beautifully of her tween years and adolescence in Leechfield, Texas in the ‘70s. Not as sympathetic as her first memoir, because it‘s a difficult age for many and particularly for Mary, who is smart but also often impudent and challenging as well as challenged by her home life and the counterculture movement.

I would have made the prologue an epilogue, however.

#14Books14Weeks
#OffMyShelf “Magic Realism”

I think I prefer Erdrich‘s later novels, but this was very good. It gives context and background to her debut “Love Medicine”. Set in the early 20th century and told from two perspectives: Pauline who is adrift from real family, mentally scarred and eventually mad and Nanapush, a wise and wisecracking elder who is troubled by the continued incursion on and internal collapse of Native lands and ways.

#OffMyShelf “Historical”

Not for the easily offended. Flashman is a terrible, amoral person. He‘s just incredibly lucky. Expelled from Rugby, he joins the army and ends up in Afghanistan, right in time for the first Anglo-Afghan war. I may continue with the series since Zelig-like, he is always at an interesting historical moment. The author is obviously a historian at heart. And I don‘t think the author endorses Flashman‘s behavior. Far from it.

#ChunksterChallenge2025
#AllergictoChunksters
#DoorstopKristen #KLBR
#OffMyShelf

I finished this 1125 page bind-up of all three novels. What a journey! This is the life of a medieval Norwegian woman - from her happy childhood, to her tumultuous courtship and marriage, to her years of motherhood and wifedom, to finally retreat to a nunnery and her death. Undset makes the characters, time and place come alive and feel relevant to the modern reader.

#OffMyShelf “completely different”
#14Books14Weeks

Short stories are not something I normally gravitate toward, but I did enjoy this book of linked stories featuring a 30 something woman in the‘90s. Lucy‘s a photographer and a real “guy‘s girl”. She sails, she white water rafts, etc. but she is unlucky in love.

I have had this book on my shelf since 1999. 😵‍💫 It‘s moved with me three times in 25 years ! Glad I finally read it. 😅