Welcome to Litsy!

Miller is an author who has a farm in Vermont. I really enjoyed his first book so I had high hopes for this one. This is a story of a young man watching his father farm in Iceland and helping him to take on the duties of the farm as his father falls into a depression. I feel as if I learned so much about Iceland and about farming through this book. It wasn‘t quite as good as The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven but a worthwhile read, for sure.

#offmyshelf “most recent TBR”
#ohcanada

This novel brings an important aspect of Canadian history to light-the use/abuse of indigent British children as indentured servants in Canada in the 19th and 20th cent. Told from the present with flashbacks to the past by Winnie to her granddaughter.

I‘m glad to have read it. However, I didn‘t like the writing or storytelling style personally. I found it too basic, the characters felt one dimensional.

A woman wakes up exhausted every morning, limbs aching, with unexplained bruising. She eventually finds out that she‘s sleepwalking. Strange things are happening - cats start to run away from her - and she tries to ascertain what is happening. It‘s a short read, a bit creepy, and one that keeps you hooked. The ending? Yeah, who knows what happened but I have several theories and I‘m okay with that. #offtheshelf #bookspin

Great idea, but poorly executed. Christine's husband has recently died, so she & her son decide to celebrate Christmas in the cabin that her husband had rented before he died. When they get there, things go bad in so many ways.
Warnings for a brutal pet death & for an ambiguous ending. Numerous parts of this book don't add up 🤷🏼‍♀️
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This one was okay. The pacing was choppy/slow, and a lot of the character motivations just didn't work for me. I also get annoyed whenever I hear the “if you don't want the government tracking/checking your every move you're obviously a criminal“ argument: it's simply not true. It was a fun concept, but the execution just didn't quite work for me.

Every year for 25 years at least 15 members of the family-my kids, aunts, uncles, grandbabies-spend a week at the ocean in the same funky house. So much of this book reminded me of the type of stays that we have. (Although I have to admit that we have some grumpy times which this author did not replicate.) I break my days down the same way she does. (Monday I‘m so relieved that we have so much time and by Wednesday I start to get sad.) 🔽

Georgiana finds a body outside of Kensington Palace, and has to figure out how it got there and why. The deceased has been a mistress to many, including some of the royal family and members of Parliament, so Georgie's investigating has to be very discreet.

I have really enjoyed reading this series, but didn't really like the previous book. So I was very glad that this one had an interesting storyline again.

Gordon returns to his hometown after spending 25 years in prison. He returns to a neighborhood that is riddled with crime, an elderly neighbor who is afraid of him, a teenager in desperate straits, a brother who has resented him for years, and a lonely woman who has visited him while he was in prison and hopes to have a relationship with Gordon. It‘s a lot for a guy who just wants to lay low and stay out of trouble. I couldn‘t stop reading it.

Ben rents a room from Winnie, who is elderly and a recent widow. Ben suspects that Winnie didn't really want him there, that she only agreed because her family thinks she needs someone there to watch out for her & help around the house. So Ben plans to stay out of her way, but then Covid lockdowns start. He and Winnie are forced to spend most of their time together, and a friendship ensues as they start to see life from each other's perspective.

Amy Tan's illustrations are beautiful, and her notes about her observations of the birds that visit her yard are so interesting! She also includes some information that she's learned from expert birders. Unfortunately not all of her observations are happy, and it makes me sad to think of birds getting ill and being in distress, but I guess that's part of nature, too.