No one talks Zen better than Alan Watts. I can‘t blame his son for cashing in on his father‘s legacy by publishing old audio lectures in book form. I kept this pocket gem in my work bag for the better part of last year. It kept me grounded and spiritually in a better place than I would have been otherwise.

I finished this audio history book a few days ago. Dan Jones writes the most lively books! This one completes his Medieval English history trilogy and connects The Plantagenets and The Wars of the Roses. I wish Dan Jones narrated more books because he‘s so engaging to listen to! Highly recommend!!

Thank you to all my #LitsyLove and bookish friends for the kind birthday wishes! This is my B-day book haul! 😍 I spent my birthday doing my favorite things: walking my dog in the sunshine, relocating all my book shelves, and picking out new cookies to bake. Thank you for making my day so special! 🥳🤩🤓

I recently discovered Jordaline Reads on YouTube; she‘s a queer horror book tuber. She‘s inspired me to branch out into trashy genre fiction. So I got this book about a woman obsessed with her heart donor‘s widow. The plot is totally ridiculous but that is the point. Such a guilty pleasure! #aardvark

First finished book of 2025! There seemed to be some missed potential in not connecting the individual vignettes but otherwise it‘s a nice cozy book! Apparently GoodReads has a list of cozy translated novels….and I‘ve read several. This genre is my jam! Thanks, Rachel, for sharing this book with me! I really enjoyed it! #LitsyLove

@JamieArc Happy Birthday!!! I‘m putting the finishing touches on a gift for you, but I‘ve had some shipping delays due to snow and presidential memorials. I hope you don‘t mind celebrating your birthday again a few days later. I hope you have a wonderful day!!! 📚 🎁 🫖 🐾 🤩 #LitsyLove

This was my final read of 2024. I was expecting more true crime, but I enjoyed the author‘s tangents about European cuisine and travel. He‘s a freelance food/travel writer so it makes sense he would shine there. A mix of history, international law, and obsessive collectors, this was a nice book to dabble in. Cheers! 🥂 💚

#NYT new book preview for Jan ‘25. Excited for this one! #TBR

NYT preview of Jan ‘25 releases! #TBR #NYT

Big finance and big tech already control access to digital money but nothing will satisfy those in power until they have total control. Interesting book! I listened to the audiobook.

Stacy, I‘m so excited to read this book! What a fun shirt!! I love the book coasters, too! Thank your for being such an awesome friend! 🤗 #LitsyLove

Denise, I squealed when I opened this book! I‘ve wanted to read it for forever!!! Thank you for thinking of me this holiday season! Sending you joy! 🤩 🩵❄️💙 #LitsyLove

@Jerdencon thank you for such a lovely #JolabokaflodSwap2024 gift! This is one of my favorite Litsy traditions! Wishing you a happy holiday season and lots of good reading time! 🍫 📚 🎅🏼

Thanks @MaleficentBookDragon for hosting such a beautiful holiday swap! #JS2024

Sorry @StayCurious ! I hit 100 pages and couldn‘t put it down! I‘m like that with a nice cozy mystery. Plus, this was a lot of fun with the romance plot. Thanks for picking this book for a read along because I might not have prioritized otherwise. It‘s definitely a fun book! #BOTM 🎄 ❄️

So I‘ve made 15 holiday cookie varieties and eaten 1 or 2 of each kind! Pfefferneuse, orange cardamom molasses, cookie butter snickerdoodles, lemon wreaths, malted vanilla sugar cookies, red velvet, chocolate caramel, marzipan thumbprints, scotcheroos, cherry walnut balls, lemony hazelnut Yule logs, peanut butter blossoms, linzer cookies, chocolate oat biscuits, and grinch heart cookies!!!!
#TLT #ThreeListThursday

My #JS2024 package arrived today! It‘s under the tree waiting for Xmas Eve! 🎄 🍫 📖 #JolabokaflodSwap

@Jadams89 Thank you for the pet friendly #StuffedStockingSwap box of goodies! Theo enthusiastically approved of the toy and treats! I‘m very excited to solve the adorable animal advent calendar puzzle. The book is absolutely gorgeous! I can‘t wait to read it and add to my home library! Thank you for your kindness 🤗 Happy Howlidays 🐾

@Avanders Thank you for hosting another wonderful swap! ❄️ 🩵💙

I‘ve been hard at work baking holiday cookies. I‘ve finished 4 and have 3 more in progress. Done: cookie butter snickerdoodles, orange cardamom cookies, grinch heart butter cookies, and pfefferneuse. In progress: malted vanilla sugar cookies, lemon wreaths, chocolate oat cookies. Still have a lot to do!!! 🍪 🥄 👩‍🍳
#SaturdayChatterday

@Avanders #StuffedStockingSwap gift went out in the mail before Thanksgiving. It‘s arrived and I have received mine as well. #SSS 2024

@MaleficentBookDragon I mailed out my #JS2024 package today!

American history is just one tale of grift after grift. This installment features the doomed Freedman‘s Bank established during Reconstruction. The white trustees stole the deposits of the formerly enslaved to enrich their cronies and themselves. Black depositors are still waiting for justice. #thisbookwillprobablybebanned 💰 🏦

“Collectively, we have taken for granted that white wealth was built from Black work and Black ingenuity. Consider the fact that formerly enslaved people deposited approximately $57 million ($1.5 billion today) into the Freedman‘s Bank. They worked and saved to secure assets that they could transfer to their families and descendants.”

Page-turner memoir about being a working actress who finds herself in a cult! I‘ve never watched “One Tree Hill” but I still enjoyed reading this book (mostly for the cult situations). It‘s unfortunate that the author cover photo is so unflattering; she looks like a 50-something starlet instead of a fashionable Millennial. #BOTM

I read this last month. It‘s a solid horror novel. The tone is sort of V.C. Andrews meets postpartum psychosis. #BOTM

Happy Howloween! 🐾🧛🏻‍♀️💀🎃

I was eagerly awaiting this release even before it was featured in the NYT. This is billed as speculative fiction about what might have happened while Benito Juarez lived in New Orleans while in exile from Mexico. Herrera captures the wildness of 1850s NOLA with all the dangers from violence to illness. 🦟 ⛓️‍💥

The audiobook narrator tried to imitate Alan Watts‘ voice and speaking style, and just no. There‘s only one authentic Alan Watts. Still a good book with lots about Buddhist history.

I‘m obsessed with the cookie recipes in this book!!! This is the first cookbook I‘ve ever read cover to cover. I love the author‘s flavor combos, her use of different butter temperatures, and creative ideas for scraps. The measurements are a little weird but that‘s easy to overcome especially with a kitchen scale. Love it!!!! 😍 🍪

This book was everything I needed to read over a rainy, gray weekend. ✔️Creepy mountain health spa village in 1913. ✔️ Suspicious death in a house with suspicious men. ✔️ Mysterious plural pronoun narrator. ✔️ Sweet and charming MC. ✔️ Lush writing that makes it impossible to put down! 💀 🍷 🍂 #readme

Thank you @Laughterhp for the delightful #FFFS box of goodies! The Halloween puzzle and comfy socks are adorable! I‘ve already enjoyed a caramel and tea. The books are perfect for spooky season. The notecards are so beautiful! 🍁 Thank you for the unique gifts! I hope your swap box is just as wonderful! 🎃

To our lovely hosts, thanks again for such a fun tradition! #FallingForFallSwap 2024 🍂

I almost passed this up at the bookstore, because how many copies of Laozi‘s masterpiece does one person need? I‘m glad I gave in to my heart because I‘ve so enjoyed Ken Liu‘s magical, imaginative version! This is certainly the most inspired and creative interpretation of Dao De Jing I‘ve yet encountered. It‘s a must-read!! 🐅 🐠 🌊 🦋

Is it a novel or a collection of connected tales? I struggled a bit near the end when the tone became serious with the war. Certainly it‘s a unique exploration of sanity, culture, and art.

My #FallingForFallSwap box arrived a few days ago! Now I just have to count the days until October 1st! 🍂 #FFFS

Cory Doctorow‘s entertaining treatise on interoperability. 💻 🛜 🆓

This explained why I feel the way I feel about being a wage slave. I‘m resistant about being plugged in to social media and dislike my employer‘s attempts to connect every work action to data. This mess we‘re in globally is quite a spiraling web. Wake up!

I think I found this book because it was recommended by the NYT. It‘s an engaging history about cancer research and the author‘s family struggles with various cancers. It‘s a nice blend of personal and medical history, but it‘s a bitter sweet story. 🧬

Mikita Brottman has a talent for finding and telling the most unbelievable true crime stories. Her other books were more philosophical and poetic. This tale is the literary equivalent of a Polar Pop or Big Gulp. Buckle up for raunchy crimes among evangelicals, sex addiction, life insurance, and gators! 🐊🥤🔫

Page-turner examination of the corrupting influence of extreme wealth and blind faith in technology. This won‘t be the last book I read by Douglas Rushkoff. A true visionary!

A neuroscientist turned journalist shares years of research about how climate change effects our brains. It‘s not good news, but it‘s a great book.

What a fun end of summer swap box! I‘ve already started A Silent Fire and think it will help me be a better nurse. Nutrition is key in the fight with chronic inflammation. I‘m excited to try the Alaska Sourdough recipes (I needed a starter)! Thanks for the fun pen and cookie cutters 🤩 Theo LOVED the cod skins!!!! Thank you so much! 🥳 #LLSS #LitsyLove

I found this novel uneven but interesting. It‘s definitely not a typical dystopian story; there are more fantasy and sci fi elements. It‘s a little like Robin Sloan condensed a fantasy series into one book. A bit of a mess but in the best way. 🦫

I bought this book based on the description: “wildly imaginative, genre-defying, and delightfully queer adventure—a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute.” No regrets!

I am weak weak weak for WWII history books about thwarting Hitler. This book is a sort-of biography of Sefton Delmer, a German-born Australian who revolutionized Britain‘s propaganda war against the Nazis. I couldn‘t put it down! 📻 🚬

LvdB is one of my “must read” authors, and this was my most anticipated book of 2024. What I love about her writing style is that it‘s never what you‘d expect. Even if you think you know what‘s going on…you‘re probably a little wrong. If you enjoy surprises and Florida weather, this might be for you! 🌴

Pros: 1) short chapters 2) excellent primary sources 3) varied personal accounts and perspectives. Cons: 1) way too long; needed better editing 2) unnecessarily extended section about Lincoln‘s train journey to D.C. 3) for all the protraction, the ending felt rushed. #BOTM (Background: insanely difficult puzzle of Paul Klee painting) 🔥 💣 ⚔️

EVERYTHING anyone could want to know about “Who‘s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The play, the movie, the actors, directors, producers. More interestingly it examines changing mores in the 1960s with regard to marriage and relationships.

I listened to this audiobook because it put me to sleep. I enjoyed hearing about different aspects of medieval travel. The author covers a variety of destinations and reasons for travel (i.e. pilgrimage, trade, exploration).

It wasn‘t a great play when it first premiered and it didn‘t age well. Vonnegut‘s problematic misogyny and homophobia really sticks out here. A necessary read for Vonnegut completists but everyone else may skip.

Do yourself a favor and read this book. 🍄

Complete your graphic novel bingo with this book about Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s famous Peterloo poem that doubles as a mini biography of women‘s labor activist Pauline Newman. 🔥

I liked this story about Cherry‘s time as a flight nurse in England. Maybe it was the British countryside but this book didn‘t feature the same derogatory language about Asian cultures. There‘s even a mention of African American troops and how they play the best swing music. My favorite detail is that preparations for evacuation flight nursing involves having hot coffee ready to drink! ☕️