My most recent read, highly recommended for anyone who has even heard of a Blizzard game!

Just finished this thriller/horror about five women who go on a writing retreat to a famous author‘s mansion deeply secluded in the woods. Let‘s just say her techniques to get her students to write are less than orthodox. 5/5 stars!

A great biography of a very magical place!

Spent a bit of my Canada Day finishing this one. Another great, (albeit convoluted) Agatha Christie novel. Don‘t worry, the only nod to golf in this book is where the body was discovered.

It‘s rare that I enjoy contemporary thrillers. However, this was a 5/5 star pick for me! Fast paced and just the right amount of creep factor for a horror fan like myself.

Bonus: This was also my BOTM club pick for June!

When it first came out, I just wasn‘t ready for this book. Now that a number of years have gone by, the time felt right. This is an amazing read filled with anecdotes from the people who knew him and constructed by Laurie Woolever into a narrative that was much better than I even hoped.

Just wow! Even better than Ninth House and Hell Bent.

“There was nothing more dangerous than a woman with a pen in her hand” - Ch. 12, page 76

I love quotes about reading and writing like this in books!

A good speculative fiction thriller that had me on the edge of my seat!

Not sure if posting bookish memes is a faux pas on Litsy, but this was too good not to share

#Bookhaul for April 9th, 2024

Just one book today, The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo. I‘m a huge fan of her Alex Stern series (Ninth House, Hell Bent) so of course I will buy any other novel aimed towards adults she writes!

Has anyone else picked this one up today?

Book haul for April 8, 2024!

Went in for Recursion by Blake Crouch for my friends‘ bookclub. Came out with a few other titles from the remaindered tables 😆.

I‘ve heard great things about everything George Saunders has written, so Liberation Day seems as good a place as any to start.

I‘m a Ian McEwan fan, but wasn‘t sure if Lessons warranted a day one purchase so I‘m getting to it now.

And I need to read more King classics so Carrie it is!

Hello to all of Litsy and my first post of 2024! I‘ve been on an Agatha Christie kick this year. What really amazes me is how well the books read to this day. They don‘t feel dated at all!

Of the Hercule Poirot books I have read, this one was one of the better ones! Maybe it‘s because it has people lounging on the beach, but the mystery is not bad either!

I aim to post more often this year!

Let‘s hear your favourite Hercule Poirot novels!

💫 Happy Star Wars Day to all on Litsy! I might also celebrate by watching a few Star Wars Visions shorts.

☄️ How are you celebrating Star Wars day?

#MayTheFourthBeWithYou

It might have taken me two or three years, but I‘ve finally finished this book.

It was well written, you just have to really like reading a lot of play by plays about rowing.

Did I like this book? Yes. Do I wish that this book was better written, longer and went into more detail about Bourdain‘s life? Also yes.

I admit it, I‘m a huge Grady Hendrix fan and this book is on par or better than the other books by him that I‘ve read.

I think this book perfectly encapsulates everything that is exciting about the slasher horror genre while mayyyybe looking at it with a slightly critical eye.

If you enjoy horror, you won‘t be disappointed!

📍Book Warehouse - Vancouver, Canada

Picked up my copy of The Final Girl Support group for my book club. I really enjoyed seeing a Halloween display at my local indie. I‘m a huge Grady Hendrix fan, so I‘m glad my bookclub chose this read!

I first read The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells as an undergrad student. I really enjoyed the sci-fi classic and so was very intrigued by the premise of this book. What if Doctor Moreau had a daughter? What would her life be like? How would she perceive her father‘s experiments making human-like animals?

Silvia Moreno-Garcia does a good job exploring these questions while keeping the elements of fantasy that made Mexican Gothic great!

Never want the day to end…

Reading after dark 😈

It is what it is

Elements of the supernatural combine with the liberal arts novel as the story follows Samantha, an MFA student whose nemeses are a clique of fellow MFA students dubbed the Bunnies for their childish ways.

However she can‘t say no when she gets invited to what she thinks will be a casual night of reading saucy poetry. That may sounds tame, but the novel gets weirder and more supernatural from there, and discovering that is part of the fun.

It‘s been a long, long time since I had a book haul!! Makes me so happy!

Pictured are:
💰 Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
💀 All‘s Well by Mona Awad
🦇 The Southern Book Club‘s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Sally Rooney‘s new novel lives up to the hype, an amazing, but understated (in typical Rooney fashion) story about four friends in their early 30s.

The most interesting parts were the emails written between two main characters of the novel, Alice and Eileen. It has me wishing for a non-fiction essay collection written by Rooney.

Read this if you are someone who values human connection!

Also pictured, handmade bookmark from a good friend.

An entertaining thriller about a game of wits between an old and young faculty member at a private school for boys.

What motivates the young teacher? Is it ambition, jealousy or something else?

This book had an amazing plot twist I did not see coming! I‘m excited to one day read the sequel.

Recommended for fans of campus novels and literary thrillers.

Leigh Bardugo was one of those authors I hadn‘t stopped hearing about since I joined Litsy, but I never had a chance to read.

That all changed when I heard about her campus/magic novel based on the secret societies of Yale. This book was much better than I expected, with some parallels to Harry Potter. Highly recommended!

Best way to spend a holiday Monday in Canada!

Latest Book Outlet haul! Pictured books are:
1. Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris
2. Dark Archives: A Librarian‘s Investigation Into The Science And History Of Books Bound In Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom
3. Madame Fourcade‘s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France‘s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson

Went to the bookstore for the first time in ages yesterday! This book was on my radar after reading about it in the TLS and The New Yorker. Despite reading two reviews about it, I‘m still not sure whether to expect real ghosts or not! #SundayRead #CurrentRead

Current vibe

Read this as an eBook and decided to try something different for the book pic! I hope it turned out.

I came to this first book in the Waterdeep series in the greater Forgotten Realms fantasy series based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons after a large chunk of time I spent last year playing a board game called The Lords of Waterdeep with a group of friends.

If you have read any Forgotten Realms in the past you know exactly what you get.

As you might have picked up from the discussion on other posts, Later was so so close to being a fun pulpy King novel. However, he made one big plot decision at the end which was unnecessarily heavy and didn‘t really fit with the presentation of the involved characters earlier in the novel.

Otherwise it was a fun read about a boy who can see dead people.

Cafe Europe Revisited was a great series of essays about the ways that Eastern Europe has integrated (or not) into the EU after the 30 years since the fall of communism. These essays were quite enlightening and gave me much food for thought!

Recommended!

Going to be catching up on reviews so be prepared for a flurry of posts in the next hour!

Let Me Tell You What I Mean was my first Joan Didion book. It was a decent starting point to understand the legend that is Didion! At the same time I left the book feeling like I need to read her more iconic works to fully get what she is all about.

Recommended!

One of the biggest books of the moment was only a “meh” read for me. I found the ending predictable and guessed it midway through the novel.

The idea about living other lives to see what you are missing is a resonant one, which is my guess as to why this book is doing so well on the bestsellers list. However, the story itself ends up being overly sentimental and cliche.

I‘m sure many people could have written the exact same book.

Obama‘s amazingly well written memoir was my first read of 2021. The writing is so good you‘ll swear it‘s worthy of a well established literary author.

Not only does this book walk through the major achievements and issues faced by Obama prior to and into his presidency midway through 2011, you get to see a touching and human side to him as well.

I absolutely cannot wait for part II!

Short and to the point, this book examines the prominence of chess throughout history, especially in medieval times. Interestingly, the pieces and the moves ascribed to them have undergone a myriad of changes throughout history. I think this book will appeal to fans of 2020's breakout TV hit “The Queen's Gambit“.

Can anyone recommend any other good chess books?

Happy New Year!

#NewYear #Chess #QueensGambit #QueenMe

Let me take you back to the year 2000, I just got my first real computer and I am playing one of my first PC games on that computer. The game is Civilization II, an extremely fun turn based strategy game where you control armies, develop technology and build world wonders in an attempt to win the game. I was hooked.

If you wonder what goes into designing such a game, this memoir will be a treat. It‘s a wild fast ride through game design!

As far as mystery/thriller novels go, this one was decent. It doesn‘t fall into the trap of too obviously and frustratingly withholding information (I‘m looking at you Woman In The Window). That said, the characters and settings are still relatively one dimensional.

I think if you are a fan of the genre you will probably be satisfied with this book.

I had never heard of Alice Marble, who was the best women‘s tennis player in the pre-Open era (~1930s and 1940s) until reading this excellently written biography.

The book encompasses her origins in tennis, her development and success a tennis player, and follows her through to her old age. It even touches on the many mysteries surrounding her involvement as an allied spy in WWII.

A fun tidbit was that she regularly visited Hearst Castle.

As I show you two of my current reads, I want to tell you about my brainwave to get me using Litsy more.

If you check my bio, I have the page or percentage counts listed for my reading progress. Hopefully, this will get me using the app more.

And if you‘re ever up for some book related chat, I‘ve also added my Discord ID to my profile bio.

I hope everyone is staying healthy this September and I can‘t wait to see what everyone is reading!

Hey Litsy! It‘s been a while since I posted, but I‘m back and more ready then ever to keep telling you all about my awesome reads!

This Friday evening finds me continuing The Witcher novel series with book 4! It continues to be a pleasing series. Bonus points if you can guess what I‘m drinking while reading! (Hint it is unfortunately a very topical tropical beverage)

In other news, I‘m now a resident of Vancouver! Where my fellow BC littens at?

Well, I‘ve just finished Becoming Leonardo: An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci by Mike Lankford. It was a great overview of Da Vinici‘s life, with some creative leaps to fill in the blanks (e.g what he could have been feeling at a certain time, etc.). It‘s an amazing book because it reads at a fast pace and dispels many of the myths we have as a society about Leonardo! Highly recommended!

This is the second novel by Wolitzer that I have read. When I purchased this book from a local used bookstore in pre-pandemic times, I had no idea that it was a young adult novel!

It is about a teenage girl who goes to a boarding school in Vermont for “fragile” youths where she takes a life changing class called “Special Topics in English” which, along with her fellow classmates, is life changing.

I will definitely be reading more Wolitzer!

I don‘t know who else is keeping on during the pandemic by playing Scrabble GO, my latest addiction, but if you are looking for more games feel free to start one with me! https://s.scope.ly/_gNMtw

I‘m so thrilled to read that a previously unpublished Simone de Beauvoir novel titled “The Inseparables” will be printed in French later this year and published in English in North America by fall 2021. It‘s based on an influential friendship she had as a child. Anyone else excited for what‘s sure to be a literary event? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/coming-soon-new-fiction-from-simone-de-...

I'm happy to see US indie bookstores stay strong during the pandemic by boosting their online sales! As for myself, I bought a copy of Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney from the Canadian chain Indigo. It was seamless with the book shipping from my local store. More on indie sales in the US here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/24/little-book-sellers-that-coul...

I just finished the work of art that is this literary fiction novel.

It follows 41 year old Toby Fleishman who is recently separated from his wife Rachel and is learning his way around contemporary dating apps while trying to raise his two kids abandoned by Rachel at his apartment. Rachel disappears and Toby must hold his life together. Expect many pithy observations on life.

Reminiscent of Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. Must read!