This was a quick, entertaining read with “just-one-more” short chapters — so, exactly what I was looking for after the last few weeks of the school year with a graduating senior and all the attendant stress and exhaustion. Horror, satire, dark humor — I give this wild debut ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a 🍿.

Currently reading with a bookmark bought in Boston.

Reading by the lake with my dog BFF. 🐾💕

Unpopular opinion: I loved this book.
I‘ve read so many reviews saying that it‘s boring, pointless, etc. and I suppose that they are sort of right in that nothing is really happening. Something has happened in the world, the characters don‘t have any way of knowing exactly what happened, and they are trying to navigate their fear of this new, unknown reality within the scope of their mundane, flawed lives & selves. But it‘s so beautifully told.

Sick on the couch with a book and my reading buddy.

California snow day!

Another book I really hoped to like but ultimately found disappointing. McCarthy is a beautiful writer. I have page flags all over the place marking passages I loved. I will still read more of his books (I haven‘t read most of them, and I gather that this one is pretty atypical). However, this one was a very long example of masterful writing that left me scratching my head. Nothing is explained or resolved, and I‘m not sure what the point was.

I really wanted to like this book. I read it with my husband, thinking it was up both our alleys - his for the horror and mine for the weird sci fi.

It was good until about halfway through. Then it became a slog to the finish for both of us. Have you ever played Candy Land with a small child who kept adding rules so that the game would never end? This felt exactly like that.

I like sci-fi, but especially sci-fi that wrestles with philosophical questions. Dick covers a lot of ground in this relatively short book: religion, fanaticism, empathy and its limits, what makes someone “human,” what constitutes “life,” the value of life. Not a “light” read, but very readable and thought-provoking.

There is so much to love here - time travel! moon colonies! - and yet those elements fade into the background of stories about characters who are all lost for various reasons, missing a place or a person they cannot yet return to, if ever.
(continued in comments)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was absolutely not what I expected. I‘ll admit I judged the book by its cover and guessed it to be a meet-cute rom-com heavily leaning on a chem lab setting. There is romance and a chem lab, but that is about all I had right. Fun, entertaining book.

“Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”

Another hilarious essay by Irby and completely relatable to me and my 2023 refusal to give a f*ck about resolutions or a “Word of the Year.”

This is a book of interconnected stories that begin in the 2030s with an Arctic archaeological dig by scientists attempting to solve climate change problems; this leads to the discovery of an ancient child‘s corpse and the unwitting release of a virus from her body, which becomes a global pandemic. The book traces the path and consequences of the virus through various characters over time, but it is not really about the virus. (cont. in comments)

Happy New Year!

This book is equal parts bonkers and tragic. So far, I love it — telepathic pig and all.

Beartown is hanging its last hope for survival on the junior hockey team: if they win, the town stands a chance of not quietly disappearing into the forest. The second half of the book was worth getting through the somewhat sluggish beginning and is a discussion-worthy look at several social issues, including herd mentality: “And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”

Barnes & Noble book haul - 50% off hardcovers today!

Devoured A Court of Thorns and Roses and then found that the holds list at the library for the next book, digital or physical, was weeks to months long. So of course the sensible thing to do was to just buy the whole damn set.

Not me randomly finding this book in a thrift shop a couple of weekends ago, thinking my students might like it; then forgetting I bought it and having it returned to me by my daughter today; then thinking I might take a peek at the beginning but actually reading 80 pages of it…

Still reading on the road. Unsure about this one — a student kept on me last year about reading it, though, so next time I see her I‘ll be able to say I did.

Peter Heller is a stunning writer. This book has it all: beautiful prose, but also suspense. Character development that blurs the line between light and dark in one man‘s soul. Philosophical musings on art, life, and grief. I think I‘m going to have to read anything else he writes.

Finished this on the road just after visiting the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest in Arizona.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Cute. Funny in places. Predictable ending. Quick summer read. Reminded me of You‘ve Got Mail, but more “adult” - some eye-rolling here with those scenes, and the writing was cringe-worthy at times, but it was entertaining otherwise.

Choosing the next book can be hard, but this one was easy —
Daughter: Why are you staring at your books?
Me: Trying to decide what to read next.
Daughter: *grabs book* You‘re reading this one because you‘ve been painting things!

Picture is the shelves I repainted. ❤️

Finished this sequel to The Golem and the Jinni last night. I hadn‘t intended to read this right after finishing Golem, but I really just wanted to stay in this world with these characters. I liked it a bit less than the first book, but nonetheless it did not disappoint! ❤️

I just grabbed whatever I had in my nightstand for a bookmark, haven‘t bothered to swap it out. 🤷‍♀️

Sunday morning.

I have students who think I just come home and read all day. Some days, that‘s true. But it‘s only because I literally don‘t have the energy to do anything else.

Anyway, this book is pretty good so far.

I had intentions yesterday to do All the Things. Instead, I spent the day unable to tear myself away from this. I know quite a few did not like the turn this took or the way it ended, but I did. I think it gives the overall story arc and the main character so much more complexity to talk about.

So thirty minutes after I finished A Good Girl‘s Guide to Murder, I ran to the bookstore and bought the other two in the series, plus two more books. 😂 Daughter is 100 pages into Good Girl, Bad Blood… I‘m gonna catch up. 😎 #motherdaughterbookclub

Hustled through this as fast as I could at the prodding of my impatient teen daughter, who *needed* me to read it so she‘d have someone to talk about it with. I don‘t tend to gravitate to mysteries, but I loved this one. #motherdaughterbookclub

Sunday vibes while reading my first Grisham book — a Christmas gift from a friend. 200 pages in and pleasantly surprised so far.

Thanksgiving break, Day One! I was honestly a little afraid to start this book right now because of its length and knowing that this is a really busy time of year — I don‘t need to spend a month on one book right now. But so far, I don‘t think that‘s going to happen. It‘s lovely, and I‘m hooked.

I know it‘s early, but I had to try out this cute Christmas cup we found last weekend!

A student borrowed this book from the library & then told me I *have* to read it. So I am. After the distance-learning debacle of last year, I‘ve found it more difficult this year to get students invested in reading, so moments like this are less common than usual. Once I‘m done with it, this copy will go on my classroom shelves for other students to enjoy.

Picked these up at a library sale yesterday even though I have eleventy billion unread books at home. Why am I like this?

Report at 9:00. Wait for 30 minutes. Get told to come back in an hour. Welcome to jury duty, Day 2. 🤦‍♀️

Not home today to make anything better than a note on my phone for my August list 😅
#bookspin #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

Another July #bookspinbingo book - this one is my #doublespin .
Finished this a couple of days ago. While reading this book, I was reminded at varying points of Harry Potter, City of Bones, and Twilight. ⬇️

My #bookspin book for #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

I was supposed to have read this years ago when I was working on my masters‘s degree in Comparative Lit. Unfortunately, there was not enough time in any day to both read all the books I was assigned and write all the papers, and I had to skip a couple. This was one of those, and it has been glaring at me from a shelf ever since. 😅 ⬇️

Probably the fastest I‘ve ever read a book of this length. Compared to my usual speed, I basically inhaled it. Yay, summer and free time and most of all, David Mitchell! Still one of my favorites.

So good. What an adventure. 💙

Different book, same difficulty with reading. 😜

Halfway through, still loving it.

What better time than summer vacation to read a 600+ page book? 😆 100 pages in and loving it so far.

…and my July bingo card. Took ages to get it right. 🤦‍♀️😂 #BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

I‘d never heard of #bookspinbingo until today, (a day late 🤷‍♀️) but I‘ll give it a try! @TheAromaofBooks

Well, that was delightful.

It‘s fine. I wasn‘t trying to read.

If you loved or even liked RP1 — don‘t mess it up by reading the sequel. I don‘t understand how the same person wrote both of these. I made myself finish RP2 because we got it for Christmas. Santa must hate me... I hope he‘ll forgive me now that I‘ve done my penance. (continued in comments)

Randomly grabbed this from a shelf. Couldn‘t remember why I bought it, or who I heard about it from. Loved it.

We bought a Roomba at a discount, and then it sat there for two years because I didn‘t want to take it apart to clean it, and nobody else was willing to do it, either. Then I finally just did it.
Will I sit on my butt and read this book about happiness while I sip wine and a machine vacuums for me? Yes, I think I will.

I feel like I‘ve been in a reading slump since the pandemic started, and given the rave reviews, I was hoping this one would pull me out of it. Nope. I do like O‘Farrell‘s writing, and I wouldn‘t say I didn‘t enjoy the book at all, but it was hard for me to feel anything much about the plot or characters. It just fell flat for me, overall.