I watched the Netflix series before reading the book. I hadn‘t even known it was a book firs. It‘s not a novel that would have been on my radar when it was first published, nor is it one I‘ve heard talked about much since. But I started reading the source material just days after watching the seven-hour TV series, and I read it pretty slowly, on purpose. I just wanted to stay in Beth Harmon‘s world longer. And I don‘t even play chess.

Happy #readathon Day, everyone!

I don't bowl anymore since my shoulder surgery a few years ago (and I was never good at it anyway, so I don't miss it). So I brought my book to hang out while the guys bowl. I feel like Diane Chambers. Cheers! (Get it? 😏)

I'm not sure how well a reader who didn't know New York City in 1977 will truly appreciate just how well Meg Medina evokes it in BURN BABY BURN. But the richness of character and setting, the stakes of the story, and the resonance of the issues--forty years later!--provide hooks for readers of any age or background. YA for readers for aren't usually YA readers.

BORN TO RUN was my last audiobook of 2016 and one of the best books I read all year. I have been a Springsteen fan for decades, but listening to him tell his own stories in the context of his own story gave me a whole new appreciation for him as a storyteller AND as a writer. Candid, funny, introspective, enlightening, and always driven to connect, this is a great gift from the Boss to his fans.

My First Book of the Year for 2017.

Mira is at home alone when a superstorm--part hurricane, part nor'easter--literally tears her hometown apart. The devastation of Haven, a tiny island town off the New Jersey coast, was inspired by the effects of Superstorm Sandy (2012). Beth Kephart vividly evokes the terror and determination of a girl, and a community, who may have lost nearly everything but refuse to be broken.

Reviewing this for Shelf Awareness in February. Reminded me a little of John Irving. Everything terrible happens to these kids! And yet, this is a warm and moving novel of the friendship between two teenage boys in 1970s Maine.

Currently, and soon-to-be, reading...

Weekend reading. So far, these people have PROBLEMS! (ARC, pub date 2/21)

Also: is it me, or is every other book cover using this font lately?

#FirstBookOfTheYear 2017

A belated Christmas gift to me, from me. I read the audiobook last summer, but now I get all the pictures and the annotated lyrics, too!

Jade Chang has framed a family's misfortunes with a comic road-trip novel. Her smart observations about class and culture are especially funny when delivered through character dialogue. The humor made me cringe at times, but I think that was a reaction to the sympathy I felt for this family. As Chang shifts perspectives among the Wangs, we see them as they see each other. I saw a family I hoped would land in a good place at the end of their road.

Another Brooklyn is not a pretty story, but the writing is gorgeous. Woodson‘s rhythmic, evocative language conveys the imprecision and subjectivity of memory without sugarcoating or losing track of emotional truths.
My only issue with Another Brooklyn is that I‘d really have liked it to be longer. I wanted to stay immersed in August‘s memories.

Behold the Dreamers presents a story that may be familiar in outline, but unique in its specifics.And in a year when in a year in immigrants and their role in modern American society have been a huge part of the public conversation, the novel is timely and topical. The characters are drawn well and their relationships are convincing. This novel made me laugh, made me catch my breath, and broke my heart over and over.

Margot Lee Shetterly has latched on to a story that needs and deserves to be told. Hidden Figures draws attention to an exceptional group of women. It emphasizes their part in the most significant scientific and engineering achievements of the 20th century, It‘s not all about, or just about, what they did, though. The environment in which these women lived and worked shaped and challenged them at least as much as the work itself.

In print, Alexander Hamilton is a doorstop chunkster, but not an intimidating one if you like big books. The audiobook was ideal for my two-hour-plus round-trip daily commute, keeping me engrossed for several weeks. If you love Hamilton already, make some time to learn the rest of his story.

In this collection of linked stories, the characters are related by blood, marriage, and/or geographical proximity. They don‘t all live on Bertrand Court, but those who don‘t are connected to someone who does. I didn‘t realize that this wasn‘t structured as a conventional novel when I picked it up, but the linked-stories form suits it well. It‘s an effective way to shift perspectives among the large cast of characters and across time periods.

TV critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating television since they covered it for the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger 20 years ago. This collection of essays on the shows they‘ve rated as the 100 best ever may be the culmination of their discussions, but it‘s likely to fuel plenty of others. This is a must-read for people who take their television seriously. (And this show IS in the Top 100.)

That time I met the Man in Black (and he was wearing a brown leather jacket)...

I read this is audio a while ago, but bought the paperback so Cary Elwes could sign it at Stan Lee's L.A. Comic Con today.

The latest #bookmailbox arrived yesterday! The theme is "magic" and the extras are awesome! Well done, @bookriot !

It's School Pride Day at the office, so my #Hogwarts robes are on! (And #Hufflepuff actually has the same colors as my high school!)

A fisherman finds a young woman floating in a lagoon. He thinks she's dead. She's not, but she IS Jewish, and the Nazis would like her to be. Set in occupied northern Italy near the end of World War II, THE GIRL FROM VENICE has shady characters, snappy dialogue, and an occasionally confusing plot.

I liked this one up until it went meta...and then I REALLY liked it. It has a "novel in stores" feel thanks to all the characters & perspective shifts. The relationships are complicated & convincing, although at times the plot is less so, and the dialogue is well-done. Maybe not as impressive as Patchett's last novel, STATE OF WONDER, but COMMONWEALTH was a win for me.

Just about 11 hours left on the audiobook. I might actually finish this one next week!

Too warm to read on the patio, so I'm up on the loft. I hope to spend as much time as possible here this weekend!

Getting in a few pages at the hair salon. #alwayscarryabook

I started this one last night and already want to set everything else aside to read it. (But I can't, so I won't. 😢.)

Also, I love when galleys have cover flaps to be built-in bookmarks!

Ng writes about Midwestern Asian-American characters in a time and place when such families were uncommon. The novel opens in 1977, but most of what defined the Lees as a family occurs at least a decade earlier. The depiction of attitudes toward the Lees is uncomfortable but appropriate to the time, and the cultural context is a big part of what makes Everything I Never Told You stand out from other missing-daughter novels.

The Neapolitan Novels were my unofficial Summer Reading Project of 2016, and I believe these books should be read straight through. Ferrante is telling a single story across all four volumes, This account of two girls from a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples is epic. It's gritty, provocative, aggravating, and intimately scaled...it's a saga. I'm not sure I've read anything quite like it before, and I can't wait to read it again.

Mostly sunny and 72 degrees--afternoons like this are why I wanted chairs on the patio.

Today was the annual observance of the Book Sticker Ritual, when I help my sister prep the new additions to the school library.

Taking today off to recover from a late night, and planning to spend most of it reading this. (But not here.)

My commute-time audiobook companion for the next few weeks. Spending all summer with the HAMILTON cast album feels like I've done the Cliff Notes for this.

"If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way"

I always like knowing where the title of the book comes from.

"As long as I have a Target, everything will be OK." #wordstoliveby

After several difficult years of marriage, Danielle Trussoni was desperate for things to change. In a dramatic play to save the relationship, she and Nikolai purchased a medieval fortress in a French village and moved their family there. The romantic setting would become a battleground where Danielle tried to protect her children and save herself from Nikolai‘s manipulations and increasing instability.

How to Party With an Infant is one of the titles that chef and single mom Mele Bart considers for her entry in the San Francisco Mothers‘ Club cookbook-writing contest. It‘s also the title that Kaui Hart Hemmings (The Descendants) has given this novel of friendship and parenthood in the Bay Area. There are no recipes in this novel built around writing a cookbook, but it has plenty of humor, heart and true-to-life dialogue.

Ditching hot Southern California for chilly Provence on a Sunday morning. An iced coffee, a late breakfast, and a book--not sure I need much more than this today.

The audiobook I'll be listening to on my drive home. Happy National Book Lovers Day!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

I'm returning this ebook to the library early. I bought my own copy because I'm finding way too many passages I want to highlight! And you mustn't write in library books, even electronic ones.

From Chapter 1

The United States might never have won the independence it declared from England without the help of France. The French provided money, guns, and soldiers to aid George Washington‘s Continental Army, However, their most valued contribution may have been the young Marquis de Lafayette. With him as its focus , Sarah Vowell‘s selective history of the American Revolution is an entertaining, engaging audiobook read.

"I realized this sounds like magical thinking. 'Wherever you go, you take yourself with you,' a therapist might have scolded (if I'd had one). And yet my life did change from city to city, sometimes dramatically so."

Imagine if our lives were treated as carefully as the rest of history. Imagine if we were documented as conscientiously, preserved as gently. Each birth at least as important as a naval victory. Each death a national tragedy. There are plenty of ways to remember someone: a park bench, a colossus, an epic poem. Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling. (chapter 34, Alexandra, page 245)

I swear I didn't plan to buy this. It jumped into my hand! Like #magic.

Told in three voices, Harmony explores how far some families will go to meet the challenges of a challenging child. Engagingly written & provocative.

My husband's newest tattoo is a literary one in honor of his all-time favorite book!

Just downloaded to Overdrive from the Los Angeles Public Library. I have moved around a LOT, and this premise intrigues me.

Killing time between Saturday appointments in the best way possible.