Happy New Year, Littens! I love best of the year lists, so I thought I‘d share mine. It was really really hard to narrow it down to these. (They are in the order I read them.)

#top10 #bestof2022

I haven‘t been as active on here as I‘d like to be, and, due to life events, I‘m going to take an official break. I hope to be back soon!! 💙

01. One Day on the Island; Sea of Tranquility
02. White daisies
03. Mother‘s Day brunch + the bookstore

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

Here are my suggestions for this year‘s #camptob. I went with nonfiction published in 2022 both because they will not be eligible for the actual #rooster and because I loved the year they did nonfiction for camp. #camptob22

#bookreport
This week was a fun reading week. All four of these were audio books, and I enjoyed them all (to varying degrees).

#weeklyforecast
I‘m hoping to finish Sea of Tranquility this week but take it slow with Call of the Wild on #serialreader. Then, depending on my mood I might start Alaska. (I‘m heading to Alaska this summer, so I hope to get to several Alaska-y books this month.) I should also have a library hold or two come in.

Here‘s how my bracket is shaping up! I love this way of thinking about my favorite book of month.

Here‘s what I read I April. It was a solid reading month. Valentine was my lone 5-star read, but I enjoyed almost all of these.

#aprilwrapup #aprilreads #monthlywrapup

01. Choose FI, Valentine
02. The Souvenir Museum, by Elizabeth McCracken
03. The No-Show, by Beth O‘Leary

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

March was a great reading month for me. To Paradise, The Island of Sea Women, I Must Betray You, and Syllabus were all 5-star standouts.

#marchreads #marchwrapup #monthlywrapup

01. Deathless Divide, Valentine
02. White Fragility
03. Good Morning, Monster

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

#bookreport
A decent reading week for me. These were all audio books, and Productivity Ninja was my favorite of the bunch. The Moriarty is for book club, and I think we‘ll be all over the board on this one.

#weeklyforecast
I‘m taking it slow with Harlem Shuffle. I just started Think Again. And then I‘m diving into the massive tome that is To Paradise.

01. Nine Perfect Strangers, Harlem Shuffle
02. Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland
03. Beloved

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

#bookreport
It was a pretty good reading week for me. I loved both Sea Women and Betray You. Both look at history that is tragic and yet so full of hope. I also did a quick reread of #gtd and had fun with a romance.

#weeklyforecast
I am loving We Are Not Like Them and just started Harlem Shuffle for #lmpbc. After that, this may be the week I get to the Ozeki as the #tob starts up. And then the Moriarty is for #bookclub.

01. We Are Not Like Them; Harlem Shuffle
02. Library holds, for the most part
03. Nine Perfect Strangers

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

I can‘t resist a book about maps! #botm

#bookreport
All nonfiction this week. All pretty good. Jenny Lawson makes me laugh and cry. And I loved listening to Brandi Carlile tell stories and sing.

#weeklyforecast
I made zero progress on the Ozeki this week, but I still want to get it read before the #tob starts next week.

01. The Tourist Attraction; The Book of Form and Emptiness
02. Feed, by Mira Grant
03. Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

#bookreport
Five Tuesdays in Winter is my favorite read of the year so far. It was beautiful and lovely on audio. Evidence of the Affair was short but striking, and The Switch was charming and cozy. The other two were just fun fluff.

#weeklyforecast
I‘ve been avoiding reading the Ozeki. 🤷‍♀️ I‘ll continue to work on that this week and then see what library holds come in.

01. The Book of Form and Emptiness; Nudge
02. The Confession of Copeland Cane, by Kennan Norris
03. The New Jim Crow

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

“A book must start somewhere.”

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Charming and comforting, this was just the book I needed on a dreary winter day. A year after losing her sister, Leena is living in London and is burnt out and flaming out at work. After losing her granddaughter and being left by her husband, 79-year-old Eileen is ready for a change from her Yorkshire life. Grandmother and granddaughter switch places for two months and delightful things ensue.

I like the vibe of this book - small Alaskan town, lots of love stories waiting to be told. But this one takes place during a serious mountain climb where the heroine and her film crew make stupid, life-threatening decisions. It took the fun out of the romance for me. I may still check out the others in the series.

#bookreport
Another week of #moremehthanyeah reads for me. But I‘m glad I read each of them for different reasons.

#weeklyforecast
The Ozeki is my last #tob shortlist book! And I have a couple of romances on deck in audio. After that, I think I shall read whatever strikes my fancy.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Part of me liked hearing so much of Cope‘s story, because it‘s the small and the big that make us who we are. But the pacing on this was off, and I struggled to maintain interest, especially without knowing until the very end why he was on the run.

01. The Confession of Copeland Cane; The Book of Form and Emptiness; Enjoy the View
02. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
03. Edenbrooke, by Julianne Donaldson

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

These are relatable comics for the introverted feminists out there. Some were laugh-out-loud funny. Others less so or opaque (at least to me). A mixed bag but worth the time it took to read.

A fun and fluffy (and lightly steamy) romance loosely based on a power couple like Chip and Joanna Gaines. In this, their respective assistants have to babysit the couple on a book tour as the marriage is crumbling. But romance blooms as the two assistants get to know each other.

#LMPBC #Round14GroupB
@Megabooks @LMJenkins @JamieArc

It looks like we have our lineup. I‘m excited about all of these #botm backlog books, ladies!

Malibu Rising (June 2021)
Leave the World Behind (October 2020)
Beautiful Country (September 2021)
Harlem Shuffle (October 2021)

I tried to keep these relatively short. I have a few doorstoppers in my backlog (The Lincoln Highway, The Hearts Invisible Furies, The Fountains of Silence) if anyone would prefer those!

Let me know which of these you guys would like to read the most!

#LMPBC #Round14GroupB @Megabooks @JamieArc @LMJenkins

This short tome took me forever to read. Nervous System is a kind of fable where none of the characters or places are named and is written in mostly short snippets of thought. While some of the snippets were compelling or thought-provoking, I found the time-jumps to be confusing, and the narrative didn‘t come together for me.

@suvata has opened up the signups for the next round of #lmpbc! It has been quite a while since I‘ve joined in. This time, I went this Group B with @Megabooks to tackle #BotM books.

Head over to @suvata ‘s post for details and the signup link if you‘re interested.

I enjoyed this a little more than I expected to, but the last third kind of went off the rails for me. I liked the idea of exploring dynamics among house guests during lockdown. But ultimately I did not connect with any of the characters and got a bit bored.

This book spent too much time convincing me fun is important (and that smart phones ruin fun) and trying to sell me on her (too-off-repeated) definition of “true fun.” In the end, I was left without any concrete ideas on how to have “true fun” and feeling like other methods of the more attainable forms of fun were shortchanged. But I did enjoy some of the research and writing.

#bookreport
Not a great reading week. All three of these were #moremehthanyeah, to borrow a hashtag.

#weeklyforecast
I‘ve got a romance in progress on audio. Then I‘m turning to the last two books from the #tob shortlist.

01. Nervous System; The Honey-Don‘t List
02. The Trees, by Percival Everett
03. Birthday party for my kid 🥳

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

This book is a feat of translation with the wordplay. As a novel, though, it was less successful for me. There wasn‘t enough plot or character development to hold my interest. But, at times, the individual scenes of the casual neglect of the child narrator were compelling.

This was the (relatively) light-hearted fare I needed. It‘s a friends to lovers story where the two friends go on a vacation together each year. I like Henry‘s writing.

This was a #botm selection from 2021.

This was an excellent start to the year!
8 #tob books
2 book club books
7 audiobooks
7 physical books
1 ebook
3 nonfiction
12 fiction

#januarywrapup #januaryreads #monthlywrapup

#bookreport
A mixed bag this week. Didn‘t like the Han, quite liked the Henry, and I‘m still reeling from the Garréta.

#weeklyforecast
I‘m enjoying the Price, though it‘s currently more about how smart phones ruin fun than how to cultivate it. And I swear I‘m going to start the Ozeki this week.

01. In Concrete; The Power of Fun
02. A tie: When We Cease to Understand the World; The Sentence
03. Several People are Typing

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

Thank you, @BkClubCare!! This arrived yesterday, and I‘ve already started reading. Thanks for the postcard too! I love being #tob buddies. 💙

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I knew I was in trouble the moment we hit the fake dating trope. Add to that that much of the plot relies on people not telling each other things, a weird love triangle with flat boys, and reliance on an implausible plot device to have the titular letters exist and disperse. The cherry on top was the lack of an actual ending. (I did like the relationships of the sisters for the most part.)

I was hoping for a more nuanced and broad-based introduction to attachment styles, but, as it says on the tin, this is solely about romantic relationships. The tests and examples have very narrow application. And I was bugged that people with secure attachments were assumed to be relationship gods.

I laughed out loud throughout this short and pithy novel. Gerald's consciousness is literally stuck in Slack (though his body is not), and the whole book is written in the various Slack channels of the PR agency where he works. While I don't use Slack specifically, anyone who texts or works in the modern office world will be able to keep up. I enjoyed this one, even if the plot lines felt a bit thin. Now I'm off to search for sunset images.

#bookreport
I made good progress this week, even though my reading took a backseat to other projects over the weekend. I really enjoyed both The Sentence and Several People are Typing for the #tob.

#weeklyforecast
I‘m hitting the Jenny Han book for book club and hope to knock the other two off of my #tob list. And maybe I‘ll get one more audio book in.

01. The Confession of Copeland Cane; To All the Boys I‘ve Loved Before
02. Where the Drowned Girls Go
03. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

This is where I‘m at with my #tob reading. I‘m very pleased with the progress so far. Of the remaining books, I have the all but Nervous System in my possession or on the way. Maybe this will be the year I read all 18. 🤞🤷‍♀️

Favorites so far include When We Cease to Understand the World, No One is Talking about This, The Sentence, and The Trees. But I really have enjoyed most of these.

This little gift book was just okay. My book club selected this, and I didn‘t realize it was based on the author‘s tweets. She‘s a poet and wrote inspirational notes to herself each day after her husband left her. The tweets are interspersed with short memoir-like musings. A few of the tweets did speak to me, but there was not a lot of depth here and a whole lot of repetition.

I wasn‘t sure if I was ready to read a book about the pandemic. But I was in good hands with Erdrich. This book pulses with life, with the love of books and words and people and traditions, and with the violence that permeates American history. It‘s told from the point of view of Tookie, an Ojibwe woman who spent a decade in jail. It weaves in and out of fiction and reality with a light touch. And, at the end, I felt a little less haunted.

This book exists in the space between words. We quietly follow a young woman who has taken a job as an interpreter in The Hague. It explores violence and the power of men, displacement and love. I enjoyed the experience of reading it and many images will stay with me. (The former leader in court, the painting of the man and the woman, etc.)