★★★☆☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A reading web site recommended this book as a literary mystery with an unbelievably great plot twist. The story opens with hit and run murder of a five-year-old boy while his devastated mother cradles her son’s dead body. Tough subject matter for a grieving parent, but I persevered.
…★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
This was a good book. I liked the characters and the storyline. The reasons Sam and Sadie found to be mad at the other were a little frustrating, but I think that’s ultimately the lesson they each needed to learn. The portrayal of grief and loss was really well done.
…Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle ZevinRead More »
★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A strange, strange book. So many Russian named-characters with small bit parts. So many references to Russian literature and culture that I failed to grasp. The story of the devil coming to Moscow to … what? Save the master who wrote a true story about Pontius Pilate? I am utterly confused. I’m giving this book three stars, but only because at times the story turned interesting. I still have no idea what this allegory represented.
★★★★☆ | History | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Volume V of the eleven-volume Story of Civilization by Will Durant.
★★★★☆ | Fantasy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I understand why this book is so often described as a cozy read. It’s filled with nice, helpful characters who work together to make nice things – like a coffee shop with delicious baked goods. Yes, there are bad guys, but of course kindness prevails in the end.
★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
My 75th book of 2023, which is a new personal record for the most books I’ve read in a single year. Many of the stories in this collection touch on the hard to articulate grief of losing a child, which hit home for me.
…★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
My 14th Stephen King book in 2023 and his most recent. The setting was some unnamed city in the Northeast, close to Philly maybe, during the second year of COVID-19. A big theme here was the idiocy of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters. While I agree with King on these three groups, it felt very preachy in a horror novel. But, the story itself was good enough to look past this. In this one, there was no supernatural element at all, just the pure evil of two elderly professors preying on young “livestock” to prolong their own lives.
★★★★★ | Reading and Books | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Reid Byers Website | Readwise
Two Quotes:
…Book-wrapt — that beneficient feeling of being wholly imbooked, beshelved, inlibriated, circumvolumed, peribibliated … it implies the traditional library wrapped in shelves of books, and the condition of rapt attention to a particular volume, and the rapture of of being transported to the wood beyond the world.
★★★★☆ | Writing | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A slow read over the course of a few months, one chapter/writing tool per sitting. Lots of great tips and advice to improve your writing.
…★★★☆☆ | Philosophy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Eastern philosophy with a Westerner’s no nonsense practicality. Watts cites the Hindu Upanishads as the source of his philosophy that there is no self, we are all one with the cosmos, and it’s only because of our social customs and teachings that we believe we are independent and apart from others and the world. We do not leave this earth when we die, just as we didn’t come into the world at birth. We have always been here.
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