When I started this blog, I thought I would focus mainly on children’s books and fantasy, which for years formed my main reading interests. And I was excited to read and review new releases from many genres. But as things developed, and I discovered more blogs and The Classics Club, I began reading and […]
This query is twofold: how do you decide which books to pass on, and what do you then do with them? I’ve been dealing with these questions lately after completing my three-month book acquisition ban. I had gathered all (well, nearly all) of the unread books in my house into one place, and after three […]
I used to read a fair amount of poetry but have fallen out of the habit in recent years. Lately I’ve been hungering for it, though, and so I picked up The Heart’s Time compiled by Janet Morley, which offers a poem a day for the season of Lent and the first week after Easter, […]
By this I don’t mean to ask for specific suggestions of books I should purchase (though you can feel free to make them), but to question what criteria I should employ when facing the vast multiplicity of reading material available. Now that my three month book acquisition ban is winding down, I can start […]
Even though I’m in the midst of a three-month book acquisition ban (that means no buying, no review copy requests, and no library checkouts) I can still dream of the books I would like to read that are not already on my shelves! A couple of years ago I made a list of ten books […]
Last week, I described how I tidied my bookshelves according to the “KonMari” method, and how I’m dealing with the problem of unread books, which are piling up at a rate that is uncomfortable for me. Rather than doing as tidying guru Marie Kondo suggests and discarding them all, I decided to put them on […]
All the conflict and struggle going on in the world seems to me to signal that we need to change our thinking. Old, inherited forms do not work any more, but the new has not yet come to pass, and sometimes seems impossibly distant. We look to leaders to save us from this chaos, yet […]
This week’s topic for Nonfiction November, hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey, is Nonfiction Favorites: We’ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I’m excited to talk about what makes a book you’ve read one of your favorites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular […]
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant (2015) A few days after I announced that The Buried Giant would be our Witch Week readalong book, author Kazuo Ishiguro became a Nobel Laureate. The magic of Witch Week may be stronger than we realize… Intrigued by the synchronicity, I embarked on my third Ishiguro novel. I had been […]
When I was growing up, I almost exclusively read fantasy. C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Ursula LeGuin, Madeleine L’Engle, E. Nesbit were the writers I read again and again, devouring every one of their books. In my teen years I idolized Robin McKinley, and became passionate about Diana Wynne Jones. Well […]