It is nearly the end of 2019, and thus time for my yearly list of books that I loved best during the year. Usually, if a book is good enough to be on this list, I try to review it. But this year I just did not have time to do all the reviews I […]
Well, this has been a year. Due to the emotional roller-coaster of my personal life (now thankfully settled down), I did not get as much reading done as usual. But when I was able to muster up the time and energy to open them books were always there for me, with their messages of wisdom, […]
It’s been a while since I did Top Ten Tuesday, now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. But seeing others’ posts about their top reading of the first half of the year made me want to join in. Here are my picks: The Sixth Extinction explored our environmental disaster-in-process, scary but strangely heartening in that […]
I haven’t been keeping up with Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, but when I saw some lists on other blogs I could not resist this topic! Here are some of my outstanding reads so far this year: The Winged Girl of Knossos The Book of Joy May Cause Love Bronze […]
It’s always interesting to look back over the last twelve months and think about which books have really stayed with me. Here are some of my favorite reads from this year, to which I’ve awarded the Emerald City Book Review Gem. Check out Top Ten Tuesday for many more lists (I couldn’t stick to just […]
Next week’s Top Ten Tuesday encourages us to make a holiday gift list — and if you’re looking for a really special gift for the booklovers in your life, The Folio Society has much to offer. In case you haven’t yet encountered this amazing repository of beautifully designed, illustrated, and bound books, have a look […]
Witch Week is about celebrating all kinds of fantasy literature, which can evoke many different moods and experiences — but because it takes place in the darkening days following Halloween, our reading choices may tend toward the creepier end of the spectrum. And for intelligently creepy entertainment, there is no one quite like Shirley Jackson, […]
I’m so fortunate to have several publishers who send me review copies on a regular basis, and I want to do them justice by at least cracking them open for review consideration. However, fall seems to be an especially busy time all around, both for the publishers and for me, so I’ve been getting terribly […]
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic invites us to identify our favorite villains. Bad they may be, but one has to admit that without them to cause trouble, most stories would not even begin — so we need to be grateful for them too. The kind of villain I prefer, though, is not the pitch-black […]
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “Back to School,” so I’ve come up with a list of ten of my favorite books that are set in schools, both realistic and fantastical. This list focuses on children’s and YA novels; I could do a whole different list of books […]