Book covers of the 34 books I’ve read to date in 2026:
Jump to a summary table of each book with the title, author, source, format, number of pages, when read, rating, and genres.
Ratings legend:
| ★★★★★ | Completely enthralling, couldn’t put it down. and/or More than just entertaining (e.g., educational, enlightening). Would highly recommend. |
| ★★★★☆ | Really great book in all respects with perhaps some minor flaws. Would definitely recommend. |
| ★★★☆☆ | Average. An entertaining read but probably forgettable. Might or might not recommend. |
| ★★☆☆☆ | Finished, but did not like. Would not recommend. |
| ★☆☆☆☆ | Abandoned before finishing, usually because it was poorly written or just uninteresting to me. |
The books I’ve read so far in 2026 — summaries
Clicking on the title of a book will take you to its detailed entry, which contains a 10-word summary, a 6-word review, a favorite quote, new vocabulary words, a description of and thoughts about the book.
| Number | Title & author | Source | Format | Pages | Duration | Rating | Genres |
| 34 | The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick |
Library loan | Audiobook | 304 | 05/19/26 – 05/20/26 (25 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, family, humor, grief, mental health |
| 33 | Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid |
Library loan | 368 | 05/10/26 – 05/14/26 (5 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, romance, sports, LGBT, queer, enemies to lovers | |
| 32 | Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 236 | 05/05/26 – 05/06/26 (2 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, humor, mystery, thriller, suspense |
| 31 | The Replacement by Liv Constantine |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 48 | 05/02/26 – 05/02/26 (1 day) | ★★★☆☆ | fiction, thriller, short stories |
| 30 | The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram by Ethelene Whitmire |
Library loan | 320 | 04/30/26 – 05/02/26 (3 days) | ★★★★★ | nonfiction, biography, history, queer, LGBT, African American, race, World War II | |
| 29 | Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller |
Library loan | 272 | 04/20/26 – 04/28/26 (9 days) | ★★★☆☆ | fiction, farming, coming of age, family, Icelandic culture | |
| 28 | Theo of Golden by Allen Levi |
Library loan | Kindle | 399 | 04/24/26 – 04/26/26 (3 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, mystery, art, books about books, Christian |
| 27 | Ward D by Freida McFadden |
Library loan | Large print | 384 | 04/17/26 – 04/18/26 (2 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, thriller, mystery, suspense, horror, crime, mental health |
| 26 | The Roaring Ridleys: A Novel by K.M. Colley (Abandoned) |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 276 | 04/09/26 – 04/16/26 (8 days) | ★☆☆☆☆ | historical fiction, mystery, family, diversity, African American |
| 25 | Lift Me Up by Milly Johnson |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 128 | 04/07/26 – 04/08/26 (2 days) | ★★★☆☆ | short stories, romance, novella |
| 24 | Tin Man by Sarah Winman |
Library loan | 214 | 04/04/26 – 04/06/26 (3 days) | ★★★★☆ | literary fiction, LGBT, romance, queer, relationships | |
| 23 | Echoes of Her by H.K. Christie |
Free BookBub download | Kindle | 276 | 04/01/26 – 04/01/26 (1 day) | ★★★★★ | fiction, mystery, thriller |
| 22 | Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano |
Library loan | Audiobook | 352 | 03/27/26 – 03/31/26 (5 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, coming of age, young adult, trauma |
| 21 | Bridgerton: The Duke & I by Julia Quinn |
Library loan | Audiobook | 339 | 03/21/26 – 03/25/26 (5 days) | ★★★★☆ | historical fiction, romance, regency |
| 20 | Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach |
Library loan | Audiobook | 292 | 03/19/26 – 03/20/26 (2 days) | ★★★★☆ | nonfiction, science, medical, humor, death, history, biology |
| 19 | Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico |
Library loan | 125 | 03/17/26 – 03/19/26 (3 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, Italian literature, existentialism | |
| 18 | Audition by Katie Kitamura |
Library loan | 197 | 03/14/26 – 03/16/26 (3 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, family, identity, existentialism, acting | |
| 17 | What Happened Next by Edwin Hill |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 292 | 03/09/26 – 03/12/26 (4 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, mystery, thriller |
| 16 | The Price of Honey by Liane Moriarty |
Free First Reads download | Kindle | 34 | 03/08/26 – 03/08/26 (1 day) | ★★★☆☆ | fiction, short stories, novella, thriller, mystery, sci-fi |
| 15 | Annette: Sierra Summer by Doris Schroeder |
Friend loan | 285 | 03/03/26 – 03/08/26 (6 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, young adult, childrens, mystery, juvenile | |
| 14 | Do You Mind If I Cancel?: Things That Still Annoy Me by Gary Janetti |
Library loan | Audiobook | 159 | 03/01/26 – 03/01/26 (1 day) | ★★★★☆ | nonfiction, memoir, humor essays, comedy, LGBT |
| 13 | Between Two Trailers by J. Dana Trent |
Library loan | Kindle | 256 | 02/28/26 – 02/28/26 (1 day) | ★☆☆☆☆ (Abandoned) |
nonfiction, memoir, religion, mental illness |
| 12 | The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton |
Library loan | E-book | 406 | 02/22/26 – 02/28/26 (7 days) | ★★★★☆ | historical fiction, classics, literature, class, New York |
| 11 | Pocketbook of Quotes from Socrates to Lebowski by Sean Thompson |
Free BookBub download | Kindle | 385 | 02/10/26 – 02/21/26 (12 days) | ★★★☆☆ | nonfiction, quotations, philosophy |
| 10 | Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano |
Library loan | Kindle | 387 | 02/06/26 – 02/07/26 (2 days) | ★★★★★ | historical fiction, romance, family, mental health |
| 9 | Little Women by Louisa May Alcott |
Library loan | Audiobook | 504 | 02/01/26 – 02/05/26 (5 days) | ★★★★★ | historical fiction, classics, romance, literature, young adult |
| 8 | The Celebrants by Steven Rowley |
Library loan | Large print | 320 | 01/27/26 – 01/29/26 (3 days) | ★★★☆☆ | fiction, LGBT, queer, friendship, chosen family |
| 7 | The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict |
Library loan | Audiobook | 310 | 01/23/26 – 01/26/26 (3 days) | ★★★★☆ | historical fiction, mystery, crime, women, writers |
| 6 | Killing Floor by Lee Child |
Library loan | Kindle | 532 | 01/19/26 – 01/22/26 (4 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, thriller, mystery, crime, suspense, detective, action, adventure |
| 5 | Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout |
Library loan | Large print | 326 | 01/16/26 – 01/18/26 (3 days) | ★★★★★ | historical fiction, friendship, family, love |
| 4 | The Nickel Loop by Nancy Houser-Bluhm |
Friend loan | 340 | 01/12/26 – 01/15/26 (4 days) | ★★★★★ | historical fiction, time travel, romance, LGBT, women’s rights, food safety | |
| 3 | Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout |
Library loan | Large print | 254 | 01/08/26 – 01/11/26 (4 days) | ★★★☆☆ | fiction, family, dysfunction, class |
| 2 | The Correspondent by Virginia Evans |
Library loan | Kindle | 291 | 01/06/26 – 01/07/26 (2 days) | ★★★★★ | fiction, family, books about books, grief |
| 1 | What Happened to the McCrays? by Tracey Lange |
Amazon Unlimited loan | Kindle | 352 | 01/01/26 – 01/05/26 (5 days) | ★★★★☆ | fiction, family, romance, grief |
The books I’ve read so far in 2026 — details
Book #34 |
Book: The Good Luck of Right Now | Author: Matthew Quick | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 304 | Duration: 05/19/26 – 05/20/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, family, humor, grief, mental health | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A sheltered man navigates the world after his mother’s death. 🖌6-word review: Excellent, with minimal pockets of tedium. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “I don’t like being called a ‘girlbrarian.’ I’m not a girl — or a librarian. I’m a volunteer at the library.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me word: “girlbrarian” — a portmanteau of girl + librarian | |||
| Description:* For 38 years, Bartholomew Neil has lived with his mother. When she gets sick and dies, he has no idea how to be on his own. His redheaded grief counselor, Wendy, says he needs to find his flock and leave the nest. But how does a man whose whole life has been grounded in his mom, Saturday mass, and the library learn how to fly? Bartholomew thinks he’s found a clue when he discovers a “Free Tibet” letter from Richard Gere hidden in his mother’s underwear drawer. In her final days, mom called him Richard — there must be a cosmic connection. Believing that the actor is meant to help him, Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate letters. Jung and the Dalai Lama, philosophy and faith, alien abduction and cat telepathy, the Catholic Church and the mystery of women are all explored in his soul-baring epistles. But mostly the letters reveal one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I saw this book reviewed on a friend’s Facebook timeline just as I’d finished Heated Rivalry, and it was immediately available at the library. So I nabbed it. Although I don’t “buy” the central philosophy of this book that “when something bad happens to us, something good happens — often to someone else,” it was a good story if you do buy it. The “tedium” I mention in my 6-word review was specifically in regards to two instances in chapter 10 where, you know when someone tells you something and then proceeds to give you not only one or two examples of what they mean, but gives you 10 or 30 examples of it? All right already. We get it. I enjoyed the twist at the end that I didn’t see coming, which is the very nature of a twist. I’d consider this for a future book in our Mostly Social Book Club. | |||
Book #33 |
Book: Heated Rivalry | Author: Rachel Reid | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 368 | Duration: 05/10/26 – 05/14/26 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, romance, sports, LGBT, queer, enemies to lovers | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A secret love intensifies between two rival professional hockey players. 🖌6-word review: Worthy of queer drama television series. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “‘I just don’t understand,’ his mother said. ‘How could this even have happened between you? Weren’t there any nice men in Montreal, Shane?'” | |||
| Description:* Pro hockey star Shane Hollander isn’t just crazy talented, he’s got a spotless reputation. Hockey is his life. Now that he’s captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won’t let anything jeopardize that, especially the sexy Russian whose hard body keeps him awake at night. Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane’s not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he’s as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him — except Shane. They’ve made a career on their legendary rivalry, but when the skates come off, the heat between them is undeniable. When Ilya realizes he wants more than a few secret hookups, he knows he must walk away. The risk is too great. As their attraction intensifies, they struggle to keep their relationship out of the public eye. If the truth comes out, it could ruin them both. But when their need for each other rivals their ambition on the ice, secrecy is no longer an option.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I was afraid this was going to be a “typical” MM romance novel, but I’m happy to report it wasn’t. And by that I mean, not once did I read, “Ilya’s turgid member teetered at the entrance to Shane’s quivering love tunnel.” And that is to say, it was straight-up (pun intended) dirty language without all that metaphorical, dancing around it. Because of the staggering popularity of the eponymous TV series, I got on the library’s waitlist for this book on January 29th and received it on May 6th. Heated Rivalry is the 2nd installment of the 7-book Game Changers series, and I thought it was interesting that the TV series is named after the 2nd book and not the 1st (Game Changer). I’m glad I read this, but as I’m wont to do, I won’t read any of the other books in the series, and I don’t watch TV, so I won’t be checking out the show. | |||
Book #32 |
Book: Murder by Design | Author: Lee Goldberg | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 236 | Duration: 05/05/26 – 05/06/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, humor, mystery, thriller, suspense | ||
| 📕10-word summary: An eccentric, crackerjack insurance investigator solves baffling crimes uncannily quickly. 🖌6-word review: Interesting characters. Usability concepts cleverly incorporated. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “Her smile seemed genuine even if her hair did not.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: larder, coprolalia, trilby, soupçon de tristesse, scintilla | |||
| Description:* Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible. Enter Wally a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets. Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable. Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I enjoyed this advanced copy (scheduled to be published on June 1, 2026) as one of May’s free Amazon First Reads books. Interesting, quirky characters added to my enjoyment, but the biggest draw was that it took me back to my “Usability Studies for Technical Communication” class, which I took in the spring of 2005 as one of my grad school classes. The textbook we used for that class was The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. The author of this book, Lee Goldberg, in his “Author’s Note & Acknowledgements” section, lists Don Norman and that book as one that “educated me and shaped my thinking the most [about usability design].” The Design of Everyday Things and that “Usability Studies for Technical Communication” class is one that has stayed with me for more 20 years now, as I navigate this world rife with poor affordances. In fact, I did a blog entry about some poor affordances — the icons on the water cooler machine and the handles on the doors to the lounge and bar — on the boat we were on for our Danube Riverboat Cruise in July of 2025. | |||
Book #31 |
Book: The Replacement | Author: Liv Constantine | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 48 | Duration: 05/02/26 – 05/02/26 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, thriller, short stories | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Struggling Hollywood icon befriends newcomer who has a secret agenda. 🖌6-word review: A twisty, albeit average, short story. |
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| Description:* Once Hollywood royalty, Veronica Van Arden has been upstaged by box office flops and tabloid gossip. But when she lands a role in a promising film, a comeback finally seems possible, especially with the support of her young and adoring costar, Sienna Vale. As Veronica weathers a new scandal, Sienna stays firmly by her side, a bright spot in Veronica’s days. But as Veronica welcomes her protégé into every part of her life, they both might find that the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This was one of May’s free Amazon First Reads books. I’ve read one other book by this author, The Last Mrs. Parrish, which I loved. This book was interesting enough, and it did have a good twist, but it was a little “involved” and I had to think too much to follow it. My 3 rating was due to its “may or may not recommend” aspect. | |||
Book #30 |
Book: The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram | Author: Ethelene Whitmire | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 320 | Duration: 04/30/26 – 05/02/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: nonfiction, biography, history, queer, LGBT, African American, race, World War II | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A young, brilliant, queer, Black man defies war for love. 🖌6-word review: Compelling biography historically well pieced together. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “He thought, ‘lots of fun if you don’t have to do it every day.'” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: hygge, philology, strafed | |||
| Description:* On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in the halls of Harvard and Columbia, Reed Peggram flirted with Leonard Bernstein, sat for portraits by famous artists, charmed minor royalty and became like a little brother to famed researcher and writer Jan Gay. Finally in Europe and on the same prestigious scholarship as literary luminaries Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes before him, he ignored the increasingly alarmed calls to return home to a repressive, segregated America and a constrained life as a second class citizen. And as tensions grew and gas masks were distributed in the City of Lights, Reed turned instead to the new life he’d made: with Arne, a tall and dashing Danish scholar with whom he had formed a deep bond.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is one of 3 books I read about in BookPage, a magazine of suggested reading, and then requested from my library. I like this comparison in a review of the book by author Anne Bartlett: Reed Peggram’s story could be an alternative version of Casablanca: Brilliant, young Ivy League scholar lives it up in bohemian Paris, only to become trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe when he refuses to leave behind his true love to return to the U.S. But there were two twists to this perilous real-life adventure that wouldn’t have made it past the studio censors of the 1940s. Peggram was Black, and his lover was a man. While reading this story, I pondered a lot about the difference between “remarkable” and “admirable.” While Reed’s life was unequivocally remarkable, I can’t say that I admired it. I get that he did what he did for love, but living so long without making any money and continually taking money from his relatively poor grandmother (a housekeeper for white people), was not admirable to me. What I did greatly admire about him was how important education was to him, and how his intellect and charm rose to the extreme challenge of getting accepted into Harvard as an African American man, and his impressive accomplishment of learning 5 languages: French, German, Spanish, Latin, and Danish. The fact that the protagonist was a queer, Black man certainly elevated my interest in the story, and I did wish the author had more to work with than having to “tease Peggram’s tale out of letters to his grandmother and mother. I wish she’d’ve been able to interview Reed, Arne (his lover), and other people (mostly men) in his life. | |||
Book #29 |
Book: Red Dog Farm | Author: Nathaniel Ian Miller | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 272 | Duration: 04/20/26 – 04/28/26 (8 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, farming, coming of age, family, Icelandic culture | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A son’s transformative year on his family’s struggling Icelandic farm. 🖌6-word review: Long uninteresting stretches between decent story. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “Embarrassing but ideal, one of those moments you know you’ll recall in perfect clarity forever, seared across the neurons like a psychic tattoo.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: abjure, abraded, Írskrabrunnur, Brennivin, Tantalus, Vestmannaeyjar, patronymics, dystocia, riposte, meltwater, skyr, simulacrum | |||
| Description:* Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík. Pabbi is no longer able to find joy in his way of life and falls into a depression soon after Orri goes away to school. Orri, feeling adrift and aimless at the end of his first semester, comes home. For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him run the farm. Despite their conflicting attitudes, Orri and Pabbi must learn to work together. Meanwhile, Orri meets a kindred spirit on the internet: Mihan, a part-time student. By year’s end, Orri must decide whether he wants to—or should—return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she’ll have him.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is one of 3 books I read about in BookPage, a magazine of suggested reading, and then requested from my library. Having a hard time getting into it, I stopped a little ways into it to read Theo of Golden, which became available after waiting 2½ months for it on our library’s waiting list. When I picked it back up, I skimmed through several excruciatingly detailed descriptions of tedious and difficult farm life. At one point, I also skimmed over a very long backstory about the grandmother, and later an even longer backstory about the father. Their backstories didn’t advance the plot, only functioning to provide insight into why they each were the way the were, but I just wasn’t that interested in either of them, in spite of them being major characters in the book. Even having been to Iceland (both Reykjavík & Akureyri) wasn’t enough to boost my interest in this story. And a nit, but very annoying because I reference page numbers a lot when making notes while reading: this book choose the worst. font. ever. for its page and chapter numbering. I gave the book a 3-star rating, because I would not recommend it without a lot of caveats. | |||
Book #28 |
Book: Theo of Golden | Author: Allen Levi | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 399 | Duration: 04/24/26 – 04/26/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, mystery, art, books about books, Christian | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Mysterious, benevolent man captures the imagination of select small-town’s residents. 🖌6-word review: Heartwarming story with detracting Christian “edge.” |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “A spate of warm days, not at all uncommon to southern winters, had seduced flowers and shrubs into early blooms. Soon, a hard freeze, also not uncommon, would chasten those tender buds for their impatience.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: riparian, tortillon, susurrus, fado, declension, murmuration, lespedeza, Colheita, encomium | |||
| Description:* His name is Theo. And he asks a lot more questions than he answers. He visits the local coffeehouse, where 92 pencil portraits hang on the walls, portraits of the people of the city of Golden done by a local artist. Theo begins purchasing them, one at a time, and putting them back in the hands of their “rightful owners.” With each exchange, a story is told, a friendship born, and a life altered.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is the “it” book for 2026 — at least at this point in the year. I started off at #1074 on my library’s waitlist on February 5. I finally received it April 23. I didn’t realize that one of the genres of this book is “Christian,” and in retrospect, it’s a good thing, because I might have discounted it completely. It’s not pervasive throughout, but after about 2 references that I thought might be going that way, I actually asked ChatGPT if the story was going to get religious. There was a pretty long scene (which I won’t go into due to spoiler issues) toward the end that was quite preachy and a huge turnoff to me; but in the end, the overall story was too good to let that reduce my rating from 5 stars to 4 stars. (Albeit, if I had ½-stars in my rating system, I would have given it 4½ stars instead of 5.) The great appeal of this story to me, which is not unlike for most people I’ve talked to who’ve read it, is that it’s a huge feel-good experience, tautly pulling on the heartstrings of our shared humanity. And it’s like the Anne Murray song, A Little Good News, says, “We sure could use a little good news today.” | |||
Book #27 |
Book: Ward D | Author: Freida McFadden | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 384 | Duration: 04/17/26 – 04/18/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, thriller, mystery, suspense, horror, crime, mental health | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Mentally fragile med student spends night in a psych ward. 🖌6-word review: Good job making reader doubt sanity. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “There are a bunch of mugs lined up by the sink. I pick up one that says “If you’re happy and you know it, thank your meds.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: folie à deux | |||
| Description:* Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out. And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger. Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D. And now she might never escape.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is my 4th Freida McFadden book, after The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Life, Never Lie, and Death Row: A Short Story. She’s written about 32 books, and she recently shared her real identity after using a pseudonym, wig, and glasses over the years to maintain her privacy in public. This was a very compelling story, but I found the writing to be a little shoddy, especially considering how many books she’s written and how wildly popular they are. There are several good twists in the plot, and it moves at a steady pace but really accelerates at the end. This was a Mostly Social Book Club book. | |||
Book #26 |
Book: The Roaring Ridleys: A Novel (Abandoned) | Author: K.M. Colley | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 276 | Duration: 04/09/26 – 04/16/26 (8 days) | |
| Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ | Genres: historical fiction, mystery, family, diversity, African American | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A slow post-murder unraveling of a very diverse, privileged family. 🖌6-word review: Plot unfolds at a glacial pace. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “She was staring at her flesh-pink tights, which were not the color of her flesh but of others’.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: kumkum | |||
| Description:* In the glittering world of 1920s New York, the seven Ridley heirs seem to have it wealth, status, and protection as the city’s most powerful family. But when notorious gossip columnist Dale Caimen is found dead during their family’s renowned summer soiree, their carefully constructed world begins to crack. Behind the champagne and jazz, each adopted Ridley sibling harbors secrets that could destroy them. As the murder investigation intensifies, long-buried tensions surface and family loyalties unravel. Someone knows the truth about the Ridleys — and they’re willing to kill to expose it. In a world where appearance is everything and power comes at a deadly price, the siblings must decide what matters protecting the family name or each other.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I desperately wanted to like this novel and give it every chance, but I ended up abandoning it 66% into it — further into a book than I’ve ever abandoned one before. At the ⅔ mark, we still hadn’t learned the “dirt” on any of the 7 children, all of whom had secrets they were hiding and being blackmailed for. That’s just too long to be strung along. At least giving us a few teasing tidbits to snack on along the way. | |||
Book #25 |
Book: Lift Me Up | Author: Milly Johnson | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 128 | Duration: 04/07/26 – 04/08/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, short stories, romance, novella | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Being stuck in a lift changes a woman’s life trajectory. 🖌6-word review: Didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “There’s Kärèn, my fiancé’s cousin, she spells her name with an umlaut and a grave accent, so I think you can guess the sort of pretension I’m dealing with.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: fusty, pencil-skirted suit, entente cordiale | |||
| Description:* For a decade, Tam has quietly held YorkMart together whilst others took the credit, making herself smaller in the process. When she’s briefly promoted to acting Managing Director, she finally has a chance to shine — until her promotion is snatched away and handed to Jack Cesaroni, the man brought in to do the job that should have been hers. Tam expects nothing but disappointment from Jack. But when they’re trapped in a lift, he sees what no one else has: Tam is exceptional. That single word of recognition sparks something Tam thought she’d lost—and an unexpected connection she never saw coming. Now she faces an impossible choice: stay being the smaller version of herself she’s become used to, or take a leap and reclaim the vibrant, authentic woman she once was.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I hardly feel anything at all about this book. I experienced it as completely average, and I’m glad it was a short story. | |||
Book #24 |
Book: Tin Man | Author: Sarah Winman | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 214 | Duration: 04/04/26 – 04/06/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: literary fiction, LGBT, romance, queer, relationships | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A wondrous, beautifully complicated love story among an MMF throuple. 🖌6-word review: Seductive story. Stylized writing diminishes enjoyment. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “People reckoned he was so skilled at it he could take the cleft out of a chin without the face knowing.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: pay packet, muntjac, vaporetto, Spaghetti vongole, co-codamol, pastis, plangent, towpath | |||
| Description:* Ellis and Michael are 12-year-old boys when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of overbearing fathers. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more. But then we fast forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question, what happened in the years between? Tin Man is a love letter to human kindness and friendship, and to loss and living.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I loved these 3 characters: Ellis and Michael were boyhood boyfriends. Ellis eventually married Annie. And Michael eventually joined their relationship for a period of time. I loved the dynamics of this throuple. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between Ellis & Michael (of course!), And I was completely simpatico with the relationship between Michael and Annie, specifically by how they both deeply loved Ellis and didn’t hold sharing him against each other. I did have (too much, at times) difficulty following this story for two reasons: this is another book with no quotation marks around the dialogue, which in addition to being distracting to me, also makes some conversations hard to follow, and the structure of the book makes it hard to know what time period in the story you’re currently in. When AI chatbots give you five ways to identify the time period, that’s complicated: 1) 1st- vs. 3rd-person narration, 2) explicit date markers (of which there are very few), 3) contextual clues tied to life stages, 4) the “dream-like” quality of present-day Ellis, and 5) “following the sunflower painting.” That’s a lot of work just to be sure what time period in the story is currently being covered. This is the aspect that made my rating 4 stars instead of 5. | |||
Book #23 |
Book: Echoes of Her | Author: H.K. Christie | |
| Source: Free BookBub download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 276 | Duration: 04/01/26 – 04/01/26 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, mystery, thriller | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Girl’s father’s sudden death opens a can of 🖌6-word review: 4-hour read. Shocking revelations unravel quickly. |
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| Description:* By the time Kay was 6, she had lost both her mother and sister. With only fuzzy memories of them, she had pleaded with her father since she was a little girl to tell her stories about them and to visit their graves. He claimed it was too painful to discuss, and refused. When her father unexpectedly passes, leaving her without any family, Kay prepares to bury him and handle his estate. But as she sifts through his belongings, in the once forbidden attic, all she finds are dusty boxes filled with old textbooks and family photos featuring her late mother and sister, but strangely none of herself. Determined to find her mother and sister’s graves to lay her father to rest, she hires Drakos Monroe Security & Investigations to find them.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I read this “page-turning crime thriller filled with long-hidden family secrets and jaw-dropping revelations” in 4.5 hours. The only thing I didn’t care for were some religious references, but overall, there were few enough to not reduce my star rating from 5. I might make this a future Mostly Social Book Club book, but I probably won’t read more of this author’s work. | |||
Book #22 |
Book: Dear Edward | Author: Ann Napolitano | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 352 | Duration: 03/27/26 – 03/31/26 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, coming of age, young adult, trauma | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Aftermath of a 12-year-old lone survivor of a plane crash. 🖌6-word review: Satisfying, intriguing, dual-timeline, well-paced survival story. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “There was no reason for what happened to you, Eddie. You could have died; you just didn’t. It was dumb luck. Nobody chose you for anything.” | |||
| Description:* One summer morning, 12-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery — one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I only recently learned of this author, having read Hello Beautiful in February. I like dual-timeline stories, especially when both narratives are equally interesting, which was the case for me in this book. Of course, I liked that there was a gay (secondary) character — a passenger on the plane — in the book. I encountered one funny, and one just plain interesting, AI-related things about this book. The funny one was that it described Veronica, the chief flight attendant, as “professional and composed.” Uh, she had sex in the lavatory with a passenger! And the interesting one was that I asked it about the gay character (a soldier) in the book, and it said that he wasn’t gay, but that another character — the brother of the protagonist — was (secretly) gay. I was, like, “HUH???” Then I asked if the brother of the protagonist was gay, and it said, “No, he was secretly dating a girl he didn’t want his parents to know about, but he wasn’t gay.” So, I asked again about the soldier being gay, and (this is the interesting part, because it hasn’t happened to me before using AI, which I’ve used a lot), it said, “I apologize, I was wrong earlier when I said he wasn’t gay. Yes he was gay, and his chapters explore identity, secrecy, and longing.” And finally, one of the genres listed for this book is “young adult,” which I guess it could be, but it covers a lot of themes that I feel are a little beyond young adult. But then again, I’m an old fuddy-duddy and YMMV. | |||
Book #21 |
Book: Bridgerton: The Duke & I | Author: Julia Quinn | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 339 | Duration: 03/21/26 – 03/25/26 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: historical fiction, romance, regency | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Regency-era family dramatic enough to have their own TV series. 🖌6-word review: Not bad for a romance novel. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: Colin: “I hate when you’re right.” Penelope: “I know; pity for you, I so often am.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: ton, rake, woolgathering | |||
| Description:* In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable…but not too amiable. Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen. Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar. The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: Love ignores every rule…*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is the first (of 8) in the Bridgerton book series. I read a “TV tie-in” edition, which is identical to the original novel but contains an extra epilogue. Since I don’t watch TV and Bob rarely reads books, we usually aren’t able to discuss storylines, but since he has seen the first 3 seasons of the Netflix series, we were able to compare and contrast our thoughts about this story on which the first season was based. I typically only read the first book of a series that become movies, as I did with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Hunger Games — and that’ll be the same with this series. I’m not interested in reading the other 7 Bridgerton books. Romance is not a genre I enjoy — and it’ll suit me just fine if I never again hear about his corpulent manhood arriving at her cradle of femininity, after which he spilled his seed on the bed instead of deep inside her. With that said, I’m glad I read this, if for no other reason than it adds some tiny tidbits into my vast void of pop culture knowledge. Tangential ejaculation: You don’t ever want me on your trivia team! | |||
Book #20 |
Book: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers | Author: Mary Roach | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 292 | Duration: 03/19/26 – 03/20/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: nonfiction, science, medical, humor, death, history, biology | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A scientific, intellectual, and emotional look at our bodies’ destinies. 🖌6-word review: Informative, at times humorous, and detailed. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: venerated, divarication, many other biology, chemistry & medical terms | |||
| Description:* Mary Roach takes the age-old question, “What happens to us after we die?” quite literally. And in Stiff, she explores the “lives” of human cadavers from the time of the ancient Egyptians all the way up to current campaigns for human composting. Along the way, she recounts with morbidly infectious glee how dead bodies are used for research ranging from car safety and plastic surgery (you’ll cancel your next collagen injection after reading this!), to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. While the myriad uses for cadavers recounted are often graphic, Roach imbues her subject with a sense of dignity, choosing to emphasize the oddly noble purposes corpses serve, from organ donation to lifesaving medical research.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This was a interesting, informative, and at times, light look at a subject that a lot of people find heavy and shy away from, but that I find interesting. I only took off a star (4, instead of 5), because I’m not really into medicine, biology, and chemistry to the depth explained in this book. So, YMMV depending on that. One frustration I had reading this now-23-year-old book was that I wondered how some of the ways to “process” dead bodies just beginning to be explored in 2003 (e.g., water cremation) have progressed. Well ChatGPT & AI to the rescue! Q: What are the eco-friendly ways to avoid burial and cremation? A: natural (green) burial | conservation burial | human composting (natural organic reduction) | water cremation (alkaline hydrolysis) | tree pod burial | mushroom burial suit | reef burial | biodegradable caskets & shrouds | and home funeral + natural burial. | |||
Book #19 |
Book: Perfection | Author: Vincenzo Latronico | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 125 | Duration: 03/17/26 – 03/19/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, Italian literature, existentialism | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Millennial expats Anna and Tom drift in search of perfection. 🖌6-word review: Excellently simulates existential ennui — without dialog. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “But each time, after a while, they would remember those trips more generously, as if the act of remembering could alter the experience itself.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: monstera, acanthus, vibratile, koine, tillandsias, “travel rabbit“ | |||
| Description:* Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Neukölln. They are young digital creatives, freelancers without too many constraints. They have a passion for food, progressive politics, sexual experimentation, and Berlin’s 24-hour party scene. Their ideal existence is also that of an entire generation, lived out on Instagram, but outside the images they create for themselves, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Their work as graphic designers becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. An attempt at political activism during the refugee crisis proves fruitless. And in that picture-perfect life Anna and Tom feel increasingly trapped, yearning for an authenticity and a sense of purpose that seem perennially just out of their grasp.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: My friend Todd mentioned he was reading this book, so I checked it out. The main characters are “digital creatives,” and I appreciated the industry-related tools and technologies named throughout the book — graphic-design tools, photo- and image-editing tools, social-media platforms, and internet infrastructure. There was no dialogue at all in this story, as the author has said he has “a terrible ear for dialogue.” As a result, there was a lot of description in it. Critics have noted that “the lack of dialogue makes the book read like a catalogue of objects and curated spaces, mirroring the couple’s image‑driven lives.” The main themes explored include: the illusion of aesthetic perfection; expat life and cultural detachment; ennui, aimlessness, and millennial drift; and authenticity vs. performance. I think the author succeeds in making ennui interesting, which is why among its awards is being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. | |||
Book #18 |
Book: Audition | Author: Katie Kitamura | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Print |
Pages: 197 | Duration: 03/14/26 – 03/16/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, family, identity, existentialism, acting | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A woman, her husband, and possibly her son contemplate identity. 🖌6-word review: Compelling storytelling with lots of ambiguity. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “Lou immediately stood and went to him, and I remember thinking that even if he was without talent he would enjoy some level of success, in some capacity, he had a face that was made for being looked at.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: languorous, sinuous, carapace, mottled, avidity, rictus, contrapuntal | |||
| Description:* Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, and young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In Audition, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day — partner, parent, creator, muse — and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I loved the author’s voice in this story. I kept thinking of this book as very, very interesting — as opposed to fascinating. The beginning of Part II brought forth the figurative “record scratch” eliciting a great big “HUH???” from me. I’m not a fan of ambiguous endings, which this book definitely has — and in fact, there’s a lot of ambiguity throughout it — but I was surprisingly okay with it. What I wasn’t okay with was not one, not two, but three instances of the (overused & my nemesis) word, conspiratorially. And finally, one detractor of this book for me was this “trendy” writing affectation of omitting quotation marks, which is often called “naked dialogue.” I am not a fan. | |||
Book #17 |
Book: What Happened Next | Author: Edwin Hill | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 292 | Duration: 03/09/26 – 03/12/26 (4 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, mystery, thriller | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Investigation of 25-year-old crime uncovers betrayal and community, family secrets. 🖌6-word review: Intriguing. The bodies really pile up. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “Our father opted for the dog races at Suffolk Downs, not the polo grounds in Newport.” | |||
| 🎓New-to-me words: lichen, antitorque pedals, selectperson, “gave up the ghost” | |||
| Description:* Charlie Kilgore was too young to remember anything, really, about how events on the lake unfolded 25 years ago. He just knows what he’s been told: that his father stabbed a man to death, left Charlie’s mother critically wounded, and then disappeared, never to be seen again. Now Charlie believes there must be more to what happened. But when Charlie [returns to his hometown and] starts asking questions of people with so much to hide, getting to the truth becomes dangerous. Because on this lake — in this family — the past isn’t dead and buried at all. In fact, it’s back with a vengeance.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This free, advanced copy (it’s schedule to be published in April 2026) was an unexpected delight. There’s a lot going on in this small town as a 25-year-old murder is questioned by a young man who was in the thick of it, but as an infant, when it all went down. A lot of suspects emerge, and a lot of people “give up the ghost” as the bodies of even major characters pile up. One thing that was nice was that there were 3 gay characters who were just people who happened to be gay, which is to say it didn’t affect the plot in any way, so it wasn’t a big deal at all. I like stories that normalize being gay. I’d not heard of this author before, but several reviewers said they love all of his books. I’ll probably read another one of them this year. | |||
Book #16 |
Book: The Price of Honey | Author: Liane Moriarty | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 34 | Duration: 03/08/26 – 03/08/26 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, short stories, novella, thriller, mystery, sci-fi | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Tech billionaire’s widow and ex-wives surprised at unexpected funeral shenanigans. 🖌6-word review: Disarrayed programming, technology, AI, sci-fi mash-up. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “She’s rarely referred to as Luisa. Always her full name: Luisa Long. It’s just one of those names.” | |||
| 🎓A new-to-me word: epigenetic | |||
| Description:* In the car on the way to her husband’s funeral, Honey Beckett still can hardly believe that Barney is actually dead. Granted, he was more than twice her age. But he was Barney Beckett, visionary tech genius, full of surprises—by turns romantic, inspirational, and controlling. Always in control. At the service, she impulsively goes to sit with the three ex-wives: practical Rita, fiery Svetlana, ambitious Meredith. Each broke up the other’s marriage in turn—and now, one final betrayal awaits.*From amazon.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I didn’t dislike this book, but I was glad it was short. This was my 4th book by this author — Nine Perfect Strangers (read in 2019), What Alice Forgot and The Husband’s Secret (both read in 2020) — and it was my least favorite of them. It’s hard to pinpoint why this storyline didn’t really work for me, but it’s something to do with it being unclear whether what was happening was due to a programming error, sinister technology, or AI gone awry, and it took a little too long (especially relative to the length of the story) to get what was actually happening. My favorite quote (above) was because that’s exactly the case with my name. At almost every (professional) job I’ve had, my colleagues have tended to say my whole name when they see me: “Hi, John Martin.” When it was all said and done, I was glad this book was a free download. | |||
Book #15 |
Book: Annette: Sierra Summer | Author: Doris Schroeder | |
| Source: Friend loan Format: Print |
Pages: 285 | Duration: 03/03/26 – 03/08/26 (6 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, young adult, childrens, mystery, juvenile | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Annette (based on Annette Funicello) has an exciting, adventurous summer. 🖌6-word review: Has definite young-adult vibes. Easy reading. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “C’mon, Annette! Let’s get into our sunbonnets!” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: ailanthus, gasser | |||
| Description:* Annette’s summer began with an invitation from her cousin, Tonia, to visit the town of Lost Creek, located in the Sierra foothills. Her invitation was full of excitement as she explained Lost Creek’s centennial celebration plans. The town would turn back time to gold rush days, wear pioneer costumes, and choose a centennial queen. And Tonia’s gang would be there for the fun — handsome Johnny Abbott and all the others. It did sound wonderful, and as Annette climbed into her little white sports car, she was anticipating a pleasant visit. Little did she realize as she sped along that this would probably be the most exciting summer of her life. Annette becomes involved in a mystery before she even arrives at the home of her cousin — a mystery that threatens to ruin the lives of several people.*From amazon.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: As a big fan of Annette Funicello, my husband owned this book from way back. Ready to “give it up” (i.e., donate it), he asked me if I wanted to read it first — to which I succumbed. What struck me the most about the book was its illustrations which made all of these teen characters look like they were in the twenties or so. I was also a little surprised by how unabashedly wealthy these young kids were, driving fancy sports cars as one example. It was an easy read; it took me 6 days mostly because it wasn’t riveting or anything, and I’ve been doing a lot of creative work the past week, which engaged me more than reading. | |||
Book #14 |
Book: Do You Mind If I Cancel?: Things That Still Annoy Me | Author: Gary Janetti | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 159 | Duration: 03/01/26 – 03/01/26 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: nonfiction, memoir, humor essays, comedy, LGBT | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Funny and poignant look at the “indignities of everyday life.” 🖌6-word review: It grew on me. Ultimately amusing. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “For those of you who don’t know, Dynasty was a sensation that took over the fucking country for a few years in the 80s. It was our Game of Thrones, but with shoulder pads.” | |||
| Description:* Gary spends his twenties in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him. He chronicles the torture of finding a job before the internet when you had to talk on the phone all the time, and fantasizes, as we all do, about who to tell off when he finally wins an Oscar. As Gary himself says, “These are essays from my childhood and young adulthood about things that still annoy me.”*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I was a little turned off by it at the beginning, but then I adjusted my attitude and I ended up enjoying it a lot. In the beginning, I thought the humor was a little too “drag-queen-bitchy” for my taste. I’d never heard of this author since I never watched Family Guy, which I only just now realize is not the same show as Modern Family, which I also never watched. (If you think that’s bad, until I one day saw pictures of Kylie Minogue and Nicki Minaj in an article, I thought they were the same person. #BlessMyHeart) I see that Gary was also a writer for Will & Grace, which I did watch but never paid any attention to who the writers were. With it all said and done, I did have a few literal laugh-out-louds in the last half of the book. | |||
Book #13 |
Book: Between Two Trailers | Author: J. Dana Trent | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 256 | Duration: 02/28/26 – 02/28/26 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (Abandoned) | Genres: nonfiction, memoir, religion, mental illness | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Preschooler drug dealer quits, becomes a professor, then a minister. 🖌6-word review: Not my cup of tea. Abandoned. |
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| Description:* Growing up, Dana tries to be the daughter each of her parents wanted: a drug lord’s heir and a debutante minister. Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her after she graduates from Duke University and becomes a professor and an ambivalent female Southern Baptist minister. But Dana was a child of the drug trade. Though she escapes flyover country, she realizes that she will never be able to escape her father’s legacy, and that her childhood secrets have kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that no one can really “make it” until they return to where their story began.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I really wanted to like this book, and I read 30% of it before abandoning it. The author is speaking [about this book] nearby in a couple of weeks, and I intended to attend her talk, which is why I decided to read it. I’m going to forgo that, too. I found no redeeming qualities in the characters and escapades related in the first third of the book, and as good as it might “turn,” I just wasn’t willing to slog through more. | |||
Book #12 |
Book: The House of Mirth | Author: Edith Wharton | |
| Source: Library loan Format: E-book |
Pages: 406 | Duration: 02/22/26 – 02/28/26 (7 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: historical fiction, classics, literature, class, New York | ||
| 📕10-word summary: New York socialite’s serial inconsequential decisions about love compound tragically. 🖌6-word review: Heavy. Beautifully — if not challengingly — written. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: crepe-de-chine, empyrean, chary, desultory, bezique, sylvan, odious, oubliettes, dissembling, Quirinal, adjuration, mauvaise honte, parterres, marquetry, puerile, propinquity, infelicity, lustral, cuirassed, ormolu, effulgence, proscenium, sward, stereopticon, phaetons, stertorous, impenitent, adumbrations, excrescences, aigrettes, orangeine, c-spring barouche, victoria, antimacassar | |||
| Description:* Edith Wharton’s dark view of society, the somber economics of marriage, and the powerlessness of the unwedded woman in the 1870s emerge dramatically in the tragic novel The House of Mirth. Faced with an array of wealthy suitors, New York socialite Lily Bart falls in love with lawyer Lawrence Selden, whose lack of money spoils their chances for happiness together. Dubious business deals and accusations of liaisons with a married man diminish Lily’s social status, and as she makes one bad choice after another, she learns how venal and brutally unforgiving the upper crust of New York can be.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is my third Edith Wharton book in as many years, two of them as Mostly Social Book Club books (including this one), and my order of preference is: 1) Ethan Frome, 2) The Age of Innocence, and now this one 3) The House of Mirth. One of the things I like about these classics is the way things are said, but only up to the point at which they become hard to parse. Jane Eyre and The Age of Innocence were easy, but this one was on the verge of being slightly esoteric. Example: “She had even risen earlier than usual in the execution of her purpose.” (Translation: She got up early to get shit done.) I absolutely loved the ending of this book, which is all you really need to know about the kind of endings to books that I like. 😂 | |||
Book #11 |
Book: Pocketbook of Quotes from Socrates to Lebowski | Author: Sean Thompson | |
| Source: Free BookBub download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 385 | Duration: 02/10/26 – 02/21/26 (12 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: nonfiction, quotations, philosophy | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Quotes by a diverse set of people: inspiration, motivation, entertainment. 🖌6-word review: Incredibly sloppy editing detracted from enjoyment. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ~Albert Einstein | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: inclemency, fand, Feldwebel, obsoledge | |||
| Description:* Are you interested in learning from the greatest philosophers, artists, writers and minds of all time? Do you want to have a handy collection of quotes that you can read anytime, anywhere? Do you want to fill your mind with wisdom, inspiration, and insight? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you. This is a compact and convenient book that contains hundreds [of] quotes for all occasions. You’ll find quotes on topics such as life, knowledge, virtue, happiness, friendship, and more. This book is perfect for anyone who wants to enrich their mind and soul through the timeless teachings of the greats.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: One of the things that stood out to me after reading so many quotes is that there are probably quotes to support whatever you believe, as many of them contradict each other. For example, there are many quotes that contend that solitude is necessary to your being, while another whole slew contend that we cannot exist in solitude as we’re all intertwined. The editing of this book (at least the kindle version I read) was just bad, bad, bad. This included many missed terminal punctuation marks (mostly periods), capitalizing the word after a semicolon in a sentence, completely wrong words (e.g., throng instead of through, near instead of never), different fonts and line spacing on the same page, and some paragraphs in black and some in a lighter (almost) gray colored font, errant spaces mid-word (e.g., “you’ re” and “you ‘ re”), and paragraph breaks (i.e., hard to tell sometimes if a paragraph break was a new paragraph in the same quote or a new quote starting). Even the blurb on Goodreads had an editing error in it — see the word “of” I have highlighted in the description above — I added it because it was missing. For posterity, of the 12-day duration reading this book, I was on a cruise for 8 days of it and didn’t read. | |||
Book #10 |
Book: Hello Beautiful | Author: Ann Napolitano | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 387 | Duration: 02/06/26 – 02/07/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: historical fiction, romance, family, mental health | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A modern, darker re-imagining of Louisa May Alcott‘s Little Women. 🖌6-word review: Great pacing — it moved right along. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “He was encouraging by nature; he attended college track events just to cheer on the slowest runners.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: caterwauled, physio | |||
| Description:* William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially reading it right after reading Little Women, regarding which the author says, “If this [story] sounds slightly ‘Little Women-esque’ to you, then that’s the point. The book is a subtle, modern-day homage to Little Women. When the four Padavano sisters stepped into the story — each of them strong-willed and loving but so different from one another — I realized they were the heartbeat that would shape the rest of the novel. They became my homage to the fictional sisters I loved so much growing up: the four March girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.” There certainly are “nods” to the 4 Little Women sisters in this story, but the parents are completely different from those in Little Women, especially the mother. And there wasn’t a “one-to-one correspondence” between the 4 (Hello Beautiful) Padavano sisters and the 4 (Little Women) March sisters. I also felt that this “re-imagining” was much darker than Little Woman, which actually appealed to me. This was a Mostly Social Book Club book, and the best thing about it was that, while I was on the library waitlist for it, I was inspired to read Little Women while I waited. | |||
Book #9 |
Book: Little Women | Author: Louisa May Alcott | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 504 | Duration: 02/01/26 – 02/05/26 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: historical fiction, classics, romance, literature, young adult | ||
| 📕10-word summary: 4 sisters endure hardships and enjoy adventures in this classic. 🖌6-word review: There’s a reason it’s a classic. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “Mothers have needs of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have girls to manage.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: deportment, derogation, redoubtable, saleratus, assiduity, loquacity, wheedlesome, superannuated, propitious, salubrious | |||
| Description:* The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored for generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo’s hand, cried over little Beth’s untimely death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Aspiring writers have found inspiration in Jo’s devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature’s most beloved women.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I loved the writing in this book. It reminded me of Jane Eyre in that it’s “older” English, but not that Old English that’s unintelligible. And I thoroughly enjoyed the turns of phrases. My impetus for reading this classic now is because our next Mostly Social Book Club book is Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, and its story has parallels with Little Woman. And since I’m still waiting for the book from the library, and I’d never read Little Women, which was available immediately, I went ahead and slipped it in. ChatGPT has graciously summarized the parallels between the two stories, and now that Little Women is fresh in my mind, I look extra forward to reading Hello Beautiful as soon as it’s available. | |||
Book #8 |
Book: The Celebrants | Author: Steven Rowley | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 320 | Duration: 01/27/26 – 01/29/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, LGBT, queer, friendship, chosen family | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Non-binary version of The Big Chill augmented by pre-deceased funerals. 🖌6-word review: An interesting, unique concept goes awry. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “We weren’t meant to see everything, we weren’t built to do everything, we aren’t capable of knowing everything. At a certain point, peace has to be found with the choices we’ve made.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: Malinois, paean, trine, planchette, huipil | |||
| Description:* A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises — especially to ourselves — by the bestselling and beloved author of The Guncle. It’s been a minute — or five years — since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and 28 years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living — that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves. But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I wanted to like this book more. I really did. But I didn’t. This is my third Steven Rowley book, and I probably won’t read any more by him. I also wanted to love The Guncle more than I did, but I absolutely loved The Editor. (Full disclosure: Having been an editor for a living and loving Jackie Kennedy Onassis may have influenced that.) I guess we can call it progress that there was a time when I thought anything by a gay author or about gay people was fantastic but am now more discerning. There were 2 “scenes” in this book that really didn’t work for me, and they were long scenes — one about a skydiving outing the 5-person group did together, and the other was near the end that went on and on about kittens. Blech. | |||
Book #7 |
Book: The Queens of Crime | Author: Marie Benedict | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 310 | Duration: 01/23/26 – 01/25/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: historical fiction, mystery, crime, women, writers | ||
| 📕10-word summary: 5 famous female crime writers collaborate to solve a murder. 🖌6-word review: 5 powerful protagonists. Creative, fun story. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “Very few of us are what we seem.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: pantheon, ignominy, skullduggery, morass | |||
| Description:* London, 1930. The 5 greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is my third book by this author, having read in 2022 The Only Woman in the Room (about Hedy Lamarr) and The Personal Librarian (about Belle da Costa Greene — personal librarian to famous financier and investment banker J.P. Morgan), and it’s a departure from her regular kind of storytelling, which is typically a fictionalized version of a woman in history who’s been overlooked or under-appreciated. In this story, instead of 1 woman, she writes about 5 women — who are actual, famous crime writers: Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy — and she has them all collaborating to solve one unsolved, real-life murder. Benedict incorporates each writer’s strengths, both as writers and of their main characters, such as Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey who stars in 11 of her novels, and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, appearing in 33 of her novels and Miss Marple, who appears in 12. I found it to be an interesting, creative, and fun premise and would definitely recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of the mystery genre. Oh, bonus! There were at least 3 uses of one of Moira Rose’s vocabulary words: chin-wag. | |||
Book #6 |
Book: Killing Floor | Author: Lee Child | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 532 | Duration: 01/19/26 – 01/22/26 (4 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, thriller, mystery, crime, suspense, detective, action, adventure | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Ex-military policeman stumbles into corrupt town. Kicks ass. Takes names. 🖌6-word review: Excellent storytelling. On the violent side. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “I had to decide how to use that pressure. I had to decide whether it was going to crush me or turn me into a diamond.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: flight case, interdiction, shunted, jinked, Perspex, intaglio, lithography, letterpress, sap, camber | |||
| Description:* The first Jack Reacher novel. Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I’ve only read short-story books by Lee Child — Eleven Numbers and Safe Enough and Other Stories. I wanted to get a feel for his writing before diving into the Jack Reacher series. I was impressed with his writing, giving both those books 5 stars. I had no idea there were thirty Jack Reacher novels, and this is my first one. I’d originally planned to run through a couple (in order of publication, of course; because, that’s how I roll), but I’m rethinking that now. I’m torn, because I loved the writing and the plot, but I really abhor violence, and the worst (meaning most brutal) kind of violence takes place in this story. And I have no reason to think that’s going to abate in any way in future books. I’ll probably try at least the second book, Die Trying, which I’m in the queue for at my library. I hear there is a Reacher TV series, starring Alan Ritchson (a hunk!), and there are two Reacher movies, starring Tom Cruise. Bob’s the movie-watcher in our family, and he said, “Tom Cruise is too wimpy to play Reacher.” I’ve seen neither, as I don’t watch TV or movies, and with the violence in this book, I don’t have any desire to watch either. | |||
Book #5 |
Book: Tell Me Everything | Author: Elizabeth Strout | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 326 | Duration: 01/16/26 – 01/18/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, friendship, family, love | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Lucy and Bob share an incredibly intimate, but nonsexual, relationship. 🖌6-word review: Elizabeth Strout at her absolute best. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “She had apparently not remembered the time — weeks ago — that she had asked him to write the letter B on the back of her underpants, and he did not remind her that she had one more pair — the pair she had been wearing — which needed a B; he did not want to embarrass her.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: schlumpy, snot-wot | |||
| Description:* It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is book #5 in a 5-book series, of which I first read book #4, Lucy by the Sea, then book #3, Oh William!, both of which I loved. Having enjoyed both of those so much, I decided to read the other 3 books in the series. So, next I read book #1, My Name is Lucy Barton, which I didn’t love at all, and which unfortunately, was the case with book #2, Anything is Possible! I know if I’d’ve read them in order, I would have stopped after books #1 & #2. I’m happy to say that this final book was on par, if not the best, of the 5-book series! I just love this author’s voice, and I loved the appearance in this book of Olive Kitteridge, who is the titular character in another of this author’s book, which I loved. So to recap about the series: I recommend skipping books #1 and #2 and reading books #3, #4, & #5. | |||
Book #4 |
Book: The Nickel Loop | Author: Nancy Houser-Bluhm | |
| Source: Friend loan Format: Print |
Pages: 340 | Duration: 01/12/26 – 01/15/26 (4 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: historical fiction, time travel, romance, LGBT, women’s rights, food safety | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Time travelers meet “part way” — help each other through it. 🖌6-word review: Different, interesting experience of time travel. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “There’s a bond that forms when people go through traumatic events together.” | |||
| Description:* Emmeline, a driven young woman, has withdrawn from friends and family since her adored father died suddenly. Traveling by train to visit her sister in a small Colorado town, she steps from 2022 into 1938. When she meets kind, well-educated Nicholas, she recognizes his panic and disbelief. He just arrived from 1898. The two struggle to grasp their shattered reality but blending into 1938 draws them close and love sparks. When a psychic offers hope for returning to their own times, will they forfeit what could be? Nicholas is astonished by the advances 1938 offers but Emmeline knows the 1930s hold little opportunity for her as a woman. A discovery intensifies the pull back to her own time. Can her heart exist on two timelines?*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: In spite of not being a sci-fi, magical realism, or fantasy fan, I do like time-travel stories. Other time-travel books I’ve enjoyed include The memory Collectors, Remember Me Tomorrow, Oona Out of Order, The Midnight Library, Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Time Traveler’s Wife, In Five Years, and A Wrinkle in Time.
The refreshing part of this time-travel plot was: of the two people traveling, one lands in 1938 from the future (2022) and the other from the past (1898). One thing I especially liked about the way the story unraveled was that it was like it anticipated my questions and then answered them. Some examples:
And of course, I liked that there was a gay character in the book. A final comment about this book is that the author went to high school with Bob (my husband), and she’s my friend on Facebook, which fortunately didn’t influence my review of the book — thank goodness, as that could have been awkward. (Thanks for a great story, Nancy, and for anticipating my questions as a reader — and more importantly — answering them! 😍) |
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Book #3 |
Book: Anything is Possible | Author: Elizabeth Strout | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 254 | Duration: 01/08/26 – 01/11/26 (4 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, family, dysfunction, class | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Woman returns to visit her siblings after 17 years away. 🖌6-word review: Had trouble keeping track of characters. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “Unease came into the room with the girl.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: lambert, kohl, cornetto, caseggiato, dappled | |||
| Description:* Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for a mother’s love even as she comes to accept her own mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after 17 years of absence.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This is book #2 in a 5-book series, of which I first read book #4, Lucy by the Sea, then book #3, Oh William!, both of which I loved. Having enjoyed both of those so much, I decided to read the other 3 books in the series. So, next I read book #1, My Name is Lucy Barton, which I didn’t love at all, and which unfortunately, was the case with this book #2! I know if I’d’ve read them in order, I would have stopped after this book (#2). Now I’m hesitant to read book #5, Tell Me Everything, but I’m hoping that they got better as they went along and that I will enjoy book #5 as much as I did numbers 3 & 4. I’m at least going to start it, and if it’s more like books 1 & 2 than books 3 & 4, then I’ll abandon it. | |||
Book #2 |
Book: The Correspondent | Author: Virginia Evans | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 291 | Duration: 01/06/26 – 01/07/26 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, family, books about books, grief | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Woman finds solace in literature, connecting with people by letter. 🖌6-word review: Nonpareil narrator. Commendable characters. Laudable letters. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “I’ve now stood before my closet on three occasions and leafed through what I own, and the only black anything I have anymore is a dress I was probably wearing in the 1990s, which dips down to the uppermost part of what used to be my cleavage, but which now resembles the skin of a raw plucked chicken.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: dryads, lichen | |||
| Description:* Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has — a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This book is all the rage right now, and I waited several months for it on my library‘s waiting list. It was at — or near — the top of many “2025 best book of the year” lists. I certainly agree with its high ratings, as I enjoyed it tremendously. I love a good epistolary novel, probably because the idea of reading other people’s mail greatly appeals to me. I loved the variety of people she wrote to, including a couple of authors (Ann Patchett to name one that I love). I also love books about books, to which I recently devoted an entire blog entry, and there were several books mentioned in this book that I’ve read including, Hamnet, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Bel Canto, The Dutch House, 84 Charing Cross Road, The Uncommon Reader, Cutting for Stone, Rebecca, The Remains of the Day, Demon Copperhead, Crossing to Safety, and Wuthering Heights. Also book/author-related, there were a couple of Joan Didion books mentioned, whose Notes To John I recently read. And a final relevant-to-me thing in this book was a plotline in it about DNA testing, which reminded me of my recently read book: The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are. | |||
Book #1 |
Book: What Happened to the McCrays? | Author: Tracey Lange | |
| Source: Amazon Unlimited loan Format: Kindle |
Pages: 352 | Duration: 01/01/26 – 01/05/26 (5 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, family, romance, grief | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Couple destroyed by loss of their son tries to recover. 🖌6-word review: Angst and sadness dominate the narrative. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “It was a curious thing being in that room again. He felt a little lost in time, like he was visiting the boy who used to inhabit this space and dream about his future.” | |||
| 🎓A new-to-me word: puffy | |||
| Description:* When Kyle McCray gets word his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown of Potsdam, New York, where he doesn’t expect a warm welcome. Kyle left suddenly two and a half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his employees, his friends—not to mention Casey, his wife of sixteen years and a beloved teacher in town. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again, especially after Casey makes it clear she wants him gone. The longer he’s home, the more Kyle understands the impact his departure has had on the people he left behind. When he’s presented with an opportunity for redemption as the coach of the floundering middle school hockey team, he begins to find compassion in unexpected places. Kyle even considers staying in Potsdam, but that’s only possible if he and Casey can come to some kind of peace with each other.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: A friend of mine recommended this book, which she loved. It was a good story, which I enjoyed, but for me, it took a little too long to get to the crux of what really happened the day the couple’s son died and why it was so hard for them to forgive themselves and each other. | |||
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