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Books Recommendations

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

I count George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss as one of my all-time favorites, so I was eager to start Scenes of Clerical Life as my Spin #38 pick for Classics Club Challenge. I was also fortunate to find the Librivox Recording by Bruce Pirie (available in Podcast formats too) and it was so good — highly recommended!

Scenes of Clerical Life has 3 stories, each one progressively longer and more impactful.

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Books Memes

Ten Lesser Known Books

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday is about listing books that you have picked up – or avoided – because of the hype around them. I fall in neither group — I’m a little wary of Hyped Books, so while I add them to my TBR, but save them for a later day. Instead, it’s the lesser known books which catch my eye… hoping to find some hidden gem perhaps?

So — here’s a list of some obscure books that I really think deserve a lot more love! Er, you may have seen these recommended around these parts before…

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Memes To Be Read Books

Classics Club Challenge: CC Spin #38

Several months ago, I had decided to participate in the Classics Club Challenge and signed up with a bucket list of 100 classic literature books that I wanted to read. Occasionally, a random number is also generated by by the hosts at The Classics Club, and you can play along by reading that entry number from your chosen list. Rules are here.

This is my first CC Spin, and the Lucky Spin Number this time around is …

…. Number 17

On my list, entry #17 is Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (1857). If I remember correctly, I chose this book because Eliot seems to have had a difficult relationship with her father and she has reflected some of that tension in this book. Plus, Eliot is one of my favorite all-time authors.

Not a very promising book cover, that. But let’s see…

Are you participating in CC Spin #38, or generally in the Classics Club Challenge this year?

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Best of List Books Watchlist

Mid-Year Check In: Best of 2024 So Far

I am ready to write bad angsty poetry on my never-ending reading/ blogging slump! Still, somehow, pushing myself to do this mid-year 2024 blogpost on stuff I have liked till now.

Let’s all pledge to move out of Slump Valley! And just in case these recs reach you, hope you’ll like some of these.

1 / The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

    I have not been a great fan or follower of the Grishaverse, so was hesitant in picking this up. But what a marvelous story this turned out to be. We peer into the ages of 16th century when anti-semitism was rife. Luzia is desperately trying to escape her confined pitiful life with her displays of magical craft… but soon ends up getting embroiled in a larger political net. Everything in this book was so impressive – the Spanish Golden Age/ Renaissance feel, the worldbuilding, the writing, the prose, the characterizations. Aaaaand, it is a standalone. If you’ve liked Mistress of the Art of Death, you’ll love this one too.

    Categories
    Memes To Be Read Books

    Spring ’24 TBR

    This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at our Spring ’24 TBR. I don’t know about you, but I’d be lucky to finish these off for the whole year! Still – subject to change and all that – here’s my set:

    Folks, how have you been? Anybody else feeling the reading blues lately? Or, er, since last year? What are your solutions — and of course, your own Spring ’24 TBR lists?

    Categories
    Index Memes To Be Read Books

    Classics Club Challenge

    I have decided to sign up for The Classics Club reading challenge this year. Based on this sign-up post and this FAQs post, we can choose our own criteria for what maketh a “classic” and then we have to make a list of 100 classics that we want to read – not immediately – but over the next 5 years.

    For my own “classics” criteria, I’m going with a mixed bag of books famous in a specific genre* OR any books published before 1974 (i.e. more than 50 years ago). Here follows the list!

    Categories
    Best of List Memes

    Top 10 Zippy Reads

    Top 10 zippy reads? I am all for it these days – and that’s the theme for this week’s Top 10 Tuesday. Here are my recs, with equally zippy blurbs!

    The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
    Tropes: Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales

    The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
    Tropes: Snarky, Retelling, The Odyssey, Ulysses hero-not-hero

    Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
    Tropes: Native American, Retelling, Snow White, Wild West

     Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa
    Tropes: Anthology, Japanese folklore, Dark, Compassionate

    Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
    Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, Bizarre, Quirky Horror

    Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West 
    Tropes: Essays, ROFL Funny, Old blockbuster movies, Punchlines

    Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror 
    Tropes: Surreal, Otherwordly, Lurid, Anthology, Poetic

    How the World Became Quiet by Rachel Swirsky
    Tropes: Anthology, Science-Fiction, AI & Identity Crisis, Evolution

    The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
    Tropes: Graphic Novel, Poetic, Feel-Good, Found Families

    Princess Floralinda & the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir
    Tropes: Snarky, 40-floor fall, Coming of Age, Unexpected friends

    So, do any of our choices match? Do you have any zippy read recs? Let’s chat!

    Categories
    Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

    Favorite Books of 2023

    Gifts from Santa

    Happy New Year ’24, everyone! And at last, my favorite topic for the yearly wrap-up to Top 10 Tuesday: favorite books of 2023. We save the best for the end, and it is so much fun adding those best to Mount TBR. Here’s my list too.

    Categories
    Books Starred Recommendations

    December Wrap-Up

    Three great December reads — all mysteries, all within this month, and all pretty good! I am already adding some of them to my Best of 2023 list.

    Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    Phenomenally well-written, terse suspense. Astronomer Vivvy Bouchet also has unsettling psychic insight and gets pulled into looking for a missing girl by cops. Is she a quack or is it real – nobody can make up their mind about it. As a narrator, Vivvy is unusually talkative but also just a bit unreliable, and this makes her a supremely interesting character. Equally interesting is her public fight with a cult-ish conspiracy podcaster Bubba Guns.
    The tense pacing of the first half dwindles later, but Heaberlin still manages a very decent wrap-up at the end. I hear  the book’s already up for TV adaptation. And with a title like that, how can you possibly ignore this book? Highly recommended!

    Wherever She Goes by Kelley Armstrong

    Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

    Another solid thriller from Armstrong. Recently divorced single mother Aubrey Finch believes she has spotted a kidnapping, but nobody wants to believe her. But Finch has other ghosts from her past, which compel her to pursue the case and in the process, reveal her own ghosts to the public eye. The pacing is excellent. If you can ignore the fact that most of Armstrong’s heroines seem very alike, you will like this one — not as much as the Rockton series, but still quite engrossing.

    Categories
    Memes

    Ten Memorable Book Quotes

    Gifts from Santa

    Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we have a freebie and I am going with some memorable book quotes. Hope these stay with you the way these have stayed with me.