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Books Memes

Ten Books With Numbers In the Title

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 are looking at Books With Numbers In the Title.

I think the titles will be self-explanatory, so I am just going to take the easy way out — and post the book covers themselves. Then, let’s choose a favorite!

Which of these is your favorite book, title or cover? (And hope everyone is doing well!)

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Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

Top 10 Feel-Good Books

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 are looking at books guaranteed to make you smile, aka feel-good books.

Honestly, I think this is my favorite sort of books, irrespective of the genre. I could go on piling books here but will try to restrict it to just ten — for your sake!

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Books Memes

Second Place & Six Family Sagas

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best. The book for September 2021 is Second Place by Rachel Cusk.

Book Blurb: A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma―and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.

I haven’t read Second Place, but the blurb reminded me heavily of family sagas triggered off by critical events in the life of an ancestor. So, here are 6 books all tied-up in family legacy.

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Books

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

Leonie Swann Three Bags Full

August was supposed to be Women in Translation month. So I turned to Leonie Swann’s Three Bags Full, a book translated from German to English (thanks to BookWyrm Knits for telling me that).

Three Bags Full is apparently one of those books where nothing bad happens to our main characters — at least that’s what the commenters said on this Tor post by Jo Walton. The book happens to be about a flock of sheep playing detective. I was easy prey because I’m all for light, breezy reads right now (still going through a reading slump!).

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Books Memes

Ten Books To Re-Read (Or Not)

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 are looking at books we wish we could re-read as if for the first time.

Come to think of it, this is a rather difficult topic. I thought of books that had lost their sparkle? Perhaps because I grew older, or perhaps because I already know what happens in the end. Most mysterious! So here I am, trying to figure out a list. With reasons.

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Best of List Books Memes

Top Ten Side Characters

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 are looking at those side characters. You know, those Secondary/ Minor Characters Who Deserve More Love.

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Books Memes To Be Read Books

Red Letter Days: Six Epistolary Books

Letters Postcards

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher is the book for August 2021. Which makes me take on the very obvious route of epistolary books. Not my favorite format, but here’s the list for six books on red letter days.

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Books Miscellany Recommendations Watchlist

Monthly Wrap-Up: July 2021 / June 2021

June and July 2021 have been quite cruel in terms of reading and blogging. I have been apartment hunting and it really takes over everything else! I also ended up DNF’ing a lot of books which just added to the reading slump. Hoping all’s well with everyone, and here’s a wrap-up post.

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Books

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published: 2008
Awards: Locus Award (2009)
Book Tropes: Roman mythology retelling/ Trojan War

Lavinia was the last bride of the Trojan hero, Aeneas. Aeneas was immortalized in Virgil’s ancient epic (29-19 B.C.), but Lavinia barely got any mention other than as the shy, blushing princess of Latinium. Lavinia is angry with Virgil for that. Virgil and Lavinia end up having a conversation across Time about this oversight.

The end result is that Virgil realizes his poem didn’t do her justice. He focused on women like Camilla and Dido and Creusa, but left out Lavinia! After all, when the Trojans (led by the notorious Paris of Troy) were completely battered by Melenaus’s Spartan army, it was Lavinia who gave them shelter in her homeland.

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Books Recommendations

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand
Published: 1950
Book Tropes: Unreliable characters, mysterious letters, remote houses
Recommended for fans of: Agatha Christie // Hitchcock movies // Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier // Gothic literature // Wales

Katinka Jones works with a women’s magazine and starts a correspondence with the lonely Mrs. Amista Carlyon. Amista lives in a very remote village in Wales. Tinka develops a fondness for her and decides to visit her. But surprise, surprise. There’s nobody called Amista living in that old house. So who was writing those letters? And who is this mysterious Mr. Carlyon who seems to hide a desperate secret of his own?

“And in Katinka Jones, the Welsh blood of her father’s family rose up and painted for her mind’s eye, a scene she loved: the grey valley where the brave green struggled through the earth’s scarred surface under the soft Welsh rain: an old house, clinging to its hard-won foothold on the stony breast of the mountain; the river lying like a silver sword between a young girl and the companionship of men — of all men but Carlyon. ”