Well, it’s been more than a quarter, but it’s just easier to sum up that way! I’m still not getting much reading done, but at least I managed to find some really good movies. Here’s a wrap-up for the first quarter.
Tag: feelgood
Categories
Top 10 Cozy Reads
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday meme has us looking at books that give us cozy vibes. Here’s a list to to keep us warm!
1/ Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Everything sounds hopeful and cozy when Anne says it.
2/ James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Because there’s so much happiness in finding your own tribe.
The Witness for the Dead
Series: The Goblin Emperor Series (but can be read as standalone)
Published: June 2021
Book Themes / Tropes: I can speak to the Dead, Judicial power politics, Court intrigue, A Good Person
Recommended if you like: Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold, or generally any mythological fantasy work
Rating: 9 of 10
How many times do we come across truly good, kind people in fiction? People who do the right thing even if that doesn’t help them much politically, simply because it is the right thing to do? In Witness for the Dead, Addison has created a good person in the form of Celehar who works as a witness for the dead.
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!
I had vague memories of the first 3 books of The Queen’s Thief series, which I read way back in 2006. I think I’d listened to the audiobooks, which I hadn’t liked very much, because the narrator made the characters sound too old.
When Mythothon #4 came up, I realized that this 6-book series would manage to chop off several prompts from that challenge. And that’s how I started off on this clever and wonderful adventure. A strange, miraculous thing about this series is that each book can be read as a standalone, but when the books are read together, the sum becomes greater than the whole.
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. And this week, we spotlight our favorite books of 2020.
This is a necessary ritual for wrapping up the year, and so here are my top ten reads for 2020.
Bringing Up Baby is a story about a missing intercostal clavicle, George the digging dog, and a Brazilian leopard named Baby. And what a madcap rip-roaring ROFL hysterical comedy this was!
Cary Grant plays an absent-minded museum director who just wants to polish off his gigantic dinosaur skeleton. But the harum-scarum Katharine Hepburn has other plans, and willy or nilly, Grant just HAS to help her out.
Oh, I felt so sorry for Cary Grant — who has trouble keeping up with all the stories and names people keep assigning to him. Hepburn gives him a really tough time, sending him running after golf balls, stolen cars, misplaced purses, escaped geese, musical leopards, hidden clothes, missing bones … I am laughing as I write this.
I never expected to like Bringing Up Baby so much. I went in thinking they were both an old married couple (they weren’t) who had decided to raise a leopard (not by choice!) and then squabbled over it (not precisely over the leopard).
I was so happy I took a chance on it. There was never a dull moment. No wonder this movie is considered one of the Top 100 Funniest English Movies of all time. Highly, highly recommended.
Watch the trailer HERE.