October 2022 Picks and Pans

  Hello fellow book lovers! For me, October was a month filled with reading variety: historical fiction, contemporary fiction, historical mystery, thriller, Christian fiction (and straight-up-fiction, of course). Most of my books were advance reader copies from publishers, but I enjoyed catch-up books in a couple series. My total isn’t very impressive this month… I started reading Shogun by James Clavell, which comes in at staggering 1,140 pages, but I didn’t finish. It’s a slow read and a definite time suck. Not sure if and when I’ll finish it. I turned on comments for this post… I’d love to hear your thoughts on these books! I’ll be transitioning to video […]

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Us Against You

  “Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.” Fredrik Backman, Us Against You. The citizens of Beartown are about to lose their beloved hockey team (introduced in the 2016 bestseller, Beartown) and their rivals in Hed—where many former Beartown players now carry stick—could not be happier. A new coach is appointed, a woman, and teenagers fill out the roster. Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker, have heart, but is that enough to win? I’m a huge fan of Fredrik Backman. A Man Called Ove […]

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5-Star Reads from 2020

  I read some great books in 2020 (and some duds if I’m being honest). These were my favorites. There’s something here for just about everybody. (I’m a professional reader, author, and librarian, in case my opinion matters). The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical, but after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes […]

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