Read-a-thon: We’ll see how it goes

The day is finally here, Jeff and the boys are at basketball practice, but I didn’t make specific Read-a-thon plans or sign up early because I didn’t know if we’d have anything else going on.  But, we took yesterday off and did a day trip, so the rest of my…

My review of The Sleepwalkers by Paul Grossman

From the publisher’s website: In the final weeks of the Weimar Republic, as Hitler and his National Socialist party angle to assume control of Germany, beautiful girls are seen sleepwalking through the streets. Then, a young woman of mysterious origin, with her legs bizarrely deformed, is pulled dead from the…

The haul from this year’s book sale!

It’s been a full week since Friends Night at the annual TSCPL book sale, and I’m only NOW able to post about it, although I took the photo and entered everything into my LibraryThing catalog last Saturday. Life is just too damn busy. Also, when I DO have some free…

Journal entry for August 6

One week ago, August 6, was my first time taking part in an event called Do Nothing But Read Day. Sounds right up my alley, right? Of course it is. But sometime during the afternoon, my mood took an extreme downward turn. Later in the evening, after a nap, I…

Mini-review of The Shadow of the Wind

This mini-review was initially posted on my local library’s website. To enter the grand prize drawing for the summer reading program, adults had to read eight books and write a review of at least one of them. I wrote mine for The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón…

Review of Half a Life: a Memoir by Darin Strauss

From the back cover: In the last month of his high school career, just after turning eighteen, Strauss is behind the wheel of his father’s Oldsmobile, driving with friends, having ‘thoughts of mini-golf, another thought of maybe just going to the beach.’ Then, out of the blue: a collision that…

Mother’s Day blurb

I’m calling it a “blurb” because I don’t have time to cover anything in a substantive way, but yikes it’s been four weeks since my last post, and I’m at the laptop, so I’m jotting down some notes before unpacking the dishwasher. Two weeks ago, Easter Sunday, a nearby house…

Super-Short Read-a-Thon update

It’s just past midnight here, and I just finished an awesome book, a novella by the late great Muriel Spark called The Driver’s Seat. This is maybe my fifth Spark book overall, and man, no one else writes like she did. Her imagination is sort of creepy and twisted, and…