Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Bread & Butter Farms is a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Farms, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. This is such a classic fall image with the farm stand and all of the pumpkins.
It took me a few sessions to complete, so I would definitely put the difficulty a bit higher, but it was very enjoyable and definitely fits the mood of the season!
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
📚Summary
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.
✍️My Thoughts
My first impression of this novella was that it was very odd and possibly not for me. But I decided to keep reading and eventually fell in love with it. I loved how the relationship between Red and Blue developed through their correspondence and how it changed their understanding of the world they lived in. And I especially enjoyed the twists and turns the story took at the end.
Potting Shed is a 500-piece puzzle from Mulic, and the artist is Chris Bigelow. I took a chance on a random Amazon brand because I liked the image and have been trying to purchase more smaller piece count puzzles.
I usually find the puzzles I am drawn to are 1000 pieces, but with those, I am always too tempted to stay up way past my bedtime trying to finish the puzzle. If I do a 300-piece or 500-piece puzzle, I can easily finish it in an evening and then get to bed at a more reasonable hour.
Seasons is a 500-piece puzzle from Pippi Post, and the artist is Alexa Zurcher, who is the owner/founder of the brand. I have done several of their puzzles and really enjoy them. The illustrations are so appealing and the quality is very good.
This was a fun, easy puzzle that includes a lot of things I like: buildings, seasons, and grid images. I will definitely do more from this brand.
A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss
This is the second book I have read by Jenny Bayliss. The first was The Twelve Dates of Christmas, which I enjoyed so much I gave it 5 stars. She has six holiday novels out so far, and I plan to read them all at some point.
In this book, we meet three half sisters – Maggie, Simone, and Star – just after their father Augustus has passed away. They have not been close for quite a while, not since they spent their summers together with their father growing up. Now they have been given special tasks they must do together to receive their inheritance.
The time spent together jumping through the hoops their father has set up offers them the opportunity to acknowledge the things that had pushed them apart and to decide if they want to take a chance on reconciling their relationships with each other.
This book was such a fun read. I enjoyed getting to know the sisters, who each have their own personalities, histories, and love interests, and I found the small-town setting charming, especially during the lead-up to the winter solstice celebration.
Highly recommend!
I have been trying to reign in the puzzle buying after going a bit crazy this summer. I’m not sure how successful I have been, but here are the eight puzzles I have purchased in the last month:
Only the Spaghetti Tree is 500 pieces; the rest are 1000. So I’m not doing very well at trying to obtain smaller piece counts, but I am still happy with all of my purchases.
Monster Mansion is a 500-piece puzzle from Mudpuppy, and the artist is Stephanie Birdsong. This is the same artist that did the Welcome to Spookytown puzzle I did last October. I love her quirky style and her fun take on a Halloween-style house crosssection.
It was fun to do an easy Halloween puzzle after the last two that were both 1000 pieces and on the difficult end of the range. I think this will be my last one for this year.
Happy Halloween is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and the artist is Demelsa Haughton. I find her artwork so charming. I was thinking this was the first puzzle I have done from her, but then I realized my only 2000-piece puzzle Novel Avenue was one of hers.
This puzzle was more challenging than I thought it would be, probably because of how detailed it is. With that said, I love all the fun and spooky details in this image. The pumpkin houses are charming, and I especially love the colors of the sky.
Halloween Crochet is a 1000-piece puzzle from White Mountain, and the artist is Jessica White. This was challenging but fun. It had a lot of the same colors all over the puzzle, but I never got truly stuck.
I have done one other crochet image from Jessica White called Country Life Crochet. It was produced by Cobble Hill, however, and their random shapes combined with the intricacy of the stitches made it a lot harder than this one was. I would consider doing this one again but am not planning on keeping the other one.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout is book 5 in the Amgash series.
Summary
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been.
Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
My Thoughts
Simple yet profound – that is the best way I can describe Elizabeth Strout’s writing. On the surface, this book follows the lives of Bob Burgess and Lucy Barton as they experience their friendship and deal with the everyday situations in their lives. Ultimately, however, it explores the meaning of life, especially that of the “unrecorded life.”
If you are interested in reading Elizabeth Strout, I would recommend starting with Olive Kitteredge and the first book in the Amgash series, My Name is Lucy Barton.
In So Many Words 