Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Balloons is a 300-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and it is part of their Puzzle Moments line. Normally I would be wary of an image that had so many light areas, but it is not really a problem with such a small piece count.
I do like this image, but I didn’t think the quality was quite as good as the other Ravensburgers I have done.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – Time Quintet #1
A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newberry Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.
I don’t know why I didn’t read this as a young girl; somehow I missed it. Reading it now for the first time, I wanted to love it, but I just didn’t. It seemed like a pale imitation of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (I loved the first two books of that series as a teenager), and it fell flat for me. I realize that may be an unpopular opinion, and I wouldn’t want to squelch anyone’s love for the book. I just didn’t connect with it.
Simple Joys is a 1000-piece puzzle from 1canoe2, and it was simply lovely. I have done one other puzzle from them back at Christmas time and was so impressed by the quality of both the puzzle and the image. There is something about this image that just speaks to me. I love the way it highlights each of these simple things, allowing us to see how beautiful ordinary things can be.
I have said this before, but I also love the feeling puzzling gives me. The act of doing a puzzle quiets the noise in my brain for a while, much the same way that reading a book does. I hope I will be able to enjoy this hobby for many years to come.
I thought it would be fun to look back over the first six months of the year and see what books rose to the top for me.
Here are my top ten fiction books for the first half of 2025:
And here are my top 5 nonfiction books:
Have you read any of these, and what did you think of them?
Over the last few years, my puzzle collection has grown to exceed my book collection by quite a bit. To be fair, I only own a fraction of the books I have owned throughout my life as I have downsized books several times and mostly read library or digital books these days.
So I recently had Michael help me build a new bookshelf to house more of my puzzles. It was a pretty inexpensive one from Amazon, so it’s not very sturdy, but at least it’s standing. If I ever have to move, I’m not sure it will survive the trip!
Last Saturday, I did a bit of thrifting and was really happy with the results. The last time I was at Community Aid, the puzzle selection was sparse, but this time, they had a whole bin of pretty nice puzzles and I grabbed five of them. Then I went to Blue Mountain Thrift Store, which is where my son Michael works, and I was happy to see that they had puzzles as well. A lot of them were the really old ones you tend to see at thrift stores, but they did have some newer ones and I picked out three of them to purchase.
Yesterday, I attended a pop up puzzle swap which was in the parking lot of a shopping center in my town. It was put together fairly quickly, so unfortunately only three people showed up, but the organizer is hoping to do more of them and I had an enjoyable time talking with the two other ladies who were there.
I took twenty puzzles to swap, three of which were sets with multiple puzzles in the box. One of the women took one puzzle, and the other one took one regular puzzle and one set that had four puzzles. The woman who took the set had lots of puzzles to choose from. She mostly does 1000 piece puzzles, her sister does 500 pieces, and her mom does 300 pieces, and she had a TON of 300 piece puzzles. I don’t normally do a lot of 300 pieces, but they are nice when you just want something quick and easy.
I ended up getting six new-to-me puzzles, including several from Charles Wysocki, who I am very drawn to. When I sat down at home to add them to my puzzle spreadsheet, I realized that one of them was a duplicate of one I got thrifting last weekend – oops! I’m not too upset about it; I will just pass it on to someone else.
I think I am going to start posting the puzzles I want to get rid of on Facebook Marketplace. The woman who organized the puzzle swap yesterday shared with me that when she posts puzzles there, she mentions in the description that she is willing to swap, and some people have taken her up on that instead of just buying the puzzles. I think that would help me fill my thirst for new puzzles without breaking the bank!
Holiday Postcards is a 1000-piece puzzle from Trefl. I purchased this one for a challenge that is taking place in a Facebook group I belong to which has a weekly clue. This week’s clue was postcard, and this puzzle fit that perfectly.
This was my first time doing this brand, and I was very pleased with it. The fit was a bit loose, so it took a minute for me to get used to and make sure I was getting the right piece in the right place, but once I got used to it, things were fine.
The image is a really good one for a puzzle. There were a lot of different colors and textures, and I finished it faster than I thought I would. I would definitely be open to getting more from this brand.
Bonus puzzle: Last week’s clue was ladder, and someone in the group mentioned a puzzle that had a barely noticeable ladder. I had actually done that puzzle before and still had it, so I redid it for the challenge. It is called Northern Lights, and it is a 500-piece Nancy Wernersbach from Ravensburger.
Can you find the ladder?
Boho Interior is a 500-piece puzzle from PieceRelax, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. PieceRelax is a brand created by Pintoo, which is known for their plastic pieces and interchangeable edge/frame pieces. The brand aims to highlight the relaxing aspect of puzzling, and this image certainly does that!
I did this puzzle with my friend Suzanne when she was over recently. She picked it from my smaller piece count puzzles because of the cats in the image. We both enjoyed it. The pieces are pretty small and get harder to click into place the more you get done, but it’s really not too bad. And it’s so cool to be able to pick up the finished puzzle and do whatever you want to it without it coming apart!
I have done one Pintoo puzzle before, but this was my first one from PieceRelax, and I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it that it included a free puzzle magnet. It is so pretty and really added to the experience of ordering from this company.
The Bride Test by Helen Hoang is book two of The Kiss Quotient series.
This is a fun romance with a quirky twist and a few spicy scenes. The author is autistic and drew on her own experience while writing this series in which each book has an autistic main character. I had read the first and third books in the series but missed this one, so I wanted to fill in the gap.
I really enjoyed this story about Khai Diep, who believes that he has no feelings and is incapable of having a relationship. His mother takes the initiative to bring a woman from Vietnam to the United States to be his fiancee, giving her the summer to convince him to marry her. Their relationship has a lot of twists and turns and some miscommunications, some of which are due to the issues brought up by Khai’s autism.
I think this whole series has great autistic representation, along with an entertaining romance.
Rockies Explorer is a 500-piece puzzle from Villager Puzzles, and the artist is Anja Jane. This was my first experience with Villager, which is a woman-owned Canadian brand featuring artwork from Canadian women artists.
The puzzle came in a box with a magnetic closure and a reusable plastic bag. It included a nice size poster as well. The pieces have a lovely matte finish and fit together beautifully, and the art was great. I loved the colors, especially the sky and mountains, and I am looking forward to doing more of their puzzles.
Last September, I completed my first 2000-piece puzzle, which was Novel Avenue from Ravensburger (artist Demelsa Haughton). I loved it so much that I wanted to save it and hang it up on my wall.
For my first attempt, I taped the back with blue painter’s tape and put it in an inexpensive frame that I got off Amazon. The frame turned out to be too flimsy for a puzzle, and I took it down after a while. Next, I got a bunch of Command Strips and used them to attach the puzzle to the wall. I had several across the top and bottom of the puzzle. That was better, but then it started bowing out in the middle, so I took it down and added another row of the strips across the center.
Unfortunately, that didn’t hold up very well. Perhaps it would have been okay if I had done three rows from the beginning, but there’s no way to know and I really wanted to protect my puzzle as well as show it off better. I started looking into framing, and that’s when I found Preserve My Puzzle.
Preserve My Puzzle were so great to work with. They offer either lamination or framing, and I chose framing. Since my puzzle was larger than the sizes priced on their site, I submitted a request for a custom quote. They got back to me very quickly with a quote and even called to follow up and see if I had any questions. It was very simple to turn my quote into an order and get the ball rolling.
Within a couple of days, a puzzle mailing kit arrived at my door. Since my puzzle was so big, they recommended using a standard mailing kit and breaking the puzzle into two halves. That would keep the shipping down, although the shipping on the return trip would be higher due to the size of the framed full puzzle.
The kit included a mailer with a UPS label already affixed, a tri-fold cardboard holder for the puzzle, and puzzle glue sheets to put on the back of the puzzle. I removed the blue painter’s tape I had previously used, split the puzzle into two sections, and put on the glue sheets. Then I packaged the puzzle up in the tri-fold and put it in the mailer so I could take it to the UPS store.
There was only one tiny glitch when I got an automated email a few days later asking if I had sent my puzzle yet. The tracking showed it had already been delivered, so I was concerned and emailed them to check on it. It turned out they did have my puzzle, but because it was a custom order, it didn’t get checked in the same way as a regular order so the automated email system didn’t know they had it. Phew!
The mounted and framed puzzle arrived at my door a couple of days later. It was the most securely packaged item I have ever gotten. There were cardboard corners, shrink wrap over the frame, foam pieces nestled over the edges on all four sides, and bubble wrap covering the entire thing.
The frame had a wire attached to the back so that it could be easily hung on the wall. I had a friend help me measure and hang it up on the wall above my couch in the living room. I am incredibly pleased with the result!
