Tag: book recommendations

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What I’m Reading – March 2025

What I’m Reading Now

I am currently reading The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick. This was published in 2016 and is part of my 25 in 2025 challenge to read some of the backlist books on my TBR. It was also her debut novel. I just started it but I like it so far.

What I Recently Finished

Fiction

  • Lawyers and Lattes: Happily Ever After in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi – I found this author during a stuff your Kindle day a year or so ago and liked the free book enough to want to get this one. This book was entertaining enough that I have added book three to my TBR.
  • The London Flat: Second Chances by Juliet Gauvin – I had enjoyed the first book in this series, which I got during a stuff your Kindle day a while back, but this one fell flat for me. I didn’t find the plot believable.
  • Hope in a Jar by Beth Harbison – Fun read! The action flips between the present day and the characters’ time in junior high and high school. I actually liked the chapters from the past better than the present; the author does a good job writing the younger characters. The present-day plot felt a bit childish to me, like the characters hadn’t really grown up since high school, which perhaps was the point.
  • What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg – I didn’t love it, even though Elizabeth Berg is one of my favorite writers. It started out good, but I just lost interest partway through.
  • Bonded in Death by J.D. Robb – I have been a longtime fan of the In Death series, and this book delivered on all fronts. I loved it!
  • Crime Scene by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman – I am a big fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series, so I had high hopes for this collaboration with his son Jesse. I thought it was alright, but it didn’t pull me in like the Delaware books do. I couldn’t really relate to the main character, or any of the characters, very much, and I didn’t find the storyline very compelling.
  • The Banned Books Club by Brenda Novak – I am still mulling over this one and plan to write a review soon. I gave it three stars for now.
  • Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman – I usually love the books in the Alex Delaware series, but this one didn’t hold my interest very well. The main draw of the series is that Delaware is a psychologist, and the crimes usually involve some psychological twists and turns. This one felt like more straightforward police work to me.

Nonfiction

  • The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby – This book was so intense. I am still processing it and plan to write a full review soon.

What I Added to my TBR

  • Not Quite by the Book by Julie Hatcher – my Amazon First Reads pick for February
  • The Fall Risk by Abby Jimenez – bonus short story from Amazon First Reads
  • A Good Indian Girl by Mansi Shah – a recent release from this author I discovered last year
  • More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa – a sequel that I want to read
  • Feeling the Fireworks: Starting Over in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi – #3 in the South West series
  • Twisted by Jonathan Kellerman – #2 in the Petra Connor series, I have #1 on my 25 in 2025 list

TBR Stats

  • I currently have 152 books on my TBR
  • Of those, 20 are nonfiction and 132 are fiction
  • I have finished 6 of my 25 in 2025 challenge

If you’re on Goodreads, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m always looking for new recommendations!

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The Taste of Ginger

I have read a few reviews of The Taste of Ginger, and they vary wildly in their response to the book.  I am on the positive side of the question, giving this debut novel by Mansi Shah 5 stars.

What I most appreciated about this book was following Preeti on her journey to understand more about herself and where she came from so that she can figure out who she wants to be. She is a first-generation immigrant to America from India, having been brought over by her parents as a child.

When the story begins, she is a thirty-year old lawyer just out of a failed relationship with a white American man.  She has a troubled relationship with her parents, especially her mother, but then a family emergency calls her to India and forces her to examine her beliefs and feelings about her family and the different cultures they have lived in.

As she sits on the plane taking her to India and thinks back over her life in America, she realizes, “Fitting in meant letting go of who I was and becoming someone new.” I can relate to that so much as an autistic woman.  I am always watching the behaviors and customs of those around me so that I can attempt to fit into different environments.

About halfway through, after Preeti learns something she didn’t know about her mother, we hear the sentence that contains the title of the book.  Her auntie tells her, “A monkey does not know the taste of ginger,” which is explained to mean, “you cannot appreciate that which you do not know.” She goes on to say, “One thing is certain; you don’t understand her life, and she doesn’t understand yours. Until you both start trying the ginger, you never will.”

I won’t say more about what happens other than to say this a turning point for Preeti. I can attest that, in my own life, gaining an understanding of my mother made a big difference in my relationship with her and in how I felt about myself as a person.

As you can tell, this was a very personal book for me. I focused here on Preeti’s relationship with her mother, but there are several other significant topics covered in this book, and I really enjoyed many of the characters as well as the detailed descriptions of places and events.  Highly recommend!

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The Silo Series

I can still remember the incredible feeling of reading the first story from Wool.  Howey is masterful at unfolding the details in a way that keeps you hanging on every word.  

This is what I posted on Goodreads after reading Wool back in December 2016:

Wow, wow, wow! This blew me away! I read good things about the first story and downloaded it on my new Kindle. Once I read it, I couldn’t get the whole collection fast enough, and I am so glad I did!!

If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, you will love this set of stories. Each one is as good as the one before it and will keep you turning the pages as fast as you can to see what happens next.

Absolute must read, in my opinion!!

There are three books in the Silo series – Wool, Shift, and Dust.  Both Wool and Shift were originally released as short stories/novellas and were later gathered into books.  There is also a thriving fanfiction community writing in the Silo world.

More recently, Silo has been made into a streaming series on Apple TV.  There are currently two seasons out and two more planned.  I have watched the first season and thought they did a really good job of adapting it to the screen, although I still recommend reading the books first if you can.

Have you read or watched any of the Silo series?

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What I’m Reading – February 2025

What I’m Reading Now

Right now, I am reading The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby. I am only a couple of chapters in and am already finding it intense.

What I Recently Finished

Fiction

  • The Seaside Sisters by Pamela Kelley – Another delightful read from this author. I enjoy her books a lot and only wish they were longer. 4 stars
  • The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society by Darien Gee – Heartwarming story but sure has a lot of characters to keep track of. 3 stars
  • The Hygge Holiday by Rosie Blake – My first from her but won’t be my last! 4 stars. Full review here.
  • Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo – I have mixed feelings about this book. I appreciated the mystical aspect of the women having different gifts and the anthropological approach being applied to a family history, but I found it hard to keep everyone straight in my head. I also wasn’t a fan of the many mentions of bodily functions. I think it’s just a case of it not being the best fit for me. 3 stars
  • The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah – 5 stars. Full review coming soon.
  • Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – 4 stars. Full review coming soon.
  • Winter Stroll, Winter Storms, and Winter Solstice by Elin Hilderbrand – I read the first book in this series several years ago and decided to read the rest this month. Pretty good, 3 stars.

Nonfiction

  • Followers Under 40: The journey away from church for Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha by Rachel Gilmore and Kris Sledge – 5 stars. Full review coming soon.

What I Added to my TBR

I was shocked to realize when I looked at my Goodreads that I added over 40 books to my TBR last month! Most were fiction, but I did add one memoir and one other nonfiction book as well.

TBR Stats

  • I currently have 156 books on my TBR.
  • Of those, 20 are nonfiction and 136 are fiction.
  • I have not finished any of my 25 in 2025 challenge yet.

If you’re on Goodreads, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m always looking for new recommendations!

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8 “How To” Books

No, these aren’t recommendations for books on fixing your toilet or creating your own website. Check out these “how to” novels for your next great read.

  • How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O’Neal
  • How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
  • How to Get a (Love) Life by Rosie Blake
  • How to Hide in Plain Sight by Emma Noyes
  • How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
  • How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
  • How to Stuff Up Christmas by Rosie Blake
  • How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

Have you read any of these? If not, which one looks the most interesting?

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Ranking Jane Austen

This may be a controversial post, but this is how I would rank Jane Austen’s novels.

  1. Persuasion – While Pride and Prejudice is many readers’ favorite book and I do love it, I love Persuasion even more. Something about Anne Elliot’s relatable character and her second-chance romance with Frederick Wentworth just resonates with my soul.
  2. Pride and Prejudice – There is so much to love about this book. It is just a wonderful story all around; it is witty and timeless and has such amazing characters. I mean, who wouldn’t love Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy?
  3. Sense and Sensibility – I love the juxtaposition of Elinor and Marianne’s personalities, as well as the ups and downs of their romantic lives.
  4. Emma – I don’t relate as well to Emma as to the main characters in the top three books, but I do appreciate this novel and Emma’s journey to becoming more self-aware and grown-up.
  5. Mansfield Park – I don’t have any specific reasons for putting this in fifth place.  It just didn’t draw me in and make me care about the characters very much.
  6. Northanger Abbey – Perhaps I need to re-read this one, as I don’t remember much about it other than I didn’t enjoy it.

Do you agree or would you rank them differently?

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The Hygge Holiday

I love the concept of hygge, which is a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture). I was first introduced to it by a creator I used to follow on YouTube and loved the idea.  I incorporate touches of it into my life wherever I can.

In The Hygge Holiday by Rosie Blake, we meet Clara, a young Danish woman who has just arrived in the small village of Yulethorpe. She is intrigued by the town and arranges to house and pet sit for Louisa, who has decided to close her toy shop and jaunt off to warmer climes. As Clara wields her hygge magic on Louisa’s flat and shop, she slowly becomes a part of the local community. 

Not everyone is happy she is there, however.  Louisa’s son Joe is suspicious of her motives and starts coming down from the big city to check on her.  And Roz, a local who is contemptuous of both Louisa and Clara, makes her objections known very loudly.

I found this book charming.  I liked the dual POV with Clara and Joe, which is interspersed with the emails Louisa is sending to Gavin, the owner of the local pub.  I also appreciated how relatable all of the characters were (well, maybe except for Roz, who is completely unlikable). There is some humor (can you say unfiltered parrot), some romance, and a lot of the promised hygge.

This is the first novel I have read by Rosie Blake, but it certainly won’t be the last!

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The Reading List

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams is a debut novel that ticks a lot of boxes for me, most especially that it centers around the power of books to affect our lives. The two main characters are the Widower Mukesh and Aleisha Thomas.  Aleisha is a teenager working a summer job in the local library when Mukesh comes in to try to find something to read.  Neither of them is much of a reader at the start of the book, but then Aleisha finds a list of book recommendations and decides to start reading them and also to suggest the first book on the list to Mukesh.

As both of them embark on a reading journey, they also develop an improbable friendship which slowly deepens as time progresses.  Each of them has challenges in their families, as Mukesh navigates life after the death of his wife and Aleisha juggles her need to become her own individual with the needs of her mother and brother.  The lessons they learn from the books on the list help them find ways to handle their personal struggles and develop in new ways.

I loved how Adams weaves the books they are reading around the events happening in their lives in a compelling way. This story also shows us the power of community and how that can happen in a place like the library.

Highly recommended!

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Amazon First Reads – January 2025

This month, Amazon Prime members are able to pick two free books from a selection of ten from a variety of genres.

I picked these two:

There’s Something About Mira by Sonali Dev – a novel about Mira Salvi, whose perfect life is interrupted in an exciting way when she finds a lost ring and goes on an adventure to try to find the owner.

The Art of Starting Over by Heidi McLaughlin – a later in life romance between Devorah Campbell, whose marriage fell apart when her husband cheated on her, and Hayden McKenna, who lost his wife a year ago.

I’m not sure when I’ll get to them because I have so many books ahead of them on my TBR, but they both sound promising.

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Top 10 Books of 2024

2024 was a great year for reading for me.  I set a goal of 52 books and blew past it, finishing at a total of 99 books. Also, in the last few years I have not read much nonfiction, but in 2024 I finished 13, up from 4 the previous year. 

Without further ado, here are my top 10 reads from 2024:

  • No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
  • The Sister Effect by Susan Mallery
  • Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle
  • The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
  • Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookstore by Bo-Reum Hwang
  • Open House by Elizabeth Berg
  • The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
  • The Little Italian Hotel by Phaedra Patrick
  • Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
  • The Book Swap by Tessa Bickers

What were your favorites this year?