An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “J”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
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Looking Ahead to 2021
Since I posted my 2020 Year in Review post yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and follow up with the preview post for next year — again, taking the relevant “Festive Tasks” items as my cues. So, without further ado: 24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Hanukkah, Task 1: Time to […]
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The New “Pride and Prejudice” Edition, and Other Lockdown Book Haul Entries
24 Festive Tasks: Door 18 – Thanksgiving, Task 1: Be thankful for yourself and treat yourself to a new book – post a picture of it. (This can be a library book.) Although being in temporary lockdown for the second time this year doesn’t exactly prove conducive to my reading (nor did most of […]
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Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (Kenneth Branagh audio)
24 Festive Tasks: Door 17 – Veterans’ / Armistice Day, Book: Read a book with active military or veteran characters, about or set during WWI or WWII, or with poppies on the cover. In honor of Sean Connery, who played Colonel Arbuthnot in the 1974 all-star adaptation of this book, I decided to revisit […]
Read MoreThe Halloween Creatures Book Tag
Rules: Answer all prompts. Answer honestly. Tag 1-13 people. Link back to this post. ( For me it was SnoopyDoo!) Remember to credit the creator. (Anthony @ Keep Reading Forward)< Have fun! Witch A Magical Character or Book Terry Pratchett’s witches, particularly Granny Weatherwax. And DEATH (preferably in his Hogfather incarnation). No contest. […]
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Books Shipped Long Distance
24 Festive Tasks: Door 16 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 4: The historic (3d century AD) St. Lucia was Italian; yet, like those of many other saints (including, e.g., St. Andrew and St. Nicholas), the most important celebrations of her holiday don’t occur in her place of origin but somewhere else in the world. List […]
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An “Out of My Reach” Book Wishlist to St. Nick
24 Festive Tasks: Door 14 – St. Nicholas’ Day / Sinterklaas, Task 1: Write a book wish list to St. Nick / Santa Claus for books that you’ve been eyeing but can’t justify the expense of purchasing. (E.g., art books? Collector’s editions? Boxed sets?) Dear Saint Nick, it would be really nice if one […]
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Agatha Christie: Star Over Bethlehem
24 Festive Tasks: Door 24 – Epiphany, Book: Read a book featuring three main characters, about traveling on a journey to a faraway place, a book that’s part of a trilogy, with a star on the cover, with the word “twelve” or “night” in the title, or concerning kings or spices. Well, most of […]
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2019: The Year’s Greatest Book Catches from my TBR
24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – St. Andrew’s Day, Task 3: St. Andrew was a fisherman by trade: Which book(s) from your TBR that you read this year turned out to be the year’s greatest “catch”? Of my favorite reads of 2019, surprisingly few already were on my TBR at the beginning of the year, […]
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Kofi Annan: Interventions: A Life in War and Peace
Mr. Annan was far and away the most influential and important Secretary General of the United Nations in its more recent history; his memoirs set forth with great passion and understanding how the experience of a lifetime, from growing up in post-WWII Ghana all the way to serving as Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, […]
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Redeeming Renée Ahdieh’s “The Wrath and the Dawn”
24 Festive Tasks: Door 7 – International Day for Tolerance, Task 1: Find a redeeming quality in a book you read this year and didn’t like. I’ve never understood the rave reviews that this book is getting, but then, I’m not its target audience; and I suppose if you read it as a straight-up […]
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So I had to go to the bookstore today …
… because I needed a “design your own” blank-page calendar to create a birthday present for my mom, and one of the large local bookstores happens to be my go-to place to get such a thing. (I create a calendar as a BD present for my mom every year.) Obviously, this being a bookstore, it […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/03 (Day 3): Favorite Ghostly Tales?
As I said in my first pre-party post, I’m not much of a horror reader, and the ghost stories I like almost all either feature a ghost who is the author’s messenger for some larger point, or they’re chiefly characters who have had such an impact on another character’s life, or on […]
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Renée Ahdieh: The Wrath and the Dawn
DNF @ 146 out of 432 pages …. and I’m out. This is insufferable. Granted, I’m not the target audience to begin with. But it’s not even the concept of “1001 Nights as a YA love story” that is putting me off the most, even though that does have at least something to do with […]
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Crowdsourced: More Books with a Difference — Fiction
You asked, Moonlight Reader? To quote from one of my additional entries below: “As you wish …” Without any further ado: Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies When Lillelara added A Place of Greater Safety to her list, I could have kicked myself — because Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books were definitely among […]
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My Personal Literary Canon, Part 2: “Veteran” Readership
24 Festive Tasks, Door 5, Task 3: Tell us: What author’s books would you consider yourself a veteran of (i.e., by author have you read particularly many books – or maybe even all of them)? The authors by whom I’ve read the most books don’t coincide exactly, but substantially with those that I’d also […]
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16 Tasks of the Festive Season: Square 14 – Dies Natalis Solis Invicti
Tasks for Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Find the sunniest spot in your home, that’s warm and comfy and read your book. –OR– Take a picture of your garden, or a local garden/green space in the sun (even if the ground is under snow). If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, take a picture of your local […]
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Chris Bohjalian: The Sandcastle Girls
Not an entirely bad book, but boy, this could have been so much more. Ostensibly, it deals with the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey in the middle of WWI. What we really get is — at least chiefly — the love story of an American volunteer nurse trainee who has accompanied her father on a […]
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Iliya Troyanov: The Collector of Worlds
The Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season — Bonus Entry Task the Fifth: The Kwanzaa: – Read a book written by an African-American author or set in an African country. I blacked out my card on Dec. 19 using the “activity” entry for the Kwanzaa square, but since thereafter I did read a book set […]
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Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (Narrated by David Suchet)
The Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season — Task the Eleventh: The Polar Express: – Read a book that involves train travel (such as Murder on the Orient Express). Well, as it happened I did pick Murder on the Orient Express for this square. Not that I’m not intimately familiar with the story as […]
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