Stacked Shelves

Almost done with September ... just in time for the end of October. First, a note on a book that I did not finish: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda. I've said it many times, but I will repeat myself just for the heck of it. I like police procedurals. That's my mystery genre of choice. I read cozies ever now and then. I also read literary mysteries. I don't enjoy thrillers or mysteries solved by people who aren't detectives (there are a few exceptions). However, I read a lot of book reviews and sometimes getting a little caught up in the hype. All the Missing Girls sounded intriguing. I especially loved the part that most of the book is told backward (so, say chapter 2 is about September 15, chapter 3 is about September 14). But I couldn't get past the idea that this book was about rural white woman making really bad choices and doing really stupid things. It's a genre all to its own, I find. I'm not even curious about what happened. On to better bo...

Ghost by Jason Reynolds (Juvenile, Fiction) There is a subset of children’s books referred to as high-low readers -- high for high interest and low for low reading level. These books used to bug me a great deal. The first ones I encountered were trashy novels that all had black or Hispanic protagonists. I was angry not only at the implicit racism but at the poor writing. Ghost , the first in a planned four-book series about a middle-grade track team, was described to me as a high-low reader, so I was expecting bad things. Happily, it’s a great book and I’d gladly recommend it. Castle Crenshaw, aka Ghost, has been running ever since his father threatened him and his mom with a gun. He knew he was fast, but didn’t know he could use that speed to compete on a local track team.   Ghost is an appealing character with a lot of heart and a lot to learn. Cliché? Maybe. And that’s probably why I gave the book three stars, rather than four.   Still, I think many middle graders ...

The League of Beastly Dreadfuls by Holly Grant (Juvenile, Fiction) This is the first book in a planned series and I remember very little about it – not a good sign. A young girl is kidnapped because of special abilities she might have and there is some shape changing involved. I think. The special abilities part isn’t really clear yet. It’s not a scary story in any way, even with the kidnapping, and, if I remember correctly, there’s lots of humor. But it’s not a very good story. I’m always hopeful that I will find a new fantasy series that I love; this one wasn’t it. I gave it three stars because I did like the two main children characters, but I won’t read the rest of the series. The Dogs of Littlefield by Suzanne Berne (Adult, Fiction) Someone is killing the dogs in a quaint Massachusetts town where everybody knows your name and nearly everyone has a dog. This novel is billed as a “comedy of manners,” so one might imagine that it’s a tale Jane Austen would write if s...

I've decided to reinvent this blog once again by simply doing what I intended to do in the first place -- write about the books I read. So, here goes nothing... Love and Friendship by Jane Austen (Adult, Fiction) I didn’t know about the Jane Austen novella “Love and Friendship” until the release of the movie based on it earlier this year. The version I read was packaged with many other Austen writings, all considered “juvenilia,” i.e. things she wrote when she was young.   I read more than a few of the selections and the main piece. They lacked some polish, but demonstrated her growing wit. You can recognize character sketches that will be used later in her more famous novels. I really wouldn’t recommend this to anyone but the most ardent Austen fan. I thought I was one, but I felt myself drifting too often when reading some parts of the book (three collections of juvenilia in one binding). Still, I gave it four stars on GoodReads because the stars because four stars mea...