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The Blue Castle – L.M. Montgomery
I’ve yet to read Anne of Green Gables – I just wasn’t interested; I preferred re-reading Little Women and Jane Eyre. After reading Lucy Maude Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, though, I might just take a look at Anne. The Blue Castle: Valancy Stirling is a young woman in 1920’s Canada who lives firmly under her […]
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Bookish Kids: Free Virtual Storytime for Children
Here’s another resource for you and your kids in the absence of story hour at your local library – stories are read by celebrities. You can choose your video platform (I chose YouTube). If you enjoy it, share it with your friends! https://www.storylineonline.net/ Start with The Rainbow Fish, which is just over six minutes long […]
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Free Book Monday March 16, 2020 – two for one!
Our Mr. Wrenn, the Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man by Sinclair Lewis This ebook is free on Amazon (see link). Full disclosure; I have not read this. However, I have read some of Lewis’ better-known works, and I can tell you his prose style is straightforward and engaging. His characters ring true for their […]
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The library is always open!
Many of us are at home right now, and most likely we aren’t going anywhere. We probably aren’t going to the library, both because we are practicing social distancing and because THE LIBRARIES ARE CLOSED. What is happening? (OK, I’m only a little serious here. Not all libraries are closed – but some are, and […]
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The Genevieve Driscoll Reading List
My grandmother, Genevieve O’Connor Driscoll, was a reader’s reader. As the end of her life drew closer, working around significant vision loss due to macular degeneration, she read with laser focus for as long as she could. Genevieve was an eclectic reader, enthusiastic discusser of books – both with readers and with the authors of […]
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A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
“It was a dark and stormy night.” I have an affinity for nearly all sub-genres of midcentury fiction, but my favorite author for that time period is Madeleine L’Engle – and my favorite L’Engle book is A Wrinkle in Time. This post is as much a love letter to the author and her characters, as […]
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Everything written or spoken by David Sedaris
This man is one of a very few authors whose books I will purchase without batting an eye. He is great to read in print, and I will always buy the print versions of his books – but his self-narrated audio books are priceless. I first listened to Sedaris when, as a bookseller, I got […]
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The Book or the Movie?
This is a trick question. For me it’s always the book. However, I did recently see the newly-released movie Little Women, and it was much better than I expected. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was the only person in the theater at Sperry’s Moviehouse in Holland, MI (https://www.sperrysmoviehouse.com/browsing/), […]
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Window on the Bay – Debbie Macomber
Format: Hardcover, from my lovely local library Publisher: Ballantine Books, July 2019 Debbie Macomber is the queen of traditional women’s fiction. She writes clean romance novels – a lot of them. This story is no exception to her usual formula, and the ending is happy (no spoiler there; all of her books have happy endings). […]
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The Institute – Stephen King
Author Stephen King Narrator Santino Fontana Format: Audio Source: My lovely local library Disclaimer: I am a fan of King’s first novels, and this review is shaped by my high regard for those first books. It’s impossible not to compare them. I listened to the audio version of this book, which was highly marketed in […]
Bookish in the Mitten 