Taking back their nights
I'm behind in my movie watching so I only recently watched the adaptation of this excellent novel. And while the movie was beautifully done, it made me realize just how much the novel had impacted me.
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Posts by Jane J
I'm behind in my movie watching so I only recently watched the adaptation of this excellent novel. And while the movie was beautifully done, it made me realize just how much the novel had impacted me.
I told you a bit ago about how I came to read the wildly popular Fourth Wing which had been on my radar for months. Not on my radar and coming in as a total surprise for me is a book I think is a great "next read" suggestion for fans of Fourth Wing, To Shape a Dragon's Breath. I was sorting through newly published books when I came across this novel. Like FW it has a young woman entering an academy to learn how to be a dragon rider.
Majella O'Neill lives in the small town Aghybogey in Northern Ireland that has been torn apart by The Troubles that have only recently "ended". To say that the Troubles have ended is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly the violent attacks between Catholics and Protestants have stopped for the most part, but the lingering divide between the factions continues. As the townsfolk go about their lives in this recovery period Majella observes it all from her job in a chip shop (the Catholic one, naturally).
Stuart Turton once again blends genres in his latest novel with amazing results. The blend here is a near-future, post-apocalyptic setting with a murder mystery.
I have mentioned in the past how I enjoy the grumpy/sunshine trope in romances (or really any genre), so how could I resist a book titled When Grumpy Met Sunshine? It's all right there in the title. Add to that the hero is an ornery ex-footballer (soccer player on our side of the pond) who bears more than a bit of a resemblance to Roy on Ted Lasso (looks and personality) and the heroine is a sunny, but competent, ghostwriter? I'm in. And I'm so glad I was. This is a heartwarming read with likable protagonists in a funny, sometimes bittersweet, story.
Makiia Lucier wowed me a few years ago with a book I've re-read many times. Her Year of the Reaper was set in a fully realized fantasy world and featured a flawed, but honorable, protagonist facing impossible choices with much grace and compassion. Since reading it, I've been eagerly waiting for Lucier's next. And here it is.
True crime books, tv shows, and podcasts are everywhere, but every now and then a crime, or series of connected crimes, breaks out of one format to overtake them all. The tale of the Murdaugh family in a rural part of South Carolina is one of those. From the first stirrings about the boat crash that killed a pretty young teenager, to the deaths of a mother and her son, to the father claiming to have survived an assassination attempt and then the revelation that there were two deaths that preceded all of this? This was a crime story that had everything and then some.
If the current state of politics in the world is stressing you out, then have I got the book for you. Not only is the politician in this book hard-working and honorable (though certainly not perfect), but there is also deep discussion of cakes and pies and pastries and pizza and tacos! I'm getting hungry just writing about it.
Sylvie Cathrall's debut is an epistolary novel - a novelistic style that sometimes works for me and sometimes does not. Here it mostly does. I was immediately drawn in by the dreamy, carefully anxious letter that E. is writing to Scholar Henerey Clel. E. (you'll learn her full name later) lives alone in an underwater abode called The Deep House. She writes to Henerey and her sister Sophy and an array of others to stay in contact with the world. This world is one that is about 99% covered in water and most abodes are on floating islands.
When Billie James inherits a little money, her grandmother's cabin and her dog in Greendale, Mississippi, she decides on a visit in hopes of re-connecting with her past. She has few memories of the rundown (even more so now) Mississippi Delta town and its inhabitants, but has always been curious about the events of her last visit when she was four years old. It was then that her father died in a drunken accident. Or so she was told.