5 Star Review: A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

I've been wondering when I would read my first 5 star book of 2020, and I'm happy to say it has finally happened!  Indeed, my last 5 star review was last August, so it's been a long time.  But don't worry, I've already read nine 4.5 star quality books this year - maybe I've just gotten pickier at awarding that coveted 5 full stars.  Anyway, the book is "A Good Neighborhood" by Therese Anne Fowler, and it was amazing.

Anticipated books of late spring/early summer - May/June 2020

Are you bored after being stuck indoors for the past 6 weeks and looking for something new to read?  The good news is tons of new books are coming out over the next two months!  A few publishers seem to have pushed back some publication dates, but plenty of others are still coming out that should be great reads.  Some of these you've already heard about in my January post about anticipated books of 2020, while some are new additions.

Light fiction, part 3

In this crazy time of coronavirus self-isolation, I'm starting to get requests for light and funny books to read.  So it seemed like the perfect time to bring you a blog post on just that topic.  I have also seen various articles about books that are about life during/post-pandemic, but although I love a good dystopian as much as the next person, who wants to read about that right now?  It's hard enough to tune out from the news and/or ignore your kids long enough to find a moment to read, so something light and funny seems like a much better way to go!

What I Read on My Vacation(s)

It's been a while since I did a post on what I read on vacation.  Last summer we took a busy sightseeing trip to London instead of our usual beach vacation, so there was not much reading done!  And while we took a (not usual for us) December vacation, it was right at the end of the year, so I ended up working on my post on my Top 10 favorite books of 2019 rather than writing up what I read on that vacation.  But now that I just came back from another vacation during President's week, thought it was time to catch everyone up on my vacation reading!

Not a bad view for reading

Finding Time to Read in a Busy World

I get asked a lot about when I read and how I find the time to read.  The honest answer is that pretty much whenever I have a spare minute, I read!  I read while I eat breakfast; if I can I read for a few minutes after I shower before I get dressed; I read while sitting in the car waiting for my kids to come out of school; I read while my kids do homework; I read before bed - the list never ends. My house is kind of a mess, and any non-critical item on my to-do list tends to languish, because, well, I'd rather read!  Obviously it helps that I'm currently a stay at home mom with older kids, but even when I was a lawyer working full time, or a part-time working mom with little kids, I still always made the time to read when I could because, well, I love to read!  And of course it helps that I'm a pretty fast reader.  But nonetheless, if you're looking to read more, I definitely have some suggestions to help you out!

Anticipated books of 2020

As if I don't already have enough books to read, I always love to look ahead and see what books are coming out that I want to read.  Here are the books I'm most looking forward to set to be published in 2020, at least that I've seen announced so far, organized by currently scheduled publication date.  And there are SO many books to look forward to this year!  Seriously, how am I ever supposed to make any headway on all the already-published books I want to read when people keep writing new ones? 😉  Though I did a pretty good job on getting throgh my list of anticipated books of 2019 - I listed 26 books if I've counted correctly, and read all but one of them!

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2019

I'm very excited to share with you my ten favorite books that I read in 2019!  I read an absolutely insane amount of books in 2019, totally blowing away the record amount of books I read in 2018, so this list really is high quality - and was extremely hard to narrow down!  Just to put things in perspective, while I had only three books over the course of the year that I rated as 5 stars, there were a whopping 19 books which I gave a 4.5 star rating.  So just to narrow that down to 10 books, I had to leave a lot of favorites on the cutting room floor - and that doesn't even begin to cover all the 4 star books I read this year which I would highly recommend as well!

For anyone who isn't already familiar with my lists, I've been creating top 10 lists of books at year's end all the way back to 1999, long before I had a blog, and sharing them with my friends.  These are books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year, though this year I think all but one of the books was in fact published in 2019.

Here's my list for 2019, in alphabetical order by author's last name.

The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center
One Night at the Lake - Bethany Chase
The Last Book Party - Karen Dukess
Evvie Drake Starts Over - Linda Holmes
Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Grammarians - Cathleen Schine
The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradal
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman

Read on for more about these books!