Supernatural Fiction

With Halloween tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to do a post with a theme that relates to the holiday.  I don't read horror novels (or watch horror movies for that matter) because they're too scary for me!  But I do enjoy not-too-scary supernatural fiction.  So today, I'll share with you some recommendations for books about witches, vampires, and ghosts!

Book Lover's Playlist

For some reason, lately I have been obsessed with coming up with ideas of themed music playlists.  So, I came up with the idea of creating a literary themed playlist for book lovers.  Here are the songs I came up with.  I've linked to the music videos for the songs, where available, if you want to hear the songs.  (Side note:  old music videos are really weird.)

5 Star Review: The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

Kate Morton is one of my favorite authors, as I've mentioned before on the blog.   It's been 3 years since she last published a book, so her latest book, "The Clockmaker's Daughter," was one of my most anticipated books of Fall 2018.  And, I'm happy to report that it did not disappoint, as it's one of her best.

From the Top 10 Archives: Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2007

Continuing my trip down memory lane of favorite books of years past, today we'll re-visit my 10 favorite books from 2007.  As a reminder, that means books I read in 2007, not necessarily books published that year.

I joined Goodreads in 2007, so one of the things that should be interesting as I look back at these lists from 2007 on is that my ratings (and reviews where applicable) on Goodreads will have been made contemporaneously, giving me a better view of what I thought of these books at the time I read them.

Here's my list from 2007, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Summer Guest - Justin Cronin
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
The Girls - Lori Lansen
The Preservationist - David Maine
Evidence of Love - Melissa McConnell
Promise Not to Tell - Jennifer McMahon
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Love Walked In - Marisa de los Santos

Contemporary women's fiction

Since I started this blog, I've been writing periodic posts focusing on some of my favorite books/authors in some of my favorite genres.  A lot of what I read doesn't necessarily fall into a genre, however - or if it does, it's a pretty broad genre which I would refer to as contemporary women's fiction.  Basically, books written by women, generally aimed at women though they can certainly be read by men as well, and set in the present day without other genre elements like thriller, fantasy, etc.

I've already written about my favorite authors in chick lit, which definitely is a subset of contemporary women's fiction.  It's kind of hard to say what the different is between the two, but I'd say chick lit (which for me is certainly not a pejorative) tends to be just a little lighter, fluffier, more focused on romance, and often about younger protagonists.  Some of my favorite writers, who I mentioned in the chick lit post I just linked to, definitely have written more serious books as they have gotten older themselves.  So definitely check out that post as well if you're interested in contemporary women's fiction.  But in addition to the authors mentioned there, here are some of my other favorites:

School Reading

It's been a little while since I posted - it has been a busy few weeks between adjusting to the back to school routine and the Jewish holidays.  And on top of that, I'm the coordinator for the school library volunteers for my son's elementary school, so a flurry of e-mails, organizing, scheduling, and training has been occupying a lot of my free time.  Still related to books, but a little less time for reading and even less for writing about reading!

Speaking of school, I'm interested to hear other people's opinions about reading for school.  One thing that seems to have changed since my own school days is a shift to letting students pick their own books rather than having assigned reading.  In my day, in elementary school we had a textbook for reading, and then in middle school and high school we read many books/plays as a class, as well as (I believe) still having a text book.  

GCBC - Summer Reading Roundup

As I've mentioned a few times previously on this blog, my friend Sarah and I have a book club that consists of just the two of us.  We call it GCBC, short for Grand Central Book Club, since ideally we meet in person to discuss the books, which we usually do over lunch at Grand Central Terminal.  We used to just pick a book to read together only when we planned to meet, but earlier this year we were discussing books we both wanted to read, and since we're both slightly crazy obsessive types, we compiled a list of books we both wanted to read and started aligning our reading so that we were reading more and more books at roughly the same time, as long as both of us either owned the book or could get it from the library!

So, from mid-June to the beginning of the September, we read a whopping 10 books together!  And unfortunately, various factors conspired against us so we were unable to get together for lunch to discuss.  So, we decided to do just a quick summary of our thoughts on each book, both to share with each other and for the edification of readers of this blog as well!