5 Star Review - Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

I'm excited to share with you the latest 5 star book I read - "Things You Save in a Fire" by Katherine Center.  It's the best contemporary women's novel I've read in quite a while, hitting that sweet spot I love so much of a book that is written in a relatively light fashion but with deep emotions.

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2015

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my old top 10 favorite book lists, starting with 1999 when I first started compiling a list each year and working my way up towards the present.   If you don't remember the details, these are lists I made contemporaneously at the end of the respective years, made up of books I read in that particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  I started out sharing these lists with just a small group of people, and over the years started sharing with more and more people, and through more and more different means, including this blog!  One of my first posts on the blog was my top 10 books of 2017, so after today's post that means I have just one more to go!  (Unless I keep this blog going for so many more years that enough time goes by that I want to look back on 2017 and after, ha ha.)

Here's my list from 2015, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Visitors - Sally Beauman
The One That Got Away - Bethany Chase
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Last Camellia - Sarah Jio
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
The Lake House - Kate Morton
The Children's Crusade - Ann Packer
The Midnight Rose - Lucinda Riley
Who Do You Love? - Jennifer Weiner
Walking on Trampolines - Frances Whiting

For more random details about these books, keep reading!

Books About Animals

With "The Art of Racing in the Rain" movie adaptation coming out this week, I was thinking about books either told from the perspective of, or primarily about, animals.  Personally, I think these work much better as books than movies, especially if told from the perspective of an animal - a voice-over meant to represent a movie animal can just be cheesy, whereas reading a scene told from an animal's perspective is totally different.  So, color me skeptical of the movie, but here are some books you should check out if this genre is of interest to you.  I'm going to stick with books that are realistic, rather than more fantastical in nature.

From the Top 10 Archives- Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2014

Ever since I started this blog, I've been occasionally (and chronologically) looking back at my old top 10 favorite book lists, starting with 1999 when I first started compiling my lists and working my way up towards the present.   If you don't remember the details, these are lists I made contemporaneously at the end of the respective years, made up of books I read in that particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  I started out sharing these lists with just a small group of people, and over the years started sharing with more and more people, and through more and more different means, including this blog!

Here's my list from 2014, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Smart One - Jennifer Close
The Secret Place - Tana French
Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers - Tom Rachman
Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Counting by 7s - Holly Goldberg Sloan
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
The Martian - Andy Weir
The Interestings - Meg Wolitzer
The Storied Life of AJ Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin


For more random details about these books, keep reading!

Q&A with Karen Dukess, author of "The Last Book Party"

Yesterday was the publication day for "The Last Book Party," one of my favorite reads of the year so far since I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy.  Plus, is that a gorgeous cover for a summer book or what?

If you missed my review of this book in my post on anticipated books of July and August, I'll repeat it for you here.  The protagonist of this novel is a young woman named Eve who works in publishing and then becomes the assistant to a semi-famous writer, and it's set during one summer in 1987 in Manhattan and Cape Cod. The characters all felt like such real people, and there is a strong sense of time and place while at the same time the book feels very timeless, like the story could happen today too. There's also a lot of discussion of writing, reading, and books, which gives the book a pleasantly intellectual feel without being pretentious or heavy. So it's light enough to be a perfect summer book, while still just so smart. If you're a fan of smart insightful authors like Curtis Sittenfeld and Meg Wolitzer, I think you would like this too. 

And don't just take my word for it - it's also an Amazon Best Book of July, an Indie Next Pick and on O Magazine's Best Beach Read list for 2019, among others. 

And, I'm super-excited to bring you a Q&A with the author - no spoilers, so you can safely read this interview even if you haven't read the book yet.

Anticipated books of summer 2019 part 2 - July and August

There are so many great books coming out this summer that I had to split my anticipated books of summer into two separate posts.  If you missed it, I already covered  the books I was excited about which were coming out in May and June, so today I'll tell you about books coming out in July and August.  (And I'm happy to say that since I wrote that first post, I've read 6 of the 12 books I listed there - not too shabby!)  So if your summer reading list isn't already long enough, here are some more books for your consideration!

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2013

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my old top 10 lists from years past and seeing how I feel about them today and other random things about them - and I'm getting close to catching up!  If you don't remember the details, I've kept lists each year of my ten favorite books all the way back to 1999.  In the early days I only shared the list with a small group, but over the years the distribution list got larger, plus I started sharing first on Facebook and then on this blog.  The lists comprise books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year.

Here's my list from 2013, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Bitterblue - Kristen Cashore
Wonder - R.J. Palacio
Night Film - Marisha Pessl
Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell
The Song Remains the Same - Allison Winn Scotch
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
The Lotus Eaters - Tatjana Soli
The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker
The 5th Wave - Rick Yancey

For more about these books, read on!