Tag: book lists

What I Added to To Read in August

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

I almost forgot I was going to continue doing this until I saw Liz’s August post on Adventures in reading, running, and working from home. 

So, here we are. The books I added in August, in order from most recent to least. My thanks to the bloggers who have told me about these books (I think!).

Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson

I’ve always been fascinated by the Mitfords, wondering how they could have ended up such diametrical opposites after having such a close childhood, it seems. I have read a couple of biographies only to discover that the authors were biased in some way. (I didn’t know the Guinesses were relatives until I was well into the bio written by two of them.) So, when I saw a brief write-up of this one by Kate on Books are My Favourite and Best, I added it to my list.

In the Shadows by Chris MacDonald

FictionFan has been talking up Chris MacDonald lately, so why wouldn’t I listen? Anyway, it sounds right up my alley.

Off the Beaten Path by Eloise Corvo

I already have no idea where I heard of this book or if I just was attracted by the cover. If you know that I read your blog and you recently reviewed this book or another in this series (because I have an idea that I actually read about the second book in the series, so I went back for the first book), let me know. Anyway, I like the cover, and the setting on Lake Michigan might have attracted me, because I’m originally from Michigan.

Little Spark by Jess Kidd

My knee-jerk reaction when I hear there’s a new book by Jess Kidd is to put it on my list. I am fairly sure I read about this book in a review by Helen of She Reads Novels.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

I have read about Model Home in several places lately, but I believe I put it on my list after reading a review in the New York Times. I thought it may have been on their list of the 50 best thrillers in the 21st century, but it turned out it wasn’t. I think I read about it elsewhere as well. Its description as “a new kind of haunted-house novel” got me right away. I love haunting stories.

Who Among Us? by Mario Benedetti

I didn’t remember where I heard about Who Among Us?, but when I googled it, FictionFan‘s blog came up immediately, so I’m guessing it was from her. And this is a classic situation for me where I already don’t remember anything about the book. But that’s okay. I rarely try to remind myself what a book is about before I start it. I like to have an open mind.

An Ocean and a Day by Hannah Richell

Brona’s review on This Reading Life showed up as soon as I googled this book, since I couldn’t remember where I heard about it. I knew that one of my Australian friends reads a lot of books about grief. That is not my thing, but the memoir sounded interesting.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

This is really silly, but I bought a Strout book recently thinking it was her newest one, and it was one I had missed. I didn’t realize that until I started reading it. Since I always buy her books, ever since Olive Kitteridge, I immediately put this one on my To Do list to make sure I didn’t forget it. And, of course, lots of people have been reviewing it.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

And for my final addition for this month, I see that I’m back to Kate on Books are My Favourite and Best for her review of Apple Tree Yard. I have a lot of new thrillers on the list, I see, and this is one of them.

So, what new books have you discovered lately? New to you, I mean.

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

Lucky me, I pulled Les Misérables by Victor Hugo in my latest Classics Club Spin! It’s 1400+ pages long, going slowly, so I have decided to read another book in between each book of Les Miz (unless I get too close to the library due date). So far, I have finished the first book, “Fantine,” and just returned to the novel after taking my first break, so I am in the book called “Cosette.” I have to be finished for the spin in early October, but this is a library check-out, and I was on a (short) waiting list, so I hope to finish it before it is due back.

What I just finished reading

Right now, I am reading for several events in October and November, and the next one after the Classics Club Spin is the 1949 Club. In the first break from reading Les Misérables, I read my third book for this club, The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. It was originally published in Swedish and is the first book of a quartet of novels about the first emigrants to the U. S. from a specific parish in Sweden. The English translation didn’t come out until 1951, but the Swedish version was published in 1949, so I think it qualifies for the club. Material on the book says that Moberg was considered one of the greatest 20th-century Swedish writers.

What I will read next

I have one more book to read for the 1949 Club, so in my next break from Les Miz, I will probably read The Parasites by Daphne Du Maurier, one of the few Du Maurier novels I don’t think I’ve read (or if I did, it was so long ago I don’t remember). The only thing I know about it is that it is about a theater family, and Du Maurier had close connections to the theater through her father, who was an actor, and through the family’s friendship with J. M. Barrie.

This isn’t certain, though, because I also picked up a set of books by Thomas Costain about the Plantagenets, and the first one, The Conquering Family, was published in 1949, so that’s also a possibility. This is a nonfiction series, though, and it typically takes me longer to read nonfiction, so I may not have time to read it as yet. I understand that George R. R. Martin used these books as a source for his Game of Thrones series.

What about you? What have you been reading lately?

Classics Club Spin #45

~ whatmeread ~ 17 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin! Here’s how it works. Before this Sunday, August 16, publish a numbered list of 20 books you’ve chosen from your Classics Club list. On Sunday, a number will be chosen that will determine your next Classics Club read. Read that book before October 4.

I have only five books on my list left to read, so this numbered list will be very repetitive:. I saw someone combining their current list with their next list to give more choice, but I decided not to mix the two. I haven’t published my next list yet.

So, here’s my list:

  1. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  2. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  3. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  4. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  5. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  6. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  7. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  8. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  9. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  10. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  11. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  12. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  13. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  14. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  15. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  16. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  17. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  18. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  19. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  20. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini

What I Added to To Read in July

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

I’m stealing an idea from Liz of Adventures in reading, running, and working from home. She’s started listing the books she adds to her wish list each month. I think this is a great idea if only for myself, to keep track. In my case, I’d be working with the To Read list on The Storygraph, but I ran into an unexpected hitch. In The Storygraph, you can look at your To Do list in order of most recently added, but what it does not do is keep track of the date you added something to your list. At least, not that I can figure out. And I looked at the Stats page to see if I could run a report, but as soon as you select To Read for the books you want to look at, the date function goes away. So, you can only look at stats for the To Read list in total.

I have a question in to customer support, but in the meantime, I figure I’ll have to try to remember which books I added in July, and then going forward I can keep track by looking at my last post about it.

I also thought this would be a nice way to keep track of why I added books to my list, that is, where I heard about them, but I find I already only remember this information for a few.

Going backwards from the most recently added:

Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggins

Kaggsy of Bookish Ramblings wrote a review of this Golden Age mystery and another in the series, Why Did She Die? I was sufficiently intrigued to add the first book to my list

Furious Violet by Sarai Walker

I often read the reviews of books from The New York Times, and their review five days ago interested me enough to add this psychological thriller.

A History of France in 21 Women by Katherine Pangonis

This’ll teach me. Because I know I read about this book on one of the blogs I follow, but I can’t remember which one, and looking through my comments doesn’t help. Perhaps it was mentioned by one of the blogs I follow that posts reviews of a bunch of books at a time. If you recognize that you reviewed this one lately, please let me know! You should get credit! Perhaps this was a book for Paris in July?

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

This week I finished reading the book for the September session of The Marriage Plot (Literary Wives rebranded), which was Family Family by Laurie Frankel. I enjoyed that book so much that I decided to look for another book by her and came up with One Two Three.

They Stole a City by Lauren Collins

I’m pretty sure I heard about this book on an NPR radio program (OPB, Oregon Public Radio) while I was driving to art class. It’s about a shameful event in 19th century Wilmington, North Carolina, that was subsequently so suppressed that people don’t know about it. Look at that! Two nonfiction books added to my list this month!

The South by Colm Tóibín

I don’t really go looking for Tóibín’s books, but when I see one mentioned, I always get it. This one is an older work by him, and I think someone either reviewed it this month or just mentioned it, and I thought, here’s one I haven’t read yet. I don’t even know what it’s about.

Unseen: Blind spots and why we miss what matters most by David Lewis

Three nonfiction books! I heard about this book on one of the science programs on OPB. It sounded intriguing.

The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders

I have no idea. I could have heard about this on NPR, but I think I actually saw it on one of The New York Times lists of the books they liked so far this year.

Blunt Instrument by Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom wrote a mystery? What’s not to like?

Heather by Caitlin Mullen

I have no idea where I heard of this book. If you reviewed it lately, fess up!

Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr

Ditto! I know that Simon of Stuck in a Book went to Canada lately and bought a bunch of books. Maybe there? Yes! Here’s his review.

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History by Ned Blackhawk

I think I know where I heard of this book. I follow blackhawkfitness on Instagram, which despite its name is posts by a knowledgeable indigenous person about native culture. I’m pretty sure he talked about this book. If not, it got mentioned on NPR. Four nonfiction books!

I am stopping here, because the next book on the list is Solace House by Will McLean, and I’m pretty sure it’s been there for a while. On the other hand, the next one after that is Hunger & Thirst by Claire Fuller, and that seems more recent. But I’ll leave it at that. Next month, if people seem interested in this post, I will know exactly where to stop!

Another short attempt at Book Serendipity

~ whatmeread ~ 11 Comments

It’s been four months since my last Book Serendipity, and unlike Bookish Beck, I have only come up with a few more instances. Book serendipity is when the same topic or theme or something like that comes up in more than one book read around the same time, but since I am slower at catching these instances, I have expanded it to cross-media serendipity.

Here’s my only true book serendipity this time:

Reading about The Princess of Cleves by Madama de LaFayette in Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer when it is the next book on my pile.

The last two are cross-cultural and cross-media:

Reading a historical mystery (To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi) with the main character Pastor Laestidious, the founder of a religious movement in Sweden when I live in one of the two areas in the U. S. populated by many members of an obscure offshoot of that religion.

Here’s my cross-media reference:

Mention of axolotls in The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb the day after them being an answer on Jeopardy.

Mid-Year Check-In

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

I’m copying Brona of This Reading Life, who got the idea from Calmgrove, and answering a few questions about my reading so far this year. I’m depending upon The Storygraph and WordPress’s Jetpack stats to help me with these stats. Here is the list of questions if you want to copy them and answer them yourself.

  1. How many books have you read so far this year?
  2. What’s your favorite book so far this year?
  3. What’s the most disappointing book you’ve read this year?
  4. What’s the most surprisingly good book you’ve read so far this year?
  5. What genre have you read most this year? 
  6. Name a new favourite author that you’ve discovered this year.
  7. What are your most anticipated end of 2026 new releases?
  8. Which post has been your most popular post (views, comments, engagement)?
  9. Which post would you like to see get more love?
  10. Is there a post, tag, meme, readalong by another blogger you’d like to highlight? Or any other bookish highlight you’d like to celebrate?

How many books have you read so far this year?

I’ve read 74 books as of Friday, July 10. That may sound like a lot, but I am behind my goal by about 10. (I have read 77 books as of today, Wednesday, but the rest of the stats are based on the Friday results, because I don’t have enough time this morning to figure everything out again.)

What’s your favorite book so far this year?

This is a tough one, even though I only have rated one book so far this year with five stars. That book is To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi, a mystery set in 19th century far northern Sweden. However, I just finished a book by Niall Williams, one of my favorite writers, Time of the Child, and even though I didn’t give it 5 stars, I really loved it. It is set in a small village in 1962 Ireland, and it is a sequel to This Is Happiness.

What’s the most disappointing book you’ve read so far?

Disappointing is a difficult word for me, because I usually don’t have a lot of expectations before I start reading, unless it is for a writer I really love. I purposefully don’t remind myself what a book is about or what people said about it before I start reading it. Although I have often read reviews to get it on my list in the first place, I usually don’t remember them by the time I start reading. But I have read some stinkers this year. I guess I’ll pick The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mafouz, which I read for the 1961 Club. I had already read his Cairo trilogy, and although I liked the first one best, I thought they were interesting. However, I really hated the characters in this novel.

What’s the most surprising good book you’ve read this year?

Surprising is also another word I’m having trouble with because of my lack of expectations. However, I did get a surprise with To Cook a Bear. The main character of this novel is a historical figure, Pastor Laestadius. It just happens that I inadvertently moved to a region that is full of people from the Old Apostolic Lutheran religion, which is an American offshoot of a Swedish sect based on his teachings. In the 19th century, members of this group were some of the original settlers in this region.

What genre have you read most this year?

Historical novels come in first this year, with a tie for second place between mysteries and literary fiction. I don’t know if The Storygraph is double-counting historical mysteries or not (answer: it is).

Name a new favorite author you’ve discovered this year

I’m interpreting this question to mean reading an author for the first time this year that I has become a favorite author. Unfortunately, almost all the books I liked best so far this year were by authors I have already read. The exception would be Mikael Niemi, mentioned above, but I have only read the one book by him, so maybe he’ll end up to be a favorite, maybe not.

What are your most anticipated end of 2026 new releases?

I am usually reading quite a bit behind the times, which means that I don’t really keep abreast of new releases but try to get them if they sound interesting when they come out. That being said, I already have a preorder out for Partita by Barbara Kingsolver. I’m looking forward to Country People by Daniel Mason, Agrippa by Robert Harris, Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus, and maybe The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar.

What post has been your most popular post?

I am depending upon Jetpack statistics for this answer, which don’t seem to be as good as the statistics I used to have on my dashboard, but they stopped working and the developers replaced them with this. It’s giving me some weird results. It says my most viewed day this year was January 8, 2026, which is a review of The Frozen People by Ellie Griffiths, but it is showing a suspiciously high number of views, about 1500. Since my usual number is more like a minimum of 150 a day up to around 300, 1500 is way out of whack. The stats also don’t allow me to limit the view for the most popular post to this year, so it is giving me a book from last year, in fact, a year and a half ago, and I don’t believe that one, either. (I also see that I have a suspiciously high number of views this year from China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and I highly doubt that I’m that popular there, so I’m thinking, scraping.

If I look at the list of most popular posts and pages from forever, most of them are old ones. The only one I know of that was posted this year is 2026 Classics Club Questionnaire Answers, with 53 views, so that is a more likely answer to the question. However, this year my Authors page got over 1000 views. I don’t see anywhere that lists the post with the most comments, but I got 19 for my 14th Anniversary! Top Ten Books of the Year! post, so I think that’s a likely high point.

Which post would you like to see get more love?

Haha, I guess I’d like to feel that people are waiting every year “with bated breath” for my top ten.

Is there a post, tag, meme, readalong by another blogger you’d like to highlight? Or any other bookish highlight you’d like to celebrate?

I just want to say that FictionFan makes me laugh a lot, out loud.

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 17 Comments

Since I just reviewed Western Lane, that finishes my reading of the shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prize. This means it’s time for my feature, where I decide whether the judges got it right.

Although I was indifferent to a few of the books on this list, there were two that I liked so much it will be difficult to choose between them, and this year, most of the others were very good. As I often do, I’ll lead up to the best ones. All of the books chosen this time were very well written.

The book that resonated with me the least was Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. It was mostly a character study of a very particular woman, one who is completely obedient to her brother. I said I felt like I was being psychologically tortured when I read it.

Although darkly funny at times, I found If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery also a bit whiny. It’s about a Jamaican-American young man trying to figure out his own identity and community in Southern Florida, but he keeps making really bad decisions.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo is about the grief of a family over the loss of their mother, which 11-year-old Gopi copes with by her success in playing squash. I found it touching and said it had floundering but sympathetic characters. So, here we are getting into more interesting territory.

I found the subject matter of This Other Eden by Paul Harding very interesting. The historical novel is based on a true event, when the State of Maine decided to evict several mixed-race families that had been living on an island since 1793. It’s no coincidence that this turn-of-the-20th-century event took place just after a Eugenics conference. Although I occasionally found Harding’s extended poetical metaphors annoying (and sometimes liked them), I found this novel to be touching. This is the first book in the shortlist that I read, way back in 2023, so unfortunately, I don’t remember it very well.

The last two novels each ended up on my Best of the Year lists in successive years that I read them. One is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. It is a complex novel about the problems faced by a family. As it looks at the situations from each family member’s perspective in turn, family secrets are revealed. It’s hard to see from my description of this book just why I found it so good, but I was gripped from the start. I say that it is unexpectedly suspenseful in the last 50 pages and that the ending blew my mind (if only I could remember what it was).

I read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch a year earlier than The Bee Sting but remember it a little better. It’s the rare dystopian novel that I found absolutely gripping, about Ireland becoming a totalitarian state, which absolutely chimes in with current events. Prophet Song was the winner for this year. I’m thinking that for me, the choice between it and The Bee Sting is hard, as I describe both as gripping. I also say that Prophet Song has long, poetic sentences that create a sense of urgency. I guess it’s almost a tie for me between this book and The Bee Sting, but I’ll say that the judges got it right.