Oh I loved this one also !
Exact opposite here!
i enjoyed Klara when I eventually got round to reading it at D19’s insistence. I’m not sure I’ve read anything else of his.
1 Like
Klara was a book club read, and I thought it was good. But… I’ve found myself struggling over which friend might want to read it next.
1 Like
It’s months after your post, @gardenstategal, but I wanted to pop in and say that I just finished Buckeye and loved it.
3 Likes
Somehow in my reading life I had never read Du Maurier’s Rebecca so I just finished it. Wow–not what I expected at all. Great writing but creepy in completely different ways than I had assumed, and definitely not the “romantic” suspense I had been led to believe. Definitely a good read though.
13 Likes
Read Rebecca with my book group a few years ago. As you said, not what I expected and a very good read!
1 Like
I never felt quite as stupid as when I read that book. Baffled by the whole thing, and I read a LOT of “literary fiction”.
Just finished The Antidote (Karen Russell) and loved every moment. To call it magical realism sorta dismisses it; the plotting and characters and setting are so vivid, so amazing, so …perfect. They will turn it into a movie and ruin it, so read it soon.
2 Likes
I tried reading Unsouled tonight. I only made it through the first 20 pages (first 2 chapters) before giving up. On paper it sounds like the type of book I’d enjoy, but actually reading it, I couldn’t get into the story. Maybe there is lack of gradual world building and/or exposition dump at start, when trying to condense in to 220 pages (the norm is the genre is 500+ page books, sometimes 700+), or the type of story was too foreign to me? What’s going on with fruit from sacred trees? What’s going on with referring to people as copper/iron/…? Who are the new characters that are being introduced? Why should I care what happens to them? It just didn’t mesh with me.
Instead I’m enjoying Mother of Learning. I found this book on Royal Road, which is a website where people can self publish their stories. The more popular ones may go on to become books sold on Amazon and Audible. Mother of Learning has the highest average rating of all 120,000 titles on Royal Road, at 4.83/5, with 16k ratings.
The story starts off as a slice of life in magic high school, with nothing remarkable happening aside from one of the protagonist’s slacker classmates becoming suddenly becoming extraordinarily skilled at all his classes. This didn’t interest me. Fortunately I continued long enough to see why the classmate was skilled at everything, with the protagonist becoming stuck in a time loop, along with his classmate. The progression fantasy involves becoming more adept over time when repeating the same month over and over, with training/skills/magic persisting to next loop. There are an assortment of interesting characters that are regularly being introduced, as well as the mystery of why the protagonist is stuck in the time loop and how to exit. I find the protagonist likable, and he makes reasonable and non-traditional decisions. It’s quite different from Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, Russian Doll, Edge of Tomorrow, or any other time loop story I’ve seen/read before. There is more emphasis on the other characters and their quirks, including things like how they change their behaviors between loops, often in response to minor things that the 3? (unclear how many persons/beings can remember events when month resets at this point in book) do differently in different loops.
While I enjoy the story, this may be the worse voice actor I’ve ever heard on the audiobook version. Voraces’ voices for Zorian’s little sister sounds like an adult male mocking a young girl’s voice. Most of the characters seem to have Scottish accents for some reason, while Zorian (protagonist) and the narrator do not have a trace of Scottish accent. Maybe the voice actor doesn’t have many accents in his arsenal to choose from. He’s no Jeff Hayes (Dungeon Crawler Carl).
1 Like
Readers may find this of interest if not on your radar already. The Sun Valley Writer’s conference is an amazing event and I find their book recommendations and free offerings to be excellent. It really is a once in a lifetime event, if ever able to attend. Tickets are hard to come by and pricey with volunteer positions having a waitlist spanning years!
Here is a link is anyone is interested in the books for this year’s event plus you can look into the archive for past choices and access some of the talks at no cost. We have used it as a resource for our book club and watched an interview from the archive and add to our discussion.
4 Likes
I did search for the book “Wreck” by the author of “Sandwich” which I know has been discussed here. Nothing came up….I can’t be the first one to mention Wreck?
Based on the same family, 2 years later I found Wreck not quite as satisfying as Sandwich. I think the topics (a train accident and a medical condition of one of the main characters) stressed me out a bit! I’m glad I read it and I’d def read more by Catherine Newman. Just some really interesting family dynamics. I wonder if she will write about this family again.
3 Likes
We were on a gondola at Big Sky Montana last Wednesday with our friends when another person joined the 4 of us. H said hi to him and asked how his ski day was going. The guy answered that he was just going out for his first run since he spent the morning writing. Turns out it was Mark T. Sullivan. When he said he was an author my friend asked if we might know any of his books. He said we may have heard of Beneath a Scarlet Sky or we may have read one of the books he coauthored with James Patterson.
10 Likes
I recently read “Wreck” and also enjoyed “Sandwich” more, and a few friends who have read both have agreed. I liked both better than “We All Want Impossible Things.”
2 Likes
I just finished Robert Galbraith’s The Hallmarked Man. It was really good. I have read all of them and I think this is my favorite.
3 Likes
Add me to the fanclub for The Correspondent. I thought it was one of the most well crafted books I’ve ever read. I absolutely loved the epistolary nature of the novel!
10 Likes
Glad you liked it.
I keep a book list. In 2025, I read (or listened to) 38 books. I noted 8 with bold text (favorites). Two of those were blue-bold (very favorites) - The Correspondent and City of Thieves. In both cases I happened to listed to the audio version, though typically I mostly listen to non-fiction. In these cases the waiting list was probably shortest for audio.
1 Like
I also loved City of Thieves.
3 Likes
I hate the time change, so decided to indulge in finishing my most recent Libby loan from the library - More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen. It was just published a few weeks ago and made my radar because of my weekly book video from Ann Patchett/Parnassus Books. I got on the list on day one and got a quick turnaround. Anyway, for me it was a fabulous story about a private girls school English teacher. Lots of things going on and I cried several tissues worth of tears. How many tissues required is often a measure of how good the book is for me.
5 Likes
I think she will continue to write about this family because it is about 95 percent (or higher!) based on her own family.
I followed her blogs about her family life for years and really loved her writing . I actually think I prefer her blogs to her fiction.
6 Likes
I just finished A Hymn of Life by Gisele Pelicot, the woman in France who was drugged and whose husband had her raped by dozens of men. The book just came out. I thought it was very very good. She emerged from the situation very strong, which was great to see.
6 Likes