Password-protected posts contain heavy spoilers and are there to prevent accidental spoiling. They can each individually be accessed with the password "SPOILME(#of the post)". That means if the post is numbered #0000, the password is SPOILME0000 - SPOILME all in caps, no space in between.
Enter at your own risk. And have fun!
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.
By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.
But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up, and closed down.
In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
It was my irl bookclub’s November BOTM, and also a buddy read.
The Quotes
“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
“The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.”
My Thoughts
This is a reread for me. The first time I read it was so long ago that I’d mostly forgotten every single detail about it. I rated it 4/5 stars at the time but left no review so I can’t refer to it for how I felt about the book. Now that I’ve read it again, I’m going to go with 3/5 stars.
It’s not that I don’t think this was a good book or that there weren’t some very poignant parts of the book, I think that I just don’t like the storytelling in many ways. Death is the narrator, but Liesel is the main character, and to be honest, I felt it was a little gimmick-y and unnecessary. It really didn’t add anything to the story, and in fact, I think it made me feel a little detached to the actual characters. It also rubs me the wrong way that Liesel actually wrote a (sort-of) biography, which is how Death knows the details of her life, and yet instead of us reading that biography written by her in her voice, we’re reading this whole thing from Death’s POV.
It’s also quite a depressing read, which is understandable considering the subject matter, but I was having so many intrusive thoughts while reading it and it was just a struggle. It’s probably worth reading, once, but I won’t want to ever read it again.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A TALE FOR EVERYONE WHO’S EVER FALLEN FOR THE VILLAIN…
When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she’s not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor’s tale.
So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they’re doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor’s fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.
This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain’s shoes, for an adventure that is both ‘brilliant’ (Holly Black) and ‘supremely satisfying’ (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue’s gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.
I was enticed by this because it was a buddy read, but had no idea what it was about going in. I ended up loving it so I’m glad I read it!
The Quotes
“I love you as a knife loves a throat,” he murmured as the dead overwhelmed her. “I crawled out of hell to fall at your feet.”
“An anti-hero was just a villain with good PR.”
“In real life, people let you go. That was why people longed for the love from stories, love that felt more real than real love.”
“Consider this. A witch who curses you is just telling the future you don’t want to hear.”
“Only heroes cared about honour. Villains were allowed to be practical.”
My Thoughts
I abso-freaking-lutely love this book! I went in with no idea what it was going to be about and was so pleasantly surprised with how much I ended up loving it! It’s isekai, a term I just recently learned about, and it’s just so much fun!
Isekai, a fantasy subgenre featuring stories in which ordinary people are transported to a magical world.
I love the story, I love the characters, I love that it’s a found family story! It’s funny and irreverent, it makes fun of book tropes, and I love how relatable the villains are. I am completely invested, and now I’m just so upset that I need to wait so long for the next book to come out. This book was such a delightful read!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.
But be careful what you wish for. . . .
Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.
For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermind” Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.
It’s a bookish book and I heard this was a smart one with riddles and puzzles.
The Quotes
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
“Always be quiet when a heart is breaking.”
“They tell us taking care of children is the most important job you can do, and then they pay us like it’s the least important.”
“Always remember that the only wishes ever granted are the wishes of brave children who keep on wishing even when it seems no one is listening because someone always is.”
My Thoughts
This book was disappointing, but to be fair, it’s because I had such high expectations. I had heard that this was a smart book with lots of riddles and puzzles and solving things, and it does, but not in the way I expected where the reader has to do some of the work to solve the mystery. Most of the puzzles were solved on the page by the characters and they’re all quite straighforward and done quickly. Which is fine, but just not what I had in mind when people say it’s a smart book. Especially since it’s categorized as adult fiction.
This book reads more like a middle grade novel, and I think I would’ve tempered my expectations more appropriately if it was categorized as such, and I think it’s amazing as a middle grade novel. I don’t know if it was mis-categorized, but it seems too simple and basic for an adult mystery. I expected DaVinci Code levels of puzzles but got middle-grade level of book. I don’t even remember where I heard it from, so I can’t go back and see if maybe it’s my own fault for misunderstanding what was said!
Having said all that, it’s really not a bad book, and I think that I would’ve liked the book more if it wasn’t for the misrepresentation.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts. After all, she was a normal American herself once.
That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father. In the years since then, Carolyn hasn’t had a chance to get out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father’s ancient customs. They’ve studied the books in his Library and learned some of the secrets of his power. And sometimes, they’ve wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God. Now, Father is missing—perhaps even dead—and the Library that holds his secrets stands unguarded. And with it, control over all of creation.
As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her, all of them with powers that far exceed her own. But Carolyn has accounted for this. And Carolyn has a plan. The only trouble is that in the war to make a new God, she’s forgotten to protect the things that make her human.
Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and propelled by a plot that will shock you again and again, The Library at Mount Char is at once horrifying and hilarious, mind-blowingly alien and heartbreakingly human, sweepingly visionary and nail-bitingly thrilling—and signals the arrival of a major new voice in fantasy.
I’ve heard so much about this book and I’ve been curious. Also, it’s a bookish book and I’m doing a bookish book challenge.
The Quotes
“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.”
“The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.”
“It’s the notion that the universe is structured in such a way that no matter how many mysteries you solve, there is always a deeper mystery behind it.”
“She knew every word that had ever been spoken, but she could think of nothing to say that might ease his grief.”
The Narrator(s)
Hillary Huber. She was great for the time that I listened on audio.
My Thoughts
It might not be fair to count this book in my audiobook challenge, to be honest. I only listened about 50% on audio on and off in the beginning, and ended up switching over to the print copy for good towards the end. There was nothing wrong with the narration, but it was because there were some made-up words for a lot of specific concepts in the book, some dialogue in different languages, as well as the purposely confusing plot. They made it difficult to follow on audio, so I switched over to print when it got really exciting.
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I loved it all the way I was reading it, up until the ending. I loved the pace, the storytelling, the plot, the characters, but I really hate the message and I feel like it might have ruined the whole book for me. I’m quite conflicted. I talk about it in more detail in Notes & Discussion | The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins at the end of the post. If you’ve already read the book, please feel free to head on over to the post and let me know what you think, otherwise, please be warned that it’s a spoiler-filled post!
For more discussion on the book – with SPOILERS – check out Notes & Discussion | The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. This post has SPOILERS and assumes you have already finished the book. It is password-protected to prevent accidental spoiling. Password is “SPOILME0004”. Proceed at your own risk.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars. Giving credit where credit is due, it’s a really well-written book!
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Murders and Metaphors (Magical Bookshop #3) by Amanda Flower
January means ice wine season in the Niagara Falls region, but the festivities leave Charming Books owner Violet Waverly cold, still reeling from a past heartbreak. Little do either Waverly women know, the ice wine festival will turn colder still when Violet finds Belinda in the middle of the frozen vineyard – with a grape harvest knife protruding from her chest.
Belinda grew up in Cascade Springs, but she left town years ago after a huge falling-out with her three sisters. One of those sisters, Violet’s high school friend Lacey Dupont, attends the book signing in the hope of making amends with her sister, but Belinda and Lacey end up disrupting the signing with a very public shouting match and Lacey quickly becomes the prime suspect in the sommelier’s murder.
Violet is sure Lacey is innocent, and to keep her friend out of prison, Violet asks for guidance from her magical bookshop. The shop’s ethereal essence points her to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but what have the four March sisters to do with the four Perkins sisters? If she can’t figure it out, Violet, herself, may turn as cold as ice.
Rachel Dulude. Still all good! I’m really enjoying her narration.
My Thoughts
I’m going to quit while I’m ahead. I really love the idea of this series; the magical elements, the bookshop and all the books, the smarter than average animals, the cozy mystery, the romantic tension… But I’m getting more and more annoyed with the MC, Violet Waverly, because she keeps doing (and saying) stupid things. I like the romantic tension but it feels a little forced this time. And the fact that all these murders are happening in a small town like this; we are running out of victims and suspects, and if it’s not the usual suspects, it’s going to be the new characters, which makes it too obvious.
Oh, I don’t know. I love the idea and all the elements of this series, I just wish they were put together better. Feeling a little sad about it, but I do think it’s smarter to quit while I’m ahead and still enjoying what I got out of the books.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Prose and Cons (Magical Bookshop #2) by Amanda Flower
Magic, books, and cats collide in a village near Niagara Falls in the latest Magical Bookshop Mystery from the author of Crime and Poetry .
In Cascade Springs, New York, Violet Waverly and her grandma, Daisy, are the proprietors of Charming Books, where the power of the written word is positively enchanting…
October in Cascade Springs means tourists are pouring in for the annual Food and Wine Festival, and Daisy hopes to draw those crowds to the store. She asks Violet and the local writing group, the Red Inkers, to give a reading of the works of Edgar Allan Poe in the shop’s back garden to entertain the revelers. Everyone eagerly agrees.
Yet their enthusiasm is soon extinguished when Violet discovers one of the writers dead during the event. After the shop magically tells Violet she’ll need to rely on Poe’s works to solve the murder, she enlists the help of her trusty tuxedo cat, Emerson, and the shop’s crow, Faulkner. But they must act fast before someone else’s heart beats nevermore…
Rachel Dulude. Still all good! I’m really enjoying her narration.
My Thoughts
I love that each book focuses on one “book theme”; the first book featured Emily Dickinson, this one featured Edgar Allan Poe. Their works provide the clues to solving the mysteries that the MC, Violet Waverly, has to figure out. However, I sometimes feel like it’s a bit of a reach and the clues don’t really do anything to help Violet. Or else Violet isn’t very good at solving the cases. She still makes stupid decisions, which I forgave in the first book, but that are starting to annoy me in the second book.
I do love the cat though. Emerson is the best cat and I love him. There are a lot of good things about this book. I love the ensemble characters. I love Chief Rainwater. I love Grandma Daisy. I love Sadie and Lacey, and I love Lacey’s husband for his food and making me hungry through the page. I love that there’s magic and books and smart animals. It’s a fun read.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Crime and Poetry (Magical Bookshop #1) by Amanda Flower
From Amanda Flower—who writes the national bestselling Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries as Isabella Alan—comes the first in the new Magical Bookshop Mystery series.
Rushing home to sit by her ailing grandmother’s bedside, Violet Waverly is shocked to find Grandma Daisy the picture of perfect health. Violet doesn’t need to read between the lines: her grandma wants Violet back home and working in her magical store, Charming Books. It’s where the perfect book tends to fly off the shelf and pick you…
Violet has every intention to hightail it back to Chicago, but then a dead man is discovered clutching a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems from Grandma Daisy’s shop. The victim is Benedict Raisin, who recently put Grandma Daisy in his will, making her a prime suspect. Now, with the help of a tuxedo cat named Emerson, Violet will have to find a killer to keep Grandma from getting booked for good…
Now that I’m finished with the 2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, I thought I’d try to make a dent on the other reading challenges I signed up for. This was a bookish book, and it’s a series, so there’s lots more bookish books to read!
The Narrator(s)
Rachel Dulude. I love her! It was smooth listening all the way! I especially love it when she narrates the cat’s meow; it makes me believe it was a real cat!
My Thoughts
Seriously, this book hits all the right spots for a witchy book lover! There’s a magical bookshop, there are magical books, there’s a resident crow and the most adorable cat! There’s also a birthright legacy passed down from grandmother to granddaughter in regards to taking care of the bookshop, and I love everything about it!
There’s also a murder mystery to solve, of course, and I just love how the story unfolds.
It’s not perfect; there are still characters making bad decisions, some things happen too conveniently, and I have issues with one of the characters – Audrey, the victim’s daughter – being so vilified, due to personal beliefs. However, this is meant to be a light-hearted cozy mystery, and so I’ll take it the way it was meant and not analyze it too deeply. It’s actually really well-written and I really enjoyed this book. I plan to read the next books in the series too!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail – for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he’s released, he’s greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
“You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.”
My Thoughts
I didn’t enjoy this book and at times, I even wondered what the point of it was. I expected it to get better but it never did, and when it ended, I was like, “that’s it?”. It was the most anticlimatic ending I’ve ever read in what is supposed to be a mystery thriller. It’s not even really a mystery or a thriller, it’s not very mysterious or thrilling at all.
It started off really slow, and I struggled to keep reading but I kept going because it was the last book for the reading challenge I was doing. It got better in the middle and I had high hopes it would keep getting better, but it just kind of fizzled out at the end.
Now I understand that this book is very Shakespeare centric and I’m not very well-versed in Shakespeare, so that could be the reason that I’m not getting it. However, I am a firm believer that stories should be able to stand on their own, otherwise this is just a companion book to Shakespeare, or something to that effect.
I was originally inclined to be slightly generous with my rating and review, but the more I think about it, the less I like the book. It’s only getting 2 out of 5 stars for me.
My Rating
⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.
It’s a bookish book, it was available, and I was in between books.
The Quotes
“Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can’t fix anything. And your life might turn out full of regrets.”
“Because every day with a book is slightly better than one without, and I wish you nothing but the happiest of days.”
“There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them.”
The Narrator
Lucy Price-Lewis. I really liked her as a narrator. I did have trouble understanding the accents, but that’s mostly on me.
My Thoughts
I enjoyed it very much at first, even though it’s just a little bit cheesy. But I started to get really annoyed with Nina (and other characters) at the second half of the book.
Spoiler
I really didn’t like that she was so forgiving towards Marek after finding out he had a romantic partner who’s the mother of his child. I also don’t like that Marek is somehow still portrayed as a sympathetic character. Nina can be naive, but I think this is a little over-the-top. The fact that she continued talking to him even after that, I just don’t like it.
I also really didn’t like the way she handled that whole thing with the two siblings and their sick mother. That whole scene with Ainslee being unhappy about Nina getting involved, and then all of a sudden being okay with it didn’t ring true to me. And her sick mother’s interactions with Nina also felt weird and unrealistic.
And there was the part where Lennox had a sick animal he was rushing to get to the vet, but then he came back to drive Nina home first, I was in disbelief.
I could’ve overlooked one or two issues, but there were too many and I couldn’t enjoy the book anymore. I’m sorry I don’t have more to say about the book that isn’t spoilered. I guess I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say, and that makes me feel really bad, but it is what it is!
My Rating
3/5 stars. Because I don’t think it’s badly written. I just didn’t like the story or the characters.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
It was immediately available when I browsed for audiobooks, and I was really intrigued by the premise. I haven’t read Little Fires Everywhere, but it’s also on my TBR, and I thought I might as well try the author’s other books. It also helps that it’s both a diversity book and a bookish book, for my reading challenges.
The Quotes
“Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.”
“If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.”
“Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?”
“Librarians, of all people, understood the value of knowing, even if that information could not yet be used.”
The Narrator
Lucy Liu. I don’t know if it’s the way the story was written, but her reading seems so block-y. Like she’s reading in blocks. It’s not a big deal, I still enjoyed the story, it was just the lack of change in cadence and it felt weird.
The Characters
Bird is the main character and we see most of the story from his POV, but his mother’s POV is the one that really punches me in the gut.
His mother, Margaret, is Chinese American, and as the story progresses, you can see how she lays low, think that all the initial abuse of Asian Americans don’t apply to her, because she isn’t like them, she isn’t a troublemaker, she hasn’t done anything wrong. She ignores what’s happening, tries to distance herself from the blatant racism, and has a general attitude of “as-long-as-it’s-not-me”. Until it is.
My Thoughts
I thought this book was very well-written, well-researched, well-told. It is so fascinating, but also painful, to see the progression of how things got as bad as they did. This book hits really close to home because, let’s be real, it has happened in real life. It could still happen.
For me, the biggest thing on my mind is how Margaret’s initial inaction, denial, and distancing, is so cowardly, but so completely understandable. I’m not a hero, I don’t think I’ll be brave enough to ever be the first to stand against oppression, especially when the result of it could be death, persecution, or having my loved ones taken away. This book really makes me think, what would I do if it were me? Being honest, I guess I’d run and hide. That would be my first instinct. But if backed into a corner and having no other choice, I guess I’d fight. But then it might be too late.
The lesson it has always been is that, if you stand by and do nothing while others are being oppressed, you are standing with the oppressors. I am reminded by this quote:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
I also want to note that once again, in times of oppression, we see the power of books, libraries, librarians, knowledge being passed around, and stories being told. Stories are powerful, and I believe stories are the secrets to peace. If everyone read books, listened to stories, they would learn to be more empathic and be less inclined to hurt others. I truly believe that.
My Feels
It’s chilling and scary because it could happen. And I honestly don’t know what I would do. It’s one thing to know rationally what to do, it’s another to do the right thing when you are caught up in feeling the fear. This story scares me.
It also breaks my heart to see the evil that exists in this world, and yet there is also the amazing resilience and courage of the human spirit. This book is going to stay in my mind for a while.
My Rating
5/5 stars. It’s such a painful but powerful story. I highly recommend it to everybody!
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
