I finished 6 books in September, and a few of those were on the lighter side. My new teaching job is keeping me ridiculously busy, between long hours and a graduate class I'm taking from home. Still, it was a good month. My job is great, despite being exhausting and pretty stressful. I'm getting to know the students, and the teachers have been so supportive.

This series about a Golem and a Jinni is one of my absolute favorites, and the final book in the trilogy didn't disappoint. Wecker combines history and fantasy with fascinating characters and Jewish and Arabic mythology. This book picks up three decades after the last one, The Hidden Palace. If you haven't read these books, you should absolutely start with the first one, and read them in order.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I was impressed by the scope of the story Russell tells. It's primarily historical fiction about the white settlers in Nebraska, the Pawnee Indians who were driven off their land, and the Dust Bowl that resulted from over-farming. The main characters include a farmer and his niece, a woman who was forced to live in an institution for pregnant girls, a government photographer, and a corrupt lawmaker who'll do anything to be re-elected.

It was a stretch to finish reading 20 books from my summer list, but I made it (and reviewed 10 of them). This was a tough month for reading, as I started my new teaching job and I've been overwhelmed. It's going reasonably well, but there's so much to plan and keep track of, and the days are nonstop. I've struggled to finish books, unless they're audiobooks I can listen to on my commute or while walking.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is about books with nationalities in the titles. I found a lot of books I'd read with "American" in the title but it was difficult to find a wide range of nationalities. I'm only including books here that I've read and recommend. Pandora's Jar: Women in the…

Daggerbound is the sequel to Kingfisher's Swordheart. In these books, two men were cursed hundreds of years ago to live trapped in a sword, and once the sword is drawn they are required to protect their wielders. To others they appear to be powerful, immortal entities, but in fact they are slaves, doomed to die over and over again and forced to serve whoever holds their sword.

I read this for a book club, and the group had very mixed feelings, but I found it an interesting and thought-provoking read (though frustrating as well). Cat is a 20-something writer who's struggling to get through a graduate writing program. She's living with her parents, working at a sausage "restaurant" and the thing she feels most strongly about is non-monogamy.

There's a lot to love about this novel. I heard Givhan speak to our local Writer's Center and I immediately wanted to read this book. It had great horror vibes, reminding me a bit of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Carmen Maria-Machado, and Victor LaValle. The cover is absolutely gorgeous and the story and writing lived up to it. The story begins as Fortuna and her husband Mongo have just moved their teenage son and daughter into a home in a nice neighborhood, next door to a family that also has teens attending the local school.

For a writer like Richard Russo, this book felt half-baked. The story has an interesting premise but many of the characters were under-developed, and the book is more plot-driven than character-driven. Russo explains in a note at the end that he developed it initially as a screenplay, and that makes sense. But that makes it a shame he turned it into a novel without fully seeing it through.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is about looking at the books you were reading in August for each of the last ten years. I chose one of my favorite August reads for each of those years, which was an interesting way to look back at a decade of reading. I highly recommend all of these.

As someone who struggles with using social media, both personally and for this blog, I was interested in this book about how social media is impacting our lives. There's already a lot of research on how social media impacts self-esteem and attention spans. This book covers a slightly different area, focusing on how social media has impacted how we tell stories about ourselves.

Step into to my little book store! I had the whole month off in July, so I had plenty of time to read and blog, and also just time to relax, which felt really good. We saw a great concert at our favorite summer venue, watched a lot of soccer, and enjoyed a cooking class and a wine tasting. I also focused on taking care of myself this month, exercising every day, catching up on doctor's appointments, etc.

This was a hard book to read but a very powerful one. Hashimi's latest novel is about a woman raising her daughter in Afghanistan in 2021, when the U.S. troops left and the Taliban returned. I remember hearing about this on the news, how quickly it happened, but I certainly didn't comprehend the terrifying reality for the women who lived there.

When people ask me if I think reading is declining, I point to thriving local bookstores, the many celebrity reading groups, the popularity of e-readers and audiobooks, and even my sisters who recommend books they've read all the time. But maybe I'm living in a book bubble. A recent article in the Atlantic (The End of Reading is Here…

Harbison's latest novel has many of the same qualities as last year's The Other Side of Now: its main character is successful but discontented, struggling with her relationships with family and friends. Like Other Side of Now, a magical element (a time loop in this case) drives the plot and helps the main character find resolution. Within that framework is a deeply satisfying novel about love and loss and growing up.

Last year, we signed up for a Rick Steves tour of the Adriatic. With all the upheaval of 2025, we hadn't been traveling much, and this was something to look forward to. I'd been wanting to go to Croatia for a long time, and on the tour we'd see as much of it as possible, while in the very capable hands of Rick Steves.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is about authors I haven't read yet but want to. I initially made a list, based on the books that have been sitting on my shelf too long, and then I realized that those are the authors I think I should read, not the authors I most want to read.

I had mixed feelings about Villa Coco, but that's mainly because I loved Less and Less is Lost so much. Villa Coco is largely what it sets out to be -- a light, hopeful, atmospheric novel about a young man in a strange land with eccentric companions. Greer describes this in an Author Letter: Whatever happened to the "charm novel"?

I had some issues with this memoir but overall found it informative and thoughtful. Nović describes her experiences as a child losing her hearing, as a woman navigating health care and other systems, and as a mother of two boys, one hearing and one deaf (Nović explains that both hard of hearing and deaf are acceptable terms, depending on context). She describes in detail her experiences giving birth and going through the adoption process, her issues with the education system and the use of American Sign Language.

Hello readers, and a happy holiday weekend to those in the U.S. The heat is pretty unbearable here in the DC area, but tonight we're heading to a Washington Spirit game (with fans and water bottles). Hope you're staying cool where you are! In June we traveled to Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia/Herzegovina on a 2-week Rick Steve's tour. It was fantastic, and I'll share some pics soon once I get them organized.

If you like stories about space and different alien species, combined with a mystery, you should enjoy this one. This is the first in a three-book series about Mallory Veridian, a woman encountered murder wherever she went, so she decides to live on an alien space station where there are no humans. The book is set in a time similar to ours, only first contact has been made by aliens, who are much more advanced than humans.

The Running Man is a novella written by Stephen King under the name of Richard Bachman. It was published in 1985 as a book of four stories called The Bachman Books, after King’s pseudonym was revealed. As King explains in an introduction, they are dark in a way his horror books are not, relying much more on the violence of humans in dystopian futures, rather than monsters.

Last March, I left my 22-year job with the Department of Education. I chose to take early retirement when my other options included being laid off, transferred to another agency, or working for an administration that clearly wanted to destroy the agency. Ten months ago I took a job as a teaching assistant in a local high school. The principal couldn’t give me a teaching job, but he did set me up assisting some of his best English teachers, so I could learn much more about teaching.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is the new releases coming out in the second half of 2026 that we're most excited about. Heartstopper Volume 6 by Alice Oseman (July 7, 2026) Some People by Parini Shroff (July 7, 2026) Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison (July 21, 2026) City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi (July 28, 2026)

I loved this book about a group of people who take a cruise from Boston to the Bahamas right after September 11. Yun contrasts the fear and chaos of Boston and New York (and the rest of the country) with the strangely sheltered world on a cruise. The employees of the cruise company are charged with giving people a perfect, relaxing, vacation experience, which in this case means not letting them think about September 11 for a minute.

In May, I visited family in Phoenix, and Mr. CG and I went to a Washington Spirit game, a rosé tasting, and celebrated the Memorial Day weekend with our closest friends. I worked on my garden, though the weather's gone from ridiculously hot to ridiculously cold - and we have to replace our fence so there isn't too much point planting things.

The only TBR list I follow every year is for the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge (#20BOS26), hosted this year by AnnaBookBel. I already put enough pressure on myself to finish my ARCs, to post reviews, to complete challenges -- so a TBR list can be just one more box to check. What I enjoy about 20 Books of Summer is that halfway through the year is a good time to review what I've read and what I had hoped to read by now.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is our ten favorite authors and our favorite books by each of them. It was hard to narrow my favorite authors down to ten. I've tried to highlight some books you may not have heard of by these authors. I also didn't include children's author or books in series.

I loved Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters, and I devoured this one (pun intended). It's a magical story of vengeful spirits, but it's also a story of history, survival, family ties, and forgiveness. It's as beautiful as its cover. Get ready for a story that jumps backwards and forwards in time, crossing islands and wars. It can be a little confusing to follow, but it was worth the effort.

Walk: Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity - One Step at a Time, by Drs. Courtney Conley and Milica McDowell, aims to convince you to walk more in your life. It has practical advice for people who don't walk at all for exercise, and people who already walk regularly. The first third of the book wasn't very helpful for me, since I already love to walk.

I'm a huge fan of Jenny Lawson, so her books are pretty much must-buys for me. This book comes with Lawson's unique blend of humor, weirdness, and relatability, so it didn't disappoint. But it's more practical and less memoir, with a wide range of coping strategies for whatever ails you. I'm guessing a lot of us are overwhelmed these days, whatever end of politics you're on or country you live in.

This book mashes together mystery-thriller, ancient philosophy, divorce and parenting, romance, and #metoo. It's a lot. I enjoyed it, but it won't be a favorite because there were just a few too many twists and turns for my taste. Readers shouldn't expect Where'd You Go, Bernadette, but they will see Semple's clever writing and unusual characters. Adora Hazzard is a woman "of a certain age".

April was busy, with family visits at the beginning and end of the month. We're also in the last quarter of the school year, and the kids are preparing to take year-end exams, while I'm trying to line up a teaching position for next school year. I got to see some of my former colleagues at a happy hour, and we saw a fantastic win by our Washington Spirit.

I loved this novel about the bonds of family and found family. It's about a 19-year-old Vietnamese-American, Hai, who tries to jump off a bridge but is stopped by an elderly Lithuanian woman, Grazina. She needs someone to take care of her and he needs a place to stay and something to do. Hai is addicted to pain pills and he's in debt from dropping out of college.

Brooks is one of my favorite authors, and this will certainly be one of my top reads of the year. It's a memoir about love and grief, written in Brooks' insightful prose. Though it's very different from her novels, I enjoyed it just as much. On Memorial Day, 2019, Brooks received a call in her Cape Cod home. She was informed by a hospital doctor that her husband of many years had collapsed on a sidewalk and died.

I get asked this question a lot: are your kids reading books in English class? This seems to be in response to recent articles about how kids are going to college unprepared to read entire books. While it's true that we also teach shorter works, like news articles, essays, and poems, my students are reading books. My kids, 9th and 10th graders, have learning disabilities and most are English learners.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is to identify ten books with titles that describe us (topic submitted by Susan at blogginboutbooks.com). I love this idea and had fun putting this together. In the end, I tried to cover a variety of aspects of my life. I've ordered these titles chronologically, for the most part.

This was a fascinating memoir and history of the paths some Polish Jews traveled to escape the Nazis during the Holocaust. In this book, Gerson researches her father's family, as well as the father of her partner Talia. When she and Talia first met, they discovered not only a strong attraction but a shared family history. Their grandparents were neighbors in the small Polish town of Zamosc.

I loved this memoir by Angela Buchdahl, who is a Korean-American rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the country. She came to the U.S. as a young girl with her Korean mother and Jewish American father. She was raised Jewish but often encountered people saying she couldn't be Jewish, because of her race and her mother's religion (Judaism has traditionally come from one's mother, not their father).

March was a busy month, which was nice after a long winter. I volunteered with my library's used book sale, went to the home opener of our NWSL soccer team, went to two teacher job fairs, and celebrated Mr. CG's birthday with friends. Spring is in full bloom, and I couldn't be happier about the warm weather and all the blossoms.

This was my first book by Marie Benedict, and I think anyone who's interested in the history of ancient Egypt will enjoy this book. I appreciated Benedict's attention to detail, and I also liked the way she paralleled the archaeology of the 1920s with ancient historical and religious practices of Egypt. Benedict's story is about two strong women: Hatshepsut was only the second known female Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and her reign is noted for being long and prosperous.

I love Greek mythology, and I'm a big fan of Felicia Day, so this was a no-brainer for me. Day has written a graphic novel telling the story of a little-known character in Greek mythology. Philonoe is the sister of Helen, Clytemnestra, and Timandra. In Day's retelling, she's born with a large birthmark on her face and her parents think she is cursed, so she's sent away until she reaches marriageable age.

I very rarely read biographies, preferring to learn about people through their own words. I wondered why Blume didn’t write her own story, but I learned that she prefers not to write nonfiction, and probably didn’t want to spend her limited writing time on a book about herself. I ended up learning a lot about Blume and appreciated her even more after reading this book.

In a lot of ways, this is the novel about Hawaii I’ve been looking for. It’s steeped in the history and culture of Native Hawaiians, but also a compelling generational family saga. The Naupaka family lives in Hilo, which is on the island of Hawai’i (also known as “The Big Island”). Laka, once Hilo's celebrated Miss Aloha Hula, has just returned from several years in Maui with a baby that doesn’t look Hawaiian.

In February I had surgery on my nose to fix a deviated septum, which required quite a bit of time at home to recover. So between surgeries and lots of snow days, I read more than usual this month. Here's what I read in February: The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown Kin by Tayari Jones Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon…

I'm a big fan of Tayari Jones, so I was thrilled to get an advanced copy of her newest book, Kin. It's the story of a friendship between two women that begins almost at birth. Vernice and Annie are "cradle sisters" in the small town of Honeysuckle, Mississippi. Neicy's father killed her mother when Neicy was a baby, and she's been raised by her aunt.

This was a perfect book to build upon the issues discussed in As a Jew by Sarah Hurwitz. Horn explores antisemitism in various forms, most notably the idea that people are comfortable with the idea of Jews as victims, as long as they aren’t challenged to look beyond that. For example, people love the idea of Anne Frank, a girl who hid away and was then murdered – but they don’t look closer at her as a writer and an individual.

This was my first book by Richard Powers, though I’ve been wanting to read The Overstory for a while, which won a Pulitzer Prize and came recommended by a former work friend. This book, Playground, was on a lot of 2024 Best Of lists and the beautiful cover certainly drew me in.  The novel covers many decades and characters. In the 1940s, Evelyne Boulieu is a French girl who is thrown by her father into a pool with the first Aqualung and who becomes a renowned diver and marine researcher.

This week's topic for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is books for armchair travelers, or books that help you explore the world from home. I love to travel and to read about other places, so I had trouble whittling this one down. Long Walks: I love books about long walks, maybe because I've always wanted to do one myself.

If you're looking for a short but powerful read about love, family and grief, I recommend this one. I also liked the way it combined history, science, and writing, but that's secondary to the raw emotion of the book. It's almost like reading poetry. Balen is an author of children's books and this is her adult debut. The story captured my attention immediately.