Sometimes we can get in a reading rut and find it difficult to break out of our comfort zones. But it's a good idea to shake things up every now and then and read an author or a genre we normally wouldn't consider, if only for the benefit of expanding our view of the world. … Continue reading 12 Books to Diversify Your Reading
Category: Reading
Shared every Friday (or thereabouts), what I’m reading and recommending.
I'm stuck at home bored, like almost everyone else, so I thought I'd indulge in my favorite pastime and put together some reading lists! I see a lot of lists like this one on Electric Literature and Book Riot -- some of them really good, some of them just frankly a hodgepodge of books the … Continue reading Disaster Reading for Disastrous Times
Time for an update of what I've been reading lately: three recent publications by women writers that are each, in their own way, unusual and engrossing reads. First up: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, her first novel since The Night Circus, which was a favorite of mine. With The Starless Sea, Morgenstern has written a deeply felt and … Continue reading What I’ve Been Reading: Books by Women
If you're a Generation X'er (or older), you may remember that golden age of horror during the 1970s and 1980s, when cheesy paperbacks with titles in red metallic fonts and lurid cover art were all over supermarket and drugstore racks. Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell (2017) is a nostalgia-inducing collection of these covers, as well … Continue reading For Horror Connoisseurs: Paperbacks from Hell
Today I started reading An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim, which promises to be an engaging time travel story. And like every good geek, I saw Avengers: Endgame this past weekend, which also plays around with time travel. I enjoy time travel stories because their mind-bending possibilities are so abundant, but it's difficult to write time travel well. The … Continue reading Favorite Time Travel Novels
I haven't posted in a while, so in an effort to get more regular about that, I'm going to share edited and annotated versions of some of the reading lists I curate on LibraryThing. Making reading lists is one of my fave things to do, next to reading itself. I enjoy books with a strong … Continue reading Around the World in Horror Reading List
Time to catch up on recent reads that I can recommend. My first book of February is a brand-new offering from a recent favorite writer of mine, Ben H. Winters. I really admire his niche of combining noir detective stories with speculative scenarios. I've read his trilogy set just before a meteor is about to … Continue reading Reading in February
I have three short books by women with enticing covers to share with you today. My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: This was a quick read with short chapters, set in Lagos by a Nigerian author, with underlying themes of loyalty to family, abuse, and the shallowness of men who "only want a … Continue reading Recent Reading
About two years ago, I discovered Valancourt Books, which reissues out-of-print horror, generally from the 1970s and early 1980s, in really attractive slim trade paperbacks. My latest read from them was Elizabeth by Ken Greenhall (originally published under the pseudonym Jessica Hamilton). What a disturbing little book about a 14-year-girl who seems to be a complete sociopath … Continue reading Golden Ages of Horror: Reading Elizabeth
My first read of 2019 fit the bill: light and easy. Passing Strange by Ellen Klages is a lovely love story with a backdrop of San Francisco in the 1940s. Excellent cast of women characters.
