What makes a good book? The setting? The characters? The artistry of a good sentence? The plot devices that further a narrative or deepen your understanding?
Well, if you have some answers to that question, then it might be time for you to start your own BookTube.
I’ve been excited for this book since I first saw the cover. Heck, the day that I started reading it, my friend forwarded me an email featuring the cover exclusively because it looked like a book I would read. She was right, of course, and I finished it and loved it!
I genuinely love books. As a nerdy homeschooled kid, coming home with a stack of fresh reads from my very small local library was the highlight of my week every week. When I first moved to New York, new stories kept me company on the long commute to my boring muggle job. Now, as I live and work in this geeky community, books are a fast connection to the people I want to connect with and a way to support and share and work with incredible authors doing incredible things.
However, as a busy adult with a seemingly-endless todo list, I now read slowly. Like a couple books a year slowly. Which does not work for my original intention of this series: to share the very many books I hear about and get early copies of and want to tell you all about so those of you who read faster than me can enjoy them.
So, this is now a new series. A “To Be Read” series, where I share books I’d like to read and why I think they’ll be great and challenge you to beat me to it.
Starting with, A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson. Despite everything I just said outing myself as the world’s slowest reader, I couldn’t resists the Book of the Month club. (If you want to join me, this link lets you pick your first book for only $5). I’ve been subscribed for about a year, and almost every month I choose the true crime/thriller option. What can I say, I have a type.
A Nearly Normal Family is a legal thriller about a teen girl accused of murdering an older man. As the back cover explains:
Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?
Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?
Any other suckers for a good crime thriller? Have you already read this book? Ideas for what I should think about reading next? Let’s chat in the comments.
This is a book that I got as a Goodreads giveaway, and it wasn’t what I expected. Clocking in at just 255 pages, this is a relatively quick read, that chronicles part of Martin’s life.
I didn’t buy Horrorstör for a long time because I thought it was a collection of phobias, and as someone with a phobia, that’s not my bag. But my boyfriend gave it to me as a gift on a rough day, and I’m so grateful to him.
As Christmas bears down upon us, the window of time we have before the shelves are picked clean of respectable gifts keeps narrowing and narrowing— which is why online shopping might be your best bet going forward (Amazon is a life-saver). Buying books will score you brownie points with the bookworms in your life, and now that comics and graphic novels are more mainstream, you might as well expand your buying horizons (either for yourself or someone else).
As I hope you remember, I fell in love with Amanda Lovelace’s poetry books a couple months ago. I started with The Princess Saves Herself in This One, and immediately needed more. Luckily for me, Lovelace released To Make Monsters Out of Girls last month. I knew I needed to pick up a copy once I was off of my buying ban.
I bought this book because I read that it had a bit of a Heathers vibe, and that’s totally my jam. But think of it this way; if one of the people Veronica & JD killed had a younger sibling, who wanted to dig to find the truth behind what happened, this would be that story.
Warning; this book contains things that may be triggering to some folks. If that is you, please don’t continue on.
This episode is sponsored by Jordandené.
Welcome back, Sartorial Geeks! This week, we sat down to chat with Benita Botello, founder of Book Beau.
Commuters, we’ve all been here: you have a long train or bus ride ahead of you. All you want is to sit down and get lost in your current read for the next half hour or so, but when you take it out of your bag, the cover is bent, the pages are crushed, and your precious book is ruined. What’s a bookworm to do?
I have some pretty strong feelings about this book, and I hate that they aren’t all positive. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, so let’s dive right in.