Get Lost in Literature

Book Beginnings on Fridays by Rose City Reader -  Share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. "Jake. There is so much I want to tell you, but we've always found it hard to talk to each other, haven't we?" - The Whisper Man by Alex North This is a thriller that starts with a lot of intrigue... First, a letter from a father to his son and the reader is immediately left wondering what inspired the letter. Soon after, a child goes missing and the feeling of dread creeps in because you just know something bad is about to happen.   Book Blogger Hop Q: Have you ever wondered why a passionate book blogger might suddenly stop posting or delete their blog without notice? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer) A: Yes, and then no. I imagine there are a lot of reasons why that happens, the first thing that comes to mind i...

Today's Top Ten Tuesday theme was listed as Animal Companions (These animals can be real or fantasy!) (submitted by P.S. I Love Books) . Back in August 2024 I did a Top Ten Literary Animal Friends list, which is basically the same, and I didn't think my list had changed since then. So instead of doing a repeat list, I'm doing the Top Ten Books with Horses. The horses will be both real and fictional. 1. American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Champion's Legendary Rise by Joe Drape - The true story about the life of the first Triple Crown winner after a 37 year drought. 2. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin - A fantasy about a thief named Peter Lake, seemingly immortal, who is watched over by his guardian, a pure white horse depicted as a deity, Athansor. 3. Battleship: A Daring Heiress, a Teenage Jockey, and America's Horse by Dorothy Ours - A nonfiction about Battleship, the undersized son of Man O'War, who despite his failings at flat racin...

  "The hairs stood on the back of my neck. All who were wise feared the god Apollo's wrath, silent as sunlight, deadly as plague." Circe is born to the sun god Helios and the nymph Perse. As far as goddesses go, she is unremarkable in every way; no beauty, no powers, and the insufferable voice of a mortal. She is the shame of her family and seems destined to remain so... Until the day comes when she realizes she can use herbs to bend life to her will. Circe isn't just a goddess, she's a witch and like most witches she must be punished for it and is sentenced to exile by Zeus and her own father. In college I had The Odyssey and The Iliad as required reading for a literature class that I had thought I'd enjoy taking at the time I enrolled in it... Spoiler alert, I finished neither the story nor the class. Thankfully Madeline Miller managed to write a Greek epic that was told in relative time lapse, meaning just because a story spans a thousand years doesn'...

Book Beginnings on Fridays by Rose City Reader -  Share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. "When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist." Circe by Madeline Miller I'm currently reading Circe and it's delightful. It's a retelling of a Greek myth about a witch-goddess but I can't tell you much more about it because I've never actually heard of Circe before... I resisted googling the story behind the story because I want to keep the ending a surprise. Seeing that The Song of Achilles was a tragedy, I'm assuming that this one is too, but I don't know yet. Book Blogger Hop Q: What are some of your favorite books to re-read? (submitted by Nicole @ The Christian Fiction Girl) A: Call of the Wild is at the top of the list, I think I have it memorized. There's Let the Right One In and The Fall of ...

I'm late to the party with my Reflections  this year; to be honest, I totally forgot about it. Last year, I had expressed a bit of dissatisfaction with my A-Z experience. While I had found some great blogs to follow, the traffic to my own blog hadn't really increased to make the effort worth my time. I wasn't sure I was even going to bother this year. But this year I did participate in the blogging challenge and was surprised to find that I did have an increase in traffic (woohoo). I'm not blind, I can see I'm a small fish in a big pond, but sometimes it's nice to meet new people. For some reason, I'm not quite sure why, I recommended a lot of dark or scary books even though I'm not predominantly a horror reader. I went through my GoodReads list and randomly picked books in alphabetical order, and coincidentally I had a few that shared vibes. I also posted nonfiction, sci-fi, and fantasy, and one book that somehow straddled the line between true-crime a...

As titled this is the list of books I reviewed for the 2025 A-Z Challenge in the order that I posted them (alphabetically). The Abominable by Dan Simmons Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey Carving Shadows into Gold by Brigid Kemmerer The Desolations of Devil's Acre by Ransom Riggs Elphie by Gregory Maguire Flyboy by Kasey LeBlanc Gone South by Robert McCammon Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall Leech by Hiron Ennes Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer Native Dancer by John Eisenberg The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones Pines by Blake Crouch Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips Rakkety Tam by Brian Jacques Spare by Prince Harry Training Strategies for Dressage Riders by Charles de Kunffy The Unidentified by Colin Dickey The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher X = Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer Yea...

  "This is how we sometimes lose people: not all at once, but little by little, like the wind blowing specks of pollen from a flower." The Land of Lost Things is the long-awaited sequel to The Book of Lost Things. The Book of Lost Things is one of my favorite books and is located on my Top Ten Books to Get Lost on a Deserted Island With list. Having never reviewed The Book of Lost Things , I feel compelled to tell you a little about it first. The Book of Lost Things is about a boy named David; his mother dies and his father remarries. Increasingly unhappy with his homelife, that now includes an infant half-brother, he falls deeper into the stories that bring him comfort... Until he accidentally opens the door to Elsewhere. In a world beyond his own, he finds fairytales and monsters reminiscent of The Brothers Grimm . I know certain adults have the compulsion for lumping all fantasy novels in with YA, but this book was not aimed at young adults. This book is a coming-of-age...

Happy Sunday! I hope you are all having a great weekend! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by the Caffeinated Reviewer. I'll be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I'll hope you'll join me. Spring is going to bleed seamlessly into Summer in my neck of the woods, jumping in temps from 40 degrees to 80... and I sense the summer is going to be a hot one (that's climate change for you) so I'll take extra enjoyment in cool summer nights out by the firepit. Yesterday I went for my once-a-year gambling excursion. Every year I try my luck, betting the Kentucky Derby. The secret is I have no luck. Whatever horse I pick usually comes in last. This year I picked up two Win, Place or Show tickets... One for Sandman and the other for Luxor Cafe. I'm the curse they never saw coming. Sandman wound up in 7th, Luxor Cafe 12th. In the month of April, I competed in the A-Z Challenge and completed it. Yay me! If you are interested in what books I posted about...

Book Beginnings on Fridays  by  Rose City Reader  -  Share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. "Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue - there was a mother whose daughter was stolen from her. Oh, she could still see the girl... But the child was silent, and her eyes remained closed." The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly I absolutely loved John Connolly's book The Book of Lost Things so when the sequel came out, The Land of Lost Things , I rushed out to get it. If you liked the stories of the brothers Grimm, you'll like these books too (most likely). They're about people who get swept away into the darkest of fairytales. Book Blogger Hop Q:   What's your typical process for writing a book review, from reading the book to publishing the review on your blog? (submitted by Page @ Pa...