Get Lost in Literature

 I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme hosted by TheCaffienatedReviewer . I'll be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The weather in August was delightful. It was sunny and hot but not too hot. The nights were getting cooler signaling the end of summer, even though I'm not ready for it to end. And as much as I like October weather, I'm hoping September brings a few more hot days before we have to break out the windbreakers. I'm sorry to say this is probably my most boring Sunday Post ever. I've had a lot to be preoccupied by in the month of August and have not had time to post a darn thing. My blog was inactive for a whole month, and the number of books I finished is 0. In July I started The Book of Night by Holly Black and it's wound up paused at the halfway point for the month of August. I did just finish it though, I sped through it in the first week of September. I'm ho...

Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme, hosted by The Caffeinated Reviewer . I'll be posting the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The weather in July was beautiful, perfect for outdoor activities. The occasional thunderstorm rolled through mostly at night, a couple times while I was at work, and never on the weekends, so that was a highlight of the month. I've been reading Book of Night by Holly Black  but I'm a bit distracted. I found out that the barn where I board my horse will be sold, and I'm a bit too panicked over that to concentrate on my book. Who will it sell to? I've been downgraded to a pleasure rider due to my horse's age and health problems so we'd probably be evicted from a show barn were one to move in. And if the property ever sold to a developer we'd absolutely be told to get out. So I've been looking at alternative housing options, but the reality is I don't want to leave... I just might ha...

Happy Sunday! I hope you are all having a great weekend! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme hosted by The Caffeinated Reviewer. I'll be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. We had thirteen rainy weekends in a row, but the weather gods must have been looking out for me because it all cleared up in time for my vacation. We had a perfect weekend followed by a heatwave, which was fine with me because we were at a scenic coastal town, enjoying the breeze off the ocean. (This last photo isn't just a pretty view, it's an accurate depiction of the whale watch I went on.) I'm not usually much for heatwaves, but I can't say I hated my lazy days at the beach; reading and swimming and reading some more. And even though there were no whales on my whale watch, it was a pretty nice boat ride. And what was I reading? Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo . It will be my first review of July, so be sure to drop by tomorrow if you want to know more ab...

Happy Sunday! I hope you're all having a great weekend! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme hosted by The Caffeinated Reviewer . I'll be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. I swear it has rained every weekend since my last Sunday Post. I couldn't hold off working on my garden any longer, so I worked outside in the wet and dreary weather when I usually spend those days in my rocking chair with a book. But it's the first day in June and June is a very busy month (and usually beautiful, so here's hoping). Father's Day is headed our way, as is mine and my brother's birthdays, and the annual family vacation. Hopefully the vacation is rain free because I don't want to be trapped in a hotel room for the better part of a week. It does look like I'm reducing my reading time to one book a month right now, having taken most of May to finish Circe by Madeline Miller , which wasn't that big a book. I've stopped work...

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...

Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by the Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. Spring here has definitely sprung and sprung with a leak. We've been having lots of rain showers, enough to keep me inside, but not enough to end the drought. I wish the water would rise again and cover those gross stains on rocks and shorelines as they normally do, but I also wish the rain would go away and leave me to my outdoor activities. I'm ready for the winter hibernation to be at an end. Right now, I'm reading at a leisurely pace to avoid burning out, spending my current reading time with The Land of Lost Things.  I am enjoying it so far, although time will tell whether or not it's good as its predecessor The Book of Lost Things.  On the subject of aforementioned burn out, I ended last year in a reading slump and am trying to find a better balance between blogging, reading, and life so it doe...

  Happy Sunday! I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend! The Sunday Post is a news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. It's March! In February we got a small snowstorm followed by a bitter, howling wind that froze the snow solid, turning the yard into skating rink. But it's March and that's almost in the past now, as Spring approaches and the yard starts to thaw. Does anyone else think the day of Spring Forward should be a National Holiday? I posted two reviews in the last month: American Pharoah by Joe Drape Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros I feel pretty good about being 5 books into my yearly reading goal of 12. I haven't posted all of the reviews for them because some of them are going to count towards my A-Z Blogging Challenge in April. I'm reading the book for Q now, Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips , and am using the 'sample' feature on Amazon to audition book...

  Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The month of January was a cold one, and I mean cold ... we had one day with a high of 8 degrees and a real feel of -2. And I know that out there, there are places that get colder. This is not the coldest place on earth, not even the coldest place in the USA, but for us it was 'frickin' freezin' in here, Mr. Bigglesworth.' My reading month has been a bit slow, I've been working a lot of overtime lately. I started reading American Pharoah  by Joe Drape,  but it's slow going; that's got nothing to do with the quality of the story as it's quite good, but with the sentimentality of the reader. (It keeps making me cry.) I'm also reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros,  late to the party, I know. I did get at least two reviews posted in January.  Carving Shadows into Gold by Brigid Kemmere...

Happy New Year! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. I hope you are all doing well, and are as excited about the New Year as I am. I'm welcoming it in with a recap of last year and my goals for 2025. In 2024, I challenged myself to read 12 books. I know it's not a flashy number, but I figure if I'm doing one a month I'm doing alright. I'm happy that not only did I meet my goal of 12 books, I exceeded it by reading 33, a grand total 14,755 pages. Last year I had set aside some reading goals (other than book count) to help keep my reading habits organized. I wanted to read only from my TBR list, except for when following up previously started series, or rereading prequels to their sequels. And while I did read some from my TBR, I added in a few ARCs and a handful of rereads during the busier holiday months. I'm proud to say, even though I didn'...

  Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer. I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. We're in drought. We live in an area that's never seen forest fires and yet we've seen forest fires. We got a couple of days of rain and it wasn't enough to consider the drought broken. Everybody has been advised not to run their wood stoves or fire pits... and naturally you can't actually advise anyone on anything anymore so people are doing whatever it is they want instead of worrying about burning the woods down (or their neighbor's house.) I feel like we're either going to get no snow at all this year or we're going to get hammered with it. The books I've read in November were both rereads. I reread The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. I don't plan to post the review of The Night Circus because it's already been posted.  But A...

Happy Sunday!  The Sunday Post is a weekly news meme created by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The weather for the month of October was chilly, colder and damper than I remember of last year's October. Windier too. The leaves dropped off the trees like orange bolts of lightning. I'm wondering if it's a sign of the winter to come. The books I read in October were theme reads because Halloween is my favorite holiday. So today my review list presents a lovely assortment of witches and murderers. Books I reviewed in October were: Elphie: A Wicked Childhood by Gregory Maguire  (expected pub. date: 3/25/25) The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones The Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell In other news, someone stole my blog layout, and I'm not inspired to change my blog to accommodate the theft. I like the blues, blacks, and grays, I like my banner, I like my choices. I'm not sure what led t...

  Happy Sunday and welcome to my Sunday Post. The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of every month and I hope you'll join me. My weather report for the month of September is 'delightfully sunny.' But there's been a chill in the evening air that wasn't there before, leaving an undeniable truth: Summer is over. My posts were few for the month. My cable provider wants us to update the boxes and our punishment for failure to comply is that our internet doesn't work as often as it should. The company is living life old-school with a, "You want it, come and get it." I'm just not desperate enough...yet. The reviews I did manage to get posted were: Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey (available 2/11/2025) The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty My reviews for the month of October will include and ARC of  Elphie by Gre...

Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of every month and I hope you'll join me. August is over already :-( And this year's August had October's weather so it really felt like summer was on its way out. Don't get me wrong, I like winter well enough. I can always add more layers unlike when it's hot and I'm only legally allowed to take off so much... But still, I always miss my short-sleeved Ts and feeling the heat on my skin. It was a slow reading month for me again. It felt like it took me forever to get through The Abominable , and yet I flew through  City of Brass with wild abandon. It was such a slow month that I didn't even have a review to post for the 5th of August. I've been shirking my reading for more active outdoor activities while the weather is nice. I picked up a ton of new books this month. I recieved two ARCs: Elphie by Gregory Maguire  (one of my favorite a...

  Happy Sunday!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of every month and I hope you'll join me. July has been a hot and humid month that drove me to do the thing I never do: wear shorts. My legs were so white all who beheld them will have retina scarring for life. It was a slow reading month for me; two of my reviews were recycled (new to the blog, but not new to life) and all the reviews were brief instead of the novellas I normally write. I just started The Abominable by Dan Simmons and   I'm hoping it's as good as his novels  The Terror  and Summer of Nights . So far it's been okay; I keep expecting something scary to happen and it's just been men and a mountain. We'll see. I've still got a copy of  The City of Brass by SA Chakraborty waiting to be read so that'll probably happen after The Abominable . The books I reviewed in July were: Flyboy by Kasey LeBlanc Salvage the B...

  Happy Sunday!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of every month and I hope you'll join me. Summer is here and it's hot and I'm okay with that. I just spent my vacation at a lovely beach, I swam in the ocean and didn't get eaten by a shark but I did get sunburn everywhere the sunblock couldn't reach.  I bought three books before heading off to the beach:  Babel by R.F.Kuang,   The City of Brass by SA Chakraborty, and  The Abominable by Dan Simmons. I had a tough decision to make: which to read first. I started with Babel,  and have found it surprising in its content.  In June, I reviewed the following stories: Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer The Unidentified by Colin Dickey A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall Rakkety Tam by Brian Jacques This month I finished reading  Flyboy  by Kasey LeBlanc , and already posted the review on the 1st. The ...

Hello and happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month. Firstly, I am happy to announce that Spring has finally arrived in my neck of the woods (just in time for Summer). I thought it was going to be cold forever. The sun has come out on multiple occasions and I've even been able to wear a couple of short sleeved Ts. My reading for the month of May was light, both in quantity and subject matter. Rakkety Tam by Brian Jacques, a children's novel, was the first book in my hands at the start of May. The last book in my hands during May was  The Unidentified by Colin Dickey. I reviewed the following stories: Spare by Prince Harry The Desolations of Devil's Acre by Ransom Riggs The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman , Tony Moore Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey This month I plan to review the following (not necessarily in this order): Rakkety Tam by Brian Jacques Dun...

  Good morning! The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month. As the first order of business, the weather: Balmy with hail and a chance of raining frogs. That's enough of that. April was eventful. I participated in the A-Z Challenge  (link's to their blog), a blog hop where participants have to post for one letter of the alphabet every day in the month of April (except Sunday). Blog posts can be themed or un-themed and on any topic your heart desires...I chose to post book reviews, some old and some new. So in the month of April, I posted reviews for the following 26 novels: Master list for the A-Z Challenge and my A-Z Reflections are here.   In April, I also made time to read The Desolations of Devil's Acre by Ransom Riggs and was inspired by a fellow book bloggers to try my very first graphic novel, The Walking Dead Vol. 1 by Robert Kirkman. This month I plan to review the following:...

  Happy Sunday! Welcome to my Sunday Post, a weekly blog news meme hosted by caffeinatedbookreviewer . I'll be posting the first Sunday of each month and I hope you join me. For my monthly weather report, there's only one thing I want to say: infinite rain. The month of March was decidedly uneventful. I skipped a week of blogging, the 17th through the 24th (not that I'm Ms. Consistency) to acquaint myself with Kindle Paperwhite, on which I immediately downloaded Spare by Prince Harry.  We had a very happy Easter, I hope you did too. I did wind up reviewing the following stories in March: The Conference of the Birds by Ransom Riggs Salem's Cipher by Jess Lourey The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie This month, I'm participating in April's A-Z Challenge  and will be posting 26 different reviews for each letter of the alphabet, so my regularly schedule Monday Reviews will be on hold until May. Some of my A-Z posts will recap past reviews, others will be entirely new...

   Happy Sunday! Welcome to my Sunday Post, a weekly blog news meme hosted by  caffeinatedbookreviewer . My blog is on the small side, so I decided I'll only be posting the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. The month of February has been eventful. I've had some wild weather in my neck of the woods: real feel listed as 11 degrees one day, switching to 60s and endless rain, and then to dry windstorms that brought trees down. I successfully managed not to freeze, drown, or fly. I became an aunt to a beautiful niece, who just narrowly escaped being a leap year baby, and I'm pretty excited about her arrival. My Kindle Touch was finally lost to the ravages of time but was replaced swiftly with a Kindle Paperwhite. I also reviewed the following stories: Lethal White by Robet Galbraith Training Strategies for Dressage Riders by Charles de Kunffy What Feasts at Night by T.Kingfisher (just released!) Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith I originally planned to ...

Good afternoon! This is my first ever Sunday Post, a weekly blog news meme hosted by  caffeinatedreviewer . I probably don't have enough content to post every Sunday, but I hope if you are following me, you'll appreciate the attempt. It's a beautiful day today, not a cloud in the sky and a sweltering 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm about to put on my thermals and go out for some fresh air. If you've been following me you probably know that I started reading Training Strategies for Dressage Riders by  Charles de Kunffy,  like three years ago. I picked it up and put it down every time I needed a break from fiction. I don't really know if it's good to admit it took three years to finish a book, but there it is.  I've had an ambitious start to 2024, reading three books right off the bat, although I'm counting the aforementioned dressage manual as one of the three (is that cheating?). I've also already managed one book this February. So I've got revie...