Leslie's Bookcase

celebrating books & the literary lifestyle

Category: Reading Lifestyle (Page 1 of 3)

I have no idea when or where I acquired this book but it's been in my bookcase for some time.

After sitting in my bookcase for years this book surprised me!

June 23, 2024 /

Last week I was headed to the pool so I wanted to grab a paperback I owned – the iPad gets too heated, and I didn’t want to ruin a library book.

So I headed to my bookcases and pulled out

The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

I had no idea what this book was about (somehow I also missed the movie!!) and was expecting some sort of slow family drama…but the recommendation on the front cover promised a “page turner” so I decided to give it a try.

The book ended up blowing me away.

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MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022!

December 17, 2022 /

I had a slow start to reading in 2022 and remember wondering if I would even find five new books to strongly recommend by the end of the year (as is my tradition).

But by early fall I was finishing one really good read after another, and I had to give some thought before narrowing it down to five of my favorites (published in 2022). Some of these books I finished so recently that I haven’t had a chance to post about them individually.

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MY FAVORITE TRAVEL BOOKS

June 23, 2022 /

I want to share my favorite travel books. These are the books I browse through over and over to plan and dream about vacations.

If you read this blog often you already know that I love planning vacations. And because the actual vacation usually includes driving and/or flying, and relaxing, vacations and BOOKS go so well together.

Related post: My four book vacation.

Most recently I wrote about trips to Jamaica and Memphis.

I love reading travel books, and this is one of my favorite sections in the library; I always have a couple of books borrowed from this section! But these books I’m listing below, I actually own, and I use them again and again.

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New historical fiction sitting next to the book that inspired it.

‘THE PARIS BOOKSELLER’

February 20, 2022 /

As if this title wasn’t compelling enough – Paris + Books – this new historical fiction chronicles the history of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company, a literary home to American expatriates and famous writers in the 1920s, focusing on the life of its founder Sylvia Beach.

The book was additionally fascinating to me because it tells how Beach published Ulysses when it was banned in America. (I wrote my master’s thesis on Ulysses.) Very rarely – maybe once before – can I recommend a modern work of historical fiction that is related to the excruciating, yet brilliant book that I studied in detail.

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BEST OF 2021 – FAVORITE BOOKS & MOST POPULAR POSTS

December 29, 2021 /

Towards the end of 2021 I ran into some reading blocks and didn’t recommend any new books for a couple of months. At that point I was feeling a bit let down about the year’s reading UNTIL I looked back over my posts from earlier in the year and remembered I did read a lot of really good books.

Here are my favorite books published (and links to posts about them) in 2021 in no particular order:

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MY FOUR BOOK VACATION

July 19, 2021 /

I’m pausing my travel posts to tell you about the four books I read on vacation.

Previous Post: Mesa Verda National Park

Previous Post: Durango, Colorado

Due to the nature of the vacation, I brought three different types of books: 1) Library book – don’t want to take to pool, so this was mainly for passenger seat reading 2) Kindle version to read at night, to not keep lights on that bother others and 3) older paperbacks I can take to the pool.

I was able to read a lot in all of these circumstances, especially since we drove around 20 hours each direction. So I’m sharing four book recommendations (two are older books and two are newer releases):

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Selfie with my beloved bookcases before I sold that house.

THE TIME I BOUGHT A HOUSE FOR ITS BOOKCASES

May 16, 2021 /

In 2005, I had no business buying a house. But I felt like that was the next logical step to make me into a responsible adult.

Much like today, the market was hot. Houses were overpriced, and you had to get an offer in immediately or the house wouldn’t be available the next day.

I strongly considered a house in another part of town. But they declined my offer. When I drive by that house, even today, I wonder how my life would have turned out differently if they had accepted my offer. Because I’m so glad they didn’t.

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The New York Public Library, the setting of my most recent read. Photo Credit: Mandy Burkhart.

BOOKS SET IN LIBRARIES

September 30, 2020 /

I love my local library and use it to borrow many the books I read and write about on this blog. Just recently I borrowed a book about a library from my library:

The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel by Fiona Davis

The title refers to the lion statues outside the New York Public Library. Not being familiar with New York City, I didn’t even realize the setting when I put this book on my late summer reading list but added it because I have previously enjoyed Fiona Davis books.

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