celebrating books & the literary lifestyle
I love reading historical fiction set in places I’ve traveled!
Several years ago we stopped at Laguna Beach during an epic west coast summer road trip to Ashland (Oregon), the Redwoods, San Francisco, and Disneyland. As I obsessively planned this vacation, I kept adding stops, and I realized I didn’t want to miss out on seeing a beach! So I picked Laguna because it seemed artsy and low key.
Laguna Beach vacation -post from the archives!
Continue readingCuba is a recurring theme on this blog; I definitely look at any book with this country in the title or description!
Today I’m writing about a book that was different than anything I’ve read before even though I’ve circled around similar topics, genres, and locations.
Chanel Cleeton’s books tend to focus on Cuban families forced to flee the political turmoil of their homeland, and I have loved and recommended several of them.
So when I was approved by NetGalley to receive a download of her newest book, The Cuban Heiress, in exchange for an honest review, I wanted to shout out in joy! As a bookblogger, we can request early access to certain books but because I have a smaller blog, I don’t always get all the books I request.
Although this new book isn’t my favorite of her books (and I will note my favorites below), it was a solid, entertaining read, and I recommend it!
Continue readingToday’s post is a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer who passed away this week.
One of his most popular songs “If You Could Read My Mind” is a favorite of mine. I once had it on a “create” playlist – songs that make me want to write or just feel inspired and appreciative of the beauty of music.
I’m grateful I got to see him sing this song (and others) in person several years ago.
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On spring break vacation, I started reading a long, epic book, but this book is so long and so epic (I’m really building the suspense on this one) I need a lot of time to process every page and every chapter. Thus, I have thus resorted to multi-booking and am updating my spring reading list with short reviews as I go, while I read and enjoy the epic book slowly.
So today I’m going to tell you about our spring break cruise!
Continue readingI am in the midst of reading a 900-page epic (more on this later) so I won’t be able to read and recommend any new books for a while, but I do have a list of books ready for spring reading:
Continue readingI just finished a third enjoyable book about Jackie Kennedy, so I want to get all of these recommendations in the same place for any other readers who, like me, find her to be a timeless, fascinating topic.
Her composure and class were what I was always drawn to (in addition to my obsession with her husband). These three books focus on who she was without JFK because they take place before she met him, during courtship, and after his death.
Continue readingI use the beginning of the new year to catch up on popular books I missed from the previous year, survey new releases for spring, and to complete my annual quest to watch all the Academy’s best picture nominations. With all of this going on, I already have several recommendations to share:
Continue readingI 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.
Continue readingI’m bringing two book recommendations to you today – both of these are new releases off of my fall reading list.
One is a climate fiction (what happens when Florida is no longer sustainable) and the other is one of my favorite genres, WWII historical fiction, but a specific horror I had not read about before.
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