Leslie's Bookcase

celebrating books & the literary lifestyle

Page 9 of 29

‘DEAR EDWARD’

At the end of 2019 I used one of my favorite Twitter hashtags – #AskALibrarian – to ask for new book recommendations with these qualities:

– a page turner

– book you can’t stop thinking about

– book that added something to your life

One of the recommendations I received – Dear Edward: A Novel by Ann Napolitano – was being released in 2020 so I immediately added it to my early 2020 release reading list.

And I’m posting today to say that YES, this is a book worth reading that met my qualifications above.

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MY THOUGHTS ON ‘AMERICAN DIRT’

I put American Dirt on my early 2020 reading list before I knew of any controversy and because it was promoted as “The Grapes of Wrath for our times.”

And the controversy, which I do understand, doesn’t change the fact that, for me, American Dirt was a great read. Meaning that I could have been accused of ignoring everyone and anything else while I finished it over this past weekend. The last novels I remember being so consuming are This Tender Land and Where the Crawdads Sing. So for me, this novel is in good company based on the personal experience I had reading it.

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‘MISTRESS OF THE RITZ’ & PARASITE

I haven’t posted about a book for awhile because I’ve haven’t read much since the new year. I’ve been pretty busy with other activities and also took the time to watch all the best picture nominations for the Academy Awards. I was so happy to see Parasite win best picture. If you haven’t seen Parasite (English Subtitled) you can watch on Amazon Prime (click on picture below). Even though I liked all the movies I saw, except Joker which I couldn’t finish, Parasite is the only one I am excited to experience again, and I will soon when I make my husband watch it!!

But I’m logging in today to tell you about the book I’ve been slowly reading since the new year. At first I thought that maybe I wasn’t liking this book so much because I was reading it very slowly. But after fully experiencing it and finding out it was inspired by real people and of course a real place, I am going to recommend it:

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NEW BOOKS TO READ IN EARLY 2020

Usually I don’t publish a reading list until “Spring” but I had to put this together NOW because SO MANY intriguing books are being released early in the year.

Here they are, new titles for early 2020 that I’ll be reading. Publishers notes in boxes and click on the title or picture to take you to Amazon. I hope you see something interesting you will read along with me!

American Dirt: A Novel by Jeanine Cummins

Already being hailed as “a Grapes of Wrath for our times” and “a new American classic,” Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.


The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.


Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

An extraordinary memoir of drama, tragedy, and royal secrets by Anne Glenconner–a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. As seen on Netflix’s The Crown.

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A Post About a Chair

This post is from my own archives from a different, older blog. Watching This is Us and Rebecca’s memories of cradling Randall as the sun came up reminded me of savoring my own children in a certain chair.

(From 2014)

I am writing this so I can throw away an old chair.

When I moved to Dallas, Texas after college not knowing a soul in that city, I bought a small chair/loveseat set at Pier One for $500 total – a lot for me at the time, especially for something so itty bitty, but it fit perfectly in my first itty bitty apartment at 17878 Preston Road.  

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MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019

As has become tradition (I am now at the end of my fourth year of running this blog) I enjoy looking back on my year of reading to remember and recommend my favorite books of the year. To keep my process consistent from year to year I only consider books published within the past year.

My five favorite books of 2019:

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‘THE LIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE UNIVERSE’

I added The Lightest Object in the Universe: A Novel to my fall reading list because I liked the idea of a apocalyptic novel with hope.

A debut novel by Kimi Eiselle, it tells the story of two people who were beginning to fall in love when the $hit hits the fan. The power grid in the United States is down, and they can’t communicate (or do most anything the same way they used to). So one starts walking across the country to find the other.

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‘A WARNING’

Following his or her shocking, bombshell essay in the New York Times last year, an anonymous senior official in the Trump administration has gone into more detail in this new book: A Warning.

Our first question is: Who is writing this book? After reading it, I cannot tell you who it is though I expect we will know soon enough, surely this person will come clean and claim some fame sometime in the next 1 – 5 years when we have a new president.

I can tell you that the author is a lifelong republican. He or she is deeply trusted in the administration. He or she sees Trump on a daily basis, when he emerges each morning from his “prime tweeting hour.” He or she began to question loyalty to the President after John McCain’s death and what he or she saw as the President’s “spite” towards a dead man. He or she has a great interest in history. This person claims to have stayed in the administration to try and guide the president’s impulses as best as one can. However, this author wants Donald Trump voted out of office in November of 2020 and has written this book to help that cause.

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‘THIS TENDER LAND’

Only a couple times a year (if I’m lucky) do I read a book that is nearly perfect to me like This Tender Land: A Novel by William Kent Kreuger.

By perfect (to me) I mean that every day I am thinking “All I want to do is read this book.” Also it has to provide artistic value (more on this below) and hit me emotionally.

This book is set in 1932 Minnesota when four kids flee a horrible home for orphaned Native American children and set off in a canoe towards the Mississippi River. Their intended destination is St. Louis, and along the way they meet other adrift Americans and lost souls, some good and some bad, but most are, as in real life, complicated. It is written as a memoir, from an older man looking back on this astounding, hazardous adventure.

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NEW BOOKS TO READ THIS FALL & WINTER

It’s already November and I hate to say it but I’ve not been super excited about too many of the books I’ve read thus far in 2019. I think (hope) I’m yet to find my favorite book(s) of the year. Maybe it will be on this fall and winter reading list below, which includes sequels and more fantastical than usual (for me). Although I gravitated towards all the tantalizing new fiction, I did include a memoir and some non-fiction about an insect!

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