Book Review: Orphan Train
This is a quick and easy read. It is an interesting story of upheaval and resilience, even though the writing style is overly simplistic.
4 Star books
Book Review: The Bookseller of Kabul
I wouldn’t say this book is enjoyable, but it certainly is enlightening. It gives you a glimpse of everyday life before, during, and after the Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
Book Review: Painted Horses
This novel was a refreshing change of time and place for me. It was set mostly in the mid 1950’s in Montana. The wild west was tipping toward a new era, where history and tradition would clash with progress.
Book Review: Delicious!
I really enjoyed this light book about a young woman with an amazingly discerning palate. She can taste anything and tell you what is in it and what it needs.
Book Review: Realistic Abstracts
This book is better than most of its kind. I give it 4 stars. You can see below both paintings and instruction in it that I thought worth considering.
Book Review: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
I really liked this light book about a bookstore owner who is brought back to life after mourning the loss of his first wife. Not only does he find love again, but in unexpected places!
Book Review: Three Junes
There are three stories in this book (hence the title) with overlapping characters revolving around a Scottish family of three boys.
Book Review: The Rosie Project
I really enjoyed this fun, light read. It is written from the unconventional point of view of an unusually awkward, smart professor…
Book Review: The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
If you enjoy history, art, or Paris, you would enjoy this book if you can stick with it. Whoever you are, reading this book is a project that you’ll be glad to have done. It makes me wonder, am I really deeply living and seizing the day in my own time?
Book Review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
This is a remarkable historical novel set at the cusp of the nineteenth century on the Dutch trading post of Dejima outside Nagasaki, Japan.
Book Review: Cooked
I became a fan of Michael Pollan’s over his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma which was a watershed read for me. This new book from him I enjoyed but found more spotty and laborious to get through than the former one.
Book Review: Schooled
It was a quite scathing expose– in novel form –of the world of the elite New York City private schools: their teachers, students, parents, and tutors.
Book Review: The Burgess Boys
I give it four stars as well; I am glad I read it, even though it is not really a “fun” book but rather one that is humanizing in a tough, good way.
Book Review: Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
Unexpectedly, I really enjoyed this fun, light book, and give this romping novel four stars.
Book Review: Longbourn
I enjoyed this new retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the servants point of view, with their own drama front and center, and the familiar Bennet’s storyline in the periphery. I’m surprised it took so long for one to be written, given the success of shows like Upstairs, Downstairs as well as Downton Abbey. This … Read more
Book Review: Prisoners of the Sea
One of the advantages of our approach toward homeschooling is that we created a culture of reading aloud as a family. Having not done this in a while, we…
Book Review: A Small Farm in Maine
I really enjoyed this small volume and give it four stars. I chose to read it for my memoir class in September, but lingered over it. Now, when I could no longer renew it, I was finally motivated to stop savoring it so slowly and get on with finishing it. It was especially lovely to … Read more