Comfort Reads: The Best of My Pandemic Reading

I don't know about you, but I've read a lot of comfort reads over the last two years during the course of the pandemic.

What sorts of books have been comfort books for me?

Poetry Books like...

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver and

100 Poems to Break Your Heart

Picture Books like...

Soaked by Abi Cushman and 

Mel Fell by Corey Tabor and

The ABCs of Black History and

Potato Pants by Laurie Keller

Nonfiction Books like...

Leave Only Footprints: My Acacia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park and

The Common Good by Richard Reich and 

Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day

Classics from My Classics Club List like...

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford and 

Tarka the Otter and 

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and

Favorite Folktales from Around the World and

Parnassas on Wheels and

David Copperfield

Humorous Books like...

Right Ho, Jeeves and 

Strange Planet and 

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Rereads of Favorites like...

The Hobbit and 

All Creatures Great and Small and

Anne of Green Gables

1001 Children's Books like...

Girl of the Limberlost and

Knight's Fee by Rosemary Sutcliff and

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Contemporary Fiction like...

A Gentleman in Moscow and 

The Portable Veblen and 

Klara and the Sun and

The Girl with the Louding Voice and

The Firekeeper's Daughter

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.  

Take Me Away, Love Stories: Love Stories (I Recently Read) That I Love

I'm just not a fan of most genre fiction. But I make an exception for romance novels. 

And what better time to read a romance than now, during this pandemic. 

Here are some recently-read love stories I love. 

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donohue

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

The Switch by Beth O'Leary

Poldark by Winston Graham

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand 

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

I've done lots of other Top Ten Tuesday lists of love stories:

Eleven Favorite Love Stories in Books

♥♥♥Love Stories I Love♥♥♥

Love Stories for People Who Gag on Romance Novels

Love Stories I Love (and Hate)

159 Love Books I Have Read

Top Ten Book Romances I Think Would Make It in the Real World

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Moonlight Over Paris, Love à la Mode, and Rosetta Stone: Français

Paris in July has begun, and everything on my blog has been dunked in a pot of Paris. I've finished my first two books set in Paris, Moonlight Over Paris and Love à la Mode. Moonlight Over Paris is a novel of historical fiction of an English art student who meets and falls in love with an American journalist. Love à la Mode is a light YA romance about two teens who are accepted into an esteemed French cooking school. Have you ever eaten an entire bag of chocolates? You know how I feel right now.

I'll try some nonfiction as a palate-cleanser.  A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War, and Enlightenment and Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris sound promising.

Last week I won three books. Wow! Kathy from BermudaOnion's Weblog let me know that I had won The Shortest Way Home by Miriam Parker, the story of a young woman who impulsively gives up her dream life to take a job as marketing a family-run winery in Sonoma. There has been lots of praise for this novel from Real Simple to Newsday to Library Journal. Bryan at Still an Unfinished Person told me I'd won Claudia Rankine's Citizen and The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne in his Big Five-Oh Book Giveaway. Citizen was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, the winner of the NAACP Image Award, the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize, and the winner of the PEN Open Book Award, and it's been touted as both poetry and essay. The Heart's Invisible Furies is by the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It's described as "a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland," and it is also the recipient of several book awards. I eagerly look forward to reading all three of these books.

Take a look at The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years, if you haven't already.

I wrote everything Paris this week on my blog:

Favorite French Childhood Favorites

I Forgot to Tell You I Went to Paris Last Month

The Jump Back July Action Calendar from Action for Happiness has daily suggested actions to do throughout July 2019 to help you be more resilient and find ways to cope with life's ups and downs. You can download it as an image file for sharing via social media or a PDF file for printing. 

The Marmalade Gypsy shared some of her favorite specialty shops in Paris here.

I'm making my way through Rosetta Stone: Français. I used Rosetta Stone nine years ago as I prepared for my first trip to Paris. When I got the discs out this week, Level 1 was missing. Oh well. I decided to start with Level 2. Why not?

What did you do last week?

Did you start any good books? Share them with us.

Have you seen anything bookish you'd like to tell us about?

I invite you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. Visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there.

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

My Favorite Books Published in the Last Ten Years

Thank you, Anne of Head Full of Books, for suggesting this list of our favorite books released in the last ten years, with one book for each year. 

Best Book Published in 2018:  American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee

Best Book Published in 2017:  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Best Book Published in 2016:  Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

Best Published in 2015:  Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina

Best Book Published in 2014: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Best Book Published in 2013:  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Best Book Published in 2012:  We Sinners by Hanna Pylväinen

Best Book Published in 2011:  I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

Best Book Published in 2010:  Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration  by Isabel Wilkerson

Best Book Published in 2009: Life-size Zoo: From Tiny Rodents to Gigantic Elephants, an Actual-size Animal Encyclopedia by Teruyuki Komiya

Here are the complete lists of the books I loved in the last ten years:

Best Books I Read in 2018

My Favorite Books of 2017: 53 Books You Must Read Now

Top Ten Best Books of 2016

Best Books I Read in 2015

Best Books of 2014

Best of 2013

Best of 2012

Top Ten Favorite Books I Read in 2011

Top Ten Books I Read in 2010

The Post In Which I Brag About How Many Books I Read in 2009

What were your favorites of the last ten years?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

The First Books I Reviewed: The Haiku Review Years

Do you remember book reports?

Book reports were big when I was growing up in the sixties. 

In first grade, we were asked to write a sentence about each book we read. For that, we got a star on our reading chart. I had more stars than anyone else in first grade. I was proud of that. I read lots and lots of books about Dick and Jane and Sally, I remember. I have no record of what I wrote about those books. I liked them, though.

In sixth grade, we were asked to read a book a week and to write a one-page summary of the book. Were we allowed to read anything we wanted? Oh no, this was 1967, and we were required to read fifteen history books and fifteen biographies as well as fifteen books about science and nature. We were not allowed to read fiction; fiction was considered too easy, something we would be doing anyway. I plugged away through books about Genghis Khan and the Silk Road and Alexander the Great. After a steady diet of fiction in my early elementary years, I found to my surprise that I loved nonfiction.

There was more required reading in high school and college, but again I have no record of those books. I remember some I loved (Don Quixote, Tom Sawyer, The Odyssey, The Metamorphosis), some I liked (Jane Eyre), and some I hated (Heart of Darkness). 

It wasn't until I joined the Book-a-Week online club back in the late 1990's that I started writing reviews of every book I read. I apparently thought I was writing some sort of clever haiku-ish reviews in those years. 

Read and grimace....

The first book review I wrote for which I have a record was for a fiction novel I read in January of 1998 called West of Venus by Judy Troy. Here is my complete review: "Holly Parker learns to love." No rating. 

Later in January of that year I read Catcher in the Rye. Here are my wise words about that novel: "Very true. Lots to think about." 4/5 stars.

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett, which I also read in January of 1998, I reviewed by writing: "Magic and tricks." 4/5 stars.

In February, I reviewed Animal Husbandry by Laura Zigman: "Old cow, new cow!" 3/5 stars. At least these words are evocative of the book.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks got "Sweet. Sad." with a generous 3/5 stars.

Visitors by Anita Brookner: "Old lady is lonely...." 3/5 stars.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, which I read in July, was a 4/5 star read for me. "Love it! Calories: 0"

I read several Barbara Kingsolver books that year including Animal Dreams in November. I could have probably put the same review for all the Kingsolver books: "A very wise book."

I seem to have read mostly forgettable fiction and light mysteries that first year of reviewing. But I did read a nonfiction book, Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy by Stephen L. Carter, that has always stayed with me. 5/5 stars. "The best book of the year." A better review of this book might have led to it being more widely read, and goodness knows, we could use that.

What are the first books you reviewed?

When did you start reviewing books?

Have you always written brilliant reviews?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

What Are You Reading Today?

RETIREMENT

It's not just the end of the school year for me; it's the end of my time as a school librarian. I'm retiring in two and a half weeks.

It was a nice little feeling of closure when a woman stopped by my library yesterday. She was in my very first class as a teacher, forty years ago, and her daughter came to our school when I was a librarian. She was at the school, helping her daughter register her granddaughter for next year. She was sad I wouldn't be there, but she was happy for me.

I'll never stop working to encourage literacy and critical thinking in this world, but it is time for me to pull over into the slow lane and spend some of my last years reading and thinking and writing on my own.

What do you think? Shall I take down my bun and toss aside my dowdy glasses and suit on my blog header? I need to contemplate this.

ITALY PREP

Much as my retirement looms closer, so does our trip to Italy. I was dismayed to discover that my suitcase has to be minuscule to fit in the overhead bins on Air France, so I had to purchase new baggage for the trip and I'll have to pack carefully to avoid going over the twenty-five pound weight limit.

My Duolingo is progressing nicely. I'm now 38% fluent in Italian.

I've now read and reviewed 13 books centering on Italy.

We have our agenda lightly planned for our two week trip. We are hoping to visit some museums and some historical sites, take a bike ride through the Tuscan vineyards, and take a cooking class in Lucca. We left lots of spaces for roaming and writing and painting while we are there.

It won't be long now.

What are you reading today?

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is now being hosted at The Book Date.