three : three : three

Today we're taking a little break from book recaps to do something fun. Back in the day, this is something I might have posted on a Casual Friday, and someday Casual Fridays might make a comeback on the blog. But since I've been pretty faithfully posting every Tuesday and Thursday since the beginning of the year—truly!—I thought I'd post it today. I'm calling it "three : three : three" but I can't take credit for thinking it up. I'm pretty sure I saw it on instagram. Without further ado...

three books I wish I'd never read

The girl on instagram (I wish I would have saved her post so I could link you back to it, but alas, I'm not internet savvy enough to find it again) called this the category "books she wished she DNF'd" (did not finish), but if I start a book, I finish it. And even though DNF-ing has its cheerleaders, I like that I see a book through. If I commit to reading something, it's usually something I really want to read, and it's also something I usually can at least appreciate even if it doesn't become a new favorite. So this was actually the easiest category to figure out. The books I chose immediately came to mind. So I'm changing it to "books I wish I'd never even heard of—much less read".

1 : The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

If you've been around for any length of time, you know that this is—without question—my most-hated book I've ever wasted the time to read. So many people that I actually know and that are good friends of mine actually had the gall to recommend this to me, and while I still love those people, I haven't forgiven them for this yet. If you're looking for a book by an Afghani author, read A House Without Windows instead. 

2 : The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

What led to my reading this book was a series of unfortunate events: a Disney movie trailer that looked good, excellent internet reviews, and a bit of naïveté on my part. What resulted was a horrible reading experience, and the movie wasn't even good either. But your girl's a bit wiser now. When I'm vetting a book that wasn't personally recommended by someone I actually know, I check out those one and two star reviews now. A better choice would be The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan. 

3 : The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This is one of those books I had to read because everyone thinks it's so amazing. It's on every list of books you must read to be well-read. It's called the "mother of dark academia" for crying out loud. Well, turns out "dark academia" is not for me. At least not The Secret History. This might be the most over-hyped book I've ever read. I'd say give Live Your Best Lie a try instead. While I wouldn't put it in the dark academia category, the vibes are the same. 

three books I wish I could read again for the first time

This category was a bit trickier for me. I am a big fan of re-reading my favorite books until they're literally falling apart in my hands. So, for me, a book with a great twist that I never saw coming would be the thing to qualify it for wanting a first-time experience all over again. If a book leaves me with a stupid grin on my face, or if you can hear me yelling "NO WAY!" as I turn the page, chances are I'd happily wipe my memory for another go-round. For that very reason, I won't expand too much on why I wish I could read these books for the first time because I hope you'll pick them up for yourself.

1 : The Partner by John Grisham

I went through a huge John Grisham phase in high school. The Partner is not one of his most famous, but it's my favorite to this day. I don't have a recap to share, because I read this long before my blogging days—it's been over 20 years, in fact!—but I still remember the way I felt when I got to the end of this book. What a twist!

2 : A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is not what I'd call "light reading" but there's a reason he was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. The way he brought every thread of this masterful story together at the end blew me away. I remember feeling heartbroken but simultaneously triumphant and a bit awed. If you only read one Charles Dickens in your whole life: let it be A Tale of Two Cities. 

3 : Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Clearly, a very recent addition but also the very first book that popped into my mind for this prompt. And not just because it's so fresh in my memory. Even as I was reading it, I was wishing I could experience it again blind. I went into this book knowing as close to nothing as I possibly could have and it was the best reading experience I've had in quite some time. Please, please, please read this book before you watch the movie.

three books that are high on my TBR

Obviously, this was the hardest category. So many books, so little time! Just in our home library, we have well over 700 unread books, and that's not even counting the wishlist of books I want but don't own...yet. My TBR (to be read) pile is completely out of control. And technically, as you'll see below, I didn't even narrow this down to just three books. None of these are even on my 2026 book list, but I plan on getting to at least two of them before this year is over. 

1 : Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace

I've been meaning to read Ben-Hur ever since the fourth grade when I read Anne of Green Gables for the very first time. Every time I read about my bosom friend Anne Shirley recounting to Marilla how she got caught by Miss Stacy reading Ben-Hur instead of studying her Canadian history—she had just gotten to the chariot race!—I think to myself, "I really need to read Ben-Hur." And I have a gorgeous edition sitting on my shelves that my brother and sister-in-law got me for Christmas a few years ago. When it comes to classics, Ben-Hur is at the top of my list. 

2 : The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

This isn't just one book, it's a whole new series I'm interested in. And I already own the first four volumes. Rumor has it that the author Beth Brower has planned this out be something like a 25-book saga. The ninth volume is set to be published sometime this year. So many of my most trusted book-recommenders have personally urged me to read these books, and my mom (who has already read all the ones I own) has affirmed I will love them. I can't wait to get started.

3 : The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

This is my next book-to-movie adaptation situation, and I just realized that book/movie combos have appeared in all three of these categories. I didn't plan that, but what can I say? Your girl loves a good book, but she also unapologetically loves a night at the movies. We have a few Peter Heller books in ye olde home library, but neither of us have read any of them yet. When the release for The Dog Stars adaptation was announced to be this August, I knew I'd be reading it before hopefully going to see the film. Cody's planning to read it too. 

And there you have it. 

three : three : three

What did you think? I'd love to hear your three : three : three down in the comments!

2017 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2017?

The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille

OR

Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager & Barbara Pierce Bush

OR

The Book of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall

OR

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan

For more background on what this is all about, click here.

To vote on Goodreads, click here.

Let's Bust a Recap : Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Despite the fact that I've had, not just one, but two copies of Lewis Carroll's most famous work sitting on my shelves for years (we got that Barnes & Noble edition in 2015 for our anniversary!), I just got around to actually reading these classics for the first time ever last week. And I have to tell you: it was not the best of times.

Both our copies contain both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—originally published in 1865—and Through the Looking-Glass—originally published in 1871. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was an immediate success upon publication and is now one of the best-known—and many scholars even say most important—works of Victorian literature. It has never been out of print and has been translated into 174 languages. Through the Looking-Glass did equally well, and both novels have been adapted for the screen, radio, ballet, opera, musical theater—even board games and theme parks! 

If you're unfamiliar with Carroll's greatest successes (which would be difficult to believe given their enduring popular appeal), in his first novel—a pillar in the genre of literary nonsense—Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. She grows to dizzying heights and shrinks into almost nothingness by eating or drinking different things, she cries a literal ocean of tears, she contends with the disappearing Cheshire cat, she plays an insane game of croquet in which the balls are live hedgehogs that get up and run away and the mallets are also live flamingos whose necks flop around, and sasses the King and Queen of Hearts who are constantly putting everyone on trial because the Queen can't stop screaming "Off with their heads!" at everyone she comes across. 

It's a strange, fever-dream of a story—a baby turns into a pig, for crying out loud!—and Through the Looking-Glass is much the same only this time, Alice enters a fantasy world through a large mirror and finds herself in a place where everything is backwards and she's trying to become a queen in a game of chess. She talks to live flowers, meets the severe Red Queen and the flustered White Queen, quarrels with Tweeledum and Tweedledee, discovers how rude Humpty Dumpty is, and finally becomes a queen herself at which point she is named the host of a chaotic banquet. 

I didn't particularly enjoy any of it. 

As I've said many a time, children's literature may be my very favorite genre in all of literature. I was expecting to at least appreciate Alice for its place in the canon, but instead of coming off as charming, Alice only read as strange to me. It was dark and weird and, at times, even unsettling. Alice herself was sometimes precocious but mostly bewildered, and while it was certainly imaginative, it wasn't imaginative in a fun or even particularly playful way. I just couldn't get into it, and I didn't care for it. Frankly, I'll never forgive Lewis Carroll—or shall we call him by his proper name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—for calling daisies the worst of the flowers, and for not making any of the flowers especially pleasant, for that matter! 

I guess none of this should come as a major shock to me since I always thought the classic animated Disney film was rather strange, and if Disney can't make something sparkle, then the source material must be pretty dark. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have both been picked apart and analyzed to death by critics and scholars the world over for all its symbolism, linguistic puns, mathematics, fantastical rules and games, and all the nonsense. I cannot be the least bit bothered with any of that, and so I'm done with Alice. I doubt I'll ever revisit these novels though they will remain in my library for their classic status, and I will happily lend them to any of my friends or family who care to read them. 

But I wouldn't personally recommend them, and I'm truly puzzled as to exactly why they are so beloved. 

Do you like Alice and her strange adventures?

2016 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2016?

The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa

OR

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

OR

We Are Not Such Things by Justine van der Leun

OR

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

For more background on what this is all about, click here.

To vote on Goodreads, click here.

Let's Bust a Recap : Carry On, Jeeves

2023 was definitely the year that contributed the most books to my current book list. There were seven books from my list that year that I never got around to reading, and Carry On, Jeeves was one of them. After my first introduction to Wodehouse in 2022, he got an automatic spot on my 2023 book list. The Inimitable Jeeves provided no end of laughs and considering that I dropped a pretty significant amount of good American money to add the Bertie and Jeeves collection to my personal library in 2020—ah, the year of massive online book shopping for me, how were you coping with the madness?—I wanted to make it a habit to read some Wodehouse each year. 

Alas, here we are, four years later before I finally picked up the second installment in my Wodehouse collection. And if we're being realistic, it'll probably be another couple of years before I pick him up again seeing as next year I'll be tackling My Life In Books project—have you voted yet?—and Wodehouse lived and died well before I was born. But not because I didn't enjoy Carry On, Jeeves. It was just as much of a riot as The Inimitable Jeeves, and I found myself laughing aloud again during every outrageous story. 

This collection of ten short stories which were popping up in the Saturday Evening Post were published together in London in 1925, and in New York in 1927. In this anthology, we get the origin story of how Jeeves came to be in Bertie's employ. Jeeves is enlisted, again, numerous times, to help Bertie's friends out of all manner of scrapes, particularly those having to do with maintaining good standing with wealthy aunts and uncles who bankroll their nephews' lives, and, of course, the frequent romantic entanglements they find themselves in. To give you an idea of how disastrously things turn out when Bertie tries to manage these conundrums without Jeeves' help, in this collection he inadvertently kidnaps a child, among other things. And this collection ends with a story from Jeeves' perspective in which he arranges for Bertie to give a talk at a girls' school after Bertie gets a wild hair to invite his aunt and three nieces to come and live with him. Jeeves is having none of that, and Jeeves always knows best. 

Another rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud good time. Douglas Adams said that "Wodehouse is the greatest comic writer ever" and I think I might agree with him. I have one more collection of short stories to read before I get to an actual novel in my Bertie and Jeeves library, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how Wodehouse's novels compare to his short story collections. If you haven't read Wodehouse yet, move him up your TBR. 

What books or authors do you turn to for a good laugh?

2015 : My Life In Books

 Which book should I read for 2015?

The Sound of Life and Everything by Krista Van Dolzer

OR

Etta & Otto & Russell & James by Emma Hooper

OR

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

For more background on what this is all about, click here.

To vote on Goodreads, click here.

Let's Bust a Recap : Anxious People

Fredrik Backman exploded onto the scene in 2012 with the publication of his debut novel A Man Called Ove. If you haven't at least heard of it, you're probably not a big reader.  I finally got around to reading it myself ten years later in 2022 and joined the legion of fans Backman has garnered the world over. Despite the fact that I've had two of his other books—Britt-Marie Was Here and My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry—sitting on my shelf for five years now, I found myself purchasing a copy of Anxious People a few weeks ago and diving right into it when my book club chose it for our April selection. And may I just say: Backman has done it again.

On opening this book, the first thing I read, of course, was Backman's dedication:

This book is dedicated to the voices in my head, the most remarkable of my friends.

And to my wife, who lives with us.  

Are you kidding me? I'm already sold. 

Chapter one opens with a bank robbery and a hostage drama. In his second paragraph, Backman writes, "This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human being for." So begins an investigation into this bank robbery turned hostage drama. Father and son Jim and Jack are the two police officers on the case, interviewing the hostages who were all released from the apartment viewing they attended the day before New Years Eve after being held there by an armed bank robber who had just tried to rob a cashless bank across the street. 

A cashless bank.

Backman has this uncanny ability to capture the strange messiness of being human in such a profound and profoundly funny way. His books make you laugh out loud, they make your heart ache, they make you nod your head in agreement thinking "yes, that really is what it's like!" Anxious People in particular is one giant reminder to remember that the people around you are going through their own stuff. Stuff you may never know about. But stuff that compels them to make the choices you've deemed idiotic. And they are idiotic. But the choices we make may seem just as idiotic to the next guy who doesn't know our stuff. 

So be kind.

It's just brilliant. Anxious People came out in 2019 and the English translation by Neil Smith in 2020. While A Man Called Ove is still easily my favorite of the two, I absolutely loved Anxious People. Given the nature of the police investigation and the host of colorful characters, Anxious People feels very scattered in a somewhat disjointed way, and Backman did a great job of keeping me guessing the entire novel. There isn't really a main character to anchor the story so you constantly feel like you're being pulled in different directions from beginning to end. But it just works. 

If you haven't gotten around to reading Fredrik Backman yet, add my voice to the chorus of people recommending you move his books to the top of your TBR. He's becoming a favorite and it will not be another four years before I pick up another one of his books. 

But which one next? Britt-Marie, or My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises?