SABBATICAL: Mysteries that Break the Mold

I’m on sabbatical for the month of September, but I am setting up some posts in advance, including this one. I have noticed in the last couple years some mysteries that are on the “cozy” side, but that shake up the usual formula – and I love them. Here are some examples you can read about:

Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies (♥♥♥♥♥) – First in a new Pies Before Guys Mystery series about a woman who “bakes vengeance into her pastries.”
Finlay Donovan series –  A struggling novelist discussing the plot of her new book with her agent is mistaken for a contract killer and offered a job. Soon, she is tangled up in a real- life murder.
Double Twist – After accidentally marrying a drug kingpin, Mia is eager to get her life back on the straight and narrow. But then she and some new friends stumble across a body. Then, when a friend is suspected of murder, Mia decides to dust off the skills of her old life to clear their name.
Skeleton Key
Dial A for Aunties –  Described as “What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?  You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!” There’s a sequel now, Four Aunties and a Wedding, but I haven’t gotten to read it yet.
Under Lock and Skeleton Key – Tempest heads home to lick her wounds, hoping she can find something else to do so she doesn’t have to join her father’s business – Secret Staircase Construction. (They build secret rooms and sliding bookcases into their clients’ homes.) But when her former stage double is found dead inside a wall that was supposed to be sealed for more than 100 years, Tempest has to wonder if she was the intended victim. This is less unusual in structure, like the previous books, and more unusual because of the clever premise with Tempest and the family business.

BOOK NEWS: September 6, 2022

Happy Labor Day and happy September and Sabbatical month.

Last summer, I took a month off from my blog, and it was such a good investment in myself, that I decided to do it again. I’ll be pre-posting things for September and taking the next few weeks to take a bit of a break. I hope you will find some great things to read this month, and I’ll see you all in October.

Books for Kids


Star Trek: My First Book of Colors (Board Book) – A color book with Trek references for the youngest fans of the franchise (and their parents).
Little Red and the Big Bad Editor – The Big Bad Wolf keeps getting distracted by Red’s thank you note errors that he misses the chance to eat her. This sounds fantastic!
The Most Magnificent Idea – A sequel to the outstanding The Most Magnificent Thing (♥♥♥♥♥) by the always fabulous Ashley Spires. The star of The Most Magnificent Thing struggles when her ideas run out and her brain begins to fill with sadness instead of ideas. This is a must read for me!

Books for Older Kids/Teens/Young Adults


Attack of the Black Rectangles – Mac and his friends go looking for answers when they discover certain words are being blacked out of their books at school. Yes, please!
Aces Wild: A Heist – A teen and his asexual support group team up to help him infiltrate a high-stakes gambling club so he can find out what an unscrupulous casino owner has over his mom that’s put her in jail.
Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade – A new Enola Holmes adventure. Lady Cecily is in need of Enola’s help once again, but after Enola rescues her from home, she goes missing. Enola is one of only a few people who know Lady Cecily has multiple personalities. She must find her before one of them gets her into trouble. You can read my full review here.
Monsters Born and Made – The daughter of an indentured family must sneak into the Glory Race – a chariot tournament with life and death stakes – for a chance to save her family.

Books for Adults


Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match (Trade Paperback) – Victor Frankenstein’s younger sister toys with creating the love of her life when she thinks she is running out of options. This sounds quirky!
The Decoy Girlfriend (Trade Paperback) – A writer with writer’s block decides to use her look-alike status with a famous actress for a little distraction. But the distraction becomes all too real when the media think she’s the real deal. So Freya agrees to pretend to be the actress for a month, living with her on- and off-screen boyfriend, pretending they are in love in order to squash the rumors she inadvertently started. Hijinks! Sounds delightful.
The Holiday Trap (Trade Paperback) – Greta needs a break from her small-town life and her friend Truman needs space to cope with the news that his ex-boyfriend had a secret husband and daughter. So they decide to swap houses for the holidays.
Killers of a Certain Age (Hardcover) – Four  female assassins think they are being sent on a vacation to celebrate their retirement after 40 years in the business, but instead it seems their agency wants to retire them in the PERMANENT sense. Yes, please!! I already have this on hold at the library!
The Most Likely Club (Trade Paperback) – Four high school friends meet up at their 25 year reunion only to discover that their high school superlatives (“Most likely to…”) have not remotely come true. So they make a pact to make their old dreams come true. I am a sucker for a reunion story, so I have to read this one!

 

 

SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: Summer/Sabbatical Wrap Up

If reading was a numbers game, this summer would be a fail.

For the last six or seven years, I have maintained a reading pace of a book a day or more. I have blown through the family reading challenge most years (although not in 2018). And I have long lists of great summer reads.

Not this year.

I read 11 books in June. I’m on pace to hit that or maybe do one or two better in July. Twenty-two books in 60-some days is way off my usual pace.

And it’s going to be okay. It has to be because that is my reality. And really, no one cares other than me.

So I will celebrate the great books I read and look forward to even more great reads as 2021 continues. Here’s the wrap up for summer 2021. (You can read back through my summer plan here – and then laugh at how naïve I was!)

Family Reading Challenge


None of us finished. Not one. I read 1 of my five (a re-read from my favorite series). My husband has finished 3. The teen has read nothing.

BUT…. We have decide to extend our deadline into mid-August. My husband is committed to finishing all five of his books, and the teen says he is going to read at least one by the new deadline. I’m not sure what I will do. I am enjoying my ARC reading since I shifted some things around, so we’ll see.

 

ARCs


In my start-of-summer post, I posted 23 book covers of some of the ARCs I need to be reading. Of course, this was before my July sabbatical (more on that in a minute). Of those pictured, I read 10 and DNF’d another (Did Not Finish). I’m on pace to finish at least 17 ARCs (well, two were DNFs) during these two summer months by the time this posts. Not bad. Not amazing, but not bad.

 

Sabbatical


One thing that was NOT on my radar when I posted my summer reading plan 8 weeks ago was my July Sabbatical. You can read about it here.

This is one of the best decisions I could have made for myself and my mental health. I relished the freedom to read – or re-read – or not read. And I might even be tempted to do it again. I needed this break desperately. And it gave me some time to consider the future.

This blog is very important to me. I’ve poured a LOT of time and a lot of myself into it. But I’m changing things up to make it more sustainable with my new responsibilities.

  • I am keeping Book News on Mondays. Doing book research on new releases is one of my favorite activities. I refuse to give it up. I might include fewer books going forward, but this was one of the driving factors I had for creating The Neverending TBR in the first place. So it stays.
  • I am keeping reviews for adult books on Wednesdays. This is not changing. For the last couple years, I have often posted *two* adult reviews a week because I have had such a surplus. But I am committing to myself that I am only going to post one a week for awhile. This means I have to fight against the feeling of being “behind.” And reviews won’t always post near their release date any more. And until I get “caught up,” I have to be okay with that.
  • I am moving my reviews of books for kids and books for teens/young adults to Fridays. Some weeks the review will be for a middle grade book and other weeks it will be a YA graphic novel and another week it will be a picture book. But one review a week, like the adult reviews, just to help me maintain my peace.

So, that’s the scoop. Generally 3 posts a week, two reviews and Book News. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing Saturday Smorgasbord. We’ll have to see what evolves over time. But this pace feels far more manageable than 3 to 6 reviews a week like I have been doing for the last few years.

I think the highlight to my summer reading has to be the re-reading I have enjoyed. There are few things as soothing as reading a favorite book – it’s like hanging out with an old friend.

 

So, what did you read this summer?

SABBATICAL: Books about Books

Before my sabbatical,  I would spend one Saturday a month on a list post or some other deep dive into a topic. You can find all of these posts together under the category of Saturday Smorgasbord. I anticipate this being my final Sabbatical post, depending on how things have gone over the last month.

Today, I want to highlight the post about some books about books. This is a post from 2017. While a lot of the books included were ones I had read, not all of them were.

If I were to do that post today, I would have to add some of the great books that have released since then – books about book banning, cozy mysteries about book sellers and authors and librarians, as well as books about bookish spaces. Some favorites would be:

For Kids:

Judy Moody, Book Quiz, Whiz
Property of the Rebel Librarian
Ban This Book
Help Wanted. Must Love Books
Madeline Finn and the Shelter Dog

 

For Teens:

Recommended For You
Copycat
The Bookish Boyfriends series
What I Like About You

 

For Adults:

Bait and Witch
How to Raise a Reader
The Magical Bookshop Mystery series
The Good Ones
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
The Bromance Bookclub Series
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

 

Check out the original post here: Saturday Smorgasbord: Books about Books

SABBATICAL: Favorite Illustrators

Before my sabbatical,  I would spend one Saturday a month on a list post or some other deep dive into a topic. You can find all of these posts together under the category of Saturday Smorgasbord. This week, to wrap up my month off, I am going to revisit three of my favorite posts.

Today, I want to highlight the post about some of my favorite illustrators. While I don’t teach kids any more, I still love a good picture book!

This list was originally posted in 2016. If you asked me today to list some favorites without looking at that list, I would definitely highlight Dan Santat, Ashley Spires, and Mo Willems, the first three names on the original post. These folks remain favorites. I can pick their art style out from across the bookstore. I love that all of them are also authors.

I’d also include Jarrett Krosoczka who really should have been on that original list. I love his art, his stories, and he’s an awesome human being, too. Another great human being who is also a great author and illustrator is Jarrett Lerner. Today’s list would include both of those gentlemen.

You can check out the original post here: Saturday Smorgasbord: Top 10 Favorite Illustrators

SABBATICAL: Memorable Protagonists

Before my sabbatical,  I would spend one Saturday a month on a list post or some other deep dive into a topic. You can find all of these posts together under the category of Saturday Smorgasbord. This week, to wrap up my month off, I am going to revisit three of my favorite posts.

Today, I want to highlight the post about some of my favorite protagonists. While this list was put together over 3 years ago, much of it is still true today. If you asked me to name memorable protagonists without having this 2017 list in front of me, I would have named Kitty Katt-Martini, Tess Kendrick, and Rydan Corvis without even blinking – three of the characters on the original list.

Today I’d add two young women – Elizabeth Vrabel from the Kitty Katt-Martini series and Joey Morales from the Orphan X series – to the protector category. Both of these young women star in short stories from their authors, and I love the roles they play in the full-length books that focus on other characters. Their smarts and their sass put them both into my list of favorites. I’d also add Ada VonHasenberg from Polaris Rising in the protector category. I don’t know that I have new brooding men or funny characters that immediately come to mind to add to my original list. And Meg Langslow is still the character most like me in the books I read.

You can read the full original post here: Saturday Smorgasbord: Memorable Protagonists.

SABBATICAL: Five Star Books for Teens and Young Adults

This week my sabbatical posts have been links to the books that earned a five star review from me. Today my focus will be on books for teens and young adults. Some of the reviews you will find in the full list include outstanding books that didn’t make it into a Year in Review post like these:

Thanks a Lot, Universe
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy
Amelia Unabridged
What I Carry
The Shadows Between Us
Shadow of the Batgirl
Slay
Fire & Heist
Zenn Diagram
Madly (The Potion Diaries)

Check out the full list here: Five Star Books for Teens and Young Adults

SABBATICAL: Five Star Books for Adults

This week my sabbatical posts will be links to the books that earned a five star review from me. Today my focus will be on books for adults. This list will include fiction and nonfiction books that I adored. Some of the reviews you will find in the full list include outstanding books that didn’t make it into a Year in Review post like these:

Furbidden Fatality
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
To Fetch a Felon
Bait and Witch
The Color of Compromise
Broken Genius
Storing Up Trouble
How to Raise a Reader
Planet Hulk
Lock In

Here’s the full list: Five Star Books for Adults

SABBATICAL: Five Star Reviews for Kids

This week my sabbatical posts will be links to the books that earned a five star review from me. Today my focus will be on books for kids. This list will include picture books as well as middle grade and older middle grade books that I adored. Some of the reviews you will find in the full list include outstanding books that didn’t make it into a Year in Review post like these:

Madeline Finn and the Library Dog
Solving for M
Wedgie and Gizmo
Mabel Opal Pear and the Rules for Spying
Sidetracked
Framed

Here’s the full list: Five Star Reviews for Kids

SABBATICAL: Year in Review 2020

One of my favorite activities as the year winds down is to take stock of what I have read and whittle down my favorites list to 10 or 12. This is my final Year in Review sabbatical re-post.

2020 was such a weird year all the way around. But it was an unusual reading year for me because two of the top books of the year were re-reads. That has happened before, but it’s unusual. The other thing that catches my attention is that the sequel to my top book, Crownchasers, is releasing later this year. Watch for Thronebreakers in October. I cannot wait! You can read the whole year in review post here:

Year in Review 2020