Last weekend, Erin laid on her bed for over 4 hours on Saturday AND Sunday afternoons to finish books. I totally get that girl.
I read ravenously all of my growing up years. Even now, if I’m not careful, I’ll lose an entire afternoon in whatever I’m currently reading. I get most of my books ideas from Bookbub, Amazon’s Prime Reading, and Kindle Unlimited, along with the library, of course, and I’ll go through dozens of books in a year easily.
But I haven’t done a book list recently. So I decided to post about books I’ve read in last six months of so for myself, books for grownups instead of only the ones I read with and for my kids.
My Rules
Books for grownups are not all the same of course. I like some that you will hate, and vice versa. So here’s some of what you can expect from my book lists.
I don’t read mysteries (often).
I don’t like the suspense/thriller genre.
This “books for grownups” list has no non-fiction this time. I need to read more of that, obviously.
In fiction, I tend toward fantasy, particularly myth- or magic-based stories, but not always.
And I read a lot of YA literature, partly to scope out possible reads for my kids and partly because I like how they deal with big ideas with fewer adult-ish themes.
And Now … The Books (Modern)
A Quiet Life in the Country is the first of the Lady Hardcastle mysteries (there are 4 now). Lady Hardcastle and her maid live at the turn of the 20th century, and their attempts to settle into a semi-retirement are regularly interrupted by mysteries and murders. The series is a mixture between Agatha Christie (though not quite as well written) and Murder, She Wrote. The conversations are entertaining, the clues are follow-able without being obvious, and I enjoyed the entire series (I just downloaded the most recent one while working on this post!).
I believe The Decent Proposal is Donovan’s debut novel, and I borrowed it from the library as an ebook. The premise–two unrelated people agree to meet weekly for one year in exchange for half a million dollars each–seemed interesting, and it was. They live in LA, so the reader gets to experience both of their views of the city and its culture. The characters explore why people fall in love, in spite of their differences. Some of the descriptions got a bit long-winded, but the overall story was, like the title, decent. I wouldn’t give it 5 stars, but it wasn’t the worst book I’ve read recently.
I actually downloaded The Mathematician’s Shiva two years ago and never got around to reading it. I wasn’t sure how dry or crazy it might turn out to be, but one day I sucked it up and started it. It is not light reading. It’s not intended to be. But it is a lovely story, sad in places, about how people deal with difficult things, particularly death. The characters were surprisingly relatable, thought Jewish mathematicians are not really my normal type. And the use of mathematics to reflect and explain the characters’ experiences was really well done. I won’t highly recommend it, but I’m glad I finally read it.
I did not expect to like Thirty-Two Going on Spinster as much as I did. This is the first book of Monson’s trilogy about Julia Dorning, and I honestly laughed out loud reading it. It is clean, fun, light, and I enjoyed all three books in the series.
The Books (Fantasy)
I accidentally read the second book of The Bird and the Sword series first (oops!), but even with that, I enjoyed both books immensely. Set in a world with a strong biblical undertone (without being “Christian fiction” at all), The Bird and the Sword and The Queen and the Cure had creative and compelling characters and stories that surprised me more than once. The language was beautifully crafted as well. I enjoyed the writing as much as the story in both books. They are definitely worth the read.
I guess this one is technically a YA novel. But The Wendy is a fantastic retelling of the Peter Pan myth. Wendy is strong and determined. Peter, Hook, John and Michael are nothing like Disney’s version, and the story itself was well-crafted and well-told. This is the first in a series (no other titles are yet available) and the authors were able to crowdfund its production because of how well-done the book is. I highly recommend it!
The Palace Job surprised me immensely. Creative and complex, I did not see the ending coming. The characters are all well-designed (and there are LOTS of them to keep track of). The world of the book (and the other two books in the series) is clearly supposed to represent our world in many ways, so there are occasional references to our current cultural climate. Also, there are themes in the second two books that I loved less, though the plots of both are as surprising as the first. The Palace Job is without a doubt the best of the three, though, and I highly recommend it.
The Books (My Most Favorite)
Call it my guilty pleasure, but I like retellings of fairy tales. They often leave much to be desired, sadly, but not K. M. Shea’s Timeless Fairy Tales series. The 10 books (so far) each take on a different tale, but the stories are set in a single world so that they overlap and the characters and their stories blend together. Beyond this, these individual stories combine to reveal Shea’s original story about the enchantress who appears in each book (Angelique’s story will continue in the coming year, I believe). Not all the stories are equally good. My least favorites were Swan Lake (#7) and The Wild Swans (#2). My favorites are Beauty and the Beast (#1), Rumplestiltskin (#4), and The Twelve Dancing Princesses (#10). But the series as a whole is very well done (and clean, too, so appropriate for middle school, or upper elementary, readers as well).
I’ve saved my favorite for last. Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series is my most favorite of recent months. I stumbled across the series in my library and ended up buying them for myself because I liked them so much. Irene is an agent of an invisible library that connects different worlds (she’s in an alternate 1880s London for most of book 1) and anchors them on a continuum between order and chaos by acquiring works of literature unique to that world.
In each world, Irene has to deal with humans, the Fae (representatives of chaos) and dragons (of order), as well as retrieve the book she was sent for–and to top it off, she unexpectedly finds herself the focus of the Library’s greatest enemy. The literary references and inside jokes are delightful, especially Irene’s comments about language, writing, words, and literature. The fifth book releases in a month, and I am super excited to read it.
So there you go. Books for grownups because recommendations are always a great thing, right? And even if you don’t see anything on my list that you want to read next, no worries. Just read something. Keep reading. And send me your recommendations, too. I’m always open to finding my next favorite book.
