Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

What a good book! As the author writes, it begins in the middle. This is a novel, written as if it were a memoir. Rosemary, the “memoirist” and narrator, begins the story of herself, her brother, sister, mother, and father in 1996, when “ten years had passed since I’d last seen my brother, seventeen since my sister disappeared.”

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Forgive Everyone Everything by Gregory Boyle

I couldn’t find a review of this book to link to that said something I always tell people when I speak of Father Greg Boyle—he is funny! Forgive Everyone Everything is a collection of 52 of Father Greg’s stories from his various books, compiled into a weekly devotional. I like it so much, I am planning to buy a copy for each of my kids. The stories are short, easy to read, touching, often funny, and give you pause.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

I cannot remember reading anything else set in the McCarthy era and it was intriguiging to see the effect of the Red Scare. I heard of it in history classes, but it made it more real to get to know people living in it and affected by it. As I think back on the book, I realize, too, that Quinn did a good job of making it feel true to the time.

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Inhabit the Poem | Last Essays by Helen Vendler

For each of these poems, I hope to cast light on its imaginative originality, its escapes from cliche, intellectual mediocrity, and linguistic intertia; and its ambitious adventures in linguistic play as it searches out, for its own era, the passionate and permanent feelings of the human race.

Doesn’t that sound fascinating? Ha-ha. I know it does not to many of you, but it did to me.

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James: A Novel by Percival Everett

James is a great book. Great writing, incredible creativity to imagine the story of Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective, wonderful writing. As I read it, I felt immersed in James’ world. For me, that was a problem…

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Books I Read in 2026

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2025

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2024

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2023

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2022

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2021

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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Mavis Moon Mavis Moon

Books I Read in 2020

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books. 2020 list. Lots of re-reading.

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Books I Read in 2019

The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.

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