Books on Thursday

I read three books this week. One was a recommendation from Jane; one was a rediscovery and reread after three decades, and one was nonfiction that made me think. 

Street Haunting was my introduction to the writing of Virginia Woolf thanks to Jane, and after finishing this collection of essays, I'm curious to try some of her fiction next.

Woolf's writing style is fascinating, evocative, observant, and packed with vivid details. Even when she's describing something as ordinary as a walk through the streets of London, she notices small moments and textures that most people would overlook. Her essays often feel less like arguments and more like invitations to see the world through her eyes.

As with most essay collections, some pieces resonated with me more than others. A few felt dated or simply didn't capture my interest, but the strongest essays were excellent and made the collection worthwhile. My favorite was "How Should One Read a Book?" In it, Woolf celebrates the freedom and pleasure of reading without rigid rules, a message that still feels fresh and relevant today. 

 

Woolf's writing speaks better for itself than I ever could. While I didn't love every essay equally, I admired her intelligence, her powers of observation, and her ability to transform everyday experiences into something memorable. A rewarding introduction to an author I've long meant to read, and one that has encouraged me to finally pick up some of her novels. Three and a half stars rounded up.  

 

I first read Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult in 1993, shortly after my second son was born. Over the years I remembered it fondly and looked for it several times, although I somehow convinced myself that it had been written by Hilma Wolitzer. I was excited to find it again for a reread.

 

Reading a novel about new motherhood hits very differently when the baby you were caring for the first time around has just turned 33. As a young mother, I identified with Paige's uncertainty, exhaustion, and fierce love for her child. Now, with the perspective that comes from decades of parenting, I found myself noticing different aspects of the story, the strains on a marriage, the lingering effects of family history, and the ways people struggle to understand one another.

This isn't Picoult at her most polished or ambitious, and some of the plot developments feel melodramatic by today's standards. Still, I found the emotional core of the novel convincing. The depiction of early motherhood, in particular, rang true, capturing both its joys and its isolating challenges. Paige's mistakes can be frustrating, but they also feel recognizably human.

While Harvesting the Heart didn't have quite the same impact on me as it did when I first read it more than three decades ago, it remained an entertaining and heartfelt read. Revisiting it offered not only a chance to evaluate the book itself but also a reminder of how much a reader can change over time. Sometimes the most interesting part of a reread is discovering the distance between who you were then and who you are now. Three stars. 

 

I borrowed Comfortable with Uncertainty from the library, hoping for something like an instruction manual, a practical guide that would teach me how to become more comfortable with uncertainty. Instead, what I found was something both simpler and more challenging.

Pema Chödrön's central message seems to be that there are no instructions. There is no formula for eliminating uncertainty, no set of steps that will guarantee peace of mind. Rather, the practice is learning to stop resisting life's inherent unpredictability and to meet whatever arises with openness, curiosity, and compassion.

That may sound frustratingly circular to readers looking for concrete advice, and at times I found myself wishing for more practical guidance. Yet as I continued reading, I began to understand that this longing for certainty and clear answers is exactly what Chödrön is encouraging us to examine. The discomfort we feel when things are unresolved isn't a problem to solve but a reality to face.

As with many collections of teachings and reflections, some sections resonated with me more than others. Chödrön's writing is warm, accessible, and often insightful, but there were passages that felt repetitive. Still, I frequently found myself pausing to reflect on an idea or reread a particularly meaningful passage.

In the end, I didn't come away with a roadmap for becoming comfortable with uncertainty. I came away with the realization that comfort may not be the goal at all. Instead, the book invites us to drop our expectations, stop grasping for certainty, and learn to face whatever comes with an open heart. That's easier said than done, but still an important lesson.Three stars.

Now I'd love to know what you're reading!  

Unraveled Wednesday: 6/17/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with some less-than-exciting knitting. The kitchen towel is back, and it’s now a bit longer than the last time you saw it.

I’ve been on a roll with this project. The knitting is both wonderfully mindless and relaxing, making it easy to pick up throughout the day. I’ve worked on it outside while listening to the birds and using Merlin, while waiting for loads of laundry to finish, and even at the auto body shop.

John had a car accident last week (he’s okay), but he left for a fishing trip this week, so I had to meet the insurance adjuster at the body shop while he inspected the damage. The knitting may not be exciting, but this towel has been getting around.

Later this afternoon, I’m taking it with me to Justin and Jess’s house, where I’ll be checking on my grand-kitties, Nugget and Fletch. The towel may be clamoring for even more adventures before it’s finally finished.

What are you making this Wednesday in June?

  

Read With Us Lounge: 6/15/26

I've been forced to change my comment settings because I was inundated with stupid spam. Currently it's set for users with Google accounts. I'm sorry to do this and don't mean to make things more cumbersome for my valued readers as I do appreciate your comments. I also chose to moderate all comments, so please submit your comments (just once!) and they will be visible after I moderate and publish them. Sorry and thank you! Now, back to the much more relaxing Read With Us Lounge.

Today in the Read With Us Lounge I'm wondering if star ratings help or flatten the reading experience? Can a deeply meaningful book still be just 3 stars?

If you've spent any time on Goodreads, StoryGraph, or Bookstagram, you've probably noticed that star ratings have become one of the dominant ways we talk about books. Before we know anything about a novel's themes, characters, or emotional impact, we often know whether someone gave it two stars or five.

But what do those stars actually tell us?

Star ratings are useful. They offer a quick shorthand for our reactions and help us keep track of what we've read. They can guide recommendations and make it easier to spot patterns in our own reading lives. Looking back at a year's worth of books, a rating system can reveal surprising things about our tastes.

But I think star ratings can also flatten the reading experience. A single number has to carry the weight of hundreds of pages, dozens of emotions, and countless personal connections. The result is that books with very different strengths and weaknesses often end up receiving the same score.

Think about two books you rated three stars. One may have been a perfectly competent novel that entertained you for a weekend and was forgotten a month later. I would choose On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan for this example. Lovely prose but not much else for me. The other may have been a challenging, flawed, but unforgettable work that raised difficult questions and stayed in your mind for a long time. This one for me is Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande. I probably think about this book at least six or eight times a year. My star ratings are identical, but my experiences were not.

This raises an interesting question for me: Can a deeply meaningful book still be just three stars?

I would answer yes.

We often assume that ratings measure importance, but they may actually measure enjoyment, or some combination of enjoyment, craft, originality, emotional impact, and personal timing. A book can be significant without being entirely successful. It can provoke thought without being pleasurable. It can change the way we see the world while also frustrating us as readers.

Some of the books that generate the best discussions fall into this category. They may have pacing issues, unlikeable characters, or uneven writing, yet they tackle subjects that linger long after the final page. We may admire them more than we enjoy them. We may be grateful we read them even if we would hesitate to recommend them broadly.

In book groups especially, the most interesting conversations often emerge from books that land somewhere in the middle. A universally beloved five-star read can generate enthusiastic agreement, but a three-star book can produce debate. Kym, Carole, and I have purposefully not chosen some books that we thought everyone would love (e.g. Tom Lake) because we were afraid there would be little discussion and we would all just sit around saying how much we enjoyed the book. Readers bring different experiences, values, and expectations, revealing just how subjective reading can be.

Perhaps the real limitation of star ratings is not that they exist, but that they sometimes become the entire conversation. I have long wished that Goodreads would allow for the awarding of half stars, but even that wouldn't really solve the star issue. When we focus too much on assigning a number, we risk overlooking the richer questions: Why did this book affect me? What challenged me? What frustrated me? What will I remember a year from now?

A star rating can capture a verdict, but it rarely captures the whole picture. Maybe I should stop depending on them so much! 

Things to think about:

• What factors influence your star ratings most: enjoyment, literary quality, emotional impact, originality, something else, or all of them together?

• Have you ever given three stars to a book that you still think about years later?

• Is there a difference between a "good" book and an "important" book?

• Do you rate books based on your personal experience or on what you believe the author achieved?

• Have star ratings changed the way you choose books or talk about them with other readers?

• If you had to give up either written reviews or star ratings, which would you keep?

Be sure and check with Kym and Carole to see what they're thinking about today!

Books on Thursday

I've been forced to change my comment settings this morning because I was inundated with stupid spam. Currently it's set for users with Google accounts. I'm sorry to do this and don't mean to make things more cumbersome for my valued readers as I do appreciate your comments. I also chose to moderate all comments, so please submit your comments (just once!) and they will be visible after I moderate and publish them. Sorry and thank you!

I read two books this week; both of them are pre-publication copies. 

For about three-quarters of Country People, I was convinced I was reading a five-star novel.

Daniel Mason creates a wonderfully eccentric world populated by characters who are odd without feeling cartoonish, and he balances humor, lyricism, and genuine emotional insight with remarkable ease. Miles is a lovable mess of a protagonist, perpetually distracted, endlessly curious, and forever chasing the next fascinating idea rather than finishing the things already on his plate. His struggles with marriage, parenthood, ambition, and self-worth give the novel a surprisingly sturdy emotional center beneath all its whimsy.

I enjoyed the community of misfits and others that Miles encounters in Vermont. My favorite among them was the character inspired by Snowflake Bentley and his endlessly fascinating "Inventory of Wrong Ideas", a catalog of humanity's mistaken beliefs and discarded certainties. That project felt perfectly suited to a novel so interested in stories, myths, and the strange things people choose to believe.

Unfortunately, the book lost me when it became increasingly invested in the local legend of an underground kingdom. Up to that point, the novel's magic had come from its blend of recognizable human struggles and delightfully quirky characters. As the plot shifted toward unraveling this bizarre legend, the story began to feel less focused and more self-indulgent. What had seemed charmingly eccentric started veering into territory that felt unnecessarily loony.

The ending was the biggest disappointment. After such a rich and engaging build-up, the novel seemed to fizzle out rather than arrive anywhere meaningful. The two epilogues only reinforced that feeling for me, extending a conclusion that was already struggling to land and drawing attention away from the characters and relationships I had become invested in.

Even so, there's an enormous amount to admire here. Mason is a gifted writer, and many passages are genuinely beautiful. The novel is packed with intelligence, warmth, humor, and affection for human oddity. I just wish it had trusted the strengths that made the first part of the book so wonderful instead of disappearing down its own metaphorical rabbit hole. This fascinating, frequently delightful novel was 3.5 stars overall for me, rounded up because the story was exceptional in the beginning. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on July 7, 2026.  

Ann Cleeves continues to prove why she is one of the most reliable voices in contemporary crime fiction with The Dying Light, a strong fourth installment in the Matthew Venn series. Set against a sweltering Devon heatwave, the novel combines a compelling mystery with the author's trademark exploration of family dynamics, community tensions, and the secrets people keep hidden behind carefully constructed facades.

The plot begins with the death of a young woman found in a swimming pool and the disappearance of her best friend, but what initially appears straightforward quickly grows more complex. Cleeves expertly peels back layer after layer of deception, drawing connections between local residents, holidaymakers, politics, social media, and long-buried grievances. The oppressive summer heat and the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small community under scrutiny create a palpable sense of tension throughout.

What continues to elevate this series for me, however, is Matthew Venn himself. In this novel, he feels increasingly confident and mature in his role as a detective. He has grown into his leadership position, trusting his team while still displaying the empathy and thoughtful observation that make him such an effective investigator. Rather than relying on dramatic breakthroughs, Venn solves cases by listening carefully and noticing what others overlook.

I also appreciated the continued development of his personal life. His relationship with his husband, Jonathan, remains one of the series' strengths. Their marriage feels authentic and lived-in, providing warmth and stability amid the darkness of the investigation. Cleeves portrays their partnership with a quiet tenderness and respect that adds emotional depth without overwhelming the mystery.

Equally compelling is Matthew's still-fractured relationship with his mother. The wounds left by his upbringing in the strict religious community that rejected him have not magically healed, and the novel continues to explore the complicated mixture of love, resentment, obligation, and grief that defines their connection. These scenes add a layer of emotional realism that makes Matthew far more than just another detective protagonist.

This book was four stars for me. My only reason for not rating the book higher is that some sections felt a bit slower than necessary, particularly in the middle, as the investigation broadened and the cast of suspects expanded. Still, the payoff is satisfying, and the resolution feels both believable and emotionally resonant.

The Dying Light is a thoughtful, character-driven mystery that balances an intricate plot with genuine emotional insight. Fans of the series will enjoy seeing Matthew Venn continue to grow both professionally and personally, while newcomers will find a well-crafted crime novel that stands comfortably on its own. I am anxiously looking forward to the next book in the series. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin' Press for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on September 29, 2026. 

Now I'd love to know what you're reading!  

Unraveled Wednesday: 6/10/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a new project on my needles. It was hot last week and I had an unusually busy social calendar, so I didn't work on Justin's hat at all. This week is moderately busy but my new project is wonderfully portable and easy to pick up whenever I have a few spare minutes. 

I was at a loss about what to make Ryan for Christmas. He already has plenty of handwarmers, scarves, hats, and potholders. He doesn’t wear sweaters (which is just as well, since I rarely knit them). But when I was at his house the other day, a lightbulb went off: dish towels! 

Ryan cooks for us whenever we visit and cooks for himself most days as well. The other day I noticed he was using a truly ratty dish towel, complete with multiple holes. I didn’t even nag him about it. Instead, I thought that three or four handknit dish towels would make a perfect Christmas gift, and some wonderfully relaxing summer knitting for me.

I ordered some Dishie and Cotlin from KnitPicks, but while I’m waiting for the yarn to arrive, I cast on this lovely bright blue cotton for a Chili Pepper Red Kitchen Towel (although mine is obviously not red). The pattern is a simple two-row repeat, and I enlarged it slightly because I’m not a fan of skimpy kitchen towels.

I have three or four other towel patterns I’d like to try, and I think knitting a collection of dish towels for Ryan will be the perfect companion project while I work on the duplicate stitching for Justin’s hat. If I have time, and if I’m not completely tired of knitting with cotton, I may even make one or two for myself.

What are you making as we approach mid-June?

 

Read With Us: Time for a Discussion

 

Today is the discussion day for our Read With Us spring book, Good People by Patmeena Sabit. 

Kym, Carole, and I are each posting a discussion question or two on our blogs today, and you are welcome to respond in the comments. I would also encourage you to reply to others' comments if you choose.  This is a book discussion, after all, so there are no correct answers or right opinions. I'm really looking forward to discussing this book. I raced through this book the first time I read it, and then read it a second time where I discovered many things I had missed or forgotten. I think this discussion will be valuable for me, and I hope for others of you as well. 

Good People seems especially well-suited to discussion because it raises questions about truth, family loyalty, reputation, immigration, community judgment, and the limits of perspective. Here is my question: The novel repeatedly asks readers to reconsider their judgments. What do you think are the most important lessons the book offers about understanding other people?

I'll be glad to share my thoughts about our questions tonight during our Zoom discussion. These questions on our blogs and the Zoom discussion are your chance to express your ideas. So what do you think? I can't wait to hear your thoughts! (And I'm counting on our discussion to give me fresh perspectives in my own thinking about this unique novel.)

The in-person Zoom discussion will be at 7:00 pm Eastern this evening. If you haven't RSVP'd to Kym already you can send me an email (the email address is in the upper right) and I will make sure you get an invitation with the Zoom link. I hope to see you there!

Read With Us Lounge: 6/8/26

 

One of the quietest pressures many readers carry has nothing to do with time or attention span. It’s the endless chorus of reading “shoulds.”

We should read the classics.
We should read the prize winners.
We should finally tackle that intimidating novel everyone else seems to have read in college.
We should read serious books, educational books, important books.
We should read book series in order.
We should keep up with best sellers.
We should always have an audiobook going while we fold laundry, commute, exercise, or walk the dog.
We should finish every book we start.

At some point, reading can begin to feel less like pleasure and more like homework with no due date.

One of the things we hope to do in the Read With Us Lounge this summer is gently question those “shoulds.” Not because classics or award winners or ambitious reading goals are bad (they absolutely aren’t) but because reading is deeply personal, and our reading lives change over time. The books that nourish us at one stage of life may not be the books we need at another.

Sometimes the most meaningful reading experience comes from picking up the exact “wrong” book at the exact right moment.

Maybe you discover that you actually prefer reading contemporary romance to literary fiction. Maybe you abandon a 600-page masterpiece halfway through and feel relieved instead of guilty. Maybe you read children’s books for comfort, reread old favorites from your teenage years, or spend an entire summer immersed in mysteries, cookbooks, essays, graphic novels, or cozy fantasy. Maybe you decide silence is better than forcing yourself to listen to audiobooks just because everyone else seems to multitask their reading.

Challenging our reading “shoulds” can feel surprisingly uncomfortable at first. Many of us learned early on that some books were “good for us” while others were considered fluff, escapism, or a waste of time. But joy matters. Curiosity matters. Rest matters. Reading for delight matters.

And often, when we let go of obligation, something unexpected happens: we read more honestly. We become more adventurous. We notice our real tastes instead of the tastes we think we’re supposed to have. We stop performing as readers and start becoming ourselves again.

That doesn’t mean abandoning challenging books forever. Sometimes we truly want to wrestle with a classic or work our way through a demanding nonfiction title. But there’s a difference between choosing a difficult book because we’re interested in it and forcing ourselves through it out of guilt or fear of not being “well read.”

This summer, consider asking yourself:

• What reading “shoulds” have shaped my reading life?

• Which ones actually enrich my reading experience?

• Which ones make reading feel stressful, competitive, or performative?

• What kinds of books do I secretly love?

• What would happen if I gave myself full permission to read exactly what I want?

Maybe the answer is that you really do love classics. Maybe the answer is dragon-filled fantasy novels, celebrity memoirs, nature writing, romance, rereading childhood favorites, or checking out giant stacks of random library books with no plan whatsoever.

All of it counts.

I'll start by admitting that I have occasionally chosen a book to read because it seems like everyone is reading it, and I don't want to miss out. The latest example of this is The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. I checked out the first four volumes from hoopla and happily started listening. Over the course of a week, I thought that maybe I was just more interested in other books and returned them. I  tried twice more to listen to Volume I, and have finally decided these are just not for me. All telling, no showing, and just too much forced whimsy. I finally admitted that these books are just not for me at this time. I felt quite a sense of relief when I gave myself permission to stop trying and move on. 

Be sure and check with Kym and Carole for their take on reading "shoulds". 

So tell us: What “shoulds” do you carry around reading? Have you challenged any of them? And when you do, are you happier as a reader? We would love to know!