Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 50

My Favorite Reads in 2020

Time for an end-of the-year reading wrap-up!  I'm linking up with Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl for this.  

As has been my habit for the last few years, I'm doing two lists, my top ten new reads and my top ten rereads.  If you want to see my previous lists, they're all on this page.  

If I reviewed a book this year, I've linked the title to that review.  There are a few here that I've reviewed previously and didn't review again this year -- you can look up my previous reviews in my r...

"Hercule Poirot's Christmas" by Agatha Christie

I have discovered a newfound appreciation for Hercule Poirot over the last couple years.  I entirely blame Kenneth Branagh and his 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express .  
I read almost this whole book yesterday, and it was great fun!  I mean, great fun considering it's a book about a severely dysfunctional family and murder and so on.

Poirot isn't even in the first third or so of this book, which is all about this old man and his children, most of whom hate each other.  The old man gets...

"Yuletide: A Jane Austen-Inspired Collection of Stories" edited by Christina Boyd

This was a diverting collection of short Christmas stories.  They all center around Pride and Prejudice, which I didn't realize at first -- I thought there would be a mix of all of Austen's novels, but nope, all P&P.  Some of the stories retold Pride and Prejudice in a modern setting.  Others were a Christmasy sequel to the book.  Still others wrote an alternate version of the book where Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy fell in love in a different way from the original.  Many of the stories were g...

"We are the Ship: The Story of Negro Baseball" by Kadir Nelson

This book was awesome!  If you'd like to learn more about Black baseball athletes and the history of American baseball in general, this middle-grade nonfiction book will give you a great overview.  If you've seen Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, you'll be familiar with some of the names here, but I expect that you still will learn quite a bit of new info from it.  I certainly did!

I feel like most people only know about Jackie Robinson being the first Black baseball player to break the color barr...

"A House to Let" by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, and Wilkie Collins

 

Well, this was an interesting premise for a novella, anyway.  Charles Dickens and his writer friends Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Anne Proctor all got together to write a book in several pieces that got stitched together later with a narrative framework.

It begins with "Over the Way," co-authored by Dickens and Collins, which tells of an elderly woman who moves to London and becomes fascinated by the house across the street from her new home.  It's up for rent, or "to let," an...

"Christmas with Anne" (and Other Holiday Stories) by L. M. Montgomery

This is a book I hugged.  I think it may even have edged out Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas  as my favorite Christmas book.

It's a collection of short Christmastime stories by L. M. Montgomery, along with the Christmas parts of two different Anne books, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Windy Poplars.  Those happen to be my two favorite Anne books, and I'm starting to wonder if the inclusion of Christmas in them might be part of why they're my favorites.

Anyway, not every story in this is p...

The 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

I created this tag for movies on my other blog last year and realized that it would work beautifully for books too, so I'm doing it all over again, but here on this blog this year!  

All pictures are mine from my bookstagram account.  My reviews are linked to titles where applicable :-)  

Rules: 

#1 Use a different movie for each prompt #2 Add photos and/or explanations of how your choices fit the prompts #3 Tag a few friends to play...

Christmas Reads: A List

(My picture from my Instagram account.)

I thought it might be fun to round up all the Christmas books I've reviewed here over the past few years.  If you're looking for something festive to read this December, maybe one of these will strike your fancy!

You'll discover that I didn't love all of these, by the way.  But I did love several, and liked many more.

Children's Books

Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti, illustrated by Michele Lemieux

Fiction

The Life and...

"Jamaica Inn" by Daphne du Maurier

What is the point of this book supposed to be?  I don't even know.  Maybe that smugglers are evil?  I can get behind that.  But man, that's about all I can get behind for this book.

It starts out when a young woman named Mary Yellan's mother dies, leaving her to the care of her aunt and uncle.  She's never met her uncle, but she remembers her aunt as a happy, carefree, lovely woman and thinks it will be nice to live with her.

Hey, guess what?  Her aunt married a...

Joining A Literary Christmas Challenge 2020

I'm joining the Literary Christmas Challenge hosted by In the Bookcase again this year.  I love this event!  I'm already reading my first Christmasy book, so I'm sure I'll be posting a review of it soon.  If you want to join this event too, just click here to visit the official kick-off post.

I plan to read the following books:

Christmas with Anne by L. M. MontgomeryA House to Let by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, et. al.A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I might read more than that to, but ...