Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 60

"The Blue Castle" by L. M. Montgomery (yet again)

This is my fourth time reading The Blue Castle.  This is the fourth time I have inhaled this book in two days.  I simply cannot read it slowly.  I really thought I was going to savor it over the course of a week or so this time, since I reread it last spring.  But nope.  Nothing doing.  Started it January 1 and finished it January 2.

Valancy Stirling continues to astonish me with her depth of character development.  I love characters who undergo a...

"Before Freedom: When I Just Can Remember" edited by Belinda Hurmence

This slim volume is subtitled Twenty-seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves.  It's a selection of remembrances collected up during the Great Depression -- part of the Federal Writers' Project that provided work for writers in need.  They interviewed former slaves and made detailed notes about their memories.  All their interviews are preserved at the Library of Congress, but those are inaccessible for most people, so Hurmence put a selection of them in this book...

"The Indian in the Cupboard" by Lynne Reid Banks

This is one of my absolute favorite books of all time.  I loved it as a kid and I love it now.  I hadn't read it in more than a decade, but I pulled it out to read aloud to my kids, and they loved it too, especially my daughters.

Omri's friend Patrick gives him a little plastic Indian for his birthday.  Omri's brother gives him an old cupboard he found in the alley.  Omri's mother finds him an old, old key that fits the lock on the cupboard, and he's delighted because now...

My Favorite Reads from 2019

Over this past year, I have read 74 books.  Wowsers.  That may be some kind of record for adult me.  Especially since one of those was War and Peace .


As always, I can't pick just ten favorite books from all those.  So here are my ten favorite new-to-me books from 2019, and also my ten favorite rereads.  I'm linking this up with Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl.


I've decided it would be nice to have a place to gather these lists together, like I have my movie...

"The Undertaker's Assistant" by Amanda Skenandore

I grabbed this off the New Releases shelf at the library without knowing anything about it except what the jacket flap told me: set in Reconstruction-era New Orleans.  That's all I needed to know.

As you may know, I'm writing a retelling of Snow White that's set in the Old West, called One Bad Apple.  It's set in the early 1870s, and most of the characters are African-American.  One of them hails from New Orleans.  So I figured this novel would be a good chance to do a...

"The Cross and the Lynching Tree" by James H. Cone

This is a heavy book.  Not physically, but emotionally and mentally.  I'll be honest with you -- it unsettled me.  For the better, actually.

Cone looks at parallels between the cross that Jesus died on and the trees that so many African-Americans died hanging from, particularly between 1880-1940, when lynchings were commonplace.  He points out that really, Jesus's crucifixion was a lynching -- mob rule having a man tortured and executed without a proper sentence.  And...

Reading Plans for 2020

Time to gather up my plans for next year's reading and share them with you.  Because I can.  Mwahahah.

So, I didn't do a "My Year with..." personal challenge in 2019 because I just couldn't settle on one.  But I have figured out one for 2020!  It will be My Year with C. S. Lewis.  I'll kick that off by participating in Olivia's read-along of Till We Have Faces over at Meanwhile, in Rivendell... which you can learn about here.  



Besides it, I aim to read...

"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum

This book is entirely enchanting.  I loved it so, so much!  It's charming and sweet and cheerful and lovely.  I can't believe I'd never even heard of it until about a month ago!  Especially because it was written by L. Frank Baum, the guy who wrote The Wizard of Oz.

In this story, an abandoned infant is rescued and raised by magical folk living in the forest when the world was very young.  He's named Neclaus, but called Claus for short, and grows up happy and carefree...

"Murder on the Moor" by Julianna Deering

I've done it!  I've finished all six Drew Farthering Mysteries by Julianna Deering!  I read them all out of order, but now I've read them all.  Huzzah!  I look forward to rereading them one day in the proper order.

I liked this one tons, especially because it kept giving little nods to The Hound of the Baskervilles , one of my favorite books ever.  It even had a massive dog living out on the moor, but not a spectral hound or anything.  And Drew and Nick took...

"Blessed are the Cheese Makers" by Tricia Goyer and Cara Putman

This was the perfect book to read on Saturday when I was spending all day on the couch, laid up with a cold and resting my voice because I was supposed to sing in a couple of choir numbers at an Advent service that evening.  I just snuggled up with a blanket, this book, a box of tissues, and mug after mug of tea.  It was great, except for blowing my nose all the time.  Wretched cold.

Anyway.  This book was fun.  It's part of a series called Sugarcreek Amish Mysteries...