Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 67

The #CoverLove Tag

Movie Critic tagged me with this :-)  Months and months ago, but hey.  At least I'm finally finishing it up and sharing, right?

All these pictures are ones I've taken myself and shared on Instagram.  I've linked the titles to my reviews of each book, if I've reviewed them.

A book cover featuring a gorgeous dress:



Five Poisoned Apples by Skye Hoffert, Jenelle Hovde, Courtney Manning, Maddie Morrow, and Rachael Wallen

A book cover with no people, just a pretty scenery:



The Blue Castle...

Top Ten Tuesday: The First Ten

Today's prompt for Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is "First Ten Books I Reviewed."


I started doing book reviews on other blogs of mine about eight years before I started this book blog.  I've been blogging at Hamlette's Soliloquy since 2002 and, in 2004, I started tossing an occasional book review into my mix there.  Later, I had a writing blog called Inscriptions and a crafting blog connected to my Etsy shop, and I posted book reviews on them as well.

But in 2012, I was...

"Caddie Woodlawn" by Carol Ryrie Brink

This book is every bit as fun as I remembered it being!  I chuckled aloud more than once.  And my two oldest kids thoroughly enjoyed it too.  In fact, my 9-year-old promptly read the sequel, Magical Melons (recently retitled Caddie Woodlawn's Family).  My 11-yr-old liked it so much, he said he'd like it if I read it out loud to everyone on vacation this summer.  Warmed my heart!

Also, this solved a semi-mystery for me.  For all of my adult life, the phrase "I...

"Murder at the Mikado" by Julianna Deering

I have mixed feelings about this one.  I had a great time reading it because of all the stuff about Gilbert and Sullivan productions, but the mystery itself dragged in places, and I got very, very frustrated with Madeline all through the book.  So it's probably my least-favorite Drew Farthering Mystery so far.

Drew and Madeline are putting the finishing touches on their wedding plans when a woman from Drew's past shows up and asks him to clear her of the suspicion of murder.  We...

"Hometown Girl" by Courtney Walsh

This book surprised me.  For some reason, I thought it was going to be about someone opening a flower shop.  It's totally not.

It's about a business woman helping her sister renovate and restore a tourist farm/orchard/market/place with the help of a handsome cowboy-ish guy who has a deep, secret connection with the farm.  That involves an unsolved crime. 

You know I love mysteries, so that unsolved-crime aspect sucked me in, and so did all the details about restoring old bui...

"The Annotated Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler, edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto

Well, this was fantastic.  I've never read a fully annotated novel before, just annotated versions of Hamlet, but I am now a firm fan.  It's like a movie with a commentary track, but as a book.  It was absolutely fascinating.  I learned SO many cool things from these notes!  From explaining slang to discussing the LA setting to exploring the major themes, this book's notes had everything.

And I do mean everything, so if you don't want the more seedy subtext of the the...

Top Ten Tuesday: Spring Fling

The prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl for Top Ten Tuesday this week is "Books on My Spring 2019 TBR."  So here are ten books I hope to read (or reread, or finish reading) this spring:

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery  (re-read)

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (finish re-reading)

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien  (re-read)

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame  (re-read)

Murder at the Mik...

"Homer Price" by Robert McCloskey

If you're thinking to yourself, "Wow, Hamlette has been reading an awful lot of YA/Middle-grade/Junior fiction lately, hasn't she?" you are not wrong.  I have been.  It's because I'm teaching two lit classes twice a month for our homeschool co-op, and I'm revisiting a lot of really wonderful books in the process.  And I am loving it!  Though I'm not loving how it cuts into my unstructured "I read what I want" pattern of reading.  But whatever, I'm still reading things...

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

I read this back in high school, like so many of you probably have.  I hated it.  Hated it in the, "Why does this exist, why did I have to read it, and how soon can I forget it?" way I hated  Of Mice and Men  by John Steinbeck.  

But I've been wondering about Lord of the Flies lately.  During my thirties, I've re-read and re-watched books and movies I disliked in my teens and early twenties and discovered that I now like a lot of them.  Even love some...

"The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler

I inhaled this book in a day and a half like a drowning woman whose been handed an oxygen tank.  It was everything I needed right now -- sparkly and gritty and grim and delicious.  

You know by now that I adore Raymond Chandler's books.  I try to read one a year (I have all seven of his novels, plus two collections of his other writings, like short stories and essays), which means it's about nine years between readings, and that lets me forget a lot of what the plots involv...