Category: books and reading

Top Ten Tuesday: Oldest books on my TBR

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, top-ten-tuesday20 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

This week the prompt was: Oldest (aka Earliest Published) Books On My TBR (submitted by Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits)

I wrote mine in order from earliest to latest:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1813)

Emma by Jane Austen (1815)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and Auguste Maquet (1844 to 1846)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)

Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott (1886)

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott (1871)

Emily of New Moon by L.M.  Montgomery (1923)

Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery (1937)

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (1952)

What are some of the oldest books on your TBR?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten books with cats on the cover

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, top-ten-tuesday16 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today the theme was top ten covers with [an item of your choice] n the front and I chose top ten covers with cats because I have a lot of books with cats on the front. That’s probably because I read a lot of cozy mysteries and cozy mystery readers and authors like cats in their books and on their covers. Sometimes they barely mention a cat in the book but they still put a cat on the cover. Cozy mystery readers and authors also like dogs but today I went with bookcovers with cats on them.

  1. The Cat Who Sniffed Glue by Lilian Jackson Braun

When I looked through my The Cat Who books I was actually surprised by how many of the covers didn’t have cats on them. They had paw prints, but no actual cats. It looks like there are some knock-off covers online but those are not the official covers so I did not include them. A couple of the books, such as this one, did have cats on them, though.

2. The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

I have not read this one yet but I hope to this winter. I have had it on my list for a while and planned to read it but got distracted by some other books first. Yes, the story of my life.

2. Mums and Mayhem by Amanda Flowers.

The cat is part of the story in this series but not a huge part. The fox pictured here is more a part than the cat.

4. Read and Buried by Eva Gates

I’ve only read one book in this series and it was pretty good. From what I remember, the cat was a big part of it.

5. A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon

This one was on my fall TBR but I don’t think I’m going to get to it so I am pushing it off until winter. My daughter picked this one out because of the cat, which looks a lot like our cat Scout.

6. Apple Cider Slaying by Julie Anne Lindsey

I don’t really remember there being cats in this book but I liked the cats on the cover at least.

7. We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida

I have not read this one yet, but it is on my list and I like the name because cats often help me when I don’t feel well or I am down. Sometimes they drive me crazy too.

8. Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing by Lisa R. Howeler

Yes this is my book but it has a cat on the front so…I shamelessly added it. It is on sale on Amazon and can also be read on Kindle Unlimited if you are interested. *wink*

9. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

This is a writing craft book that I have read part of and would like to read more of but have put it somewhere and can’t find it.

10. The Crime That Binds by Laurie Cass

I’ve had this one on my shelf for over a year so I really hope to get it read soon. This series looks so good and I am interested to see how the cat fits in to the story.

How about you? Do you have books with either cats on the cover or a lot of books with similar images?

Top Ten Tuesday: Top ten musicians to listen to while reading that also might put you to sleep.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, top-ten-tuesday8 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today is a Halloween freebie so I am making a list of the top ten musicians to listen to while reading that might also put you to sleep.

  1. Diana Krall

My husband turned me on to Diana Krall and I used to play her music to help calm my son when he was a baby and to help him fall asleep. We listened to Diana up until he was probably 5 or 6 to fall asleep and he said the other day that he has a type of Pavloveyn response to her music because no matter where he is and hears it, he immediately wants a nap. I can say the same thing because one time The Husband and I were in Barnes and Noble (many years ago because we have not been to one in probably a decade) and Diana came on. I immediately looked at the comfy chair I was standing next to and considered a nap.

2. Frank Sinatra

The best album of his to listen to for reading or dreaming is The Wee Small Hours

3. Nat King Cole

Just about any Nat King Cole album will do but I love any of his albums with a lot of ballads on them for this purpose

4. Miles Davis

Kind of Blue is a good album choice for this one

5. Harry Connick Jr

Harry has some peppier albums so I stick with his more mellow tunes but one of my favorite albums of his is Red Light, Blue Light

6. Alison Krauss

You’re either going to relax or cry listening to her.

7. Rachael & Vilaray

A recent duo for me suggested to me by The Husband

8. Michael Buble

Don’t listen to his fast stuff or you will have to get up and dance and sing because his music just makes people happy. Stick to the smooth, easy going songs or albums.

9. JJ Heller

I don’t remember how I discovered JJ Heller but I listened to her lullaby album to  help Little Miss sleep and now when I hear songs from the album I burst into tears remembering those wonderful days of naptime with a newborn, infant, and toddler, cuddling and just connecting as JJ’s music played in the background.

I always imagine that heaven will just be full of those moments – reliving those special times with our children and loved ones over and over again.

10, Vince Gill

Specifically his box set These Days. This is another set of albums I listened to when The Boy was little. I love the jazz album for sleeping/reading and just every other album for anytime listening. I combined him and Allison for this clip —  love this song.

Bonus:

Elliot James Reay

I discovered this guy while looking up these videos so I am adding him as bonus.

So how about you? Do you like to listen to music while you read? What are your go to genres or musicians?
(I’d also add classical music to this list, personally, but didn’t choose any to share this time around. Maybe a future list!)

Book review/recommendation: Nancy Drew Mystery, The Secret at Red Gate Farm

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings6 Comments

I’ve been reading through the original Nancy Drew books, which, as many of us now know, were written by around 28 ghost writers. These first books I am reading, though, were written by Mildren Benson using outlines given to her by either Edward Stratemeyer or his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.

The Secret of Red Gate Farm is number six in the original series and was first released in 1931 with some rewrites of it done in 1961 by Adams.

In this book we find Nancy caught up in a mystery that starts on a train while she and her friends George (female George) and Bess are coming home from a shopping trip.

Let’s start with the summary: “Nancy and her friends, Bess and George, meet Joanne Byrd on a train ride home. Joanne lives at Red Gate Farm with her grandmother, but if they do not raise enough money to pay the mortgage, they will soon lose the farm! Nancy, Bess, and George decide to stay at Red Gate for a week as paying customers. Soon, they learn about the strange group of people who rent a cave on the property. They describe themselves as a nature cult called the Black Snake Colony.”


 Nancy Drew books are written simplistically in many ways but the storylines are not light by any means. There are subjects of abuse, criminal underworlds, abandonment, parental loss and many other hard-hitting issues.

This one was no exception. A young woman goes to the city to look for work because her grandmother is going to sell the family farm because they are losing money. While there she meets Nancy and almost gets caught up in a gambling ring of some sort when she interviews for the job and the interviewer is super, super creepy. I’ve watched too many movies and written up too many stories for newspapers so I imagined all the  horrible things that would happen to this girl and Nancy while reading these scenes. It made me a bit lightheaded, but since it is a Nancy Drew book I knew things would turn out okay in the end.

Nancy decides she and her friends will go with the young girl back to her farm and pay to stay at the farm while also encouraging others to do the same. Nancy’s idea is like an early Airbnb. People can rent rooms at the farm and this will help the farm owners pay off their dept.

While there Nancy and her friends notice people in the woods, wearing all white, and dancing in the moonlight. This doesn’t seem like your everyday farming community activity so they ask Joanne’s grandmother what that is all about. The woman says she’s renting her land to a group of people to help avoid selling the farm but she doesn’t really know what they are doing up there. Can we say “RED FLAG”?

In addition to that craziness, there is also a man trying to buy the rest of the farm but the grandmother is trying to push him off until she sees if other options work to raise some money.

Despite the simple and fairly innocent way the Nancy Drew books are written, this one was a little creepy for me because of the cult angle.

Even with the simple writing, the dark subject matter leaked through and left me a little unsettled part of the time. People wearing white robes, dancing weirdly in the moonlight? Shudder!

Then Nancy and her friends decide to infiltrate the group at one point and I swear I was about to faint from the tension.

Nancy Drew books might be written simply but their plots still hold together well in my opinion.

Either Stratemeyer or Mildred had quite an imagination.

Have you read this one in the series yet or before?

Top Ten Tuesday: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday18 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today’s topic is: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time (submitted by Lydia @ https://lydiaschoch.com)

I don’t really know how to do this as a top ten list so I thought I’d just chat about it.

I started reading fiction fairly consistently when I was a kid and then even more when I was a teenager. When I was a “kid” – like under the age of 13 – I read books like the Little House series and the Chronicles of Narnia and sometimes I used a flashlight to finish a chapter because Mom had said I needed to go to bed and shut my light off but I didn’t want to go to bed yet.

I never read books quickly but I consistently had a book with me when I was a teenager. Back then I read mainly historical fiction and some clean/Christian romance. Now I read mainly mysteries – clean and cozy mainly.

In high school I got in trouble at least twice for reading in class. It’s not my fault my Roman-based epic was way more interesting than the football coach rambling about driver safety. Or a book from that same series (The Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers) was way more interesting than my history teacher who never really taught but mostly talked about football because he was the other football coach. Huh. Coincidence there? I think not.

I remember my mom came to a parent teacher conference, holding one of those books because we had picked it up at the local Christian bookstore (which only lasted about two years in our tiny community) and the teacher said, “Oh. Is that one of those books you got caught reading in class the other day?”

My mom, with her quick wit, said, “Yes, it probably is but it is based in history at least.”

I don’t think she meant that as a slam against that teacher but he was the one who used to start classes each year by holding up the text book and saying, “You can take this an use it to prop up a window.” Then he’d spend the rest of the year talking about who knows what from the front of the classroom with very little of it being actual history.

The only thing I remember from his class is how he told us all not to mess around with pimples and other spots on our skin because his mom had one she didn’t get checked and it was cancer. I don’t know if she died from it or not but that unlocked a new fear for me.

In college I mainly read textbooks. I didn’t seem to have time for reading fiction. I started working full time my senior year of college and there was no time for reading. I was taking classes twice a week and working like 60 hours a week, sometimes seven days. That’s about the time I killed my thyroid and my mental health but I was young and stupid.

I don’t really remember picking many fiction books back up again until a few years ago when I really got back into reading again. When I had my kids I was working full time at newspapers or writing blog posts or completely immersed in photography and homeschooling while taking care of kids. I didn’t take a lot of time for myself or to escape the stress of life by reading fiction. I wish I had because it would  have helped all the stress back then.

Now I always have a hard copy of a book and my Kindle in my purse or with me wherever I go. I may not always read the book but I have it with me “just in case.” Instead of watching TV or surfing online all the time, I now carve out time for reading, even on the days I think I don’t feel like reading. I’ll find that once I start reading, I get caught up in the story and I start to relax and forget about all the things I was stressed about. I think I recently heard that reading even 15 minutes a day can help a person relax and reset their emotional state. Something like that anyhow. I don’t know – just go with it and pretend I’m smart. *wink*

Now that I am reading more, I have gotten caught up more than once with feeling like I have to read what other people are reading instead of what I want to read. It’s crazy that even at my age I can be influenced by what is popular or talked about a lot or what others say I should or shouldn’t read. Luckily, I have pushed aside a lot of that in the last year and now I really am reading what I want to read.

Sure, I see recommendations and sometimes I take them but I don’t just read a book because a lot of people claim it is good. Yes, I have read books that I’ve seen recommended a few times, but I don’t feel like I have to anymore. I do it because the book actually interests me.

Honestly, I find myself leaning away from books that are heavily recommended more than I lean toward them. I’ve been burned more than once by books that were supposed to be so amazing and then turned out to be complete duds or pushed agendas or morals that didn’t fit with mine.

Becoming an independent author opened my eyes to the publishing world and how reviews can be bought, essentially, or reviewers can be swayed to give a book a good review because they either don’t want to be excluded from other advanced reader groups or because they don’t be the one to step out of line and say, “I didn’t like this book everyone else liked.”

Before this year I was susceptible to getting wrapped up in all those “BookTok” (not on TikTok though. What a nightmare that app is!) “Bookstagram” drama sessions about – well, everything about reading. This year, though, I couldn’t care less what some Bookstagrammer says I should or shouldn’t read or what I shouldn’t or shouldn’t say on social media.

I read books, I share about the ones I like, I move on. Life is way too short to be so dramatic about reading. Good grief. Reading is for leisure and enjoyment. There was a time when only the rich could read books and then it became so everyone could read books as long as they had a good education and were taught to read.

Now we teach children to read at a young age so the world is opened wide to them. They can learn so much from books – fiction and non-fiction. This can be a bad thing, of course, if the subject matter is not age appropriate but in the vast majority of cases being able to read is a wonderful thing.

Because reading is a gift, I don’t believe we should try to finish books that don’t bring us joy. I do not continue reading a book I am not connecting with. A couple of years ago I made way too many commitments to read books and review them without knowing what I was really getting into. This year I have been reading books because I want to.

 I read a couple of books for author friends and ran into trouble because the books were okay but they simply weren’t for me. Then what do I do? I don’t want to keep reading the book simply because the person is a friend if it is taking the joy out of reading for me. That’s why I’m now deciding that if I do read a book by an author friend, I’m not going to tell them I am reading it in case I don’t enjoy it.

Life is too short to read books qw aren’t enjoying. This is something I’ve heard said in reading circles again and again and it is something that we readers need to heed more.

Sometimes I do break my own “rules”, though. I’m reading one right now that isn’t one I’d probably finish if it was just me reading for fun, but I’m reading it to review for a magazine. Just because the book isn’t really for me, doesn’t mean it won’t be for someone else. The fact I am pushing myself through this book, though, has made me decide I probably won’t be doing reviews for magazines anymore unless I have already read the book first and enjoyed it.

My motto the rest of this year and next, therefore, is to read what I want and review it only if I want to.

I hope I can keep up with that because taking the pressure off something that should be done for enjoyment and relaxation is what I really need in my life right now.

How has what and how you read changed over the years?

Book review/recommendation: Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings11 Comments

My 10-year-old daughter picked out a hardcover copy of Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland for me at a used bookstore about a month ago.

As soon as I saw that cover, I had a gut feeling I was going to like it. Luckily my gut was not wrong. As soon as I saw that cover and title I wanted to know if it would feature the characters from My Fair Lady since I knew the title was alluding to the famous line Eliza Doolittle yells out in the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll have to look it up.

When I read the title of the series on the front (An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery), I was giddy with delight to know that it was based on the same characters.

This was a delightful, fun, and engaging mystery that takes place – as the inside cover says – in the Edwardian racing world. It is a very fast-paced story with very few slow scenes.

The book starts with Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins at a horse race to cheer on Eliza’s father’s horse, which he co-owns with a group of about 10 other people.

When a murder occurs after the race it seems to be an isolated incident but future developments show that someone is after the members of the horse-owning syndicate. The question is – why?

Woven into the murder mystery is an underlying story of women’s suffrage as women fight for their right to vote in England.

The main characters – Eliza, Henry, Arthur (Eliza’s father), and Freddy (Eliza’s “boyfriend”) are very likable and fun, much like the characters in My Fair Lady. I will say that Henry Higgins was much more likable in this book than the film since I only wanted to throttle him a few times in the book instead of almost the entire time in the movie.

I loved the quick wit of the characters and how closely they mirrored the wit and charm of the characters in the movie. The movie is based on the 1957 Broadway Musical, which was based on the 1914 play, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

The back-and-forth, quick-paced conversations between the characters, the complex mystery, and the well-developed side characters made this one a very fun read for me.

I was very excited to see there are four other books in the series. This was the second book in the series but I didn’t feel like I’d missed something by not reading the first. I also liked how the plot and outcome of the first book weren’t given away in this book, which means you don’t have to read the series in order to understand what is going on in each book.

For those who are not fans of romance in books, there is very little in this one, and the romance that is there is so minor and secondary that it’s barely a blip on the romance meter. For those who are not fans of swearing, there is, I think, only one or two minor swear words. For those who are not a fan of graphic descriptions, this book will also work for you because there are no graphic descriptions of any of the crimes.

As a side note – the cover art for the Kindle version of this book is hideous and amateur-looking to me. The cover on the hardcover/library version that I bought is – dare I say it? Delightful. So if you go to look for the Kindle edition, please don’t run away. I promise the book is much better than the cover that is shown.

Have you read this book or any of the others in the series?


Book Review/Recommendation: Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings3 Comments

Book Title: Trouble Shooter (A Hopalong Cassidy book)

Author: Louis L’Amour

Genre: Western

Description:

Hopalong Cassidy is one of the most enduring and popular heroes in frontier fiction. His legendary exploits in books, movies, and on television have blazed a mythic and unforgettable trail across the American West. Now, in the last of four Hopalong Cassidy novels written by Louis L’Amour, the immortal saddleman rides again—this time into a lonely valley of danger and death.

Hopalong Cassidy has received an urgent message from the dead. Answering an urgent appeal for help from fellow cowpuncher Pete Melford, he rides in only to discover that his old friends has been murdered and the ranch Pete left to his niece, Cindy Blair, had vanished without a trace. Hopalong may have arrived too late to save Pete, but his sense of loyalty and honor demands that he find that cold-blooded killers and return to Cindy what is rightfully hers.

Colonel Justin Tradwar, criminal kingpin of the town of Kachina, is the owner of the sprawling Box T ranch, and he has built his empire with a shrewd and ruthless determination. In search of Pete’s killers and Cindy’s ranch, Hopalong signs on at the Box T, promising to help get Tradway’s wild cattle out of the rattler-infested brush. But in the land of mesquite and black chaparral, Cassidy confronts a mystery as hellish as it is haunting—a bloody trail that leads to the strange and forbidding Babylon plateau, to $60,000 in stolen gold, and to a showdown with an outlaw who has already cheated death once… and is determined to do it again.

My Thoughts:

Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour was not listed under L’Amour’s name when it first came out in 1951. Instead, it was released under the name Clarence E. Mulford, the original creator of Hopalong Cassidy, the main character of the book. When Mulford retired, he asked L’Amour to carry on Hopalong’s tradition in four novels, which included Trouble Shooter, The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, and the Riders of High Rock.

The books were published on L’Amour’s name in the 1990s when they were re-released.

I ended up liking Trouble Shooter a lot more than I thought I would when I first started it. Once I realized that the book was written in the style of another writer and that it was written in the 1950s, I began to adjust to the style of writing and storytelling. I found myself pulled into the story a bit more as it went along, despite the old style of writing, which included what writers call “head hopping.” This is where the thoughts of each character involved in a scene are shared instead of the point of view being from just the one character. This can get a little bit confusing but L’Amour didn’t over do it.

The way the sentences were structured threw me off at times but I thought the prose really was well-written. I wasn’t as interested in the lengthy description of Hopalong Cassidy climbing a mountain or riding long distances in the middle of nowhere and would have loved for the female characters to have been flushed out a bit more, but I still liked the overall story.

I didn’t expect the ending to take such a dark turn since most of the book was mild when it came to the discussions of violence. There was very little to no descriptions of violence at all and any descriptions offered were very surface level. There were no obscenities in the book and no sex at all – not even hinted at.

This was definitely a stripped back Western. There were some descriptions but none of them went on for pages. There were some slow parts for me but I wanted to know the  answer to the mystery introduced in the beginning so I kept reading.

A couple of lines I enjoyed and thought were well-written:

“Hopalong Cassidy had drawn his gun as he always drew, with flashing, incredible speed. Once his hand was empty, then filled, and the gun blasting death.”

“The heat was a living thing, and he touched his lips only a little with the water in his canteen, then pushed on. Dust devils danced across a vast, empty distance marked by nothing but the trail of two riders. And then out of the north came another trail, a trail of several riders that moved in and obliterated the trail they followed.”

“Through the storm clouds the afternoon sun sent streaks of cathedral light across the sky and first spattering of drops fell, dappling the ground and making the dust jump.”

“Even if he isn’t dead, he might have reformed, and if a man has reformed, I’d have to judge him according to what he is now, but I’d advise him to keep his name to himself.”

If you would like to read more about Louis L’Amour, you can do so here:

https://louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

Top Ten Tuesday: 8 books I Read Because of the Hype — and 2 I avoided because of the hype

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday28 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today’s topic is: Books I Read/Avoided Because of the Hype (and did you make the right choice?)

For this one, I decided to share eight books I read because of the hype and two I avoided.

First, the ones I read because of the hype:

How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristin Perin

It was the hype on Netgalley that hooked me on this one. Reviewers were calling it the Knives Out of mystery books so I decided to give it a go and I ended up really enjoying it – with the exception of a couple issues and two unnecessary swear words.

The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett

I’ve heard a lot about this book over the years and had seen the movie years ago so figured I needed to give it a try. I ended up enjoying it but wanted more from the ending.

Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott

I think I got sick of women gushing about this book and having no idea what they were talking about. I’d seen a few versions of the movie but never read the book. Now that I have I think the book lived up to the hype. I fell in love with the book and plan to re-read it each Christmas season now.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

I’ve heard a lot about this classic book over the years, but, again, never read it. I finally did that last year as part of my son’s English curriculum and ended up feeling like the book did live up to the hype.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

After all of my family fell all over these movies and my much, much older brother read it in high school or college or whatever (I can’t remember. It was sooo long ago.), I figured I’d better try it too. I didn’t think I was going to make it because of all the tree descriptions but I ended up falling in love with the characters and, in the end, the book. I can’t read to read the other two installments.

The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kipp by Sara Brunsvold

This was huge in Christian Fiction circles when it came out.

I think the hype is warranted for this one but I’ve never been able to actually finish it. Not because it isn’t good but because the topic is heavy and I have older parents and I’m struggling with that so the topic of an elderly woman with a terminal illness is a hard one for me to read. I do plan to finish it though.

The Mistletoe Countess by Pepper Basham

In this instance, I didn’t make the right choice for me. I found the main characters irritating, the marriage of convenience trope ridiculous, and the suggestive comments about the sex the morning after really uncomfortable, even though they weren’t graphic. This was a Christian fiction book and this book and the reaction of Christian readers to it, was particularly grating to me because I was condemned for a kiss scene in one of my books by Christian readers but they had no issues with this author’s main character being giddy over getting to have sex with the man she was “forced” to marry and then daydreaming about their night together the next morning for a full page and a half.

It was weird to me but I’ve learned there are as many hypocritical Christian fiction readers out there as there are crooked politicians. It’s weird the things Christian Fiction readers will embrace and the things they will reject. It seems to change every other month or so. I have just never understood the readers of that genre and their absolute love for marriage of convenience books.

That trope is so disgusting to me – being forced to marry someone you don’t love and then supposedly falling in love with that person. I mean what cheap thrill do these women get out of that? I have no earthly idea.

The Mysterious Affair of Styles by Agatha Christie

I had heard a lot about this first Poirot book within the cozy mystery reader circle over the years and so when my husband suggested it, I decided to give it a go. I ended up really liking it but not liking the antisemitism buried in some places. Great story, but Agatah had some issues there, which is something I wrote about on the blog earlier this year.

Two books I avoided because of the hype:

50 Shades of Gray

Yes, this self-proclaimed prude tried this book because I had NO idea what it was about. I barely made it into it when it hit me what was going on and the book was returned to Amazon for a full refund and I never touched it again. Sex is one thing. Abuse and domination is another and I do not read those kinds of books at all.

Fourth Wing

I know. I know. But ….just not my thing. Not a fantasy or a smut reader so I avoided it. So many people loved this book and if you did – that’s awesome. It’s just not my thing. That’s all!

What are some of the books you read or avoided because of the hype?

Book Review/Recommendation: An Assassination On The Agenda

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading4 Comments

I love the Lady Hardcastle Mysteries and once again I was not disappointed. An Assassination On The Agenda is the eleventh book in the series and released earlier this year.

Description:

July 1912. Lady Hardcastle and her tenacious lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, are enjoying a convivial gathering at the home of their dear friends, the Farley-Strouds. The only fly in the idyllic ointment seems to be the lack of musical entertainment for the forthcoming summer party—until, that is, Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry calls with news of a murder.

Harry dispatches them to Bristol on behalf of the Secret Service Bureau, with instructions to prevent the local police from uncovering too much about the victim. It seems an intriguing mystery—all the more so when they find a connection between the killer and an impending visit from an Austrian trade delegation, set to feature a very important guest…

Summoned to London to help with some very important security arrangements, the intrepid duo will have to navigate sceptical bureaucrats, Cockney gangsters and shadowy men in distinctive hats in their attempts to foil an explosive—and internationally significant—threat.

My thoughts:

Once again, the pairing of Lad Hardcastle and her partner in solving crime, her maid Florence “Flo” Armstrong was the breeding ground for early 1900s humor and entertainment.

In this installment we see the two women, already known to be spies and operatives for the British government in the past sent on yet another mission. This time they are summoned from their country home to Bristol and their goal is to find out about a group of men who may be trying to commit an assassination that will start a war.

We see Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry and sister-in-law Lavinia (nicknamed Jake) again in this book and as usual I love the bantering between the siblings, which fits in nicely with the bantering between employee and employer, though Lady Hardcastle always treats Flo as her equal.

I read this one on my Kindle but when I had to do dishes or drive somewhere I listened to it on Audible with amazing narration by Elizabeth Knowelden, who is the narrator for most, if not all the other Lady Hardcastle books on Audible.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book but was not asked to give anything other than my honest opinion. Let’s be honest, I was going to read this book even if a complimentary copy had not been provided to me.