Classic Club Spin Time

 The time for the Classic Club Spin!  Check that out through the link 👈 and join in if you'd like.  It took me years to finally join the Classics Club and I've enjoyed having a goal of reading books on my list.  The Spin is a fun little game.

Here's my book list for the Classics Club Spin 

1. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
2. And The There Were None by Agatha Christie
3. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
4. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
5. Daisy Miller by Henry James
6. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
7. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
8. Goodnight, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian
9. Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
10. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
11. Lost Horizon by James Hilton
12. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
13. Out of Africa by Blixon, Karen 
14. Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier
15. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
16. The Covenant by James Michener
17. The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
19. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
20. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

When the spin number is announced on Sunday 17th of May, I will (hopefully) read that book before 5th of July, 2026.  Wish me luck!

Will you be joining in?  Check out the announcement post HERE.

Sharing with:

The Classics Club

British Breakfasts, Classics and bookish plans

Hello to my bookish friends!  I am inside for a very rainy day and getting some good reading in.  Taking a break to post about books and have more coffee. 

Currently I am reading YesterYear by Caro Claire Burke with Susan at The Cue Card. The start of this leads me to believe we are getting a snapshot of events from our main character's future, us being dropped in the middle of a crazy situation.  I read on to see what happened beforehand.  She isn't a very likeable person yet I am interested to see how events unfold, before and after. It's a page turner.

Recently I finished a nonfiction by Felicity Cloake titled Red Sauce, Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey.

This was a fun book about traveling through England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Isle of Man, in search of regional breakfast preferences.  Felicity Cloake rides her bike, meeting up with other cycling enthusiasts and samples a traditional breakfast from the area. The end of the chapters, after eating, they state their preferences for using a red or brown sauce, or nothing added at all.

I grew up using ketchup on eggs, still do. That is apparently a regional thing as I witness anything from raised eyebrows to revulsion here in the south.  Completely unsolicited opinion on MY breakfast.  I grew up in the Philadelphia area and that's what I was used to.

They stop at pubs, tour farms and are educated about honey and bread making, disappointed by being turned away at the Marmite factory as it was during lockdown/covid times.  They ride in beautiful weather as well as rainy gloomy conditons. Felicty suffered a hamstring injury early on but managed to adapt, making her way across the British Isles.  This is a story about cycling. friendship with a detailed foodie element. Oh, there are also some recipes included.

The English-speaking peoples are differentiated from the other nations of the earth by the peculiar and substantial character of their breakfast … to the nation as a whole the British breakfast remains as sacrosanct as the British constitution. – F. Marian McNeill, 1932

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Last but not least, the Classics Club has announced another Spin event HERE and I will write up a post about it next.  Hope to participate with a book from my list.

I hope you are well, have a stack of great books and enjoying life.

Linking with:

Shelleyrae at Book'd Out for the 2026 Nonfiction Reading Challenge for the Food category

Joy for British Isles Friday for British author Felicity Cloake

April roundup of books and movies

Well...April went by fast. I've read, planted more seeds, enjoyed some tv time in the evenings and have started walking more. I like writing letters and watching the rabbits in the backyard in the mornings ..that's my exciting life.

Here are two of the larger rabbits who graze as seen from the screen porch.

 Here's the April breakdown.........

Watched........ 📺

Just started Ted Lasso again.  It's been a while.

This month we watched a variety of genres.  We finished Shrinking (love that show), season 3 of Colony,  season 3 of Blue Lights (a police drama set in Belfast) and started Ted Lasso again as we heard a 4th season was coming out.

Still waiting on For All Mankind to drop all the episodes. 

📚  Read   📚

I had a good month of reading.  Reviews may be found by clicking on the title links.

Nonfiction 

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

Dog Days by Andrew Cotter

Fiction

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (a buddy read with Susan)

I Should Have Told You Sooner by Jane Ward

A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

Contemplating

Every once in a while I get restless about the blog format or how often to post.  Do I make a schedule?  Should I post once a week (ideally that would be good for me) or just stick to Goodreads and post there exclusively? 

I think I will post randomly this month and see where that takes me as I have not been joining up with much of the blog hops lately.  Just wool gathering here.

Well....that's it for now.  End of April, over and out!

I don't think I ever want to do a DNA test

Here we are about to slide into May - ALREADY!

My last book of the month is More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen. This is my first by this author and I was pleased to see there are many more titles, both fiction and nonfiction, for me to check out.

I liked this book about relationships, friendships and discovery. Polly Goodman is a character I could see having as a friend.  She is a high school English teacher, dealing with IVF treatments with support from her best friend Sarah and her lovely husband Mark.  The husband is a large animal vet at the Bronx zoo and the little bits about his interactions, with both people and the animals, are great.

Polly meets with her three friends for a book club, a book they never read, and they hash out all sorts of topics.  On Polly's birthday one of her gifts is a DNA test kit.  It was meant as a joke but opened up Pandora's Box.

Another character who will win the supporting actor category, in my opinion, is Polly's brother Garrison.  He's supportive, funny and he needed more page time in this story.  When they meet and she tells him about the DNA test ...well, that conversation is great.  He keeps her grounded for the most part.

"I love you, Garrison said.  I'm all you've got. Live with it."

"Oh, Gar, you are so much more than enough."

Polly and Garrison's father Jack is on the fast road with dementia, a sad progression , and their mother Mary is a judge.  There are surprises about the relationships and I think it was written well.

There are many other characters who are very realistically written.   I loved Sarah, Helen Mark's parents Lou and Skipper, and tolerated Jamie. 

The thing about you, Polly, is that you’re lucky. You let life in. I know because I don’t, and I’m fine with that. I never have. But you want, and you give, and you open your arms to everyone but her. 

Topics include cancer, DNA testing, infertility,  friendship, love.  Rounded to 4 stars

📚📚📚 Nonfiction is on the agenda next 📚📚📚

I just started Felicty Cloake's book Red Sauce, Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey   It's about traveling via bicycle through the British Isles and researching the different sorts of regional specialties for breakfast.  She has friends she meets up with, other biking enthusiasts, and they enjoy the riding, the eating and scenery throughout the country.

That's it.  Hope everyone is well, your weather is good, your book stacks are filled with all you want and life is good for you.

John Green and Chloe Dalton captivated me this week

I had two excellent nonfiction books this past week.  Let's start with John Green's book.

This was my first John Green book and I found it very informative and sad at times.  The explanations for medical resources and discoveries were written in laymans terms, easy enough for me to understand, saddened by the lack of medical care where it is needed most, yet hopeful for those suffering from tuberculosis.

The disease was where the cure was not, and the cure was where the disease was not.

Not all who suffer from the disease have options for treatment. It's like chasing your tail in Sierra Leone with rates of tuberculosis remaining high because of poverty and malnutrition. There is foremost the issue of affordability for food and medicine, not to mention the costs of transporation to a facility to receive treatment.

Where there is a wealthy population elsewhere in the world, the cure is readily available.   Therefore, the disease is not is not an issue.

"We could reimagine the allocation of global healthcare resources to better align them with the burden of global suffering."

In chapter 11 it was interesting to read about superstitions in the ages past and how the disease changed fashion. In 1916 a magazine article discusses how hemlines were shortened so women's dresses didn't drag through dirt, thus bringing bacteria into the home.  Men's whiskers were trimmed, or shaved completely, in attempts at cleanliness. 

There is great information in this book for the health category and I'm glad I read it.

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Next was the book Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.  I couldn't put this one down.

Chloe Dalton, a British foreign policy writer in a fast paced environment is suddenly thrust into a solitary life style when the pandemic hit. Remember that, when we all wore masks and avoided people because of Covid?  She sheltered and worked remotely from her rural home in the English countryside when she crossed paths with a leveret.

A leveret, a baby hare, was trying to be invisible in the path.  She wisely left it alone as the mother hare wouldn't accept it, or find it, if she moved it out of harms way.  But it was there hours later and she took it to shelter before it was found by predators or crushed by a vehicle.   That moment changed her life.

She took care of it and against all odds it survived.  In doing so she never tried to domesticate it, never named it and allowed it the freedom to go back to the wild when it was ready. The relationship evolved and caused Dalton to look at nature differently. She became more attuned to the seasons, wildlife and how man and nature sometimes did not exist harmoniously.  She made great accommodations for the hare as it grew, being there for safety but allowing it to be wild. I very much enjoyed reading her thoughts over the three year period she researched, provided and observed the hare and other creatures in nature.

Some of this book reminded of James Rebanks' Pastoral Song in regard to being stewards of the land.  That was a very good book as well.

This story is a 5 star for me. 

Linking with:

Shelleyrae at Book'd Out for the 2026 Nonfiction Reading Challenge for the Health category on the Green book and the Memoir category on the Dalton book. 

Joy for British Isles Friday for British author Chloe Dalton and Raising Hare

Lots and lots of books....

Saturday already.  I've been trying to get myself organized with the books I want to review as well as the next books in queue.  Let's talk books first.

Currently reading two nonfictions. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.

My reading buddy, Loki, enjoying some sunshine while I sit in the shade. 

Raising Hare is hard to put down and I'll most likely be done with both nonfictions before the end of the weekend.

Finished Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (review in link).  This is a good one for a book club discussion.  

Here is my list of books I hope to get off the shelf or read on Kindle.

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan

The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

Red Sauce, Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey by Felicity Cloake - Nonfiction

But wait! ....the library holds came in so...here is what I received. 

The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits and More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen.  Let's see how I can balance these with due dates and length of books. Yikes.

Watching

We don't subscribe to Britbox but we did manage to get season 3 of Blue Lights from the library on DVD. Police (Peelers as they are called in Northern Ireland) work the streets in Belfast.  Gritty and tense, great police drama if you like them.  We had the previous two seasons from the library as well.  Hope they do a fourth season.

Linking up with:

A Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday

Buckeye, a historical fiction and family saga

Catching up on reviews and blogging this week. :-)

Buckeye.

This was so good. The time period spans roughly 50 years and covers quite a bit of history from before WW II through Vietnam and the aftermath.  

The focus is on two main couples. Margaret & Felix Salt and Cal & Becky Jenkins. We see their childhood stories as well as their courtship and marriages from beginning to end.  It's hard to write about this book without giving spoilers.  You have to read the revelations as they come to see how they impact the relationships.

In the beginning Margaret sees people flooding to cars and businesses in search of a radio. Back then, breaking news arrived this way. As she searched for anyone with a radio she runs into Cal Jenkins' hardware store and hears WW II has indeed ended. In that moment she kisses Cal passionately.  Margaret Salt knows her husband Felix will return home from his tour of duty. That's not the end of Margaret's story but she doesn't appear again for a few chapters.

There are circumstances beyond the control of two of our characters but it shapes their personalities forever.  Margaret was abandoned as  a baby and never knew her mother.  She was left at an orphanage, placed in a basket with only a note stating her name was Margaret. After stints at foster homes, never knowing a permanent place and people to call mom and dad, she just grew up in the orphanage. Wouldn't that harden your heart and ability to trust? Unconditional love was a foreign concept.

Cal Jenkins was born wth a disformity.  One leg shorter than the other which kept him out of military service during WW II. He grew up with little support from his alcoholic father Everett. Cal's mother and siblings had died many years ago and Everett took solace in liquor rather than raise Cal properly.

In this small Ohio town of Bonhomie you will see love, support, grief, infidelity and best of all...forgiveness. The children play a big part in this story.  Felix and Margaret's son Tom and Cal and Becky's son Skip.    These families will be connected forever...read it to see a good story unfold.

Just a FYI - from the title Buckeye I thought it refered to the state of Ohio as this is where the story is primarily set.  Then I wondered if it refered to Tom Salt as Skip Jenkins nicknamed him Buckeye. A friend on Goodreads mentioned it was from the Buckeye tree in front of the Salt's house, as well as for Tom.

This was a buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card.  Very enjoyable and ignited great discussions.  This is one for a book club, folks.