nomadreader

This year, Mr. Nomadreader and I are starting a new tradition for our family: we hope to visit one new country each year with Hawthorne. Our family is complete, and I'm excited to be starting a new family tradition. Hawthorne will be two and a half next month (!), and we're ready to start showing him the world. Our first destination: Amsterdam, this spring. While we've been studying the guidebooks and planning our days, I've also been busy making lists of fiction I want to read that is set in Amsterdam, both past and present. I've been intrigued by Chris Ewan's The Good Thief series, as each one is set in a different city, but our trip made me pick up his first in the series, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam.  The titular good thief is Charlie Howard, a novelist who writes books about a globetrotting thief named Faulks. He also secretly works as a thief himself. There is a lot going on in this novel. In its opening pages, Charlie gets an intriguing of...

Books are one of my favorite ways of exploring new places and revisiting familiar places. When I travel, I've always loved to read books set in the place I'm visiting. This year, I'm leading a J-term travel seminar to Chiang Mai, Thailand. The course is the culmination of almost two years of work, and I'm spent a lot of time learning about Thailand. When our flights were finalized, I learned we're flying through Beijing both ways. I began seeking out books about China, and I was intrigued by Susan Conley's memoir about the two years she and her family spent living in Beijing. Conley is a novelist, and I'm drawn to memoirs written by fiction writers. Moreover, I wasn't necessarily interested in immersing myself in China; I wanted to see it through the eyes of a western woman so I could anticipate my own experience with culture shock. I sought answers to the questions I didn't even know to ask. I wanted insight into Chinese culture and the difficulty o...

2016 wasn't my most productive year of reading, but I did manage to read 104 books, which averages out to two a week, and I'm pleased with that. I didn't review most of those, so this post is not full of linked reviews as in years past ,  but I did rate eight of them 5 stars. 19 more were 4.5 star reads. The books I loved were incredibly diverse in genre, so this year, instead of ranking them, I offer my favorites by categories. Dig in! (Pictures take you to Amazon and linked titles take you to my reviews--if I actually wrote one.) Best Comic (tie) Something New  by Lucy Knisley &  Roller Girl  by Victoria Jamieson Best Nonfiction All the Single Ladies  by Rebecca Traister Best Short Story Collection American Housewife  by Helen Ellis Runner Up: Almost Famous Women  by Megan Mayhew Bergman Best Mystery (standalone) Dodgers by Bill Beverly Runner Up: The Kind Worth Killing  by Peter Swanson Best New My...

Oh, 2016: the year I accidentally quit blogging. I didn't actually quit blogging, but I rarely chose to spend my time blogging. I posted only 44 times this year. I think I spent more time creating elaborate lists about how I could and would catch up on all the unreviewed books I read than actually blogging. I miss blogging, both the writing and the interacting with those of you who (still?) read this blog. As I've been thinking (yet again) about what the realistic future of this space, I realized how much my online book life has changed in since I started blogging 2007. These days, I do more interacting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Litsy than here. I'm okay with that switch, but I realize I'm more drawn to those kinds of conversations about books than I am in writing reviews, and I want to make this space reflect what I'm most enjoying (and finding the time for) elsewhere. So what's next? I want to talk about books more than review them. It's a fine...

The backstory: Michael Connelly is my favorite mystery writer. I've read and reviewed all twenty-eight (and now twenty-nine) books. The basics: Harry is once again out of the LAPD and working as a private investigator. The case: discover if a very rich and powerful old man fathered a child in his youth and has an heir. At the same time, Harry is working as a volunteer detective for tiny San Fernando PD, where he's putting together pieces of what appear to be a number of crimes committed by the same perpetrator. My thoughts: When I first started reading Michael Connelly, I loved that time passed between his books in real time. Each time we see Harry Bosch, he's a year or two older. But the first Bosch book came out in 1992. It's now 2016, and part of my brain knows Harry Bosch can't live and work forever. Until then, however, I eagerly await and savor each new installment. This one certainly does not disappoint. In all the roles Bosch has served in over the ye...

The basics: Spot 12  is Jenny Jaeckel's graphic memoir of her experience giving birth and the months following, when her daughter Asa was in intensive care.   My thoughts: The premise of this book sounded right up my alley. Since I gave birth (26 months ago now), I've stayed interested in parents, particularly mothers, talking about the transition into parenthood. I was curious to see how Jaeckel's transition was similar and different given her daughter's health problems. Unfortunately, I found Spot 12  to be more of journal than a memoir. The language was mostly simplistic and recounted events. I kept waiting for Jaeckel to offer more insight or hindsight, but it didn't happen. I was yearning for wisdom. I think a few of Jaeckel's style choices contributed to the emotional disconnect I felt with Jaeckel's story. First, the memoir is entirely black and white and doesn't play much with the shape and size of cells. I prefer my comics to push the medi...

I've been feeling guilty about my reading this year. I'm not reading as much as I was. I have bright spots, particularly when I travel for work and remember how much time in the day there is after a long day of work when I'm not playing with and taking care of a two-year old. This summer, I felt the shift as my reading became predominantly audiobooks, boosted by a nanny share that required a lot of driving (by Des Moines standards) two days a week. I realized I rarely picked up an actual book or my Kindle to read. I'd get back in the groove with one book, but then I'd lose my momentum again when I finished it. When classes started, I found myself so stressed and intellectually exhausted that I often chose music in the car instead of my audiobook. I have been listening to the same audiobook since August 13th. I like it, but it is heavy, and I'm not always in the mood to listen to it. This weekend I finished a mystery by one of my favorite mystery writers. I star...