The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley fulfills the category “Book with a Bird on the Cover” for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. The cover is a muted green featuring a dead Jack snipe bird with a stamp on his beak. The novel is a cozy mystery featuring amateur detective Flavia …
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks fulfilled the “Book with More Than Twenty Letters in Its Title” category of the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. In fact, it has fifty-one letters. And that’s the best thing I can say about the book. We all know I’m …
The Host by Stephenie Meyer fulfills the “Book with a Main Character in their Twenties” category for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. Wanda, the symbiont, is well over a hundred, but the body she inhabits, Melanie, is twenty-one years old. I’ve used quite a few Young Adult books on the blog. I’m sorry if that’s …
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones fulfills the category “Book with a Great First Line” in the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. The first line of the novel is “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the …
A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman fulfills the “Book that Won an Award in 2019” category of the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. This story won an Agatha Award for Best First Novel in May 2019. The Agatha is an award for mysteries that fall under “cozy” guidelines—no sex, not much violence, …
Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon fulfills the category “Book Set in a City that Hosted the Olympics” for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. Honestly, the city setting for the story turned out to be irrelevant. So, perhaps not the best choice for the category. BUT it is a great choice for the world situation of …
Becoming by Michelle Obama fulfills the “Book about a World Leader” prompt for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. Some may question my choice on this prompt. As First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Obama labored to create new programs for healthy living for children. She worked very hard to be a mother, wife, and …
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells fulfills the “Book with a with a robot, cyborg, or AI character” category of the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. It is the fourth novella in the Murderbot series. The fifth will be published this May. The new one is a full novel rather than the novella format of the first …
X by Sue Grafton fulfills the category “Book with only Words on the Cover” for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. It’s number twenty-four in her Kinsey Millhone series. Yes, I have read all the others and plan to finish Y is for Yesterday by the end of 2020. Plus, doing X for my tenth blog …
A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole fulfills the “Book by a Woman of Color” category for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. The novel seemed like a fantastic choice to end Black History Month, for everything Ms. Cole has done for Romance Writers of America over the years and especially the past two months. I …
Ginny Frost