Happy Tuesday! And I hope you’re ready for another edition of Show Us Your Books! I also want to take a second to congratulate both hosts on the 4th anniversary of this wonderful linkup! I’ve only been doing it for a little over a year, but I absolutely love it, and I’m so happy to be a part of it now. Thank you, Jana and Steph for all you do to keep this going each month 🙂
Leif Enger is an award-winning author who I’d never heard of before coming across his latest novel, Virgil Wander. He truly has a gift for language, painting a colorful and complete picture of a Midwestern small town and its inhabitants without overdoing it. I look forward to checking out his previous work, but first, Virgil…
Despite Virgil Wander’s somewhat-aspirational last name, he describes himself as “cruising through life at medium altitude.” That is, until his car unexpectedly flies off the road and into an ice cold Lake Superior. When he wakes up in the hospital, Virgil has lost some of his memories and most of his adjectives.
I’m going to say it, because I’m sure we’re all thinking it: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” (Anne Shirley knows best.)
There is definitely a chill in the air. All I’ve wanted to do the past few days is hide under a blanket with a good book. I’m currently in the middle of A Place for Us, which is due back to the library later this week (and not renewable!), but after I finish that, here’s what I plan to read:
I have never read a Kate Morton novel, but I have heard amazing things — and a lot of buzz about her latest novel, The Clockmaker’s Daughter. So, I was naturally quite excited when I was granted my NetGalley request to read it early. It’s the story of an English love affair and a mysterious murder that begins in the 1860s and ripples into the present.
It all starts when Elodie, a modern archivist, stumbles upon a satchel with a notebook and old photograph inside. Elodie diligently researches their past, whisking us across time as the story develops. Chapters are told from multiple points-of-view, and it’s not always immediately clear at the outset whose we’re seeing or where we are in time and place. It’s a method that works well, getting us to the end without giving all the twists and turns away beforehand.
If you’re involved in the book community at all, I’m sure you’ve heard that Banned Books Week is here! It started on Monday the 23rd and goes until the 29th. All this week, we are celebrating the freedom to read as well as raising awareness for books that have been challenged over the last decades. This year specifically, the theme is “Banning Books Silences Stories,” which is a reminder that everyone needs to speak out against the tide of censorship.
Books might be banned for all sorts of reasons, whether it’s considered anti-religious, has foul language, or is unsuitable for specific age groups. Unfortunately, this practice restricts us access to some of the best novels and educational resources ever written. You’ll find reviews of some of these books here — A Wrinkle in Time, 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale have all been banned. Plus, some of my all time favorites, including the Harry Potter series, A Prayer For Owen Meany and To Kill a Mockingbird, are repeat offenders. Of course, I still recommend them all wholeheartedly!
Thank you to Invaluable for creating and sharing this wonderful infographic of books that have been banned in the United States (also below). It includes modern favorites, classics, YA and children’s books — nothing is safe from the banned books list!
Are you surprised about any that made the list? What are some of your favorite banned books?
Though I enjoy books about books, it’s rare that I read one right on top of the other. It felt as though I’d just finished Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore when The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Diary of a Bookseller came in from the library. I ran out of time and didn’t get a chance to get to Diary before it was due back, but I made sure to tackle Amy Meyerson’s novel so it didn’t slip away too.
Miranda Brooks has fond memories of trips to her Uncle Billy’s bookstore, Prospero Books, when she was growing up. But when she finds out she’s inherited the beloved bookstore, she hasn’t set foot inside in over 15 years. Uncle Billy was always a lover of riddles, and he is no different in death. Along with the bookstore, he leaves Miranda an obscure message that sends her on a scavenger hunt to discover the truth behind old family feuds.
The description for Diane Chamberlain’s “genre-spanning” novel The Dream Daughter promises it will be “irresistible.” In that, it was 100% correct.
Twenty-six-year-old Caroline Sears is pregnant when she finds out her baby has a fatal heart defect. In 1970, there’s nothing that can be done, and the news is devastating. Carly’s brother-in-law Hunter is a physicist, who came into their lives quite mysteriously a few years before. When he tells her he has a way to help her baby, she’s skeptical.
The book description doesn’t give too much away, beyond the fact that, what Hunter is proposing is inconceivable. To save her baby, Carly needs to be courageous in the face of the unknown. I’ll expand just a little bit more to say that how Hunter saves Carly is by helping her time travel into the future, a time when medicine has caught up to her baby’s needs.
I won’t give anything else away, but if I had known this was book involved “realistic time travel” — one of my absolute favorite sub-genres (think The Time Traveler’s Wife and the movie About Time) — I would have rushed to pick it up even sooner. After a few chapters in, when I figured out what was going on, I was hooked. I couldn’t put it down, and I stayed up until 1am one night to finish it (if you know me, that’s a huge deal; I typically go to bed around 10).
Oh my gosh, I can’t say enough good things about this novel. It was unexpected and clever. It definitely played with my emotions a little bit, but I didn’t even care. I was all in, and I loved every minute of it!
When Carly goes forward from 1970, a lot of things are unfamiliar. The technology, yes, but also the food. In one of the most amusing scenes, Carly’s host brings home some Taco Bell for dinner. Not only has Carly never heard of Taco Bell, she doesn’t even know what Mexican food is. She specifically calls out the taco, burrito and enchirito, but also mentions that there were a few other items on the table that were “alien” to her.
I like to think one of those was the Mexican Pizza, my absolute favorite thing at Taco Bell. I’ve been eating them since I was a young kid, and I like to think of myself as a Mexican Pizza aficionado. Regardless of what they ate for dinner they night, they ate Taco Bell, and this is my excuse to make a copycat version of the best food on their menu.
For those of you who don’t know, a Mexican Pizza is definitely a loose interpretation of the word pizza, but it’s delicious, and that’s what matters. It has meat and beans sandwiched between two crispy tortillas; the top tortilla is covered in red sauce, cheese and tomatoes. (There also used to be green onions, back when I was little, so I brought those back into this homemade version.)
I found a recipe from Genius Kitchen to use as a guide, though having eaten an embarrassing number of these throughout my life, I probably could’ve figured it out myself. I did tweak it a bit to be closer to the Taco Bell version. Good news: Like the book, it turned out even better than I imagined!
To start, I prepared my taco meat (ground beef with taco seasoning) and warmed my canned refried beans. I also combined a can of red enchilada sauce (I used medium, you can use whichever spice-level you like best) with a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (drained) to make the pizza’s sauce.
Then, I prepared the tortillas. If you can find flat, roughly 8” corn tortillas, that would definitely make this experiences easier and quicker, but I couldn’t. I used the flour tortillas from the recipe. To get them crispy enough, you need to fry them in oil on the stove top — just until they’re golden brown and stiff.
They don’t need much time, about a minute or so will do it. You might need to flip and repeat on the other side (I did). Once all of your tortillas are ready to go, it’s time to assemble the pizzas.
First, I spread a thin layer of the refried beans onto a tortilla and covered them with some of the ground meat.
Then, I added another tortilla on top of that and carefully spread on some of the sauce and covered it with cheese.
Then, I added my toppings — in this case, diced tomatoes and chopped green onions, but you could also add black olives (or anything else taco-y, I suppose). I wanted to keep it as close to what I’ve come to know-and-love at Taco Bell; plus, Scott doesn’t like olives.
Finally, I put the prepared pizzas under the broiler in the oven just to melt the cheese.
They came out perfectly! If I’m being honest, even better than half the time I get them at Taco Bell (where the employees clearly don’t care if it looks as perfect as I’d like). It looked like something right off the menu.
I cut them in fours and served them up.
The best part? They tasted DELICIOUS. (And maybe even better than the Taco Bell version…)
Slightly adapted from: Genius Kitchen
I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Happy Tuesday — and even better it’s almost fall! I think I’ve been saying that off-and-on for the past few weeks, but no matter what the weather says, it’s actually coming. The calendar says Friday is the last day of summer, officially. In this week’s Top Ten Tuesday the bookish topic is Books on My Fall TBR, and these are the books that I’m most excited to see released this fall. Just two weeks until the first release date – I can’t wait!
Tommy Orange’s novel There There tells a multigenerational story of Native Americans as they are today, living not on reservations but in cities throughout America. It’s a perspective many of us have never seen or read about, that of the Urban Native.
It’s a complex and epic story, told through vignettes involving twelve different characters. There are characters who embrace their Indianness, those who are just fully discovering it, and those who use it as a means to an end. Though in the beginning they are seemingly disconnected, their convergence at the Big Oakland Powwow gives each of them purpose.
It’s the second Tuesday of the month, and you know what that means; it’s time for another edition of Show Us Your Books! Compared to last month, which included a couple 2-star reads and a couple of DNFs, this one was AMAZING. I had 6 — yes, SIX — 4-star reads, which is pretty unheard of, for me. I love great reading months!
But I’m also a little bit sick this week (I’m blaming it on the abrupt transition to fall from a week of suffocating 90 degree weather…), so I’m keeping my blurbs short and linking to full reviews in lieu of blurbs where I can. Know that I 100% recommend any of the 4-star books, and honestly, you should go read them now, if you haven’t already… Let’s get to it!