May’s Mutterings: Rants and Ramblings
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Book review: When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley
When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the debut novel of the author (and full disclosure: the author was my son’s favorite high school English teacher).Reading this novel is like peeling an onion–you think you know what’s happened and what’s going to happen, but then you peel…
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Book review: Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have really enjoyed all of Michelle Moran’s books that I have read, but this one is one of my favorites. Of course, it helps that I love reading about ancient Egypt. This book is about Cleopatra’s daughter, Selene, and what befell her after…
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Book review: Sweet Revenge by Andrea Penrose (A Lady Arianna mystery)
Sweet Revenge by Andrea Penrose My rating: 4 of 5 stars The debut novel of the Lady Arianna Regency Mysteries (I think my theory is that if I keep discovering new good series, I will never run out of books to read. I think I will never run out of books to read anyway, but…
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Book review: Castle and Key by W.R. Gingell
Castle and Key by W.R. Gingell My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the latest (but hopefully not the final!) book in the author’s Two Monarchies series. I have loved all of the books in this series and highly recommend that you read them. This most recent book is the story of Susan Farrah…
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Book review: The Second Empress by Michelle Moran
The Second Empress: A Novel of Napoleon’s Court by Michelle Moran My rating: 4 of 5 stars Michelle Moran is one of my favorite historical fiction authors. She does impeccable research, and the historical characters come alive in her books. This book is no exception, even though it isn’t my favorite historical period. There has…
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A September Birthday Celebration
One of the advantages of the quarter system in college is that school doesn’t start until late September, which means that when you have a child with a September birthday, it is possible to go somewhere—say, hypothetically, Disneyworld—with that child to celebrate before school starts. This year, it was a special birthday as we celebrated…
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Summer 2022
The summer was a whirlwind, and I have not enough space to bore everyone with our activities. Highlights include the following: A joint birthday celebration at the Inn at Little Washington Jade’s master’s degree (in theoretical computer science) graduation ceremony at Stanford. She is now at Georgia Tech getting her PhD in combinatorics (or theoretical…
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Book review: The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu My rating: 4 of 5 stars A new author! And a new mystery series! (For me, anyway.) The setting for this series is in 1930s Singapore, when Singapore was a British colony. It’s a period and place in history that I know very little about, and I love…
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Spring Break 2022
Our last spring break together as a family was in March (yes, this entry is a bit late). We really have no grounds for complaint, however. For several years, the college spring break for Jade coincided with the high school spring break for Marcus, and so we eked out a couple more years of spring…
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Book review: Beyond by Mercedes Lackey
Beyond by Mercedes Lackey My rating: 4 of 5 stars Prequels are difficult. Because the readers (assuming they have read the subsequent books) know how the book turns out, it’s difficult to build up suspense. And origin prequels are especially difficult because everything isn’t supposed to work quite as smoothly as in the subsequent series…
Got any book recommendations?