This book left me exhausted after. The years of abuse Jennette went through as a child actor just blew my mind. Her mom was incredibly abusive and horrible, and a lot of different aspects resonated with me about her Mom’s behaviour. It was a very heavy read. The fact that her Dad did basically nothing really made me angry. I truly hope she’s able to continue to get the help she needs so she can keep working on herself.
3.5/5 stars
Unexpected read. It was very raw but also fascinating. Rushdie spent very little time talking about “A” and spent most of it going over thoughts on various things like humanity. It was obvious this book was a very personal healing journey. The book wandered around subjects a lot.
3/5 stars
With one day left in the tax break for Canadians this year, I decided why not spoil myself for Valentines day, and I ordered a bunch of books for $7.99 each from Bookoutlet.ca. Excited?! Yes! I am. There was free shipping, and I can’t wait to get them and start reading. You can be sure I’ll post reviews as time goes on.
Ugh. This book started so slow I almost went DNF – then it got good. VERY good. Then the ending was SO rushed and such a disappointment. What the heck even was that.
2.5/5 stars
My very first 5 start review of 2025 – woohoo! I loved this book. The author is an intellectual and it came across the pages in a way that wasn’t condescending or obnoxious and had a lot of things I could relate to, especially when he was talking about his children. The book was about a lot of food – it made me hungry (a good thing)! I’m so glad I decided to borrow it from the library. So far, the best read of the month.
5/5 stars
It took me a while to get into this one. I was not a fan of the dungeon at all – the entire train sucked. The last 25% of the book was fantastic. I continue to adore Princess Donut. Also the whole story involving Frank and his kid was absolutely heartbreaking.
There are a LOT of different ideas on reading journal spreads out there. When I want to relax, sometimes I just watch videos on YouTube that talk all about them. I wasn’t really happy with a few of the spreads I had put in my reading journal, but I also didn’t want to just start over in a new journal so I took a big piece of sticker paper, and started fresh. That’s where both of these spreads come into play.
On the left hand side is my reading Matrix. At the end of the year I’ll take the top 10 books (with the highest ratings) and then pit them against one another to figure out my #1 book of the year. So far I’ve only read a single book with a 5 star rating, we’ll see if that changes. I didn’t want to do monthly ‘favourites’ because what I read varies so much depending on my moods. It didn’t really seem fair, and wouldn’t be an accurate representation of my favourites.
On the right hand page is my alphabet reading challenge. That one is pretty self explanatory, I write down the titles of the books I read for each letter of the alphabet. I do have a few simple rules, like “they, all, them” do not count as words for this challenge. It’s just a silly little game, but I think it’s a lot of fun. While I don’t think I’ll actively go out and look for books that begin with those letters to try to complete it or anything, I do think it will be fun to see where it naturally leads.
I borrowed this as an audio book first, and then immediately bought the entire series. Loved it. The story was fascinating, characters robust. Can’t wait to continue the series.
One of the book challenges I’m doing this year is “A Year of Goober” from the book club that I belong to. The challenge is pretty simple, there’s two prompts for each month, and each one coincides with a flower. You can do either of the prompts, and at the end of the year you have a bootiful (beautiful, but Goober is a ghost, see?) bookuete (bouquete) of flowers. So far I’ve got January and February planned out, January is a Carnation “your favourite author” and I went with Holly Black, and then February is a violet, “continue a series” and I went with Iron Flame (I can’t wait to read the next book). On the left hand side I’m pasting the prompt along with the flower (I printed them out onto sticker paper) and on the right hand side I’m writing down the book and the author, but I think instead I might print out the covers and stick them there. This is my 2nd attempt at this layout, I had an earlier version that I just wasn’t loving at all. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s completed at the end of the year!
To be honest this book was not on my radar at all, but I had some free time and saw it was available at the library, so why not. The book does a great job of reminding you that humans are small and know very little about the universe. It’s important to question things and ask why – and to trust in science. I’ll be honest, a lot of this book went over my head, but I’m still glad I listened to it, and I still feel like I learned a bit about the universe, dark matter, and how we’re all joined. Not a great read, but it was OK. Just not really for me.
2.5/5 stars
The Nomadic Reader 