en-US Sun, 27 Apr 2025 07:39:07 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7522840322 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 07:39:07 -0700 /review/show/7522840322 Lisa has read We Begin at the End (Hardcover) by Chris Whitaker
bookshelves: novels
Just so sad. Too great a tragedy. The foster care is so familiar and the way so many people just have super bad luck. So many dumb decisions. Hard for me to enjoy this book. ]]> Review7518218605 Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:42:12 -0700 /review/show/7518218605 Lisa has read The Lake Wobegon Virus (Hardcover) by Garrison Keillor
bookshelves: novels
Just the kind of folksy feel good thing I needed just now. Reminding us that even when it feels like people are crazy but deep down are still loving and good. He brought in a few current event things from the Trump era but mostly relies on us realizing what the context is and why he’s telling these stories. ]]> Review7503779916 Sun, 20 Apr 2025 09:57:56 -0700 /review/show/7503779916 Lisa has read The Paris Apartment (Hardcover) by Lucy Foley
bookshelves: novels
This was my second Lucy Foley novel so I’m still getting the hang of her style. I enjoyed the tight location—mostly just one building and a very small circle of characters. It was a bit dramatic but didn’t get too gruesome—mostly hinted at really ugly things without spelling them out. I listened to it in one 24 hour period—it definitely kept my interest. ]]> Review7498288930 Fri, 18 Apr 2025 06:02:37 -0700 /review/show/7498288930 Lisa has read The Midnight Feast (Hardcover) by Lucy Foley
bookshelves: novels
This was a fun read and I just did it in one afternoon as a form of escapism. I appreciated the critique of how tourism and gentrification impact rural communities. I could really see this community and how it had decayed and how the difficulties of life beat down people. It was clear how some folks who had been pillars of the community were almost broken by the changes and crises of their lives. The author draws these changes out so well. Life is both really short and really long and in 15 years (not long!) people can both recover from crisis and they can also lose everything and their standing in a community.
I found the locals way more interesting than Francesca and the situation at the Manor. ]]> Review7487414990 Mon, 14 Apr 2025 04:22:14 -0700 /review/show/7487414990 Lisa has read Murder in an English Glade (Beryl and Edwina Mystery, #5) by Jessica Ellicott
bookshelves: novels
I listen to these cozy mysteries while gardening or doing housework. This one featured a development in the relationship between the detectives and the lady constable who has been their nemesis. And it had a small movement forward in the romance between Charles and Edwina. The mystery was so-so and I guessed the murder quickly. But I liked the connection bereeen artists and the war effort and the disillusionment that the post years provided for so many who had been connected to it. ]]> Review7485285347 Sun, 13 Apr 2025 09:36:55 -0700 /review/show/7485285347 Lisa has read How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1) by Kristen Perrin
bookshelves: novels
I enjoyed this multi generational mystery. The protagonist in the present helps solve her great aunt’s murder by reading her diary etc. I was annoyed by the lack of sufficient aging for a couple of the characters who were young in the 60s and not quite old enough in the current story line. Some of the clues and plot lines were a bit convoluted and the romance element in both timelines was rushed and confusing—no clue why those characters would like each other. But I enjoyed the audio book and didn’t guess the murderer so that made it a good puzzle for a Sunday afternoon entertainment. ]]> Review7484858076 Sun, 13 Apr 2025 06:12:02 -0700 /review/show/7484858076 Lisa has read College communities abroad: Education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe (Studies in Early Modern European History) by Liam Chambers
bookshelves: academic-history
This is for scholars only. A collection of essays that helped me a great deal in my book writing to understand the finances and interrelationships of the Catholic seminaries and colleges in Europe. Each chapter has a different author and a different tone but they all do a good job of both giving an overview of their subject and adding to the research on it. I was most focuses on the colleges that were set up for folks from the British isles but it was helpful to know the context for Maronite Christians and Dutch and German Catholics as well who I hadn’t really thought of much as being minorities in their own states. In the end, it appears national identity trumped Catholic unity in the relationships between these schools. ]]> Review7484850921 Sun, 13 Apr 2025 06:07:59 -0700 /review/show/7484850921 Lisa has read Abson & Company: Slave Traders in Eighteenth-Century West Africa (Hardcover) by Stanley Alpern
bookshelves: academic-history
An excellent micro history using one man’s biography to understand the Euro-African relations in the 18th century. The horror of enslavement is always in view, but the characters, kings of African states, the women and men who worked with the Europeans, the sailors and merchants who lived and died on this coast are clearly in view. I was introduced to new historiographies I hadn’t encounters of the Dutch and German and Danish slave traders and the way they tried to make a living and competed with each other. I also learned about many more specific kings of the nations along the West African coasts and their individual legacies. It’s a rich and lively history and very readable and fairly short to get so much information. I could definitely assign it to undergraduates. ]]> Review7481775903 Fri, 11 Apr 2025 21:08:38 -0700 /review/show/7481775903 Lisa has read The Midnight Library (Hardcover) by Matt Haig
bookshelves: novels
I liked the premise of being able to think about all permutations of one’s life and gradually becoming grateful for the current life. All variations of our lives have advantages and disadvantages. It is predictable but allows for some good philosophy discussion. The characters aren’t really important for this purpose but they are all still really well drawn and seem real, even the minor characters. ]]> ReadStatus9291557634 Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:51:09 -0700 /review/show/7476652576 Lisa has read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
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