Listening to audiobooks isn’t cheating, I swear! It's seizing an opportunity. I’m writing a book while homeschooling, maintaining this blog, and keeping up with all my other responsibilities. Sitting and reading books for hours during the day is not a luxury I have. (Though I usually get about a half hour of reading in before bed.) It’s not that I don’t have the time per se. It’s that I have other things to do that keep me from sitting down with a book, including my own inattention, which brings me to the first reason why audiobooks changed my life. 1. Look ma no hands! Because I don’t have t ..read more

Picking Books may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you buy through our links to Bookshop.org. Every book you purchase on bookshop.org supports independent bookstores. What’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo About? In The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, an aging and reclusive Hollywood starlet, Evelyn Hugo, is finally ready to talk about her life, but she doesn’t want just any writer to tell her story. Evelyn Hugo chooses Monique Grant, an unknown magazine reporter, to write her biography. Monique has been left by her husband and is unsatisfied with her job, so when she ..read more

Do you read in bed? Do you lay on your back, hold the book up, and get lost in the story? It’s relaxing, isn’t it? Relaxing, that is, until, SMACK, the book falls on your face. “I guess I’m awake now,” I lament when this happens to me. Of course, I’m also a little miffed at the book as if it’s the book's fault. I never worry about it too much though because I know exactly how to go to sleep again, so I pick up my book and read. Do you know what’s worse than a book falling on your face at night? An e-reader falling on your face at night (I have the bruises to prove it), but that’s my only grip ..read more

The trouble with writing a World War II novel, I imagine, is figuring out how to describe the indescribable. How does an author with no first-hand experience of unimaginable suffering do justice to the people subjected to the horrors of man’s darkest hour? This is why authors like Hazel Gaynor, author of When We Were Young and Brave, are literary wizards sent to earth to breathe life into history so that we mere mortals can learn from the mistakes of our forebears. When We Were Young and Brave Summary When We Were Young and Brave is a fictional account of the WWII internment experie ..read more

Have you ever read a book that made you wish you could be haunted? I have. Twenties Girl is about Lara, a twenty-seven-year-old woman, who is visited by the ghost of her great aunt Sadie. Sadie was 104 when she died but appears to Lara, during her own funeral, as a twenty-three-year-old flapper. Twenties Girl Summary While wandering around the funeral parlor asking people where her necklace is, Sadie realizes that no one can hear her except Lara. After some persuading, Lara begrudgingly agrees to help Sadie. To buy some time to find the necklace, Lara stops the funeral and subsequent cre ..read more

A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum is about Vanya, a physicist on a quest to prove Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and Miri, Vanya’s sister and Kovno’s first female surgeon. The book begins in 1914, just before the start of WWI. Vanya is on the brink of fixing Einstein’s field equations for general relativity. (Einstein’s initial calculations were incorrect.) In order to test the theory, however, Vanya needs to measure “the bend in the stars” in photographs he hopes to obtain of an upcoming eclipse. But before the eclipse arrives, WWI breaks out. So, Vanya voluntarily joins ..read more

Picking Books may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you buy through our links to Bookshop.org. Every book you purchase on bookshop.org supports independent bookstores. Who is Emily Henry? While we all anxiously await the release of Emily Henry’s next novel, Happy Place, on April 25, 2023, I am taking a look back on her first three books. I know lots of us are already completely in love with Emily Henry’s writing. On the off chance, you are not already familiar with Emily Henry, she writes romcoms. They all contain a medium level of “spice,” meaning there is a sex scene ..read more

“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and therefore like power.” — Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’ Burnt Sugar Summary In Burnt Sugar, by Avni Doshi, Antara, the book’s protagonist, appropriates a photograph, by drawing her own rendition of it day in and day out in what appears to be an attempt to put herself in a position, into a certain relation to the world that feels like power. Antara is an artist, an artist who had a hellish childhood. As an infant, her mother, Tara, “would disapp ..read more

Picking Books may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you buy through our links to Bookshop.org. Every book you purchase on bookshop.org supports independent bookstores. Summary of Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers In Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jessie Q. Sutano, Vera Wong finds a dead body clutching a flash drive in her teahouse in SanFrancisco’s chinatown. Convinced that the cops will be incompetent, Vera takes the flash drive so she can investigate the murder herself. It’s no surprise that with the flash drive missing, the cops are unconvin ..read more

Summary of Oona Out of Order Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore is about 19-year-old, I mean 51-year-old, oops, I mean 20-something-year-old—oh, never mind—Oona Lockhart. On the eve of her nineteenth birthday, which also happens to be new years eve, Oona thinks her biggest problem is whether she should pursue her academic interests away from home or pursue her love of music with her boyfriend at home. Little does she know, she’s about to be hurtled thirty-two years into the future. She continues to spontaneously travel to different parts of her life every year on her birthday. With no wa ..read more