Penny Thoughtful: All Things Books and Running

Years ago I read many of Napoli’s works and enjoyed them. This one, however, I did not. The fantastical side of the main character being a mermaid but also easily able to transform into a “regular” human had no explanation. Of course, her plight – controlled by the awful “Neptune” – engenders sympathy. Unfortunately, that…

The complexity of the world these authors have created continues to keep me engaged and immersed. With the reveals and events of book one, the narrative has moved on from the con and fully into the macro-plot which cleverly expands the already intricate magic systems. Even though I will keep this review brief to avoid…

This is the first book from this author that did not completely knock it out of the park for me. I still think that she did an excellent job with the narrative. This particular story, though, had a pretty big hill to climb. This book is set in Amsterdam during Nazi occupation just at the…

This is not something easy to build a TBR for but I managed to do it. I tried to do hard mode for as many of the prompts as possible but a couple of them I’ll have to settle for easy mode.

I knew from the title and subtitle that I would enjoy this book and thankfully it lived up to my expectations. I had just one disappointment and that was the narrator. I had to slow my listening speed down significantly because of his lack of distinction between words. I did love his accent though. At…

I really enjoyed this graphic novel entry on the list. The main character, whose name I have as usual unfortunately forgotten, is just starting school in her dad’s home town where they moved once his military service ended. She feels desperate to fit in, especially since it seems that everyone knows her dad while she …

This episode covers the same amount of time but far fewer books. A combination of benchmark tests and other schedule oddities meant less time for classroom reading. I did not realize when first reserving this book that it connected to the Lunar Chronicles series. As soon as I opened the first page and found out,…

Here are all the books I managed to read in the last few days of March, those days after the 28th but before April started. Thankfully, this Alan Gratz novel worked a lot better for me than the last one that I read, Two Degrees. This one still had to contend with the over-saturation of…

So…I read a few books this month. Okay, I actually read more books in this single month than I have ever read in a single month before. I entered the month hoping for 60 but…clearly, I overshot that goal. That’s what happens when I prioritize the middle grade books that I need to read for…