Book Review: Travelers Rest, by Keith Lee Morris

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

This quietly unsettling novel combines past and present, dreams and reality, into one strange hotel mystery.

The Books That Pull You In

I've been in an odd reading slump lately; I'm reading a ton, and a lot of it is very good, but nothing is pulling me in and holding my attention the way I'd like it to. So I did what I always do in situations where I want to talk about books but don't know what books I want to talk about: I asked Twitter.

What's the last book you read that pulled you completely in and wouldn't let you look away?

— Kerry McHugh (@kerryamchugh) January 25, 2016

Week in Reading: January 25

It was a wintry wonderland up in these parts this weekend: Friday and Saturday brought 30 inches of snow to my little town (approximately an entire winter's worth of snow in one 36-hour period), and a host of scattered thoughts on adulting and the magic of snow in its wake. I had hoped the forced hibernation would mean lots of reading time, but I found myself too easily distracted to focus on much. I did finish All is Not Forgotten, a psychological thriller that I'll be writing more about later on, and The Blind Assassin, which I absolutely loved after I hit about the halfway point (it was a bit of a slow build in the first half).

Scattered Thoughts on a Snowy Sunday

I'm in a weird headspace today, so forgive the rambling nature of this post. It snowed here Friday and Saturday--30 inches of snow, to be precise--and I'm riding the little-kid highs of the thrill of snowstorms (everything's closed! We can walk in the middle of the streets! Oh my god, it's *still* snowing!) and the adult-like lows of the dangers of them (do we have batteries? Will they ever plow our street? Where will they put all of this snow? Is the furnace return blocked outside? Why don't I have any water pressure-omg-is-it-a-frozen-pipe-I-have-no-idea-how-to-own-a-house!?). 

It's the conflicting nature of my feelings that is confusing to me today: I am sad to see the storm go, sad that we never lost power, that we weren't forced to build a blanket fort and read by flashlight (sad, perhaps, that we chose not to build a blanket fort and read by flashlight anyway). I am grateful for two days of guilt-free rest from running, but my legs are itching to be back out on the roads. I am thankful for a chance to hibernate this weekend, and also stir crazy, and also convinced my hibernation was too short.

I want a drink. I want a cookie. I want a nap. I want to read every book on my shelf.

I need to do the dishes, fold the laundry, and figure out how to get my car out of the garage over 3 feet of unplowed snow, and go back to work tomorrow.

I want to be a child. I have to be an adult. I need to learn how to live between those two things: how to appreciate the moments--like 30" of snow--that bring childlike wonder into our lives, and using those moments to bolster me through the harder parts of being responsible.

Is this what it feels like to grow up?

Picking the Best of the Best: Incredible 2015 Fiction Books

I read a lot of really great books last year, and a lot of so-so books, and a few really crappy books (very few of that last, actually, because I tend to just put aside books I don't like). In no particular order, and to complement my favorite 2015 non-fiction books and the ten books that blew my mind in 2015, here are the best fiction books I read this past year:

#Hamalong: Chapters 10-13

I'll be participating in Reading Rambo's Hamilton Readalong for the next two months, so expect weekly (if I can keep up) posts on the book from now through the end of February. Because the story of Hamilton's life is generally known from history books and the musical, I will not be avoiding spoilers in these posts (in other words: if you're planning to read Hamilton and want it to be a surprise, skip along).

[Technically this week's reading was Chapters 10-14, but I misread, so I'm a chapter behind the rest. Oops.]

We are moving right ALONG in this ol' Hamilton's life, friends. In this week's chapters (10-13), Chernow goes over Hamilton's time building up a successful law firm (albeit one with an awful lot of Tory traffic for the patriots' tastes); reflects a bit on Hamilton's past and how it might impact his future; dives into the Constitutional Convention and all its drama llamas; and gives us a full-on rundown of the Federalist Papers that puts Clifs Notes to shame. That last was about as interesting as reading Clifs Notes, to boot, which is not at all interesting.

Week in Reading (and a #24in48 Wrap!)

It's Tuesday, not Monday (when I usually post my week in reading plans...), but this was a three-day weekend and I luxuriated in spending as little time at my computer as possible. This included a slightly new tack for the #24in48 readathon: I posted my plans for the weekend, and updated on Twitter as I read, but I didn't compile my total pages read or my total hours reading or any other information here on this ol' blog. I actually didn't keep track of any of it at all, and it was rather glorious.