In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer shares stories of her life as child, mother, teacher; of the plants and animals around us; and of creation itself. These beautifully written essays mingle her own experiences, indigenous wisdom, and scientific knowledge in luminous, evocative prose.
I really love this quiet, thoughtful, slow-paced (but never dull) novel. Technically, it is a historical fantasy romance, but the romance is only one facet of the relationship between the main characters, and only one facet of the plot. There’s also a bit of a mystery threaded throughout, although the book isn’t quite a mystery novel, either.
The Verity Kent series gets off to a good start with This Side of Murder. Huber revisits the classic “trapped on an island with a killer” trope, but gives it tension and immediacy… Huber is skilled at plotting, characterization, and atmosphere. I found all three here, plus a believable, complex heroine.
I generally enjoy Agatha Christie, and I love Miss Marple, but this is not one of my favorite of her books. On the other hand, the 1985 BBC adaptation starring Joan Hickson is a longtime favorite and a comfort movie for me.
It’s All a Game starts off with the ancient games of senet, the “royal game of Ur”, and the many forms of mancala, then delves into a truncated history of chess before moving on to the board games many of us grew up playing.
The Calculating Stars was easily one of the best books I read in 2018. (Note: I reread it in January 2025, and although I have tweaked a word or two of this review for greater clarity, I wouldn’t change a single sentence.) The story is gripping; the characters are depicted so vividly they could be standing in front of you; and the details, from the physics of an asteroid impact and the experience of piloting an aircraft to the chauvinism of many men involved in the space program, appear to be spot on.
It took me a little while to get into On the Edge, but once I did, I was totally hooked. This paranormal romance has great worldbuilding, compelling characters, external threats and internal conflicts that each inform and heighten the other, and a romantic pairing that I was initially dubious about and ended up loving.
The third book in Mercedes Lackey’s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Fortune’s Fool is an enjoyable if eclectic remix of a number of fairy tales. Lackey takes a wide assortment of elements drawn from Russian, eastern and northern European, Japanese, and Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, and mixes them up, higgledy-piggledy… and it works surprisingly well.
I love this gentle romance, which explores how two people, through sheer politeness, respect, and upper-class British reticence, end up in a conventionally distant arranged marriage instead of the affectionate, loving union they both desire… and how they eventually find their way to the real marriage they long for (with a little outside help from an unexpected quarter.)
I enjoyed Hideaway just as much as I did the first time I read it. However, it doesn’t quite rise to the “favorites” level, in part because Hideaway is lighter on both romance and suspense than my favorite NR books.
