“Ironically… being locked up in prison is where I fully realized I had to change my life for the better… It is where I went from thinking about becoming a writer, to writing.”— Jack Gantos, Hole in My Life I was scrolling around for more memoirs to read and decided to ask ChatGPT for a… Continue reading

Pray for Silence (2010) is the second novel in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder mystery series. I read the first book Sworn to Silence a few years ago and loved it. And what really sold me, in addition to the writing and the small town Amish community setting, was the chemistry between Police Chief Kate Burkholder… Continue reading

“Seventeen years; and here we are at that day. The one of us in spirit, the other in scarred, aging body with just one risky job, the last risky job, left to do: to tell the story of the shared existence that filled those years … Yes, she was a cat; but if you are… Continue reading

““We were dreamers, both of us, and like all dreamers asleep to the waking world … We would have both survived, had we been other men” — Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel ​About two or three years ago I read Daphne du Maurier’s classic romantic suspense novel Rebecca. It didn’t grab me the way… Continue reading

This review will contain spoilers Nao is a 16 year old girl living in Tokyo who is having a difficult time at school. She cannot turn to her parents because her mother is dealing with her father’s severe depression. Nao decides to start a diary about the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun,… Continue reading

Famous Last Words (2025) by Gillian McAllister falls under the thriller genre but I think it also works as an inverted mystery where you know who committed the crime but the mystery is why? And so why would Luke Deschamps, a good husband and father, wake up one morning, write his wife Cam (Camilla) a… Continue reading

I am looking at my list of the 40 books I was planning to read in 2026 and though I had fun designing the list, I don’t see myself following through. To be honest, I am having trouble getting this new blog “Reading Matters Part II” started. Book reviewing is difficult—even short reviews are not… Continue reading

In thinking about 2026 I wanted to map out at least 40 of the books I will be reading and I asked Grok for help. I gave Grok some of my preferences and they came up with a good list which I have further tweeked. Here is the final list to be read in this… Continue reading

In December I read Brat Farrar (1949) by Josephine Tey which was a let down for me although I enjoyed Tey’s classic Daughter of Time. I also finished The Word Is Murder: A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery (2017) by Anthony Horowitz. Its the third book of his that I have read this year and The… Continue reading

I have been fascinated this past week by the Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza drama that is all over social media. I like gossip as much as the next person and for me gossip involving quasi-celebrities (as opposed to A-list Holywood actors, musicians, athletes) feels much more relatable. And that’s particularly true when the people at the… Continue reading