#AmReading

There aren’t many societal limits on behavior any more–except here I adore Jane Austen. I’ll try nearly any variation on her work, including the delightful mysteries from Claudia Gray, who can’t write fast enough for me (The Murder of Mr. Wickham and The Late Mrs. Willoughby) and The Other Bennet Sister (Mary Bennet’s story, and she’s not at all what you think and I love her now.) But many modern retellings of Austen struggle with the lack of constraints in modern society. Many of […]

Picking a book for a flight is just different Airport bookstores are different for a reason. When you’re getting on a flight, you need a book that’s pretty much a lock—one that’s going to have you turning pages, oblivious to your surroundings and the slow passing of time and even your neighbor’s back-of-seat screen showing the latest Marvel movie. What kind of book that is differs. Some of us want to be caught up in Malcolm Gladwell-esque non-fiction full of […]

Reading about cleaning, writing or getting organized is EXACTLY the same as doing it, right? Ok. Reading about getting organized—or being a better parent, or being more creative, or ridding my life of things that aren’t working, is way easier than actually doing it. And often way more enjoyable, because it comes with the free fantasy that when I put the book down, I will be a better, stronger, more improved me. I love books that allow me to imagine […]

and some it thinks you are In addition to this email, I also have a #bookstagram (@kjda). It consists almost entirely of very short videos and shouts of delight for books I adore, tarot cards and occasional farmcore featuring the various dogs, cats, chickens, mini-ponies and horses who live around here. Here are some amusing, totally anecdotal random factoids about said bookstagram: my reels (which Instagram pretty much decides who sees) get way more views when my hair looks good. […]

read-alikes and weekend travel guarantees (and hey, welcome!) Only a real reader knows the distress of putting down a book you loved, one where you savored every page and slowed down to keep from getting to the end. Not to mention the horror of taking one (1!) book on a trip and realizing, one chapter in, that you have chosen … poorly. I got you! And also, HEY HOWDY. A bunch of you are new here (thanks to Booksweeps, and […]

a mystery for Austen-ites and a real ripped bodice, Ok. I take it back. A closer look at the cover of the delightful, satisfying, this-is-like-a-pint-of-your-fave-ice-cream When a Scot Ties the Knot reveals that her bodice is secure. And because this is a deliciously modern romance, our hero would never—NEVER—rip it unless she consented. Sober, and in full possession of her senses. You know I love a good rom-com. And I’ll dabble back in regency rom-com, too. But (probably like you) in adulthood […]

possibly my favorite trope–and the best book I’ve read yet this year, Give me ALL the writers behaving badly. Stealing, plagiarizing, stalking, stabbing one another in the back—in books, mind you, not in my real life—and I will read them, savoring every shadenfreudian moment. (Apparently that’s not a word but it should be and I’m leaving it.) If you, as I did, loved The Plot, Who Is Maud Dixon?, The Writing Retreat, Dear Committee Members and countless other stories in which writers go to extreme […]

that is the question… that should help me not drop $28 on a hardback from an author I usually love! It’s taken a while. Ok, I still mess it up. But there are book plots, tropes, topics, even structures that are just not for me. Doesn’t matter if they’re well done. Doesn’t matter if everyone else loves them. Doesn’t even matter if the author is a friend. For me, some things are non-starters, and if I want to insist on […]

I’m a fall BuzzBook! So, there’s this industry email. That, ok, often generates FOMO, or something like it…because it’s all the new book announcements for books you didn’t write! And deal announcements for movies and TV and foreign sales! And prizes and buzz and awards and you can see where I’m coming from, I presume. But once in a while you get to be on top of it, and that’s why we get it. Because we LIKE sticking our heads […]

Of Nina Hill… I have TWO recs for you!   The Bookish Life of Nina Hill was fun… and also thoughtful. A coming of self more than a coming of age, a chance to hang out in someone else’s head—with just the right amount of found family and romance to satisfy. If you felt that way too, I have two suggestions for you this week! And not just because of the title echoes… honestly there are many, many books that […]

Future you called, they need a book to read and THERE IS A SALE!   Imagine this: you’ve just turned the final page of a fantastic book. Perhaps it was The Bandit Queens, or Murder Your Employer. Or How High We Go In the Dark (in which case, go take some deep breaths, it will be okay) or Georgie All Along. You had so much fun!! And now you have to pick a new book. I have lots to say about what one should […]

I don’t want to read your diary. Or your letters. But these I want to read… I don’t like the idea of a novel written as letters (or emails. or texts. or What’s App posts). But somehow, I often like the execution. I might not even click on a novel in that format. Or, for that matter, a memoir done as a diary entries. But again—when it’s done well, not only do I really like it… I somehow can’t stop […]

If you binged Dirty John or Inventing Anna, I have a book for you.   The two POVs in The Fake slowly revolve around an unheard third, coming closer and closer to the truth about the young woman who’s entered both of their lives… but not, in classic con-artist thriller fashion, with any particular ill intent. She will not murder them or steal their identities or ruin their lives, exactly. Not dramatically, anyway. In fact, she’ll make things better. For a while. […]

Purply darkness revealed… I’m gonna need to up my eyeliner game. It is perhaps true that even I, who love all things fall and Halloween, am not exactly ready to launch myself into that distant season just yet. It’s been a long-ass winter (and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last…*) and I am very much not wishing away spring and summer just yet. BUT This fall will bring the release of Playing the Witch […]

  I’ve just had the extremely strange experience of being happy when a book broke the spell I was under and revealed itself to be a book. I’d already begun an adversarial relationship with this book—How High We Go in the Dark, a novel in short stories about a pandemic that begins with the release of a virus through melting permafrost. I was lured in by the promise of black humor in the idea of an amusement park for plague-ridden […]

“And a—kinda—’Writers and Lovers’ read-alike.” A joy of my writing life is the opportunity to read books before they come out into the world. The advent of bookstagram means that many readers know about “advance reading copies” or ARCs—which we usually see as much as six months before a pub date, or the practice of sending some readers an early copy in the weeks right before publication—but in case you don’t, I’ll lay it out for you—especially because it’s a […]

Two books I’d love to read again for the first time. It felt like a particularly lucky reading week when I realized I’d inadvertently landed on two of what I call my “starred reads” for 2023 within a matter of days of each other. I can’t wait to share these with you—especially as one of them is suited to reading with partners who skew more thriller/whodunnit (or gifting to same, or possibly to becoming a family road trip audio book […]

It’s not all Very Serious Sad Literature, even when it’s about serious things in unfamiliar places. Ok, so here’s the thing: for lots and lots of people, places that are “other places” to me (as in, very other, where things on the surface appear very different to my eyes) are quite familiar. And ordinary life happens in those places, as it is wont to do. But as a U.S-based reader, so much of what I’m offered to read that takes […]

Maybe we don’t always have to call everyone out all the time.   I was listening to a conversation recently where someone who’d been doing more yoga and exercise said she thought of it as “coming home to her body” which, she said, seemed like a really warm and pleasant approach to her. Well, the other person responded, maybe—if you’re lucky enough to have good associations with “home” and “body”. But a lot of people don’t. And… that is indeed […]

Whether you love Valentine’s Day or loathe it, I have a read for you. To me, the child of an elementary school teacher (later middle school and then administration), Valentine’s Day is mostly a holiday for sticking adorable paper hearts in varied colors of red and pink to things and also, candy. I like candy. Also chocolate, absolutely, big fan. I have zero strong feelings about who gives me said chocolate and will happily buy it for myself, but I […]

What would 1990s KJ do? The wheels off of my plans this morning—literally, although not in the plural. The wheel came off the car my kid was driving to school (happily, on a small rural road). He and the friend he picked up had to walk back to the friend’s house and find a ride. Me, I had to call three auto shops to find someone with time to figure out what went wrong, and as I write this, I […]

  First up today: me making a pretty typical me mistake. Next: a book that’s totally vibing with the view out my window right now and that I loved, plus one chock-full-of-weird-reading-experience—so skip down to that if that’s what you’re here for! Conceded that it was a long list. But I want to do—and be—a lot of things. I want to speak other languages fluently, to be able to draw the things I see and imagine, to stay connected with […]

It was fat and literary and difficult and daunting. But I finished it and now I’m eying all of its friends in the #tbr pile because I want more.   I know. You want to know what book I’m talking about. I’ll get there, but first: I think of myself as a pretty light —but decently educated or something like that—reader. Like, I can handle Jane Austen, but you can keep Nathaniel Hawthorne. Trollope yes, Melville no. So when it […]

A serial book abandoner’s plea. Rough week around the old couch-and-bedtable reading homestead. I started and dumped no fewer than 6 assorted books. There’s only one thing to conclude at that point. I’ll spare you the meme, but… It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. I just wasn’t into them. In my defense, five of the six were advance copies, which I don’t pay for and am therefore far more likely to take a flier on. I could probably […]

Go ye into the world and grab this booky writery thriller. If you loved The Plot, this is a great place to go next (and vice versa)–everyone in this book is fascinating and disturbing and behaving badly, much to the delight of the reader. To sum up: Maud Dixon is the pseudonym for anonymous author of a Crawdads-like success, blocked for her next book. She hires an assistant, a wanna-be writer herself, who then wakes up in the hospital after […]