Waiting on Wednesday

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous at Breaking the Spine.

A vivid look at the ten key people who are maintaining some of the world's oldest and rarest cultural traditions.

Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our rarest cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to seeking out Cuba's last official cigar factory “readers” more than a century after they spearheaded the fight for Cuban independence, Stein uncovers an almost lost world.

Climbing through Peru’s southern highlands, he encounters the last Inca bridge master who rebuilds a grass-woven bridge from the fabled Inca Road System. He befriends a British beekeeper who maintains a touching custom of "telling the bees" important news of the day and crunches through a German forest to find the official mailman of the only tree in the world with its own address – to which countless people all over the world have written in hopes of finding love. These are just some of the last people on Earth still in touch with quickly vanishing rites. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them.

Why I'm Waiting: This sounds like a fun book

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

When an heiress disappears from her superyacht and security footage shows her getting pushed, the main suspect has to prove her innocence in this thrilling mystery at sea told in reverse chronological order, perfect for fans of Karen McManus and Genuine Fraud.

It was supposed to be the best-ever girls’ trip: five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, eighteen-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She’s nowhere to be found the next morning even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces . . . showing Maggie pushing her overboard.

But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, a passport that isn’t hers, and Giselle’s diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board: jealous Viv, calculating Emi, even some members of the staff.

What really went down on the top deck that night? Maggie will have to work her way backward to uncover the secrets that everyone—even Giselle—kept below deck or she’s dead in the water.

Jan Gangsei crafts a compulsively readable tale of privilege, family, and identity wrapped in a wholly original mystery that will keep readers on the edges of their seats until the final twist.

HAPPY READING!!

Medieval Cats - Review

Author: Catherine Nappington

Genre: Nonfiction

Format: eBook

Pages: 208

A huge thank you to Net Galley and Ten Speed Press for a chance to read this early, Medieval Cats: Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore hits shelves on March 4, 2025!

Listen this year I've had a weird fixation on the Medieval era, this is the third book based around (or in) the Medieval era. No, I do know why. Just that one book was a weird sci-fi book that sounded as good as was, and then the other two (Medival Cats included) were hilarious nonfiction. So there was no real thought when I requested this book through NetGalley other than, I love weird little drawings of Medieval Cats!

It was the best decision ever because this was an absolute delight. I cannot wait until March to add it to my shelves. I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon with this book.

When I first looked at Medieval Cats, I thought it was going to be a small, fun, little coffee table book that made fun of the fact that no one in Medieval times could draw cats. Which it was, Catherine had some hilarious footnotes attached to every single piece of artwork she used with medieval cats on them. What I didn't realize I was going to get was so many cat facts included inside the book, along with all the literary works that included cats, and some not-so-fun facts about cats as well.

Being a cat in Medieval Tims, not always a good time.

This was an absolute delight to read, and you can tell the author enjoyed putting it together. It was the perfect book read, curled up in bed with my own cat, after work. Without a doubt, I'll be adding to my collection on release day (March 4, 2025)! So if you're a cat lady like me, get this one added to your 2025 TBR, and if you have a cat lady in your life, well this is the perfect little gift for them! It was so much fun!

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

   

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon!

The Bermuda Triangle. Personality tests. Ghost hunting. Crop circles. Mayan Doomsday. What do all these have in common? None can quite live up the rigor of actual facts or science and yet they all attract passionate supporters anyway.
 
Divided into broad sections covering the easily disproved to the wildly speculative to wishful thinking and of course hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person’s future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It’s a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn’t. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain’t, but it can be explained scientifically.

HAPPY READING!!

Weyward - Review

Author: Emilia Hart

Genre: Historical Fiction

Format: eBook

Pages: 408

I went out on a limb with this one because it's different from my usual type of read. Still, something about this book kept pulling me in. It kept appearing on my Libby dash as a book I might like. The cover is so eye-catching that I clicked on it every time, but I always thought, maybe not right now. 

Apparently, November was the time, and I'm not upset I picked it up. I liked this book quite a bit, but it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I loved the idea of the plot being told by three generations of women through their trauma and the discovery of their powers. I was sucked into Altha's story and how she ended up on trial for witchcraft, and there was something just very sad about Violet's story. I think it was because from the very start as a reader you know how her story is going to go, just like you know what's happened to mother.

And then there's Kate. I thought I was going to really like this character with the first chapter of her escape. However, her chapters were my least favorite. I do understand she went through something horrid, I do, but I kept waiting for her to have a breakdown and be helped, or pull herself together. There was also this thing with her father that kept recurring and kept tripping me up as I read. I did a lot of scanning her chapters to miss anything for the plot.

This is a heavy book and not easy to read at times. It's definitely one I couldn't read for than an hour, either right before work or between chores on my day off. None of these women have an easy time of it. Some of the trigger warnings are rape, abortion, and abuse both mental and physical.

Still, there was something hauntingly beautiful about this story. I spent a lot of the time not sure if I actually liked this book, only to pick it up and be sucked into it. It's been a hard book to review because I feel wrong disliking a character knowing all she survived and watching her come out the other side of it. Yet, here I am doing just that.

However I will say that the epilogue is easily the worst part of the book. For half a second I thought it was just a little look at adult Violet's life, and it was that, but at the same time, like really. From the shadows, when you could have been the cool aunt and taught properly. Showed her everything, that's how you saved her. I raged the most with the last handful of pages of this book. 

I'm glad I gave this book a go, Emilia Hart is a wonderful author who weaved something beautifully but heartbreaking. I don't know if this genre is for me, still, it's a solid-built book.

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

 

This cover is the first thing that caught my eye with it's They Live vibes. Then I read the synopsis and I was all in. Who hasn't wanted to order that thing at the back of comics, or from the Scholastic pamphlet in Elementary School? Add on a small monkey's paw concept, and that's the story. This was a lot of fun, while still smacking me a little bit in the feelings. I enjoyed this, and the way that it was told. Another win for my Insta FYP because until I stumbled across this on there, I'd never heard of this. Which is a shame because it's really good. 

Joe Hill, oh Joe Hill, why do you do this to me. I thought this would be just a quick, creepy, little read. Something to get me going on my last shift before my weekend. I should have known better though, I really should have. Because every single time he gets me, and the last line of this book, you have to be kidding me. This was really good and I adored the Ushers, even if I don't know exactly what they were. Angels. Reapers. Demons. What I loved about all of this was I wanted more pages, more lore on these things. How many people did he try to save before he realized the consequence of saving people from the Ushers? But also, I loved how short it was. We understood why Martin couldn't get on the train, and this is a full story that leaves you satisfied, but also that last line man. That last line! Ugh, it's so good!

HAPPY READING!!

November Silent Reading

Hi! Hello! This is a gentle reminder that the Edmonds Silent Book Club is meeting in less than a week. If you're in the North Seattle area and need to do some cozy reading, come join us at 7 p.m. at Leftcraft in Edmonds. Come early for dinner, and stay for an hour of quiet reading! It doesn't matter what you're reading or how you read. All readers are welcome!

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous at Breaking the Spine.

In this atmospheric southern cozy debut, Madeline Brimley returns to the bookstore she inherited, discovering that small towns hold deadly secrets.

Madeline Brimley left small town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she's left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore, and restart her life, Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the back yard is set ablaze and a late night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn't leave immediately.

But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there's another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it's up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victim.

Why I'm Waiting:  You had me at small town and secrets!

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.

Consider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colors before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws, and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.

But each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes—to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.

Beautifully illustrated, and full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

This was a lot of fun! I feel like I learned more with this book than my entire time in a public high school. Maybe because this was more fun since the science was based on the popular monsters and really why they wouldn't be able to exist in the real world. It was full of fun facts about actual creatures that do (or well did at one point) in reality. I will never unknow that T-rexs sometimes turned a corner too fast, fell down, and sometimes died because of their own size. Best new fun fact of the year. I will be telling everyone this. If you're a fan of monsters and cryptids, pick this one up. I snagged this from the library because I wanted to see all the illustrations in full color (I have a B&W Kindle). Had a super fun couple of days reading this after work in bed with my little book light. 

I'm a huge fan of Steve Niles,  30 Days of Night is one of my favorites and October Faction was brilliant.  So, I didn't really think twice about stuffing this into my bag when I found it on the library shelf. In true fashion with my luck, this was part of a series, and this was not the first book. In fact, I'm not sure where this falls in the series because until I picked this up I'd never heard of this series. However, this was a stand-alone, so I was able to pick up the idea of the story and quite enjoy it. I've even added the full series to my TBR.

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

   

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon!

There’s power in a book…

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

HAPPY READING!!