Main site homepage
Showing 10 of 130 Results

The Book Blog

featured-image-145530
10/07/2024
profile-icon Dr. Brittnee Fisher

While visiting my colleagues at the Orange Park Campus Library, I noticed that Kendall (OPC Librarian) has a fun scratch-off reading challenge hanging in her office. Since I'm always looking for fun ways to discover new books and read outside of my comfort zone, I immediately hopped online and put a version of the reading challenge poster on my Amazon wish list. 

I was very pleased when my four sweet nephews presented me with the poster as a birthday gift for my birthday in July. I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, so I was immediately motivated to hang the poster in my office so I could start scratching away!

Imagine my surprise when, immediately after hanging up said poster, I spiraled into a (minor) existential crisis. My conundrum, you ask. Do I scratch off prior reads or re-read them to meet the challenge? Is this obviously me overthinking something that should be a fun activity? Yes, of course! But it was something that I had to work out for myself to proceed with my reading fun!

Ultimately, it came down to the recency of the read and my remembrance of the book. Many of the books listed in this challenge are what you'd consider "classics." Some of which I have read, but it was long ago. Could I pass a basic knowledge quiz on this book's plot and characters? No, I think I need to re-read. Did I read this book in high school? Yes, and that was too long ago and warrants a re-read. 

There were a few books that were outliers. I've read them within the last decade, but I can only remember that I did not enjoy them. They received low ratings on Goodreads from me. I knew immediately that I would not recommend them; the only memory I could scrounge was that I didn't like them. If you want more details, I'm sorry- this book has been purged from my mind. So, what did I decide to do with these few troublemakers? I scratched their squares, and I am moving on with my life. If there’s one thing I know to be true, there will be more “classics” on this list that I’ll read and (probably) hate. No need to dwell on the past. 

Some of the books that I've already scratched: 

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

Books from the challenge on my short TBR list: 

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

 

Interested in the challenge? Here is a link to my poster! 

No Subjects
featured-image-144659
09/23/2024
profile-icon Victoria Slaughter

As someone who grew up in Kentucky, autumn has always been my favorite season. There's nothing quite like the crisp air, the golden leaves crunching beneath your feet, and that undeniable shift in the atmosphere that signals sweater weather is on its way. When I moved to Florida, I knew that my beloved autumn wouldn’t follow me. Instead of flannels and bonfires, it's endless sunshine (or like we have seen in the recent weeks, endless rain). But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on chasing those cozy or spooky autumn vibes.

When September hits, I load up my digital and physical shelves with books that have that autumn feeling I'm craving. I know it sounds silly, but I love bringing as much autumn energy into my home as possible. So, you'll usually find me reading with an autumn-scented candle burning and sipping endless cups of apple cider. I might not get to pull out my boots or wear my favorite sweater, but the right stories take me to cozy cottages, ancient forests, magical towns, or haunted mansions where autumn is in full swing.

Below are some of my favs!

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.


 

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic

Sadie Revelare has always believed that the curse of four heartbreaks that accompanies her magic would be worth the price. But when her grandmother is diagnosed with cancer with only weeks to live, and her first heartbreak, Jake McNealy, returns to town after a decade, her carefully structured life begins to unravel.

 

Legends & Lattes

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success — not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

A House with Good Bones

Sam Montgomery is worried about her mother. She seems anxious, jumpy, and she's begun making mystifying changes to the family home on Lammergeier Lane. Sam figures it has something to do with her mother's relationship to Sam's late, unlamented grandmother.
She's not wrong.

The Midnight Library

Between life and death there is a library.

 

 

 

 

Wuthering Heights

Set in the west Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights is the story of two gentry families -- the Earnshaws and the Lintons -- and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathclifff.

 

Practical Magic

When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers -- and as their own powers begin to surface -- the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.

Twilight

About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy - until he is rescued by an owl, taken to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, learns to play Quidditch and does battle in a deadly duel. 

The Reason ... HARRY POTTER IS A WIZARD!

 

 

 

 

No Subjects
09/09/2024
profile-icon Kayla Cook

I’ve been on something of a Macbeth kick this year. For some reason, several authors have written “feminist” retellings of Shakespeare's Scottish play this year, all from the perspective of Lady Macbeth, and I can't be blamed for falling down this particular rabbit hole.

This started a few months back when I was scrolling through NetGalley—an online service which allows library professionals, educators, and online influencers to read books before they’re published in exchange for reviews—and I came across a book by Val McDermid called Queen Macbeth. I had never read anything by McDermid before, and I didn’t really know anything about her other than that she is one of the most well-known modern authors in Scotland, but I knew I liked Macbeth, so I decided to give this book a chance. Dear reader, I wish I hadn’t because it was genuinely the worst book I’ve read this year so far.

Queen Macbeth is told across two alternating timelines, the first, during Gruoch’s (that’s Lady Macbeth’s historical name for those unaware, as I was) marriage to her first husband when she met her soon-to-be second husband Macbeth, and the second, about twenty years later. I’m not sure why this story is told in alternating timelines, though, because the two are not connected in the slightest, and so far as I could tell, there was no plot to this book. Perhaps the alternating timelines existed as a means of hiding that there was no plot. I couldn’t figure it out, and I still can’t.

The second Lady Macbeth book I read was significantly better, if only because it did have an actual plot, and it was generally fun to read, even if it made very little sense at first. In Lady Macbeth, author Ava Reid presents readers with a completely new, never-before-seen Lady Macbeth, replacing the middle aged Scottish leading lady of Shakespeare’s Scottish play with a French teenager named Roscille, also called Roscilla, Rosele, and Rosalie at different points in the story… apparently for the sake of linguistics. As someone with a degree in European history, I understood what Reid was going for, but I thought that it exposed a deep misunderstanding of how medieval and early modern spellings actually worked rather than adding depth and nuance to her retelling as she thought it did.

Roscille is seventeen and the illegitimate daughter of a French nobleman who has married her off to some distant, isolated lower member of the Scottish noble class in order to get rid of her because she is a nuisance. Sometime before her marriage, Roscille was accused of charming a stable boy with witchcraft, and as punishment, she had to watch as her father had the boy executed, and was forced to wear a veil at all times following this incident in order to protect men from her treacherous gaze, something which she wholeheartedly believes in.

When she marries Macbeth, she refuses to remove her veil in his presence even when they are alone, and she also refuses to consummate their marriage until he brings her three very specific gifts that she thinks will be difficult to procure. She is terrified of her husband and views him as brutish and harsh and unpredictable, and thus does everything in her power to avoid displeasing him, including allowing him to pressure her into committing several murders for him (a stark contrast to the OG Lady M, who pressured her husband into committing murder).

This all appears to be a result of her trauma from seeing her father kill the first boy she loved and being forced to wear a veil so she doesn’t accidentally bewitch/seduce anyone else. I thought her belief that she was a witch who needed to be veiled was also a result of this trauma, but no. She actually is a witch.

The first half of Reid's book read like a piece of historical fiction, while the second half was an increasingly bizarre fantasy novel interspersed with random, weirdly-timed sex scenes featuring a fellow Scottish noble's son, who is English in this story for some reason, and who can turn into a massive, powerful dragon (he didn’t do that during the sex scenes, but she did make it very clear she would have been into it if he did).

At no point, though, did any of this book feel like it had anything to do with Macbeth beyond the fact that some of the characters had the same names as characters from Macbeth, and there were three witches who made a few cameo appearances. I generally enjoyed this one, but I didn't like it as a retelling of Macbeth.

The third and final Lady Macbeth book of the year (unless someone else drops another one in the final months of 2024…) for me is All Our Yesterdays by Joel H. Morris. This book is by far my favorite of these three, and one of my favorite books I’ve read this year in general. It is the only one of the three that interprets the characters in a way which, in my opinion, honors the play it was based on.

Where Val McDermid’s Lady hates her first husband for being weak and cowardly and unmanly and therefore, in her eyes, less-than, Morris gives her a backstory which makes her hatred of him make sense, and which equally shows the reader how this Lady has fought for her life as well as her station and how she could become the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare’s play. Where Ava Reid’s Macbeth was large and brutish and cruel, Morris’s Macbeth is a gentle, softspoken, and somewhat awkward man who tries—not always successfully—to leave his battles on the battlefield, and who loves his wife and puts her comfort and her interests first, which lines up much more believably with the Macbeth Shakespeare created.

Interestingly, Macbeth was referenced in another book I read this year as well: Julia Armfield’s Private Rites, which is actually a retelling of another Shakespeare play, King Lear. From the perspective of Agnes, Private Rites’ Cordelia (Lear’s youngest and most beloved daughter who he cast aside late in life), Armfield writes of the three sisters:

It occurs to her [Agnes] that there has always been one shitty witch in Macbeth, the one that never says anything useful and always just seems to be filling in space between the other two. Most of the time she feels like this witch is Irene, although sometimes it’s Agnes and sometimes it’s all of them, which doesn’t really make sense but still feels fundamentally accurate. (p. 175, UK edition).

The inverse, I think, is fundamentally accurate where these three Lady Macbeth books are concerned: two are just filling space with nothing useful to say, and one is a proper one.

No Subjects
09/03/2024
profile-icon Kendall McCurley

Well… I’m not really sure where to start this post. I decided at the beginning of this year that my reading goal was to stick with the genre that I love most – romance – but broaden my horizons within the genre. My least favorite and least read genre is fantasy/science fiction. Ever since I read Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorn and Roses (ACOTAR) series last year, I decided that maybe I was too harsh on the genre of fantasy and should give it another go. So far, it hasn’t been too bad! But I’ve come to the conclusion that within the genre of ‘fantasy,’ I’m still not a huge fan of the “fae/fairy” stuff. Now, there have been some exceptions to this rule, such as ACOTAR, so I wanted to keep an open mind. That brings us up to our Book Club meeting on July 16th

Having discussed with the group about my goal of trying to read more fantasy/sci-fi but disliking “fae/fairy” stories, our very own Brittnee Fisher then recommended I should read, How Does It Feel? by Jeneane O’Riley. To be fair, she did warn me that it was a “fae/fairy” book and that she did not like it and that it was wild (and not in a good way). With a raving review like that, who could stay away? So, I quickly found and downloaded the book, then waited a few days (because I had no idea what I was about to dive into), then I got started…

So, all I knew starting this book was that it was a well discussed book on BookTok and the synopsis on Amazon – 

A forbidden obsession
Unyielding family allegiance
Three deadly challenges

THE HUMAN.
When a trip into the forest to collect a rare mushroom goes horribly wrong, I find myself falling through a fairy portal and straight into the arms of the Unseelie Fae prince. The dangerously unhinged and handsome Unseelie Fae prince.
What could be more horrible than that? He thinks I'm an assassin sent by the humans to kill him, not a biologist.
Determined to kill me first, and rid himself of the human he has unwillingly grown obsessed with, yet also needing to entertain his people, the villain challenges me to three deadly trials.
If I survive, I gain my freedom. But if not...
The Fae.
I've never felt anything but hate and loathing until my eyes found hers--the vile human assassin's. She is a parasite that has mercilessly latched onto my mind and won't let me free.
My hand itches to be ungloved and feel her smooth skin, even though I would never. The Unseelie Fae royals would rather burn than touch a repulsive human.
I fear that if I do not destroy the girl soon, she may be the only thing that's capable of truly destroying me.

 

Let’s just say, this book was… a collection of interesting choices. First, the main heroine, who is a human, Callie, is just not very smart. She makes one horrible mistake after another that really left me confused. The main love interest, Prince Mendax, who is the prince of the unseelie court, is supposed to be an anti-hero/villain-who-gets-the-girl, however, he was BEYOND unlikable. Because he is the “villain” of the story, he was abusive and horrible with Callie, and it makes absolutely ZERO sense why she would end up falling in love with him. Speaking of falling in love, I’m still baffled as to how Mendax becomes interested in Callie. He is convinced for the ENTIRE book, that Callie has been sent to kill him. We also never get his perspective so his “love” for her really feels out of the blue. The “relationship” that forms over the course of this book is best described as toxic. Basically, Mendax starts off hating and abusing Callie and then ends up being an obsessed stalker. There is also a twist at the end that I have to say, I didn’t see coming, and I guess, cleared up some confusion about the plot. However, the book ends on a cliffhanger and left me feeling uncomfortable with the toxic relationship and confused with the overall choices the author made.

But obviously I had to read the second book! 

What Did You Do? is the title and it is even more wild and confusing than the first! I won’t go into too much detail into this book since the main plot is about the twist at the end of the first book. However, another love interest enters the picture to create a sad and messed up love triangle between the three characters. Things got even more wild and crazy with the plot, and it ended on another cliffhanger.

I believe that there are supposed to be two more books in this series and honestly, I’m probably going to read them. So far, these books are like car wrecks, you can’t help but look! I can also honestly say that I said to myself, out loud, “what the heck am I reading?” multiple times while reading these books.

So, with all that being said, if you want to read something crazy (and not in a good way), check these out! And if you too are uncomfortable and confused by these books, we can all thank Brittnee for that!

No Subjects
08/19/2024
profile-icon Brenda Hoffman

 

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll | Goodreads

A group of women's portraits

Description automatically generated

Top left: Bright, young women Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, both murdered by Bundy.

Bottom left: Bright, young women Cheryl Thomas, Karen Chandler, Kathy Kleiner, all injured by Bundy

Nita Neary, a member of the Chi Omega sorority, came home to find Ted Bundy 

(Left-artist’s rendition with Neary’s description; Right-photo of Ted Bundy) running from the house.