December First Reads

 Hmm.  No picture book this month. 

• Police procedural - Hide
• Women's fiction - Five Winters
• Historical fiction - A Castle in Brooklyn
• Thriller - The Blue Bar
• Book club fiction - The Fireballer
• Domestic Suspense - No One Knows Us HEre
• Gothic historical fiction - Through a Darkening Glass
• Memoir - Local (Jessica Machado)

No thanks on police procedurals, thrillers, or suspense. Five Winters doesn't sound like my thing either, or the baseball book. I ended up with A Castle in Brooklyn; Local was my other choice, but the library owns a copy. 

November First Reads

 This month's choices: 

• Book Club Fiction - The Vibrant Years
• Suspense - The Widow
• Historical FIction - Light to the Hills
• Psychological Suspense - One of those Faces
• Science Fiction - The Union
• Police Procedural - Hidden in Snow
• Literary Fiction - An Impossible Return 
• Picture book - Bright Winter Night 

 

Not interested in psychological thrillers, suspense, or dystopian sci fi. Light to the Hills has packhorse librarians, but the library owns a copy, and The Vibrant Years sounds entertaining. 

 

October first Reads

 October is another two-book month, and 11 to choose from instead of the usual 8 or 9.

• Thriller - The Quarry girls
• Gothic fiction - The Stroke of Winter
• Historical fiction - Well Behaved Wives
• Domestic suspense - The Break
• Short Story (new category) - The Bookstore Sisters
• Historical Fantasy - Keeper of Enchanted Rooms 
• Memoir - Excuse Me While I Disappear
• Suspense - Over Her Dead Body
• True crime - Pesos: the rise and fall of a border family
• New adult romance - June, Reimagined (new term for YA??)
• Picture book - It's Not The Three LIttle Pigs

Nope on the Gothic fiction, thriller, and domestic suspense (which the library owns anyway).  Not in the mood for true crime or the historical fiction. Of the three I'm most interested in, the library owns all three.  So I think I'll get June Reimagined and Excuse Me, and check out Keeper of Enchanted Rooms from the library. And recommend It's Not the 3 Little Pigs to the library.

 

August First Reads

 August's choices:

• Legal thriller - Rich Blood
• Women's Fiction - Big Chicas Don't Cry
• Suspense - Real Bad Things
• Historical fiction - A Harvest of Secrets
• Dystopian Fiction - Exiles
• Memoir - No One Crosses the Wolf
• Lit Thriller (listed on Amazon as a memoir) - Broken Summer 
• Children's - Anni Dreams of Biryani

I'm not in the mood for dystopian anything, or thrillers/suspense.  After reading the summaries, it's down to Big Chicas, Harvest, or Anni, and the library already has Big Chicas and Harvest on order.  So Anni it is. 

July First Reads

 July is another month when we get to choose two books instead of one.  

1. Mystery - The Last Lie Told
2. Hist Fict - FEather on the Water
3. Psych thriller - Kismet
4. Women's fiction - She's Up To No Good
5. Short Story - Signal Moon
6. True Crime - All The Lies They Did Not Tell
7. Book club fiction - No Ordinary Thursday
8. Memoir - War and Me
9. Lit Fic - Embers on the Wind
10. Suspense - Mother of All Thrillers

No picture book this month.  

I ended up with Signal Moon and War & Me, with a couple of others on my to-read list from the library (they already pre-ordered everything but the short story)

 

June 2022 First Reads

 Okay, June's choices: 

• psychological thriller - Blackout
  
• book club fiction - The Brighter the Light
  
• crime thriller - The Secret Witness
  
• women's fiction - Happy is on Hiatus
  
• memoir - Bookends
  
• domestic drama - A Gracious Neighbor
  
• contemporary fiction - This Way Out
  
• children's - Pink is NOT a Color 

 Thrillers aren't my thing, so that's two unlikely right there.  A few of the others look meh, and the library owns most of them anyway.  The Brighter the Light and This Way Out look like the best options.  Library has This Way Out on order, so I went with the other one. 

Happiness is new jeans

 For the first time in at least ten years, I went shopping for jeans and didn't come home cranky and discouraged.  Instead, I almost fainted from happiness - I found jeans that fit the way I want them to, they're 98% cotton (not 70% or less), and they have pockets that my whole hand will fit into.  And, to top it off, they weren't expensive to start with - $19.99 a pair - and they were on sale, 20% off!!  I did what I've sworn to do for the past few years, and bought 6 pairs in the slightly-too-big size, and another 5 in the slightly-too-small size, in hopes that I'll re-lose some of the pandemic weight I gained. 

Prime First Reads - April 2022

 Okay, this month's books: 

• Domestic Suspense - At the Quiet Edge (Victoria Helen Stone)
• Historical Fiction - The Half-life of Ruby Fielding (Lydia Kang)
• True Crime - The Vanishing Triangle: The Murdered Women Ireland Forgot (Claire McGowan)
• Book Club Fiction/Horror - Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold (Umar Turaki)
• Epic Fantasy - The Druid: The Dawning of Muirwood (Jeff Wheeler)
• Suspense - Strangers We Know (Elle Marr)
• Literary Fiction - The Last Goddess (Katerina Tuckova)
• Memoir - American Seoul: A Memoir (Helena Rho)
• Picture Book - I Am Able to Shine (Korey Watari)
  

Horror is out. Ditto for the Suspense/Serial Killers book.  The Fantasy doesn't look interesting, or the picture book.  Library owns Vanishing Triangle. So, WWII fiction, literary fiction, or memoir?  Lit fic has some bad reviews, as does the memoir, so I ended up with The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding.

First Reads - March 2022

 The choices for March:

1.   Domestic thriller - Or Else by Joe Hart
2. Historical fiction - Scarlet Carnation by Laila Ibrahim
3. Thriller - Say Her Name by Mitchell & Carter
   
4.  Memoir - This Time For Me by Alexandra Billings
5.  Historical thriller - Cleopatra's Dagger
6.  Women's fiction - Full by Julia Spiro
7. Memoir - The Betrayal: the true story of my brush with death in the world of Narcos and Launderers
8. Picture book - Before the World Wakes

The library has ordered all the ones I'm interested in (other than Full).  Cutting out the thrillers and the second memoir, and the picture book, leaves four to choose from.  I ended up going with Scarlet Carnation, but may put This Time For Me on hold at the library. 

First Reads - February 2022

 Another month when we get to choose 2 books. 

1.  Domestic thriller - Family Money
2. Historical fiction - A Train to Moscow
3. Fantasy - The Quarter Storm
4. Thriller - Death in the Sunshine
5. Memoir - North to Paradise
6. Romance - The Astronaut and the Star
7. Book club fiction - Like Me
8. Memoir - The Fallen Stones
9. Picture book - This is (Not) Enough

1 is out, thrillers aren't my thing.  3 seems like a fantasy/thriller.  4 is a thriller that wants to be a cozy mystery, with a group of retired cops finding the victim.  The book club fiction is in the thriller category too.  It's basically down to two memoirs, historical fiction, and the rom-com.  The library has one of the memoirs, so it looks like the other memoir (Fallen Stones) and A Train to Moscow this time. 

January First Reads

 January's First Reads choices:

1. Political thriller - Deep Sleep
   
2. Book club fiction (coming-of-age thriller) - The Night Burns Bright
   
3. Historical Fiction - the Lobotomist's Wife
4. Serial Killer - Base Notes
   
5. Women's Fiction - Impossible to Forget
   
6. Historical fantasy - The Raven Spell
   
7. Memoir - Almost Romance by Nancy Balbirer
   
8. Contemporary fiction - Deconstructed
   
9. Picture book - I Am You
   
10. Memoir - They Said They Wanted Revolution: a memoir of my parents
    

Nope to the thriller and serial killer.  #2 is a post 9/11 commune-cult storyline.  #5 is friends raising a woman's orphaned teen daughter. #8 - Friends, fashion, revenge, divorce, an affair.  

None of these do a whole lot to interest me, so I'm going with the picture book, first published in South Africa.