Purchased – Carol's Notebook

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

November 21, 2025November 20, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

I am maybe not the right audience for On the Road. I know if's a classic and definitely a product of its time. I found it a slog to get through. It's a series of road trips take by Sal Paradise (Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) back and forth across the continent. They meet a variety of people, see a variety of towns, make money in a variety of way - and to be honest I couldn't care less. It's racist and sexist and, yes, it's the fifties and would usually overlook those to some extent, but I didn't enjoy the rest of the book enough. It's also pretentious and, at the same time, purposefully naive. I will say Kerouac has a strong voice which the narrator conveyed well in the audio I listened too. Honestly, that's probably the only reason I didn't set the book down. Well, that and I needed a "stream of consciousness" narrative for a...

A Killer Wedding by Joan O’Leary

November 11, 2025November 11, 2025 by Carol1 Comment

One of the many lessons I've learned in over four decades of reading mysteries is avoid destination weddings. This time around the setting is an opulent castle-turned-hotel in Ireland; the murdered woman is the groom's grandmother; and our plucky amateur sleuth is ambitious, newly promoted, senior magazine editor, Christine Russo. I did not like most of this book. While rich families behaving badly is usually a decent start, this one jus didn't work for the most part. We have so many characters and so many flashbacks and so many secrets. Everyone's a potential suspect. And Christine is a mediocre investigator who seems to be in over her head both with the family and her job. Really, the only reason she gets anywhere are the notes she's given by an unknown someone. Now, the twist at maybe 90% made the book worth reading. It doesn't make it a good book, but it does pull everything together well and caught me off...

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

The Hacienda will probably be my last spooky story of the year. Newly-married Beatriz has just moved to her husband, Don Rodolfo's, hacienda, San Isidro, where she will live with her husband and sister-in-law. It's not long until Beatriz realizes something is wrong with the hacienda, aside from neglect. She begins hearing voices, having vivid hallucinations, and constantly feels like she is being watched. Fearing the house is haunted, she turns to a local priest, Padre Andrés, for help. The writing is beautiful and descriptive. The atmosphere is "hauntingly lovely" and oppressive. I listened to the audio and having two narrators worked well with the two viewpoints, Beatriz' and Andrés'. In print, I'm not sure their voices would have been as distinct. Overall, it was an enjoyable read: a bit of supernatural, a unique (for me) setting, a touch of romance. It did touch briefly on some tough topics but ended up skirting around them....

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

October 29, 2025October 29, 2025 by Carol3 Comments

I don't read a lot of horror, and when I do, I tend to prefer the lighter side, and the horror aspect of Play Nice was fairly light. The family drama and unresolved childhood trauma were the heavier parts here. Clio is an influencer who seems to have the world at her feet. When she and her two sisters inherit their mother's house after her death, Clio insists on taking on the rehab and selling of the property, a house their mother always insisted was demon-possessed, thinking it will make great content. Clio is a difficult person to like. She is deeply affected by her past, no matter how much she believes she's past it. She's self-centered, stubborn, a bit chaotic, probably an alcoholic, but her character makes sense, given the family dynamics and I found myself rooting for her. Yes, I wanted her to make different choices, but that's part of the horror genre, isn't it? The relationships between her and her sisters...

The One Thing You’d Save by Linda Sue Park

October 23, 2025October 23, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

The One Thing You'd Save is written in verse using a Korean form of poetry called sijo. Sijo is an ancient classic form of poetry with three lines of thirteen to seventeen syllables. They can be either 3 long lines or divided into 6 shorter lines. to be honest, though, i wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for the author's note at the end. It doesn't read like poetry to me, for what that's worth. In the story, A teacher asks her students what one thing they would save if their home was on fire. Your family and pets are safe, so you don't have to worry about them. We get to hear each student's choices and the reasons behind them. And the kids talk about their lives and what's important to know, with the occasional reminder from the teacher to be respectful. The kids' voices felt real and honest. And yes, it made me cry. ...

Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library by Amanda Chapman

October 16, 2025October 16, 2025 by Carol1 Comment

I love the concept in Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library. Agatha Christie appears in a specialty mystery library in NY in contemporary times saying that she’s taking a break from a rather dull afterlife to help amateur sleuth and book conservator Tory Van Dyne solve a murder that hasn’t happened yet. The future victim? Tory’s sister Nic’s agent—who ends up being pushed in front of a subway train. Mrs. Christie, aka Mrs. Mallowan, is charming and insightful. She does a good job of encouraging the rather quirky set of "detectives" to work things out for themselves. She also has a habit of quoting from her books, which is fun at first, but becomes a bit overdone as the book goes on. The supporting cast seemed a little quirky for quirky's sake. Tory is pretty bland - she does have a reason, but we don't know it until well into the book, but she she does wear a lot of...