🐎⚖️🐍 True Grit 🤯 and Fun Stuff

    True Grit by Charles Portis is my March Book Club book. I have seen both the John Wayne version and the Jeff Daniels one, but have never read the book. It is a stunner. I listened to the audiobook read by Donna Tartt that included her introduction. The novel operates on many levels, and, as Tartt points out, it is similar to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It has a quest, villains, a journey, a brave but naive questor, a shady but savvy guide, and a vain, talented warrior. I could be describing The Lord of the Rings. The book was published in 1968 and was once taught in high school literature classes. I think it deserves to be there. The 1960s were "the golden age of Westerns." Think of Bonanza and The Magnificent Seven. There are grand themes of dispensing justice versus revenge. Humanity versus Nature. What makes someone evil, rather than misguided? It is set on the edge of the West, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and moves into unregulated Indian Territory. In the 1870s, many characters were former soldiers in the Civil War. The central character is whip-smart, determined 14-year-old Mattie Smith, who hires MarshalRooster Cogburn to pursue her father's murderer, Tom Chaney. They are joined by a Texas Ranger who is also hunting Chaney to bring him to Texas for crimes he committed there. These three are together and also at cross-purposes. 

    The biggest surprise was how humorous this book is and how violent. It does not romanticize the West; it is a gritty tale of cowardice and bravery, loyalty and betrayal, and perseverance and weakness. 

🐎⚖️🐍

    Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley was a quirky and fun book. A screwball comedy that twisted in ways I didn't anticipate and made me laugh out loud, mostly at the mother/teenage daughter interactions. Oakley really captures that, as well as the husband-and-wife dynamics of a 19-year marriage, as a major status quo change--an empty nest-- is on the horizon. It pokes fun in a winky-way at influencers, weird billionaires, pretentious restaurants, and other very 2026 things. 

📱👨‍🍳💣😂❤️

🪄🏰🐉🧙⏳ More Septimus Heap--Did I Mention There are 7 Books? ❤️And a Katherine Center Romance

 

    Queste by Angie Sage is the fourth book in the Septimus Heap Series. I admire how Sage takes the adventures to wild places and ties in previous characters well. I like to know the behind-the-scenes process for things. I picture a giant spreadsheet of her series tracking what has happened, color-coded character arcs, dividers for each novel, and fancy links to expanded text. She's rocking the messy middle with intense plot lines and character growth. 

⌛️😰⏳

    I took a reading break from Septimus Heap to read a little romance. I enjoy Katherine Center's novels and picked up The Bright Side of Disaster. I read romance for escape, so some of the more audacious plot points I was great with. I knew the right people would end up together. She set the stakes high with a pregnant Jenny Harris, being left by her fiancé the day before she gives birth! If only she had an empathetic, hunky neighbor who could help her out. There is a trope that if you want to reveal a character's true self, how do children and pets react to them? If dogs hate them, or they hurt a pet, or avoid children, something is fundamentally wrong with them. It helps separate the white hats from the black.

👶🏻❤️🐕

Here is a link to reviews of other Katherine Center titles I've read:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Katherine+Center

🐉🏰🗝️🪄🧙🛶All Septimus Heap!

 

    After some heavy reading — see the previous week's post — I am taking a YA break. I have seen the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, but hadn't read any... until now. I had expected to be a Harry Potter-ish remix. It has similarities. There is magic, dark forces, a mistreated orphan, and dangerous situations, but I found Magyk, the first in the series, different, not as dark, for one. Mistaken identity figures big in the novel's plot. There is a fun rivalry between characters involving proper magic. The villains are somewhat silly in their evilness. Angie Sage shines at making a knotty plot seem hopeless, then untying it with panache.

🪄🧙🛶

    This novella provides background on the Port Witches, Simon Heap, and Dom Daniel, showing how the bad guys' choices come back to bite them.

🐸🐸🐸

    The adventures continue in Flyte and Physik. Angie Sage is excellent at creating fresh plots with her cast of characters. The main characters, Septimus Heap and Princess Jenna, make poor choices, face consequences, and grow in wisdom and understanding in humorous and audacious ways.

🐉🏰🗝️

🪜🎭👺🦴⌛️Katabasis! 🤯

    I have someone in my life who, when they recommend a book, it will be  1) really good, 2) super weird, and 3) possible in the horror category. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang was recommended to me by this person, and it was all three, plus an intellectual plunge about power and purpose in the form of a novel. The word I would use to sum up the novel is "layered." The book is entertaining as dark fantasy. There are many references and nods to other literature on descent: Alice in Wonderland, the Divine Comedy, The Odyssey, and patheons of Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese Myth. She references Freud, Foucault, Toni Morrison, and many others. There is a lot going on, more than I could absorb in one reading. Kuang has accomplished something extraordinary; a reader could read it once and enjoy it, or read it several times and find new insights each time. 

🪜🎭👺🦴⌛️

    Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman is not Dungeon Crawler Carl, but there are many similarities between them. They are both litRPG. The protagonist is reluctant, brave, and clever, aided by a sassy pet-like sidekick. The humor is irreverent. Corporations are evil, money-grubbers, and the people/players that pay to indulge in their games are psychopaths. The plot is surprising and twisty. My biggest complaint is that it isn't Carl and Donut. I like how Dinniman makes a wild, crazy novel feel relevant to our current political situation. I think he may be subversively subversive.

🤖🎮🐔🐷👨‍🌾

    I like a well-done romance, and Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane is well done. It operates on the enemies-to-lovers trope, where they also have to pretend to be dating. The main characters, Bel and Connor, are both journalists in a tiny office in Manchester. The opportunity to break an important story requires undercover work—not those covers! Will the two coworkers eventually come to appreciate each other's strengths and learn to work together? Worth the journey to see it happen.

 📰 💖 🗞️

    I am currently rereading some of my favorite books. I have finished all of Jane Austin,  The Murderbot Diaries, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Let me say: I love them all.

⚔️🤖🦁

🐟🦀🦦🦞🎣🚜👨‍🌾🐄 Light-Hearted Aussie and Serious Thoughts About Life

 

    Sometimes I have reserved books on Libby, but don't remember requesting them. They show up in my feed to be borrowed, and I worry about what I'm going to encounter. Heretical Fishing by Haylock Jobson is one of those books. Maybe I heard it was like the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, because it is a litRPG (Literary Role-Playing Game). A billionaire dies and finds himself in a different world that reminds him of world-building games he's played. All he wants to do is fish, live by the sea, and create meaningful relationships--things he failed to do in his previous life. The pace is gentle, the plot is more about fun times than leveling up. The hero, Fischer, moves through his new life mostly oblivious to conflict and antagonism from others. His kindness earns him loyal friends and awakened, ascending pets. The book is overlong and lacks conflict, but it is readable and humorous.

🐟🦀🦦🦞🎣

    Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry, is the February pick for my book club. It is another gentle book, but it contains depth and conflict as it balances grief and gratefulness for life. Hannah recounts her small-town life as a farmer's wife from her youth to her old age. Hannah is deeply wise in the ways of community. A sadness of the novel is how small farms collapsed after World War II, as the next generation found jobs elsewhere. My Dear Husband is from a farm family. He proudly states that his grandfather never had a W-2. He has justified pride in what his family has accomplished. Hannah Coulter is a vehicle for showing the dignity and resilience of farm families. 

🚜👨‍🌾🐄

🎉📖👩‍💻 I Got Published In a Book!

 

    I started this blog to put some short stories I wrote out into the world, but then let it slide. I resurrected it as a place to talk about the books I read each week, but kept the name because I can be lazy like that. However, I kept writing and submitting work. I got published online and in The Sun Magazine's Readers Write column. My goal for the past few years has been to write something and get paid for it. 

It has happened!

 https://www.facebook.com/ChickenSoupfortheSoul/

 #CSSBeingGrandma

 https://www.chickensoup.com/book/being-grandma

    Chicken Soup for the Soul: Being Grandma is available on March 10th at bookstores and online.  I am grateful to be published, especially for my supportive husband and first-draft editor. Hurrah!

🎉📖👩‍💻

🏠🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒🌀🧠😶‍🌫️🦠 Great Weird Books

 

    The Names by Florence Knapp has a wonderfully quirky premise. How much does a name influence one's path in life? Three different storylines spool out from three different name possibilities: Bear, Julian, or Gordon. The other aspects of life remain the same. He has an abusive father, a downtrodden mother, and a fierce older sister. What will they all become under the influence of the son's name? This novel explores identity, the lingering scars of abuse, and how to find hope. The Names is Florenc Knapp's debut novel, and it is extraordinary. Wonderful characters, a whimsical proposition, and lovely descriptions underline a belief that people generally want to do good, but also want to feel powerful.

🏠🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒🌀

    I didn't like Social Crimes main character, wealthy socialite Jo Slater. It was difficult to root for her, especially as she made poor choice after poor choice. Jo, from Oklahoma, is fascinated with Marie Antoinette's life and decor, and catches the eye of a wealthy, much older millionaire from New York. He pursues her and sets her up in a New York apartment while he tells his wife he wants a divorce. They marry, and she becomes a leading light in society because of her wealth, fabulous parties, and impeccable taste. That all changes, and it changes how Jo approaches life.

🍸👑🗽

       I like weird books, and There is No Antimemetics Division by antm (not a typo). This book explores themes of identity, the spread of ideas, and whether we really know what we think we know. It opens on a world where dangerous-to-life ideas — ones that cause division and disconnection from others — invade but contain self-erasing properties. So its victims don't know that they've been infected and have no defense or cure. Now, imagine a secret organization that fights those entities called the Antimemetics Division. To keep itself secret, it must regularly wipe its employees' minds to prevent them from being compromised. qntm makes it work. I enjoyed this clever, mind-bending book. Once I accepted the premise, I, too, began to anticipate the problems they faced and to admire their solutions. 

🧠😶‍🌫️🦠

🌊🛶🏝️The Wayfinder

 

    The Wayfinder, by Adam Johnson,  is probably the longest book I'll read this year. It's over 700 pages and Adams uses all the pages to tell this complex, intricate story. The book contains multitudes of characters, plots, and ideas. It is historical fiction set in Polynesia during the Tu'i Tonga's reign. To remain emperor and rule a vast number of people in any place, one must be ruthless, scheming, and focused on power. I found this book to be like Wolf Hall and Shogun. There are characters who rise by crunching the bones of others beneath them, and those who rise because they sacrifice for others. Adams employs magical realism or mythical realism to embody aspects of life. There is a talking parrot, a fan that contains the breathe of life, and special powers granted to royalty. The story is told by multiple voices: a young woman, whose name means story who seeks to find a way to help her starving people, a second prince who is being trained as a navigator, a second prince who was sent to war to keep him from becoming a threat, but now he's returned, and the most powerful female in the kingdom. This book is sweeping in its scope, but it also feels granular in its level of engagement with those who dwell in the lower levels of society. 

🌊🛶🏝️

👙☀️🩱Sunny Florida💀🐾🗽NYC Death Doula, and 🌪️🤖💻⌨️💨Dystopian AI

 

    Every time I read Katherine Center, I feel buoyed up in a sea of troubles. I come away thinking the novel was more than a romance. Her characters in this book are Katie, a video producer making a recruitment video for the Coast Guard featuring rescue swimmer Hutch. Sounds straightforward, right? It's not. It's quirky, uplifting, and insightful. It has sun, water, dogs, hunks, and a bathing suit phobia. 

Other reviews of Katherine Center books: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Katherine+Center

👙☀️🩱

    The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer reminded me of Frederik Bachman's book A Man Called Ove in spirit, though the details were quite different. It started slowly, building the case that death doula Clover Brooks is merely existing, not living her life. She has one friend, three pets, and lots of regrets. The regrets aren't all hers. She keeps three notebooks, Advice, Regrets, and Confessions, filled with the words of those she's served as they died. Reading the novel was similiar to watching a baby grow from unaware newborn to bright and interactive adult. I would classify it as a feel good read.

💀🐾🗽

    There are many sci-fy novels about Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence by Thomas R. Weaver is a good addition to the ouvre. Sci-Fi is good place to work out questions. The novel explores a planet on the edge of climate collapse and desperate for solutions. So desparate that the world has voted to create a dictator with the specific purpose of saving humanity. One of the candidates is an AI construct named Solomon. Investigative journalist, Marcus Tully, suspects things are being manipulated, but who is pulling the strings? The plot is fast-paced and surprising. It reads like an action movie.

🌪️🤖💻⌨️💨

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Three Five-Star Books in One Week. A Great Start 2026!

 

   The first book club for 2026 is Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston. I've read this book before because it is a classic, and I want to be well-read. What benefits me about book club is I dig deeper into a book and find so much more than I realized as I zoomed by. Set before World War 1 in Florida, Janie Crawford carries the weight of being the granddaughter of an enslaved woman. Raised by her nurturing grandmother, she is married at 16 to a potato farmer. Her grandmother is seeking to break the cycle of abuse, but in reality, perpetuates it. Janie is loved, but valued for work. Mules are a symbol of beast of burdens that depict Janie's life of having to carry both race and gender.

🫏👀🍐

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

    The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is my first five-star book of 2026. I felt a strong connection to this book for many reasons. It is set in Annapolis, Maryland, and many of the landmarks mentioned were familiar. Sybil Van Antwerp is a retired lawyer living alone. She reads voraciously, and her days are spent between her garden and her correspondence. She writes everyone--authors she's read, her childhood pen pal, her neighbors, the dean of English at the University of Maryland, her brother in France, everyone. Grumpy, stodgy, set in her ways, with deep hurts, and yet caring deeply for those around her, Sybil is my favorite type of character, a ball of conflicting emotions and actions. 

✍️🐦‍⬛📬🐦‍🔥💌

I have a love loathe relationship with with Lily King's novels. She writes about women who are intelligent and aware, but also conflicted and fragile. They have experienced things that give them grit, and make them mistrustful others. These women are frequently caught between two men. Heart the Lover follows this same pattern, exploiting the tension of this triangle. Jordan life trajectory changes when she meets Sam and Yash in her English Literature class. They are honors students that operate on a different level of thinking, writing, and conversing. She is drawn in and becomes enthralled with writing. Twnety years later, her current cozy life is interrupted by a visit from her former lover. King writes kind wisdom capturing first love, the anything can happen early life, and the costliness of forgiveness.

💔🎓❤️‍🩹

🛸🎄👽🎄🛸 Christmas is OVER!

I love rereading this every Christmas. A Lot Like Christmas by Connie Willis is a compilation of 12 short stories with a Christmas theme. Many have aliens. Beings not from Earth come to visit us, not all with benign intentions. Willis celebrates carols, Christmas letters, holiday movies, and family dinners. So good. It's a mini break to read or listen to the story, performing the many Christmas tasks that are a joy and a burden.

🛸🎄👽🎄🛸

 

    Connie Willis is one of my top authors. She excels at what appeals to me: quirky characters, humor, and well-researched. In The Road to Roswell, it is obvious that she has been to the locations she describes, in Roswell and Las Vegas. The voices of the UFO enthusiasts are earnest, knowledgeable, and slightly unhinged. She pokes fun at them, while at the same time, she has an entire book exploring the fun of aliens among us. Because it is set in the southwest, she also celebrates the heyday of Western movies. A common thread in her novels is misinformation and assumption, and she uses that deftly here. Her writing is intriguing and complex enough to enjoy rereading it. 

👽👾🛸🤠

   It's a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan was a well-crafted romance novel. I wanted something very not Christmas, but not too intense.  Its enemy-to-friend plot, set mostly in LA in August, was spot-on. Jane is a former child TV star who now works for a production company that has discovered a script she loves. She works to get it greenlit, but it's not commercial enough--no big names, no explosions. The smoldering, cinematographer who only lacks a man-bun to complete his aesthetic thwarts her efforts. Sparks fly.

I have read another book by Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script, and liked it. Here is my review:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Nora+goes+off+script

🎞️☀️❤️