Tag: In Ascension

Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

The Book Lover's Sanctuary12 Comments

Is it my imagination or are the days starting to stretch out a little bit again? It's still pitch dark on my morning runs but I don't feel that I am both driving to and home from work in the darkness! And this week's theme is a lovely one, a celebration of the books I have read in 2023 - which already seems a very long time ago and we have not yet finished January! - from authors I have not come across before. We all have those familiar favourite authors, don't we? Those writers who we just know we will feel welcome and comfortable and familiar with, even in a new book - and that is a wonderful thing! And alongside that, it is a joy to uncover a new author whom we might also fall in love with, possibly with a weighty backlist to enjoy, potentially with a future of more books to come. It is also a feature that I track on my reading spreadsheet - I am such a geek! - so I can easily share my full list of books by new-to-me authors, of which there were 22.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Books of 2023

The Book Lover's Sanctuary24 Comments

Birnam Wood is on the move... Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker - or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List

The Book Lover's Sanctuary20 Comments

I do enjoy these seasonal to-be-read lists, even if I consider myself in no way bound by them. Which is just as well really: looking back at the Summer To-Read list, I managed to read just one, a single solitary one, of them! Do I feel any shame? Hell no - no one should ever feel shame for what they read, how they read, how much they read or how often they read! As my mood shifted and changed over the Summer - and it was a little hectic! - so to did the things I fancied reading. I read what served a purpose at the time and that was great! So with that in mind, what vague notional TBR do I have for the coming season as the nights draw in, the mornings grow darker, the temperatures drop and leaves turn...?