Seascraper - Benjamin Wood (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025) I received an Advance Listening copy of this book thanks to the publisher and Libro.FM. All opinions are my own. I began listening to Seascraper just before the winter holiday and so even though it is a short novel - just over five hours listening time… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
Today my kids (and my husband) go back to school so our Winter break is officially, truly over. It's a little bit painful, those transitions back to regular schedule. We were delightfully lax over the past 2 weeks - with bedtimes, wake-ups, junk food intake, and screen time. There was a fair amount of reading… Continue reading Farewell 2025 and Hello 2026
I always enjoy a good retrospective post to close off a year of reading. At the beginning of 2025, I didn't set a lot of firm reading goals, primarily because I hadn't felt like I'd done much of a great job at hitting my goals in previous years. Perhaps that worked out well for me… Continue reading What I Read – 2025
Hello and welcome back! The vast majority of the reading that I do is fiction. This is a hard category for me to narrow down because it's the closest I'll get to picking a favourite book of the year. But the year is long and the reading is varied and how do you choose? I… Continue reading The 2025 Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards (Best Fiction)
Hello and welcome back! Today's category is a stacked one. Non-Fiction is a pretty broad category and encompasses biographies, histories, essay collections, and works of theology. I don't read as much non-fiction as I do fiction but I read some truly excellent non-fiction in 2025. The runners-up (in order that I read them) are: One… Continue reading The 2025 Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards (Best Non-Fiction)
Hello and welcome back! Today's category is Best Audio. This is, as far as I can tell, a new category for these prestigious awards. It's a challenging one because for a book to be nominated in the Best Audio Category, it must be both a great book in and of itself, but also have an… Continue reading The 2025 Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards (Best Audio)
Hello and welcome back! Today's category is Best Translation. Since I'm not able to read all of these books in their original language, I'm unable to actually speak to how accurate the translation into English is. Instead, when I say "best translation" what I mean is the best work I read that was translated into… Continue reading The 2025 Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards (Best Translation)
I listened to an Advance Listening Copy of this book thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher. All opinions are my own. This robot-focused novella is a little out of my normal book choices but the cover was appealing, it was a short listen, and it was available to me through Libro.fm so I thought I'd… Continue reading Book Review: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
Hello and welcome! This is my annual "Best Of", look back at what I've read in 2025. The categories, the shortlist, and the winners are all chosen by, you guessed it, me! The prize is the warm feeling that the author will surely feel when they learn that they have been selected for the Karissa… Continue reading The 2025 Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards (Best Debut)
At the end of November, I celebrated my 40th birthday. It's both a momentous occasion and also just another day of the week. It's a birthday that people seem to expect you to have a lot of feelings about and I guess I do but I also am not quite sure how I feel. The… Continue reading Karissa is 40!
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