Quite often, January looks mostly like the above photo. It's grey, it's rainy, the days are short. It's a month that seems to last forever. We started out a little like that, with days where it felt like the sun never fully rose before it was dark again. But rather than a month that dragged… Continue reading 2026 Highlights: January
Beautyland - Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) I started listening to Beautyland on audio back in, I think, November, via the Libby app. My time lapsed and the wait was so long that I kind of gave up on it. But when I saw that it had no wait at the library in… Continue reading Book Review: Beautyland by Marie-Helen Bertino
Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2022) Damon Fields is born to a single mother in the bathroom of a trailer. He is born into poverty in a small, Appalachian community. His childhood is unsteady but not necessarily unhappy. He quickly becomes known as Demon Copperhead instead of his legal name (just as his best… Continue reading Book Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
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)
Karissa Reads Books 