If I have heard of the National Book Critics Circle Awards, I certainly don’t remember. This award is very prestigious, however, and worth taking a look at. Each year, a panel of 24 book review editors and critics choose one book in several categories to win the award. Winners for books pubished in 2025 were announced in March. Here they are: Fiction— We do not
Those of you who have read my blog know that I admire and respect Dolly Parton. I certainly know that she isn’t a fool. I used to think she was a bit fake, and some of her IS fake, but underneath her show biz persona is a brilliant and talented mind with a knack for business and music, and a tender heart with a love
Some really good books don’t appeal to large numbers of readers. These books are either too specific or too detailed or even about an obscure subject that few people are interested enough to read about. Many of the books still deserve notice, however, so I am going to list a few that sound incredibly good. I’m not saying that I’ll read them all, but I
I really love it when one of our readers comments on a blog entry or another book that s/he has read. Such is the case with Linda Dove, a Sandcastle Book Club member and avid reader. See below to read what she has to say about a new biography! There’s a new biography out on one of my, and most of my family’s, favorite authors
I am happy to introduce you to another author who resides on Kiawah Island. His name is Herb Jansen. He is retired from a career working first with Ernst and Young and later with Arthur Anderson. When Herb was 19 years old, he served as an Infantry Sergeant in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Vietnam for a year. Several years ago, Jansen came
The weather warmed up before I could get this post out to readers. Maybe we should rename it “Books to Read on a Sunny Porch.” Anyway, the books below are ‘so-called’ cozy books people are beginning to talk about. Too much real stuff to handle means we don’t want to read more real or even pretend stuff that we don’t want to think about. So,
I have done a post like this before because I know that some of you like specific authors. I’m not at all sure how wonderful the following books are, but you can find out!! Allegra Goodman, This Is Not About Us (Isola) The book follows three generations of women in the Rubinstein family and their long-standing feud. The Boston Globe calls it “one fo the
I featured author David Schaeffer’s Letters from Sweden a few years ago. His new book Initiation at the Scum Pond is a story based on an actual event. This book is different from the other books Schaeffer has written in that it is a novel. Although I am not a literary critic by any means, I will have to say that this book demands one’s
The Jilted Countess by Loretta Ellsworth is the story of an American GI named Joe and an aristocratic ballet dancer named Roza. They meet druing World War II and have a love affair. Joe promises he will marry Roza if she comes to Minnesota after the war. After saving up for two years, Roza arrives in the U.S. only to find that Joe is now
It is hard to believe in 2026 that women who wanted to write often had to use pen names. They knew that people would not take a book written by a woman seriously. Many men would certainly not have read a book written by a woman. Of course, after the books became successful, the truth became known and the reset is history. See if you
