Booking Through Thursday: What Makes a Good Book

 

Join Booking Through Thursday: 

Everybody needs a change now and again, so what new topics or authors are you interested in these days? Or what new kinds of books do you wish you had time for?

I'm looking for good writing in the books I read these days, and if the first page or pages don't grab my interest right off, I move on to the next book. First person narratives are interesting, as are the voices of adolescents or children, or struggling personalities, female or male. 

Books with in depth characterizations, complex individuals, and teasing ideas are just as important or even more important as the plot per se. Of course, an intriguing and unusual plot that leads you on becomes just as important as the characters sometimes. 

Have you found any books lately that fit the bill for you? 

Here are a few books that kept and are keeping my interest throughout:

Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange by Katie Goh, May 6, 2025; Tin House, NetGalle

The Master Jeweler by Weina Dai Randel

Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa, (September 30, 2025; Knopf Canada; NetGalley

The Water Lies (October 2025; NetGalley)

What books are you reading that have you staying up at night? 

Re gardening: the storms and rains have prevented much gardening but the yard looks bright and green though overgrown. I replanted red lilies from the back to the front flowerbeds, but the winds and rain uprooted them, so I'm back to digging and fixing this morning.

How about you? 

We'll Prescribe You Another Cat and Other Reviews

 

Multiple Book Genres

I've been jumping around genres recently, from Japanese literary fiction to thrillers and cozy mysteries, to historical fiction. 

We'll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida, Sept. 2, 2025, Berkley, NetGalley

Genre: magical realism, contemporary Japanese fiction

The doctor and nurse at The Healing Clinic for the Soul lends out Bengal cats for a week, prescribing a cat for those with problems at home that could be fixed with a cat in the house. The stories are clever and cute, and I loved the magical and fantasy aspects of both cats and clinic, and the doctor who does the prescribing. If I did not have allergies, I'd prescribe myself a cat!

 

Look in the Mirror by Catherine Steadman, July 30, 2024; Ballantine

Genre: thriller, suspense

Two women, Nina and Maria, are caught up in a house that they cannot fathom, it's secret so huge literally and figuratively. Both women are warned not to enter the basement or enter any of its doors, but they don't comply, being too curious and overly adventurous.

Maria's ordeals in the basement and Nina's bewilderment at the house that her dead father bequeathed her, turn out to be a puzzle the women must play and win. The author's plot around this house as the scene for a dangerous game is intriguing and original.

Thrilling and suspenseful, the story is surprising and the ending shocking.

 

Currently reading

The Master Jeweler by Weina Dai Randel, June 24, 2025; Lake Union Publishing, NetGalley

Genre: historical fiction, Shanghai

Description: the epic story of a brilliant young woman’s rise to fame in the perilous world of jewelry in 1920s Shanghai.

Harbin, China, 1925. Fifteen-year-old Anyu Zhang discovers a priceless Fabergé egg in the snow and returns it to the owner, Isaac Mandelburg, a fugitive former master jeweler for Russia’s imperial palace. In gratitude, he leaves her his address in Shanghai and a promise of hospitality, forever altering her fate.

Memes:  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, , and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday