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? 

Bookstore Browsing: Sunday Salon

 At the bookstore

 Book Display at the store 

Chairs and a cat on the Toshikazu Kawaguchi book covers; cats only on books by T. Shigematsu and Syou Ishida. The Japanese are certainly fond of cats. I bought Before Your Memory Fades, the most recent in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Kawaguchi.

How many of these have you read, if any?

 On a poetry binge, I couldn't resist this new collection or its colorful cover.

The New Yorker started as a weekly in the mid-1920s, and is now published forty-seven times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Poems, cartoons, satire, and essays are included in each weekly. 

I like that there are many short and shorter poems on various subjects in the collection. makes for easy reading.

And  I had to get a thriller too

The House Guest by Hank Philippi Ryan, published 2023 by Forge Books.

Description: Alyssa Macallan is terrified when she’s dumped by her wealthy and powerful husband. She begins to suspect her toxic and manipulative soon-to-be-ex is scheming to ruin her—leaving her alone and penniless. And when the FBI shows up at her door, Alyssa knows she really needs a friend.

And then she gets a seductive new friend, one who’s running from a dangerous relationship of her own. 

Alyssa offers Bree Lorrance the safety of her guest house, and the two become confidantes and schemers. 

Currently reading/almost finished

I am enjoying the descriptions of the canals in the watery neighborhood of Venice, California, where The Water Lies (October 2025; NetGalley) takes place.

In this mystery, a heavily pregnant woman, Tessa, tries to find the link between Gigi, a woman she just met at a local cafe, and her toddler son who seemed to recognize her. 

When Gigi turns up drowned in the canal in front of her house, Tessa becomes unnerved and bent on finding out how her son was connected to Gigi, calling her by her name in the cafe. 

Enter Gigi's mom, Barb, also determined to find out how or why her daughter drowned in a shallow canal even though she had been a swim champion in school.

The two women, Tessa and Barb, work together, and so far there are so many twists and turns in the plot that I can't wait to find out what really happened. 

 

What are you reading this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves