Chalet Shelves • Reading Recs 10.14.26

Today I’m sharing some titles I’ve really enjoyed over the last few months. Happy Reading friends!

I listened to many of these titles. I love to feel fully immersed with my air-pods in. I borrowed these titles through Hoopla and Libby and I purchased This Book Made Me Think of You through Chirp. I always try to borrow whenever I can and keep my purchasing of titles to a minimum. My Chirp library is predominately filled with classics.

This Book Made Me Think of You: Tilly Nightingale, a widowed publishing editor whose late husband, Joe, leaves her a year-long trail of books starting with her birthday a few months after he passes away. Each gift nudges her toward food, travel, friendship, family, courage, and love. The novel uses reading as a way back to the self. It is warm, hopeful, and honest about how mourning can sit beside new beginnings.
Heart the Lover: The book is tinged with so many emotions - I found it captivating. In the fall of her senior year of college, she starts a relationship with Sam a fellow student from her 17th Century Lit Class. She is drawn into an easy friendship with his roommate Yash. She is nicknamed Jordan by them. There is a triangle to this relationship. Decades later we find her grappling with her own truth and how decisions she made impacted her life and others.
A Year in Provence: In this delightful tale, Peter Mayle shares what it’s like to realize your dream and move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron. He and his wife along with their two dogs learn the ways of the locals.
American Fantasy: What newly divorced 50 yr old empty-nester doesn’t want to join her younger sister on a four day cruise to nowhere? There’s a catch - the cruise is a vehicle for 2000 fans of the 90’s band - Boy Talk! That’s where Annie finds herself alone when Katherine breaks her leg and can’t take the trip. I felt the nostalgia for simpler times when swooning over a poster on your bedroom wall and knowing all the lyrics to your favorite album was all life was about.
More Than Enough: Polly Goodman is able to talk about anything - her struggles with IVF, her students at a private girls college prep school, her fraught relationship with her mother, with those closest to her - her husband, brother and her three friends who she is in a Book Club with - where they never read the book! But, when she receives an ancestry kit from those friends as a joke and then has a match - that she doesn’t want to talk about. Life changes are coming and the wonderful Anna Quindlen weaves a story about characters we care about. I found a lot to like about this book.
Whistler: The book opens with an encounter between Daphne and her former stepfather at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Eddie has been absent from her life for more than forty years but, as the two reconnect it becomes clear they each had a lasting impact on each other far outreaching the brief years they spent together. I read it in one sitting.
Songteller: My Life in Lyrics: Dolly Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics and shares the stories of each song. I listened to this book and loved hearing Dolly tell these stories and then hear a bit of each song…I do recommend it as a listen.
The Tenant of Windfell Hall: I watched a documentary about the Bronte sisters and it led me to look beyond Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to this story published in 1848 by her sister. It is a romance that resonates today. A classic will they won’t they get together. I was very invested in Gilbert and Helen and I listened to the 16hrs and 25mins quickly. The old English is lovely to the ear.
Finding Grace: This book is written in such a unique way - I was immediately drawn into the story and I stayed up late listening with the anticipation of the symbolic “other shoe” dropping… when will Grace learn all about Honor and Henry. And even though Tom is doing what he thinks best for all… will his choices blow up in his face…again?1?