Thanks for answering my recommendation (I‘m the one with the Death in Paradise question) 😁 You’re right, they’re so particular and I couldn’t find anything like them. I‘ve read all of Richard Osman‘s mysteries and the other series by Robert Thorogood. Maybe I just need to re-read DiP on an endless loop 😅
I'm grudgingly trying to appreciate summer while longing for fall. Emily Herey's Happy Place is great. Not so much enemies to lovers rather friends to lovers to tension filled estrangement to lovers. Also A Man called Ove by Fredrick Backman is a about a sad but sweet old man.
It's Summer and it's already hot out. Blah... My Book Recommendation to keep you feeling cool is: NORTHERN DECITE by Cori Lynn Arnold this is the 3rd in a series but also stands on it's own.
For good therapist/patient non-fiction, I recommend books by Irvin Yalom, especially Love’s Executioner. They aren’t “a walk through a museum,” but Iain Pears’ art history mysteries are very entertaining.
I'm definitely going to try that recipe as well 🍋Thanks for sharing it! I also have some summery boom recommendations: - "The River" by Peter Heller (two friends canoe the Maskwa River while a wildfire is making its way across the forest towards them, there's also some mystery and survival elements) - "Black Water Sister" by Zen Cho (Jess visits Malaysia where she has last been as a toddler and stumbles into ghosts, gods, eccentric family members.. oh and she hears the voice of her late grandmother who has revenge on her mind) - "Untamed Shore" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (historical coming-of-age mystery set in Baja California) - "A Room Called Earth" by Madeleine Ryan (spans just one day and follows a neurodivergent woman in Melbourne getting ready for a party, attending said party, and it really is just about the various strangers she meets and the conversations and inner monologue she has) - "River of Teeth" (Series) by Sarah Gaily (an alternate history set in the early 20th century Louisiana where they imported hippos as livestock but things didn't go as imagined and decades later the bayous are overrum with feral, savage hippos and we follow a man and his misfit crew riding ON hippos who've been hired to clear the swamps) - "Light from Other Stars" by Erika Swyler (a historical, literary coming-of-age speculative sci-fi involving space and time travel, orange orchards, a father and daughter relationship, it's about obsession, passion, loss, grief, love and empathy, hope, curiosity and humanity and it's just BEAUTIFUL)
For summer I really recommend A Month in the Country by JL Carr and Heatwave by Penelope Lively. Both very short as well! I think also We Were Liars, which is a YA by E Lockhart, is set over summer on a private island. Italian setting made me think of Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers, which is set mostly in Venice, and is also about art. She has another book much more specifically about a painting/art, I think it's The Other Side of You which might be vaguely museumish, like art gallery maybe more than museum.
For art books (though not like walking in a museum) I would recommend I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson and Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman, both might also break your heart 😁 I just loved the description of art / art as a main topic of these books so much!
I read From Here to Eternity many years ago, and the one death ritual or funeral "service" I will always remember is the Tibetan Sky Ritual. Wow I just love that.. born out of necessity but still such a moving funeral. I love the idea of a natural "burial".. I myself do not want to be embalmed and I do not want to be put in a box, just a biodegradable shroud so my not-poisoned body can be given back to the Earth and all its little soil creatures. I feed off the Earth in life, I feed the Earth in death. Dark perhaps to some, but I think it's a beautiful idea! Also read her other book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. I have yet to read Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (btw the answer is yes once they run out of food.) Meeeow! 🐈🐈
For a book about art and a museum I recommend All the Beauty in the World: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. It is nonfiction about a journalist that left his job to become a guard at the Met. It was great!
I love these videos! So casual yet detailed with the books and I also love baking/cooking! My birthday is coming up and I'm going to make myself a lemon cheesecake :) I also love the sort of title screens you did with the paintings and book category text over it! I think any EM Forster book, Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan are perfect reads for the summertime!
I don’t like romances as a rule but I discovered a series of regency romances by M C Beaton which were written in the 1990s and I love them. They are the Poor Relation series and are funny and fast paced and the book equivalent of eating a beautiful fancy little dessert with a friend. Another really fun read is The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. It’s about an old man who escapes from a nursing home on his birthday makes new friends and commits crimes because he’s like a smart Forrest Gump who knows people.
Where I live we call them Lemon Bars and we live on them in the summer. They are at every picnic and potluck. I love this video, thanks for all the great summer reading suggestions. I have hesitated to read Crawdads from all the hype, but you might have changed my mind.
For a good book about an old man, I'd suggest A Man Called Ove. I haven't read it yet but it gets a lot of praise. There is a shorter book by the same author, about a grandsons relationship with his grandfather, called And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. Heard both books are tear-makers though, especially the shorter one. Author is Frederick Backman.
Hi Alice, while it does not star in this video I have to thank you for recommending The Feather Thief continuously! Just spend a lovely sunny afternoon on my balcony reading it in ONE sitting 😂
I loved this video, Alice, your videos are such a joy. I just read 'The Sea' by John Banville and if you haven't read it -- I think you'd like it a lot. Much of it is set during a coming-of-age Summer at the sea, and is told, as recollection of an older man who has recently los his wife. He returns to that place by the sea, to grieve. It is even a little mysterious. I think you'd love the writing, and as someone who also loathes the Summer, I thought this worked well. PLUS; it meets the criteria for for some of the later prompts in this video.
NOT summer related but I'm going to recommend The Indifferent Stars Above if you haven't read it yet. It was so engaging for a nonfiction book, I couldn't put it down!
I am currently baking a Carrot Cake while watching you! Next, I must bake Lemon Brownies they look like a must-have!! The Appel is my next book to read.
I loved this video Alice, the cake looked amazing also. Thank you for helping me to add a ton of books to my TBR, even though I'm in winter right now. There's one book that involves art that I love and that's The Girl Eith The Pearl Earring by Tracey Chevalier. ❤
