Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Book Covers Featuring Cool/Pretty/Unique/etc. Typography (Typography is the art of arranging letters so they look visually appealing and more interesting than, for example, the body text of this blog post you’re reading now.). I am going to broaden the theme a bit to pick books where there are more than one font on the cover or where I found them interesting in some way.
Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada - I like how they fit the title, author and translator all in the sky of the illustration by putting it on an angle (my review)
Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson - I like the mix of fonts, and the way they did the word train (my review)
The Wartime Book Club by Kate Thompson- Three different fonts probably shouldn't work but it does (my review)
Us Against You by Fredrik Backman- This is a different font choice
Good Spirits by B K Borison - I like the font choice here
Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce - I really like how the cover looks like a typewriter (my review)
Escape to the Northern Lights by Carrie Walker - chose this purely because of the curly bit on the end of the word Escape (my review)
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina - I like how they use all lower case on this cover (my review)
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki - This book isn't out yet, but I like how the title is vertical instead of horizontal
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie by Rachel Linden - Love the font and the colour on this one. (my review)
This week I had finished several books and two of them were 5 star reads. That has to count as a good reading week right? The first one was Us Against You by Fredrik Backman, which is the second book in the Beartown trilogy! I did pick up the third book in the trilogy from the library as well, and it is a very big book! I am looking forward to reading it!
I then finished The Girl from Lake Maggiore by Siobhan Daiko. I actually started this book a few weeks ago but I put it aside. When I was trying to decide what to read after finishing my last book, I figured I should probably finish that one!
I also started reading The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien for a blog tour later this week. So far I am enjoying it a lot
When my read on a theme book club chose the theme of Childhood Favourite, I decided pretty quickly that I was going to read Jean Plaidy as I read every one of her books I could get through my school library when I was 12 or 14. I have a whole stack of her books which I got from someone, and there were two copies of The Goldsmith's Wife so I took that as a sign that I should read that book. It was only on Wednesday night that I realised that I only had two day to get it read before the meeting! I loved it though and gave it 5 stars. That could be related to the nostalgia of reading one of her books after so many years.
There was only a small group of us at book club for the first meeting of the year and these were the books that we talked about. The next theme is a Book Someone Lent You!
Best of
In January I read 14 books and had quite a few that were 4.5 star reads. The two that were 5 star reads for me were Us Against You by Fredrik Backman and The Goldsmith's Wife by Jean Plaidy, which are pictured at the top of the post.
Books let our imaginations travel where our feet cannot - Nora Nguyen
Here are all the places I travelled in my reading this month
Europe
UK - The Sweet Life Café, The Goldsmith's Wife
Ireland - So Late in the Day
Croatia - The Croatian Island Library
Norway - The Arctic Cruise
France - The Boulangerie on the Corner
Sweden - Us Against You
Italy - The Girl from Lake Maggiore
US
New York - The Housemaid
Australia
NT/SA - Everyone on this Train is a Suspect
Asia
Japan - Dinner at the Night Library
Japan/Korea/US - Flashlight
Korea - Soyangri Book Kitchen
I'm watching
Nothing in particular really
Life
On Saturday night we went to a new show that is on at the casino in the city. It was called Piper's Playhouse and is an interesting mix of Paris cabaret, magic, drag, burlesque and circus type acts. The acts were very, very good, and the night was a lot of fun. After the show, the venue turns into a piano bar and the crowd really got into it! I think even the pianist was a bit surprised by some of the things that the crowd did last night!
In the photo above, the show that you see is actually all made of white chocolate and was filled with fresh berries!
Thank you to everyone who contributed a review in January for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. It's been a good start to the 2026 challenge. Currently there are nearly 50 links! I will be back in the next week or so with all the statistics for the month.
I am looking forward to reading your reviews throughout the rest of the year! I am sure there is going to be a lot of great historical fiction discovered and shared with fellow HF lovers over the course of this year!
If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late! The sign up post is here.
Just to recap what participants need to know. At the beginning of each month I will put up a post which will have a Mr Linky embedded into it for you to add your link.
Please remember...
add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky we’ll be adding to our monthly post (please, do not add your blog link, but the correct address that will guide us directly to your review).
it doesn't matter where you review - Bookstagram, Goodreads etc as long as you share a direct link to your review.
any kind of historical fiction is accepted (fantasy, young adult, graphic novels...)
if you have time, have a look some of the other links that are present. You never know when you will discover new blogs or books!
You can also join the challenge group on Facebook which you can find here and don't forget to use the #histficreadingchallenge hashtag on the socials.
When this book was announced as the Cook the Books selection for December/January, I wasn't sure that I would be able to join in as both the paper book and the e-books were pretty expensive. I tried a few different places and then realised that the book was available as an audiobook and I had credits available!
Bite By Bite is a collection of short food essays from essayist and poet Aimee Nexhukumatathil. It is a really interesting mix of nostalgia, the author's personal memories, culture and food history.
The audiobook is narrated by the author herself. Some times that can work and other times not so much, but I do think it worked here, mainly because it is her memories, her heritage, her favourite foods etc. It also worked as an audiobook for me because it isn't a straight line narrative, by which I mean because all the essays are short and about particular subjects so if you don't listen for a week it doesn't matter. You can just pick up the next story and go from there. Some of the essays are 3 or 4 minutes long and others are about 15 minutes long.
The author is of both Indian and Phillipino heritage which brings an interesting mix of ingredients, and a little bit of competition to the mix such as when her parents disagree about whether the best mangoes grow in India or The Phillipines. There are also a number a traditional Phillipino dishes that are included such as Lumpia and Kaong. There is also an influence from her travels, such as the essays about Shave Ice and associated social history in Hawaii and Gyro from Greece.
I did learn quite a lot from many of these essays, and it did get me thinking. For example, there are numerous chapters about different types of bananas. In our supermarkets, you might be lucky to find two varieties of bananas. Who decided that those are the only two varieties that we should have? I was particularly intrigued by a variety called Saba Banana that is less sweet but is used as part of a bananacue in the Philippines. Barbecued banana with a caramel sauce sounds amazing! There were also other fruits that also have some different banana asssociated names, such as Pawpaw which can be known as names like Poor Mans Bananas or Hoosier Bananas. Here in Australia, we tend to call them Papaya.
I was surprised to see the suggestion that you can make your own homemade vanilla extract by using vanilla beans and vodka. I have never even thought that such a thing could be possible! And this chapter was also interesting due to the history of the cultivation of vanilla.
Some of the essays are more a collection of sentences, for example in the chapter about onion, but others are personal stories which flow a lot better.
I am so glad that I was able to participate this time. I don't read a lot of non fiction, so I am not sure I would have come across this book if not for Cook the Books.
I decided pretty early on what I was going to make, although I did have a few other ideas, but in the end I decided to make something that is kind of inspired by the essay on pineapple.
I really had two reasons for making Hummingbird cakes. The first was because in the essay, it talks about the fact that hummingbirds are banned in Hawaii as they pollinate pineapples and change the internal structure of the pineapple making them less marketable. So yes, I have made hummingbird cake because hummingbirds are banned in Hawaii
The second reason is because my auntie had given me this recipe ages ago. Every now and again I come across the piece of paper and so today I am putting it on the blog so that I can find it again when I want to find it, not just when I happen to find it. Oh, and and a bonus reason....I have been thinking about finding something to make with cream cheese frosting for weeks!
I have made Hummingbird Cake before, but that time it was a large cake, and it also had the addition of coconut in it.
When I was making the cakes I just used normal oil as we only had extra virgin olive oil in the pantry, and I made 1.5x the frosting because that just didn't feel like enough with the measurements. It actually could have done with double the frosting. I started trying to pipe the icing but quickly ran short so ended up just using a knife to spread it on the top, which is why they look a bit messy! Although to be fair, my baking always looks messy. It does taste good though! I served these up as dessert when my sister and her family came for dinner and they got a big thumbs up.
The Cook the Books selection for February and March is Annabel Abbs' book Miss Eliza's English Kitchen, which is also published under the name The Language of Food. This will be a reread for me so it will be interesting to see if it works for me the second time round. Here is my original review.
Hummingbird Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
3/4 cup plain flour 3/4 cup self raising flour 2 tspns ground cinnamon 1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 440g can crushed pineapple in juice, well drained 2 eggs, lightly beaten 3/4 cup mashed banana 2/3 cup light olive oil Frosting 75g cream cheese, at room temperature 25g unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 1/2 cups icing sugar mixture
Line a 12-hole muffin pan (1/3 cup capacity) with paper cases
Sift flours, cinnamon and soda into a large bowl. Stir in sugar.
Combine pineapple, eggs, banana and oil in a large jug. Whisk well. Stir into flour mixture until just combined. Divide mixture evenly among paper cases.
Cook in a moderate oven (180C) for 20 minutes, or until cooked when tested. Stand in pan for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
To make frosting, beat cream cheese and butter in a small bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy. Add sugar. Beat until combined.
Spread frosting over top of cold cakes.
Weekly meals
Saturday - Steak, baked potato, salad Sunday - Crispy lemon and garlic roast chicken (new) Monday - Beef and broccoli noodles Tuesday - Chicken and onion wraps Wednesday - Honey pepper chicken and rice Thursday - Pork chops, mash, beans and mushroom sauce Friday - Takeout
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina (translated by Lucy Rand)
Last year I read and loved The Library of Heartbeats, so I was very keen to read more from this Italian author who has lived in Japan for many years. Like Library, this book has a fundamentally sad premise but the way that it is written is so beautiful that it is easy to close the book with a smile, even while you ponder the emotions that you have felt while you read.
Near the coast there is a place where there is a man who has a disconnected phone booth, some times known as a wind phone, installed in his garden. People come from miles around to pick up the phone and speak to the people that they have lost. Some times they speak softly and tell their stories. Some times they yell at the top of their voices.
Yui has suffered great loss when her daughter and mother were killed in the 2011 tsunami. Yui finds herself drawn to the garden time and time again, despite the fact that she can't bring herself to actually pick up the phone to speak to her loved ones. There she meets Takeshi who has lost his wife and now his young daughter refuses to speak at all. Can these people who have lost so much, find something to help them be able to live a more full life? Can they allow themselves to be happy.
I have a friend who is a Japanophile and I was talking to her about this authors books, and she started to cry because she said that the stories just sound so Japanese. Interestingly, it seems that this idea of a wind phone has spread around the world. I recently learned that we have some in Australia. There are also at least three Japanese movies/short films about wind phones.
I also wanted to mention how much I love both of the covers on this authors books. They are so simple but totally beautiful!
I don't think any more of this authors books have been translated into English, but if they are I will be reading them!
Rating 4/5
The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama (translated by Takami Nieda)
A while ago I read What You Are Looking For is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama. Whilst I mostly liked it, I did struggle with one particular aspect. So while I looked a this title and think that looks like fun, I was a little nervous. Unnecessarily so it turns out.
This book is set in a Tokyo neighbourhood where there has recently been a new apartment block built. Nearby, there is a small park where one of the installations is a rather worn plastic hippo whose name is Kabahiko. He has scratches on his body and paint where he shouldn't have. But that doesn't stop people from coming to visit the hippo. You see, there is a local legend that if you touch the hippo in the place where you feel pain, then you will be healed.
As the new residents move into the area, we get to understand where their pain is, from a struggling student to a new mother who is feeling lonely and a young man who fakes an injury to get out of sports at school and more. They each find their way to Kabahiko, and slowly they also find others in their community.
Like so many of these cosy, feel good Japanse books, this one of these stories which is episodic in nature. The characters are seemingly very separate but as the book comes together we see how the lives are interconnected.
I was relieved that there was no such issue in this book, and I am really excited that this year we get two new books from Michiko Aoyama, the first of which is called Hot Chocolate on Thursday and it is out in February!
Rating 4/5
Both of these books qualify for the Books in Translation challenge hosted by Jen at Introverted Reader. Healing Hippo also counts for the Japanese Literature Challenge hosted at Dolce Bellezza, and I am sharing this post as part of my personal January in Japan event!
Last year I was tempted into buying two new books all because I wanted a little penguin figurine. One of the two books I chose was Flashlight by Susan Choi which was nominated for the Booker Prize. Fast forward a couple of months and I decided to read the book as part of a buddy read, but my buddy ended up finishing a good couple of weeks before I did. And that's where it started to go a little wrong. This book was a bit of a struggle for me and I almost gave up completely. In the end, it was announced as the starting point for February's Six Degrees of Separation and that was what got me over the line to actually finish it
When 10 year old Louisa is found washed up on a beach in rural Japan, it is assumed that her college professor father, Serk, has drowned. Traumatised, Louisa and her mother return to America and try to start over and forget about their life in Japan.
Serk was a man who was born and grew up in Japan but he had Korean parents. Whilst his parents were tempted to return to what we now know as North Korea by promises of a good life, Serk heads to America, finding work in a small town college. He meets Anne and together they begin a life together. Soon, they have their daughter, Louisa, and together they try to build their lives. He is offered the opportunity to return to teach in Japan and the small family travel together for what is supposed to be just one year.
For Louisa, moving to Japan gives her the chance to go to school in a country where she is still obviously mixed race but she doesn't stand out quite so much. She quickly begins to learn the language and the culture. Anne finds living in a foreign country is very difficult, not least because her body is failing her.
As the years pass in America, the relationship between Louisa and Anne disintegrates. They don't know how to communicate with each other at all, and never really have done. Louisa constantly feels frustrated with Anne and does everything she can to get as far away, both physically and mentally, from her mother
It is only in the second part of the book that it becomes clear what actually happened on that night long ago.
The story itself should be fascinating, especially seeing as it based on true stories of people who just disappeared from the coastal areas of Japan and ended up in North Korean re-education programmes. As Serk undergoes the reeducation program which could end up killing him, he wonders what happened to the little girl that he did everything that he could to protect, and yet he still ended up losing her.
Notice I used the word should in that last paragraph. The thing is, I didn't find any of the characters particularly relatable. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Serk, Anna and Louisa were all quite unlikable. They are often really horrible to each other. I am sure that we were supposed to feel sorry for Anne as it became clear that her illness was not just in her head, and for Louisa after the trauma that she had experienced but I just couldn't.
It didn't help that there were big jumps in time without any explanation. The story was told through alternating chapters from each characters point of view, plus at least one other voice. All of a sudden the character's story would jump forward with little to no warning. For example, there was a whole section set in Europe where Louisa met a man we really only knew a bit of a drifter and that he smelt. Suddenly in another chapter, she has two kids and is married to someone else.
The second half of the book was better than the first so I am glad I persisted, but it is fair to say this won't make my list of favourites for the year. What I can say is that I learned something I didn't know about before. I did know about the treatment of Korean nationals in Japan particularly in before and during WWII after reading White Mulberry last year, but I hadn't ever heard about the abductions. And I do think that I will remember the book, so it will have left it's mark on me, whether I like it or not.
So was it worth it for the penguin? Absolutely. Would I do it again for another penguin? Probably!
I am sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here. It also counts for my personal January in Japan event.
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025 (New-to-you authors you discovered, new genres you learned you like, new bookish resources you found, friends you made, local bookshops you found, a book club you joined, etc.). I am going to use this as an opportunity to showcase some of the new to me authors I read last year.
All up I read 67 new to me authors which is hard to narrow down to just ten choices, so the first 9 of these authors are those that I read multiple books from. In other words, I enjoyed their first books enough to go and read more!
Finding that elusive 10th author to include on the list was a bit trickier. I thought I would pick one where I only read one book by them but I gave that book 5/5 rating. However, there are still four of those!
Claire Keegan - I know that I am late to the party with this one but I read two of Irish author Claire Keegan's books last year and I have already read another this year. I am going to run out of her books soon I think. Often her books are quite short but boy they pack a punch!
Claire van Ryn - Another Claire! This one is from Tasmania, and I really loved both books of hers that I read last year which I reviewed here and here. Birds play an important part in the stories and both covers are gorgeous! I will be excited about her next book for sure!
Emma Davies - Emma Davies is a British author. I enjoyed the two books I read from her and have now bought some of her earlier books. I reviewed her books here and here.
Emma Grey - I have mentioned Emma Grey several times now in my best of posts for last year. She is the only author that I have given 5/5 stars to both of the books I read from her last year. I reviewed them here and here. Can't wait for the next book which is out soon.
Hannah Bonam-Young - This is definitely a case of being last to the party. I read Out on a Limb and Next of Kin last year and I am looking forward to reading more this year!
Laura Imai Messina - Laura Imai Messina is Italian by birth, but she has lived in Japan for more than 20 years. I loved both of her books but so far I have only reviewed one of them. I have a friend who is a Japanophile and I was talking to her about this authors books, and she started to cry because she said that the stories just sound so Japanese. I don't think any more of this authors books have been translated into English, but if they are I will be reading them!
Mai Mochikuzi - At first I wasn't sure about the mix of human size, walking, talking cats, astrology and food but it is fun. I reviewed the first book here and the second book here.
Shari Low - I read three of Shari Low's books last year. They are mainly set in Scotland and feature a bunch of fun characters, and are often interconnected.
Yuta Takahashi - This is the author of one of several Japanese foodie series I am reading. This one features a restaurant where you can come to eat remembrance meals and get the chance to have one last conversation with the person you are remembering. I reviewed the two books here and here.
Jodi McAlister - In the end I chose this book because it is the only book by a new to me author that I rated 5/5 stars that I never got around to reviewing, for no other reason than I ran out of time. I also saw her at a couple of events last year as well! If you love smart, funny enemies to lover romances check it out! Highly recommend! One of the members of my book club read it and she absolutely loved it, and she is 80 years old!! I will definitely read more from Jodi McAlister
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