Let’s celebrate Spring in the most bookish way, with a series of fun prompts designed to pair your favorite reads with the essence of the season. I first did The Spring Essentials Book Tag last year, and I have no idea where it originated, but here’s Vol. 2.
April Showers: A cozy book for rainy days
The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst
Emphasis on the “cozy” and bonus because The Spellshop involves book lovers – told well with a detailed plot, plus characters you get to know and love. Kiela, a librarian in charge of spell books, escapes the city with her sentient plant Caz, and some of the books during the revolution. She goes back to where she lived as a child and has some unexpected adventures there. The characters were the highlight for me, as well as the World building as she experiments with magic.
Daylight Savings Time – Spring Forward: A Short book (or novella) you like
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher
There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story. Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? But nothing with fairies is ever simple.
Kingfisher puts a unique spin on this retelling of Sleeping Beauty in Thornhedge. The story is lush and detailed and the imagery is so vivid. I really don’t want to give anything away because it’s a wonderful experience to discover on your own the World created in this novella. Also – read the acknowledgments – it’s a bit lengthy but it gives some of the background behind the story.
Earth Day: Name a book where the environment or an element of nature (including animals) or a natural phenomenon, is important in the book or features in the title
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors – until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt is very cleverly written and engaging. A perfect animal-centered choice, and I haven’t read too many of those. I became completely invested in the story and the different arcs, and seeing how they would all come together, which the author pulled off flawlessly. There is an undertone of sadness and hopefulness (almost unwillingly so) but they were well balanced. Also I think the movie was just as good as the book.
Atrocious Allergies: Name a book you find that others like way more than you do
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Set in a future where the roles of women are reduced to those assigned to them in Old Testament – they are no longer allowed to read, work, own property, or handle money. Due to pollution and man-created viruses, the fertility rates are so low that the few fertile women (the Handmaids) are now a communal property and are moved from house to house to be inseminated by men of power under the watchful eye of their wives.
I need my books to have a story and not just be about the day to day … to start somewhere, and end up somewhere else, with things happening in between the beginning and the end. That’s what I think The Handmaid’s Tale lacks. A+ for writing style and premise, as well as world building , but its without a dramatic story (other than the fact that women are now subjugated to baby making machines). I was left counting the pages until the end. But I do think, in this case, the TV series is much better than the book.
Spring Fling: A book you read (or could be read) in a day or that takes place in one day.
We Have Always Lived in The Castle, Shirley Jackson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the story of the remaining members of the Blackwood family and the history behind how they came to be the only residents living in a sprawling estate. It’s a classic and once you start reading, it’s hard to put down. I was constantly wondering where the story was going. It’s bizzare, haunting, a little twisted, foreboding, and atmospheric.
Spring Cleaning: An audiobook that you could listen to for hours while cleaning.
Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King
In the predawn hours, in a distressed American city, hundreds of unemployed men and women line up for the opening of a job fair. They are tired and cold and desperate. Emerging from the fog, invisible until it is too late, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes. Months later, an ex-cop named Bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from “the perk,” claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.
Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, the first book in the Bill Hodges trilogy, marks a departure from his typical horror narrative, but – although it’s a thriller, it still has King’s signature affinity for the unexplained. I loved the cat-and-mouse game between retired detective Hodges and Mr. Mercedes and the found family aspect. I’ve always said this about Stephen King – he knows how to write characters so that we get to know them and become invested in their story.
Spring Break: A book with a character or setting you wish were real and you could go on vacation with.
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman in the 1960s. She battles wanting to live outside the normal expectations of women in the 1960s, and the author brought her story to life on the pages. Lessons in Chemistry had me laughing, close to tears, mad, and rooting for her always and constantly. The pacing is spot on and the book is detailed, rich and interesting.
Give Me Flowers: A book with flowers on the cover, or that’s light and easy to read
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, Sangu Mandanna
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention … with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a charming fantasy novel. Mika, the main character, was a delight to read about, even as she is always doubting herself. Her found family is also quirky and heartwarming. Witty repartee and clever plot twists abound with romance simmering beneath the surface.
Your turn! How would you respond to the prompts above? Feel free to share copy this Spring Reading Essentials tag (I couldn’t find where it originated) and let me know if you’ve read any of the books above.
