Happy (very belated) New Year! I had hoped to have this post up much earlier, but I got a bad cold starting on Christmas Eve and it just would not go away. I don’t think I started to feel normal again until about halfway through January. But late as it is, I could not pass up the opportunity to discuss my favorites of 2023 since I read some wonderful books and found something else fantasy-related that I absolutely love (which […]

Happy New Year! Last year was another not-so-great year in a lot of ways, and the last couple of weeks included a storm that knocked out our power for two days and was overall an unpleasant experience. But I also got to visit a cat cafe and spend time with some adorable kitties as an early Christmas gift, and as usual, I read some wonderful books. One of the biggest highlights of 2022 was the eleventh annual Women in SF&F […]

It was a rough year between the ongoing pandemic and then being evicted, buying a home, and needing to do lots of work on said home, and I didn’t write nearly as many book reviews as I would have liked. (And a few of those I did write were catching up on books I’d read in 2020 and struggled to review because of, well, 2020.) But it was a great year in other ways. Women in SF&F Month 2021 was […]

Truth be told, 2020 was not the easiest year for concentrating on reading (or writing for that matter, which is why it took me so much longer than usual to get this post together). But it was a year filled with AMAZING books, and I am so grateful to every author on this list for their work, as well as many others whose stories helped me get through this year. Cover images link to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I […]

Happy New Year! In addition to being the start of a new year, today is the day this blog is officially a teenager: Fantasy Cafe turns 13 years old today! I can hardly believe I’ve been blogging that long. Now that I’ve read everything I will ever read in 2019, it’s time for the favorite books of 2019 list. My main goal for the year was to embrace what I love and ruthlessly cull books that aren’t drawing me in. […]

Last year wasn’t as strong a year for books as 2017 in terms of quantity or quality of those read, but there are still plenty of books worth highlighting! (And, although there may not be as many books finished, there were many more sampled and set aside.) About half the books I read last year are ones I enjoyed and would recommend without reservation, but there are eight of those that stand out to me as being especially notable. Without […]