Bookish Pixie Reads

I read a ton.

I have very strong opinions and oftentimes they are unpopular.

Mostly fiction, mostly mysteries. I have a love/hate relationship with cozy mysteries. A lot of other genres sprinkled in - even picture books all the way to YA. I struggle the most with romance and non-fiction. I’ve been consuming my non-fiction through audio books lately and that has been a great help.

My favorite book is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.

My current favorite genre, if you can even call it that, is LGBTQ+ Historical Fiction.

Not sure if I’ve been successful, but I’ve been trying to diversify my reading.

I plan on using Tumblr for more of my “real time” reactions to what I’m currently reading.

Here’s where you can find me elsewhere on the web.

Instagram: https://instagram.com/bookishpixiereads?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@bookishpixiereads

“The Crossover” by Kwame Alexander

Thanks to for the recommendation. I was nervous about this Newbery Medal winner because it’s written in verse and I’m very new to that medium. But there was no need for my nervousness. “The Crossover” is great.

I find the cover, as gorgeous as it is, to be a little deceptive. I thought that the boy on the cover looked older so I expected the main character to be like 17, when he was only 12.

The summary makes this sound like this is about both brothers, but it’s mainly about Josh and told in his first person POV.

As I said, it’s written in verse, but physically the typesetting is very cool to look at.

I dribbled

dribbled

dribbled the ball down the court.

(That’s just an example I made up), but it would look sort of like that, and I felt like I could feel the verses more.

This was great coming-of-age story, that felt very real and true to these characters.

As a grown adult reading a middle-grade novel, I did see the end coming.

I also wish that there was an exploration or conversation about how these boys were practically given no option but to love basketball. It felt a bit like their dad was pushing this on them when they were little. But then again, they DO really love the sport.

Overall, this is a slam dunk. I bet it would be amazing. I also plan on continuing with the series.

“Cherry Baby” by Rainbow Rowell

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.75/5 Stars

Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the eARC of this book. It came out a couple of weeks ago! All opinions are my own.

This was my first foray into Rowell’s work written for adults and not teens. I’m not sure it was objectively good (the writing style was sometimes all over the place), but it held my attention in a way a book hasn’t in a while.

I suppose that this is technically a romance novel. It fits all of the criteria, but it felt more like contemporary fiction… with quite a few spicy scenes.

Cherry, short for Cherish, is overweight and going through an estrangement/divorce. I can’t speak on whether these topics were covered in a true to life fashion or not, but they felt true to me. There is also a subplot of overbearing, nosy sisters.

I liked all of our main characters (Cherry, her ex-husband Tom, and her new boyfriend Russ) enough as individuals, but I felt that Cherry shouldn’t be with any of these people. Tom can’t communicate and Russ is too hung up on his idea of Cherry from college. The story gets told through flashbacks as well as the present day. Cherry TELLS the reader that their marriage was falling apart even before the thing that really broke it happens and even blames herself for some of it. But I didn’t feel that we got SHOWN enough of that. I never really saw what she was trying to tell us.

I felt like that happened a lot. She can’t tell us about this inside joke, you just had to be there. This was written in the third person. You certainly can explain the inside joke to me. We are told that Cherry has a lot of LGBTQ+ friends, but we never meet them or hear about them ever again. We only meet one of Cherry’s friends (who isn’t a love interest or a coworker) throughout the whole book.

You might be asking, “well then Carly, what did you like about the book then?” Honestly, I’m not sure. I just did. Maybe it got me on an emotional level.

It’s an ORANGE-cover flat lay for April!

“The Cricket in Times Square” by George Selden

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ .5/5 Stars

I was charmed by this 1960s children’s classic. I was having nostalgic Little Golden Book flashbacks because of the Garth Williams illustrations.

You could easily this read Newbery Honor book on a very surface level. I mean it is a story written for a 8-12-year-old audience. Sweet and country born and raised (and secretly talented) Chester Cricket accidentally gets himself stuck in the New York City subway. Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat take him under their metaphorical wings and show him the ropes. And Mario, a little boy who works in a subway newsstand with his family, adopts Chester as a pet.

But you could also read this on a deeper level as an immigrant story. Mario is the son of Italian immigrants whose mother clearly misses her old home. Mario brings Chester to Chinatown where he meets some Chinese immigrants. Mario even shares a meal with them. Even Chester is an inadvertent immigrant.

Even Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat are best friends. Something you wouldn’t expect something from a cat and mouse. But I think it can be used to shown how New York was an amalgamation of all sorts of people (or animals).

The edition that I read made some changes to the chapters with the Chinese characters. Stacey Lee wrote the foreword and the changes to those chapters. Asian herself, she said that she didn’t notice the racism with the Chinese characters when she was a child. She was just excited for the representation. I can’t speak for those original chapters, but I did notice that the writing style was different than the rest of the book.

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

Thanks to @leandra_thetbrzero from YouTube for bringing this book to my attention. She mentioned it in her YouTube video about books that are turning 100 this year. I’ve known who Langston Hughes was for a long time, and I’m sure read a couple of his poems in high school or college. And I’ve always had a sort of romantic view of the Harlem Renaissance without knowing a ton about it. So Leandra’s video got my butt into gear and I read this lovely book of poetry.

I so enjoyed this especially with the introduction. He was only 25 when this book was published and had already lived a wide and varied life that I didn’t really know anything about.

These poems beautifully cover his life as an African-American man, his life as a biracial man, and his life on the seas. It beautifully conveys Harlem, its renaissance, and jazz.

Although academics are a little hazy on Hughes sexuality, there are two poems [Port Town” and “Poem (To F.S.)] in this book that definitely can be read as queer.

The following were my favorite poems from this collection:

March Moon

Cross

The South

As I Grew Older

Death of an Old Seaman

Troubled Woman

S***ide’s Note (This is actually written out in the book, I was just afraid I am going to get shadow banned.)

Sick Room

The Dream Keeper

Poem (To F.S.)

Lament for Dark Peoples

The White Ones

“The Little Prince” written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Expuéry

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

I’ve never read this almost 83-year-old classic until last month. My friend, Brigette, her son, and her mom were dressing as characters from the book for Mardi Gras so I figured my time had come to finally read it.

I started it and after a couple of pages I texted her, “Am I going to bawl at the end? I think I’m going to bawl at the end.” She replied, “It’s French.” I finished it the next day and texted her, “…that was very rude of you.” She responded back with, “I told you it was FRENCH. They only believe in the art of suffering.”

So as kind of tragic as this story is, it’s also quite charming and really funny. I’m not sure if the book was intended for children, adults, or both; but it can easily be construed as a chapter book for early readers. It’s full of illustrations and there is nothing inappropriate about it. But it reads more like a fable for adults.

My favorite part may have been the Prince’s interactions with the adults on other planets. Such sass and attitude from everyone involved.

I also loved what the pilot had to say about what happened at the end of the book, which I don’t want to talk about in case you also haven’t read it.

I am glad that I finally visited this book. If you’re looking for something quick, but also hits all the emotions, this one is for you.

“Strega Nona” written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

“Strega Nona,” a Caldecott Honor book from 1976, is a sweet and funny picture book. I was aware of it for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever read it.

It’s hard for me to review a picture book because there is so little content to actually review. I think it’s just about how much I enjoyed it. Which I did. And the illustrations are charming.

But here are some interesting things. “Strega Nona” is or was a commonly banned book. That shocked me when I found out, because it’s a pretty innocent book. But it has been banned because it portrayed magic and witches in a good light.

“A Wizard of Earthsea” by Ursula K. Le Guin

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

I read this for a book club that I’m in at my favorite bookstore where we read or revisit children’s classics.

We have the list for the year and this is the one that intimidated me the most because it’s high fantasy, and that is not my genre of choice.

This book is really good and really well written, but it’s just not my cup of tea. I fought for my life to get through the first chapter. Once I switched to immersion reading, the audio book really helped me get into it.

Published in 1968 and the first book in the Earthsea series, it was pretty advanced for its time. It’s a coming-of-age story about Ged aka Sparrowhawk, a young wizard going to magic school in the time when most wizard stories were about wizened, bearded old wizards. The good guys were brown-skinned and the bad guys were pale-skinned. The author talked about sneaking it in.

And there is no war. Ged ages from around 12 to 19 in the span of the book. And there are bad guys and good guys, but no battles and wars. It’s mainly his growth as a person and dealing with the bad things that his recklessness and pride set forth in the world.

I did read the first chapter of the second book in the series and it was written in a very different way. One of the employees at the bookstore said that we should definitely read the second book - that it’s better than the first one.

“How to Read a Book” by Monica Wood

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

This book was such a surprise to me. I read it because a book group (The Leisure Book Club) on Fable was reading it and I thought this was going to be a cozy read. And it’s not that it wasn’t “cozy,” it’s just that it went deeper than expected.

This contemporary fiction novel says so much about grace, empathy, and forgiveness. And growing old and being young and found family. And that you never really know what’s going on with other people in their internal lives.

Is “sentimental fiction” a thing? Like its own sub-genre? Because that’s what I kept thinking that this was. And I was so afraid that it was going to be sappy, but the author did a phenomenal job of making it the right amount of sentimental without crossing that line into sappiness.

There were parts that I thought were unrealistic, but then I realized that no, these things probably happens more than I realize and people just don’t talk about it.

I found all the characters that I was supposed to like, likeable and the characters that I was supposed to dislike, unlikeable.

Y’all the African grey parrots were darling.

“The Viper” by Brad Meltzer

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the eARC of this book. It came out a couple of weeks ago! All opinions are my own.

Book 2 of 2026 (also read most of it in 2025)

“The Viper” is the third in the Zig & Nola series and I haven’t read the other two. I didn’t feel lost without having read the first two. The story was complete in and of itself.

I read a lot of mysteries, but not a lot of thrillers and I’ve been wanting to read more so this was a great start to the new year.

I thought this was a good, easy read. I was entertained and I wanted to keep reading. There are a lot of characters, but I didn’t have any trouble keeping them straight.

I did expect for the characters Zig and Nola to be more of a duo. And maybe they were in the earlier books, but they weren’t in this one. They were each working on the same case, but from different angles and they were rarely working together.

I will admit that, as much as I enjoyed this, maybe it’s a bit forgettable. I finished this only two weeks ago and I had to remind myself what this was about. I remember the characters the most and their emotional connections with each other, but the plot, less so.

But I’m giving it 4 Stars because I enjoyed the ride and I had zero complaints. Bonus points because I didn’t figure it out and the solution didn’t feel like a reach either.

The year was 2016… in books!

This is just a selection of what I read 2016.

“Miss Buncle’s Book” by D.E. Stevenson - 5 ⭐️ - I adored this and I’m due for a reread

“Gone Crazy in Alabama” by Rita Williams-Garcia - 4 ⭐️ - I love this series. Solid middle-grade gold

“Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” by Mindy Kaling - 4 ⭐️ - I don’t particularly remember this outside of the fact that I liked it.

“The Black Country” by Alex Grecian - 5 ⭐️ - I’ve been wanting to read the third in this series for ages. Maybe this is the year to finally do it.

“The Secret Life of Ms Finkleman” by Ben H. Winters - 4 ⭐️ - I couldn’t have told you I read this, but according to my review, I really liked it and thought it was really funny. Maybe I should revisit it?

“Queen of Hearts” by Rhys Bowen - 3.75 ⭐️ - This is a series that I kept up with for a long time. This is #8 in the series. I haven’t read one in awhile though. Maybe I’ll catch up this year. Or maybe I won’t.

“The Spellman Files” by Lisa Lutz - 5 ⭐️ - This was a reread and is a consistent favorite in my life. I’ve been due for a reread (and maybe finish the series). I love these books so much that I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed by the last book, so I just never read it. 🫤

“Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence Of Our Deadliest Infection” by John Green

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

Book 1 of 2026, (but it feels like cheating, because I read most of this in 2025)!

Did you know that tuberculosis is partially the reason New Mexico is a state?

“Where are the drugs? The drugs are where the disease is not, and where is the disease? The disease is where the drugs are not.”

“Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.”

“And so we have entered a strange era of human history: A preventable, curable infectious disease remains our deadliest. That’s the world we are currently choosing.”

I adored every second of this book. Not only did I learn so much, but also, Green tells the “story” in such a compelling way. It’s not only a history of the disease and its cure, but it’s also telling the story of Green’s personal connection with Henry, a young man from Sierra Leone infected with TB and his story.

I was particularly interested with how race played a part in this history. Before TB was found to be a spreadable germ, there was a time in Europe when white people thought that the sensitive and artistic personality type made a person more likely to contract the deadly disease. So they thought that people of color couldn’t get TB because of, you know, racism. And then after it was found to be a germ, the racism flipped. But can you imagine, thinking that you are so much better than another race because you can catch a disease. WILD.

It cuts me to the quick to see how tuberculosis could be stopped around the world and that systemically we just choose not to.

“The Storm” by Rachel Hawkins

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the eARC of this book. It comes out today! All opinions are my own.

I risked it all on “The Storm”! Not really, but seriously, I read “The Villa” by two years ago and very much didn’t like it, but the synopsis of this one made me want to try it. I live on the Gulf Coast and as a child, oftentimes, we vacationed in places like St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama. Y’all, I felt the souvenir shop mentioned in the first chapter in my bones.

This mystery/thriller was enjoyable even though I figured out one of the major twists about 10% of the way through. I flew through this pretty fast for what I consider my normal.

As someone who has been through my share of hurricanes, most of the hurricane stuff felt true-to-life and the tension really ratcheted it up as the storm was approaching in a way that felt really familiar.

“A Bear Called Paddington” by Michael Bond

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5 Stars

Today is Paddington‘s birthday! Not the day of his debut, but in one of the books, the Browns decide that Paddington‘s birthday is today, June 25th.

I read “A Bear Called Paddington” last year, took the photo, and just never wrote the review for it, so I thought what would be a better time than now than to write the review than today on the Bear’s birthday.

Growing up I did not have exposure to Paddington. I didn’t read the books and I didn’t watch the TV show. I knew that Paddington existed and that was it. And 15 years ago, I went to London and got my friend a Paddington souvenir because of an inside joke. And then I watched the 2014 movie and became obsessed. That movie has my heart.

I read the book last year and I liked it. It wasn’t the most amazing thing of all time, but I enjoyed it.

Paddington is a very polite, orange marmalade-loving, anthropomorphized bear from darkest Peru, who stowaways to London and the Brown family adopt him after finding him alone in the Paddington train station. The Brown family consists of Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, their two children - Jonathan and Judy, and their housekeeper Mrs. Bird.

The book follows Paddington and his adopted family through their adventures and slapstick shenanigans ensue.

This is chapter book where each chapter is kind of its own story that can almost be read by itself - minus the first chapter.

“Colored Television” by Danzy Senna

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.75/5 Stars

I enjoyed this one, but I finished it really thinking that the author wanted me to get more out of it than I did. I felt like I was supposed come away from this having learned a lesson rather just enjoying a story. But maybe I put too high of an expectation on it. 

Jane is a mixed-race (black and white) married woman with two kids and is college professor with a successful novel under her belt. 

“Colored Television” begins with Jane struggling to pump out her long-awaited second book. If she doesn’t finish it soon, she will be demoted at the college she works for. While writing, the draft become this magnum opus to the mulatto experience in the United States. Her black husband, Lenny, is a struggling visual artist/painter.  They are poor. They are essentially couch surfing. They luck out and get to house sit for a rich friend for several months. 

Since Jane & Lenny are artists, they discuss how “black” does their art have to be to make it marketable. And that it sucks that is even necessary. A black man can’t just paint a tree the way a white man can. It has to be related to the black experience. But also it can’t be too black. It has to be palatable to a white audience.

I don’t want to say too much without spoiling what makes the book interesting. But a huge point of contention is about selling out and basically writing Marvel movies and not making high art.  It’s easy money. Jane teams up with a famous producer and they try to create something of merit about mixed peoples’ experiences. Insanity ensues. What specifically happens to Jane here, I think speaks more to how the entertainment industry works no matter what race you are. 

There is an interesting point about being intentionally poor. Both adults went to good schools. They could get good-paying jobs, but are choosing not too. And how that affect your kids. Is that fair?