Katherine Miller's Blog

Eventually, there will be a flood of them. Books written about (and some, no doubt, during) our collective and oh-so-individual experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, two years after the early days of quarantine and lockdown and forming “pods” with those we love (or perhaps don’t), the books are just starting to trickle in.

I decided to read a few of them to get an early take on what the “pandemic literature” might look like this time around. I’ve always had a soft spot for such books...

I typically read in the adult category more than kid lit, but this year I read 14 young adult and 12 middle grade books, so I thought they deserved their own post. In 2021, the books I read in these categories were primarily fiction, and the eight “5-star rating” books reviewed below (2 middle grade and 6 YA) reflect this. So without further ado …

The List of Things that Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead tells the story of Bea, a girl in New York whose life is complicated. She has eczema, ...

As I detailed in my 2021 Reading – By the Numbers post, my nonfiction reads last year were pretty evenly divided between memoir and what, for a better term, I’m calling general nonfiction. My first encounter with almost all of these books was auditory, and a surprising number of them were ones I just came upon while scrolling for audiobooks that were “available now” on my Libby app. Here are the eleven that garnered five stars from me on Goodreads!

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe i...

I read forty-six adult fiction books this year. Twelve were historical novels, ten were thrillers, and 24 I’ve categorized as “general” fiction (including contemporary novels as well as short story collections). Ten of these 46 were “five star” reads for me. Though I know others are more picky about giving five stars, I tend to err on the side of generosity. All these books, though by no means perfect, were excellent read that I’d recommend to others.

So, without further ado, here they are!

I read 115 books this year. 37,600 words, if one is to believe word counts from Goodreads. That’s a lot of books. A lot of words. Those words were sometimes brilliant, sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, sometimes inspiring, sometimes just meh. I decided to break up my “favorite” lists into three blogposts (fiction, nonfiction/memoir, YA/MG) that will come shortly after the first of the year. As we close out 2021, though, I thought it would be fun to look at all these words not with words, b...

A lot of people had a difficult time reading in 2020. With the world in such a mess, it can be hard to concentrate. I wasn’t one of those people. I got through a LOT of books of 2020. I bought them from independent bookstores. I read them in sweats on my couch. I listened to them on long walks around my neighborhood and at a nearby lake.

One hundred and fourteen of them, to be exact. They were a respite from pandemic, a window into real and imagined places, and a way to educate myself about ...

I’ve heard there are some writers who just start.

These writers, if I’m to believe the stories, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. They stare at the trees beyond their window or the organized desk at which they sit or even the dishes piled in the sink. But instead of seeing these things, they are transported to the corners of their minds where the beginnings of stories reside.

And then, they start.

“I just go where the writing takes me,” these writers say.

“The story has a life...

On January 1, 2018, my friend Chad and I decided to start a Facebook reading group. It wasn’t supposed to be a “book club” in which we all read the same book and discussed it (or, more to the point of most book clubs, where some of us read the same book and we all got together over wine and sort of discussed it). No, this was just a “share what you’re reading and what you think about it” kind of group. Or an “I need a book to listen to right now—what should I get?” kind of group. All kinds of re...

On the evening of January 31, 2019, I sat in a third floor classroom of Loft Literary in Minneapolis and stared at the blank pages of the teal-covered Moleskin I had just purchased. It was night one of the year-long “Novel Writing Project” class. There were a dozen of us there, and each of us had parted with a lot of money to spend Thursday nights together with our mentor, Peter Geye. We were all going to write a full novel that year, by gosh and by golly. And this was the start.

Write the du...

March 4, 2006

The phone rang at our Texas home on Saturday afternoon. It was the nursing home Dad had lived in for the past few months. He had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

I had received calls like this several times in the past two years, for both Mom and Dad. They weren’t commonplace, but also not cause for panic. Was I concerned? Of course, and I quickly gathered my things to go to the hospital. Was I also a bit resentful? Probably. It had been a crazy week at work. A weeke...