Long and Short Reviews

Top Ten Tuesday: Picture Books About the New Year

December 2, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 32 Comments

Can you believe that we are less than a month away from 2026? Here are ten books about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day from a variety of cultures, not all of which actually begin their new year on January 1.

1. Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-lan! by Lauryn Silverhardt

2. Every Month Is a New Year: Celebrations around the World by Marilyn Singer

3. Shanté Keys and the New Year’s Peas by Gail Piernas-Davenport

4. The Bravest Flute: A Story of Courage in the Mayan Tradition by Ann Grifalconi

5. Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution by Pat Miller

6. What a Way to Start a New Year!: A Rosh Hashanah Story by Jacqueline Jules

7. Mademoiselle Grands Doigts: A Cajun New Year’s Eve Tale by Johnette Downing

8. Clifford’s Happy New Year by Norman Bridwell

9. Angelina Ice Skates by Katharine Holabird

10. The Night Before New Year’s by Natasha Wing

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: New Year's Day, New Year’s Eve, Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Quotes About Pie

November 25, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 36 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Pie is the most delicious course of Thanksgiving dinner if you ask me! Here are ten quotes about pie.

1. “America has developed a pie tradition unequivocally and unapologetically at the sweet end of the scale, and at no time is this better demonstrated than at Thanksgiving.”
― Janet Clarkson, Pie: A Global History

2. “Pie is good any time of the day.”
― Kristin Hannah, Magic Hour

3. “There is no problem that can’t be solved with the help of a good carrot pie, my friend.”
― Anna Horbatenko, Bedtime Stories: Little Bunny and The Big Race

4. “Whoever put steak and kidneys together in a pie made a serious error in judgment. — Nick Snowbeard”
― Cinda Williams Chima, The Warrior Heir

5. “After going upstairs to visit her father, who had looked vastly pleased with himself and stoutly insisted the mincemeat pie would cause him no troubles whatsoever, Garrett went down to the front receiving room. She sat at the escritoire desk and sorted through correspondence, and picked at the slice of mincemeat pie Eliza had brought her. She could only manage a bite or two. She’d never been fond of sweet-and-savory dishes, and she’d certainly never shared her father’s fondness for this one. In her opinion, mincemeat pie was a jumble of ingredients that had never been meant to unite in one crust. It was a heavy, overpowering dish, entirely resistant to digestive enzymes.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Hello Stranger

6. “Mother took the pie out of the oven and it hissed fragrant apple, maple, cinnamon steam through the knife cuts in the top crust. She was making her world beautiful. She was making her world delicious. It could be done, and if anyone could do it, she could.”
― J.J. Brown, Death and the Dream

7. “Never ask a baker what went into a pie. Just eat.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

8. “I went to sit in the bus station and think this over. I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’s
practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of
course.”
― Jack Kerouac

9. “There were little triangles of coconut custard pie on a graham cracker crust for dessert, the best and sweetest thing…”
― Joe Hill

10. “Pie makes everybody happy.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory

What is your favorite dessert?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Quotes, Thanksgiving, Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf

November 4, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 41 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

These are all books from my TBR list I’m curious to read.

1.Ma te (Bride, #2) by Ali Hazelwood

2. Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake

3. The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga, #1) by Kiri Callaghan

4. Overdue by Stephanie Perkins

5. Dracula by Bram Stoker

6. Twice by Mitch Albom

7. Wanting Daisy Dead by Sue Watson

8. The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong

9. The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

10. Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: TBR Lists, Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Halloween Quotes

October 28, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 46 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Halloween is nearly here, so today I’ll share some fun quotes about this holiday.

1. “People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn’t want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you’d be married and you’d own a farm with about a million chickens on it.” They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.”
― Heather O’Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals

2. “For some of us, Halloween is everyday.”
― Tim Burton , Tim Burton

3. “The farther we’ve gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we’ve come to need Halloween.”― Paula Curan

4. “It was so close to October that Halloween was knocking at his heart.”
― Barry Eysman, Candles For November

5. “Dear Great Pumpkin, Halloween is now only a few days away. Children all over the world await you coming. When you rise out of the pumpkin patch that night, please remember I am your most loyal follower. Have a nice trip. Don’t forget to take out flight insurance.”
― Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, 1961-1962

6. “Most people will tell you growing up means you stop believing in Halloween things – I’m telling you the reverse. You start to grow up when you understand that the stuff that scares you is part of the air you breathe.”
― Peter Straub

7. “People think that ghosts only come out at night, or on Halloween, when the world is dark and the walls are thin. But the truth is, ghosts are everywhere. In the bread aisle at your grocery store, in the middle of you grandmother’s garden, in the front seat on your bus. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
― Victoria Schwab, City of Ghosts

8. “Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Christmas and the others can end up making you sad, because you know you should be happy. But on Halloween you get to become anything that you want to be”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

9. “I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I’d told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that’d be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Cerulean Sins

10. “The Harvest Moon glows round and bold,
In pumpkin shades outlined in gold,
Illuminating eerie forms,
Unnatural as a candied corn.
Beware what dare crawls up your sleeve,
For ’tis the night called Hallows Eve.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates it!

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Halloween, Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Things I Love About Autumn

October 14, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 40 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Hello from Astilbe, one of Long and Short Review’s bloggers.

For today’s freebie post, I’d like to share ten reasons why autumn is my favorite season of the year.

1. The beginning of my relief from seasonal allergies.

2. Halloween.

3. The food: pumpkin spice lattes, candy corn, pumpkin or sweet potato pie, fresh apples, and more!

4. Shorter days help me to appreciate the sun more.

5. Paranormal films which are the most entertaining subgenre of horror if you ask me.

6. The leaves change colour and make my corner of the world a beautiful place for a few weeks.

7. New holiday-themed books are everywhere. I prefer the Halloween stories, of course, but there are plenty of great options for many other holidays as well.

8. It’s generally cool enough to wear cozy sweaters.

9. There are so many different holidays to celebrate in the coming months. I love seeing the joy these days give to people.

10. Many insects have died off or gone into hibernation now which makes spending time outside more pleasant.

What’s your favorite season?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Fall 2025 To-Read List

September 23, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 48 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

This autumn sounds like it’s going to be an excellent season for books.

Here are ten titles I’m looking forward to, a few of which I learned about from the Top Ten Tuesday topic earlier this year about books we’re anticipating that are being released in the second half of the year.

I will be thanking those bloggers individually later on in this post as they really helped me find some great titles for today’s post.

1. The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez

Why I Want to Read It: The golem myth is something I’d like to learn more about.

2. Hot Wax by M.L. Rio

Why I Want to Read It: The protagonist’s backstory sounds quite mysterious.

3. Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Thank you to AJ Sterkel for blogging about this.

Publication Date: September 25

Why I Want to Read It: As soon as I read the phrase generational curse in the blurb, I knew this was going to catch my attention. What an interesting topic.

4. The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes by Chanel Cleeton

Publication Date: September 30

Why I Want to Read It: Imagine being paid to procure the last copy of a book known to exist! What an unusual thing to do.

5. What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher

Publication Date: September 30

Why I Want to Read It: Kingfisher is on my must-read list, and this is one of two books from them on today’s list.

6. The Unveiling: A Novel by Quan Barry

Thank you to Top 100 Books Reviews for blogging about this.

Publication Date: October 14

Why I Want to Read It: Literary horror isn’t a mashup of genres I see too often.

7. The land of sweet forever by Harper Lee

Thank you to Anne @ Headfull Of Books for blogging about this.

Publication Date: October 21

Why I Want to Read It: A new Harper Lee book sounds great to me.

8. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Publication Date: November 4

Why I Want to Read It: More Hunger Games universe stuff? Sign me up!

9. Deadly Ever After by Brittany Johnson

Publication Date: November 4

Why I Want to Read It: I’m excited to see how Ms. Johnson makes the concept of true love’s kiss fresh and new again.

10. Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher

Publication Date: November 11

Why I Want to Read It: As stated earlier, Kingfisher is one of those authors I always find time to check out.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: TBR Lists, Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Occupations in the Title

September 2, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 22 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you, Lisa of Hopewell, for submitting this theme! Here are my answers to it. Some of these professions aren’t really a thing anymore, but I think they still count.

1. The Queen’s Dollmaker by Christine Trent

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

3. The Taster by V.S. Alexander

4. Midwife of the Blue Ridge by Christine Blevins

5. The Archivist by Martha Cooley

6. The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas

7. The Wet Nurse’s Tale by Erica Eisdorfer

8. Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East by Amanda H. Podany

9. The Exorcist (The Exorcist, #1) by William Peter Blatty

10. The Bookbinder by Pip Williams

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with a High Page Count

August 19, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 58 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I have not read any of these books yet, so let me know if you’ve read them and think they were good reads.

1. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

2. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) by George R.R. Martin

3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

4. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

5. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

6. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

7. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

8. I, Claudius (Claudius, #1) by Robert Graves

9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

10. The Court of the Lion: A Novel of the T’Ang Dynasty by Eleanor Cooney

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Middle Grade Novels I’ve Recently Reviewed

August 5, 2025 By Long and Short Reviews 40 Comments

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I love it when authors submit middle grade stories to Long and Short Reviews. This genre can be such a playful one, and it’s just as interesting to see what sorts of mischief characters in that age range get up to as it is read about more serious topics.

Here are ten books for readers between the ages of eight and twelve that I’ve reviewed for this site recently. Click on their titles to read my reviews.

1. Rudy & Me by Brittany Gilbert

2. Memoirs of Lady Greta by Heather Piper

3. The First Avocado by Greg Schindler

4. I Know What UFO Did Last Summer by Kevin Garon

5. Free by EB Roshan

6. Sour Apples: A Novel For Those Who Hate to Read by Paul Jantzen

7. Devin Drake and the Roller Ghoster by R. M. Clark

8. An Empty House Doesn’t Sneeze by David Scott Richardson

9. The Island by Brian Conte

10. Secret of the Whispering Woods by Jordan Gray

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Musings Tagged With: Top Ten Tuesday