Sunday, October 18, 2026

DEWEY'S 24-HR READATHON: The End 2026

 

Well, per the usual, too many distractions kept me from getting too much reading done, but I did get more reading than usual in. I got about 3.75 hours of reading in.


Reset by Kevin Charles

Advanced 47 pages






Untamed Coast by Kevin C. Morris

Read about 6% in the e-book






Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer

I listened to two chapters, or about 40 minutes.





And I made pitiful progress on my bingo!

Oh well! At least I got some reading in! Until next time!

Saturday, October 17, 2026

DEWEY'S 24-HR READATHON: The Beginning October 2026



It's that time of year; time for Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon! And around in my neck of the woods in southwest Florida, it couldn't be a better day for it! We're expecting heavy thunderstorms and gusting winds. So, I've had my McD's egg McMuffin and an apple pie, and I'm nestled in for a day of reading. Won't you join me?

Dewey's Read-a-Thon

On my reading list today is:


Reset by Kevin Charles

In a world where turning fifty means becoming twenty-five again, one man's second chance is his family's ultimate betrayal.

Tom and Elena Miller built a beautiful life over nearly three decades of marriage. But as Tom approaches his fiftieth birthday, the crushing weight of his middle-aged responsibilities and a desperate desire for freedom drive a wedge between him and the people he loves most. He doesn't just want a break; he wants a second chance at his twenties.

In a society defined by "The Reset"—a global anomaly where anyone turning fifty wakes up in their original, twenty-five-year-old body—Tom’s desire becomes a devastating reality. He chooses to undergo his Reset and leaves his forty-eight-year-old wife behind to live in a downtown bachelor pad, assuming he can just return to her when she finally Resets eighteen months later.

But his selfish "intermission" shatters his family. While Elena struggles to rebuild her life and identity without him, his oldest son, Jack, is driven into the arms of a radicalized movement determined to end the "Immortal Class" by any means necessary.

As Tom navigates the lonely, surreal reality of his new youth, he is about to discover that reversing the clock on his body might mean permanently running out of time to save his family.



Untamed Coast by Kevin C. Morris

A late-night mayday call drives a grieving man to embark on an unexpected journey along the wild Alaskan coast, unraveling a decades-old mystery of stolen gold, missing women, and murder in this atmospheric and propulsive debut novel.

After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can't explain or ignore.

His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.

Told across three evocative timelines—a radio operator in 1938 collecting more than just telegrams, a young woman in the 1980s fighting to survive her abusive husband, and Marco in the present day searching for a voice in the static—Untamed Coast is a story of fierce determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection, and the unseen ripples that reverberate across generations, standing the test of time and the tides.


And when I want a break from reading to get some chores done, I've got my audiobook:


Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture and political thought in Europe. And for the last two hundred years, historians have struggled to describe what makes this famous golden age unique.

In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating. Her witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the period show how its legend derives more from later centuries’ mythmaking than from the often grim reality of the period itself. She examines its defining figures and the enduring legacy of Niccolò Machiavelli, the rediscovery of the classics, the rise of the Medici and fall of the Borgias, the astonishing artistic achievements of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Cellini, the impact of the Inquisition and the expansion of secular Humanism. Palmer also explores the ties between culture and books, for example, could cost as much as grand houses, so the period’s innovative thinkers could only thrive with the help of the super-rich. She offers fifteen provocative and entertaining character portraits of Renaissance men and women, some famous, some obscure, whose intersecting lives show how the real Renaissance was more unexpected, more international and, above all, more desperate than its golden reputation suggests.

Drawing on her popular blogs and writing with her characteristic energy and wit, Palmer presents the Renaissance as we have never seen it before. Colloquial, funny and brilliant, you would never expect a work of deep scholarship to make you alternately laugh and cry.


Hopefully, I'll make some real progress with my reading list today!

Saturday, October 3, 2026

REVIEW: Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty


 Synopsis

Three strangers’ lives are forever changed when they’re all drawn to a mysterious agency claiming to have unlocked the secret to time travel.

Anna, Teddy, and Jade are on a collision course. The Agency is the cause. It is also the solution.

On a quiet road nestled within the bustle of Sydney lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. At once a confounding mystery and a beacon of hope, the Agency seems to attract those who need it most. Single mother Anna is in desperate need of change, and the Agency gives her the chance to begin her career—and life—anew. Teddy is a genius at salvaging businesses but needs saving himself, and he’s drawn to the Agency hoping to travel back in time to untangle his troubled childhood and his recently imploded marriage. Jade has no interest in the Agency at all, because there’s no way people are literally time traveling, right? Jade’s present is challenging enough, with her spirited, increasingly bad-tempered daughter and a deeply buried secret too painful for words.

As Anna, Teddy, and Jade’s paths converge, the question of just how legitimate the Agency’s ventures into the past are becomes a mysterious, provocative, tantalising, and even heart-wrenching one to parse—but there is no denying that the ripple effects through all three of their lives are very, very real …

Format 544 pages, Hardcover
Published August 4, 2026 by Berkley
ISBN 9780593820339 (ISBN10: 0593820339)


About the Author

Jaclyn Moriarty is an Australian writer of young adult literature.

She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD.

She is the younger sister of Liane Moriarty. She was previously married to Canadian writer Colin McAdam, and has a son, Charlie. She currently lives in Sydney.

Learn more about the author



My Thoughts

This novel follows Anna and her daughter Nicola, and the bewildered Teddy. It's also the story of Jade and her daughter Holly, whose lives keep intertwining with Anna's in ways that slowly come together over the course of the book.

At the center of it all is a mysterious Time Travel Agency hidden away in Australia. No one's quite sure what goes on there – some people doubt it even exists, dismissing it as an urban legend. Anna ends up employed there, working among a genuinely eccentric cast of coworkers. Meanwhile, Nicola falls in with a new group of friends and starts getting into trouble as she tries to fit in, while in a parallel thread, Jade's daughter Holly has been facing accusations of bullying within her own new friend group. At the agency, Anna meets a customer named Teddy, whose marriage has fallen apart and who's been using sessions there to try to understand where it went wrong – and Anna finds herself drawn to him.

For much of the book, I struggled with the writing style. It's choppy, rushed, and often disjointed, and the plot itself leans outrageous and loosely stitched together – there were stretches where I just felt bored. The story is pretty farcical and ridiculous at times, and while it's clearly written with humor, which I did appreciate, it's not something you can take too seriously.

Five words: preprosterous, quirky, mind-bending, mysterious, predictable

Buy Now:

My final word: My bigger issue is that when the prose is this stilted, the story itself needs to carry the weight – the writing can't lean on lyrical language to pull you through, so it just becomes the vehicle getting you from point A to point B. That means the story needs to be good enough to justify the ride, and for me, this one was a bumpy one.

Still, there's enough inventive, humorous energy here that I didn't regret finishing it. I just wished the execution had matched the ambition of the premise.

Trigger Warnings:
Adultery, bullying







My Rating:






The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

I received a copy of this book to review through BookBrowse and the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel. The book that I received was an uncorrected proof, and quotes could differ from the final release.