It’s that time of year again, a time to look back at the books we reviewed here at KRL over the past year and share with you some of our favorites! We reviewed a LOT of books last year. All of our main reviewers share in this post their top 5-10ish favorite books they reviewed in 2023, except for me. To find my list click here and you can also enter to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
2023 was quite a year for The Great Food Search, reviewing 34 different eateries. Here’s a top five.
I’ll start with the truth: I have been watching Good Company Players shows for more than 35 years, and Beautiful: the Carole King Musical—at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater through March 10—could be the best GCP show I’ve ever seen.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Antonio Salieri. Two musicians of the 1700s. Mozart was a creative genius, an immortal composer whose works are treasured, centuries after his death. The main reasons Salieri is known today are his claims that he killed Mozart, and Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus, which is now playing at the Good Company Players’ 2nd Space Theatre through February 18.
You know how sometimes you have really good food, but you don’t finish it, so you have a refrigerator full of leftovers? Food reviewers can have a version of that. Maybe you come across a great restaurant, but it doesn’t fit the theme you had planned for that month, so the pictures sit in your phone until you can’t quite remember what you ate or where it was. That happened to me this year, so I present—LEFTOVERS 2023!
Georgie is 35th in line to the throne of England, pregnant, and living with her husband in the manor owned by her globe-exploring godfather/former stepfather. It’s past time for her to begin entertaining as hostess, but she now has hired a real French chef...whose cooking she has never tasted... in The Proof of the Pudding, a Her Royal Spyness mystery by Rhys Bowen.
Four young boys die in a hallucinogenic-caused car crash, and Ken Parks is ordered to deal with it. Parks is the school district’s assistant superintendent in Portsmouth. He deals with teachers, parents, principals, and problems, but he never faced a problem like this, in Cruel Lessons, a gritty mystery by Randy Overbeck.
It’s London, 1814. Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont are sisters—well, stepsisters. They live above the family bookstore, and there is a dead man downstairs. Is it Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet? If Percy isn’t the dead man, could he be the murderer? Death and the Sisters is Heather Redmond’s first book in a new series, sending the reader spinning into a historical maze of real-life historical and literary figures.
Once.
It’s a word that starts things happening. Once upon a time. Once a (something), always a (something). Once is enough. Once is not enough.
William S. Gilbert wrote the words. Arthur Sullivan wrote the music. After 144 years, The Pirates of Penzance is still great theatre, good fun, and lots of laughs. Join the crew for the Good Company Players’ production now playing at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater through November 5.
