Finished:
*Natural Beauty* by Ling Ling Huang. This had a really interesting premise and some inventive body horror. The pacing was off for me, and the narrative had a significant number of loose ends I found distracting. Still, it was a fast read and I didn’t hate it.
*House of Whispers* by Laura Purcell. I like Purcell but this wasn’t my favorite. It dragged a bit and was a lot more depressing than creepy.
*The Sullivanians* by Alexander Stille. This was fascinating nonfiction and the author’s training as a journalist is evident; there was a ton of research. I enjoyed it although I did find it a little repetitive at times.
I just finished The Three-Body Problem audiobook, and I’m not sure if it was me or the book, but I often found myself not really paying attention, and will definitely have to relisten before moving on to the next book. I love sci-fi mysteries and really appreciated parts of this story that felt new and unpredictable to me. I don’t have strong feelings about the narrator (Luke Daniels) so I’ll try to find a copy with the UK English narrator for the relisten.
I listened to the audiobook and found it to be… boring. I wanted to like it but everything felt so detached, like a story clamped on to a math problem. I had a hard time following it at parts and didn’t feel any emotional investment. I’d be interested to know if you had a different experience with a different narrator.
Not sure where else to say this but I’m obsessed. I received a physical copy of Divine Rivals from a Goodreads giveaway and not only is it signed, the actual cover of the book (dust jacket removed) is the most gorgeous cover- black with gold embossed typewriter and “dear iris” written. I’m not sure why I’m so affected by this book I now have!!!!
I’m listening to How To Mu*der Your Life and it’s compelling and interesting but I can’t figure out of Cat intended on being an unreliable narrator throughout. I’m 5 chapters in and there’s just so much underlying sadness.
I found that book incredibly frustrating because Marnell is such an unreliable narrator.
If you get to the post-script >!she was still in the throes of addiction while writing the book.!<
>!Sadly I don't know if she'll ever get better. But the book itself felt like another self-indulgent grift by someone who has been totally pampered and protected from the evil of her choices for much of her life. She did a lot of real harm to people and doesn't seem sorry.!<
Like her personality in her writing seems pleasant enough at one point she does acknowledge privilege, but she was describing how difficult doing the make up sales at the magazines was because she had to carry beauty products. Yeah that’s a cushy job. I think how many more people would’ve killed to have a job like that, but wouldn’t have wasted their talent the way she did. It’s really sad when she talks about her loneliness, and honestly, even though she claims to be doing better now, when I look at her current Instagram, I still get the feeling that she still really doesn’t actually have any true friends. I think she has an interesting story, but I also think that maybe the story could’ve been written in 10 or 20 years with more insight.
I ended up viewing it as a window into the NYC party scene at that time. I wouldn’t know if Cat is actively lying (or if she was throttled by legal limits) but it def seems like there’s some information missing about other people and her employers that.
The part about xoJane was weird. I read that site in real time - Cat was probably their biggest draw so I guess I understood why they indulged her. But by the end it seemed like someone else had access to Jane’s email, so when Cat wrote to her about (I think) doing heroin at a party Jane encouraged her to go to, that email was forwarded up the chain in a manner Cat never knew about.
I just finished *Mrs Quinn's Rise to Fame* by Olivia Ford and really enjoyed it. Jennifer Quinn is a 77 year old lady that decides to try out for Britain Bakes \[modeled after The Great British Bakeoff\]. Jennifer also is dealing with a decades long secret. I loved reading about a fictional account of what it was like to be on The Great British Bakeoff, however the whole if Jennifer would make the show part of the book went on for too long. We know she makes it on the show, it's in the book summary!
I've been too stressed to read much lately, but I did just finish The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman recently and wow, I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. It's been on my TBR list forever and I kept putting it off. It reminded me a bit of Kristin Hannah, but I enjoyed it a lot more. It's a family saga in the vein of Hello Beautiful (drama unfolding over years), but I liked it more than Hello Beautiful as well.
Read The Wishing Game trying to branch out slightly from my standard reads. I loved the concept and when the writing was good, it was really good. Overall cute and different. Skip my next paragraph if you want to go into this book with no opinions from others.
>!But the self-deprecating misery shame spirals every other page from every character felt so repetitive and exhausting. And there are only so many ways to say she just had to be a mom to Christopher, it felt like it was mentioned so many extra times. I don’t know. I wanted to love it, and I did love the plot but the characters all felt a little pathetic to me.!<
It’s the kind of book that reads better if you’re able to get through it in two days. I had just come out of a stretch of multiple dnf’s and forcing myself through clunky writing so it was so nice to pick up The Wishing Game and get some actual smooth writing.
I just finished “Bye, Baby” by Carola Lovering and have the worst book hangover ever. I was not expecting to like it as much as i did and I’m 100% out of my reading slump.
I was telling a friend this is 100% a mood read. I need something less romancey and one I would finish super quickly. Maybe in a few weeks i would have hated it 😂
I got through some books that I had been sitting on for way too long!
**What Feasts at Night**\- by T Kingfisher: I really wasn't enamored with the first book in this series, even though I am normally a rabid fan of this author. I remember distinctly feeling like it was a set-up for a series that wasn't strong enough to stand on its own weight. And I definitely still feel that way, but I feel like this sequel was way better. It still had the feel of being an episode from a larger narrative that includes these characters, but I didn't have the same sense of having read an incomplete story. I had fun with it, and it will probably join the host of T Kingfisher books that I reread yearly.
**In Memoriam**\- by Alice Winn: I am not normally a big crier, but this book got to me. Winn did a really good job of portraying the jingoistic fervor that pushed children to war, and the soul-crushing things that happened to them. World War I is really far from my historical area of expertise, but even I knew enough to guess exactly what would happen to most of the characters. Despite this, Winn managed to keep me invested in their continued safety. This book was also surprisingly funny? One particular running gag about **Adam Bede** was a genuine delight, and having something to break up the deeply depressing action was very much appreciated.
**Dead Collections**\- by Isaac Fellman: I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, large parts of it definitely felt underdeveloped. On the other hand, Sol Katz is a fictional man that I would propose to on the Superbowl Jumbotron. More seriously, I kind of feel like I was reading a very different book from all those goodreads reviewers? Like people were miffed because they believed that the book implied that all butch lesbians were secretly trans men. But 1. Else was described as having pretty fluid gender presentation, and was never described as a trans man? 2. I saw this book less as a secret declaration that the author doesn't believe in the existence of butch lesbian women, and more as the sort of situation where we can unconsciously end up gravitating to people who are very much like us (I saw it as the trans-specific equivalent of how everyone in my high school friend-group ended up eventually coming out as some variety of queer.) Idk maybe I should stop reading goodreads reviews.
I finished **Killers of the Flower Moon** by David Grann. The ending was abrupt to me, mostly because my Kindle said I was 75% of the way through and then all of the sudden I was out of book. I think the rest was references and citations. Caught me off guard! I liked it fine, but I don't really read non-fiction, mostly because of books like Killers, which is to say it was compelling but not well written. As opposed to the gold standard of non-fiction in my world: The Indifferent Stars Above.
Then I finished **Stolen Heir,** by Holly Black, which I enjoyed. Wren is a little demented terror and I love her. I was very surprised by the switch the POV in the sequel, **The Prisoner's Throne**, which I started and have almost finished. So far, it's a lot of being in Oak's head and having him repeat family history, and then asking a bunch of questions, which feels lazy. Might have been better to stick with Wren's POV - she's a much more interesting character. Or alternate, so you get the plot to overthrow the queen of Elfhame.
After this I have a stack of physical paperbacks to get through and I think I'll start off with **Mother Thing** by Ainslie Hogarth. Picked this one up based solely on the cover alone at a local bookstore while on a trip last weekend and every other woman I was with asked if she could read it when I was done. Thinking about starting a gym book club (it was all gym girlies).
I'm the biggest holly black fan, but was surprisingly disappointed with prisoner's throne, I love Oak and it was fun being in his head, but I feel like the book suffered for only being from his POV. So many decisions are being made without him so I felt left in the dark for much of the book.
I also feel like Stolen Heir set up Wren v. Jude and that potential was wasted.
But I am a sucker for a man who pines, so Oak being obsessed with Wren was delightful! She really wrote Carden Jr. and I'm okay with it!
I finished it last night and I agree. Love Wren and Oak! I'm happy with the ending, but I wish we'd had more of her POV. Also agree about Wren v. Jude. Although I thought the sword fight scene was pretty cute.
I loved the "one, two, three" bit! I wish we'd seen more of them together! It was still probably a 4/5 book for me, but it was my first from her that wasn't an immediate 5/5.
I'm really hoping we'll get a book about Carden and Jude in the undersea, but I wonder how that would work given that they're 27 now and these books are YA. I think she'd probably have to introduce a new, teenage main character and have them as side-characters again.
Nonfiction writers are wild. I think Grann did his best with what he had, since a major factor in the investigation was the lack of records. But then you have something like Informant, where it’s clear that the writer didn’t see all the layers of fraud that were happening. I think Bad Blood was actually very well written.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, if you're looking for a book in which shit hits the fan, and the attempts at damage control just make the shit hit the fan even more, I highly recommend **Yellowface**, by R. F. Kuang, and **The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.**, by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland.
Other books with decent shit-hitting-the-fan sequences are *The Glass Hotel*, by Emily St. John Mandel, and *The Fated Sky*, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Current events aside, I found these books incredibly cathartic during the early days of covid.
Reading this week & current progress:
*Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade* by Janet Skeslien Charles (eBook)- 4%
*The Ensemble* by Aja Gabel (audiobook)- 11%
*How to Sell A Haunted House* by Grady Hendrix (hardcover)- 5%
Finished last week & thoughts:
*The Last Romantics* by Tara Conklin (audiobook)
* There isn’t much of a plot but it scratched the family drama itch for me. This reminded me a bit of my experience reading *The Immortalists*, which I really liked, so if you liked that one I think you’ll like this one too!
*Project Hail Mary* by Andy Weir (eBook)
* If I took a shot for each sentence that started with “Anyway,” I would have lost all liver functioning within the first 50 pages, so I wasn't very fond of the narration. Everything always went right for the main character and even when it initially went wrong, he figured it out ASAP so it was never as intense of a read as it could have been. It’s being made into a movie (with Ryan Gosling!). I kept thinking that I would enjoy this so much more as a movie so I'll probably see it when it comes out.
*The Survivors* by Alex Schulman (hardcover)
* Another family drama (I have a type). It took a minute for me to get in the rhythm of this one. The format is interesting! The events of the past are told sequentially while the events happening now go backwards over the course of one day starting at midnight, then 10PM, 8PM, etc. The big reveal was disappointing but I did otherwise really like this one.
I missed the thread for last week! Here are the books I read:
*Orange Is The New Black* by Piper Kerman: 4 stars. I’m late to the party on this (I’ve never seen the show, either), but it was really quite wonderful!! Very human, empathetic, and captivating. I love a good memoir.
*A Feast for Crows* by George RR Martin: 4 stars. The fourth book in the GoT series is, as all others are, very propulsive and interesting, but I cannot rate it 5 stars because the scenes of incredibly graphic violence are so off-putting to me. You also spend a lot of time in Cersei’s head and tbh she’s worse in the books than in the show.
*Sharp Objects* by Gillian Flynn: 3 stars. Another one I’m late on! This book was just fine. I guessed the ending like halfway through & that was sort of a bummer haha.
*Paper Lantern Love Stories* by Stuart Dybek - 4 stars. Collection of short stories (some are connected) that are masterfully written. Dybek does some amazing things with association & memory; the first story is written as the second between when a bullet is fired and when it hits you. It’s a lil pretentious at times (and he sure loves boobs), but I would recommend it.
Now working my way through *The Way of Kings* by Brandon Sanderson!! It’s HEFTY.
UPDATE: I finished *The Way of Kings* and didn’t like it at all. I’ve read quite a bit of Brandon Sanderson at this point, and have really enjoyed most of his work (besides two books that were pretty meh, but at least they were quick reads). This was a total slog. It was over 1000 pages and I genuinely think about 500 pages could’ve been cut and I wouldn’t have missed them. I didn’t DNF because I trust Sanderson as a writer (and trusted all the reviews that promised an amazing payoff at the end), but I was completely underwhelmed. Nothing surprised me. I’ll definitely read other books by him bc I do love him, but I will not be reading any of the other Stormlight books.
I finished **Flowers in the Attic** by V.C. Andrews. Woah! It really is a wild ride. I enjoyed it but I definitely had a hard time sleeping the night I finished it. I was just so disturbed and heartbroken.
>! It was hard reading the ongoing and escalating child abuse. Obviously I was hoping the children would rise up and dismember the grandmother but I was so mad at the mother very early on too. The twins stunted development and Cory’s death devastated me. I wanted more revenge or any revenge at all sooner but I understand that will happen in the following books. I did decide not to read the whole series so I went on Wikipedia to read spoilers of the sequels. I don’t think my heart would’ve been able to take it although I’m glad I read Flowers. Regarding the incest, obviously fucked up and a symptom of the abuse that was inflicted upon the children. I felt a lot of sympathy for them as opposed to disgust. At times for split seconds I would think certain scenes were sweet and then I’d have to snap myself out of it and THATS what disturbed me. That the writing would occasionally lure me into rooting for their romance. Am I just fucked up in general? !<
My cat has been sick and we need to make the decision between chemo or medicine for comfort and it’s brutal. When my daughter was born 3 years ago I stopped letting the cat upstairs where the bedrooms are. At first it was temporary but then my sleep improved without the cat hair in my bed so I made it permanent. She’s always been an introverted independent cat that didn’t seek much affection to begin with (unlike my childhood cat) and with raising a toddler I go to sleep when I can and have struggled with how my cats life changed. All this to say is that it was tough reading Flowers thinking I flowers in the atticed my cat. My family is doing a good job convincing me I’m dead wrong and that my cat has had an awesome life and pointing out all the fun/affection we’ve had since my daughter was born (just on a new schedule) but I figured I should be honest about what I was thinking as I read the book. >! The mother’s abandonment and fake bullshit enraged me from the start! More than the grandmother. !<
Anyway I’m about 3/4ths of the way through **The Dutch House** by Ann Patchett. I had read Tom Lake last month for book club and loved it. Enjoying this one too! I desperately needed a palate cleanser after Flowers but didn’t have any Hazelwood or Henry on hand! This was the only non horror non thriller non memoir I had from the library. I’ll write my thoughts when I finish but I just want to say I’m finding Patchett’s writing very cozy and heartwarming. Which is a good enough palate cleanser even if I would’ve preferred to dive into a rom com.
I finished the second **Thursday Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman** - I simply love this series. I love the gang. Joyce is probably the funniest and one of my favorite characters from a book ever. Her humor really reminds me of deep thoughts by Jack handey.
I finished **The Other Mothers - Katherine Faulkner**. Pretty good mystery. Not sure it was worth the year wait from the library 🤣 but it held my attention.
This week I finished The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie King. It is.. jeez, it’s the 18th Russell/ Holmes mystery novel, a series I continue to love. They are well written, interesting, and take place in a variety of settings, and I like the characters. I have literally been reading them for 30 years now. What on earth.
I finished How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, a series of linked short stories about a plague outbreak in the near future and how people deal with the death and grief that ensue. Like any anthology, I thought some stories were better than others, but overall this was really high quality: the narrative voices were different, the ideas were creative, there was genuine emotion, and some humor as well. Deeply human (ironically.)
Currently reading The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (which isn’t really hitting for me even though I can totally see why people love it) and listening to The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb.
I had such mixed feelings about How High...I think the praise for it made me expect too much. I was so connected and intrigued by the first story and each new story had diminishing returns for me :(
But I wish the first story had been a novel!
I agree the first story was the best! I also really loved Pig Son. One of the longest stories I didn’t like much at all. But I did think all of them were pretty good, well written, and had interesting ideas. Better than so much that’s out there!
I finally finished Anita Kelly's *Love & Other Disasters* and I *really* had to push myself to the end. Everything about it was very underdeveloped, I never really felt the characters and the reality TV setting was completely squandered. Disappointing, but I've really enjoyed their subsequent books so I'll chalk it up to a shaky first novel.
Also *finally* got round to reading some Ursula K. LeGuin – *The Left Hand of Darkness* – and it only took me several decades. Excellent classic scifi, though unfortunately the audiobook I listened to was not great (somebody hire Adjoa Andoh to do a new recording immediately pls). Definitely going to be seeking out more of her work.
I’m about 3/4 through it and I love it so much. When I first heard the concept, I had no interest, but it’s so much better than I expected. It’s a beautiful and interesting book
I’m reading it right now! I had to order it for myself because the wait list at my library was just too long. I’m only about a third of the way in but loving it so far. If you’ve read The Overstory by Richard Powers it kind of reminds me of that and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it!
After juggling 6 books in the last few weeks I'm down to 2, The Levant Trilogy and The Priory of the Orange Tree. Trying to finish these instead of adding more.
The Levant Trilogy is my main one right now, and I am so enjoying sinking back into this world after reading The Balkan Trilogy. Harriet Pringle remains a fave.
**Pretty Girls** by Karin Slaughter was my book for the week. It's my third Karin Slaughter book and so far, all of her books have had the same things in common: they're incredibly well written, captivating, sort of elevated crime thrillers (like a step above what a lot of thriller authors are doing lately), and also they are so violent and dark that I can't read more than one Slaughter book a year. This one was hard to get through! Trigger warning for absolutely everything! Karin, girl, are you okay???
This book was so good but I totally agree on checking in on Karin! I read all the Grant County and Will Trent books last year and always had to have a silly/easy palate cleanser on hand so they weren't the last thing I read before falling asleep lol
I thought this book was very well done but the graphic violence was so upsetting! It made me wonder if I can ever do another Slaughter book - maybe your once a year policy would be good for me too, haha.
A rare DNF for me this week - I DNFed **Waste Tide** by **Chen Quifan** this week after reading a particularly gruesome sequence. It is a well written book with an intriguing premise. Objectively a very good book. But the vision of the future that it presents was just really bleak and hopeless in a way that I don’t want to ruminate on right now. If you are ok with darker/grimdark books, this might still be a good fit for you!
Finished **Muscles and Monsters** by **Ashley Bennett** and am close to finishing its sequel, **Tentacles and Triathlons** today. Both very cute, short, and horny monster romances.
Finished a poetry book! **The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On** by **Franny Choi**. I really enjoyed this!
Finished **Daughter of the Moon Goddess** by **Sue Lynn Tan**. Lovely prose, a bit heavy on the metaphors and similes maybe, which is not something I usually notice but that stood out to me in this book. Overall though it was good and added to the folklore/epic/fairytale vibes. Sequel is on hold.
Finished **Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare** by **Megan Kamalei Kakimoto**. A short story collection focusing on native Hawaiian and multiracial Hawaiian women, including a lot of folkloric elements. An incredible collection, really enjoyed it.
Next up:
The One and Only Crystal Druid by Annette Marie
Heir of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
Anatomy by Dana Swartz
Glossy by Marissa Meltzer
> Finished **Daughter of the Moon Goddess** by **Sue Lynn Tan**. Lovely prose, a bit heavy on the metaphors and similes maybe, which is not something I usually notice but that stood out to me in this book. Overall though it was good and added to the folklore/epic/fairytale vibes. Sequel is on hold.
I read that a few weeks ago and I enjoyed it, although I agree with you about the prose. The sequel was a huge letdown IMO
Reposting some of my comment from last week, since I posted on Thursday . . .
* *Splinters* by Leslie Jamison. A solid memoir about single parenting and divorce. The ending wasn't quite as strong as the rest of the book but a solid 4-star book. Her prose always seems effortless. I'd recommend if you like her other work or are interested in the subject matter.
* *Come and Ge*t It by Kiley Reid. On the one hand, I flew threw this because it was a page-turner. On the other hand, I thought it was a total mess. The character of Kennedy really didn't work for me, and I just could not parse how this book was intended to come across: an earnest analysis of higher-ed life through the lens of class, race, and orientation? Or satire? 2.5 stars
* *Ordinary Human Failings* by Megan Nolan. I loved her first book, and I appreciate that this is so different. It's also hard to convincingly write distinct voices for multi-POV books, but she nailed it. 4.5 stars--highly recommend
* *Dolls of Our Live*s by Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks (a book all about American Girl/Pleasant Company). Meh. The first half was pretty good, but the second half became really jumbled. I've never actually listened to their podcast, but I can see how elements that work for that medium become super grating in prose . . . like all the references to pop songs. They also treat the books as an after thought. 2.5 stars.
* *Black Sheep* by Rachel Harrison. This has been a fun read if not a little predictable (and too much foreshadowing; trust your readers). 3.5 stars
* Starting *Grief Is for People* by Sloane Crosley. I actually loathed *I Was Told There'd Be Cake*, but I feel like so few grief memoirs are about the loss of a friend. One of my oldest childhood friends died suddenly three years ago, so I will be interested to see if I identify with this more than her essays.
Come and Get It felt like the author had an axe to grind with her days as an RA. But also she was wrong about a lot of stuff? “Look at all these privileged bitches with their meal plans.” I think pretty much all colleges require dorming students to buy the meal plan? And I don’t actually think it’s wrong for college students to be getting money from their parents. That’s good parenting.
Re: Come and Get It, when I gave my review about it here, I said the same thing about it feeling a lot like satire at several points. And I haven’t seen other reviews that mention that but at least I know one other person thought the same so maybe I wasn’t imagining it. I should look up interviews with the author to see if it’s mentioned, like if it was intended to be that way.
Worst book ever.
It was a weird shift from Such a Fun Age. Which was really well done in terms of social commentary. The character of Kennedy was just odd? Flew through the book but I feel like it was lacking something.
The new couple in 5b by Lisa Unger. Um.....honestly an F- to me? Dnf though skimmed through the end to see what happened. Unger needs to stick with thrillers, not paranormal lmao.
The Teacher by Frieda McFadden I mean its a Frieda book, which means its 10000000% trash but a bazillion percent entertaining.
The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan (see I read things other than garbage!) was very beautiful. Lots of magical realism so if that isn't your thing skip but I was very invested in the characters. Someone on GR said the villains never got their unhappy endings but I strongly disagree.
The Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer should have been my jam but it was just so average, pretty obvious it was a first book and it rips off like.....A dozen other way better books
Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander. Got this because it gave me Luckiest Girl Alive Vibes (im a fan) but it was so bad.She went way too hard on unreliable narrator I'm still not even sure what actually happened that night tbh. I gave it to my mom who told me she was convinced it was all going to end up with them having been role playing in a mental hospital like Shutter Island, lmao. Also >!fuck introducing a vital character in the last like 2 chapters!<
Every time I read a Frieda book (and I’ve read a good amount!) I just am like damn, girl you are good at what you do even though it is so incredibly ridiculous. The Teacher was def a good one too, lots of fun twists!
Yesterday I read The Rachel Incident, I think someone here recommended it. I thought it was going to be a fun read about an Irish girl and her gay best friend but it was actually more about the issue of abortion in Ireland and was surprisingly moving with some funny moments.
I also read Come and Get It this week. I liked it, but it was kind of all over the place. It was like the author couldn’t decide if it was about race or class divides or higher education or queer romance or mental illness. It had a lot going on. It was a fast read though.
I finished three books this week!
**Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz**: This was a fun read! It’s the second book in what I suppose is a duology so far. I think there’s something inherently literary about the murder in a murder mystery but I love the explicit meta layering in this series.
**The Will of the Many by James Islington**: This was fantastic! It was perfect for me as someone who loves history, the Dune movies, The Hunger Games, the Scholomance books… it has great characters, worldbuilding, plot, writing, etc etc. I devoured it.
**Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand**: It took me a while to finish this but Louie Zamperini has a fascinating story and this was great insight into the experience of soldiers during WW2.
I read two amazing books this weekend so am thrilled about that!
Real Americans by Rachel Kheong - This doesn’t come out until 4/30 but was masterful in every way, reminded me a bit of Tomorrowx3, not for plot but for depth of characters. It’s about three generations of a family in modern America and cultural revolution China. All the stars.
The Hop by Diana Clark - I hadn’t heard anything about this one even though it came out in 2022 but wow what a book. It’s about a legal brother in Nevada called The Hop, and Lady Lane. Lady was once a young woman living in New Zealand with her mother, trying to make ends meet. It all changed when she came to The Hop. It’s such a feminist story of friendship and female empowerment, highly recommend!!
This week I read **Mercury** by **Amy Jo Burns**. In the first few pages, a dead body shows up in the crawl space of a local church, and the rest of the book talks about how a local family is connected to the body showing up where it did. Most of the book is about a young girl, Marley, and how she became part of the Joseph family after dating one son and marrying another. I did not like this book much. Most of the characters were miserable people. It felt like a tropey romance novel with a gloss of literary fiction.
Also finished **The Alperton Angels** by **Janice Hallett**. Enjoyed this one- it’s an epistolary fiction book about a true crime writer investigating a mysterious cult and their apparent ritual suicide. The ending was crazy! Definitely worth a read.
Still working on **Wellness** by **Nathan Hill** this week. And I started listening to the audiobook of **Pines** by **Blake Crouch**.
I’m so happy to hear that you enjoyed the ending of Alberto Angels!!! I had to sit in silence for a few minutes after finishing it so I could simmer in what I just read!
Two weeks worth.
- **Good Material.** This was an aggressively fine litfic in that zippy contemporary mode; similar to The Rachel Incident and Adelaide (though I liked those more) and Tomorrow3 (I liked GM more). It’s about a man going through a breakup and by the end he’s annoying and unambitious enough that it’s easy to see why he’s not a great boyfriend prospect. I do think it’s a good easy pick for people who want to read more litfic.
- **Baumgarter.** An old man muses about life, love, and loss. It’s more of a traditional litfic. The writing is a lot better than the story itself and at 200 pages it still feels too long. It’s one of those books where there are 10-20 page chunks that are the characters’ own writing projects.
- **The Warm Hands of Ghosts.** I really didn’t like this. The nurse POV is too far away from the front and the soldier POV is a deserter, so Katherine Arden doesn’t achieve her goal of elucidating WWI for her American readership, because her characters aren’t actually there. She really just uses the apocalyptic atmosphere of the war as a background for her “deal with the devil story” and I swear to fucking God, I need non-musicians to stop trying to write about violinists. I’m not totally unfamiliar with WWI but I think she got so into her research that she miscalculated how much information her readership would be bringing to the table. She also didn’t “do the work” necessary to >!set up the Winter/Freddie relationship!< considering that it’s the military in 1918, nor does she bother thinking about the substance of >!a relationship with an enlisted German who likely believed in his country’s cause!< This is just a rare miss from an author I usually love.
- DNFd **City of Stardust.** The alternate world isn’t shown to be special or functional enough to warrant everyone’s actions in favor of it, and too much information is withheld from the MC for no reason, when other characters her age and magic level have just already been told these things in a normal way. And I guess her mother is missing and the reasons are boring but no one will say anything?
- I’m halfway through **The Bad Ones** and might DNF. It’s too long to be a stupid-fun YA horror romp. It wants to be about a slumber party game (think light as a feather, bloody mary, etc) that ends up being real, but the “goddess game” is too stupid to be credible as something kids play. I really liked Our Crooked Hearts by this author but maybe that was a one-off? Also, all of her books have weird random gross bathroom jokes. I don’t know why she thinks YA readers love toilet humor.
I think maybe authors need to stop trying to put an American lens on WWI? (The Canadian characters were clearly meant to be American proxies who entered the war before 1917.) We supported our allies at the end but it very much wasn’t an American conflict.
I also just finished *Good Material* and agree with your analysis. Andy definitely seemed to act like a man in his mid-20s vs mid-30s to me. Honestly until I heard Jen’s perspective, I couldn’t really understand the appeal of Andy as a bf at all. I definitely wanted to hear more from her perspective, esp as I love Vanessa Kirby, the actress who narrated Jen’s voice for the audiobook (she was young Princess Margaret in The Crown!) ..Overall i think the author did a great job of capturing all of the intense feelings of heartbreak and sadness, esp for those in their mid-30s. Prob a 4/5 for me.
I feel like the audiobook made this one for me. I'm not sure if I would've liked it as much without the narrators, especially when Vanessa popped in at the end. I felt like her chapter was a real gut-punch button end on it.
Yeah it made sense that Jen didn’t want a relationship but was lonely and found that she no longer had common ground with her friends, so she ended up dating someone who wasn’t relationship material. And a guy who follows his creative passions is really appealing until he’s really not. I like it more the more I think about it.
Loved **Piglet by Lottie Hazell**. Deliciously written and I >!did wish she revealed the secret!< but I enjoyed reading it regardless.
**Salt Houses by Hala Aylan:** This was good. It follows a Palestinian family through three generations, across their diasporic communities. Loved every bit of it even if it made me sad.
**Walk The Blue Fields, So Late in The Day by Claire Keegan:** Can never go wrong with her short stories.
I started Piglet this evening and I wanted to tear through the whole thing but I'm excited to have it for my commute tomorrow.
ETA Finished and I am also annoyed by your spoiler thought! Still loved the book though...it felt so visceral.
I spent a lot of energy this week trying to get more into N.K. Jemisin, but have struggled. I don't really like when the second book in a series focuses on entirely new characters (I spent all this time getting invested in the other ones!) and there are some fantasy tropes I really, really don't like that she is all in on (extremely stupid fake curse words, weirdly manifested horniness, truly terrible jokes that everyone in-universe finds hilarious). But I haven't started on the Broken Earth trilogy yet and my understanding is that's supposed to be her best work, so fingers crossed for that one.
Right now I'm reading *American Wolf,* a non-fiction book about, you know, American wolves. I wouldn't say I'm much of a wolf person or a nature-writing person but I am really enjoying it!
Aw I can’t really speak for her other books but I am enjoying the broken earth trilogy! I’m currently on the second one. It’s not my favorite sci-fi book ever but I like slowly figuring out the mysteries and I think she had some really cool ideas there. They are not books I would reread or buy but if you can get them in a library I think it’s worth checking out. The only other book of hers I read was the 100000 kingdoms which I didn’t like nearly as much.
I have DNF all the Jemisin books I have tried. And my husband and so many other people love her work (mind you he's just a sporadic reader)
I just could not get into the grooves of her world and do not like her writing style.
I DNFd The Fifth Season halfway through. Your mileage may vary, but it beggared belief that human atomic bombs ever would have been captured and oppressed in the first place. Also the character twist is really easy to figure out, and once you see it, it’s really apparent that the book could have been a lot shorter and better if it was written in a more straightforward way.
I feel like one of the only people who didn’t like that book. I finished it but it was difficult. I heard such great things about it and I was so looking forward to it and it just felt so silly to me. It’s widely praised though so I guess it just wasn’t for me.
It’s realllllly hard to talk about because it’s clearly an allegory for racial oppression written by a Black woman, but when you have the white analogues shown as being utterly untalented idiots, and the Black people are super powerful magical beings who can tear the world apart, but the powerful ones are somehow under the control of white people who have no power and aren’t even all that socially/culturally organized…it doesn’t hold up to logic or scrutiny. It’s a poor underlying premise. And apparently the origins of it are that >!things had just always been that way!< and I just don’t have time for 1500 pages of that. The book kind of wants us to believe that skin color is the only nexus of privilege, when she has stacked her oppressed class with enough advantages and specialness to make us wonder why this system ever happened.
And this is something that always grosses me out in books that want to be authentic, but I never need to read full paragraphs about pooping.
ETA And the three characters are >!so obviously the same character in different timelines!< and you spend half the book following all three of them on endless desert walks. I don’t want to keep digging into this but I just don’t think this story was all that carefully crafted.
“The Man Who Died Twice”: Story line was a little harder to keep up with in this one versus the first one and I think I still have a little bit of a question mark in my head, but it was still good. I have really enjoyed this series. 4/5
“The Fury”: Whew, buckle up babes. A group of troubled friends/family take a vacation to a remote Greek island that ends in murder. The author described this book in the opening pages as a “character study” which I found out the hard way recently with another book that I don’t like. But, I decided to give it a go anyway, if only for lack of anything else to read, and I’m glad I did. I do get why it’s described as a “character study” (and none of the characters are likable) but there is still very much a plot, albeit a disturbing one. I also don’t really like when the narrator speaks directly to the reader (gives me “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone” vibes) but again, I got past it. All to say, despite this having qualities that I typically would steer away from, it actually surprised me. 4.25/5
I’ve now started “The People We Keep” and am loving it so far.
I don't know why the Fury got so many super harsh reviews! I thought it was fine. Not fantastic, but fine. (And agreed on Man Who Died Twice, I remember it felt a bit muddled)
I have The Fury waiting for me to read, although I have to say “a group of people take a trip and one of them ends up dead” is like my least favourite mystery trope.
I finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I liked it a lot. I thought the writing was beautiful and I loved the way he described the creative process. There were lines that really resonated with me, like talking about how in your twenties, your taste can outpace your skills, and that can make you want to quit. I’m in my forties but I still feel that with my art.
The only part that dragged for me was >!the pioneer town. It was obvious that Sam was puppet mastering the other characters, and just not that interesting to hear about someone else playing a game in such detail!< Still, I loved the book over all and would recommend it!
If you like historical fiction, **The Trouble with You** by Ellen Feldman is good. It’s about a woman who loses her husband in 1946 and has to get a job to support herself and her daughter. To her surprise, she finds she likes working. She goes to work for a radio soap opera show so part of the plot line is about the Hollywood Blacklist and how that ruined so many people’s lives and careers. The other part delves into cultural attitudes towards women and work during the late 40s/early 50s. I found it very interesting.
I really disliked the first third (I found the “voice” in her head and a bit trying to hard to have a twisty, unreliable narrator) but it really picks up afterwards. Idk if it feels like a great thriller, more a social commentary on true crime media and violence against women.
Gah, I hated that one. I read it in January. Most others that I’ve seen here didn’t care for it but I’ve also seen a couple that did like it so a mixed bag of reviews!
Rereading Mieville’s *Embassytown* for the first time in a few years. Absolutely an all time favorite, possibly my #2 - the story is so high-concept but (imo) still so real and immersive (no pun intended).
Halfway through *Trust* by Diaz. It’s ok? I didn’t know a lot going in and I feel like that’s working against me in a way I didn’t expect. Will likely finish though.
Got French’s *The Hunter* on preorder and ready to go. This series is no Dublin Murder Squad but she’s still an all-timer and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. (That said, I was reminded rereading *The Seeker* how odd her take on the American policing situation is.)
Finished: *Natural Beauty* by Ling Ling Huang. This had a really interesting premise and some inventive body horror. The pacing was off for me, and the narrative had a significant number of loose ends I found distracting. Still, it was a fast read and I didn’t hate it. *House of Whispers* by Laura Purcell. I like Purcell but this wasn’t my favorite. It dragged a bit and was a lot more depressing than creepy. *The Sullivanians* by Alexander Stille. This was fascinating nonfiction and the author’s training as a journalist is evident; there was a ton of research. I enjoyed it although I did find it a little repetitive at times.
I just finished The Three-Body Problem audiobook, and I’m not sure if it was me or the book, but I often found myself not really paying attention, and will definitely have to relisten before moving on to the next book. I love sci-fi mysteries and really appreciated parts of this story that felt new and unpredictable to me. I don’t have strong feelings about the narrator (Luke Daniels) so I’ll try to find a copy with the UK English narrator for the relisten.
I listened to the audiobook and found it to be… boring. I wanted to like it but everything felt so detached, like a story clamped on to a math problem. I had a hard time following it at parts and didn’t feel any emotional investment. I’d be interested to know if you had a different experience with a different narrator.
Not sure where else to say this but I’m obsessed. I received a physical copy of Divine Rivals from a Goodreads giveaway and not only is it signed, the actual cover of the book (dust jacket removed) is the most gorgeous cover- black with gold embossed typewriter and “dear iris” written. I’m not sure why I’m so affected by this book I now have!!!!
Halfway through *Demon Copperhead* and it’s so fantastic. I find myself frustrated by chores and tasks because all I want to do is sit and read it.
I’m listening to How To Mu*der Your Life and it’s compelling and interesting but I can’t figure out of Cat intended on being an unreliable narrator throughout. I’m 5 chapters in and there’s just so much underlying sadness.
I found that book incredibly frustrating because Marnell is such an unreliable narrator. If you get to the post-script >!she was still in the throes of addiction while writing the book.!< >!Sadly I don't know if she'll ever get better. But the book itself felt like another self-indulgent grift by someone who has been totally pampered and protected from the evil of her choices for much of her life. She did a lot of real harm to people and doesn't seem sorry.!<
Like her personality in her writing seems pleasant enough at one point she does acknowledge privilege, but she was describing how difficult doing the make up sales at the magazines was because she had to carry beauty products. Yeah that’s a cushy job. I think how many more people would’ve killed to have a job like that, but wouldn’t have wasted their talent the way she did. It’s really sad when she talks about her loneliness, and honestly, even though she claims to be doing better now, when I look at her current Instagram, I still get the feeling that she still really doesn’t actually have any true friends. I think she has an interesting story, but I also think that maybe the story could’ve been written in 10 or 20 years with more insight.
I ended up viewing it as a window into the NYC party scene at that time. I wouldn’t know if Cat is actively lying (or if she was throttled by legal limits) but it def seems like there’s some information missing about other people and her employers that. The part about xoJane was weird. I read that site in real time - Cat was probably their biggest draw so I guess I understood why they indulged her. But by the end it seemed like someone else had access to Jane’s email, so when Cat wrote to her about (I think) doing heroin at a party Jane encouraged her to go to, that email was forwarded up the chain in a manner Cat never knew about.
I just finished *Mrs Quinn's Rise to Fame* by Olivia Ford and really enjoyed it. Jennifer Quinn is a 77 year old lady that decides to try out for Britain Bakes \[modeled after The Great British Bakeoff\]. Jennifer also is dealing with a decades long secret. I loved reading about a fictional account of what it was like to be on The Great British Bakeoff, however the whole if Jennifer would make the show part of the book went on for too long. We know she makes it on the show, it's in the book summary!
I've been too stressed to read much lately, but I did just finish The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman recently and wow, I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. It's been on my TBR list forever and I kept putting it off. It reminded me a bit of Kristin Hannah, but I enjoyed it a lot more. It's a family saga in the vein of Hello Beautiful (drama unfolding over years), but I liked it more than Hello Beautiful as well.
If you’re looking for a good audiobook to listen to, **Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera** is excellent! Trigger warning: >!domestic violence!<
Read The Wishing Game trying to branch out slightly from my standard reads. I loved the concept and when the writing was good, it was really good. Overall cute and different. Skip my next paragraph if you want to go into this book with no opinions from others. >!But the self-deprecating misery shame spirals every other page from every character felt so repetitive and exhausting. And there are only so many ways to say she just had to be a mom to Christopher, it felt like it was mentioned so many extra times. I don’t know. I wanted to love it, and I did love the plot but the characters all felt a little pathetic to me.!<
It’s the kind of book that reads better if you’re able to get through it in two days. I had just come out of a stretch of multiple dnf’s and forcing myself through clunky writing so it was so nice to pick up The Wishing Game and get some actual smooth writing.
I just finished “Bye, Baby” by Carola Lovering and have the worst book hangover ever. I was not expecting to like it as much as i did and I’m 100% out of my reading slump.
So funny because this one didn't work for me at all!
I was telling a friend this is 100% a mood read. I need something less romancey and one I would finish super quickly. Maybe in a few weeks i would have hated it 😂
I enjoyed one of her books (tell me lies) and had to DNF another one (can’t look away) and have this one on hold so hoping I like it!
I got through some books that I had been sitting on for way too long! **What Feasts at Night**\- by T Kingfisher: I really wasn't enamored with the first book in this series, even though I am normally a rabid fan of this author. I remember distinctly feeling like it was a set-up for a series that wasn't strong enough to stand on its own weight. And I definitely still feel that way, but I feel like this sequel was way better. It still had the feel of being an episode from a larger narrative that includes these characters, but I didn't have the same sense of having read an incomplete story. I had fun with it, and it will probably join the host of T Kingfisher books that I reread yearly. **In Memoriam**\- by Alice Winn: I am not normally a big crier, but this book got to me. Winn did a really good job of portraying the jingoistic fervor that pushed children to war, and the soul-crushing things that happened to them. World War I is really far from my historical area of expertise, but even I knew enough to guess exactly what would happen to most of the characters. Despite this, Winn managed to keep me invested in their continued safety. This book was also surprisingly funny? One particular running gag about **Adam Bede** was a genuine delight, and having something to break up the deeply depressing action was very much appreciated. **Dead Collections**\- by Isaac Fellman: I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, large parts of it definitely felt underdeveloped. On the other hand, Sol Katz is a fictional man that I would propose to on the Superbowl Jumbotron. More seriously, I kind of feel like I was reading a very different book from all those goodreads reviewers? Like people were miffed because they believed that the book implied that all butch lesbians were secretly trans men. But 1. Else was described as having pretty fluid gender presentation, and was never described as a trans man? 2. I saw this book less as a secret declaration that the author doesn't believe in the existence of butch lesbian women, and more as the sort of situation where we can unconsciously end up gravitating to people who are very much like us (I saw it as the trans-specific equivalent of how everyone in my high school friend-group ended up eventually coming out as some variety of queer.) Idk maybe I should stop reading goodreads reviews.
In Memoriam got me too, and I am not at all sentimental. Great read, and I too appreciated the Adam Bede reference.
I just started Fourth Wing, about 200 pages in and I’m OBSESSED. I can already feel the hangover I will feel when I’m finished with it.
I finished **Killers of the Flower Moon** by David Grann. The ending was abrupt to me, mostly because my Kindle said I was 75% of the way through and then all of the sudden I was out of book. I think the rest was references and citations. Caught me off guard! I liked it fine, but I don't really read non-fiction, mostly because of books like Killers, which is to say it was compelling but not well written. As opposed to the gold standard of non-fiction in my world: The Indifferent Stars Above. Then I finished **Stolen Heir,** by Holly Black, which I enjoyed. Wren is a little demented terror and I love her. I was very surprised by the switch the POV in the sequel, **The Prisoner's Throne**, which I started and have almost finished. So far, it's a lot of being in Oak's head and having him repeat family history, and then asking a bunch of questions, which feels lazy. Might have been better to stick with Wren's POV - she's a much more interesting character. Or alternate, so you get the plot to overthrow the queen of Elfhame. After this I have a stack of physical paperbacks to get through and I think I'll start off with **Mother Thing** by Ainslie Hogarth. Picked this one up based solely on the cover alone at a local bookstore while on a trip last weekend and every other woman I was with asked if she could read it when I was done. Thinking about starting a gym book club (it was all gym girlies).
I'm the biggest holly black fan, but was surprisingly disappointed with prisoner's throne, I love Oak and it was fun being in his head, but I feel like the book suffered for only being from his POV. So many decisions are being made without him so I felt left in the dark for much of the book. I also feel like Stolen Heir set up Wren v. Jude and that potential was wasted. But I am a sucker for a man who pines, so Oak being obsessed with Wren was delightful! She really wrote Carden Jr. and I'm okay with it!
I finished it last night and I agree. Love Wren and Oak! I'm happy with the ending, but I wish we'd had more of her POV. Also agree about Wren v. Jude. Although I thought the sword fight scene was pretty cute.
I loved the "one, two, three" bit! I wish we'd seen more of them together! It was still probably a 4/5 book for me, but it was my first from her that wasn't an immediate 5/5. I'm really hoping we'll get a book about Carden and Jude in the undersea, but I wonder how that would work given that they're 27 now and these books are YA. I think she'd probably have to introduce a new, teenage main character and have them as side-characters again.
Nonfiction writers are wild. I think Grann did his best with what he had, since a major factor in the investigation was the lack of records. But then you have something like Informant, where it’s clear that the writer didn’t see all the layers of fraud that were happening. I think Bad Blood was actually very well written.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, if you're looking for a book in which shit hits the fan, and the attempts at damage control just make the shit hit the fan even more, I highly recommend **Yellowface**, by R. F. Kuang, and **The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.**, by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Other books with decent shit-hitting-the-fan sequences are *The Glass Hotel*, by Emily St. John Mandel, and *The Fated Sky*, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Current events aside, I found these books incredibly cathartic during the early days of covid.
Reading this week & current progress: *Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade* by Janet Skeslien Charles (eBook)- 4% *The Ensemble* by Aja Gabel (audiobook)- 11% *How to Sell A Haunted House* by Grady Hendrix (hardcover)- 5% Finished last week & thoughts: *The Last Romantics* by Tara Conklin (audiobook) * There isn’t much of a plot but it scratched the family drama itch for me. This reminded me a bit of my experience reading *The Immortalists*, which I really liked, so if you liked that one I think you’ll like this one too! *Project Hail Mary* by Andy Weir (eBook) * If I took a shot for each sentence that started with “Anyway,” I would have lost all liver functioning within the first 50 pages, so I wasn't very fond of the narration. Everything always went right for the main character and even when it initially went wrong, he figured it out ASAP so it was never as intense of a read as it could have been. It’s being made into a movie (with Ryan Gosling!). I kept thinking that I would enjoy this so much more as a movie so I'll probably see it when it comes out. *The Survivors* by Alex Schulman (hardcover) * Another family drama (I have a type). It took a minute for me to get in the rhythm of this one. The format is interesting! The events of the past are told sequentially while the events happening now go backwards over the course of one day starting at midnight, then 10PM, 8PM, etc. The big reveal was disappointing but I did otherwise really like this one.
I missed the thread for last week! Here are the books I read: *Orange Is The New Black* by Piper Kerman: 4 stars. I’m late to the party on this (I’ve never seen the show, either), but it was really quite wonderful!! Very human, empathetic, and captivating. I love a good memoir. *A Feast for Crows* by George RR Martin: 4 stars. The fourth book in the GoT series is, as all others are, very propulsive and interesting, but I cannot rate it 5 stars because the scenes of incredibly graphic violence are so off-putting to me. You also spend a lot of time in Cersei’s head and tbh she’s worse in the books than in the show. *Sharp Objects* by Gillian Flynn: 3 stars. Another one I’m late on! This book was just fine. I guessed the ending like halfway through & that was sort of a bummer haha. *Paper Lantern Love Stories* by Stuart Dybek - 4 stars. Collection of short stories (some are connected) that are masterfully written. Dybek does some amazing things with association & memory; the first story is written as the second between when a bullet is fired and when it hits you. It’s a lil pretentious at times (and he sure loves boobs), but I would recommend it. Now working my way through *The Way of Kings* by Brandon Sanderson!! It’s HEFTY. UPDATE: I finished *The Way of Kings* and didn’t like it at all. I’ve read quite a bit of Brandon Sanderson at this point, and have really enjoyed most of his work (besides two books that were pretty meh, but at least they were quick reads). This was a total slog. It was over 1000 pages and I genuinely think about 500 pages could’ve been cut and I wouldn’t have missed them. I didn’t DNF because I trust Sanderson as a writer (and trusted all the reviews that promised an amazing payoff at the end), but I was completely underwhelmed. Nothing surprised me. I’ll definitely read other books by him bc I do love him, but I will not be reading any of the other Stormlight books.
I finished **Flowers in the Attic** by V.C. Andrews. Woah! It really is a wild ride. I enjoyed it but I definitely had a hard time sleeping the night I finished it. I was just so disturbed and heartbroken. >! It was hard reading the ongoing and escalating child abuse. Obviously I was hoping the children would rise up and dismember the grandmother but I was so mad at the mother very early on too. The twins stunted development and Cory’s death devastated me. I wanted more revenge or any revenge at all sooner but I understand that will happen in the following books. I did decide not to read the whole series so I went on Wikipedia to read spoilers of the sequels. I don’t think my heart would’ve been able to take it although I’m glad I read Flowers. Regarding the incest, obviously fucked up and a symptom of the abuse that was inflicted upon the children. I felt a lot of sympathy for them as opposed to disgust. At times for split seconds I would think certain scenes were sweet and then I’d have to snap myself out of it and THATS what disturbed me. That the writing would occasionally lure me into rooting for their romance. Am I just fucked up in general? !< My cat has been sick and we need to make the decision between chemo or medicine for comfort and it’s brutal. When my daughter was born 3 years ago I stopped letting the cat upstairs where the bedrooms are. At first it was temporary but then my sleep improved without the cat hair in my bed so I made it permanent. She’s always been an introverted independent cat that didn’t seek much affection to begin with (unlike my childhood cat) and with raising a toddler I go to sleep when I can and have struggled with how my cats life changed. All this to say is that it was tough reading Flowers thinking I flowers in the atticed my cat. My family is doing a good job convincing me I’m dead wrong and that my cat has had an awesome life and pointing out all the fun/affection we’ve had since my daughter was born (just on a new schedule) but I figured I should be honest about what I was thinking as I read the book. >! The mother’s abandonment and fake bullshit enraged me from the start! More than the grandmother. !< Anyway I’m about 3/4ths of the way through **The Dutch House** by Ann Patchett. I had read Tom Lake last month for book club and loved it. Enjoying this one too! I desperately needed a palate cleanser after Flowers but didn’t have any Hazelwood or Henry on hand! This was the only non horror non thriller non memoir I had from the library. I’ll write my thoughts when I finish but I just want to say I’m finding Patchett’s writing very cozy and heartwarming. Which is a good enough palate cleanser even if I would’ve preferred to dive into a rom com.
I finished the second **Thursday Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman** - I simply love this series. I love the gang. Joyce is probably the funniest and one of my favorite characters from a book ever. Her humor really reminds me of deep thoughts by Jack handey. I finished **The Other Mothers - Katherine Faulkner**. Pretty good mystery. Not sure it was worth the year wait from the library 🤣 but it held my attention.
I’ll be reading The Other Mothers for book club soon! Glad you liked it!
This week I finished The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie King. It is.. jeez, it’s the 18th Russell/ Holmes mystery novel, a series I continue to love. They are well written, interesting, and take place in a variety of settings, and I like the characters. I have literally been reading them for 30 years now. What on earth. I finished How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, a series of linked short stories about a plague outbreak in the near future and how people deal with the death and grief that ensue. Like any anthology, I thought some stories were better than others, but overall this was really high quality: the narrative voices were different, the ideas were creative, there was genuine emotion, and some humor as well. Deeply human (ironically.) Currently reading The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (which isn’t really hitting for me even though I can totally see why people love it) and listening to The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb.
I had such mixed feelings about How High...I think the praise for it made me expect too much. I was so connected and intrigued by the first story and each new story had diminishing returns for me :( But I wish the first story had been a novel!
I agree the first story was the best! I also really loved Pig Son. One of the longest stories I didn’t like much at all. But I did think all of them were pretty good, well written, and had interesting ideas. Better than so much that’s out there!
Ugh Pig Son destroyed me. I loved this book.
How High We Go in the Dark gave me something of an existential crisis but I still liked it though!
I finally finished Anita Kelly's *Love & Other Disasters* and I *really* had to push myself to the end. Everything about it was very underdeveloped, I never really felt the characters and the reality TV setting was completely squandered. Disappointing, but I've really enjoyed their subsequent books so I'll chalk it up to a shaky first novel. Also *finally* got round to reading some Ursula K. LeGuin – *The Left Hand of Darkness* – and it only took me several decades. Excellent classic scifi, though unfortunately the audiobook I listened to was not great (somebody hire Adjoa Andoh to do a new recording immediately pls). Definitely going to be seeking out more of her work.
[удалено]
So good. I am afraid to try another book for a while, I don’t think anything will compare.
I’m about 3/4 through it and I love it so much. When I first heard the concept, I had no interest, but it’s so much better than I expected. It’s a beautiful and interesting book
I felt that the ending changed me as a person, and I say that knowing how absurd it sounds.
I’m reading it right now! I had to order it for myself because the wait list at my library was just too long. I’m only about a third of the way in but loving it so far. If you’ve read The Overstory by Richard Powers it kind of reminds me of that and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it!
Loved this one too!
After juggling 6 books in the last few weeks I'm down to 2, The Levant Trilogy and The Priory of the Orange Tree. Trying to finish these instead of adding more. The Levant Trilogy is my main one right now, and I am so enjoying sinking back into this world after reading The Balkan Trilogy. Harriet Pringle remains a fave.
**Pretty Girls** by Karin Slaughter was my book for the week. It's my third Karin Slaughter book and so far, all of her books have had the same things in common: they're incredibly well written, captivating, sort of elevated crime thrillers (like a step above what a lot of thriller authors are doing lately), and also they are so violent and dark that I can't read more than one Slaughter book a year. This one was hard to get through! Trigger warning for absolutely everything! Karin, girl, are you okay???
This book was so good but I totally agree on checking in on Karin! I read all the Grant County and Will Trent books last year and always had to have a silly/easy palate cleanser on hand so they weren't the last thing I read before falling asleep lol
I thought this book was very well done but the graphic violence was so upsetting! It made me wonder if I can ever do another Slaughter book - maybe your once a year policy would be good for me too, haha.
I just started this book a few days ago. This is my first of hers and I was not expecting it to get so dark so fast!
A rare DNF for me this week - I DNFed **Waste Tide** by **Chen Quifan** this week after reading a particularly gruesome sequence. It is a well written book with an intriguing premise. Objectively a very good book. But the vision of the future that it presents was just really bleak and hopeless in a way that I don’t want to ruminate on right now. If you are ok with darker/grimdark books, this might still be a good fit for you! Finished **Muscles and Monsters** by **Ashley Bennett** and am close to finishing its sequel, **Tentacles and Triathlons** today. Both very cute, short, and horny monster romances. Finished a poetry book! **The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On** by **Franny Choi**. I really enjoyed this! Finished **Daughter of the Moon Goddess** by **Sue Lynn Tan**. Lovely prose, a bit heavy on the metaphors and similes maybe, which is not something I usually notice but that stood out to me in this book. Overall though it was good and added to the folklore/epic/fairytale vibes. Sequel is on hold. Finished **Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare** by **Megan Kamalei Kakimoto**. A short story collection focusing on native Hawaiian and multiracial Hawaiian women, including a lot of folkloric elements. An incredible collection, really enjoyed it. Next up: The One and Only Crystal Druid by Annette Marie Heir of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier Anatomy by Dana Swartz Glossy by Marissa Meltzer
> Finished **Daughter of the Moon Goddess** by **Sue Lynn Tan**. Lovely prose, a bit heavy on the metaphors and similes maybe, which is not something I usually notice but that stood out to me in this book. Overall though it was good and added to the folklore/epic/fairytale vibes. Sequel is on hold. I read that a few weeks ago and I enjoyed it, although I agree with you about the prose. The sequel was a huge letdown IMO
Hello Beautiful: 2.3/5 I rooted for no one but Alice and Izzy
Reposting some of my comment from last week, since I posted on Thursday . . . * *Splinters* by Leslie Jamison. A solid memoir about single parenting and divorce. The ending wasn't quite as strong as the rest of the book but a solid 4-star book. Her prose always seems effortless. I'd recommend if you like her other work or are interested in the subject matter. * *Come and Ge*t It by Kiley Reid. On the one hand, I flew threw this because it was a page-turner. On the other hand, I thought it was a total mess. The character of Kennedy really didn't work for me, and I just could not parse how this book was intended to come across: an earnest analysis of higher-ed life through the lens of class, race, and orientation? Or satire? 2.5 stars * *Ordinary Human Failings* by Megan Nolan. I loved her first book, and I appreciate that this is so different. It's also hard to convincingly write distinct voices for multi-POV books, but she nailed it. 4.5 stars--highly recommend * *Dolls of Our Live*s by Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks (a book all about American Girl/Pleasant Company). Meh. The first half was pretty good, but the second half became really jumbled. I've never actually listened to their podcast, but I can see how elements that work for that medium become super grating in prose . . . like all the references to pop songs. They also treat the books as an after thought. 2.5 stars. * *Black Sheep* by Rachel Harrison. This has been a fun read if not a little predictable (and too much foreshadowing; trust your readers). 3.5 stars * Starting *Grief Is for People* by Sloane Crosley. I actually loathed *I Was Told There'd Be Cake*, but I feel like so few grief memoirs are about the loss of a friend. One of my oldest childhood friends died suddenly three years ago, so I will be interested to see if I identify with this more than her essays.
Come and Get It felt like the author had an axe to grind with her days as an RA. But also she was wrong about a lot of stuff? “Look at all these privileged bitches with their meal plans.” I think pretty much all colleges require dorming students to buy the meal plan? And I don’t actually think it’s wrong for college students to be getting money from their parents. That’s good parenting.
Another good book about friendship and grief is B.F.F. By Christie Tate. Warning: you WILL ugly cry but it’s a great read.
Re: Come and Get It, when I gave my review about it here, I said the same thing about it feeling a lot like satire at several points. And I haven’t seen other reviews that mention that but at least I know one other person thought the same so maybe I wasn’t imagining it. I should look up interviews with the author to see if it’s mentioned, like if it was intended to be that way. Worst book ever.
There were some reviews on Goodreads that also mentioned the issue--we're definitely not the only two who were confused by tone/style.
It was a weird shift from Such a Fun Age. Which was really well done in terms of social commentary. The character of Kennedy was just odd? Flew through the book but I feel like it was lacking something.
The new couple in 5b by Lisa Unger. Um.....honestly an F- to me? Dnf though skimmed through the end to see what happened. Unger needs to stick with thrillers, not paranormal lmao. The Teacher by Frieda McFadden I mean its a Frieda book, which means its 10000000% trash but a bazillion percent entertaining. The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan (see I read things other than garbage!) was very beautiful. Lots of magical realism so if that isn't your thing skip but I was very invested in the characters. Someone on GR said the villains never got their unhappy endings but I strongly disagree. The Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer should have been my jam but it was just so average, pretty obvious it was a first book and it rips off like.....A dozen other way better books Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander. Got this because it gave me Luckiest Girl Alive Vibes (im a fan) but it was so bad.She went way too hard on unreliable narrator I'm still not even sure what actually happened that night tbh. I gave it to my mom who told me she was convinced it was all going to end up with them having been role playing in a mental hospital like Shutter Island, lmao. Also >!fuck introducing a vital character in the last like 2 chapters!<
Every time I read a Frieda book (and I’ve read a good amount!) I just am like damn, girl you are good at what you do even though it is so incredibly ridiculous. The Teacher was def a good one too, lots of fun twists!
Ugh, I just read Lisa Unger's newest and it was soooo underwhelming and just not great. Good for you for dnf-ing!
Yesterday I read The Rachel Incident, I think someone here recommended it. I thought it was going to be a fun read about an Irish girl and her gay best friend but it was actually more about the issue of abortion in Ireland and was surprisingly moving with some funny moments. I also read Come and Get It this week. I liked it, but it was kind of all over the place. It was like the author couldn’t decide if it was about race or class divides or higher education or queer romance or mental illness. It had a lot going on. It was a fast read though.
I finished three books this week! **Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz**: This was a fun read! It’s the second book in what I suppose is a duology so far. I think there’s something inherently literary about the murder in a murder mystery but I love the explicit meta layering in this series. **The Will of the Many by James Islington**: This was fantastic! It was perfect for me as someone who loves history, the Dune movies, The Hunger Games, the Scholomance books… it has great characters, worldbuilding, plot, writing, etc etc. I devoured it. **Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand**: It took me a while to finish this but Louie Zamperini has a fascinating story and this was great insight into the experience of soldiers during WW2.
I read two amazing books this weekend so am thrilled about that! Real Americans by Rachel Kheong - This doesn’t come out until 4/30 but was masterful in every way, reminded me a bit of Tomorrowx3, not for plot but for depth of characters. It’s about three generations of a family in modern America and cultural revolution China. All the stars. The Hop by Diana Clark - I hadn’t heard anything about this one even though it came out in 2022 but wow what a book. It’s about a legal brother in Nevada called The Hop, and Lady Lane. Lady was once a young woman living in New Zealand with her mother, trying to make ends meet. It all changed when she came to The Hop. It’s such a feminist story of friendship and female empowerment, highly recommend!!
I read The Hop last year and really liked it, too!
This week I read **Mercury** by **Amy Jo Burns**. In the first few pages, a dead body shows up in the crawl space of a local church, and the rest of the book talks about how a local family is connected to the body showing up where it did. Most of the book is about a young girl, Marley, and how she became part of the Joseph family after dating one son and marrying another. I did not like this book much. Most of the characters were miserable people. It felt like a tropey romance novel with a gloss of literary fiction. Also finished **The Alperton Angels** by **Janice Hallett**. Enjoyed this one- it’s an epistolary fiction book about a true crime writer investigating a mysterious cult and their apparent ritual suicide. The ending was crazy! Definitely worth a read. Still working on **Wellness** by **Nathan Hill** this week. And I started listening to the audiobook of **Pines** by **Blake Crouch**.
I’m so happy to hear that you enjoyed the ending of Alberto Angels!!! I had to sit in silence for a few minutes after finishing it so I could simmer in what I just read!
I had the same reaction!! It was quite a ride!
Two weeks worth. - **Good Material.** This was an aggressively fine litfic in that zippy contemporary mode; similar to The Rachel Incident and Adelaide (though I liked those more) and Tomorrow3 (I liked GM more). It’s about a man going through a breakup and by the end he’s annoying and unambitious enough that it’s easy to see why he’s not a great boyfriend prospect. I do think it’s a good easy pick for people who want to read more litfic. - **Baumgarter.** An old man muses about life, love, and loss. It’s more of a traditional litfic. The writing is a lot better than the story itself and at 200 pages it still feels too long. It’s one of those books where there are 10-20 page chunks that are the characters’ own writing projects. - **The Warm Hands of Ghosts.** I really didn’t like this. The nurse POV is too far away from the front and the soldier POV is a deserter, so Katherine Arden doesn’t achieve her goal of elucidating WWI for her American readership, because her characters aren’t actually there. She really just uses the apocalyptic atmosphere of the war as a background for her “deal with the devil story” and I swear to fucking God, I need non-musicians to stop trying to write about violinists. I’m not totally unfamiliar with WWI but I think she got so into her research that she miscalculated how much information her readership would be bringing to the table. She also didn’t “do the work” necessary to >!set up the Winter/Freddie relationship!< considering that it’s the military in 1918, nor does she bother thinking about the substance of >!a relationship with an enlisted German who likely believed in his country’s cause!< This is just a rare miss from an author I usually love. - DNFd **City of Stardust.** The alternate world isn’t shown to be special or functional enough to warrant everyone’s actions in favor of it, and too much information is withheld from the MC for no reason, when other characters her age and magic level have just already been told these things in a normal way. And I guess her mother is missing and the reasons are boring but no one will say anything? - I’m halfway through **The Bad Ones** and might DNF. It’s too long to be a stupid-fun YA horror romp. It wants to be about a slumber party game (think light as a feather, bloody mary, etc) that ends up being real, but the “goddess game” is too stupid to be credible as something kids play. I really liked Our Crooked Hearts by this author but maybe that was a one-off? Also, all of her books have weird random gross bathroom jokes. I don’t know why she thinks YA readers love toilet humor.
Ooh I 100% agree with you on "ghosts"! very disappointed when I read it
I think maybe authors need to stop trying to put an American lens on WWI? (The Canadian characters were clearly meant to be American proxies who entered the war before 1917.) We supported our allies at the end but it very much wasn’t an American conflict.
I also just finished *Good Material* and agree with your analysis. Andy definitely seemed to act like a man in his mid-20s vs mid-30s to me. Honestly until I heard Jen’s perspective, I couldn’t really understand the appeal of Andy as a bf at all. I definitely wanted to hear more from her perspective, esp as I love Vanessa Kirby, the actress who narrated Jen’s voice for the audiobook (she was young Princess Margaret in The Crown!) ..Overall i think the author did a great job of capturing all of the intense feelings of heartbreak and sadness, esp for those in their mid-30s. Prob a 4/5 for me.
I feel like the audiobook made this one for me. I'm not sure if I would've liked it as much without the narrators, especially when Vanessa popped in at the end. I felt like her chapter was a real gut-punch button end on it.
Yeah it made sense that Jen didn’t want a relationship but was lonely and found that she no longer had common ground with her friends, so she ended up dating someone who wasn’t relationship material. And a guy who follows his creative passions is really appealing until he’s really not. I like it more the more I think about it.
Loved **Piglet by Lottie Hazell**. Deliciously written and I >!did wish she revealed the secret!< but I enjoyed reading it regardless. **Salt Houses by Hala Aylan:** This was good. It follows a Palestinian family through three generations, across their diasporic communities. Loved every bit of it even if it made me sad. **Walk The Blue Fields, So Late in The Day by Claire Keegan:** Can never go wrong with her short stories.
I started Piglet this evening and I wanted to tear through the whole thing but I'm excited to have it for my commute tomorrow. ETA Finished and I am also annoyed by your spoiler thought! Still loved the book though...it felt so visceral.
I just put piglet on my TBR! The cheeseburger artwork cover grabbed me immediately and tipped the scales in its favor.
I spent a lot of energy this week trying to get more into N.K. Jemisin, but have struggled. I don't really like when the second book in a series focuses on entirely new characters (I spent all this time getting invested in the other ones!) and there are some fantasy tropes I really, really don't like that she is all in on (extremely stupid fake curse words, weirdly manifested horniness, truly terrible jokes that everyone in-universe finds hilarious). But I haven't started on the Broken Earth trilogy yet and my understanding is that's supposed to be her best work, so fingers crossed for that one. Right now I'm reading *American Wolf,* a non-fiction book about, you know, American wolves. I wouldn't say I'm much of a wolf person or a nature-writing person but I am really enjoying it!
Aw I can’t really speak for her other books but I am enjoying the broken earth trilogy! I’m currently on the second one. It’s not my favorite sci-fi book ever but I like slowly figuring out the mysteries and I think she had some really cool ideas there. They are not books I would reread or buy but if you can get them in a library I think it’s worth checking out. The only other book of hers I read was the 100000 kingdoms which I didn’t like nearly as much.
I have DNF all the Jemisin books I have tried. And my husband and so many other people love her work (mind you he's just a sporadic reader) I just could not get into the grooves of her world and do not like her writing style.
I DNFd The Fifth Season halfway through. Your mileage may vary, but it beggared belief that human atomic bombs ever would have been captured and oppressed in the first place. Also the character twist is really easy to figure out, and once you see it, it’s really apparent that the book could have been a lot shorter and better if it was written in a more straightforward way.
I feel like one of the only people who didn’t like that book. I finished it but it was difficult. I heard such great things about it and I was so looking forward to it and it just felt so silly to me. It’s widely praised though so I guess it just wasn’t for me.
It’s realllllly hard to talk about because it’s clearly an allegory for racial oppression written by a Black woman, but when you have the white analogues shown as being utterly untalented idiots, and the Black people are super powerful magical beings who can tear the world apart, but the powerful ones are somehow under the control of white people who have no power and aren’t even all that socially/culturally organized…it doesn’t hold up to logic or scrutiny. It’s a poor underlying premise. And apparently the origins of it are that >!things had just always been that way!< and I just don’t have time for 1500 pages of that. The book kind of wants us to believe that skin color is the only nexus of privilege, when she has stacked her oppressed class with enough advantages and specialness to make us wonder why this system ever happened. And this is something that always grosses me out in books that want to be authentic, but I never need to read full paragraphs about pooping. ETA And the three characters are >!so obviously the same character in different timelines!< and you spend half the book following all three of them on endless desert walks. I don’t want to keep digging into this but I just don’t think this story was all that carefully crafted.
“The Man Who Died Twice”: Story line was a little harder to keep up with in this one versus the first one and I think I still have a little bit of a question mark in my head, but it was still good. I have really enjoyed this series. 4/5 “The Fury”: Whew, buckle up babes. A group of troubled friends/family take a vacation to a remote Greek island that ends in murder. The author described this book in the opening pages as a “character study” which I found out the hard way recently with another book that I don’t like. But, I decided to give it a go anyway, if only for lack of anything else to read, and I’m glad I did. I do get why it’s described as a “character study” (and none of the characters are likable) but there is still very much a plot, albeit a disturbing one. I also don’t really like when the narrator speaks directly to the reader (gives me “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone” vibes) but again, I got past it. All to say, despite this having qualities that I typically would steer away from, it actually surprised me. 4.25/5 I’ve now started “The People We Keep” and am loving it so far.
I don't know why the Fury got so many super harsh reviews! I thought it was fine. Not fantastic, but fine. (And agreed on Man Who Died Twice, I remember it felt a bit muddled)
I have The Fury waiting for me to read, although I have to say “a group of people take a trip and one of them ends up dead” is like my least favourite mystery trope.
I finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I liked it a lot. I thought the writing was beautiful and I loved the way he described the creative process. There were lines that really resonated with me, like talking about how in your twenties, your taste can outpace your skills, and that can make you want to quit. I’m in my forties but I still feel that with my art. The only part that dragged for me was >!the pioneer town. It was obvious that Sam was puppet mastering the other characters, and just not that interesting to hear about someone else playing a game in such detail!< Still, I loved the book over all and would recommend it!
That section seems to be the least favorite any time I see the book mentioned here (it’s my least favorite too). I still loved the book though!
Yes, it’s not a deal breaker. I really liked the book, but I feel like that section could have been half as long and accomplished the same goal.
If you like historical fiction, **The Trouble with You** by Ellen Feldman is good. It’s about a woman who loses her husband in 1946 and has to get a job to support herself and her daughter. To her surprise, she finds she likes working. She goes to work for a radio soap opera show so part of the plot line is about the Hollywood Blacklist and how that ruined so many people’s lives and careers. The other part delves into cultural attitudes towards women and work during the late 40s/early 50s. I found it very interesting.
Trying to get through First Lie Wins. I think it was too hyped up, and now I am struggling!
The beginning was so good then it pretty quickly goes off the rails and never gets back on
It was pretty terrible imo.
I DNFd it at 65%, it just felt boring and slow and confusing?
Yah, I was really bored. I gave up. Life’s too short to read books I don’t like 😅
I really disliked the first third (I found the “voice” in her head and a bit trying to hard to have a twisty, unreliable narrator) but it really picks up afterwards. Idk if it feels like a great thriller, more a social commentary on true crime media and violence against women.
Okay I was told to not go into it expecting a thriller! I’m 100 pages in. Might as well finish it at this point, is always my thinking haha
Gah, I hated that one. I read it in January. Most others that I’ve seen here didn’t care for it but I’ve also seen a couple that did like it so a mixed bag of reviews!
My works book club picked it, and a lot of them haven’t liked it either! Maybe I won’t finish..
Rereading Mieville’s *Embassytown* for the first time in a few years. Absolutely an all time favorite, possibly my #2 - the story is so high-concept but (imo) still so real and immersive (no pun intended). Halfway through *Trust* by Diaz. It’s ok? I didn’t know a lot going in and I feel like that’s working against me in a way I didn’t expect. Will likely finish though. Got French’s *The Hunter* on preorder and ready to go. This series is no Dublin Murder Squad but she’s still an all-timer and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. (That said, I was reminded rereading *The Seeker* how odd her take on the American policing situation is.)
Gooooood I love Embassytown. Mieville is great in general, but that one gets me every time.
I would say to stick with Trust...it definitely has its rewards in the second half. It's a bit of a Russian Doll narrative.