Started: 3/6/21
Finished: 3/13/21
Book 3 in the Maisie Dobbs series. Any pretense that she isn’t somewhat mystical is gone, and since the pretense is gone, I feel like I can relax about it. It does remove a little of my enjoyment of the mystery aspect, though. Still great characters and good stories, so I’m in the for long haul with the series.
Started: 3/3/21
Finished: 3/6/21
I wasn’t sure, using the title as my only clue, if this was going to be about actual killing or not, and I’m not going to tell you. But I will tell you that this was really good. I have plenty of sympathy for the main character (not total, for reasons), and I both hate and understand her sister. Sort of understand. Enough to understand the main character’s actions. Anyway, it’s good. You should read it.
Started: 2/14/21
Finished: 2/16/21
Weird, kind of horror – I can’t say for sure that I liked it. There was a bit too much musing on the nature of humanity and the thin veneer of civilization. Having teenagers literally run wild, like wild, was an interesting idea, but there wasn’t enough about why the main character was different, if she was different – I’m not even clear on whether I’m supposed to think she was different! Did she just think she was different and so she acted like it? I finished it last night, and the more I think about it, the more dissatisfied I am. This isn’t the good kind of post-book musing.
Started: 2/12/21
Gave up: 2/14/21
Ugh. Retired military, super-capable, gentlemanly know-it-all has to save his town after an EMP takes out all modern amenities. I have read this book before. I have read better versions of this book. This one feels like a non-writer decided to fictionalize his What To Do In Case Of An EMP report, hoping it would get his point across better. It’s all tell, no show, and Mr. Only I Am Making The Right Decisions is going to be proven right. AND it’s the beginning of a series, so he’s probably going to end up saving the world. I’m sitting this one out.
Started: 2/8/21
Finished: 2/12/21
T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon when she’s writing kids’ books) is one of the guests of honor at this convention I’m (virtually) attending this weekend, so I figured I’d read her next to most recent book before then. I’ve read three before this and loved them, and I love this. I love it when I find a new favorite.
Started: 2/4/21
Finished: 2/8/21
A fiction recommendation by Sarah Gailey (still kind of obsessed). This guy writes horror. Sort of funny horror? He’s VERY good at immersing you in the setting. This is 1980s Charleston, and the 80s is very 80s, and the teenagers are very teenager-y, and the horror is mostly gross. I liked it, but only as much as I ever like horror. There’s one scene I wish I could forget.
Started: 2/3/21
Gave up: 2/4/21
Non-fiction recommendation by Sarah Gailey (I’m kind of obsessed). It’s about fungi. Why would I read (or like) this book? It’s so not me. Except, dude, the author’s name is Merlin Sheldrake. And supposedly, he’s funny in that dry British way. And there are footnotes!
Update: I was promised footnotes! There weren’t any. I must have been thinking of some other book. Also, not that funny. I cannot get excited about fungi, no matter how lyrical prose. Possibly because the lyrical prose.
I gave up.
Started: 1/22/21
Finished: 1/30/21
Book 2 of the Maisie Dobbs series. She’s still mostly perfect, but her detective work has a woo-woo element that I’m not sure I’ll like long-term. I was expecting pure investigation and deductive reasoning, with maybe some insight, but she practically has visions and gets feelings about things. I’m interested, but I’ll have to see where this goes.
Started: 1/3/21
Finished: 1/11/21
Last in the Great Library series. It ends well, but there’s a magical element that feels…not shoehorned in exactly, but maybe not as well-developed as everything else. These books have a lot going on, and I think the series could have ended without it. BUT I liked them very much, and I’m planning to read some of the author’s other stuff.
Started: 12/26/20
Finished: 12/27/20
I can’t remember where I heard about this book, but it starts out HARD. A twenty-something black woman babysits for a white family, and one night, the mother calls her unexpectedly to take the toddler out for a little bit so they can deal with an emergency at home. The babysitter tells her she’s not dressed like she normally is (she was out with friends), and the mother says that’s fine, so she takes the toddler down the street to a local expensive grocery store to just kill time. A shopper calls security on her, implying that she kidnapped the little girl, and it’s a REALLY tense scene. It turns out fine, and the rest of the book talks about the aftermath, but in a very anticlimactic way. Well, until the climax. Anyway, it’s about how all these characters see each other and how they react and think about themselves, and it’s pretty funny and enjoyable, which I did NOT expect after that scary beginning.
Started: 12/19/20
Finished: 12/25/20
Book 4 in the Great Library series. The stakes keep getting higher. No, the stakes have always been the same. The tension is ratcheting up.
Started: 12/15/20
Finished: 12/19/20
I’ve been a little off Ann Patchett for a few years. I’m afraid to re-read Bel Canto, which I read several times years ago and LOVED and gave as gifts to many many people. What if I have changed enough that I don’t love it anymore? Anyway, I picked up The Dutch House. First, it’s good. When I couldn’t read it, I wanted to read it. Second, turns out that in order for me to LOVE a book, I need it to have a plot. It’s not that nothing happens – it’s a family saga, plenty happens – but it’s a family saga, so there’s no mystery to solve, no murder to avenge, no THING to DO. And I have learned that I prefer books that have a THING the characters need to DO.
Started: 12/9/20
Finished: 12/14/20
Book 3 in the Great Library series. How will our rebels overcome evil in this installment? I’m not telling. You’ll have to read it.
Started: 12/5/20
Finished: 12/9/20
I found this thriller on a recommendation, but I can’t remember from where. I think it was described as similar to the movie Get Out, which I haven’t seen yet – not big on horror, but I’d like to see that one if I can psych myself up for it. Anyway, I’m lukewarm on it mostly because the thriller part doesn’t really get going until the last quarter of the book. It’s an uncomfortable read, in a good way – it’s about the evils of gentrification as some truly racist white people get away with small, medium, and large awful things as they move in. And if it hadn’t been billed as a thriller, I would probably feel better about it as a story. The first part was really good (and uncomfortable).
But the male lead being a white guy feels like a sop, like the author was cautioned that “not all white people are bad”, and while on one hand I appreciate that, on the other hand I think it undermines the point.
Started: 12/2/20
Finished: 12/5/20
Second in the Great Library series, still good stuff.
Started: 11/17/20
Finished: 12/2/20
I almost gave up on this one halfway through. It starts out really good, in a future after a climate disaster, when everyone has their minimum needs met, money is social capital, and everyone basically lives in the Matrix. Our main character is trying to help someone who may or may not be a sentient AI, her dad is a conspiracy theorist, she’s a superstar gamer, and there’s a police officer after her client. Super good, I was super involved. And then, exactly at the 50% mark, they threw in a curve ball that almost made me throw the book across the room. (For perspective, the last time I actually threw a book was at the end of The Day After Tomorrow, when they brought out Hitler’s cryogenically frozen head. This wasn’t THAT bad.)
I kept reading, and I got hooked again fairly quickly so I could forgive the weird plot twist that messed with a perfectly good AI/Matrix book.
I know it’s not clear, but I DID like it, and I DO recommend it.
Started: 11/14/20
Finished: 11/17/20
This is the first book in the Great Library series, and it came highly recommended. I’ve been burned (heh) by that before, so I didn’t have particularly high hopes, especially when I realized that our main characters were all teenagers (sigh), but what a wonderful surprise this one turned out to be! It starts out with one premise, immediately makes you rethink it, and then gradually gives you a whole different perspective, and I loved it.
Started: 11/14/20
Gave up: 11/14/20
I read the first short story in this collection and started the second, and no, thank you. These are not for me. A little too graphic, a little to uncomfortable, a little too “I’m not sure what happened here”, and I decided to move on.
Started: 11/1/20
Finished: 11/13/20
This book marks the first time I’ve been disappointed by an Ann Leckie book. The style is different, but interesting-different, not off-putting, so that was fine, but I finished this book over a month ago and I cannot remember the ending. I remember the reveal, but I don’t know what happens to the characters. So…I suppose that’s saying something about how I feel about this book.
Started: 10/29/20
Finished: 11/1/20
Third book in the Abhorsen series, combines all the characters and picks up immediately after the second book. Good ending to the first trilogy.