fiction

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

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Started: 1/19/21
Finished: 1/22/21

I’d heard of this series, but I didn’t start it until Jess recommended it. I LOVED this book by the time I was only 30 pages in, and I raced through it (as much as I can during the work week these days). I’m thrilled there are 15 more books so far. She’s a private investigator of sorts in England in the period between the world wars.

The only thing I’m hoping gets addressed later on is that she’s kind of perfect. Like, she has no flaws, she has lots of useful skills, and everyone loves her. I mean, I love her, but she needs to have SOMEthing to improve on, right? She did one not great thing, but a) we only find out about it at the end of the book, and b) we find out about it as she’s doing something to correct it.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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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.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

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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.

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

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Started: 8/22/20
Finished: 8/24/20

This was a good book, YA, and a hard read.  The teenagers all feel very real, even though I was nothing like them in high school, and neither were most (if not all) if the kids I knew, but hey, times are different.  It’s emotional and disturbing, and I couldn’t put it down.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

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Started: 8/6/20
Finished: 8/9/20

Molly recommended this book to me.  She likes thrillers, I like thrillers, but I think she only recommends to me the ones she’s not sure she likes because she needs to talk about them.  This is the second time I’ve read one from her that I felt I had to push through.  It was interesting, and I don’t NOT recommend it, but it’s one of those where the narrator starts to make decisions that YOU know are wrong, that even HE knows are wrong, and it’s hard not to get frustrated.

Old Lovegood Girls by Gail Godwin

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Started: 8/2/20
Finished: 8/6/20

I thought about putting this down shortly after starting it.  Not because it was bad, it’s very much not bad, but because it wasn’t grabbing me.  I wasn’t positive I was in the right mood for it.  But I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I couldn’t stop reading, and I stayed up late two nights running because I couldn’t stop reading, and then it ended, and I’m a little sad.  It’s about two women who meet in college and then separate and how their lives went on.

Would Like To Meet by Rachel Winters

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Started: 5/16/20
Finished: 5/19/20

It’s a book, not a movie, so while I would call it a rom-com, I suppose it’s more correctly chick lit.  It’s totally a rom-com, and it name-checks every rom-com out there because part of the plot is that it steals the meet-cutes from them.  And just like a rom-com, it was SO OBVIOUS who the love interest was that it was infuriating that no one else seemed to think so.

It was light, it was mostly cute, but it seemed to go a little longer than it had to.  I’d watch the movie, but I wouldn’t re-read the book.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

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Started: 5/2/20
Finished: 5/6/20

This book started out really cute, turned absurd, got serious, took a dark turn, and ended on the cute side again without taking into account the darkness.  The second half, especially the last little bit, felt like an exercise rather than a novel, so I can’t say I fully recommend it, at least not as an immersive novel.  On the other hand, it was a really interesting exercise in use of language, and the made up months and days made me laugh, especially toward the end.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin

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Started: 4/27/20
Finished: 5/2/20

Having just finished a couple of very pleasant adventure stories with likeable protagonists, I almost physically recoiled at the main character’s attitude in the first few pages.  It’s an adjustment.  It’s also about a murder, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Pretty much all of the male characters came across as arrogant chauvinists, including (especially) the good guys, so the book was a bit much to take.  I enjoyed it, but I can’t say I liked it.

The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

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Started: 11/12/19
Finished: 11/19/19

Recommended by Jo Walton (an author I like and whose recommendations I trust), it’s a somewhat quiet story about a British family who goes to France for a vacation, immediately lose their mother to hospital convalescence, and hang out for the summer in this hotel pretty much on their own, over the objections of the women who run the hotel.  The oldest is 16 and is sick for the first half of the book, so basically not a character until later, and the narrator is the next oldest, at 13.  There are shenanigans going on the background that the narrator doesn’t understand completely.  It’s good, it’s disturbing at times – I think I liked it.  It definitely makes me want to go to France.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

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Started: 9/28/19
Gave up: 9/28/19

I’m sure this book is really funny, but I am not its audience: Part 2.  Or I was not in the right mood: Part 2.  The man climbs out the window right away, but I don’t know why.  He leaves his own party and I don’t know why.  He STEALS SOMEONE’S SUITCASE at a bus station on, like, the third page, and that just seems really cruel AND I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY, so I gave up.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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Started: 9/23/19
Finished: 9/27/19

I almost put this book down several times out of, not boredom, but kind of a “this isn’t what I want to be reading right now” feeling.  I kept convincing myself I wanted to see where it was going.  It won the Pulitzer Prize by being about an author who dated a man who won the Pulitzer Prize  and who was trying to get his third book published.  It got rejected because no one wanted to read another book about a man wandering around his city coming to terms with his life.  What was this book about?  A man wandering the world coming to terms with his life.  I suppose I appreciate the lampshading, but at the same time, it’s kind of disgusting.

So…it was good, but not for me.  I finished it anyway.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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Started: 5/8/19
Finished: 5/10/19

I’ve heard so much about this book while also learning absolutely nothing about it, so I really didn’t know what to expect.  It’s an interesting story, but I think I was looking for more to come out of it.  More…plot.  So I’m left feeling unsatisfied. Sort of “that’s it?”  I’m pretty sure that’s the fault of my expectations, though, and not of the book itself. I need more distance from it.

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

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Started: 4/24/19
Finished: 4/25/19

Overall, I don’t think I liked this book.  I read it quickly, it drew me in pretty well, but it’s written from the point of view of this woman who never seems to have matured past college age.  She’s telling the story to someone, and her voice is irritating.  And her two great loves?  Also irritating.  I would not be friends with any of them, and oh my god, she’s just wrong.  I don’t think I felt this strongly about that when I finished it.  Given a week to let it sit, and yeah – I didn’t like it.

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe

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Started: 4/18/19
Finished: 4/19/19

This is a movie waiting to happen, and I’d happily watch it.  It’s the story of a lonely, sarcastic, black French Canadian teenager transplanted to Austin, Texas in the middle of high school. In some ways it’s predictable, in other ways it isn’t, and I flew through it.

When You Read This by Mary Adkins

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Started: 4/18/19
Gave up: 4/18/19

I couldn’t get into this one.  It’s the story of a woman who died told via the emails of the people who knew her (and one person who didn’t know her but started working for her boss after she died).  It might be depressing, it might be uplifting, I think it’s supposed to be funny, but I didn’t stick around to find out for sure.  I wasn’t learning enough about the characters to care, and the intern really bugged me.