Month: August 2020

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

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Started: 8/28/20
Gave up: 8/30/20

It feels familiar at the beginning, and I wasn’t in the mood for another same-old story, but I’d heard good things about it and the premise is fascinating, so I kept going. Then there were hints of something really dark and awful going on that the heroine is going to find out, and okay, I’m interested, but she doesn’t follow up!  Or she’s more interested in the same-old!  Are you kidding me?  And then I found out that it’s the first in a series, so I’m not even going to find everything out by the end of the book, and you know, I’m making up my mind to quit reading as I’m typing this.

Yup, I just read a few more pages and then skimmed a few more and NOTHING IS HAPPENING.  Next!

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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Started: 8/24/20
Finished: 8/28/20

I liked the beginning, and then I got bored, and then I got interested again, and then I was disappointed.  The book ends like it’s going to have a sequel, but I don’t think it’s planned to be a series, so it just feels unfinished.  It’s supposed to be this feminist-thriller-climate change-body horror variation of Lord of the Flies, and some of that comes through, but then it just ends.

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.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Started: 8/15/20
Finished: 8/22/20

I wanted to love this book because I loved the one before it, but I was SO confused by it.  It seemed to be rewriting the first book in flashback, with different characters and different events, and while that does get explained, it was confusing, not gripping.  And then at around 70%, it got 1000 times more fun for me, for reasons I will not explain because spoilers, but that wasn’t enough. And then it ended, and what?  I don’t know what happened.  I don’t understand the world this series is set in.  I love the character of Gideon from the first book, and I really feel for Harrow in both books, and I WILL read the third book because I just have to know, but I was disappointed not to love this one as much as the first.

He objects to naps with his whole being

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No naps in six days, guys.  SIX.  DAYS.  And Jack has woken up four of the last six nights.  We are all still sane (we think – would we know?), but Jack has the darkest circles under his eyes.  It’s so sad.  Today, he tried the poop method again.  It wasn’t a constant barrage, but “Poop.  POOP.” was interspersed regularly with “Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama” and “Hello tree?”  (“Hello tree” is his request to open the skylight shade, which he knows signals the end of the nap.  When I answer with “No, night-night tree”, he gives a giant wail of despair.)  Anyway, he kept saying poop and I kept not smelling poop and then a half-hour later he was no longer lying to me.

Maybe it was luck (on his part), maybe he noticed he had to go and was telling me (a milestone), or maybe he willed himself to poop to get out of nap time (a superpower).  Regardless, that was it for nap time today.

Things were going so well!

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

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Started: 8/9/20
Finished: 8/14/20

I don’t know how to talk about this one without spoilers.  First, several authors and reviewers I trust LOVE this book.  I know the story of Tam Lin because I’ve read two other adaptations of it (Rose and Rot by Kat Howard, which I really enjoyed, and Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which, according to these same authors and reviewers, should also have been a life-changing experience – it was not).  Since I knew the story already, I was looking for clues early and pretty sure I was seeing them, but OH MY GOD this story took forEVER to get to the point, and then it rushed through EVERYthing right at the end.  And left a lot of questions.  NOT lifechanging for me.  Maybe if I’d read it at a younger age…or maybe not.

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.

Total about face

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I’m back after a week-plus of silence – all my free time has been spent working or watching WorldCon panels – and I just re-read my last post where I got all excited about Robert Silverberg, and MAN do I have different opinions about that now.  After the Hugo Awards ceremony.  After the Hugo Awards ceremony that wouldn’t end.  After the Hugo Awards ceremony that wouldn’t end because two super-famous, super-old, super-white, and super-out-of-touch men wouldn’t stop talking about the past. It was mostly GRRM, but Silberberg’s segment was just as bad.  They mispronounced finalists’ names repeatedly and spent SO MUCH TIME talking about Campbell without ONCE acknowledging that the name of the award was changed to the Astounding Award, let alone WHY it was changed.  It felt deliberate, which, if it was, is super insulting.  If it wasn’t deliberate, then the nicest things you can say about them are that they’re hopelessly out of touch and possibly senile.  I’m not going to get into it much more than that (there are many people who did so online, and they go into much more detail), but I would like to take back my squee.  It left a bad taste in my mouth.

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.