Started: 9/24/22
Gave up: 9/27/22
I don’t remember what I thought this book was going to be about, but I certainly didn’t expect a bored and thoroughly unpleasant 30-something woman, a somewhat interesting young government thug, and a missing person who sounded like someone I would find pretentious and obnoxious. Not for me. Gave it up.
Oh, wait, I know. I was confusing it with Certain Dark Things, which I am still interested in reading.
Started: 9/22/22
Gave up: 9/24/22
I have been wary of David Mitchell books. Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks sound so impenetrable, and that’s really not what I’m looking for in my fiction. So when Jo Walton wrote basically the same thing and then said that this book (and Utopia Avenue) are completely different and totally wonderful, I figured I would trust her. I HAVE to stop doing that. I started this book, and I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for 17th century Japanese and Dutch morality and hand-wringing and ugh with the overly gross descriptions. So I gave it up. I MIGHT still try Utopia Avenue when I get around to it.
Started: 9/18/22
Gave up: 9/22/22
Giving up two books in a row is never a good sign for my state of mind, but I think I’m justified here. I made it to 72% before I got tired of the drama between 22-year-olds. It started out cute, light, good immigrant family stuff, but at the point where I quit, stuff that had barely been hinted at in the first three quarters of the book was all of a sudden brought out and OH, here’s the obstacle our characters have to overcome, and ugh, I don’t care. Not a good setup.
Started: 9/17/22
Gave up: 9/18/22
The premise is interesting, and it got me through the first 90 pages, but no. Girl (on the eve of her 19th birthday) begins living her life out of order, meaning that her consciousness spends every year in her own body in a random year of her future life. So when she turns 21, maybe she jumps to her body when she’s 30. (I don’t know – I quit before that.)
I quit for two reasons. First, I don’t like the character, and I feel like that’s a failure of the writing, not of my imagination. She’s going through a lot, and I would like to feel sympathic and understanding when she’s bitchy to the people who are trying to help her, but even though the reader is ONLY in her head, there’s not enough to bring me to sympathy. Then again, she’s still a teenager when this begins, so maybe I should give her more slack, but THEN I feel like I shouldn’t have to put in this much effort. So I quit.
Started: 9/6/22
Finished: 9/17/22
I can’t say I liked this book. A lot of the first half was too dryly written, a little too academic. It makes perfect sense why it was that way – I mean, it takes a long time for spiders to evolve to the level of intelligence necessary for a first person point of view to be viable – but it means I didn’t really get drawn in. The problems to be solved and their eventual solutions were interesting and unusual, and maybe I’ll read the sequel, but it’s not jumping to the top of my TBR list.
Also, giant sentient spiders. No, thank you.
Started: 9/6/22
Gave up: 9/6/22
I love Jo Walton, but I do not love all that she recommends. She likes to read a lot of romance, which is not an issue in itself; I like romance, too. I just don’t like the ones SHE likes. This is at least the second one she has really enjoyed that I have put down EARLY.
This one is about two people who fall in love despite bickering the whole book, or so I’m told. I quit before they even met. The woman seemed fine, character-wise, and the writing didn’t bother me, from what little I read, but the man! What an ass. And the writing suffered from his point of view. In a page and a half, I was hit over the head 6 times with how he lives with his little sister. His sister? No, his little sister. Who is an adult with a job. But you say he lives with sister? No, he lives with his little sister. Who cares? How is this important? It’s either bad writing or a deliberate choice to make the guy look like he’s intimidated by his sister’s success and covering it by reminding HIMSELF at every opportunity that he’s older. Either way, it makes me not like him, and why would I bother reading a romance featuring a guy I do not like? He has a job barely works at and doesn’t care about and then tries to get someone fired when she suggests that maybe she could do his job better. Anyway, I quit.
Started: 8/28/22
Finished: 9/5/22
Sequel to The Unspoken Name, which I really enjoyed. I liked this second book so much I emailed the author to thank her. And I learned there will be a third! (That wasn’t guaranteed, or even necessary, based on how it ended, but I’m happy to hear it.) There’s a time jump I found jarring at first, but pretty quickly I loved that the characters got to grow up. I think that just means I’m old, but still!