Started: 10/17/23
Finished: 10/22/23
Yay for main characters who are actually adults (and over 30!), but otherwise this was just okay. Enjoyable enough, not great, sometimes annoying. Writer for an SNL-like show tries not to fall in love with the hot musical guest man because he’s too famous, he’s too attractive – she’s too insecure. Whatever, they work it out, and if they make a movie out of it, I’ll see it.
Started: 10/11/23
Finished: 10/19/23
A professor visits her old boarding school, runs a class about podcasting, and starts a podcast where she accuses just about everyone she knows of murdering her roommate 20 years before. It started out good and then got pretty tiresome.
Started: 8/16/23
Gave up: 8/18/23
I don’t remember how I heard of this book, but it’s a time-loop story, and I like those. Except I really didn’t. Didn’t like the character, didn’t enjoy how the plot was unfolding. Gave up!
Started: 5/6/23
Gave up: 5/27/23
Nice writing, interesting characters, but NOTHING was happening. It had a sense of foreboding, but it was taking too long to get anywhere. I gave up.
Started: 4/8/23
Finished: 4/14/23
I found this book mostly annoying. The conflict was predictable, and the two “main” characters should NOT have ended up together. The guy was truly awful, and sure, he got better, but he was specifically awful to the woman he ended up with, without EVER apologizing to her for being awful TO her! I don’t think it was in character for her to not insist on an apology or an acknowledgement or whatever. No happily ever after for them!
Started: 2/10/23
Finished: 2/21/23
SO GOOD. Historical fiction, started out by making me laugh, ended up making me cry (TWICE). I have been recommending it to everyone.
Started: 11/3/22
Finished: 11/8/22
This started out super interesting (it’s set in LA’s Chinatown and written like a movie script), and it’s a fast read, but I nearly gave it up around 2/3 of the way through. I don’t think there’s any question about the conceit (that I don’t want to spoil for anyone), but I will admit to be confused about what was reality and what was, I don’t know, maybe allegory?, a couple of times.
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: 3/23/22
Gave up: 3/25/22
I just couldn’t with this book. I read an article by the author, and her description of this book was intriguing, but it didn’t work for me. We see alternate futures for this woman, all starting from one moment in time, as she makes minor changes in that moment for every iteration. Fascinating! I love Sliding Doors-type stories! Why only nine? I don’t know. I didn’t make it through all nine because the story was about a married couple who, when they got together and then married, always agreed they didn’t want kids. The woman had NEVER wanted kids. Then the husband changed his mind and basically bullied her into trying. The decision point (very beginning) is when he finds a full bottle of prenatal vitamins, vitamins he bullied her into taking, and proof she’s not taking them and not trying to get pregnant. How she reacts, in major and minor ways, drives each one of the lives.
To start, that’s infuriating. Her reasons for not wanting kids are valid and thought-out, and she has to defend her decisions to EVERYONE. That felt real, legitimate. But THEN – hang on.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
In at least two of the lives, she has a baby and never looks back, thinks to herself “how could I ever not want this baby?”, never thinks she should have stuck to her principles.
INFURIATING!
So I gave it up. Maybe she sticks to her principles in lives I didn’t get to, but I stopped caring. I don’t need to read books that make me angry.
Started: 8/9/21
Finished: 8/14/2021
I saw this while browsing in Powell’s over four years ago, so I think I can be forgiven for not remembering anything about it by the time I actually read it. I went in thinking it would be like Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, a book I loved when I read it, although I’m afraid I won’t like that one if I read it again.
It was not like Where’d You Go, Bernadette. I did like it immediately, particularly after giving up on two books in a row the day before. The first few pages were funny, and then it took a dark turn but was still funny, and then it was less funny and I started wondering if I had been supposed to think it was funny – was I laughing at a mentally ill person?
I was unsure the whole middle of the book, and I was afraid it was going to be predictable and have an unearned ending, and then it kicked me and I cried and I liked the ending very much.
I don’t know if you should read it.
Started: 8/8/21
Gave up: 8/8/2021
Light read, supposed to be a fun romance, and OH MY GOD I DON’T CARE. The main character is not relatable, the situations are not funny, and I gave it up the same day I started it. Jo Walton, an author whose books I like and whose recommendations I often enjoy, is WRONG about this one (she thought it was terrific and funny).
Started: 7/22/21
Finished: 7/27/21
Recommended by someone I follow on Twitter, with their guarantee that I would LOVE it. I did not love it. It was fine, it was okay, but I really didn’t like the modern day characters. I found myself hoping for a ghost and at least one murder. Meh.
Started: 6/1/21
Gave up: 6/2/21
I like my fiction weird, and I’m happy to be dropped into an unexplained or unexplainable situation right off the bat, but this was incomprehensible to me. Two seemingly normal people dropped into a situation that immediately got super-weird, and they’re barely questioning it. Certainly not panicking like anyone else would. Am I supposed to be reading into it? Probably. Did I have the patience? I did not.
Started: 4/28/21
Finished: 5/5/21
Recommended by Sarah Gailey. There’s a cult! And a missing sister! And trauma! Good, but I was disappointed by the reveal and the end. Which were both quite abrupt.
Started: 4/9/21
Finished: 4/12/21
Another Sarah Gailey recommendation, another good one. It’s a book about a fictional band in LA in the 70s, told in the style of an oral history. Very rock biography/documentary, and very real.
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: 2/12/21
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: 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: 1/23/21
Finished: 1/26/21
I’ve been meaning to read this for years, but I guess better late than never. This book is so good. Young adult can be hard to read. If it’s bad, it’s cringe-y bad, and I’ll usually put it down. This is good. And it’s hard. I cried, I got angry, I felt helpless, I cried some more, and I got angry some more. And then I cried again. I was so emotional, nearly the whole book, that I stopped reading it in bed. I switched to a friendly murder mystery before going to sleep because I’d be more able to wind down and fall asleep. I’m not going to tell you the plot, even the beginning – it’s easy enough for you to find that. And as awful as it is to know what prompted this book to be written, it’s so much worse knowing how much worse things have gotten since this book was published not even four years ago.