Started: 1/16/20
Finished: 1/20/20
Thriller/horror story. I gave up on another Ruth Ware book, but I gave this one a try on Molly’s recommendation. I was truly creeped out by it (I stopped reading it at night), but…I can’t really say more without giving stuff away. It was pretty good.
Started: 1/17/20
Gave up: 1/18/20
Probably good, but I was not in the mood for an “I’m too old for this shit” kind of ghoul hunter.
Started: 1/4/20
Finished: 1/16/20
Book 2 of the Alanna books. She’s 14-16 (at least in the first third of the book), so it’s a little easier to take, but she can do EVERYTHING and kick ass at it. So, yay for her, but also COME ON. Still fun, though.
Started: 1/11/20
Finished: 1/16/20
Second in the fairy trilogy by Holly Black. Good middle book. Great ending.
Started: 1/4/20
Finished: 1/10/20
I’ve read (and liked) one other fairy story by Holly Black, and she’s a guest of honor at a convention we’re going to, so I figured I’d read more of her stuff. This is the first in a trilogy, also about the Fae (you can’t just call them fairies when they’re trying to kill you). It starts off DARK (bad stuff happens to some kids under 10 before they get packed off to live in Faerie), and then we jump ahead ten years and follow them as teenagers.
Started: 12/16/19
Finished: 12/28/19
Dolls are scary, right? So I assumed this book would be creepy. It’s not, although one or two parts are a little bit weird in a scary way. It was good, but I don’t think it stuck the ending. It’s about a man who goes on a cross-country trip to meet the woman he loves, who he has only corresponded with via letter. Along the way, he reads a book of short stories by an author the woman is interested in, and the stories are part of this book, too. Those are the parts that get a little creepy, and the main character and his love both think the stories parallel their own lives a little too closely. Unfortunately, the ending doesn’t do anything with that, and I was left hanging.
Started: 12/14/19
Finished: 12/16/19
First in a series a girl who wants to be a knight. I would have eaten this up if I’d found it when I was 10 (it was published in 1983). I enjoyed the first book (and I’ll keep reading), but I’m having a little bit of a hard time believing that this 10-year-old girl would talk the way she does, have the power (magical) that she does, know all these things, be able to do all this stuff, etc. She makes it to age 14 or so by the end of the book, so hopefully her ability to master EVERYTHING will get a little easier to swallow as she gets older.
Started: 12/1/19
Finished: 12/14/19
13 short stories, all SF, all really good. Two in this collection were up for Hugos in the last couple of years.
Started: 12/2/19
Finished: 12/13/19
First in a series about magic based on Indian culture, set in a desert country with gods and spirits and power-hungry emperor-priests. Really good. I think the sequel follows a different character, and I’m a little bummed about that.
Started: 11/24/19
Finished: 12/1/19
Military SF with some weird circular time travel and a narrator who doesn’t know what’s going on, with a prisoner interrogation going on as a framing device, and really, I liked it. I’m not sure it got fully explained, or maybe I need to read it again, but it reminded me of Starship Troopers, and I liked it.
Started: 11/19/19
Finished: 11/23/19
Political intrigue on an island nation where the haves live on the mountain and the have-nots live by the sea, and the divide between them is stark and violent. Also, YA and LGBTQ+ and pretty interesting overall. There’s a sequel. I will read it.
Started: 11/19/19
Gave up: 11/19/19
Marketed as a sweeping political drama series with battles and intrigue, it sounded great, but OH the writing. I had hoped it was just the prologue, so I pushed through. It wasn’t just the prologue. I didn’t make it through the first battle.
Started: 11/11/19
Gave up: 11/12/19
I found this mystery series in one of those library/book publisher magazines, too, but I couldn’t get into this one at all. It’s set in Salem, so I assume magic will come into it, but it’s starting with astrology and a dead fake astrologer’s cat named Orion (dead astrologer, live cat), except they change it to O’Ryan because I don’t know why and I quit.
Started: 11/10/19
Finished: 11/11/19
I found this mystery series in one of those library/book publisher magazines. Small town librarian, all the book titles are cute puns, so I figured it was worth trying. And it was…okay. I’m not in a hurry to continue the series, but I did enjoy it, and there was a breakup scene in chapter 3 that was so very satisfying.
Started: 11/3/19
Gave up: 11/10/19
Young adult, time travel, heist/mystery. At around 50%, I’m not sure I’m going to finish it. I’m intrigued by the complication that arose around a quarter of the way in that has not been explained yet, but a) I feel like I can live without knowing what’s going on, and b) I’m not convinced it’s going to be explained in this book. Is this part of a series? I should find out.
I gave up at 70%. That’s when they explained exactly how they were going solve their problem. I’m sure it won’t go exactly as planned, but that’s close enough for me to know how it ends, and I put it down. Meh. Also, not part of a series.
Started: 10/21/19
Finished: 11/3/19
Sort of zombies, sort of apocalypse, sort of medical thriller, and really long. Really long is not usually a problem, but I’m reading at a glacial pace lately. It’s a problem.
Update: it reminded me of Stephen King, and separately but also specifically, it’s similar to The Stand. That’s not a bad thing, but I’m not a huge Stephen King fan, so I think it puts this book into the “not for me” category. Despite the fact that I finished it, which is saying something recently. I’ve given up on a LOT of books lately.
Anyway, it was good, made me laugh a couple of times, made me cringe (like HARD cringe, like I kind of wish I hadn’t read that scene because I’ll never be able to get rid of it cringe) at least twice, and if you don’t like books like The Stand, you won’t like this one.
Started: 10/12/19
Finished: 10/21/19
Sequel to Lock In, same issues with dialogue, but otherwise a good story and a good book.
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.
Started: 9/28/19
Gave up: 9/28/19
I’m sure this book is really funny, but I am not its audience. Or I was not in the right mood. Either way, I gave up on the second essay.
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.