Two stars = eh, it was okay
Three stars = liked it
Four stars = really, really liked it
Five stars = absolutely loved it
1-Star (2)
*When Women Were Birds (Non-Fiction, Terry Tempest Williams)
I really wanted to love this book because I’ve heard so many good things about it. But, I was soooooo bored. And it was WAY to ‘woo-woo’ for me. Like when she wrote about how she talked to rocks and the rocks listened to her. ??? What the heck? The entire time I read the book, I kept thinking….’what am I MISSING? Everyone loves this book’. Oh well.
(library book)
*To Have and Have Not (Fiction, Ernest Hemingway)
This is widely known as Hemingway’s worst novel (even Hemingway said that) and I can see why. My summary is that a criminal (and murderer) transports immigrants by boat and runs into loads of trouble along the way (obviously).
(owned book, but listened to on audio, will donate to LFL)
2-Stars (5)
**Shelter (Fiction, Yun Jung)
Eh….not a strong plot (just a bunch of bad and depressing things happening) and unlikable characters. Extremely forgettable.
(library book, but listened to on Hoopla audio)
**Angle of Repose (Fiction, Wallace Stegner)
This book won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1972. And I can completely see why. Stegner’s writing is amazing. And this book is ambitious. But also very long. And slow. It’s one of those books that I ‘wanted’ to like and felt like I should like, but I just didn’t. And that’s okay. I’m not giving up on Wallace Stegner, that’s for sure.
(owned book, will donate to LFL, but listened to audio book on RB Digital)
**The Shipping News (Fiction, Annie Proulx)
Another Pulitzer Prize (1994) ‘dud’. I loved the setting (coastal town, Newfoundland), but I pretty much hated every character in the book.
(owned book, will donate to LFL, but listened to audio book on RB Digital)
**Cannery Row (Fiction, John Steinbeck)
I definitely would have given this 3 stars if I had really liked any of the characters. John Steinbeck is such an amazing writer though….I swear he could write a coding manual and make it interesting.
(owned book, will donate to LFL, but listened to audio book on RB Digital)
**The Elite (Fiction, Kiera Cass, Selection Series book #2)
Not as good as the first one (see 3-star section below). But….I’m IN this now ha ha.
(owned book, keeper….for now)
3-Stars (7)
***The Buddah in the Attic (Fiction, Julie Otsuka)
This was fiction, but it was written kind of in essay style about women who came to America (San Francisco) from China at the turn of the century.
(book, donated to LFL)
***The Clay Girl (Fiction, Heather Tucker)
Okay, so I can NOT recommend this book….very adult themes going on here. Think…Prince of Tides meets the 60’s, with creepy uncles and stepfathers. However, the writing and story were great. Books like this are hard. Because they’re so good, but they will never get more than a 3-star rating from me due to the content.
(library book)
***The Selection (Fiction, Kiera Cass, Selection Series book #1)
Ahhh….fluff. Good, old-fashioned, Young-Adult fluffy fluff fluff fluff. And I loved it. But because it’s fluff, only 3 stars for me. This is like the Bachelor meets the Hunger Games in a post-World War 4 dystopian world. It was totally predictable but I couldn’t put it down (especially after the halfway point). And I already have the next two books in the series. Yup. I’m not even ashamed.
(owned book, keeper….for now)
***An American Marriage (Fiction, Tayari Jones)
This was good, a book about a newly-married man who was falsely accused of committing a crime and sent to prison for 5 years. The book is a lot of letters between Roy (the falsely accused) and his wife, Celestial. But when Roy gets out of prison, he discovers a lot of things have changed and both he and his wife have to figure out how to start over (and if it’s even possible). The writing was excellent. The reason it didn’t get 4 stars from me is because the middle of the book REALLY dragged for me.
My favorite lines of the whole book:
”But home isn’t where you land; home is where you launch. You can’t pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.”
(listened to for free on Hoopla audio)
***Four Seasons in Rome (Non-Fiction, Anthony Doerr)
10 years before ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ was published, Anthony Doerr was awarded a grant to live in Rome. So he packed up his wife and their twin baby boys and lived in Rome for a year so he could write. Guess what he started writing?!? However, that is not the focus of this book. This book was his account of his year in a foreign country with a foreign language with twin babies and his struggle with insomnia. It’s a nice quick read. (And yes, it took him 10 years to write ‘All the Light We Cannot See’).
(listened to for free on Hoopla audio)
***Stay With Me (Fiction, Ayobami Adebayo)
This was really good. However….once again I cannot recommend it because of the content. It’s one thing when a book has a little swearing or adult content. But when it’s the main focus of the book, that’s another thing. In this case, it’s infertility in Nigeria in the 80s. And the lengths that one woman goes to to get pregnant and the devastating consequences. I also began to not like the main character, but I felt better when she herself said ‘I began to loathe the woman I had become’. Me too! Ha ha. Engaging story though.
(listened to for free on Libby audio)
***The Good House (Fiction, Ann Leary)
I’m still kind of on the fence about this one. It’s about a recovering alcoholic who is in denial still about being an alcoholic. She is a real estate agent for rich people in New England. Hildy (the protagonist) is really a likable person, but I wanted to strangle her many times.
(listened to for free on RB Digital, but also have a copy of the book, will donate to LFL)
4-Stars (2)
****Castle of Water (Fiction, Dane Hucklebridge)
Cast Away, except with two survivors. Who speak different languages. I really enjoyed this book. I loved reading about their resourcefulness on this tiny island in French Polynesia. Plus, I loved the French language sprinkled throughout and I LOVED that I understood it all! I just read it naturally like I did the English. #progress
(library book)
****Hunger (Non-Fiction, Roxane Gay)
This was a painful read. But so, so good.
(book, will donate to LFL…I just don’t see myself reaching for this book again)
5-Stars (3)
*****The Little Book of Lykke (Non-Fiction, Meik Wiking)
This is the second book by the author of the Little Book of Hygge. I wish there were more little books like these. I love learning about other cultures and what makes them happy. This kind of reminded me of ‘The Year of Living Danishly’. It was excellent with delightful illustrations. Plus, they’re just cute little books!
(owned book, keeper)
*****This Must Be the Place (Fiction, Maggie O’Farrell)
Let me start by saying a few things before I get into the plot. I knew I had to give this book 5 stars when after I read the last page, I immediately wanted to flip to the front and start over again (and I almost did). Typically, I’m not a fan of books that have lots of characters, told from lots of perspectives, and jumping all over in time (and place). However, this book has ALL of those things and I LOVED it….another reason for the 5 star rating. Somehow, Maggie O’Farrell made this typically unlikable reading style (for me) not only extremely readable, but incredibly enjoyable. The heart of the story is a marriage: Daniel (a former Berkley professor) and Claudette (a former movie-star-turned-recluse), that are living in Ireland with their children. Right before Daniel goes back to America for his father’s funeral, he hears something about someone from his past that is incredibly disturbing to him. He starts digging into it and now…..everything changes. The story jumps back and forth decades, characters (the children, the parents, the brother-in-law, the step-son, etc.), and locations (Ireland, California, New York, Scotland, London, Paris to name a few). I actually started this book a few months ago (shortly after we moved) but stopped….it just wasn’t the time for a book like this (one where you had to pay attention to the times and the characters). But less than a week ago, I picked it back up again (on my iPad….I purchased it as an e-book), started over from the beginning (I had only read about 50 pages the first time around) and read each night WAY past my bedtime because I didn’t want to put it down. This was my first Maggie O’Farrell novel, and I am officially impressed. Although now I will compare all of her other novels to this one, and that might not go well. P.S. - from the reviews I read, it was highly recommended to READ this book and not listen to it. I completely understand why with all of the dates and characters in case you need to flip back and forth. Plus, they said the narrator was awful. P.S.S. – please read this review of sorts from Anne Bogel…she describes the ‘muchness’ of this book much better than I can:
(e-book, Nook, KEEPER….and now I want to get an actual copy of the book as well)
*****The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley (Fiction, Hannah Tinti)
Can I give this book six stars? This book was pretty perfect in my opinion. The story follows the life of Samuel Hawley and his teenage daughter, Loo. Samuel has led an….’interesting’ life on the run and his body is scarred from the 12 times he’s been shot. Loo, as a teenager now, is becoming more curious about her mother’s death as well as her father’s storied past. Every other chapter we find out how each bullet wound happened, told from Samuel’s perspective. The chapters in between are told from Loo’s perspective. Somehow, Hannah Tinti makes you love Samuel Hawley, even though he’s a criminal. The relationship between he and Loo is both incredible and heartbreaking. I am terrible at writing reviews and I wish I could convey here just how much I loved this book.
Samuel’s 5 Lessons:
1. Never hide anything in your underwear drawer
2. Make sure you take out all of the security cameras
3. Don't point a gun at anything you don't want to shoot
4. Take a breath. Let half of it out.
5. Everything breaks if you hit it hard enough
Just…read this book. Trust me.
Total Books Read: (4 non-fiction, 15 fiction)
Formats
E-Books: 1
Audio: 9
Audio CD: 0
Real Books: 9
Abandoned books: 0
DNF (Did Not Finish): 8
The Girl With All the Gifts (zombies, sigh)
Winter People (ghosts, sigh again)
Fates and Furies (couldn’t get into it)
Into the Water (couldn’t get into it)
A Room of One’s Own (couldn’t get into it)
The Library at the Edge of the World (couldn’t get into it)
Good As Gone (couldn’t get into it….awful writing style)
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (love her blog…but couldn’t handle the jumpiness and writing style of the book)
