Friday, June 29, 2018

June Reads (15)




One star = did not like it at all
Two stars = eh, it was okay
Three stars =  liked it
Four stars = really, really liked it
Five stars = absolutely loved it

2-Star (3)
**The Perfect Nanny (Fiction, Leila Slimani)
I think this book had potential.  I think it's trying to be a 'who done it' psychological thriller, but it fell pretty flat.  And there was no really wrap-up at the ending.  I don't like books that are wrapped up in a nice neat bow at the end, but this one had really NO resolution at all.  Very frustrating.  Even a bad resolution would have been better than NO resolution.

(owned book, will donate to LFL)

**Across Five Aprils (Fiction, Irene Hunt)
This young reader book won the Newbery award and was published in 1964.  It's the story of Jethro and his family who live in Southern Illinois during the Civil War.  The writing was good, it just seemed incredibly....long.

(free from Hoopla audio, but also owned book, will sell to Page 1 Books)

**Thrive (Non-Fiction, Arianna Huffington)
Her book on sleep was much better.  This one was nothing new.

(free from Hoopla audio, but also owned book, will sell to Page 1 Books)

3-Star (6)
***How to Walk Away (Fiction, Katherine Center)
This book got a lot of buzz from book reviewers so I picked it up at the bookshop for cheap.  Then I started reading, and while it was a quick read, I was super surprised about all of the good reviews.  Not because the book wasn't good, but typically, the reviewers I follow review fiction more on the 'literary' side.  This book was pure, fluffy, chick lit.  ???  I can see how it was disguised as NOT to be chick lit (plane crash, life altering injuries, etc.).  But it read like a Sophie Kinsella or Debbie Macomber book.  Cringe-worthy dialogue, extremely predictable, cheesy ending.  However, I read it right between two heavy books, so it was a good choice AND I was entertained. 

(owned book, will donate to LFL)

***Under the Harrow (Fiction, Flynn Berry)
I enjoyed this 'who done it' mystery taking place in Oxford/London.  It was well written and kept my attention (which is hard sometimes with mysteries)

(free on Hoopla audio, but also owned book, will sell to Page 1 Books)

***When We Were Worthy (Fiction, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen)
A decent read about a car crash, drunk driving, secrets, stupid teenagers, etc.  I'm going to check out other books by this author because I enjoyed her writing style.

(e-book, owned)

***A Fall of Marigolds (Fiction, Susan Meissner)
This was an enjoyable read about two women, one living in 1911 and one living in 2011 whose stories are intertwined by a mysterious beautiful scarf.

(real book, but listened to on Hoopla audio, will sell to Page 1 Books)

***Only Child (Fiction, Rhiannon Navin)
Ugh....this is a rip your heart out novel told entirely from the perspective of a 6-year-old boy who survives a school shooting....his brother does not.  It focuses on how grief can just rip a family apart. 

(real book, but listened to on Libby audio, will sell to Page 1 Books)

***You Me Everything (Fiction, Catherine Isaac)
A little fluffy, but it had great potential.  A story about a single mother who spends 4 weeks in France with the father of her child, while worrying about her ailing mother (who has a neuro degenerative disease) back home in the UK.

(free audio book from Libby)

4-Star (3)
****The Girl in the Garden (Fiction, Melanie Wallace)
I really enjoyed this book that almost felt like a collection of short stories (but in a good way...I typically don't like short stories).  It is about a young woman and her infant son who were abandoned at a cottage in New England and the townspeople that came together to care for them.

(real book, keeper)

****Circling the Sun (Fiction, Paula McLain)
I am officially a Paula McLain fan.  This woman can WRITE.  Typically, I MUST like the main character (or at least most of the supporting ones) to truly enjoy a book.  However, this character, Beryl Markham, was not very likable (she was a floozy), yet I was impressed and amazed by her a little bit more as I finished each chapter.  By the way, Beryl Markham was an actual person from Kenya, a horse trainer and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West.  She also was friends with Karen Blixen and had an affair with the hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Out of Africa), which is a big part of the book.  Again....I think if this book had been written by anyone but Paula McLain I probably wouldn't have liked it.  But Beryl Markham was just a remarkable woman for her time and was incredibly brave and Paula McLain's writing kept me interested.

(real book, keeper)

****If You Leave Me (Fiction, Crystal Hana Kim)
This book actually does not come out until August (yay for ARCs!).  This was one of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read.  And the characters were not entirely likeable (with the exception of one or two).  But the story was told soooo well.  It focused on one 1 women and 2 men (cousins) in a love triangle of sorts.  At one point, I couldn't figure out if the book was supposed to be a love story or a war story, but it's both.  It's about how war (the Korean war specifically) can just tear people apart in devastating ways. 

(real book, keeper)

5-Star (3)
*****In Order to Live (Non-Fiction, Yeonmi Park)
This young woman is 24 (she wrote this book when she was 21), and she escaped from North Korea with her mother when she was 13.  But of course it didn't go as planned and she and her mother spent some very unpleasant years in China before finally making it to South Korea.  It was such a great (but horrifying) read.  I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't reading a fictional story taking place 60 or 70 years ago.  That's how screwed up North Korea is. 

(real book, keeper)

*****Wishtree (Fiction, Katherine Applegate)
This was just a delightful little magical book.  I would say it borders between 'children' and 'young reader'.  It brings trees and animals alive in a way that just...works.  And the illustrations are just perfection.  Love love loved it.

(real book, keeper)

*****The War That Saved My Life (Fiction, Kimberly Brubaker-Bradley)
Oh man, I wish that I could have read this book when I was younger.  I feel blessed to have read it as an adult, but it's one of those books that I think I would have read over and over and over again as a child.  If you can't get it at your library, it's worth the $9 to buy it new (it's a young reader book)

(real book, keeper)

Total Books Read:  15 (2 non-fiction, 13 fiction)

Formats
E-Books:  1
Audio: 6
Real Books: 8
DNF (Did Not Finish): 8 

Celine (Fiction, Heller) - couldn't really get into it, although I'm sure some people LOVED it.  The writing was good.
Other People's Houses (Fiction, Waxman) - content
The Year of Magical Thinking (Non-Fiction, Joan Didion) - pretentious, pretentious, pretentious.  Ugh.
Abide With Me (Fiction, Strout) - Elizabeth Strout is completely hit or miss with me.  This was a miss.
Exit West (Fiction, Hossin) -just....life's too short to read boring books
Dumplin (Fiction, Murphy) - SOME potential, but not enough for me to keep going
The Honey Farm (Fiction, Lye) - couldn’t get into it
The Summer Before the War (Fiction, Simonson) - couldn't get into it

20 Years of Reading

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