What Are We Currently Reading?

[grommit2]

Finished The Women by Kristin Hannah.
Kristin authored one of the best books ever, The Great Alone.  The Women has some distinctive, compelling and powerful episodes. Its core message is that women who served in Vietnam were ignored and unsupported after their tours were over.

[Bookish Jen]

I just finished "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us" by Rachel Bergstein. I loved this book. Bergstein really showed how Ms. Blume, once a suburban housewife went on to be one of the most iconic (and yes, controversial) writers of young adult literature and how she affected readers, writers, and books for tweens, teens, and adults. I can't recommend it enough.

And right now I'm reading "Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them More" by economist Rob Larson. This book is quite enlightening and it's also really pissing me off.

[andromeda331]

11 hours ago, grommit2 said:

Finished The Women by Kristin Hannah.
Kristin authored one of the best books ever, The Great Alone.  The Women has some distinctive, compelling and powerful episodes. Its core message is that women who served in Vietnam were ignored and unsupported after their tours were over.

It really doesn't surprise me. Men or women returning home were ignored, forgotten and told to forget about it.  They were all messed up and no one where to go for help. It really sucks how badly they were treated by well everyone but especially the government.

[Anduin]

I just finished the Magicians, by Lev Grossman. What a strange book. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But I know one thing, the protagonist is mopey as hell. Wake the hell up, you're living your dream! Try to bloody appreciate it, will you? Anyone know if he gets his act together in the sequels?

Also, what exactly does Grossman think about the Narnia books? Love them? Hate them? It must be one of those.

[scarynikki12]

I don't know if anyone has read Paris Is Always A Good Idea by Jenn McKinlay. I finished it a couple days ago and I really enjoyed it. I was ready to give it 4 stars on Goodreads until the final line which I hated and dropped it to 3 stars. I'll get to that.

So the premise is Chelsea's father is getting married seven years after her mom passed away from cancer, Chelsea's opposed (I'll get to this too), she eventually realizes she's allowed her life to come a halt and decides to recreate the year long trip she'd been on when she got the news of her mom's cancer. She's doing a three week version in Ireland, France, and Italy and hoping she can reconnect with the three men she dated. If there's a renewed spark, great, but it's ok if there's not. She also has a coworker who joins her in France and then Italy to try and get a rich guy to donate to the book version of the American Cancer Society.

I liked the basic story and I liked how the characters played out. Rock solid premise and execution.

HOWEVER.

Now I'm picky about what I give a 5 star rating. For me a 5 goes to the books I love so much I not only make sure to own a copy but I will also purchase a second for when I travel. They get reread regularly and I end up having them almost memorized.

My 4 star rated books tend to be the ones I enjoyed so much I'll definitely be rereading and will own but not a second copy. 

My 3 is for books I genuinely enjoyed and will recommend (with caveats when necessary) but won't necessarily own and may reread but rarely. 

So, the reason this book didn't hit the 5 star rating is because of the instigating subplot of Chelsea's dad getting married again. Here's the thing: her dad comes to her and reveals his engagement to a woman he's known for literally 2 weeks and then the whole book Chelsea is presented as being unreasonable for thinking they were rushing things and not jumping for joy. Chelsea does accept the wedding will happen pretty quickly, and a part of her concern does come from the place of thinking of her mom as still being her dad's living wife even though she's been dead seven years, yet everyone is all "who cares if we've only known each other two weeks (three months by the time the wedding happens)? We're in love!" Why the hell couldn't they just write it as her dad's been in this relationship for over a year and Chelsea just refused to accept him moving on? At least then the characters and book acting like she was the bad guy in her family would have some validity to it. If anyone I knew in real life came up to me and revealed they were about to marry someone they'd know for two weeks I would absolutely be trying to talk them into a year long engagement at the least. Chelsea's reaction was perfectly normal AND reasonable so no 5 stars.

Now, the very end of the book, and I mean literally the last line, further dropped my rating to a 3. The book's almost five years old but I'll still spoil bar it just in case:

Spoiler

Chelsea calls her dad's new wife Mom. What the fuck?? To be clear, Chelsea is twenty nine, this woman has been in her life for three months, and they hardly know each other both because Chelsea hasn't made an effort to get to know her AND because a full third of that time she was on the other side of the world. In the final paragraphs Chelsea has a realization that Sheri (new wife) really is great and that's all that was needed! There is literally no reason for Chelsea to start calling her Mom. Her dad makes a comment earlier in the book about Sheri had never been married before and was looking forward to having daughters but, again, Chelsea and her sister are full grown adults in their twenties. I'm an advocate for the role of step-parents being recognized for its importance in the raising of children but that doesn't apply here. Also Chelsea doesn't spend the book wishing for another mother or anything where it would kind of make sense for her to grab on to this second opportunity. Maybe this is just a me thing but I cannot ever imagine a full grown adult calling the new spouse of their parent Mom or Dad. I think Chelsea establishing a good relationship with Sheri to the point where she comes to see her as family makes sense but that's it. I don't know what the writer was trying to do here.

Whew, rant over.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Well, I’m saving to read Bonded in Death  when I’m on an airplane headed for a family wedding in Thailand in two weeks-UNINTERRUPTED time to read it all!

And so now I’ve gone to the Malorys and finished Love Only Once, by Johanna Lindsey. Started Tender  Rebel (and am blocking out of my mind what she did books later regarding Tony). @scarynikki12 knows wot  I’m talking about!

And yes, I’m picturing the yummilicious Pierce Brosnan as Lord Anthony Malory!

[proserpina65]

I'm currently re-reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence.  I've loved the books ever since I first read them, but what I appreciate the most is that while the story is very much one of good vs. evil, from the second book on, the author makes it clear that it isn't a matter of Christians vs. non-Christians and even has one of the characters specifically state that the conflict is much older than Christianity.  I also like that most of the characters, both Light and Dark, are complex and some move from one side to the other and sometimes back based on understandable, relatable reasons.  And the female characters are not treated as necessarily being silly or undeserving for liking girly things.  For me, these books are the anti-Narnia series in these respects.

[Cloud9Shopper]

Currently reading The Partner Track by Helen Wan and really enjoying it so far. It’s about a Chinese-American woman who was the first in her generation to go to college in the U.S. and the first to go to law school and she is close to making partner at her fancy NYC law firm, but has to navigate being the voluntold DEI figure and gets into a romance with one of her fellow attorneys. I’m about halfway through the book and it’s a realistic look at law firm politics and especially how they try to pump up diversity in firms. I wish the Netflix series of the same name had lasted longer than one season, so I had to read the book.

I DNFed (did not finish) a book for the first time this year, New York, New Year, New You by Rachael Bloome. I enjoyed it when I started out but I stopped because I could guess the ending about 35% of the way through. I’m fine with romance and chick lit being a bit predictable, but I don’t want to be able to guess the ending before the book is even half over. When I last read something where the ending was kind of obvious, at least there were still other elements or plot twists that kept me wondering. This book didn’t have that.

Last month I finished The Baker’s Man by Jennifer Moorman. It was a cute, lighthearted read and I’d pick up again if I wanted something mindless to look at. However, I think for future reads, there will only be so many books with small town bakeries and coffee shops I can read before they start to feel the same. And I wasn’t a huge fan of the fantasy aspects of the book, but again…if I needed to escape life or wanted a book to read on a vacation, it works fine. 

[Anduin]

Runes of Engagement, by Tobias Buckell and Dave Kletcha. Magic portals open up across the Earth, linking it to some kind of fantasy world. Monsters come through, humans repulse them and go back to the other side. It's about a squad of USMC who are cut off behind enemy lines and have to hoof it to the next portal, while carrying critical intelligence and have enemies after them.

It's good, though weirdly a few too many Tolkien references for my liking. There are a zillion fantasy universes out there, you can reference some of them instead.

Thing is, I first heard about this book in November, and ordered it from my favourite bookshop. Publication date came and went with no book arriving. I discovered that in Australia, if mainstream chain bookshop Dymocks want more copies of a new book, it comes out of the indie bookshops orders. Well, fuck that. I have not set foot in Dymocks since then and can't see myself doing so possibly ever. It spurs my stubborn and 'support the little guy' instincts.

The book finally arrived last week, I nabbed it as soon as I could.

[Browncoat]

I just finished Lisa Genova's newest, "More or Less Maddy."  It's about Maddy's struggle with her recent diagnosis of Bipolar I, and if you know someone with that diagnosis (or even "just" depression), it's a tough read at times.  

I love Genova's books.  She's a neuroscientist and really researches her subjects; from early onset Alzheimer's (Still Alice) to traumatic brain injury (Left Neglected), and now Bipolar I, she offers real information about these issues.  "More or Less Maddy" is a nice addition to her library.

[Spartan Girl]

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey: I loved The Snow Child, so of course this was a must-read for me. It was good, but I was NOT prepared for the dark turn it took. You go in expecting a fairy table/dark romance a la Beauty and the Beast, and it winds up being more of a cautionary tale.

[Anduin]

I finished Runes of Engagement. The LOTR references didn't abate. There's a clear sequel hook at the end. It was fine. Nothing exceptional, IMO, but nothing terrible.

[grommit2]

OK.  An odd one:  We'll Prescribe You a Cat, by Syou Ishida. Yes, troubled folks visit a doctor,  who prescribes a cat. A furry little cat. For one to two weeks. Somehow a bit slippery in sticking to a story line. 😿 But, the treatment seems to work every time.

[Cloud9Shopper]

I finished The Partner Track tonight. Five stars all the way around for me. In addition to what I said above, I did like the climax of the book where the main character, Ingrid, realizes she was so caught up in doing for other people that she has never really done for herself and “said yes” to herself. I found it to be a really inspiring message regardless of what path you’re on in life. I won’t spoil what happened that leads her to that realization, however. 

It does end happily, but not before you get a moment of pause where you wonder if she blew up her life. 

Next up for fiction reads is Normal People by Sally Rooney. I also just picked up a nonfiction/self-help book called The Fangirl Life, which is about turning your fandom life into positive energy for your real life and, of course, how to navigate fandom drama and trolls. I’m really excited to share that with my fandom friends since I’m sure there will be some good discussion points. 

On 2/17/2025 at 4:58 PM, grommit2 said:

OK.  An odd one:  We'll Prescribe You a Cat, by Syou Ishida. Yes, troubled folks visit a doctor,  who prescribes a cat. A furry little cat. For one to two weeks. Somehow a bit slippery in sticking to a story line. 😿 But, the treatment seems to work every time.

This is actually on my to be read list! Someday, anyway. I also told my coworkers about it since they are also cat people. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Cloud9Shopper

[Constant Viewer]

On 2/4/2025 at 12:21 AM, andromeda331 said:

It really doesn't surprise me. Men or women returning home were ignored, forgotten and told to forget about it.  They were all messed up and no one where to go for help. It really sucks how badly they were treated by well everyone but especially the government.

True, but while there were eventually places for men to go for help, female veterans were ignored completely. This also occurs in China Beach. They didnt get the Nurses memorial until the 1990s.