What Are We Currently Reading?

[partofme]

I tried reading Little Fires Everywhere a while back but I had a hard time getting into it and I had a lot of other books downloaded from the library that I wanted to read more.

Edited June 28, 2018 by partofme
because the library isn't a diary

[truthaboutluv]

4 hours ago, Crs97 said:

I really, really disliked Little Fires Everywhere, which was very disappointing because I enjoyed her first book.  LFE is such that I may not try a third book of hers.

 

3 hours ago, partofme said:

I tried reading Little Fires Everywhere a while back but I had a hard time getting into it and I had a lot of other books downloaded from the diary that I wanted to read more

Well this certainly isn't helping to convince me that it may just be a slow starting book and will get a lot better. 

[Crs97]

Sorry.  It was the worst of the writing issues for me: I actually enjoy her writing style, but her perspective in this book was so flawed IMO that I don’t think I can trust her again.  It certainly didn’t help that I heard her speak, and she said she had to rewrite the book because her writing group told her she was too heavy on one side of the argument.  If the end result was supposed to be more balanced, I cannot even imagine what the first draft looked like.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Crs97

[Mindthinkr]

9 minutes ago, truthaboutluv said:

 

Well this certainly isn't helping to convince me that it may just be a slow starting book and will get a lot better. 

Or for me to pick it up and read it. I find that everyone’s reviews here are a lot more honest than anywhere else. 

[partofme]

I'm not really a good person to go by, I gave up on it after one chapter because I had too many other books to read and I just wasn't that interested.

[luna1122]

Oops

Edited June 29, 2018 by luna1122

[luna1122]

13 minutes ago, luna1122 said:

Well, I'm one who loved Little Fires Everywhere...I think its one of the finest novels of recent years. Friend Request kept me turning pages but the ending, and the protagonist,  annoyed the hell out of me. Interesting how different perspectives and reactions are. 

Edited June 29, 2018 by luna1122
Apparently, editing is too hard for me

[Haleth]

I liked Little Fires Everywhere but I wanted to smack some of the characters really badly.  I thought it needed one more chapter where

Spoiler

a certain character finds out a certain thing.

(I left that comment really vague but thought I'd better spoiler tag it anyway.)

[Crs97]

And where a certain tertiary couple  

Spoiler

finds out that a main character lied to them about a major event.

[starri]

Polished off Bad Blood: Secret and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup about the fraud behind the phony blood-testing company Theranos in a couple of nights.  It reads like a thriller in places.  I think I'd ultimately class it as a True Crime book, but it's a great read, regardless.

[hendersonrocks]

Just finished Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu and was bummed to not like it more - I think my expectations were too high. I moved on to There There, which is already blowing me away (in a good way).

[helenamonster]

Just finished: Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman. Ugh. First of all, it doesn't speak well of a book that somebody as oblivious as me could call the twist before the inciting incident (protagonist and her husband find a mysterious package while scuba diving on their honeymoon) even happens. Not to mention that said inciting incident doesn't even happen until 30% into the book (thanks Kindle!). I'm a veteran of the trashy beach-read genre and while these types of book vary in quality, there's a certain formula that you can generally depend on. Just give us one or two chapters of backstory and exposition and then it's time to get things moving. And when things actually do get moving, it's at the most glacial and boring pace. The book is comprised entirely of false leads--I do not mean twists and turns and red herrings. I mean the protagonist will spend an entire chapter formulating a plan only for her husband to talk her out of it. This happens more times than I can count. If you take out all the sections of her brainstorming going absolutely nowhere, you'd probably be left with about 100 pages. She's also an unpleasant mix of boring and stupid, and the husband isn't anything to write home about either. Don't bother.

Next up: Educated by Tara Westover.

[Spartan Girl]

I just read Beast by Lisa Jensen, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a rather unique twist: the prince and the beast have this whole Jekyll and Hyde/Angel and Angelus setup.  Basically, the beast is good while the prince is evil.  It's pretty good.

[GaT]

I recently found myself in an unheard of position, there were no books in my "to be read" pile on my nightstand. It was very strange. So I went to the 384,485,849,951 books I own that I've already read, & decided to reread one. I'm reading A Shred of Evidence by Jill McGown, the 7th book in the Lloyd and Hill series. If you like British police procedurals, I highly recommend this series which has 13 books. Unfortunately, the author died in 2007, so that's it for the series.

[Black Knight]

On 6/23/2018 at 6:25 AM, Spartan Girl said:

Just finished The Mermaid by Christina Henry, and I highly recommen it for anyone that loves Little Mermaid retellings and/or loved The Greatest Showman. 

Have you read Ann Claycomb's The Mermaid's Daughter? In this one the curse (of needing to kill the one you love in order to return to the sea or otherwise you'll die) is passed down through generations of daughters, down to the present day. The book focuses on the latest descendant, along with her girlfriend and her father, as they all try to figure out why it's so painful for her to walk, among other mysteries, and what to do about it.

I'm also fond of Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid, a somewhat more traditional retelling, except for that it splits its narrative between the mermaid and the woman the prince marries; it starts with the two young women meeting each other before everything else happens.

[Spartan Girl]

I LOVE Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon! One of the best TLM retellings ever, and I love that the mermaid

 

got to live at the end!

Edited July 13, 2018 by Spartan Girl

[NutMeg]

On 6/24/2018 at 7:40 AM, truthaboutluv said:

I just completed Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson. It was okay, if a little predictable. I figured almost immediately

  Reveal hidden contents

that the husband was likely the one who'd attacked the woman. And while it took me a little longer to work out he wasn't actually her husband, I figured it out as soon as she started remembering the son and seeing pictures of him and none of them included her husband.

I agree, and for once I think the movie version does it a little bit better - have you seen it?

As it happens, before reading either Before I Go To Sleep or Second Life, I attended a speech by SJ Watson, who seemed quite in awe still that his books were not only blockbusters but also being adapted in film. It was interesting to learn how he went from his regular job within the NHS to writing full time. I'd say the movie Before I Go To Sleep is slightly more suspenseful, due to the way it's filmed and acted. As of Second Life, I really enjoyed the journey, even if the ending felt

Spoiler

stuck on rather than earned

. 

[truthaboutluv]

1 hour ago, NutMeg said:

I agree, and for once I think the movie version does it a little bit better - have you seen it?

Nope but meaning to. I am so mad, it was on Netflix and as soon as I completed the book and searched for it, it was gone. 

[partofme]

10 hours ago, NutMeg said:

I agree, and for once I think the movie version does it a little bit better - have you seen it?

As it happens, before reading either Before I Go To Sleep or Second Life, I attended a speech by SJ Watson, who seemed quite in awe still that his books were not only blockbusters but also being adapted in film. It was interesting to learn how he went from his regular job within the NHS to writing full time. I'd say the movie Before I Go To Sleep is slightly more suspenseful, due to the way it's filmed and acted. As of Second Life, I really enjoyed the journey, even if the ending felt

  Hide contents

stuck on rather than earned

. 

Huh this is interesting to me.   I read Before I Got To Sleep years ago and really Loved it but I hated the movie, I don think think it did the book justice at all.

[NutMeg]

On 7/16/2018 at 5:33 AM, partofme said:

Huh this is interesting to me.   I read Before I Got To Sleep years ago and really Loved it but I hated the movie, I don think think it did the book justice at all.

In a way, the movie way makes less sense, because there's no way someone would review a filmed diary that goes way back everyday. Still, I thought the way it was acted made it a bit more suspenseful, as in the ending was maybe less obvious. But as always, YMMV :)

Interestingly (to me, at least), the idea of the book came to the writer after reading the obituary of a man who had lost all short term memory, and literally woke up each morning to a blank canvass.

[Darian]

I just finished The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I'd heard such raves I was afraid I'd be disappointed. No. Not one bit. Not remotely. I am always reading at least one book, but I had to take a break after reading it, just to savor it and think more about it and what I want to take away with me. 

Another book I read recently lived up to the hype. Educated by Tara Westover. 

[nodorothyparker]

I'm on an end of the world kick again so I've been burning through two different books that both begin with the premise of a world-wide epidemic that wipes out all but a handful of survivors.  Both pick up years afterward in the wreckage of civilization left behind.  Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is one of the most elegantly written meditations on loneliness and delayed grief and just what the hell do you do when everything familiar is dead and gone that I've read in maybe forever.  Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven is a simply gorgeous read on what it means to be civilized after civilization as you knew it dies and fighting to keep the finer things like music and Shakespeare alive beyond just meeting bare subsistence needs.

[Mindthinkr]

9 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

I'm on an end of the world kick again so I've been burning through two different books that both begin with the premise of a world-wide epidemic that wipes out all but a handful of survivors.  Both pick up years afterward in the wreckage of civilization left behind.  Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is one of the most elegantly written meditations on loneliness and delayed grief and just what the hell do you do when everything familiar is dead and gone that I've read in maybe forever.  Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven is a simply gorgeous read on what it means to be civilized after civilization as you knew it dies and fighting to keep the finer things like music and Shakespeare alive beyond just meeting bare subsistence needs.

Those sound like interesting books. I may have to check them out. Thanks for telling us about them. 

[Haleth]

I liked Station Eleven a lot and hope she writes a sequel some day.

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann.  Fascinating true story of the Osage Indians of OK, how they became enormously wealthy and how they suddenly started dying under mysterious (and not so mysterious) circumstances 100 years ago.  Very interesting (and horrific) chapter in American history that has been forgotten.

[GaT]

22 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven is a simply gorgeous read on what it means to be civilized after civilization as you knew it dies and fighting to keep the finer things like music and Shakespeare alive beyond just meeting bare subsistence needs.

 

6 hours ago, Haleth said:

I liked Station Eleven a lot and hope she writes a sequel some day.

 

I know a lot of people love this book, but it didn't work for me. It's been a while since I read Station Eleven so there's a lot I don't remember, but I do remember not liking the book at all. I felt that it spent way too much time on a character from the past, & not enough telling about life in the current timeline.

[Spartan Girl]

On July 13, 2018 at 12:23 AM, Black Knight said:

Have you read Ann Claycomb's The Mermaid's Daughter? In this one the curse (of needing to kill the one you love in order to return to the sea or otherwise you'll die) is passed down through generations of daughters, down to the present day. The book focuses on the latest descendant, along with her girlfriend and her father, as they all try to figure out why it's so painful for her to walk, among other mysteries, and what to do about it.

 

I'm actually reading that now, per your recommendation. It's definitely an interesting take on the fairy tale so far.

But I just finished Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage. Ho-ly shit, it is disturbing. Sociopath kids/bad seed stories are always creepy, but this...I couldn't put it down. This girl was basically Amy from Gone Girl if she was seven, sloppier and her parents weren't so stupid. And yet you still feel some degree of pity for her. I don't know why. Maybe because the ending of

her being sent away to a juvenile institution and her parents basically being happier without her kind of comes off as...I mean, they HAD to do it, she almost killed her mom, but it just feels kind of wrong. Although it doesn't sound like her getting "help" will do much good, since like any good Lifetime psycho bitch, she's already plotting her escape by pretending to be "cured."[/spolier]

[Black Knight]

Cool, I'll be curious what you make of the ending!

[Spartan Girl]

23 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Cool, I'll be curious what you make of the ending!

Okay, I just finished it, and it was...clever. I wasn't expecting them to

break the curse via a TLM opera with an ending where she kills the prince. Kind of a cop-out that nobody actually had to die after all the buildup but whatever. I'd rather be a mermaid these anyway.

[Black Knight]

Yes, I wasn't expecting that either. Music ended up being so important all throughout the book. And in regards to your comment about the ending - 

Spoiler

But so many mermaids died before Kathleen! And she had to give up her true love, along with her father. So I was okay with it.

[truthaboutluv]

I just completed Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Fun and quick read but one of those books that's been hyped so much, it leaves you feeling a bit "that's it"? I figured out the murderer midway but doubted myself when 

Spoiler

he supposedly died before many others. 

 

I'm still getting through Little Fires Everywhere and lordy, this one is getting tough for me. I'm already eye-rolling the big legal battle, I really hate Izzy and the other characters range from meh to nonexistent for me. 

[Madding crowd]

I didn’t like Little Fires Everywhere. I just finished Baby Teeth and loved it-creepy and suspenful.

[Neko]

I started reading Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman in anticipation for the new OItNB season, and I'm finding it a little hard to get through.  It's easy to read, but once Piper gets to prison and starts getting used to the daily routine, it gets pretty boring.  I feel like I've been reading it forever, and I still have 100 pages, left.  Ugh.

Also, maybe it's just me, but Piper Kerman sounds pretty arrogant when it comes to her fellow prisoners having lesbian relationships.  She makes little comments about how they're not "real" lesbians, and whenever she does, I think, "But...you had a lesbian relationship, and then you got engaged to a man.  Who are you to determine who is a 'real' lesbian, and who isn't?".

It's a small thing, but it bugs.

[nodorothyparker]

I read Orange is the New Black a couple of years ago before I got distracted by other things and fell way behind on the show.  IIRC, I found it about as maudlin and self-indulgent in spots as you would expect for the basis of a character like Piper.  It also became quickly apparent, as reality vs. TV often is, that her prison experience wasn't nearly as funny or dramatic as her TV counterpart's.  Still, I appreciated it for the stories and poignancy it did provide in in cluing me in to some of the realities of our female inmate population.

[hendersonrocks]

Quote

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann.  Fascinating true story of the Osage Indians of OK, how they became enormously wealthy and how they suddenly started dying under mysterious (and not so mysterious) circumstances 100 years ago.  Very interesting (and horrific) chapter in American history that has been forgotten.

I just picked this up from the library and am really excited to read it. 

Coming off of a week's vacation, I have read a lot recently. Dune (OMG, bonkers), One of Us is Lying (YA life/mystery), a terrible John Grisham found on a bookshelf in our rental house, and now My Dear Hamilton (a fictionalized biography of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, which is actually pretty good - I'm enjoying the history).

[Danny Franks]

I just finished American War by Omar El Akkad. What a book! Bleak as anything, and sadly not as far fetched as I'd have thought a few years ago. Very powerful read, and in a style that I'm growing to like more: prose that focuses quite narrowly on the experiences of one person, interspersed with fictionalised extracts from books, senate hearings, letters etc, which shed a lot more light on the broader picture.

This one is going to be recommended to everyone I know. Particularly those who are dismissive or unaware of the way American foreign policy has impacted on countless people overseas, particularly in the Middle East.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Danny Franks

[helenamonster]

Just finished: Educated by Tara Westover, a memoir about a girl who grew up in a fundamentalist family in Idaho that stocked up for doomsday and didn't believe in modern medicine, who then by sheer force of will escapes to college and graduate school. A lot of the reviews I read compared it to The Glass Castle, and I definitely felt those similarities. The dads in both stories in particular were very similar--two men who were probably bipolar and raised their children off the grid because they didn't trust The Establishment. But unlike The Glass Castle, where the constant moving and changing was a huge theme, Educated is a story about a girl who keeps getting pulled back home no matter how far she gets away. Even though it was a memoir I still can't wrap my head around people living like this, not sending their kids to school or having any meaningful connection to the world outside their property. Definitely not recommended for those who have a weak stomach; the "we don't go to the doctor" thing plays a much bigger part than I was expecting, and the injuries these people sustain--and receive no treatment for--are horrific.

Up next: All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin.

[Black Knight]

11 hours ago, hendersonrocks said:

I just picked this up from the library and am really excited to read it. 

I read that (Killers of the Flower Moon) a couple of months ago. You're in for a fascinating - and infuriating, and heartbreaking - read. The widespread nature of the evil is just jaw-dropping.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

Working my way through the Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey, which is sort of like Preacher in novel form.

[Spartan Girl]

On 7/23/2018 at 10:03 AM, hendersonrocks said:

My Dear Hamilton (a fictionalized biography of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, which is actually pretty good - I'm enjoying the history).

I just finished that myself, and it was good!  Of course I couldn't stick with the character descriptions because I'm unable to separate it from the musical.  I always picture Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast!

I also read The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson.  As a person that loves bookshops, I liked it although I didn't see the twist that

the uncle was really her biological dad

coming.

[proserpina65]

Just finished reading Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella.  It wasn't brilliant but it was a breezy, entertaining read, even if I didn't much like the narrator for a lot of the book.  I got extremely tired of Kinsella's Shopaholic series by about book 3, but her stand-alone titles have been good in a quick, light, Brit-Chick-Lit kinda way.

[Wiendish Fitch]

On 7/23/2018 at 9:40 PM, helenamonster said:

 

Up next: All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin.

I normally can't stand Emily Giffin, but I'm grudgingly curious about this one. Has her writing style matured since her earlier stuff? I'll be eager to read your two cents, should you choose to post it. 

[truthaboutluv]

29 minutes ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

I normally can't stand Emily Giffin, but I'm grudgingly curious about this one. Has her writing style matured since her earlier stuff? I'll be eager to read your two cents, should you choose to post it. 

Yeah the topic is timely and if done well, could make for an interesting read. The key is if done well and frankly, Giffin's history makes me very wary. Because I feel like that's been the biggest weakness in her writing. She takes on these interesting topics but doesn't have the skills to effectively deliver on them. And sometimes, like in the case of that god awful The One & Only, the last book of hers I read (okay, I quit halfway in), the result is just a big old mess. Hell even one of her most popular, Something Borrowed, I thought was a mess in the end because instead of rooting for the best friend and the fiance as I think she expected us to, I hated both of those assholes.

Edited July 26, 2018 by truthaboutluv

[Wiendish Fitch]

19 minutes ago, truthaboutluv said:

Yeah the topic is timely and if done well, could make for an interesting read. The key is if done well and frankly, Giffin's history makes me very wary. Because I feel like that's been the biggest weakness in her writing. She takes on on these interesting topics but doesn't have the skills to deliver on them effectively. And sometimes, like in the case of that god awful The One & Only, the last book of hers I read (okay, I quit halfway in), the result is just a big old mess. Hell even one of her most popular, Something Borrowed, I thought was a mess in the end because instead of rooting for the best friend and the fiance as I think she expected us to, I hated both of those assholes.

Yeah, I had the exact same problem with Something Borrowed, Baby Proof, and Love the One You're With... yeah, can you see why I'm wary? I did like Something Blue in spite of myself (though the fact that we're still supposed to sympathize with Rachel and Dex burns me up).

Fortunately, I'm #229 on my library waiting list, so I have plenty of time to weigh my options.

[truthaboutluv]

1 minute ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

I did like Something Blue in spite of myself (though the fact that we're still supposed to sympathize with Rachel and Dex burns me up).

Completely the same for me. The only one of her books I genuinely loved from beginning to end because I genuinely adored Darcy and Ethan. 

[Crs97]

I only liked Ethan and thought he would be well served if someone told him to get away from both Rachel and Darcy.  They were both awful, and Dex was certainly no prize. Hard to feel sympathy for either

Spoiler

the woman cheating with him or the woman cheating on him.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Crs97
I probably should spoiler tag that part, even though the books have been out forever.

[truthaboutluv]

I didn't hate Darcy for the 

Spoiler

cheating because I  maintain that that was a cheap cop-out on Giffin's part to get readers to root for and justify Dex and Rachel's behavior. Well see, Darcy was cheating too so no biggie that her friend who chose to be her friend for years despite constantly resenting her and the man who chose to date her for seven years and propose to her, were fucking each other behind her back. Nope, Darcy's still, the worse and she made sure readers thought that by upping the ante with Darcy getting knocked up. 

 

As for Ethan, I actually only came to like him in Something Blue because I found his bullshit Rachel propping and excusing of Rachel's actions because "well she felt really, really bad about it" in Something Borrowed, to be annoying. Ultimately, for me, Rachel and Dex as characters were boring as hell. It's something that even with a storyline like sleeping with your best friend's fiance, Rachel was still such an uninteresting simp. And Dex - please, a Ken doll that readers just kept being told was so sexy and amazing but had little to no personality. 

Edited July 26, 2018 by truthaboutluv

[Black Knight]

I just finished Seanan McGuire's The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the second book in her Rose Marshall series and the sequel to Sparrow Hill Road. Rose Marshall is a ghost who, because of how she died, is a hitchhiker ghost who features in a number of urban legends that are variations on her story. The first book was really a collection of short stories with a larger narrative thread holding them together, and each story was like its own urban legend. This second book is a single novel-length adventure of Rose's, and while it's interesting, what happens to her in this book quickly takes it out of the realm of urban legends into something different. I don't think it's possible to do a novel-length urban legend, so it makes sense, and I'm glad to have spent more time with Rose and the other characters and to learn more about this series' universe. But I just really missed the original book's series of riffs on urban legends - I'm always fascinated by retellings of myths and such, and retellings of urban legends was something I hadn't come across before. Rose's journey here is more mythic if anything - there's a quest, people who help and people who oppose, and the main riff the book does is on a Greek myth. But maybe the third book will have more of the Americana urban legend feel of the first book.

And now I've started on Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, because I figured why not go from a book that features a bit of Greek myth to a book that's full-blown Greek myth?

[truthaboutluv]

Just finished Little Fires Everywhere. Stayed up way past my bedtime to do so.  Not because it was that good mind you but just because I had slogged through almost 80 percent of it and I just wanted to be done. I truly am not sure what to even think about this book and that alone says it all. I think the biggest issue I had is that I really and true didn't care a damn about any of the characters. They all ranged from assholes to annoying to bland as fuck. The big "social issues" just left me meh. 

Like I'm sure I was meant to care about the big custody battle but I didn't. Though I found the biological mother way more annoying than the adoptive one. And that bullshit of her 

Spoiler

kidnapping the kid and of course getting away with it and Mrs. Mcullough thinking about the baby not making a sound when she was taken and that being some big statement of the mother's love is all that matters was some bullshit. Maybe the kid didn't make a noise when she was taken because she was asleep at the time. It just felt like the message was that a woman carries a baby and that's all that matters and yeah, NO. And I say that as a woman. Mia's giving the couple some of their money back didn't change the fact that she stole the people's kid. But I guess Ng thought the reader was supposed to understand and like her. Yeah, no. 

I don't know. I just think this was one weird ass book with a bunch of uninteresting as hell characters and bunch of cliches thrown all over the place. And I am truly baffled as to why it's such a big hit. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by truthaboutluv

[Crs97]

truthsboutluv, can I please sit by you?  My feeling exactly!  I won’t read another of hers because this was so offensive to me.  You will love this:  I heard the author speak and she said 

Spoiler

Her writing group read her first draft and told her she had written too much on the side of biological v. adoptive parents so she had to go back and make it more even.  

Can you imagine what that first draft looked like if the finished product is supposed to be more balanced!?!?!?

[Athena]

I gave up on Emily Giffin after the terrible The One and Only and that controversy with the reviews. I read a lot of her books and for the most part, I did find her female characters sympathetic, but there was a lot of crap in the books too. I think one of her best books was Where We Belong which focused more on a mother and daughter relationship than a romance. Uncertain if I should go back, probably not as it doesn't seem like she's matured much?

I use to read Sophie Kinsella books as well, but I also grew a bit tired of the same protagonist over and over. I read her young adult novel a couple years ago and while I could tell she was trying to branch out as an author, it was a bit of a drag to read as well.

I finished the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy by Kevin Kwan earlier in the month. He's not perfect but he's by far my favourite chick lit author now.