What Are We Currently Reading?

[DearEvette]

Just finished Iron and Magic by Ilona Andrews.  Very good and softens the blow for when the final book of their Kate Daniels series comes out later this year.  This already feels like a worthy successor and they did an admirable job of moving an antagonist from the previous series into a creditable anti-hero in this one.

Currently in the middle of The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal.  An alternate history story about how the US space exploration program began.  In this one Dewey actually did defeat Truman and a big meteorite demolishes DC, thus ushering in the imperative to explore space.  Including women astronauts!  As I am reading I am also feeling the book was in some way influenced by Hidden Figures since the book heavily acknowledges racism along with the sexism and the intersection of both how they all play into and the plot and the key figures at the forefront of new space program.

[Mindthinkr]

I finished Pied Piper and really enjoyed it. Now I’m reading An Exaggerated Murder by Josh Cook. It’s a complicated book with a genius main character (meaning I need to be on my A game)  but I’ll review it when finished. 

[kathyk24]

I just finished Everything Everything  by Nicola Yoon and I really enjoyed it. I loved Maddy's one sentence book reviews. I wondered how no one realized she wasn't sick. I'm shocked that there were no family members or friends to question Madeline's mother. I thought it was interesting that Oliver needed her just as much as she needed him.

[Haleth]

On 7/26/2018 at 11:14 PM, Black Knight said:

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?

I read both that and Circe recently. I must say I liked Circe better, but both were enjoyable. 

I didn’t hate Little Fires Everywhere but I thought it needed one more chapter for one character to learn a certain secret. 

[Minneapple]

I recently finished Give Me Your Hand, the new one by Meghan Abbott. It's not bad but it had a lot of pre-publication hype and I don't think it lived up to it. I'm pretty sure anyone who's read it is rolling their eyes by the time the girls' "secret" is revealed. The twist at the end got me, though.

I'm currently in the middle of Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, a loose retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale. It's really good so far, a very interesting twist on the story.

[helenamonster]

On 7/26/2018 at 5:18 PM, 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. 

This was my first foray into Giffin, so I can't say if her writing style has matured or not as I have nothing to compare All We Ever Wanted to. The main thing that annoyed me about her writing style in this book was her pathological habit to write like this:

Character 1: "Regular line of dialogue."

Character 2: *internal monologue* I didn't think that was a good idea, and told him so. *internal monologue*

Character 1: "Regular line of dialogue."

Drove me NUTS. If she can't control the urge to write like this, her editor should have stepped in to fix it. 

The plot itself is very of the moment, a story for the #MeToo era. I enjoyed the setting, amongst the Nashville one percent--I'm not from Nashville but from a similar area and the attitudes rang very true to me. Between fiction and real life I am a little burnt out on sexual assault narratives (I in no way mean to disparage people who have been coming out about their experiences over the past year, more just exhausted at how long we as a society have tolerated and sometimes encouraged this behavior among predators), but I found the way the story played out to be pretty realistic in the various frustrating, tone-deaf, and uncertain ways characters navigated the situation.

35 minutes ago, Minneapple said:

I recently finished Give Me Your Hand, the new one by Meghan Abbott. It's not bad but it had a lot of pre-publication hype and I don't think it lived up to it. I'm pretty sure anyone who's read it is rolling their eyes by the time the girls' "secret" is revealed. The twist at the end got me, though.

This one is up next for me, so definitely keeping this evaluation in mind. I read You Will Know Me last year and while I enjoyed Abbott's writing style, I thought she completely missed the forest for the trees plot-wise: murder mysteries are, quite literally sometimes, a dime a dozen, and she had a much more interesting narrative in the bizarre world of competitive gymnastics that she could have explored instead.

[Minneapple]

57 minutes ago, helenamonster said:

This one is up next for me, so definitely keeping this evaluation in mind. I read You Will Know Me last year and while I enjoyed Abbott's writing style, I thought she completely missed the forest for the trees plot-wise: murder mysteries are, quite literally sometimes, a dime a dozen, and she had a much more interesting narrative in the bizarre world of competitive gymnastics that she could have explored instead.

This is exactly what frustrated me about You Will Know Me. After I read the book I actually went searching for more fiction about competitive gymnastics and there's hardly anything out there. 

[OtterMommy]

I just finished From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein and I liked it and it drove me crazy.  Luckily, I liked it for one aspect and a rather unrelated aspect drove me crazy, so I guess that's a win?  I loved everything she wrote about the Obama Administration and how she portrayed Obama as a human and not some sort of God-like creature.  However, I wanted to slap this woman at times.  If you like Girls, Sex in the City, and/or The Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce this book will be right up your alley--because it is about a very smart woman doing epically stupid things...over and over again (just to be clear, none of these stupid things involved Obama...)

I'm trying to finish up The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan, but my dry eyes are acting up once again so reading print is difficult for me at the moment (I seem to be fine if I can read on my Kindle--I'm not entirely sure why that is.  Maybe the contrast of the eInk on the screen is gentler to my eyes than print on paper?).  It's too bad because I've enjoyed this book, but not as much as I think I would have enjoyed this book if I could have just sat down and read it without having to take "eye breaks."

Back on my Kindle, I just started The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.  I'm not even 10% into it, so I don't have any strong opinions yet.

[Minneapple]

I finished Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik and I highly recommend it. It's really good, especially if you like fairy tales. The winter setting and the worldbuilding are perfect. There are two slow burn romances that are beautifully done, and in fact I wish we had just a wee bit more of the one romance in particular. The three main characters are women, strong and brave and kind. The characters and relationships are likeable and you really want them to have their happily ever after. It's just so good. I haven't read anything else by this author but I will definitely look for more from her.

Next up for me is The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. 

[proserpina65]

I just finished Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh.  I'd read a review of it that wasn't entirely positive, so I was unsure going in, but I ended up really liking it.  I figured out some of the plot twists early on, some not so early, and the last one about a page before the reveal, but I enjoyed seeing how it all tied together in the end.

[Madding crowd]

Just finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. I liked the details about Alaska and the way of life in the desolate town. However, there were too many tragedies and the romance part read like YA fiction. 

[JAYJAY1979]

On 7/30/2018 at 4:17 PM, OtterMommy said:

I just finished From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein and I liked it and it drove me crazy.  Luckily, I liked it for one aspect and a rather unrelated aspect drove me crazy, so I guess that's a win?  I loved everything she wrote about the Obama Administration and how she portrayed Obama as a human and not some sort of God-like creature.  However, I wanted to slap this woman at times.  If you like Girls, Sex in the City, and/or The Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce this book will be right up your alley--because it is about a very smart woman doing epically stupid things...over and over again (just to be clear, none of these stupid things involved Obama...)

I'm trying to finish up The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan, but my dry eyes are acting up once again so reading print is difficult for me at the moment (I seem to be fine if I can read on my Kindle--I'm not entirely sure why that is.  Maybe the contrast of the eInk on the screen is gentler to my eyes than print on paper?).  It's too bad because I've enjoyed this book, but not as much as I think I would have enjoyed this book if I could have just sat down and read it without having to take "eye breaks."

Back on my Kindle, I just started The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.  I'm not even 10% into it, so I don't have any strong opinions yet.

 

I loved The Woman in the Window... but it does take a little bit of time to get into it.  I was intrigued to read it once I found out that the author was a guy and the main character was female...  so I wanted to see how a guy would write a female 1st person perspective.  

 

I finished reading 'An American Marriage' by Tayari Jones.  I loved how it was divided into three parts... and that we were shown the characters as married before the husband was wrongly accused.. etc.   I read it in two days, it was a smooth and easy read... and when it was over, it made me think about my position on marriage, etc.

Edited August 2, 2018 by JAYJAY1979

[Browncoat]

I just finished One Of Us Is Lying, and while I figured it out fairly early on, it was interesting to see how everything came about and meshed together by the end.

I've started Only Child, by Rhiannon Navin, and so far it's pretty good.  It's the story of a school shooting through the eyes of a six-year-old who was hiding in a closet with his class and teacher at the time of the shooting.  It bothers me a little bit that the six-year-old is named Zachary Taylor, and his ten-year-old brother is Andy Taylor, but otherwise, the author seems to have captured the child's voice well.

[Spartan Girl]

To be fair, they call him Zach for short.

Let us know what you think when you're done!

[hendersonrocks]

Quote

I just finished One Of Us Is Lying, and while I figured it out fairly early on, it was interesting to see how everything came about and meshed together by the end.

Agreed. I thought it was a credit to the author that the characters and other plot lines were interesting enough to keep my attention.

I just finished When Life Hands You Lululemons, a pseudo sequel to The Devil Wears Prada focusing on Emily (the Emily Blunt character in the movie) many years later, because sometimes you just need light and fluffy lit. It was a fast read and did what I needed it to, which was give me something mindless after the crushing sadness of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. That was a great - but disturbing - read.

[Hanahope]

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

Coming off of a week's vacation, I have read a lot recently. Dune (OMG, bonkers

Dune?  You mean by Frank Herbert?  That is a classic science fiction book.  Any scifi nerd worth his/her cred has read that book and knows the phase "He who controls the spice, controls the universe."  Frank wrote two sequels and partly wrote a third that was finished by his son (and mostly panned).  His son then wrote many more books in the same universe, which I thought were ok.  If you really dig that universe, the subsequent books are decent enough.  Most people really only like the main book, plus maybe the 2 full Frank Herbert sequels.  

[hendersonrocks]

Quote

Dune?  You mean by Frank Herbert?  That is a classic science fiction book.

Yes, that Dune! My husband has been trying to get me to read it for years (he's way more into sci-fi than I am). The movie happened to be on TV the day I finished it, so we then watched that which was a REAL trip (hello, Sting in a leather bikini brief!). We now say the world "melange" to each other, just for fun, at random moments.

[scarynikki12]

21 hours ago, Browncoat said:

I just finished One Of Us Is Lying, and while I figured it out fairly early on, it was interesting to see how everything came about and meshed together by the end.

What I loved most about this book is that I didn’t want any of the four to be guilty. We got to know them so well and I was ready for my heart to break when the killer was revealed. That always works for me. 

[truthaboutluv]

4 minutes ago, scarynikki12 said:

What I loved most about this book is that I didn’t want any of the four to be guilty. We got to know them so well and I was ready for my heart to break when the killer was revealed. That always works for me. 

Agreed. I liked all the four kids and to be honest, midway through the book, I just couldn't buy any one of them was guilty. So I was ready for a truly shocking twist. 

Spoiler

Except it didn't come because in the end it was just Simon killing himself. I mentioned this previously in the thread when I first finished the book but the one thing I didn't like, was how batshit crazy the boyfriend became. Yes, dude was obviously controlling and a potential future abuser and I was thrilled when the relationship ended. But I don't know, the whole him being in on the whole thing and trying to kill the girl in the end just made the whole thing a little too Lifetime Movie for me. Though in fairness, abusive boyfriends, even teen ones, statistically do have rates of hurting, even killing their girlfriends so in essence, maybe it wasn't so outlandish. 

[Browncoat]

On 8/1/2018 at 5:40 PM, Spartan Girl said:

To be fair, they call him Zach for short.

Let us know what you think when you're done!

And then we find out that

Andy's middle name is James!  So he's Andy James Taylor!  It just kind of took me out of the story for a minute.

It was one of those stories that I can't really describe as enjoyable, but I liked it, and I liked

the way everything was resolved in the end.  Yeah, it was a little too pat, but Mommy needed reminding that she had another son, and she needed to be there for him. 

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, Browncoat said:

And then we find out that

  Hide contents

Andy's middle name is James!  So he's Andy James Taylor!  It just kind of took me out of the story for a minute.

 

It was one of those stories that I can't really describe as enjoyable, but I liked it, and I liked

  Hide contents

the way everything was resolved in the end.  Yeah, it was a little too pat, but Mommy needed reminding that she had another son, and she needed to be there for him. 

Yeah, I really found myself

hating the mom at times. Yes, she was grieving and it was understandable but she got really awful towards the end.

[aradia22]

Nothing to check in about. I'm almost at the end of a handful of books but I'll fill you in once I get there. 

What are we thinking for Amazon First Reads for August? I'm deciding between Hotel Sacher and Stray. Hotel Sacher feels like the kind of pseudo-prestige period TV show I would add to my Netflix queue and never feel like watching. I do like a memoir but Stray just seems miserable and unpleasant. One of the books I'm reading right now is Sex Object by Jessica Valenti and while I'm enjoying it, I don't think I could live in that place (troubled sexual history, drug use, bad relationships with men, etc.) or anything similar anytime soon so Stray is probably not for me. 

[DearEvette]

I've had good luck with waiting a bit before choosing my Amazon First reads book.  I try to get a sense from the Goodreads reviews if I'll like them and they tend to be more reliable than the blurb.  I am not thrilled about any this month so far.

I waited til almost the end of the month to get July's First Reads and I am reading it now, Jane Doe.   The blurb made it sound like some run of the mill psychological thriller so I was pretty meh.  But I read a few reviews and they made it sound more interesting and , dare I say it, fun, than the blurb.  It is a pure revenge fantasy and it is pretty entertaining so far.

[Cherry Cola]

I love all the reading that is happening!!  I am almost finished with Emily of New Moon by LMM.  It started out slow for me.  So I set it aside and read a Cat Who mystery.  Then picked it back up and really fell in love with the writing, the details of where she lives etc.  I am going to read the next in the series next.  

Any Cat who...fans? Books by Lillian Jackson Braun.  They are generally a quick read, but lots of fun. I am a huge cozy mystery fan.  

[SherriAnt]

9 hours ago, Cherry Cola said:

 Cat who...fans? Books by Lillian Jackson Braun.  T

I also am a fan, of all but the last book. I'm pretty sure she was unable to finish it, and whoever finished it knew nothing about the characters beyond their names! Everyone was acting bizarrely,  important plotlines were wrapped up so messily, and unimportant characters were forced into the foreground. It's a weird way to put it, but the whole flavour of the book was wrong. I haven't been able to reread the series for quite a while, but that last one really left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Cherry Cola]

17 minutes ago, SherriAnt said:

I also am a fan, of all but the last book. I'm pretty sure she was unable to finish it, and whoever finished it knew nothing about the characters beyond their names! Everyone was acting bizarrely,  important plotlines were wrapped up so messily, and unimportant characters were forced into the foreground. It's a weird way to put it, but the whole flavour of the book was wrong. I haven't been able to reread the series for quite a while, but that last one really left a bad taste in my mouth.

I haven't made it that far in the series, but I have seen some other people say that as well.  I will skip that book! 

[rmcrae]

I just finished March Forward, Girl by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine. This book is a prequel to Warriors Don't Cry and Melba discusses how the oppression and violence (there's a particular scene where she witnesses a black man being lynched in her church) smothering the black community in Little Rock gave her the courage to integrate Central High. Highly recommend it.

[MeloraH]

Finished Circe a few days ago and I'm still thinking about how much I loved it. And living alone an a Greek Isle with tame lions seems really appealing right now.

[proserpina65]

On ‎08‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 1:17 PM, Cherry Cola said:

Any Cat who...fans? Books by Lillian Jackson Braun.  They are generally a quick read, but lots of fun. I am a huge cozy mystery fan.  

I enjoyed them up to a point, but got tired of the first chapter or so rehashing storylines/characters as if we'd never met them before.  Eventually I stopped reading them.

[kathyk24]

I finished the Immortalists. I liked the author's ability to describe the lives of the main characters especially Klara and Simon. However I didn't like how each of the siblings sabotaged themselves.

[MeloraH]

On 8/5/2018 at 12:03 AM, MeloraH said:

Finished Circe a few days ago and I'm still thinking about how much I loved it. And living alone an a Greek Isle with tame lions seems really appealing right now.

I just finished The Fifth Season which was incredible and just started There There and the prologue alone was so well-written and affecting I was crying by the end of it. This streak seems unsustainable.

[Haleth]

10 hours ago, MeloraH said:

I just finished The Fifth Season which was incredible and just started There There and the prologue alone was so well-written and affecting I was crying by the end of it. This streak seems unsustainable.

I just finished The Fifth Season the other day too and immediately started the next in the series, The Obelisk Gate.

[Captain Carrot]

Just saw this in B&N. I give the odds of it being good at 50/50, but I had to get it.

[Irlandesa]

Political fan fiction?  Oh my.  Is it full of political intrigue or is it some kind of cozy mystery where Obama and Biden try to find out who destroyed Michelle's garden and killed the White House Pastry Chef?

[OtterMommy]

I just finished The Woman in the Window today and quite enjoyed it.  It was one of those rare occasions where I didn't figure out the twist before it happened.  

I'm about to start The Banker's Wife.  Normally, I would take a break between thrillers, but these are from the library and I have to finish them before they go *poof* off my kindle!

[Captain Carrot]

27 minutes ago, Irlandesa said:

Political fan fiction?  Oh my.  Is it full of political intrigue or is it some kind of cozy mystery where Obama and Biden try to find out who destroyed Michelle's garden and killed the White House Pastry Chef?

From the back of the book:

 

Quote

 

It's been several months since the 2016 presidential election, and "Uncle Joe" Biden is puttering around his house, grouting the tile in his master bathroom, feeling lost and adrift in an America the doesn't make sense anymore.

But when his favorite Amtrak conductor dies in a suspicious accident, Joe feels a familiar desire to serve-and he leaps into the role of amateur sleuth, with a little help from his old friend President Barack Obama (code name: Renegade). Together they'll plumb the darkest depths of Delaware, traveling from cheap motels to biker bars and beyond, as they uncover the sinister forces advancing America's opioid epidemic.

Part action thriller, part mystery, part bromance, and (just to be clear) 100 percent fiction, Hope Never Dies imagines life after the Oval office for two of America's greatest heroes. Together they'll prove justice has no term limit.

 

[cherrypj]

15 hours ago, Haleth said:

I just finished The Fifth Season the other day too and immediately started the next in the series, The Obelisk Gate.

You will NOT be disappointed in the third one too!

[GaT]

4 hours ago, Captain Carrot said:

Just saw this in B&N. I give the odds of it being good at 50/50, but I had to get it.

Oh, please come back after you read this & tell us how it is. I want to love this LOL 

[Spartan Girl]

I just finished The Romanov Empress by CW Gortner, and I liked it. Boy, the Romanovs had a scandalous family history long before the revolution. But even if Nicholas was a crappy leader, I don't think he and his family deserved to be murdered. Especially not the poor kids.

Now I'm reading Olivia Hussey's memoir The Girl on the Balcony. I love reading about the making of Romeo and Juliet. Say what you want about Franco Zeffirelli, but the film was beautiful. And while Olivia does have some horrible experiences -- her ex boyfriend raped her while she was staying at the infamous Cielo Drive house in LA -- she has plenty of wonderful stories about Paul McCartney, Christopher Reeve, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, Vanessa Redgrave, Bette Davis, and many others. 

[Enigma X]

12 hours ago, OtterMommy said:

I just finished The Woman in the Window today and quite enjoyed it.  It was one of those rare occasions where I didn't figure out the twist before it happened.  

I am reading this now.

[Ceindreadh]

On 8/10/2018 at 1:55 AM, Captain Carrot said:

Just saw this in B&N. I give the odds of it being good at 50/50, but I had to get it.

 

 

On 8/10/2018 at 3:22 AM, Irlandesa said:

Political fan fiction?  Oh my.  Is it full of political intrigue or is it some kind of cozy mystery where Obama and Biden try to find out who destroyed Michelle's garden and killed the White House Pastry Chef?

 

On 8/10/2018 at 6:22 AM, GaT said:

Oh, please come back after you read this & tell us how it is. I want to love this LOL 

I'm currently reading this book. 

As a mystery/thriller, it's not too bad - although I might change my mind by the time I finish it. 

It's written in the first person from Joe Biden's point of view, which i'd probably appreciate more if I'd heard him speak (might have to see if I can find a speech of his on youtube so I can really 'hear' him). 

[Haleth]

I read Biden's Promise Me, Dad a couple months ago, his memoir of his son's illness and death with lots of behind the scenes stuff at the White House.  It was very moving.  There was no way he could have run for pres in '16.

[Captain Carrot]

On 8/10/2018 at 1:22 AM, GaT said:

Oh, please come back after you read this & tell us how it is. I want to love this LOL 

Just finished it. It's a mystery in the Holmes (Obama) and Dr. Watson (Biden) format, and the writing is decent. Biden is the POV character, has a tendency to use folksy expressions, and puts his foot in his mouth a few times. Obama has a tendency to go into college lecturer mode at the drop of the hat. Basically it's a beach book that happens to star Obama and Biden. That being said, it was a beach book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

[GaT]

Just now, Captain Carrot said:

Just finished it. It's a mystery in the Holmes (Obama) and Dr. Watson (Biden) format, and the writing is decent. Biden is the POV character, has a tendency to use folksy expressions, and puts his foot in his mouth a few times. Obama has a tendency to go into college lecturer mode at the drop of the hat. Basically it's a beach book that happens to star Obama and Biden. That being said, it was a beach book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thanks, I may have to pick it up :-)

[Cupid Stunt]

"The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States" by Jeffrey Lewis

[DearEvette]

I've been on A Sharon Sala kick.  She writes romantic suspense.  So far I've read four of her books: In Shadows, Next of Kin, Family Sins, and Mimosa Grove (written under Dinah McCall).  So far what I am enjoying about them is the fact that unlike a lot of rom-suspense where there is a big climatic showdown at the end of the book between the villain and our intrepid hero/ine where the villain finally gets his just desserts, her books often have the villain's plans unravel because of some really random or  unpredictable event that comes out of left field that all their nefarious planning could not account for.  I think that is what I am liking about them, the unpredictability of how she dispatches with her villains or how their carefully crafted plans all come falling down while still managing to keep the protagonists in some sort of jeopardy. 

[Anela]

I'm reading several books. The newest Stephen King book, the second in the White Trash Zombie series, and Visible Empire. I have two Harry Potter books waiting for me(rereading), Secondhand Souls, Florida, Reincarnation Blues, and a few others, not to mention the rest of the books I've bought over the last few years...

[Lovecat]

On 8/9/2018 at 8:55 PM, Captain Carrot said:

Just saw this in B&N. I give the odds of it being good at 50/50, but I had to get it.

 

On 8/12/2018 at 1:48 PM, Captain Carrot said:

Just finished it. It's a mystery in the Holmes (Obama) and Dr. Watson (Biden) format, and the writing is decent. Biden is the POV character, has a tendency to use folksy expressions, and puts his foot in his mouth a few times. Obama has a tendency to go into college lecturer mode at the drop of the hat. Basically it's a beach book that happens to star Obama and Biden. That being said, it was a beach book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

DH bought it, read it, and quite liked it, and has passed it on to me.  I'll be reading it while traveling for business this week, and am looking forward to it!!

[helenamonster]

Just finished: Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott. Yawn. 300-some pages and nothing really happened. I think Abbott has a beautiful prose style but the woman can't plot for shit. This might just be a taste thing...I need stuff to happen in the books I read, and I find too much introspective navel gazing in fiction to just be an attempt to disguise a paper-thin storyline. She was also really reaching to say something profound about psychopathy in women and it did not land at all.

Next up: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.

[Spartan Girl]

I'm about to read the new Robin Williams biography by Dave Itzkoff.  I just hope to God it isn't another Wired.