What Are We Currently Reading?

[helenamonster]

20 hours ago, Katy M said:

And I actually didn't care that much for Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  Oddly enough, I felt like the whole point of the book was that men suck and had I not known better I would have never guessed that it was written by a man.

I remember enjoying it exactly because it seemed amazingly progressive not just for the time it was written in, but for the fact that a man from that time wrote it. But mileages vary, etc.

I haven't read it since before #MeToo...I'll have to remember to grab my copy next time I go home and see how it holds up.

18 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Finally read A Simple Favor and...I didn't like it. It's basically Gone Girl if Amy's idiot friend/patsy was more involved. 

Hated it. Didn't get a chance to see the movie when it was in theaters, but from the trailers it looked like they'd significantly improved on the book's weaknesses, so I'm still interested.

[Mindthinkr]

I finished Up Country by Nelson DeMille. It was a slog (850) paged fictionalized history of Vietnam. Very interesting especially because I’m at the age where family and friends got shipped off to there. 

I also read Verses for the Dead by Preston and Child. One of their better and I loved that they gave Agent Pendergast a partner! 

[peacheslatour]

11 hours ago, Silver Raven said:

Adding to books that are hard to read, Les Miserables.  It's always amazed me that Jean Valjean, the protagonist, doesn't even make an appearance till about 200 pages in.

I read The Phantom of the Opera a few years back. It's a weird book, the first few chapters read like a book for kids. The it gets really dark, really tragic.

[Athena]

22 hours ago, Katy M said:

And I actually didn't care that much for Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  Oddly enough, I felt like the whole point of the book was that men suck and had I not known better I would have never guessed that it was written by a man.

2 hours ago, helenamonster said:

I remember enjoying it exactly because it seemed amazingly progressive not just for the time it was written in, but for the fact that a man from that time wrote it. But mileages vary, etc.

I like Hardy for that reason. Tess is progressive for the time because it shows socioeconomic and gender inequality. Hardy's novels tend to be very depressing because he was a Victorian realist, but he really captured a lot of different female perspectives in his books. I prefer his portrayal of Victorian women over Dickens. Tess and Jude the Obscure were both banned and in some cases, burned. Sadly, Hardy was a reportedly a neglectful husband to both his wives.

[HazelEyes4325]

On 3/4/2019 at 11:28 AM, helenamonster said:

In my senior year high school English class, our final project was to pick a book from the Norton Critical Editions collection and write an essay on it (Norton Critical Editions are classic works of literature that also include a bunch of secondary sources at the back that give the works context and help with analysis). One girl in my class picked Moby Dick. When I was talking with my teacher about my paper, we got into a conversation about what other students were reading, and she mentioned the girl reading Moby Dick. My teacher's exact words: "I tried to get her to pick something else. She says she's enjoying it, but nobody enjoys Moby Dick." Even the English teachers are out here telling us to not bother with that one!

1

When I was in High School, we had to read an abridged version of Moby Dick and our teacher started out by saying, "Trust me, this is much better than the real deal."

[MaggieG]

I know people loved it and it won a Pulitzer but I had to force myself to get through All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr. I read it for book club, otherwise I probably would not have finished. I normally enjoy books about that era, but this one was just a slog. It didn't get interesting until the last 30 pages. This may be an unpopular opinion.

Currently reading An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen and I like it so far. I finished Our Kind of Cruelty by Aramita Hall and the main character was even more delusional than Joe Goldberg which I didn't think was possible

[Irlandesa]

20 hours ago, Silver Raven said:

Adding to books that are hard to read, Les Miserables.  It's always amazed me that Jean Valjean, the protagonist, doesn't even make an appearance till about 200 pages in.

This is tough.  It is so well written.  It does so well at description and capturing atmosphere.  But my attention span for pages and pages and pages of description isn't what I'd like it to be. 

[MeloraH]

On 3/3/2019 at 9:56 PM, Silver Raven said:

I read War & Peace, though there are a lot of spots (the ninety pages of agriculture philosophy, for example) that I skipped over.

I just finished Part 1 of Book 1 so I haven't made it to the endless battles or agricultural philosophy yet. I have been making myself read the French parts in French before checking the translations when necessary which was fine until I got to the 2+ page letters... Reading it on my kindle at least makes it easier to go back and forth between translations and notes than flipping pages...

[helenamonster]

21 hours ago, HazelEyes4325 said:

When I was in High School, we had to read an abridged version of Moby Dick and our teacher started out by saying, "Trust me, this is much better than the real deal."

In ninth grade we had to read Great Expectations and my teacher had us spend four months on it. Four months. The school year is only nine a half! By contrast, my friend had a different teacher that year and eventually they got to the point where she was literally printing out the Great Expectations SparkNotes chapters for every student and telling them to just read that instead.

21 hours ago, MaggieG said:

Currently reading An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen and I like it so far.

I'm reading this now too (42% through according to my Kindle) and enjoying it. It's managed to constantly subvert my expectations/predictions just enough at every turn to keep me interested.

[Bunty]

Talking about classics-- college introduced me to the reading of plays, which I would never have picked up on my own.

I especially enjoyed Long day's journey into night by Eugene O'Neill and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.  Long day's journey into night was made into a great movie with a young Dean Stockwell, Jason Robards, and Katharine Hepburn.

[Minneapple]

I liked An Anonymous Girl, better than The Wife Between Us, actually. It was different and the scene-setting was creepy and very well-done. 

I read The Silent Patient and really enjoyed it. It's been awhile since one of these thriller-with-a-twist novels ramped up the tension to the point where my heart was pounding, but this book did it.

[AngelKitty]

18 hours ago, helenamonster said:

In ninth grade we had to read Great Expectations 

Ooh, we read that too. Plus A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield and I loved all of them. And then senior year I had Shakespeare and the Literary Hero and I enjoyed that too. It wasn't until college that I had to read something I disliked, specifically, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (and actually got a B+ on a paper I wrote about just how much I hated that book.)

I just finished C.J. Cherryh's latest: Alliance Rising:The Hinder Stars. This was a little tough to get through but she's one of my favorite authors so I persevered since I know this universe and it's the first in a series.

Next up is Persona, a near future tale about the media. Looks interesting. I'll let you know.

[nodorothyparker]

On 3/3/2019 at 4:01 PM, Slovenly Muse said:

Whew. Well, friends, ever since I saw it listed as #1 on a list of greatest works of English literature back in high school, it has been my personal goal to read James Joyce's Ulysses before I die. I'm not intimidated by big books, and I've studied a lot of classic literature (I didn't major in English Lit, but it was close). I'm 35, so I've had this goal awhile, and I recently finished Infinite Jest, so I felt ready to take on a new challenge, and I decided to give it a go. Man, oh, man, this book is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I realized right away that it is not the kind of book you just "read." I did a bit of research, and now I'm reading Ulysses in one hand (a 700 page book, thankfully on my Kobo), a book of annotations in the other (another 700 page book, thankfully on my phone), and the SparkNotes summary/analysis of each section cued up on my browser. Yep, reading this book in any meaningful way means reading 3 books at once. I am committed to finishing this book before I die, even if I have to live another hundred years to do it! Seriously, I can see why this is the book with one of the lowest reader completion rates... it's hard to keep going! Each section is long and difficult, punctuated by flashes of brilliance that make it worthwhile, but depending on the section, those flashes can be very far apart. Each section is written in a unique style. Some are beautiful, poetic, and absolutely a delight to read, and others are a completely interminable, impenetrable slog. The delight one feels in finally finishing a section is matched only by the dread of beginning the next. I've been reading it for months and I'm about a third of the way through. I'm not letting myself read anything else until I finish this, because I know if I start another book for casual reading, I'll get distracted and never pick up Ulysses again, so of course, all I want to do now is read something else! But I'm gonna do it. I'm going to finish this book!

Has anyone else climbed this mountain? Any words of wisdom for me?

No words of wisdom but I admire your tenacity and commitment in seeing it through. 

I like to tackle the Big Important Books every once in awhile just to make sure I'm exercising my mind and it's mostly been the Russian writers I've done that with.  (Disclaimer: I'm not Russian and have never been to Russia.  But there's something about the Russian writers and composers that speaks to me.)  So I've been trying most of my adult life to convince myself to take on War and Peace.  I've seen movie versions so I know the basic gist of it, but there's enough ruminating on agrarian philosophy in Anna Karenina that at times felt like it was drowning the more interesting story that when thrown in with what I'm told are long battle descriptions give me pause in taking on Tolstoy's Biggest Most Important Work.  I keep seeing the old Peanuts strips of Charlie Brown struggling to finish it in my head.

[dubbel zout]

In my previous life as a book editor, I worked on an annotated edition of some of Dickens's novels, which was fun. Of course, it helped that the book included his shorter novels, heh. As much as Dickens can drone on—and that's mostly because he was writing the novels as serials, not standalone books—he's a great writer who brings up some important social issues while still be very entertaining.

[Crs97]

My sophomore year in high school we read, in succession, Animal Farm, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451.  That is the year I discovered I hate dystopian fiction.  

[festivus]

Of all the books we had to read in high school, 1984 was easily my favorite. So much so that I buy it every time that I find a copy at the thrift store. I'm now calling it an art installation .

@Slovenly Muse I just wanted to say that your post really amused me. I salute you for trying to read Ulysses. My personal motto on most classic literature is that life is too short. lol. I have so many other things I actually want to read and I'll probably never have time for all of them that War & Peace and Moby Dick etc. will not make the cut. I bought a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead honestly just because it's a copy from 1968 and it's beautiful. Has anyone read it? Should I attempt it?

To get back on topic, I just started Brideshead Revisited and I'm also reading a Winter Soldier graphic novel and The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. I can never seem to read just one thing at a time.

Edited March 7, 2019 by festivus
forgot an important word

[peacheslatour]

Quote

I bought a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead honestly just because it's a copy from 1968 and it's beautiful. Has anyone read it? Should I attempt it?

I wouldn't bother. Ayn Rand was a loon. Her writing is ridiculously heavy handed and long winded.YMMV.

[nodorothyparker]

That Robbie the Creep in Dirty Dancing was shoving his copy of The Fountainhead at Baby while telling her "Some people count.  Some people don't." prejudiced teenage me against Ayn Rand before I ever knew who she was.  Later having to read one of her other books (blanking now on which one it was) for a college class did nothing to dissuade me from that opinion.

[festivus]

Well I guess I'll just keep that one for its artistic value then. 😊

[Silver Raven]

2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

I wouldn't bother. Ayn Rand was a loon. Her writing is ridiculously heavy handed and long winded.YMMV.

The 90 page radio broadcast in Atlas Shrugged is totally unreadable.

[Crs97]

One summer I decided to try Ayn Rand. I think I had watched a portion of The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper and wanted to see how it ended.  Then I thought I should give her a second chance with Atlas Shrugged.  I read half before I remembered I loved myself too much to torture myself.

[Mabinogia]

27 minutes ago, Crs97 said:

Then I thought I should give her a second chance with Atlas Shrugged.  I read half before I remembered I loved myself too much to torture myself.

I actually read all of Atlas Shrugged. I didn't love myself very much back then. lol It was not a good experience. 

[Black Knight]

I did find The Fountainhead weirdly readable. My biological mother was very into Ayn Rand and so I read her copies of both this and Atlas Shrugged (I did skip through the rest of the radio speech after about 20 pages or so). Of course it's hugely problematic, the philosophy is stupid, and also I was in high school at the time. I haven't read it again since. But I would say give it a try. If it doesn't grab you quickly, then bail.

[alias1]

I read The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye.  I'm a huge fan of this author and I thought it was excellent.  I loved her book Jane Steele.

[Haleth]

I read The Fountainhead many years ago.  The only thing I remember is that I hated all the characters.

I finished Once Upon a River the other day.  What a lovely fairy tale, so different than Diane Setterfield's previous book, The Thirteenth Tale.  (13th is really creepy, chock full of very disturbing characters.)  Although OUAR is not very deep or thought provoking, it is a story of generally kind people who are trying to unravel the mystery behind a little girl who washed up on the bank of the river.  Who is she?  Where did she come from?  Two families have a possible claim but everyone wants what is best for the child.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Haleth

[AngelKitty]

19 hours ago, festivus said:

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead honestly just because it's a copy from 1968 and it's beautiful. Has anyone read it? Should I attempt it?

After reading all the posts, I'm almost afraid to admit this but I remember being fascinated with Ayn Rand when I read her in my teens.

[festivus]

Well, at some point I guess I'll give it a try. I'm intrigued now.

[Minneapple]

On 3/7/2019 at 11:21 AM, Crs97 said:

My sophomore year in high school we read, in succession, Animal Farm, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451.  That is the year I discovered I hate dystopian fiction.  

Animal Farm was 8th grade. Fahrenheight 451 was ninth grade. To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, Moby Dick, The Crucible, round 'em up. My son is now 11 years old and I don't know if these are in his future, but what I do know is that the schools are now emphasizing more world literature rather than just Western/European literature. which is a nice change. His district has an entire year (10th grade, I think) where they focus African and Asian literature in English class. I'm not even sure I read a single African or Asian novel as part of my school reading when I was growing up.

[Black Knight]

6 hours ago, Minneapple said:

I'm not even sure I read a single African or Asian novel as part of my school reading when I was growing up.

I remember being assigned one in high school. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, unsurprisingly. It's a good read - I still remember quite a lot of it even all these years later.

[Jenniferbug]

I just finished The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It is probably the most unique book I've read in years and definitely kept my attention throughout. It was at times very confusing and I did not see the end coming at all. I'm tempted to read it again to see if it I pick up on more detail the second time through. 

[peacheslatour]

19 hours ago, Jenniferbug said:

I just finished The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It is probably the most unique book I've read in years and definitely kept my attention throughout. It was at times very confusing and I did not see the end coming at all. I'm tempted to read it again to see if it I pick up on more detail the second time through. 

I remember being very confused at the end of The Little Stranger. When I read it again I was even more confused.

Spoiler

was the stranger the doctor?

[alias1]

20 hours ago, Jenniferbug said:

I just finished The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It is probably the most unique book I've read in years and definitely kept my attention throughout. It was at times very confusing and I did not see the end coming at all. I'm tempted to read it again to see if it I pick up on more detail the second time through. 

I know! You really have to pay attention and even then it's still somewhat confusing.  I'm tempted to read it again, too, but I have to say, as unique as the plot is, I was not really engaged with the characters. 

[blackwing]

21 hours ago, Jenniferbug said:

I just finished The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It is probably the most unique book I've read in years and definitely kept my attention throughout. It was at times very confusing and I did not see the end coming at all. I'm tempted to read it again to see if it I pick up on more detail the second time through. 

5 minutes ago, SierraMist said:

I know! You really have to pay attention and even then it's still somewhat confusing.  I'm tempted to read it again, too, but I have to say, as unique as the plot is, I was not really engaged with the characters. 

I just finished it yesterday too.  And I agree.  Really unique concept but I am still really confused.  All the jumping around in bodies and days confused me, especially when he went kept going back into the butler on Day 2.  I think he had all the memories of his later hosts on later days when he went back to the butler in Day 2.  I kept trying to figure out the time paradox created if he had said anything useful on those jumps but then my head almost exploded.

I think I need a really good timeline which sketches out what he learned in each host, who he told or what he did about it, and what consequences each action had on an earlier or later host.

I also fully agree that I did not find any of the characters that engaging.  There's way too many of them.  The list of characters at the front of the book was overwhelming.

So just so I have it straight...

Why exactly did teenage Evelyn kill her brother Thomas?  I have forgotten already.  I know he found out that she was doing something with the stable boy or something like that but I forget why.  Her mother figured it out 19 years later when she found the dirty clothes.  Why wouldn't Evelyn have disposed of the bloody clothes in all of those years (I know she was away, but surely she could have found a way.  So she killed her mom, and her dad.  Did the other brother know?  The woman that Evelyn paid to portray her was getting greedy so Evelyn poisoned the drinks and ended up killing her other brother.  Did the rest of the family know that this "Evelyn" was actually Felicity Maddox?  I have a hard time believing that the parents didn't know it wasn't her.  If they knew, why keep up the charade?  I know they explained that Michael knew it wasn't her but wanted Evelyn to escape the marriage to the old large Lord Ravencroft.  Does that about sum it all up?

[Katy M]

I read Atlas Shrugged.  I found it amusing for the sheer ridiculousness of it.  And this from someone who tends to lean right.  The whole thing was ridiculous. Her brother's girlfriend said she didn't deserve to be forgiven, just for being the brother's girlfriend.  The "protagonist" and I use that word against my will, left her best friend high and dry.  Because he wasn't brilliant enough, I guess.  I don't know.  There's a difference between not being a social or communist and being completely cold-hearted and selfish.

[Jenniferbug]

2 hours ago, blackwing said:

I just finished it yesterday too.  And I agree.  Really unique concept but I am still really confused.  All the jumping around in bodies and days confused me, especially when he went kept going back into the butler on Day 2.  I think he had all the memories of his later hosts on later days when he went back to the butler in Day 2.  I kept trying to figure out the time paradox created if he had said anything useful on those jumps but then my head almost exploded.

I think I need a really good timeline which sketches out what he learned in each host, who he told or what he did about it, and what consequences each action had on an earlier or later host.

I also fully agree that I did not find any of the characters that engaging.  There's way too many of them.  The list of characters at the front of the book was overwhelming.

So just so I have it straight...

  Hide contents

Why exactly did teenage Evelyn kill her brother Thomas?  I have forgotten already.  I know he found out that she was doing something with the stable boy or something like that but I forget why.  Her mother figured it out 19 years later when she found the dirty clothes.  Why wouldn't Evelyn have disposed of the bloody clothes in all of those years (I know she was away, but surely she could have found a way.  So she killed her mom, and her dad.  Did the other brother know?  The woman that Evelyn paid to portray her was getting greedy so Evelyn poisoned the drinks and ended up killing her other brother.  Did the rest of the family know that this "Evelyn" was actually Felicity Maddox?  I have a hard time believing that the parents didn't know it wasn't her.  If they knew, why keep up the charade?  I know they explained that Michael knew it wasn't her but wanted Evelyn to escape the marriage to the old large Lord Ravencroft.  Does that about sum it all up?

@SierraMist, I think that's what is holding me back from picking it up again too- I'm not that engaged with any of his hosts. I think Bell showed some potential, but he's one who has minimal impact and we don't revisit. And then by the time we cycle back to Davies, I had mostly forgotten him. At one point he was on host 6 (I think) and someone said he still had 4 more hosts, it took me a really long time to realize they meant he would still have a couple hours as Davies and a couple of hours as the Butler. 

Spoiler

I think it was that Thomas knew she was the last to see the stable boy alive and was lying about it. I don't think the clothes the mother found were bloody, I think they were clean- Evelyn stashed them there to change into, but the mother found her with the brother first. She said it was an accident and the mom believed her until she found the clothes years later, which proved premeditation. I guess I was under the impression that it was a pretty quick timeline. Evelyn comes home, probably sees her parents, then the guests arrive and it sounds like the parents refuse to do any of the major dinners or social obligations once the guests have arrived (and then are dead) so the guests would only have met Felicity-Evelyn and hadn't seen Evelyn in long enough to know the difference. Michael took the social role from his parents and he knew so kept it covered. I don't think Michael knew she was planning to kill their parents or about her involvement in the other brother's death, but I don't know that it was explicitly stated he didn't know. A LOT happened at the end so I feel fuzzy about some of those details.

I guess my biggest question was- how did her death change from the first night? He sees it happen as Ravencourt with Michael reaching her first, and then when he's Derby (?) he sees it's changed and Rashton reaches her first...but I don't understand what happened to change things. I also didn't understand how much Grace and others who showed up at the graveyard to help catch Daniel were aware of or why they would believe this crazy story without the kind of proof he provided for Cunningham. And I really wasn't sure I bought into the whole thing with Anna- so he hates her enough to volunteer to go into this situation, intending to make her suffer. Then they end up working together, kind of. Except he never really seems to fully trust her and she even (somewhat) helps 2 of his hosts get murdered...so why on earth is he so hellbent on insisting she's changed enough to deserve release? She basically just did whatever he told her and read from the book of events he provided for her in the cycle we saw, so her own agency wasn't even really a factor to prove she was rehabilitated. 

[blackwing]

1 hour ago, Jenniferbug said:

  Reveal spoiler

I think it was that Thomas knew she was the last to see the stable boy alive and was lying about it. I don't think the clothes the mother found were bloody, I think they were clean- Evelyn stashed them there to change into, but the mother found her with the brother first. She said it was an accident and the mom believed her until she found the clothes years later, which proved premeditation. I guess I was under the impression that it was a pretty quick timeline. Evelyn comes home, probably sees her parents, then the guests arrive and it sounds like the parents refuse to do any of the major dinners or social obligations once the guests have arrived (and then are dead) so the guests would only have met Felicity-Evelyn and hadn't seen Evelyn in long enough to know the difference. Michael took the social role from his parents and he knew so kept it covered. I don't think Michael knew she was planning to kill their parents or about her involvement in the other brother's death, but I don't know that it was explicitly stated he didn't know. A LOT happened at the end so I feel fuzzy about some of those details.

I guess my biggest question was- how did her death change from the first night? He sees it happen as Ravencourt with Michael reaching her first, and then when he's Derby (?) he sees it's changed and Rashton reaches her first...but I don't understand what happened to change things. I also didn't understand how much Grace and others who showed up at the graveyard to help catch Daniel were aware of or why they would believe this crazy story without the kind of proof he provided for Cunningham. And I really wasn't sure I bought into the whole thing with Anna- so he hates her enough to volunteer to go into this situation, intending to make her suffer. Then they end up working together, kind of. Except he never really seems to fully trust her and she even (somewhat) helps 2 of his hosts get murdered...so why on earth is he so hellbent on insisting she's changed enough to deserve release? She basically just did whatever he told her and read from the book of events he provided for her in the cycle we saw, so her own agency wasn't even really a factor to prove she was rehabilitated. 

Re how it changed...

I didn't think that was ever the real Evelyn who shot herself by the reflecting pool.  I think that was always Felicity Maddox impersonating Evelyn.  The real Evelyn was always disguised as that maid, Madeline Aubert.  I thought it changed because Rashton made the connection that "Evelyn" was using a different gun, the first time it was the silver pistol and the second time it was the black revolver from the dueling set?  I thought Rashton realized where the guns came from and made a point to be by the reflecting pool because he figured out that she intended to fake her death.  Rashton had the policeman's mind and thus was able to figure some things out that the other hosts had not been able to.  At that point in time however, he still believed it to be the real Evelyn, it was only until later that he figured out she was a fake.

Or something like that?

[Jenniferbug]

22 minutes ago, blackwing said:

Re how it changed...

  Hide contents

I didn't think that was ever the real Evelyn who shot herself by the reflecting pool.  I think that was always Felicity Maddox impersonating Evelyn.  The real Evelyn was always disguised as that maid, Madeline Aubert.  I thought it changed because Rashton made the connection that "Evelyn" was using a different gun, the first time it was the silver pistol and the second time it was the black revolver from the dueling set?  I thought Rashton realized where the guns came from and made a point to be by the reflecting pool because he figured out that she intended to fake her death.  Rashton had the policeman's mind and thus was able to figure some things out that the other hosts had not been able to.  At that point in time however, he still believed it to be the real Evelyn, it was only until later that he figured out she was a fake.

Or something like that?

Spoiler

Absolutely right, but even before he's Rashton, he sees it change. I think it's when he's Derby (the rapist) and he's standing by the rock Anna told him to stand by to watch what's happening. And then he knows for sure things can change because when he was Ravencourt, it was Michael who reached fake Evelyn first and when he's Derby and Rashton, it's Rashton who reaches her first. But I don't understand what changed between when he witnessed the event as Ravencourt and when he witnessed it as Derby to cause that change. Was it something he did? Or something Anna or Daniel/Silver Tear did? Or am I forgetting a host between them? I can't remember when he's the lawyer guy or where that guy is when Evelyn "dies". 

[proserpina65]

On ‎03‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 3:12 PM, peacheslatour said:

I remember being very confused at the end of The Little Stranger. When I read it again I was even more confused.

  Reveal spoiler

was the stranger the doctor?

Spoiler

I don't know if he was the one doing all the strange things which had been going on, mainly because I couldn't quite figure out how he would've done some of them.  However, I definitely came away from the book thinking he had killed Caroline because she wouldn't marry him and make him lord of the manor.

[peacheslatour]

1 hour ago, proserpina65 said:

  Hide contents

I don't know if he was the one doing all the strange things which had been going on, mainly because I couldn't quite figure out how he would've done some of them.  However, I definitely came away from the book thinking he had killed Caroline because she wouldn't marry him and make him lord of the manor.

That and I sometimes wonder if it was:

Spoiler

When Mrs Ayres goes to investigate, she is locked in the nursery where Susan, her much-loved first daughter, died of diphtheria at eight years old. She ended up much later in the book being mauled by something and she said "My little girl, she's so eager for me to join her. I'm afraid she....isn't always kind."

[Spartan Girl]

Reading Olivia Newton-John's book, Don't Stop Believin' and it's good so far! I'm amused that she kept her leather pants from Grease.

[GoldenGirl90]

Haven't been reading as much as I'd like to lately, but I'm finally getting around to finishing Michelle Obama's Becoming. She's a phenomenal woman.

[Annber03]

Michelle's book is definitely on my "to read" list. I've no doubt it'd be quite a fascinating read :). 

[Crs97]

I loved Michelle’s book and learned so much about her family and growing up on the south side of Chicago.  Her mom especially is an amazing woman; Michelle clearly takes after her!

[rmcrae]

I'm in the middle of Sally Field's memoir In Pieces. I knew her only for her work and very little about her personal life. Damn, she's been through some things!

I'm on my library's waiting Michelle Obama's book and can't wait to get my hands on it.

[Spartan Girl]

FINALLY got Once Upon A River from my library, and you guys are right, I'm hooked!

[peacheslatour]

41 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

FINALLY got Once Upon A River from my library, and you guys are right, I'm hooked!

I heard it was a little hard to get into but you apparently had no problem. I may have to give it a go.

[helenamonster]

Just finished: An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. I found the story engaging for the most part and thought it had some very interesting twists and turns--nothing earth-shatteringly shocking but enough to keep me surprised. I could have done without the Noah subplot. I get that

Spoiler

the authors wanted to show Jess getting over her commitment issues as well as have something else she was working towards be taken away by Lydia, but I felt we didn't spend enough time with him for me to really care whether or not they ended up together. The whole thing really lifted right out, so I felt they should have either developed it more and woven it more organically into the main story, or just ditched it altogether. Losing her job at the same time that she's also trying to get out from under Lydia's thumb (and therefore lose that extra income as well) were enough stakes for me.

I found the Lydia character a little difficult to ever get a full read on--intentional, I know, but even at the end she didn't really make 100% sense to me--but I found Thomas to be very interesting and a character type we don't normally see. He did shitty things and lied about them, but he was clearly repentant about it and overall didn't seem like a bad guy, just a normal guy who made a very very bad mistake (which he should have paid for by losing his license, not getting wrapped up in Lydia's nonsense).

I also sympathized with Jess's motivations regarding money. As a twenty-something living paycheck to paycheck in NYC, yeah, I too might take somebody's place in a psychological study and then continue to perform weird tasks for hundreds of dollars at a time without too many questions.

I was also expecting there to be more made out of the lock sticking in Jess's apartment door. Every time they made a reference to her needing to pull it closed, I was sure we were setting up some foreshadowing of a showdown with Lydia at her apartment. And all it lead to was Lydia leaving her soup. Idk, I felt that was too much build up for such a small development.

Next up: Her One Mistake by Heidi Perks.

[Spartan Girl]

I was initially excited by In Another Time by Jillian Cantor because I loved Margot. And it started out good, but...it lost me at the sci-fi twist.

[Snow Apple]

On 3/12/2019 at 5:55 PM, Spartan Girl said:

Reading Olivia Newton-John's book, Don't Stop Believin' and it's good so far! I'm amused that she kept her leather pants from Grease.

I started this last night. I went to bed when I got to the chapter about Grease because I didn't want to start that goodie while in a sleepy state. 

I have a question. Did I miss it or did Olivia just mentioned being engaged to Bruce without talking about their background story prior? All of a sudden out of the blue, there was a sentence about how they were engaged even though he wasn't divorced yet and I thought "Huh? Who's Bruce? "

1 minute ago, Snow Apple said:

Edited March 17, 2019 by Snow Apple

[Spartan Girl]

8 hours ago, Snow Apple said:

I started this last night. I went to bed when I got to the chapter about Grease because I didn't want to start that goodie while in a sleepy state. 

I have a question. Did I miss it or did Olivia just mentioned being engaged to Bruce without talking about their background story prior? All of a sudden out of the blue, there was a sentence about how they were engaged even though he wasn't divorced yet and I thought "Huh? Who's Bruce? "

She mentioned how they met in a previous chapter I guess. She does tend to skip ahead to things. Still a good book though.