The week in review

I feel like I slept about a total of three hours all week. It’s only October and I’m already burned out on the school year.

But who cares about that, because The World of Tomorrow was so good! Such a satisfying ending. If I haven’t convinced you to pick this one up by now, I don’t know what more I can do. Instant favorite.

I thought I would maintain that momentum with Forest Dark. I’d been eagerly awaiting this for a long time, because I loved History of Love so much. (I never finished The Great House, but only because I was in the middle of it the last time I gave birth, so that was a little distracting.) Unfortunately, I had a hard time caring about anything in this book; I like her writing but the storylines were so uninteresting to me. The most compelling parts by far were the ones about her personal life; I don’t know for sure that it was based on herself but it sure felt that way. It’s a bad sign when I feel like something would have been better as a memoir, because I almost never like memoirs at all. This was a real disappointment.

I fully expected to love Jillian though, and guess what…I loved it! I am going to write more about this soon, because it deserves a spot under favorites. This one has a big ‘not for everyone’ tag; it feels like a precursor to After Birth, another ‘not for everyone’ book that is most definitely for me. More about this later, but it was hilarious and I loved it.

I was a little disappointed in The Grip of It. This was another one that I was expecting to love, and there was a lot that was good about it, but it just kind of fizzled out. It was spooky and weird but then it was just like, hmm that was weird, The End. I don’t know, it was okay, but I felt like it could have been so much better. I don’t know if I’ll read more from that author or not.

Right now, I am very excited to be halfway through Manhattan Beach. I waited a very long time for Jennifer Egan to follow up Goon Squad, and I am really proud of the fact that I was #3 on the hold list for this. I’ve read everything Jennifer Egan has published, and I probably always will. I loved Goon Squad, and this is nothing at all like Goon Squad but it’s great so who cares? A lot of interesting characters and very insightful writing and I want to know what happened to a certain character, so signing off here to get back to it. No spoilers!