I tried to do this yesterday but my laptop died. Then this morning our basement flooded. That’s not really relevant but it was annoying, and annoyance shared is annoyance halved. But neither of those things will be what I remember about these last eight days. Lots of ups and downs, and it was a very very special week for this kid:
Oh I also did some reading. I took a couple breaks while reading I Am, I Am, I Am. The first story was phenomenal, the last two stories were also fantastic. But in between I got less interested. I guess it’s unfair to critique a memoir as being “too memoir-y” but who said I have to be fair? I think most people will like this more than I did. She’s a great writer and I’ll keep reading her fiction, it’s just that memoirs are not really my thing. Liked it, didn’t love it.
I guess I was on a roll of reading stuff I don’t like, because next up was a thriller. I always seem to hate thrillers, and guess what, I hated The Woman in the Window! This started out pretty well, and it was constantly referencing Hitchcock films, so that was cool. But it eventually just highlighted how much more compelling Hitchcock’s movies are than this tedious, dopey book. Way too long for how little happens, one twist is embarrassingly obvious, and there are about four characters in the whole thing, so not very hard to guess who the bad guy is. I’m mad at myself for giving this a chance. Lesson learned: don’t give things a chance.
There was nowhere to go but up from there. Brass has a lot of elements I like. Shifting points of view, mother/daughter stuff, nice writing. I almost always hate it when characters have unplanned pregnancies and don’t have abortions; if you were only going off fiction, you would think abortion was the rarest procedure on earth. In this one it didn’t bother me, because it was a kind of shiftless teenage girl in denial and kind of let things get away from her. (Not a spoiler.) Definitely more believable than the usual, “Oh whoops I got pregnant and it’s a terrible time and I totally don’t want a baby at all but hey, guess there are no options in 2018 so call me mommy!” that we usually see. I think I just in general don’t like surprise pregnancies as a plot device. Anyway, this was a really solid novel with good writing and good characters.
I’m annoyed at how many distractions I have going on right now (although one distraction is pretty great) because I am absolutely LOVING The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore and I wish I could just get in an isolation tank and devour it. So this is about five girls at summer camp who go on a little excursion and things go wrong, then it follows up on each character later in life. So it’s not necessarily the most original plot, but it is so well done, and I love the writing, and the details, and the insights…seriously I am loving this book. And if I can get a few minutes of quiet today, maybe I will finish it!
