But mostly read.
But mostly read.
Nothing happened this week.
The Golden State is one of the most frustrating books I've ever read. It doesn't help that my expectations for this one were sky high. This one has some serious hype going for it. I loved the story and the characters, but the writing style was so irritating. This sort of constant, stream of consciousness run on sentences that went on forever. I was always hyper aware of it, and it felt so calculated, like she was somehow both showing off and slumming at the...
After (mostly) taking a break from running over the summer, I've started to get back into it. Super slow but I'm building up mileage again and getting ready for Ragnar Napa. I took a bad fall the other day and my hand still looks awful and hurts like hell. I will spare you the photo of my gross hand so please enjoy Bubba in a laundry basket instead.
Ok, I hate saying things like this, but I feel the author of The Bed Moved must have some friends in the industry or something. There is...
This was Dash and Lucy's first full week of school. It went well but it felt like it was about 11 days long. If the first eight days of middle school are representative of the whole experience, this will be a breeze. (Don't listen to the narrator.) Anyway here's a picture of our cat reading Garfield.
The Summer Wives was a perfect end of summer novel. You really can always rely on Beatriz Williams to deliver. This jumps around among three different time periods and I was equally...
Young Jane Young. Oh man, did I love this book. This is really sharp, feminist, and funny. In a nutshell, it's about a Lewinsky-esque scandal and how she and her family dealt with the aftermath. One of the few things I love about the time we're living in is that Monica Lewinsky is awesome now and we're realizing how we should have looked at that scandal way back then. The final section is in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and that really brought it up a notch for me. Seemed...
Summer ended with some high drama and a jam packed few weeks. I was going to update last week but then there was Annihilation at the summer rewind festival, so, chocolate popcorn won out.
A Place for Us is a very very solid novel and was just what I needed to get out of my slump. I love a modern multicultural family saga, love shifting viewpoints, parent child strife...this hits a lot of buttons for me. My only quibble is it could have been a little tighter. With an edit it would have...
Visible Empire. 3 stars. Great story, but it's based on a true event, so real life is doing most of the work here. The characters all felt flat and undeveloped. A real missed opportunity.
All We Ever Wanted. 4 stars. High four stars. I was totally into this story, I loved the issues of parenting in the age of social media, and what happens when you discover your kids don't share your values anymore. The book goes too easy on its main character but this was terrific and would be a great...
My kids have been away at camp this week, and surprisingly, I did not really do that much reading. Reading is easy to do while they're around so I used my time doing hot yoga, going to movies, and watching a lot of tv. They've been with me 24/7 this summer so I really didn't miss them but I'm also very excited to see them tomorrow.
I don't know why Fruit of the Drunken Tree never really clicked for me. Totally sounds like something I would love and, I mean, the writing isn't bad or...
Dash is living and breathing Dog Man 24 hours a day this summer. One thing he and Lucy like about it is how some of the titles are references to "real" books, so we came up with the "fun" idea of doing a Dog Man book club. We had lots of titles to pick from; Of Mice and Men and A Tale of Two Cities were top contenders, but since Dash is counting the days until Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas comes out, we decided to start there. So this became the summer I read Lord of the Flies to my 11 and 7...
Young Jane Young. 5 stars. Holy smokes, did I love these characters. The choose your own adventure section at the end will stick with me forever. I might read this again sometime, this was an instant favorite.
Providence. 3 stars. This was compelling and unusual, but it didn't have the humor of her other books and I couldn't get past that. I'm sure you get more out of it if you've read any Lovecraft. I have not.
Before We Were Yours. 4 stars. The main...
We spent six days on Orcas Island, where we had very little cell coverage, and the kids got to be very free range. So that means I got a lot of reading in. Perfect trip all the way around.
Then She Was Gone was hard to believe, and impossible to put down. I definitely had some issues with some of the character interactions feeling a little off, but it's so rare that I enjoy a thriller so I don't want to nitpick. There are some pretty ruthless moments in this book and I love the author...