#WondrousWednesday @Eggs
1) Tana French, Louise Penny, Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Kevin Wilson.
2) I am awful at picking favorites. I'll go with the tagged (genre: literary fiction), but I'm not sure it's my favorite-favorite.
3) Beverly Cleary.
#WondrousWednesday @Eggs
1) Tana French, Louise Penny, Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Kevin Wilson.
2) I am awful at picking favorites. I'll go with the tagged (genre: literary fiction), but I'm not sure it's my favorite-favorite.
3) Beverly Cleary.
I can't remember how I learned about this book, but it's just my cup of tea. An epic, car-free journey following the migratory loop of the monarch butterfly, undertaken to raise awareness about conservation and habitat loss with commentary about community and culture and privilege... it's like the many thru-hiking books I've enjoyed just with a purpose broader than self-discovery. And on a bike. I'll definitely be gifting some copies of this one.
A little bittersweet to work this puzzle while listening to Xe Sands tell Sara Dykman's story of biking thousands of miles to raise awareness about the North American monarch migration and conservation in general. I'll review the book once I finish it...and then I'll see if my landlord will let me plant a patch of native milkweed and other butterfly-supporting plants in the tiny yard.
I attended my first book launch today! The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs (California) is not in the database, so I tagged the book! It's a beautiful journal filled with awesome ideas for adventures big and small that we can enjoy with the youngest people in our lives! The bookstore is a sweet little spot chock-full of great books and fun and friendly staff! I am so filled with exclamation marks, they are spilling into every sentence!!
I'm not able to devote quite as much time to the tagged as I'd like, but it's getting nice and creepy. No connection to this photo, really, except that I'm kind of obsessed with the lighting, which looks a little like it was painted by a Dutch master, which is maybe a little uncanny.
I really enjoy the subtlety of the relationships in Tana French's novels. She's adept at portraying both the spoken dialogue and the subtext, including when characters recognize that there is subtext but can't quite be sure what it is. I'm not sure what the title has to do with the story, but aside from that, I found this to be another solid, enjoyable addition to French's oeuvre.
I presume that this little lizard in my yard agrees with me.
Despite the fact that my photography skills make it look like an indistinct lump in the tree, this is one of our neighborhood great horned owls. On my evening audiowalk with the tagged book, I spotted this fellow flying from tree to tree in between calling to his sweetheart (and no doubt with another kind of hunting plan for later). On an earlier audiowalk today, I saw a hawk carrying off a snake. It's Wild Kingdom around here!
Pretty cool day today! I got a skip-the-line loan of Tana French's latest on Libby, had a beautiful walk with a friend (first time wearing a sleeveless top this year...slathered on the SPF50), and during our evening walk, my spouse and I unexpectedly saw the SpaceX Falcon 9 shortly after it launched from Vandenberg AFB. (I have very mixed feelings about ultra-rich dudes funding space stuff, but this was cool.)
It took me a couple of chapters to get into this one. I watched Star Trek when I was younger, and I've read a decent amount of sci-fi (Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Tchaikovsky, PK Dick, Adams, Eggers, Chiang---TheStorygraph says I've read 101 sci-fi books), but I'm not really a sci-fi fan, per se. I do not cosplay, for example. However, I'm glad I persevered because this novel is funny, smart, and emotionally truthful.
Camille and Silo say that my top priority this afternoon is sitting still and finishing my book. If I don't fall asleep under the warmth and purring of two cats.
I finally got into the tagged book and all I want to do is read it, but instead I have to read and give feedback on informational articles written by 5th graders. I mean, they're awesome 5th graders, but it's not really the same. Photo of yesterday's sunset and waxing moon to illustrate my wistfulness.
🪻I prefer task-based work to time-based work, it's okay not to be immediately awesome at something when I first start out (or ever. Mediocre still gets the job done), and I kind of like being the center of attention (but don't mind sharing).
🪻 Part-time teacher, part-time student, aspiring voice actor.
🪻 I'd love to do so many things. Park ranger, Navy chaplain, actor, musician, photographer, scientist, midwife...
@Eggs #WondrousWednesday
Maggie Downs's second book just came out, and I can see this book becoming a must-gift for new and expectant parents (and grandparents!) in my life. The list includes activities ranging from the simple---"Sing together"---to the more ambitious---"Visit a wonder of the world." Best of all, each activity is paired with prompts and journal space to reflect on and savor each completed activity, with extra pages for your own adventures and drawings.
1) Watch drunk people on YouTube and give feedback on classmates' commercial recordings.
2) So many (clown, mom, teacher, long-haul truck driver, firefighter), but for a long time I wanted to be a singer because I loved Linda Ronstadt.
3) Zion and Death Valley NP road trip this spring, then a 2-3 week trip in June either to Nova Scotia or to Seattle/Vancouver.
4) Tagged!
@Cupcake12 #MotivationalMonday
After 23 hours, with 23 more to go, I have to set this one aside. I am interested in knowing her story but not enough to devote my precious time and attention to it right now. Maybe I'll pick it up again later.
Book mail!
If this---voice acting, practicing multiple languages, learning about recording, performing music again after a long hiatus (and adding a new instrument)---is a midlife crisis, I am enjoying it more than I expected. It's kind of terrifying but mostly in a good way.
While I always enjoy Hugh Fraser's narration, I had to re-read parts of this on my Kobo to get the plot straight. Listening to the audiobook, if I let my attention stray for one moment, I lost the thread. Even reading back and understanding the basics, the motivations and details still don't make total sense to me. I like the characters, but it's not my favorite Poirot mystery.
Still chugging away on the tagged. I snapped this photo of a not-duck at school today. This fellow was singing his heart out. I don't know what he is...some kind of finch, maybe. Every time we move to a different region I have to learn new birds, and although we've been here 6 years, I still only know phoebes, ospreys, pelicans, cormorants, seagulls, condors, wrens, and quail. This is none of those.
1) Newcomerstown, Ohio (Ducks, Newburyport)
2) The location I'm thinking about now is the Canadian Maritimes from the Anne of Green Gables books. I've been to New Brunswick and PEI, but I haven't made it out to Nova Scotia yet. I've also wanted to see Newfoundland ever since I read E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.
@Eggs #WondrousWednesday
Some people take classy restroom selfies. I take whatever this is. (Book-related because while taking the picture I was listening to the tagged on my little headphones, which are cleverly hidden in my hair.)
Still uncertain if I can go the distance with the tagged book, but I listened to it while putting our new rug under the dining table, and it's grown on me a bit. (The book, not the rug. Although that's grown on me, too.)
Please tell me that the stream of consciousness doesn't go on for the entire novel. Please? So many people like this book a lot, but the stream of consciousness might break me.
(Rainbow from my walk today.)
While I found the first 1/2 to 2/3 of this novel to be more well put together compared with the latter portion, which felt a little rushed, I really enjoyed the characters and relationships. McBride draws rich characters and skillfully shows how groups of people interact with one another and react to circumstances of inequality and bias. There's a feeling of being trapped and looking for/seeking to create a small bit of breathing room.
For those following closely, you probably remember that I initially, accidentally, used January's #bookspinbingo board numbers to populate my February titles. I later made the correct board, but decided to track both, just for fun. As you can see, the correct board yielded a bingo and the erroneous one did not. So, yay for February!
#bookspin #doublespin @TheAromaofBooks
The first thing to know about Ring the book is that it's really not at all like either the Japanese or US movie versions. The second thing to know is that it's not really scary (but it is weird and a little creepy). It's decently enjoyable, the relationship between the two main characters is well done, and it's an interesting 1990, pre-Internet take on viral media, but there are a couple of twists where I'm just, like...why?
Towards the end of the book, Breslin explains that while she originally planned to write a work of investigative journalism about longitudinal studies and their impact on the study subjects, her publisher requested she make this book a memoir. This likely accounts for why the book consistently feels like neither one thing nor the other. It's interesting, but I think it would have been better if Breslin had been able to write it how she wanted to.
When I was about 40% in and ready to bail, I took a break, read some reviews, and reminded myself that I really liked The Pisces. While I'm still not a huge fan of a novel that reads like a memoir and spending so much time inside the head of someone I'm not sure I like, I did end up appreciating this book. The second half redeems the first, and I like when authors portray the richness and beauty of the desert alongside its potential deadliness.
I really enjoyed this book. Kingfisher's humor is just my style, and although it's not quite as creepy as I would prefer (not as many shivers down my spine as I was hoping for), it's creepy enough. I do like the theme of children contorting themselves trying to please their parents and the way that love can get distorted by need.
1) We moved house in April 2022, but last big move was Dec 31, 2017 to Jan 8, 2018, when we did a corner-to-corner road trip to move from Massachusetts to SoCal. I'm feeling the itch to move again (hoping for Europe this time), but my son wants to graduate high school first.
2) There's a military kid in the tagged, which as a former military kid myself, I really appreciate.
#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView
If you've seen my Litsy posts, you know I like weird books. In fact, I love books in which super-off-the-wall stuff happens in the service of portraying true emotional reactions. However, this novel has the first without the second. It's a changeling story, which is cool, but I don't really buy the characters' reactions. And the repeated use of the phrase "the muck and the mire" has "Hang Me Up to Dry" by Cold War Kids stuck in my head.
Yoshimoto's prose (or Yoneda's translation of it) is smooth, comforting, and understated in this strange, quiet, short little novel about growing up and learning about the parallel stories running alongside our childhood understanding of the world. Yayoi's story is perhaps more dramatic than many, but I suspect that the discomfort of learning that the world isn't quite what you thought it was is a fairly universal experience of adolescence.
Ear scritches and reading time: Silo is perhaps even happier than I am that I have a rare Saturday off from work.
Michael Connelly writes novels of consistent quality. They're not astounding works of literature, but they're good stories, and I always pretty much know what I'm getting when I open the cover of one of his books (or put on my headphones, in the case of audiobooks), which is a comfort. I like that this one shows some evolution in Haller and Bosch's characters. As always, I look forward to his next book.
I love this novel. Some parts are a smidgen on the nose, but the themes and interactions really resonate with me. Also, the MCs are almost exactly my age and not only saw some of the same bands around the same time I did, but are going through similar mid-life stuff at the same time. The family relationships, the stories the characters tell themselves, the misunderstandings...it all hits really well for me. Now to get my spouse to read it!
The lineage of this test making it to me was, I think, @ElizaMarie from @Chrissyreadit from @TieDyeDude from @The_Book_Ninja
Despite flaws in the test, for a former subscriber to Ms. Magazine, someone who saw Gloria Steinem speak at Duke University, who participated in Take Back the Night rallies, and whose later feminism was strongly influenced by work with birthing and childrearing families, it's a quick look at where feminism is today.
Less than two weeks after the start of February, my January Bookends post is up! Enjoy! https://imperfecthappiness.org/2024/02/12/bookends-january-2024/
With alternating timelines that gradually move closer to one another until they meet, this one is structured quite similarly to The Dry. I found it confusing in a few spots, but that seemed intentional and felt satisfying when things became more clear. I'm going to take a break before reading the next in the series, but I do plan to revisit these characters.
Thank you so much for sending me this book, @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks ! What a great story! It's twisty and thrilling and mysterious but also has complex, well-drawn characters. I just downloaded the second book in the series from Libby!
Photo is of California rather than Australia, but I think it represents the title well.
I occasionally get lost reading Sayers's novels. I enjoy the pleasant meandering of the plot until I look up and realize I have no idea how we got to where we are. But in some ways I feel like the mystery itself is secondary to the relationships. The friendships in this one are excellent, and it's interesting how emotionally delicate the rich people seem to be, Peter included. I'm interested to watch these characters evolve.
#doublespin for Feb
Rainy lunch between classes. (I'm under a ramada, so as long as the wind doesn't blow too hard, it's not actively raining on me...or my book.)
"She knew when they were genuine because she was built to feel the world through active, staggered checks of compassion. She could not help but understand where they were coming from, because it was where she came from, too, because she was meant to begin where other people ended."
I find this novel funny, quirky, true, and very sad. It's a look at how we (some of us) are conditioned to put ourselves aside to become what everyone else wants us to be, whether realistic or not, and to change when their whims change. It's a look at how this is okay until it's not, and then we have to figure out what to do with the disillusion and grief that result.
Photo: Unusually active koala at the zoo this morning.
Not a great photo, but we're enjoying a movie night with the 2002 movie adaptation of P.K. Dick's classic story. It's been ages since I watched this one. All of the actors are so young!
I'm giving this a pick in spite of some silly aspects (like how hung up characters are about hair color) because it's just fun to read. I had to listen to the last couple of chapters three times and check out the ebook to figure out what exactly had happened, but aside from that, the twists and turns were fun. The characters in this one are especially interesting. I would like to read a whole novel about Anna Scheele.
Okay, I re-made the February card with the correct numbers (and titles). NOW I'm ready for #bookspinbingo this month! (Although if I get a bingo with the wrong card, I might count it.)
@TheAromaofBooks
Ready for February!
EDIT: Nooo! The Litsy app took me to what was apparently the most recent post I looked at on @TheAromaofBooks 's profile, which was the January #bookspinbingo card, and I didn't notice the month was wrong, just looked at the numbers! Now, do I re-do it with February's card, or do I stick with this one? 🫤
#bookspinbingo #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks
And so ends January 2024 #bookspinbingo. Alas, no bingo, no #bookspin, no #doublespin. But I had a good time with several of these. I'm not sure if February is shaping up to have much more reading time, what with both taking and teaching classes now, but I'm certainly going to do my best to find time to sit and read this month.
@TheAromaofBooks