Bookin' It Thru Life

Mixture of murder mystery, film noir, psychological thriller, and just plain sad...I "Liked It"...though I will say, on the heels of The Children , I wondered what sort of list I was looking at to get these book recommendations where two books in a row the protagonist was an agoraphobic woman...since things often happen in threes, I'm on the lookout for another one... This book had hints of Rear Window (I think that had to have been deliberate) and I seriously kept picturing Jimmy Stewart's girlfriend, her slim skirts and her hair always done and digitally remastered color...it was honestly a little distracting.  It also had a little bit of The Sixth Sense and some Stephen King to it. I haven't read Finn before (at least that I recall) and I liked her style.  This book also hit all the pop culture lists and seems to be one "everyone" is reading or has read...as those type books go, I can see the appeal, which is more than I usually say for those ty...

Yikes...still considering whether its worth making my way through this.  Stumbling on page 30 and not sure how or if I am going to proceed...if anyone has made it through and enjoyed it I'd love to know if its worth the wade...otherwise, it'll probably go on the "maybe someday, probably not" list...

Set in modern day world of blogs and cell phones (and dependent on these for certain plot devices which in my opinion takes away from the book instead of adding to it), this is a novel about a home bound (mostly) woman and the family dynamics that take on a life of their own one summer.  Some of the things that I liked about this book included a) the girls' relationship with their mother-accepting of her flaws, tolerant of her ignorance, loving and mocking in equal measure while never losing sight of the fact that she was their mother-I thought it was well portrayed... b) the house...it reminded me a little of my grandparents house on the Hill, sprawling, never changing but never quite the same, always needing upkeep that it never seemed to quite get but never being truly run down to the point of being uninhabitable, though surely some would see it so...it made me nostalgic...c) I thought her relationship with the caretaker/boyfriend was done well enough for me to buy it...a little...

What to say about this book...I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that its "pop fiction"...the cover is everywhere, so on some level I read it because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.  I don't know why I do that-it hardly ever works out.  But I feel like I can't really disparage a book until I have read it.  For example, I heard so much about those vampire books (wait, I'll remember in a second what they were called...Bella and her vampire, set I think in Seattle, big, big, big movie, people rave about the books I found them borderline terrible...I read the first one and probably would have rated it a "Don't Bother"...what the heck...I'll have to google it...ah yes, Twilight..dreadful) that I had to read them...mistake...I read the first one and vowed never to read another one nor to ever see the movies.   This book reminded me a little of Girl on a Train ...and I'd say it was way better.  It also brought to mind the ...

#4-Liked It With Balducci, you get what you get.  You know when you pick it up you are going to read an adventure story with a couple of badass characters who go up against some not-so-good-guys and hopefully at the end come out ahead.  He's not as good as Grisham at his best; he's far above Grisham at his worst.  The plot just rolls past you...seriously, I am not sure that I can remember exactly who the main character was or what the objective of his mission was and I just finished the book...but that's not really important when reading his stuff.  And his characters, while by no means flat, are not exactly full-dimensional.  But hey, why do they need to be?  If a book's goal is to get you through a flight and some out of town downtime, and you are just looking for escapism and not anything fancy, he's your guy.  I've read most of his stuff and I'll continue to read it until he stops publishing it...so that, my friends, is sometimes all that you can...

None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer mid-2017 thru early 2018 until TBD (if I ever finish it???) I am not sure where I picked this book up, whether I found it on a list or whether I just grabbed it at Barnes and Nobel one time-I think I've had it for a while.  Started this book last year and stopped.  Started it again and put it down.  Picked it up, read a few chapters, put it down.  I suppose I'll finish it eventually since its a paperback and it just sits by my bedside until I am out of other things to read.  The writing is very, very dense which is probably why its taking me a while to get through it...I can't just "escape" by reading this book.  She doesn't use traditional punctuation, there is much stream of consciousness interspersed with active voice and you have to focus to take it all in.  Its also pretty far off the beaten path for me...its the story of two couples and their lives in post-apartheid South Africa.  I'm pretty certa...

The Children's Book by A.S Byatt March 2018 I found this on a list online of books some author recommended.  It may have been Novik, the author of the last book I read (I sometimes go look at their websites after I finish a book).  It may have been someone else entirely, I really don't remember where I got the recommendation.  I had been heavy on the fantasy recently and was looking for a change in scenery.  This seemed to be a story about people, specifically an author and her relationship with her many children.  I'm a sucker for books about big families so off I went. Well, it was unexpectedly "artsy" in places...literally, there was a whole chapter that I barely skimmed because it was full of what I viewed as arcane and snotty references that even with my English major background and prolific reading experiences, I simply could not follow.  But that chapter was an anomaly in an otherwise very readable book. The lives of the characters were set ...