TBR List Update: August

     

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In August 2023

Books read: 6

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

Despite hanging onto and coming back to Lost Children Archive, I DNF; the topic seemed interesting but the execution was so dry and weirdly detached! How does the main character feel about her husband accepting a job across the country without consulting with her? Does this mean their marriage is on the rocks? What does he think about her career, and what adjustments or sacrifices is she making to accommodate his? "The girl" and "the boy", their children, blended together for me into an amorphous backseat blob -- I kept forgetting which one was older. When I looked at the "leftovers" from June and July's holds, it just didn't seem worthwhile to keep slogging through this one when I could clear the pile.

I started Calypso, but David Sedaris is for a select palate (not mine). Trauma tossed off wittily but not with a personality I can relate to.

Books left on the TBR List: 66

Best book of the month: A Half-Built Garden

I was so excited by this one! 30 or 40 pages in, I wrote a glowing recommendation to library colleagues, feeling like I'd finally identified the niche of queer Jewish feminist sf that speaks to me most deeply. It's near-future when the aliens land and tell the first humans they meet that the planet Earth is running out of resources and will perish (and the human race along with it) if humans don't evacuate their home planet in the aliens' ships. But the humans, part of a watershed network that champions ethical use of natural resources and seeks to make decisions through AI-assisted consensus negotiation, take umbrage -- they KNOW Earth is in trouble and have been working the last two generations to reverse humans' terrible impact on the planet. Shouldn't they get a chance to save their home?

Worst book of the month: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

I did NOT like the first-person writing and all the (improbable) dialogue without commentary in this novel's style. I skimmed a lot of it to get to the plot twists, and would have given it up (DNF) if it hadn't gone so quickly. Creepy, yes, but mostly annoying and confusing.