TBR List Update: October

            

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2024. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In October 2024

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

Low-Demand Parenting: This is useful info in general, especially for parents and people who work with kids, but it was most relevant to the foster kiddo who's recently left our house. I'm going to let it go.

Model Home: See below about Rivers Solomon.

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat: I realized that my library system only had one volume available, and it wasn't the first one. I didn't want to read this manga badly enough to seek it out from interlibrary loan.

Brown Girl in the Ring: I don't know why. I've previously read excerpts and it just doesn't sound so appealing anymore.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 45

Best book of the month: Bloodchild and Other Stories

Yummy, chewy morsels of Octavia Butler's work, with an accompanying author's note on each one.

Worst book of the month: An Unkindness of Ghosts

*sigh* This is the second Solomon book I've not connected with, and at this point I'm not up for reading another. There's so much character development and interesting worlds/life circumstances, and you start to really care about the characters' choices, but then what happens in terms of plot? Is there resolution? No! Very unfulfilling.

TBR List Update: September

           

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2024. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In September 2024

Books read: 3

Books I decided NOT to finish: 4

When the Angels Left the Old Country: I started this before going on sabbatical, and found my interest in demons and dybbuks and demonstrations at sweatshops waned.

Delicious Foods: Maybe it was the "daring and shape-shifting prose" (as advertised in the jacket copy) , but when I was sorting through my pile, I decided to turn it in unread.

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: Science written for a popular audience -- which is fine, but I thought from the introduction that I'd be reading the author's personal experience with his family. It didn't make the back-to-work cut.

Cane River: This one WAS the author's family's story... and as interesting as it might be over a glass of sweet tea, it doesn't have the systemically crafted plot twists of a novel.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 41

Best book of the month: An Unkindness of Ghosts

Space-age SF with social justice along multiple axes.

Worst book of the month:

They were all fine.

TBR List Update: August

           

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2024. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In August 2024

Books read: 3

Books I decided NOT to finish: 1

The Mountain in the Sea: Looked forward to this for ages based on the sf premise and a colleague's recommendation, but found it slow going and the loan expired.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 

Best book of the month: Aft

This read

Worst book of the month: Cu

What the heck was this?? 

TBR List Update: July

          

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2024. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In July 2024

Books read: 9

Books I decided NOT to finish: 2

The Orphan Collector: Usually books like this are my cup of tea, but I just couldn't get into it after a second or third attempt, and decided not to spend my vacation time on it.

The Apple:  Eh. Not as racy as I'd been led to believe.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 55 (I pulled some from Hoopla recommendations, not the list)

Best book of the month: After We Were Stolen

This read like a long and twisty episode of Criminal Minds or Law & Order: SVU, with a little nod to the second half of Room. I appreciated the glimpses into safe house etiquette and the perspective of our unreliable narrator as she learns more about the outside world.

Worst book of the month: Cutting Lisa

What the heck was this?? I finished it because it was short, but I regret it. No explanation of character motivation. If you didn't already think just like this guy (an old white straight man), you don't get a clue as to what he's feeling or why. No plot development! Characters would have conversations, and either nothing at all would change about the situation (so why have the conversation on the page?) or somehow it would trigger a bold action, without explanation. I selected this because of the acclaim given to the author's latest, James, but reading this doesn't incline me in the slightest toward his other novels.

Spent the whole month on leave (and much of the reading occurred on an airplane or ship), but it often felt like I was just substituting work at home or travel for work at the office. I finished up a few that had been hanging out half-read, and succumbed to a sequel in a series I don't think I want to finish,

TBR List Update: June

         

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR2024. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In June 2024

Books read: 2

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

Predators: Who They Are and How to Stop Them: Going through some stuff right now that made me not want to read more. Good advice in what I did read, though.

REMY: I *had* to try a book with my own name! Then I couldn't get through the writing in the first pages. Too much telling without showing. Slow and ungainly. I gave up on myself.

The Orphan Collector: Started it again, got half a chapter further, skimmed a bit, and decided it was too slow/boring.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 58 (yes, it's getting bigger now)

Best book of the month: There's not much to choose from...

Mad Honey was fine; I saw the twist coming (not always true with Jodi Picoult!) and it was handled well. Perhaps groundbreaking at the time it was published? I wrote, until I checked and found it it was from 2022. I liked the setting and learning more about bees!

Worst book of the month: I haven't finished enough to say!

I had a lot of balls to juggle this month, between work and home responsibilities. Starting in July I'll be on sabbatical/family leave, and there will be traveling, so hopefully some free time to read.