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.

TBR List Update: May

        

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 May 2024

Books read: 6

Books I decided NOT to finish: 5

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: After reviewing this slim volume, I realize that I've read it before.

The Husband Hunters: I added this to the list in 2020 (when I was working with the Main Library collection during its pandemic closure), having watched a lot of Downton Abbey. Since then I've also viewed The Gilded Age, and closely enough to recognize a number of real-life personages that those characters were modeled on, from the photographs in the book. The text reads like Debrett's -- too many names for me -- so that was sufficient.

Miss Pym Disposes: a recommendation that would've been all right had I nothing else pressing to read; since I do, and was looking for something to cast off, I have disposed of it.

The Echo Wife: I have enjoyed Sarah Gailey's previous work, but I just couldn't get into this one. I ended up skipping through and getting the gist of the plotline, then turned it back in.

Lives of Girls and Women: I tried the first chapter and couldn't see what all the fuss was about. But there's also a book club reading it, so many people on the hold list who do want it.

Life Undercover

Books left on the TBR List: 56

Best book of the month: The Women Could Fly

At about the halfway point, I hadn't yet decided whether I liked this book. Reserving judgement until the last page was turned, I'm still a little perplexed, but I'm falling on the side of no. It's a little too acid-trippy in its musings on witchcraft and magic, and the realistic aspects -- a Handmaid's Tale-like authoritarian government bent on eradicating witches, and by TOTAL COINCIDENCE I'M SURE oppressing women, gender minorities, POC, and under-resourced people -- were grim but not all that insightful. I'm still interested in the social effects of having all unmarried women under suspicion of terrible acts, requiring them to leave the workplace by 30 if they haven't married, putting them under formal control by a male relative and/or government monitor, etc. The main character in this story is conflicted about what she wants and needs, and so was I. Was this a happy ending? Would I have preferred a different one? It's all a twisting, foggy path.

Worst book of the month: I'm not prepared to name one. The Echo Wife would've been it, if I had read the whole thing.