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.