Weekly Reading Thread: July 21-27

This week I read The Better Sister by Alafair Burke. I enjoyed it as it kept me guessing and had many twists and turns. 4/5 stars.

Now I'm reading an old book (2000) by John Gilstrap called Even Steven. Someone here must have recommended it because I don't know why I would have put it on hold otherwise. So far I'm enjoying it.

Currently reading In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opiods by Travis Rieder. It's... upsetting. It's upsetting to know how the opioid crisis could possibly have been averted, but instead drug companies (Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family being tops) lined their pockets. Blood money. Also upsetting about the lack of training most doctors have in tapering off opioids or managing pain in general.

Next up will be Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys.

I finished Dear Wife by Kimberly Belle (She also wrote The Marriage Lie)

Good plot, easy read (only 328 pages) and satisfying thriller I gave it 4.5 stars

**Warning - Domestic violence triggers

Just started Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner. I have liked her other books, so we will see.

I just looked it up on Good Reads and saw that Bill Gates loved it too. He cried while reading it. He and Melinda often read the same book and she evidently was behind and didn't know why he was crying.

I finished a little book called The Body in Question by Jill Clement.

I loved the concept of this. Two jurors meet and have an affair. The trial ends. Now what?

The jacket of the book gives a bit too much away, IMO. But not everything.

This book could have gone soooooo many directions. But the path that Clement took and the ending were ... interesting. It's a super quick read. 4/5 stars.
(TBH, I'm fascinated by the idea of about 10 authors taking this basic plot idea and writing 10 books. And seeing what they each come up with.)

I'm reading The Woman in the White Kimono right now. It alternates between past (1957 in Japan) and present. It's really good so far.

Lisa

Two books that I have started but not finished in the past are A Gentleman In Moscow and Educated. I am making it a goal to finish both of these this year - I'm not sure why I didn't finish them, I think I will end up really enjoying both of them.

See, I thought Pachinko was just OK, and I didn't like This is How it Always Is at all, but LOVED 'Crawdads'

I finished my book club book “Station Eleven” on Wednesday last week, it was okay, but I wanted a certain storyline to be developed just a little more.

Saturday I read The Handmaid’s Tale, which was very good. I figured since I was about to start binge watching season 3, I’d read her version.

Then, continuing the theme of me already watching Hollywood’s version, I read Bird Box yesterday. Another good one!

It was fun to read a couple books I knew the story to, it’s been a while.

Not sure what I’ll start tonight...maybe something fluffy like Nicholas Sparks?

I'm still trudging through Grant by Ron Chernow. I've been reading it for almost three weeks.

Chernow wrote the book which the musical Hamilton is based on. He really knows how to make history come alive. I took a course on the Civil War in college, but I have learned so much more about the Civil War and Reconstruction by reading this book than I ever learned in that semester long class.

This book gives me hope that the nation will get through our current division. It is comforting to read about how incredibly divided the country was after the Civil War and to see that it made it through those very tough times.

I had no idea how truly powerful the Ku Klux Klan was in the South after the Civil War. I always thought the Klan was a bunch of local organizations who committed random acts of horrific violence. This book has shown me the Klan was an extremely well organized terroist organization which systematically committed violence against society and had no scruples about murdering white judges and jurors to ensure that they would not be punished for their acts of terroism directed at blacks and Northern reformers. President Grant sent in the feds and successfully dismantled the Klan. (Unfortunately they emerged again in the next century).

I think I'll need to read something very light and entertaining when I finally finish this book.

This week I finished Riley Sager's latest, Lock Every Door. It's the story of a young woman who becomes an apartment sitter in a super-exclusive apartment building in New York, but mysterious things and disappearances begin to happen.
The book is getting high ratings on Goodreads and while it's good, it seemed a little Nancy Drew / Scooby-Dooish to me at times. I gave it 3.5 stars.

I finished, "The Night Olivia Fell" last night. I loved it. It was very reminiscent of "Reconstructing Amelia" for me. It got me to thinking how I parent my own girls and how they might view it in hindsight.

I also listened to "Only One Life" by Ashley Farley. It was decent, very predictable. There were many characters in the book that I disliked, though it was written that way.

Happy reading!

I just started this a few days ago. 

Just wanted to mention that Grant is $1.99 today on Amazon.