Weekly Reading Thread: October 20-26

I finally read Where the Crawdads Sing and loved the first half of the book but felt it lost its way at the end.

Right now I'm reading a random library pick up, Stone Mothers by Erin Kelly, and really enjoying her writing style and story telling.

I finished Unsolved by James Patterson. It was much better than the last book of his I read. Lots of twists and turns and short chapters!

Now I'm reading The Summer of 69 by Elin Hilderbrand. After that, I have The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney who I just recently discovered is actually a man named Anthony Capella.

I put a lot of books on hold at the library several months ago and they are all coming up too fast! I had to freeze several of the holds.

I just read one this week as it was kind of long.

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys.

I was a bit disappointed. The historical aspect was interesting. It was written in quite a juvenile fashion and dragged out too long. There was a great twist at the end. 3/5 stars.

I'm reading the top short stories of 2019 right now. So far, I have read five. They are incredibly bizarre. Lol.

Lisa

I’ve finished a couple of good ones. 

I read the latest Jojo Moyes book The Giver of the Stars. I loved it and highly recommend it. 

I also read the memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.  I found it very interesting as a teacher. The book did seem to skip around quite a bit, but I thought the author had some very good points to make about the poor working class in America. 

I finally read The Handmaid’s Tale. My DH loved it and said it was one of the best books he’s read in awhile, but I was so so on it. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either. 

I’m currently reading All the Flowers in Paris by Sarah Jio. It’s an interesting historical fiction novel set half in WWII era France and half in present day France. I’m loving it so far. 

Don’t know if you heard, After The End is based on real life events from the author's life. I thought it was sad but very well done.

I

I finished The Giver Of Stars as well and enjoyed it as well. I posted 2 weeks ago about it being on the same topic as The Book Woman OF Troublesome Creek and gottapeanow linked an interesting article about the two books & potential copyright issues with the 2 authors.
Having read both books now, it feels unlikely that anyone copied, if anything Moyes may have got the idea of the main topic, but the two books are quite different. I think there's a place for both and reading both one after the other feels like a more complete exploration of the topic and not like you are reading the same book twice.
If you enjoy either book, then I think you'd enjoy the other one just as much. I gave them both 4 stars.

Now I'm almost finished The Dutch House by Anne Patchett. I really liked State of Wonder by her, but couldn't get past the first few pages of Commonwealth, so I was interested to see which way this one would go.
It's described as a "dark fairy tale" and that's quite apt, as there's the cold father, who remarries the evil step mother and his two children are cast out of the house by her and her two daughters. It's OK, I'm almost at the end and still don't really know what the point is. Much is made of the house they live in, but I'm not seeing why this is either.
It's narrated by Tom Hanks, who I love as an actor, but not liking as a book narrator at all, he reads like it's a conversation and he runs the words and sentences together and makes it easy for me to tune out.
It's kept me listening but I don't love it. Probably 3 stars.

We had planned to listen to Tampa by Alissa Nutting for our next month's book club & I was going to start that next but there's just been a WhatsApp chat and the 3 who have started it hate it so it's been ditched. It's about a female pederast, which probably would have made for some interesting discussion even if we all hated the topic at hand. I might still listen to it though.

Finished...
Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center - It was just okay for me. A little too predictable.

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James - I really liked this one. It's a mystery with 3 different mysteries inside it. It was all going great until it wrapped up a little too neatly and quickly in the end. That seems to happen a lot with these sorts of books though.

Starting...
The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger - My library hold came in yesterday, so I'll start this one today.

pjaye, thanks for your thoughts on the two books. I was wondering how they would compare to each other.

Lisa

Friends of the library by Susan Cushman.