Weekly Reading Thread: January 26 to Feb 1

I was having trouble getting into Such a Fun Age and A Nearly Normal Family, so I only read about 50-100 pages then stopped. Started reading Past Perfect Life, which I liked, but I had it in the car, and my daughter was driving it, and the car started having problems, so she took it to the dealership and didn't realize I left the book. So had to find a new one because car will be in the shop for 5 days. Started Stolen Things and so far so good!

Right now I am reading Becoming Mrs. Lewis. I am about 75% finished and it has been a good read.

I finished The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas. The premise was interesting, and the beginning of the book was, too, but in the end I found it repetitive and a little disappointing. I rated it three stars on GoodReads. I'd only recommend it if you're really interested in the world of 19th century book publishing. Lol.

I'm halfway through The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I saw the first two movies in the trilogy years ago, have never been interested in gangster movies really...but I watched a show on TV a few weeks ago where they talked about the movies, how they came to be made, and analyzed the story and the characters from a more literary perspective. It was really excellent; they had interviews with Coppola, Pacino, Caan, several film critics, etc. It made me want to read the book and I have to say I'm enjoying it. It's a sordid story but it's fascinating, too. I feel like I'm understanding all the hoopla about The Godfather for the first time.

We love David Rosenfelt! We've read all of his Andy Carpenter books and all of his stand alone books.

Hmmmm, maybe I'll listen to The Godfather on Audible some time.

I read Ask Again Yes, Dear Edward and The Secret Life of Violet Grant this week and really enjoyed all three. Almost finished with The Haunting of Ashburn House which I got for free on Amazon and am surprised at how fun it is. Getting ready to start Where the Crawdads Sing.

The first this week was The Ones We Choose by Julie Clark, this is a fictional story about a woman who had a child using donor sperm and how that child struggles because he doesn't have a father, it also covers themes of family, DNA/DNA testing, & inherited diseases. I's hard to rate this book, on the whole I liked the story, but didn't always agree with the authors/characters views and a couple of co-incidences in the book were so unbelievable and would never have happened and that almost ruined it for me. But if you can go with the flow and not overthink it, it is quite entertaining. 3 stars

Deborah Harry must have lived a crazy and interesting life, so I'm astounded that she managed to turn it into such a stinker of a book. Face It by Debbie Harry is truly dreadful. Firstly the audiobook - she narrates it herself...in a mumbling monotone that is extremely difficult to keep listening to. 
Secondly the book reads like a list "then we made this record" "We broke up" There is zero insight into anything that happened in her career and it's like she has no feelings about anything. She's also forgotten a bunch of stuff and says "I don't remember" a lot, she mentions people's names without explaining who they are, and glosses over a couple of decades of drug abuse with just the occasional comment about "scoring heroin" nothing about how she stopped using. 
Then there's some existential pondering about bees and a whole section on opposable thumbs (ever noticed how aliens don't have thumbs yet they can still fly their spaceships through the universe??)  Don't even bother. I rated it one star on Goodreads but would have been zero if I could.

I just finished A Fire Sparkling by Julianne MacLean and this was another one I find difficult to rate and review. On one hand I enjoyed listening to it and it kept me engaged in the story, but on the other some of the events were so unlikely and so many really awful things happened to one character that it really stretched my ability to accept the storyline. 
It's dual timeline WW2 fiction, in the modern day Gillian finds a photo of her British grandmother with a Nazi officer and they look like they are in love, then her 93yo grandmother finally tells them all the secrets she has kept over the years. It was ALL the things that happened to the grandmother during the war that got quite unbelievable at times. But overall I still gave it 4 stars

I have been reading a lot more than usual this past week - rehab after a knee replacement has meant a lot of sitting around waiting.
First up was The Department is Sensitive Crimes, by Alexander McCall Smith. Easy reading and quite funny in places - think Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, but set in Malmo, Sweden. This is the first in this series and I will probably read more.

Next up was Hostage by Kristina Ohlsson. This is her 4th book in the Fredrick’s Bergstrom/Alex Rechts series, but can stand alone. A plane leaves Stockholm’s Arlanda airport bound for New York and shortly after takeoff, a note is found in a toilet saying there is a bomb on board, and making demands on both the Swedish and US governments. Riveting reading - I really like this author and the topics she covers in her books.

Just finished with Big Bad Wolf by Nele Neuhaus. This is also one in a series, I think #3, but they have been translated from German out of order, so I’m not sure. I haven’t read them in order. The discovery of a girl’s body in the Main river near Frankfurt is the start of an investigation into a child abuse ring involving many high ranking people. There are several threads running their way through this book and it can be tricky to follow at first, but all the stories come together at the end.

My brush w/ fame is that we used to hang out w/ the man who produced most of Coppola's movies, including The Godfather movies.  (The producer had moved back to Oklahoma and was good friends w/ one of my good friends).  He rarely talked about his Hollywood days, but every once in awhile he would throw out a juicy morsel.  The producer was recently inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and Coppola came and spoke at the ceremony.

I read Arcadia by Lauren Groff.  It is a novel about a boy who grows up on a commune in New York and how that experience shapes his life.  It is a good story and it was well written, but I thought it was a little too long.  I felt like the story dragged at times.








 

I read Noel Street by Richard Paul Evans. It was about a single white mother raising her biracial son in a town called Mistletoe after her husband died in Vietnam and her family disowned her. I really enjoyed this light read.

I'm half way through The Escape Room by Megan Goldin - I'm enjoying it

Finished...

Heft by Liz Moore - I really liked it! I didn't like being left with the ending though. I wanted to know more about how the relationships continued to evolve.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore - So I read 3 of her books recently. This was actually my least favorite of the 3. Heft is #1, The Unseen World is #2, and this is #3.

Started...

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson - I read and liked The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton (another man on death row who he also represented) last year and have had this on hold for months!

I just checked this one out. I've been consumed by a new netflix series another thread led me to (Hart of Dixie) instead of reading.