Library Love, Wednesday, March 30th

Shannon over at River City Reading has a monthly Library Checkout post. While I love the idea, I check out too many books to just post once a month.

This week I brought home: 4 adult fiction, 1 young adult fiction, 1 young adult graphic novel, 1 lyric memoir (?), and 6 books for my middle schooler, plus a handful of other books that I cannot remember that I returned immediately because I knew I wouldn't get to them. I only added one e-audiobook this week.

What about you? Have you read any of these? Do you use your local library? 

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten of the Best Books I've Read Recently

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. 

This week's theme is Ten of Your Most Recent 5-Star Reads. Because I don't 5-star things very often, I am choosing 10 of the best recent reads.

1. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

2. The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

3. Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff

4. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

5. The Vegetarian by Han King

6. A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin

7. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

8. Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

9. The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

10. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Unfortunately, my list is pretty boring. Obviously my first love is adult literary fiction, and most of the usual suspects from the past year are on here. Of these, the two that I would push on almost anyone are Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, a YA graphic novel that I thought was just fabulous, and Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, which is so wonderful and short!

I can't wait to see everyone else's lists!

It's Monday, March 28th! What Are You Reading?

It's a new week and time for the weekly Monday post! "It's Monday! What Are You Reading?" is a weekly meme hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. Click on the picture above to visit her blog.

Here is what I am currently reading:

I had so much fun last week finally getting around to reading The Keep by Jennifer Egan and Arcadia by Lauren Groff that I asked myself what else I needed to read. I guess I wanted to challenge because I picked A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. I have both the hardcover and the e-audiobook checked out. I've only read a few chapters so far, and I'm already intimidated by its cast of thousands. A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2015. It's set in Jamaica in 1976 and beyond and centers around an attempt to kill Bob Marley two days before he was to perform at a peace concert and the aftermath.

I have an unwritten rule that if I bring something home from the library enough times I have to read it. I thought I could tempt my teenager to read Illuminae by Amie  Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, but he decided he wasn't interested. I am not a big fan of science fiction, but I started it last night, and I had to force myself to stop reading. Illuminae is set in 2575, and its two main characters have just fled the planet on which they lived after it was attacked by a competing mining company. And because it's YA, the two characters used to date, but they broke up the night before the attack.

I am also currently reading Doll Bones by Holly Black. It's juvenile fiction, and that doll is creepy! 

After I finish those three, it is anyone's guess what I will read next. Here are some of the books that I am considering.

What are you reading this week?

Week End Reviews, Week Ending Sunday, March 27th

I am a little behind this week. Friday we went to a movie. Yesterday, I worked, and we had extended family Easter. So here it is Easter Sunday, and no week end post yet.

I finished 10 books since my last week end review! Here is a quick summary of what I have been reading.

Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel by Zachary Thomas Dodson

Bats of the Republic was a surprise winner of an early round in the Morning News Tournament of Books. It is more of an awesome art project than a novel. Bats has two principle storylines. One is set in the steampunk future of 2143, and the other is set in 1843 in the wild west and the city of Chicago. But it's not quite the 1843 our ancestors lived in. 

The book is an exercise in style. It's told in the format of excerpts from 2 novels supplemented by letters and illustrations and carats and occasional green text. It's metafiction.
 
For the most part it worked for me. There was a part near the middle, where I just quit reading one of the storylines for a few pages because the author insisted on alternating one storyline on the left hand pages and another on the right. The plots were tightly mirroring each other, and it was obnoxious, so I just said F it and read the left. Or maybe it was the right. Anyway, after that I never really got back into the story in the same way. And the ending was kind of a huge disappointment, but that implies a level of caring that I couldn't quite muster and ignores the excitement that I felt at having made it to the end.

This book's layers have layers, and it's all very impressive, and it's an experience. If that sounds like fun to you, try it.  I'm trying to think of another book that favors style over substance, and the book that keeps coming to mind is S by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst or Building Stories by Chris Ware. Neither of which I have actually read.

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes

Ghost World is a graphic novel. It's about two teenage girls, Enid and Becky, getting ready to embark on their post-high school lives. The girls hang out at a diner a lot, and Enid has a strange fascination with repulsive people. 

I always tell myself that I like quirky books, but sometimes when I start a book and it's a little too quirky, I have to really force myself to keep going. In this case I am glad that I did, but in the end this book was just kind of there for me, and I have zero interest in watching the movie. Is it one of those art-house movies where there is a lot of talking and nothing much happens? Because that is what the book was like. The movie stars Thora Birch as Enid and Scarlett Johansson as Becky.  

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Arcadia is a book that had been on my TBR for several years. It was in the Tournament of Books in 2013, but it lost early. Arcadia centers on Bit, who at the opening of the novel is a 5 year old boy living on a hippie commune called Arcadia in upstate New York. The book is divided into 4 sections: Bit as a boy on the commune, Bit in his teens still on the commune, Bit as an adult in the city, and Bit about a dozen years later. 

When I try to put into words what I think it was about, the first thing that I think of is community, but also family and society. Despite its flaws, I think Groff is like Bit in that she has a lot of sympathy for the commune dwellers and the sense of community and togetherness they tried to foster, and that sense of togetherness is something that we are often lacking. There was a clash between the dream of living purely and the dream of living freely.

The final section of the novel was a bit of a surprise. It is set in the near future and carries a warning. In that, it reminded me of the last section of A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I spent too much time during the section pondering how well this part will age. 2018 was a much more distant near future in 2012 than it is today in 2016.

I thought it was interesting how different Bit's and Helle's memories of Arcadia were, and I wondered how much of that was the mitigating influence of Bit's parents and their relationship with each other and Bit. I appreciate that Groff didn't romanticize life on the commune but didn't dismiss it either, and I liked that the novel wasn't about Handy. He was one of the least interesting things about it, and Groff seemed to think so too.  

American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis

American Housewife is a short collection of short stories. Although most of the stories feature an American housewife, that is about all they have in common. I've seen the collection described as uneven, and I would agree. Some stories are wonderful, biting and funny. Others are a little flat. But overall a worthwhile read. I especially liked "What I Do All Day", "The Wainscoting War", and "Dumpster Diving with the Stars".

A solid 4-star read with 5-star moments.

Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse by Faith Sullivan

I read Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse for my local book group. It is about Nell, a young wife and mother, whose husband passes away suddenly in 1900, and follows her through her teaching career and two wars all the way into the 1960s. 

The book was an enjoyable, if sweet, read, and it contained many passages expounding on the rewards of being a reader and how a reader can develop a relationship with a writer through his work. I definitely liked it, but it was a bit light. Having read Wodehouse is not a prerequisite, but it might add to one's enjoyment of the book. This book was recommended to a member of our group by the owner of a local bookstore.

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

The Keep has two storylines: one set at an old castle in Eastern Europe and the other in an American prison. In the first storyline, Howard has purchased a creepy castle complete with an ancient baroness who refuses to leave, and he wants to turn it into a hotel. He asks his cousin Danny with whom he has a complicated history to come and help him, although he doesn't seem to have a clear task in mind for Danny. In the other storyline, Ray is taking a creative writing class in prison, and he develops a crush on the teacher Holly. Also his cellmate Davis has a special box.

I've seen this described as Gothic, which I think means creepy. I am not a fan of creepy. Egan does a good job of creating and building tension. I was very uncomfortable reading the book. Unsettled might be a better word. Both Ray and Danny are well-developed characters, and I liked how it all came together in the end.

The Longest Night by Andria Williams

As The Longest Night opens, it is 1959, and Paul and Nat Collier are moving with their two young daughters to Idaho Falls, Idaho, where Paul has accepted a job working at a small nuclear reactor. The job is dangerous. Paul quickly finds out that the reactor needs a new core. He and his boss get off to a bad start. It is hard being new to town and not knowing a lot of people, and it puts a strain on their marriage.

Although The Longest Night is fiction, it is based on a real incident that occurred on January 3, 1961, a little known incident in American history.

The Longest Night is a solid read. It has a prologue that reveals part of the ending, which is a pet peeve of mine because sometimes I think the author relies too much on the prologue to create tension in the novel. The Longest Night had plenty of tension, mostly interpersonal, without it, and really you didn't have to read the prologue to see it coming.

Also, this week I read the three juvenile and young adult books pictured above. All were solid efforts, although my favorite was American Born Chinese, and I look forward to reading more of Gene Luen Yang's books in the near future.

Library Love, Wednesday, March 23rd

Confession: I have a library problem. I am a stay-at-home mom, who works part-time at the local library, and if I thought I had a library problem before I worked there, it has just gotten worse in the 18 months since I got my job. I think someone has a monthly library linkup, but well, if I only posted a library list once a month it would be too long.

This is what I brought home last week: 5 adult fiction, 1 adult graphic novel, 1 young adult fiction, and 3 juvenile fiction. Of these, I am most excited about All Things Cease to Appear, March. Book One, and The Lost Tribes. The Lost Tribes was written by a friend of a friend, and I spaced out when it was released last year.

I also checked out a few audiobooks, including two adult fiction and 1 juvenile fiction. 

 

I will probably only have time to read a few of these books. Have you read any of them?